Antiwar.com Blog

Three weeks ago seven US soldiers in Iraq wrote an op-ed in the New York Times expressing grave doubts about the war.

On Monday, Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, two of seven U.S. troops killed in the incident which was reported just as Gen. David Petraeus was about to report to Congress on progress in the “surge.”

One of the other five authors of the Times piece, Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He was expected to survive after being flown to a military hospital in the US.

Thanks to Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher for alerting us to this.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced early Wednesday he had vetoed legislation that would have allowed Californians to vote on an advisory measure calling for President Bush to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

The measure had been passed by the State Senate and State Assembly, and would have allowed Calfornians the chance to vote the February on a non-binding resolution calling for immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. This would have more clearly tied the Presidential primary to the issue of Iraq.

Schwarzenegger, a typical politician who clearly believes that Californians should not be allowed to express their decisions at the ballot box, said that the measure “would only further divide voters and shift attention from other critical issues that must be addressed.”

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_09_11_tilghman.mp3]

Former Stars and Stripes reporter Andrew Tilghman discusses “al Qaeda in Iraq,” the different players’ motives for playing up their influence, the new redirection toward the Sunnis, and the Samara mosque bombings.

MP3 here. (36:06)

Andrew Tilghman was an Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2005 and 2006.

Unlike some people at Antiwar.com, I am a fan of Reason magazine. Perhaps I am just nostalgic for my tenure at Reason, 32 years ago. I have forgiven their attempt to balance the pro-war and antiwar “libertarian” positions. At least the pro-war “libertarians” tried to justify their hawkishness with the intent of bringing liberty to people in other nations.

But even that justification seems to be a thing of the past.

Today’s article by Jonathan Rauch reads like something that could have appeared in any unprincipled newspaper. Rauch explains the difference between pacification and peacekeeping. He implies (incorrectly) that our pulling out of Vietnam is what led to the bloodbath in Cambodia.

Rauch offers no justification for staying in Iraq, other than to continue the “surge” because “it is working.” Rauch apparently does not believe that the surge will result in any sort of long-term success. In fact, he seems to think it’s hopeless: “My reading of the evidence is that Iraqi fundamentals are more conducive to war than peace, and that there is not much the United States can do to change that.”

Yet Rauch says the Democrats will pay a heavy political price if they stop supporting the surge: “If they managed to ram through a withdrawal or timetable on party lines this fall, when most Republicans think the surge is working, they would be flayed for a generation as the party that seized certain defeat from the jaws of possible victory. For years to come, Republicans would insist that Democratic pusillanimity emboldened jihadism, an ugly narrative that some are already rehearsing.” Luckily, says Rauch, it’s not possible for the Dems to stop the war, so they shouldn’t bother trying: “Fortunately, without Republican support, Democrats can’t pull the plug or impose a strict timetable this fall.”

Rauch concludes that our anger over the disastrous war “does not justify impatience. If Petraeus says he needs more time, he should get it. If he fails, a course correction won’t be long in coming. The 22nd Amendment has seen to that.”

One question for the editors of Reason: What has any of this to do with libertarianism?

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_09_10_scheuer.mp3]

MP3 here. (45:24)

“Well, you know, the only people taking ‘marching orders’ from Osama bin Laden, as far as I can tell, are every presidential candidate (Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush) except Mr. Paul. Mr. Paul has it very square about what the motivation of our enemy is, and it’s certainly exactly what he said it is, intervention. …

“Really, it is the American political establishment that is marching to al Qaeda’s beat, not Mr. Paul.”

Michael Scheuer, former head analyst at the CIA’s bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris, discusses:

• His view of the legitimacy of the new bin Laden tape and the mention of his book
• His belief that current U.S. foreign policy is exactly what bin Laden wants and that Rep. Ron Paul M.D. has the best understanding of the enemy’s motivations and how to deal with them
• The sad fact that bin Laden wins whether America leaves Iraq now or later
• The “near” and “far” enemy
• The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan and what he believes should be done there
• Why he believes that al Qaeda wants to detonate a nuke here
• His support for the conclusions of Robert A. Pape in his book Dying to Win that suicide bombing is caused by foreign occupation and view of the role religion plays in al Qaeda’s motivation (they believe they’re defending theirs)
• The role of the mujahedeen in the 1999 Kosovo War
• The lack of threat posed to America by Syria and Iran and of cooperative links between Iran and al Qaeda
• The expansion of the war to Africa
• The impossibility of an “al Qaeda in Iraq” takeover in the event of U.S. withdrawal
• The degree of the danger that AQI represents in the long term
• The review by he and his CIA colleagues of the evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda before the Iraq war and their report to George Tenet that there were none
• His view that the vast majority of post-9/11 domestic terrorism prosecutions have been bogus cases of entrapment
• Closed borders

Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author of Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America and Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.

Scott’s previous interviews of Scheuer.

Ron Paul’s Reading List for the Farsighted.

From my Monday morning column, written on Sunday:

“At this dramatic turning point, bin Laden reappears with a half-hour long tape, the transcript of which can be found here, and there is something very odd about it, in that it reads like a political polemic that might have been written by an American.”

From the London Telegraph, posted pretty much simultaneously:

“A Californian heavy metal fan, who converted to Islam and became the first American to be charged with treason in half a century, has been fingered as the author of Osama bin Laden’s latest video lecture – which left the terror chief sounding like an anti-globalisation protester….

“American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s broadcast.

“Last October, the 28-year-old ‘loner’ became the first American charged with treason since 1952, for appearing in a succession of al-Qaeda videos under the guise of ‘Azzam The American,’ in which he condemned globalisation and made American cultural references.”

For more on the curious case of Senor Gadahn, go here, here, and here.