…were you right or wrong when you opposed the Iraqi surge?

It’s a simple question, Mr. President: were you right or wrong?

Max Boot reviews “The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama.”

Obama’s shameful, indifferent neglect of Iraq gets very little notice in the media.

Bush had a weekly teleconference with Maliki. Guess how often Obama called.

…Like all victories, the surge had many fathers. Messrs. Gordon and Trainor amply chronicle the valor of the frontline troops, but they also single out some unsung heroes who operated behind the scenes. Col. Derek Harvey, for example, an intelligence officer who was warning as early as 2004 that the situation was much worse than the official assessments claimed and arguing that it was imperative to reach out to the Sunni tribes. Or another intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Nicholas “Nycki” Brooks, who in 2006 was telling superiors of the need to clear insurgents from the “belts” surrounding Baghdad, a key part of the strategy that was eventually adopted. Yet another hero is former Sen. Chuck Robb, who, virtually alone among members of the 2006 Iraq Study Group led by Lee Hamilton and James Baker, championed the idea of sending additional troops to Iraq.

Messrs. Gordon and Trainor are less kind to the Obama administration, which came into office at a time when violence was falling as a result of the surge. On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama had opposed the surge, and the authors give the new administration credit for “backtracking on its unrealistic campaign promise to remove combat forces within sixteen months.” But they are highly critical of a range of other decisions, starting with the appointment of Christopher Hill, a diplomat with no experience in the Arab world, as the ambassador in Baghdad. (The job was first offered to, and accepted by, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, but then, for reasons the authors cannot explain, the offer was rescinded.)

Mr. Hill was a disastrous choice. He clashed both with Iraqi officials and with Gen. Raymond Odierno, the senior U.S. military commander, with whom he developed a “toxic and dysfunctional” relationship. While his successful predecessor, Ryan Crocker, saw his job as working closely with the military to push Iraqi politics in a constructive direction, Mr. Hill adopted a hands-off attitude, trying to treat Iraq like a “normal” country even as it was mired in a lengthy stalemate over the formation of a new government following the inconclusive election of 2010. Mr. Hill sneered at Gen. Odierno’s attempts, Messrs. Trainor and Gordon write, “to neutralize, or at least attenuate, the ‘drivers of instability,’ those factors that had the potential to unhinge Iraq.”

When Mr. Hill and his superiors in the Obama administration finally got involved in trying to create a new government, they wound up pushing for Nouri al-Maliki’s retention as prime minister—ironically, the result that Iran was also pursuing. As one Iraqi politician joked, “the Axis of Evil and the Great Satan appeared to be backing the same candidate.” Mr. Obama tried to find a senior job for Ayad Allawi, the secular Shiite whose party had won the most seats in the election, but his clumsy intervention accomplished nothing. “Compared to Bush’s weekly videoconferences with Maliki,” the authors note, “Obama’s direct role with Iraq’s leaders was minimal.” Vice President Joe Biden, the administration’s point man on Iraq, had more direct contact, but his understanding was so limited that he told aides in 2010: “I’ll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA [Status of Forces Agreement].”

Today, the SOFA has expired, and Mr. Maliki is more firmly entrenched than ever. The prime minister’s compliant courts recently passed down a death sentence on the Sunni vice president, Tariq Hashemi, based on evidence allegedly gathered by torturing his bodyguards. Mr. Hashemi has fled to Turkey, but his fellow Sunnis aren’t standing by idly while a militant Shiite with close links to Iran accumulates all the power in Baghdad. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which had been all but defeated by 2008, has risen from the grave to perpetuate fresh atrocities. On Sept. 9, the very day that Mr. Hashemi’s sentence was handed down, at least 100 people died across Iraq in a series of terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Iran is using Iraqi airspace to send airplanes full of weapons to the Assad regime in Syria.

This dismaying outcome might have been averted if U.S. troops were still present in Iraq. Messrs. Gordon and Trainor show, however, how little interest Mr. Obama had in extending any troop presence past 2011. While military commanders judged that they would need at least 16,000 troops to advise and assist Iraqi forces, Obama was willing to send fewer than 5,000; and when Iraqi officials raised predictable objections to Washington’s demands for complete immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops, Mr. Obama didn’t try to finesse the issue. Instead he pulled the plug on the negotiations and embraced a total pullout. By failing to consolidate the gains won by our troops, the president appears well on his way to seizing defeat from the jaws of a hard-won victory.

This letter to the editor of the WSJ came soon before the start of the Iraq war. After that, another ten European leaders asked to be co-signers of the letter.

Today, it’s just an historical footnote, but one worthy of remembering the next time someone refers to Bush’s “unilateral” action in Iraq.

United We Stand

By Jose Maria Aznar, Spain
Jose-Manuel Durão Barroso, Portugal
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy
Tony Blair, United Kingdom
Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic
Peter Medgyessy, Hungary
Leszek Miller, Poland
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark

January 30, 2003

The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America. Today they are under greater threat than ever. The attacks of Sept. 11 showed just how far terrorists — the enemies of our common values — are prepared to go to destroy them. Those outrages were an attack on all of us. In standing firm in defense of these principles, the governments and people of the U.S. and Europe have amply demonstrated the strength of their convictions.

Today more than ever, the trans-Atlantic bond is a guarantee of our freedom. We in Europe have a relationship with the U.S. which has stood the test of time. Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and farsightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and communism. Thanks, too, to the continued cooperation between Europe and the U.S. we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent. The trans-Atlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regime’s persistent attempts to threaten world security. In today’s world, more than ever before, it is vital that we preserve that unity and cohesion.

