Greenspan doesn't just criticize Bush's economic policies in his new book. Check it out:
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.
According to this Associated Press article, Al-Qaida, like the demonic car in Stephen King’s Christine, has managed to successfully rebuild itself:
This is not news we can take lightly, America. If we are to interpret this report correctly, we are at as great a risk of suffering a terrorist attack on our soil as we were just before 9/11. But our President would rather sit on his hands than take the bold, effective measures we need in a time like this. That is why we, the voters, need to start a massive letter-writing campaign to our congressional representatives, urging them to authorize a massive military effort to stop these terrorists before they can hit us. Specifically, we need to launch an invasion of Afghanistan.A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that al-Qaida has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001. A counterterrorism official familiar with a five-page summary of the document _ titled "Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West" _ called it a stark appraisal. The analysis will be part of a broader meeting at the White House on Thursday about an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate.
I kid you not, that's the argument being made by William Kristol (and, apparently, Lathryn Jean Lopez):
War is hell and war deserves everything you've got left in you. So onward and upward, but let's rally for the fight.In Washington, pundits can be consistently wrong about pretty much everything and still be considered Very Serious People. That's why William Kristol still has a job. What's truly bizarre here is Kristol's apparent belief that Bush has not yet "embraced hawkishness," and that doing so now would somehow be a "shot in the arm" to the administration. What does this even mean? Should Bush give a speech in which he confidently reiterates his adamant support for the war? How would that differ from every speech in the past four years? Will administration officials stand around water coolers having conversations like, "Hey, did you know the President supports this war? Before, I thought he was a waffler on Iraq. Now he's 'embraced hawkishness.' I'm inspired!"
A few minutes ago, Bill Kristol expressed a similar sentiment (stressing the moving forward part), while on Laura Ingraham's show, wishing Cabinet secretaries would engage in the fight for victory. He encouraged the president to embrace hawkishness, predicting it could not only rally folks toward being victory-minded but could also have the added benefit of being a real "shot in the arm" for the Bush administration.
Fred Thompson has decided to jump into the Harry Reid "controversy":
For those of you who haven't been following this sorry Republican talking point, the gist of it is that Reid (supposedly) called Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, incompetent in a conference call with bloggers. This is, apparently, not only hugely insulting to Pace but a boon to our enemies. So says White House spokesman Tony Snow:Well, you've heard by now that Senate leader Harry Reid insulted one of this country's brightest military minds, Marine Corps General Peter Pace -- calling him "incompetent."
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But Reid's comments are not meant for logical analysis. He proclaimed the war lost some time ago, and the surge as a failure even before the additional troops were on the ground. The problem is that every one of Reid's comments I've noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.
Snow told reporters that he hoped what he had read about Reid is "not true, because in a time of war, for a leader of a party that says its supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and also the man that is responsible for the bulk of military operations in Iraq.Of course, Pace will only be responsible for military operation in Iraq until September 30, 2007, because Bush has essentially fired him. (Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates advised President Bush not to renominate Pace for the job, and Bush agreed.) Pace didn't want to step down:
In his first public comments on the Bush administration's surprise decision to replace him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace disclosed that he had turned down an offer to voluntarily retire rather than be forced out.Now, let's get this straight. Calling General Pace incompetent in a conference call gives aid to our enemies, but firing him doesn't? Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog is all over the cognitive dissonance here:
If Pace is so competent, why is he losing his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while we are in the middle of a war?There is nothing inherently with either criticizing or firing generals in the middle of a war. We've done it many times before in our history. As Kos puts it:
Is Tony Snow telling us that it's Pace's competence that has led us to where we are in Iraq? Pace is being fired as our top military commander either because he's incompetent (which is fine) or for purely political reasons (which is not fine in the middle of a war), so which one is it? Either way, Bush made the decision to get rid of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs "in a time of war." And now that Harry Reid agrees with Bush for once, he's the bad guy? Then who is to blame for how horribly things are going in Iraq? Not Bush, apparently. And not the military commanders either, we're now being told. So does the White House blame the troops, or did some magic pixie run the war into the ground when nobody was looking?