We know that success in the day-to-day battle against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction demands unwavering determination and firm international cohesion on the part of all countries for whom freedom is precious. The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security. This danger has been explicitly recognized by the U.N. All of us are bound by Security Council Resolution 1441, which was adopted unanimously.

We Europeans have since reiterated our backing for Resolution 1441, our wish to pursue the U.N. route, and our support for the Security Council at the Prague NATO Summit and the Copenhagen European Council. In doing so, we sent a clear, firm and unequivocal message that we would rid the world of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. We must remain united in insisting that his regime be disarmed. The solidarity, cohesion and determination of the international community are our best hope of achieving this peacefully.

Our strength lies in unity. The combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is a threat of incalculable consequences. It is one at which all of us should feel concerned. Resolution 1441 is Saddam Hussein’s last chance to disarm using peaceful means. The opportunity to avoid greater confrontation rests with him. Sadly this week the U.N. weapons inspectors have confirmed that his long-established pattern of deception, denial and noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions is continuing.

Europe has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Indeed, they are the first victims of Iraq’s current brutal regime. Our goal is to safeguard world peace and security by ensuring that this regime gives up its weapons of mass destruction. Our governments have a common responsibility to face this threat. Failure to do so would be nothing less than negligent to our own citizens and to the wider world.

The U.N. Charter charges the Security Council with the task of preserving international peace and security. To do so, the Security Council must maintain its credibility by ensuring full compliance with its resolutions. We cannot allow a dictator to systematically violate those resolutions. If they are not complied with, the Security Council will lose its credibility and world peace will suffer as a result. We are confident that the Security Council will face up to its responsibilities.

The USA spent a lot blood and treasure to rid Iraq of Saddam and fashion an Arab democracy.

George W. Bush was the man who saw it through, despite intense criticism from Democrats and Republicans, and signed the peace treaty that led to our withdrawal.

Yet Obama boasts about getting us out of Iraq. The small, but vital, task left to Obama was to manage the peace.

Michael R. Gordon in the New York Times

The request was an unusual one, and President Obama himself made the confidential phone call to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president.

Marshaling his best skills at persuasion, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Talabani, a consummate political survivor, to give up his post. It was Nov. 4, 2010, and the plan was for Ayad Allawi to take Mr. Talabani’s place.

With Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of a bloc with broad Sunni support, the Obama administration calculated, Iraq would have a more inclusive government and would check the worrisome drift toward authoritarianism under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But Mr. Obama did not make the sale.

“They were afraid what would happen if the different groups of Iraq did not reach an agreement,” recalled Mr. Talabani, who turned down the request.

Mr. Obama has pointed to the American troop withdrawal last year as proof that he has fulfilled his promise to end the Iraq war. Winding down a conflict, however, entails far more than extracting troops.

In the case of Iraq, the American goal has been to leave a stable and representative government, avoid a power vacuum that neighboring states and terrorists could exploit and maintain sufficient influence so that Iraq would be a partner or, at a minimum, not an opponent in the Middle East.

But the Obama administration has fallen frustratingly short of some of those objectives.

The attempt by Mr. Obama and his senior aides to fashion an extraordinary power-sharing arrangement between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Allawi never materialized. Neither did an agreement that would have kept a small American force in Iraq to train the Iraqi military and patrol the country’s skies. A plan to use American civilians to train the Iraqi police has been severely cut back. The result is an Iraq that is less stable domestically and less reliable internationally than the United States had envisioned.

The story of these efforts has received little attention in a nation weary of the conflict in Iraq, and administration officials have rarely talked about them. This account is based on interviews with many of the principals, in Washington and Baghdad.

White House officials portray their exit strategy as a success, asserting that the number of civilian fatalities in Iraq is low compared with 2006, when the war was at its height.

What gall! Fatalities are down after the successful surge that Obama denounced, and after the war is over.

Politics, not violence, has become the principal means for Iraqis to resolve their differences, they say. “Recent news coverage of Iraq would suggest that as our troops departed, American influence went with them and our administration shifted its focus away from Iraq,” Antony Blinken, the national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said in a speech in March. “The fact is, our engagements have increased.”

To many Iraqis, the United States’ influence is greatly diminished. “American policy is very weak,” observed Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff to Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. “It is not clear to us how they have defined their interests in Iraq,” Mr. Hussein said. “They are picking events and reacting on the basis of events. That is the policy.”

Campaign vs. Reality

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Mr. Obama had one basic position on Iraq — he was going to bring a “responsible end” to the conflict. He vowed to remove all American combat brigades within 16 months, a deadline that enabled him to outflank his main rival in the Democratic primary, Hillary Rodham Clinton, but which the military said was too risky. Once in office, he adjusted the withdrawal schedule, keeping American brigades in place longer but making their primary mission to advise Iraqi forces.

All American forces were to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the departure date set in an agreement signed by President George W. Bush and Mr. Maliki in 2008. Even so, Mr. Obama left the door open to keeping troops in Iraq to train Iraqi forces if an agreement could be negotiated.

The situation the Obama administration inherited was complex. Many Iraqi politicians were worried that Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, was amassing too much power and overstepping (more…)

Wha? He really had them? But but but…

BAGHDAD (AP) — Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what’s left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, still stored in two bunkers in north of Baghdad, the British embassy in Baghdad announced Monday.

The British Defense Ministry will start training Iraqi technical and medical workers this year, an embassy statement said. The teams will work to safely destroy remnants of munitions and chemical warfare agents left over from Saddam’s regime. He was overthrown in 2003 following an American-led invasion.

Saddam stored the chemical weapons near population centers so that he could access them quickly, despite the danger to his civilian population.

Most of Iraq’s chemical weapons were destroyed by military forces in 1991 during the first Gulf War or by U.N. inspectors after the fighting. The inspections halted just before the invasion.

Iraq is a party to the U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention and must get rid of the remaining material, according to terms of the pact.

Also, now that Syria has confirmed it has WMDs, this story deserves a recall:

Iraq’s WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Or maybe just as much a blowhard: Jill Biden saysJoe Biden would make a great president.

No, she didn’t mean president of the United Clowns of America.

“Joe would make a great president,” she told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie on Tuesday. “Last time when he ran, I supported him. I wanted us out of Iraq and I felt that Joe would do that, but Barack did it, so everything has worked out.”

Biden, who is promoting her new children’s book, “Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops,” was noncommittal when discussing whether this would be her husband’s final campaign.

“I don’t know whether this is his last campaign,” she said. “We’re focusing on this campaign and winning this campaign. I take one campaign at a time.”

Just as FDR was not president on Black Friday, Obama did not get us out of Iraq.

President Bush did.

From AttackMachine in 2003, a historical reminder about Bush’s supposed unilateralism.

___________________________________

In the months preceding the Iraq war, Democrat critics of President Bush decried his “unilateral” approach to dealing with Saddam Hussein. The following was published as an op-ed piece in editions of the Wall Street Journal and signed by eight European leaders. After publication, ten more European leaders came forward to ask that they, too, be allowed to sign the declaration.

So 18 European leaders came forth to back the Iraq war.

The strong support for President Bush’s position by so many European leaders would seem newsworthy. However, it was not reported as a news story in the Los Angeles Times. A media column by Tim Rutten later discussed the provenance of the op-ed piece, but ignored the substance of the views held by so many Euro leaders. In fact, the Los Angeles Times persisted in calling Bush’s policy unilateral.

_____________________________________

United We Stand

By Jose Maria Aznar, Spain
Jose-Manuel Durão Barroso, Portugal
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy
Tony Blair, United Kingdom
Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic
Peter Medgyessy, Hungary
Leszek Miller, Poland Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark

January 30, 2003

The real bond between the U.S. and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the United States of America. Today they are under greater threat than ever. The attacks of Sept. 11 showed just how far terrorists — the enemies of our common values — are prepared to go to destroy them. Those outrages were an attack on all of us. In standing firm in defense of these principles, the governments and people of the U.S. and Europe have amply demonstrated the strength of their convictions.

Today more than ever, the trans-Atlantic bond is a guarantee of our freedom. We in Europe have a relationship with the U.S. which has stood the test of time. Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and farsightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and communism. Thanks, too, to the continued cooperation between Europe and the U.S. we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent. The trans-Atlantic relationship must not become a casualty of the current Iraqi regime’s persistent attempts to threaten world security. In today’s world, more than ever before, it is vital that we preserve that unity and cohesion.

We know that success in the day-to-day battle against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction demands unwavering determination and firm international cohesion on the part of all countries for whom freedom is precious. The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security. This danger has been explicitly recognized by the U.N. All of us are bound by Security Council Resolution 1441, which was adopted unanimously.

We Europeans have since reiterated our backing for Resolution 1441, our wish to pursue the U.N. route, and our support for the Security Council at the Prague NATO Summit and the Copenhagen European Council. In doing so, we sent a clear, firm and unequivocal message that we would rid the world of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. We must remain united in insisting that his regime be disarmed. The solidarity, cohesion and determination of the international community are our best hope of achieving this peacefully.

Our strength lies in unity. The combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is a threat of incalculable consequences. It is one at which all of us should feel concerned. Resolution 1441 is Saddam Hussein’s last chance to disarm using peaceful means. The opportunity to avoid greater confrontation rests with him. Sadly this week the U.N. weapons inspectors have confirmed that his long-established pattern of deception, denial and noncompliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions is continuing.

Europe has no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Indeed, they are the first victims of Iraq’s current brutal regime. Our goal is to safeguard world peace and security by ensuring that this regime gives up its weapons of mass destruction. Our governments have a common responsibility to face this threat. Failure to do so would be nothing less than negligent to our own citizens and to the wider world.

The U.N. Charter charges the Security Council with the task of preserving international peace and security. To do so, the Security Council must maintain its credibility by ensuring full compliance with its resolutions. We cannot allow a dictator to systematically violate those resolutions. If they are not complied with, the Security Council will lose its credibility and world peace will suffer as a result. We are confident that the Security Council will face up to its responsibilities.

Lost Iraq wasn’t lost after all.

It’s a rare day when positive news surfaces from the frontlines of Iraq’s post-occupation government–or from its troubled economy. However, a U.S. Iraq inspector general report that concluded this week that $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped cash the U.S. government previously feared had gone missing in the chaotic early days of the Iraq occupation has in fact been safely accounted for.

“The mystery of $6 billion that seemed to go missing in the early days of the Iraq war has been resolved, according to a new report,” CNN national security producer Charles Keyes reported Wednesday. “New evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR.”

Vancouver Sun

He and vice-president Biden went nearly a year without contacting Iraqi prime minister, U.S. Embassy logs reveal

BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained aloof from the process, not even phoning top Iraqi officials to help reach a deal, according to logs released by the U.S. Embassy here.