How many generals did Lincoln go through before he found Grant?If I was in a satirical mood, I might write something like this:
But beyond that obvious point, the spectacle of George Bush's press secretary lamenting attacks on military officers is just laughable. The President was re-elected following a political convention where his followers mocked John Kerry's purple hearts by waiving around band-aids. And decorated war veterans from John Murtha to Max Cleland to Wes Clark have seen their character and integrity -- not their mere competence -- publicly mauled by the President's political movement.
Everyone’s favorite sportscaster-turned-troop-hater, Mr. Keith Olbermann, has this to say about the Democrats’ recent face-plant in the tug-of-war game that was the Great Iraq War Funding Debate of Aught-7:
“The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”; the Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans; the Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government; the Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq. You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.”
From the Boston Globe:
The White House announced yesterday that the US ambassador in Baghdad would meet with Iranian officials about stabilizing Iraq, probably in the next several weeks, as the administration embraced a tactic outsiders have long recommended as essential to reducing sectarian violence in Iraq.This is a huge shift in policy for the administration. It looks like desperation is forcing Bush to do what he despises: negotiate with an unpleasant regime. Note the inevitable neoconservative complaint:
You know what else is seen as a sign of American weakness? Losing the war in Iraq. I wholeheartedly approve this belated move. That isn't to say that I have much faith in the Iranian government; odds are that nothing much will come of this. It's just that if there is any possibility that the Iranians could be convinced/bribed to tone down their activities in Iraq, we should find out. Maybe the price would be too high; maybe they really are totally committed to creating chaos in Iraq. But the only way to know for sure is to talk to them.A prominent supporter of the Iraq war, however, blasted the Bush administration's decision to hold talks with Iran, saying it will be seen in the Mideast as a sign of US weakness. "I think it's foolish to believe that Iran sees its interests as compatible with American interests in Iraq," said Richard Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-oriented think tank. "I don't think they are interested in stability. Iran has been contributing to instability. That is a deliberate policy and I don't expect it to change. So it's not clear what we hope to achieve."
Below, Fz asks:
If we want to succeed (and despite what the Bush Administration says, Democrats would like to see a success), we need to first define what that is. I'm torn about how we should define success. Should we create a strict definition and say it isn't possible? Or should we make it easier to achieve? Do we shoot for the best possible outcome or the most practical outcome?I think there are two different issues here. As a matter of policy, it's clear that the US must think in terms of the "least bad" option in Iraq. No form of "success" as it was originally understood (establishing a peaceful, democratic, pro-American state to contribute to the democratic transformation of the Middle East) is possible in the foreseeable future. Continuing to chase this pony is counterproductive. Instead, the US should concentrate on the least bad option it can realistically hope for at this point, which is a fairly stable state that does not play host to al-Qaeda, isn't too beholden to Iran, and keeps ethnic conflict below the level of a civil war. I'm not breaking any new ground here; serious strategic thinkers have been saying this for years.
We often hear "talking heads" go on and on about how we must "succeed" in Iraq, and we see poll numbers suggesting that Americans think we will not do so. But here we see another flaw in polling. It assumes that people understand and agree on the meaning of the words used in the phrasing of the question. But, I think if we polled people regarding what "success" even means in the context of Iraq, we would see a wide spread of answers.
For instance, it could simply mean stability. Perhaps restoring Iraq to pre-invasion days is a success. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, it could mean complete Iraqi unity and American-style democracy. Or, a partitioning of Iraq into three sovereign entities, free to govern as they wish could be seen as a success.
If we want to succeed (and despite what the Bush Administration says, Democrats would like to see a success), we need to first define what that is. I'm torn about how we should define success. Should we create a strict definition and say it isn't possible? Or should we make it easier to achieve? Do we shoot for the best possible outcome or the most practical outcome?
Perhaps DC can shed some wisdom on this; he knows more about such international matters than I do.
There is a key concept of negotiation, outlined in Fischer and Ury's Getting to Yes, called the "Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement," or BATNA. A BATNA is the best outcome a negotiator can expect if the negotiation fails. The stronger the BATNA, the stronger the negotiator's bargaining power and the less incentive he has to reach a compromise. An example of this is a job negotiation. If a potential hire has another job offer in his back pocket (good BATNA), he can demand a higher salary from the employer. This is because he can walk away from the negotiation. Now imagine that the employer has also interviewed another job-seeker, with similar skills to the first, who will work for a lower wage. The employer, too, has a good BATNA. What will happen to the original negotiation? It will fail. Both the first job-seeker and the employer have good BATNAs, which will discourage them from making the compromise necessary for hiring to be made. The first job-seeker will take that job offer he had in his back pocket, and the employer will hire that other guy.