The omission is an unusual one, given the high priority that U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline set in a 2008 pact between the two countries. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other senior Pentagon officials spoke often about the need for an agreement in a pivotal country in a volatile region and insisted talks were continuing up until Friday, when Obama announced that all U.S. troops would be coming home before the end of December.

A listing of direct conversations provided by the embassy — drawn, the embassy said, from the White House website — indicates that Obama had no direct contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki between Feb. 13, when he telephoned the prime minister, until Friday, when he called al-Maliki to tell him U.S. troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31.

…the kind that doesn’t act imperial at all.

Jonah Goldberg:

…Critics of U.S. foreign policy have long caterwauled about American “empire.” The term is used as an epithet by both the isolationist left and right, as a more coldly descriptive term by such mainstream thinkers as Niall Ferguson and Lawrence Kaplan, and with celebratory enthusiasm by some foreign policy neoconservatives like Max Boot.

The charge in recent times has centered on the Middle East, specifically Iraq.

The problem is, contemporary America isn’t an empire, at least not in any conventional or traditional sense.

Your typical empire invades countries to seize their resources, impose political control and levy taxes. That was true of every empire from the ancient Romans to the Brits and the Soviets.

That was never the case with Iraq. For all the blood-for-oil nonsense, if America wanted Iraq’s oil it could have saved a lot of blood and simply bought it. Saddam Hussein would have been happy to cut a deal if we only lifted our sanctions. Indeed, the U.S. oil industry never lobbied for an invasion, but it did lobby for an end to sanctions. We never levied taxes in Iraq either. Indeed, we’re left holding the tab for the liberation.

Trouble is, USA’s critics don’t care about facts. Which is why it’s pointless to try to appease them.

A lot of good men and women gave their time, devotion and lives to the war in Iraq. Too bad Obama didn’t care enough to preserve the victory.

Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidt in the New York Times.

BAGHDAD — President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American military officials were dismayed by the announcement, seeing it as the president’s putting the best face on a breakdown in tortured negotiations with the Iraqis.

And for the negotiators who labored all year to avoid that outcome, it represented the triumph of politics over the reality of Iraq’s fragile security’s requiring some troops to stay, a fact everyone had assumed would prevail. But officials also held out hope that after the withdrawal, the two countries could restart negotiations more productively, as two sovereign nations.

This year, American military officials had said they wanted a “residual” force of as many as tens of thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq past 2011 as an insurance policy against any violence. Those numbers were scaled back, but the expectation was that at least about 3,000 to 5,000 American troops would remain.

At the end of the Bush administration, when the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, was negotiated, setting 2011 as the end of the United States’ military role, officials had said the deadline (more…)

Walter Russell Mead

That is something, but it is not enough.  The Americans who served, suffered and died in Iraq — and who still serve there today — changed the world and won a great and a difficult victory.  No account of their service, no commemoration of the dead that ignores or conceals this vital truth is enough.

To celebrate a momentous victory in Iraq is not to acknowledge that President Bush was right to go into Iraq when and how he did; it is not to justify or excuse the years of poor choices and strategic fumbling before the President found the generals who knew how to win.  (One can say the same thing, of course, about President Lincoln.  Like most great leaders, he failed his way to triumph.)  I supported the invasion because I believed Colin Powell’s solemn assurances about weapons of mass destruction; I continued to support the war despite the absence of such weapons and the chaos and incompetence attending the occupation because I believed that vital issues were at stake in Iraq, that defeat was unacceptable, that victory was not nearly as unattainable as the hand wringing, pseudo-smart choruses of despairing ex-hawks so cluelessly and insistently asserted, and that if nothing else we had a duty to the Iraqis and to ourselves not to leave the country without giving it a fair chance to shape the future for itself.

Because of President Bush’s steadfastness, because of the military genius of General Petraeus (or Betray Us as the keen wits and intellects at Moveon.org so memorably called him as, to their frustration and fury, the evidence of victory began to appear) and his associates, because of the professionalism and honor of American officers, and above all because of the dogged courage, patriotism and humanity of the extraordinary men and women who served in the ranks, we won the war.

That victory was much more than a dignified escape from a sticky predicament.  The coalition victory in Iraq was a historical turning point that may well turn out to be comparable to the cannonade of Valmy.  It changed the course of world history.  We have not done justice to those who gave their lives in Iraq until we recognize the full dimensions of their achievement.

The story of Iraq has yet to be told.  It is too politically sensitive for the intelligentsia to handle just yet; passions need to cool before the professors and the pundits who worked themselves into paroxysms of hatred and disdain for the Bush administration can come to grips with how wrongheaded they’ve been.  It took decades for the intelligentsia to face the possibility that the cretinous Reagan-monster might have, um, helped win the Cold War, and even now they haven’t asked themselves any tough questions about the Left’s blind hatred of the man who did more than any other human being to save the world from nuclear war.

It may take that long for the truth about the war in Iraq to dawn, but dawn it will.  America’s victory in Iraq broke the back of Al-Qaeda and left Osama bin Laden’s dream in ruins.  He died a defeated fanatic in his Abbotabad hideaway; his dream was crushed in the Mesopotamian flatlands where he swore it would win.

Osama’s goal was to launch the Clash of Civilizations against the West.  He would be Captain Islam, fighting against the Crusader-in-Chief George W. Bush.  By his purity, wisdom, daring and above all by his special knowledge of the hidden ways of God, Captain Islam would crush and humiliate the evil Bush-fiend and unite the Muslim world behind the Truth.  Osama would complete at a spiritual level the mission his father undertook on the physical plane.  His father’s construction company rebuilt and modernized the ancient holy city of Mecca; Osama would rebuild and restore the entire Muslim world.

The 9/11 attacks propelled Osama to the historical height he sought: in the minds of many he had become a caliph-in-waiting, the fierce servant of God whose claims to leadership were vindicated by the dramatic success of his plans.  Angry young people across the Islamic world, frustrated by a host of frustrations and privations, wondered if this was the charismatic, God-aided figure who would overturn the world order and lead Islam to its old place on the commanding heights of the world.

9/11 was the trumpet, Iraq was the test.  The US invaded an Arab country, overthrew its government, and found itself condemned to the hardest task in international politics: nation building under hostile fire. More, the US had taken a country run by its Sunni minority and put power into the hands of an inexperienced and fractious Shi’a majority.  Then the US occupation began to fail: the government institutions fell apart, there was no security in country or in town, the economy went into free fall, and basic services like electricity and health failed across the land. The provocations were serious and real; the Americans were clumsy and awkward.  US checkpoints and raids were humiliating and degrading; the scalding Abu Ghraib scandal was a propagandist’s dream come true.  The ham-handed diplomacy and tongue-tied defense of American policy from Washington created a sense of rising, unstoppable global opposition to Bush’s War.

There could be no more favorable terrain for Al-Qaeda.  From all over the world, young people intoxicated on radical Islam and hatred of the United States rushed to defend Sunni Iraq (more…)

…but there aren’t because Gaddaffi, after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein, in 2003 voluntarily ended his nuclear program.

Thank you George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

In exchange, they removed Libya from the terror list. But Andrea Mitchell, old but not wise, asks Donald Rumsfeld if we got a good deal.

Is she kidding? Imagine how bad the Libya situation would be today if there were nuclear weapons in play.

WATCH her interview with Rumsfeld here.

In 2005, I met Omar and Mohammed Fadil, two Iraqi dentists who blogged at IraqtheModel. They were in Santa Monica on a short US visit.

They began the evening by thanking the American people for rescuing them from Saddam Hussein. After their presentation, they mingled with the small audience.

The day before, they had an impromptu meeting with President Bush at the White House. I asked Mohammed what Bush had told them. He said that the President promised he wouldn’t let the Iraqi people down.

This came to mind reading this from the Washington Post:

AT THE beginning of this year, Iraq’s fragile new political order faced a momentous challenge. The country needed to hold credible democratic elections at a time when its army was still battling al-Qaeda and other domestic insurgents. The winners had to form a government in spite of deep rifts among leaders and sects, who just three years ago were fighting a civil war. And all this had to happen even as the United States reduced its troops from 150,000 to 50,000 and ended combat operations for those who remained.

The result was a long, painful, contentious, confusing and sometimes bloody year. But when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presented his new government to parliament on Tuesday, Iraq could fairly be said to have passed a major test. It is not yet the peaceful Arab democracy and force for good in the Middle East that President George W. Bush imagined when he decided on invasion eight years ago. But in the past 12 months it has taken some big steps in the right direction.

First was the election, which was judged free and fair – a rare event in the Middle East and a big contrast with recent balloting in Iran, Egypt and Afghanistan. The result was a tricky deadlock, in which no party held a majority in parliament and the winner of the most votes, a Sunni coalition, had no realistic chance to form a government. Iraq’s neighbors, whose rulers have little understanding or respect for democratic processes, lined up behind competing favorites even as al-Qaeda tried to trigger another civil war.

Somehow, the country’s oft-maligned leaders worked their way through all this, with help from the Obama administration. The coalition Mr. Maliki presented Tuesday was led by Shiite parties but handed major positions to Sunnis and Kurds. Sunnis serve or will be named as deputy prime minister, defense minister and speaker of parliament. Measures to integrate former Sunni militiamen into the security forces or other government jobs have finally been implemented. Fears that Mr. Maliki will establish a dictatorship look, at least for now, to be exaggerated.

Violence, meanwhile, has dwindled to the lowest level Iraq probably has known in decades. In September 2006 the Web site iCasualties. org recorded more than 3,300 civilian deaths from violence; this month so far it has counted 62, making Iraq a far safer country than Mexico. The economy is nearing a tipping point: Foreign oil companies are refurbishing the fields of southern Iraq, and the city of Basra, a militia-ruled jungle four years ago, is beginning to boom.

It’s still too early to draw conclusions about Iraq, though many opponents of the war did so long ago. Mr. Maliki’s government could easily go wrong; the coming year, which could end with the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops, will likely be just as challenging as this one. But the country’s political class has repeatedly chosen democracy over dictatorship and accommodation over violence. If that keeps up, a rough version of Mr. Bush’s dream may yet come true.

Iraqpundit normally has nothing but scorn for Obama and Biden, but this is different.

Obama’s plan is working in Iraq. Ayad Allawi agreed to join Nouri Al Maliki’s cabinet. Allawi long refused to join the Maliki government, but after VP Biden talked sense into him, all’s well. Three cheers for Obama.

That Sunni Allawi has agreed to join the government seems like a significant milestone toward normal governance. Iraq may indeed become the democratic example in the Arab world.

Of course, the conditions that made this possible are the fruit of Bush’s policies. See Condi’s comments near the end of the clip below.

I’ve always enjoyed the commentary from Iraqpundit. He understands both his native Iraq and the US, where he spent time.

If you want insight into what’s really happening in Iraq, his blog is a great place to start.