Now consider the situation in Iraq. It's clear that a political solution is a necessary component of any peaceful future of Iraq. It's also clear that this solution would involve hard compromises from all parties involved, particularly the Sunnis. It's time to ask if the presence of our troops is hurting or hindering this political solution. They are certainly preventing the current sectarian violence from breaking into an all-out civil war. It's possible, as the administration argues, that this is providing the necessary breathing room for a political solution. But it seems far more likely that their presence is actually hindering the political solution by strengthening the BATNAs of the various factions. An open-ended presence means that the Sunni militias, for example, are free to continue bombing and shooting Shiites without worrying about the consequences of a full-scale civil war which they would almost certainly lose.
One way to address this might be to set a firm timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. This would worsen the BATNAs of the main factions and give them more of an incentive to make the painful compromises necessary for peace. I'm hesitant to fully endorse the idea because it is definitely risky, and the consequences will be terrible if our troops pull out but no agreement is reached. Then we will see what a civil war really looks like. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a better option available.
I still have not figured out where I stand on the whole war issue. But, I have figured this much out: just as pulling out is not an effective method of contraception, it is not an effective military strategy either.
I'm sorry. That was shameful.
But in all seriousness, I do not support an immediate withdrawal of the troops. However, my refusal to support such a plan does not, by any means, echo the sentiments of our president. He (among other Republicans) consistently notes that announcing a timetable for withdrawal would basically tell the enemy when we are going to leave, as if "the enemy" (whatever that means) were waiting in the wings. It sure seems to me like our enemies in Iraq aren't waiting for anything. Also, it implies that a stealthy withdrawal is possible. In other words, he implies that pulling out could possibly be effective at some point so long as we don't announce it before hand.
As if "the enemy" wouldn't notice that we had left.
Of course, I'm sure he doesn't mean to imply this, but it is a necessary implication of his rhetoric. If announcing a timetable is inherently bad, that implies that an unannounced timetable could work, which seems absurd to me. I'm sure our astute readers will point out that Bush has rejected the notion of a timetable for withdrawal in and of itself. So, it is doubtful that Bush would support an unannounced timetable. And that's fine by me. I just wish he would put forward good arguments, and I think that there are plenty to be made against pulling out. However, the whole "aiding the enemy" argument is nothing more than hollow rhetoric, and it weakens the other arguments by shifting the focus away from policy and toward some vague notion of "patriotism." After all, in addition to the "Democrats want to aid the enemy" argument, we've heard that a withdrawal will make it such that all the deceased troops will have died in vain.
This is not about patriotism. It is about policy. And for once our shining star of a president is right: an immediate withdrawal is a terrible idea. But not for the reasons he has been stating. I realize that politics is always about rhetoric, but when it comes to war, I have a feeling that a frank discussion of the consequences of any policy proposal will get us farther than wrapping ourselves in the flag. And as always, this applies to both parties.
But hey, that's politics, eh?
More reaction to former CIA chief George Tenet's self-justifying new book. Former Time magazine editor and chairman of CNN Walter Isaacson weighs in:
George Tenet's woes, it seems to me, come from the very natural instinct to please rather than tell uncomfortable truths to those in authority... I was reminded how Kissinger, someone I once wrote about, was too willing to cater to and collaborate with the darker impulses of Nixon.As does the flamethrowing Christopher Hitchens, in an article entitled "A Loser's History":
The author is almost the only man who could have known of Zacarias Moussaoui and his co-conspirators—the very man who positively knew they were among us, in flight schools, and then decided to leave them alone. In his latest effusion, he writes: "I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting." Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it then, and not just in his "gut" but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies. His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to "HUMINT" under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle. It's for this reason that the CIA now has to rely on torturing the few suspects it can catch, a policy, incidentally, that Tenet's book warmly defends.
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And now comes Tenet, the man who got everything wrong and who ran the agency that couldn't think straight, to ask us to sympathize with his moanings about "Iraq—who, me?"A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that "hindsight is always 20-20." Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all.