He, too, read the Biden interview we excerpted yesterday.

Here’s a curious thought: The guy in charge of Iraq policy doesn’t appear to have a clue about the subject. VP Biden says, “I was pleased when the president turned the policy over to me. Completely over to me. So I was able to do things I wanted to do. They are, knock on wood, as my mother used to say, they’re succeeding. I’m confident we’re going to be able to leave Iraq a secure place, not a threat to its neighbors, and bring all our troops home again.”

Someone please explain to him that Iraq hasn’t threatened anyone in a very long time. It’s too weak. Actually, it’s Iraq’s very neighbors who are taking advantage of that very weakness and being aggressive at this time. Turkey invades regularly in the north. Saudi Arabia and Iran meddle in every way imagineable. If Biden meant a new civil war will start up and not spread, he would not have claimed to leave Iraq a “secure place.” He can’t promise Iraq will be secure unless he can be reasonably sure its neighbors will not either attack it or continue to sponsor terrorist acts within Iraq. If he can’t promise that then he should not make promises.

Isn’t anyone else nervous about the Obama administration’s lack of familiarity with the matter at hand? It would be fine if they were just talking over drinks. But these guys’s ideas have an impact on people’s lives — U.S. and Iraqi lives.

Calvin Woodward and Robert Burns do an AP Fact Check, catching Obama in a whopper when blaming deficits on the Iraq war.

OBAMA:“Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.”

THE FACTS: This is partly true. For sure, the costly Iraq and Afghanistan wars have contributed to the nation’s budget deficit — but not by as much as Obama suggests. The current annual deficit is now an estimated $1.5 trillion. But as recently as 2007, the budget deficit was just $161.5 billion. And that was years after war expenses were in place for both the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

Most of the current deficit is due to the longest recession since the 1930s. It has seriously depressed tax revenues while increasing costs to the government — including social safety-net programs such as unemployment insurance and spending by both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations on stimulus programs and on bailouts of banks and automakers.

The AP doesn’t question Obama’s notion of “investing in our own people” –lib-speak for tax (take money from those who earned it) and spend (on someone Obama, et al, feel is more deserving.)

Obama last night:

But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment.  It should also serve as a message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century.

This is the very opposite of what the Democrats preached during Bush’s term.

Only Sen. Joe Lieberman stood strong, and for that the Democrats purged him.

From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq. Much has changed since that night. A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested.

Our unity was tested because Democrats decided there was no political upside to backing Bush’s policy, despite having voted for the liberation of Iraq.

To explain away the change, they cynically concocted a Big Lie, with full support of the mainstream media: the notion that Bush tricked them.

Thus we endured years of ugly politics brought to us by Michael Moore,  Joe Wilson/ Valerie Plame, assorted Hollywood nitwits, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, and Barack Obama himself.

Yeah, our unity was tested.

Peter Robinson:

Incoherent: The president argued that the war had represented a worthwhile cause, asserting that “We have persevered…because of a belief…that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization.” Moments later, however, the president insisted that the war had instead been mistaken: “We have spent a trillion dollars at war…This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.” The president wants to have it both ways, associating himself with the victory we achieved in Iraq while distancing himself from the costs. As argument, this is incoherent. But of course it isn’t argument. It’s cheap manipulation.

Grudging: “The Americans who have served in Iraq,” the president accurately stated, “completed every mission they were given…They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi Security Forces; and took out terrorist leaders….Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny….” In other words, we won. Why? Because in 2007, when many, including then senators Obama and Clinton, insisted that the United States should simply withdraw from Iraq, leaving behind a nation reduced to chaos, George W. Bush instead insisted on a new strategy, the surge. Let me repeat that. We won because President Bush insisted on the surge.

Did President Obama extend the courtesy to his predecessor of saying as much? He most certainly did not.

“It’s well known,” President Obama said, “that [President Bush]…and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.” Support, love, commitment. President Obama could bring himself to credit President Bush with nothing more than mere well-intentioned haplessness. How shabby. How tawdry.

Disgraceful: After having added $1 trillion to the deficit since taking office, President Obama suggested that somehow the $1 trillion the nation has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade “short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.” Take just a moment to do the math—something of which our chief executive apparently believes most Americans incapable. The cost of the war against radical Islam has averaged $100 billion a year—which comes to one-eighth the size of the President’s stimulus bill, or one-thirtieth of the average federal budget over the same ten years. I have my reservations about the president’s economic advisors, but they know—he knows—that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with our economic woes. He was intentionally attempting to mislead us…

…writes David Brooks

The U.S. venture into Iraq was a war, but it was also a nation-building exercise. America has spent $53 billion trying to reconstruct Iraq, the largest development effort since the Marshall Plan.

So how’s it working out?

On the economic front, there are signs of progress. It’s hard to know what role the scattershot American development projects have played, but this year Iraq will have the 12th-fastest-growing economy in the world, and it is expected to grow at a 7 percent annual clip for the next several years.

“Iraq has made substantial progress since 2003,” the International Monetary Fund reports. Inflation is reasonably stable. A budget surplus is expected by 2012. Unemployment, though still 15 percent, is down from stratospheric levels.

Oil production is back around prewar levels, and there are some who say Iraq may be able to rival Saudi production. That’s probably unrealistic, but Iraq will have a healthy oil economy, for better and for worse.

Living standards are also improving. According to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index, the authoritative compendium of data on this subject, 833,000 Iraqis had phones before the invasion. Now more than 1.3 million have landlines and some 20 million have cellphones. Before the invasion, 4,500 Iraqis had Internet service. Now, more than 1.7 million do.

In the most recent Gallup poll, 69 percent of Iraqis rated their personal finances positively, up from 36 percent in March 2007. Baghdad residents say the markets are vibrant again, with new electronics, clothing and even liquor stores.

Basic services are better, but still bad. Electricity production is up by 40 percent over pre-invasion levels, but because there are so many more air-conditioners and other appliances, widespread power failures still occur.

More on the mess and who made it. Instapundit:

CHART OF THE DAY: Deficits, With And Without The Iraq War. “Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009? Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on.”

UPDATE: The Anchoress emails: “That deficit graph is going to go viral. This piece in the NY Times from 2006 reinforces it.”

Yeah, note this excerpt:

An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.

Well, that was back when the Bush tax cuts were kicking in. Now, in the Age Of Obama, the “unexpectedly” language is in regard to very different kinds of developments . .

Sources: CBO and U.S. Statistical Abstract.

Joe Biden has been claiming a democratic Iraq will be a feather in Obama’s cap (despite both his and Obama’s opposition to the Bush policies that won us breathing room.)

But Iraqpundit — who lives there — says Obama’s passivity has turned a US victory into defeat.

…When the U.S. watches as Iran steals the election from the people of Iraq and withdraws its troops and forgets about the plight of the people, Bin Laden and Zawahiri celebrate. Why? Because this U.S. move will damage whatever positive accomplishments were made over the past few years. This will result in a victory for the radicals. Al-Qaeda knows how to turn that anger into spreading their operations in the region.

The Iraqis were skeptical at first but gave the U.S. a chance. People were skeptical because the U.S. had urged the Iraqis to rise up in 1991 against Saddam; the people did. But when Saddam attacked the uprising, the U.S. sat back and watched. From here it looks as though history is about to repeat itself.

When the U.S. removed Saddam, the Iraqis welcomed the change. When the U.S. brought democracy and asked the people to vote, do their part to bring aobut positive change, the Iraqis did. But when the Iraqis gave the secular candidate the most seats inparliament, Iran kicked into high gear. The U.S. is doing nothing.

It’s already happening. People in the streets are saying the U.S. doesn’t care what happens here. They say the word of the Americans means nothing. They cannot be trusted. All that plays directly into Zawahiri’s message. He and Bin Laden have been saying the Americans are not to be trusted, so now they can say I told you so. That is serious damage. and it is probably irreversible. Again, al-Qaeda has it figured out. But I don’t know whether the White House has.

How depressing. And how tragic for the Iraqis.

Iraqpundit, who lives in Iraq, on the mealy-mouthed Obama administration

Oh God. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. I just found out the Obama administration recently decided to drop references to Islamic radicalism. I’m not sure I understand the reason behind the decision, but I can only guess that it’s perhaps to avoid upsetting the militants.

Of course that’s not how the administration describes the logic. “President Barack Obama has argued that words matter, and administration officials have said that the use of inflammatory descriptions linking Islam to the terror threat feed the enemy’s propaganda and may alienate moderate Muslims in the U.S.”

How a normal Muslim would be offended by a reference to radicals who target civilians is beyond me. Any self-respecting Muslim knows that the vermin who go around killing in the name of Islam and get support from radical religious leaders are deserving of an accurate depiction. That is, let’s call them what they are: radical, militant, extremist, violent Muslims. Why not refer to them in honest terms? Is everyone that afraid of them? I know I am, but the mighty White House should not be.

A White House official explained that by “describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie — propagated by al-Qaida and its affiliates to justify terrorism — that the United States is somehow at war against Islam.” All he has to do is say the U.S. is at war with radical Islam. I think the White House might be surprised to learn that most normal Muslims would agree that it would be a noble war to fight. (more…)

Iraqpundit:

The talk about the suicide bombers was lively today at work. Not one person said they supported the killers because nobody could justify the killing of civilians. The intersting thing was those who are pro-Baath said the killers were Iranian. Those who hate the Baathists say the killers were Baathists who joined forces with al-Qaeda in Iraq. Everyone else in the middle believes the killers were al-Qaeda in Iraq.

One of the bombers who was stopped before he could detonate in being interrogated. He is said to have been drugged for the event. If the guy was courageous, why does he need drugs? He certainly sounds like a coward who was too frightened to perform a cowardly act. And the killers are believed to have hit the embassies to discourage foreign investors in Iraq. Only those who hate Iraq would discourage investment in its future.

People are still discussing the new government. The groups are all talking with each other and visiting neighbouring countries. Many have visited Iran, and even the Sadrists sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia.

There is a great deal of pressure on the politicians to form a government as soon as possible. Even the sermons at the mosques last Friday called for the new government to be set up right away. Nobody wants to see a vacuum. They’re still negotiating. The different groups are looking for what they can get out of joining whatever group.

Iraqis are still hopeful and refuse to let al-Qaeda destroy the country. Only those who worry about their government jobs are afraid of a new government. The rest haven’t been discouraged.

Entertainment Weekly:

In a quietly remarkable piece of television, David Letterman interviewed Tea Party member Pam Stout on last night’s Late Show. “I know nothin’ about the tea party,” Dave began, saying Stout had come to his attention after the 66 year-old Idaho woman had been featured prominently in a Feb. 15 New York Times story on the Tea Party movement.

Letterman invited her on to ask about the movement and whether it aimed to become a “third party.” She said, “I don’t think it will become a third party,” but that its voice “can be pretty devisive” in some elections, and that locally, she wanted the Tea Party to “take over the Republican Party… [and] go back to the old ideas.”

You can watch the entire interview at the link. Letterman was indeed respectful, and in fact seemed curious to learn something.

One odd bit came in the third segment. Letterman was comparing citizen anger at the cost of the bank bailout vs. the cost of the Iraq war.

(Rough transcription)

“Money spent to militarily go in a destroy the country of Iraq, we don’t get that money back. And we’ve lost thousands and thousands and thousands of lives.”

Every death is a tragedy, but in terms of wars, the numbers are low. American deaths were 4287 through 2009. Compare that to 308,000 who died on American highways in the same period.

“We’ve turned Iraq into a hotbed of terrorism, which may or may not have been the case before.”

Iraq is not a hotbed of terrorism today. Where did he get that?

As for the money spent on the wars, it is impossible to measure the return. Did we kill terrorists in Iraq that might have pulled off another 9/11? Dissuade others from joining the jihad?

Will creating the first real Arab democracy have a lasting impact on the region? We won’t know for a while.

Iraqpundit says his fellow citizens are optimistic.

The rain continues today with the happiness that people feel about Allawi’s win. Everyone had grown tired of Maliki’s government. Sure he did good things for a while, but he turned out to be sectarian, which is something Iraqis don’t want.

When I read the western papers online, I get the impression that war is around the corner. I also love WaPo’s description of the situation as “the country’s fledgling political system.” Why is WaPo afraid to say democracy? We might as well all pack up and leave the Iraq that is about to burst into hellish flames. That’s the outsider view.

Here people are optimistic. It’s true that Maliki is acting like a sore loser. But in all fairness he says he will challenge the results in court.

Just like Al Gore.

He didn’t say he would take up arms. And of course people worry about al-Qaeda who made it clear they don’t care who wins, they plan to keep killing Iraqis. And people fear Moktada Al Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi and its offshoot Asa’b ahl al Haq. They are likey to keep up their wicked deeds. But if the Iraqi Army and police feel like they are working for their country, they will work to protect the people against terror.

Under Maliki, plenty of ordinary workers didn’t know whether they were working for Iran or Iraq. Too many of Maliki’s top advisers took their orders from Iran. Now at least they can have a prime minister who puts Iraq first.

Iraqpundit mocks the ignorant and pompous Iraq coverage from the Gray Lady.

Perhaps it’s true. I do go on and on about how badly the media misread or misunderstand Iraq. Maybe I should stop. I’ll stop as soon as the reporters stop misrepresenting Iraq. Until then, it’s hard not to react. Look at today’s NYT. Writer Anthony Shadid devotes an entire piece to the savage culture of Iraq. He calls the Iraqis who defied the terrorists to turn out to vote “cliche.” Probably because they don’t fit into his idea of Iraqis. He can’t tie it up in a bow and present it to his readers. But what he says next is what? Not cliche? Not stereotype? Read this:

“The roots of political violence run deep in Iraq, long a turbulent frontier between Romans and Persians, Ottomans and Safavids and, now, Americans and Iranians.” I just love these reporters who show off after reading a couple of pamphlets. Suddenly they’re experts. Get it, violence is in Iraqi blood. We don’t know how to be anything but violent. This country made no contributions to civilization. We just murdered people. And what’s more, we’re unique in that tradition. The reporter quotes a local as saying this is the culture of the shoe.

What the reporter doesn’t get is the macabre sense of humour of the Iraqis. Just watch as an Iraqi offers you a cigarette from his open pack. If you say no thanks, I’m trying to cut back. He’ll say, “come on, you only die once! it might as well be from cigarettes!” For the Arabic speakers, “hiyya fard mota!” Also, people here will elevate anything above Iraqis. Any product made outside Iraq is better than local stuff. It’s out of frustration. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t recognize the rich history and culture of Iraq.

Now that you’ve read what the NYT has to say about Iraq, let me tell you what the Iraqis are saying. First of all, Iraqis are waiting patiently for a winner to be declared. The vote was March 7, and the race is still too close to call.

All the experts-for-hire said they knew Iraq really well. They said Iraqis voted along sectarian lines. If the Sunnis are about 20 percent of the population, why is Allawi running so close to Maliki? It’s because the division is not Sunni-Shiite. The division is secular and religious. This is one of the things that Iraq does share with Lebanon. The divide between the Hezbollah supporters and the March 14 people in Lebanon is like what we’re going through here. The marches and demonstrations in Martyrs square were about 50-50 from what I’ve read. In Iraq, the division is similar.

Had western reporters spoken with some Iraqi academics, they would have learned of their analysis. Several political science professors and information science professors were interviewed [Arabic]. They said the success of Allawi is a rejection of the political religious movements. Iraqis saw what religion does when it enters politics, and they don’t like it.

It’s hard for me to see western analysis as anything but the western reporters and other experts looking down their noses at Iraqis. If they had respect for Iraqi people, they would not focus on the anger of some who are justifiably angry at the violence of recent years. Of course one can and should mention that violence. But there is so much more to Iraq than some murderous thugs kidnapping and killing civilians.

Iraqis showed their feelings about U.S. presence this week. It;s the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. If the Iraqis hated the invasion and hated the United States so damn much wouldn’t they have marched in the streets yelling yankee go home? There were no large demonstrations here. It was very much ho hum. From what I understand, all the protests were in the United States. No Iraqi wants the U.S. to stay forever, but most here don’t hate Americans. I know it doesn’t fit that picture presented by western media, but it’s real.