April 26, 2004

Could Iraq be Kerry's quagmire

"Well," writes G. Pascal Zachary of Berkeley, "as the war gets worse, Bush's popularity remains steady and even nudges up a bit, and at least his bedrock supporters seem prepared to stick with him no matter what happens in Iraq. "Democrats and independents may not be as understanding of John Kerry. And so the war threatens to become his albatross, not George Bush's." I think he's exactly right. Bush's small resurgence in the polls, and Kerry's contemporaneous small slump, clearly are linked. And I think the link is Iraq, a thesis I plan to explore in more detail later this week. Kerry's Iraq problem is that he has proposed no serious alternative to Bush's "Saddam was bad, we're good, we'll prevail and everyone will be better off" conflation. Somehow Kerry has to go beyond sounding like a waffling Bush. If we're going to fight this war – any war – we need someone in charge who has conviction about what we're up to. Bush has convinced people that he does. Kerry hasn't. As Pascal points out, Kerry is toying with the pieces of what could become a plausible plan that, if fleshed out, might help reframe the debate about Iraq. But Kerry would rely on internationalizing the Iraq solution to a degree not contemplated by Bush. The president certainly was right that doing it yourself is easier than lining up a bunch of major allies and keeping them on board – at least for the short run. Kerry's approach is far more difficult to pull off, especially now, and more important it's going to take a lot of work to convince a lot of middle-ground voters that it would work better than being the lone Global Cop. Kerry's got some work to do on that front.

Posted by tbrown at 12:30 PM

'Helping' the troops

They'll get whatever they need, right? Well, they haven't so far. Newsweek reports that, "In continuing adherence to the Army's 'light is better' doctrine, even units recently rotated to Iraq have left most of their armor behind. These include the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which has paid dearly for that decision with an astonishing 30 percent-plus casualties (45 killed, more than 300 wounded) in Fallujah and Ar Ramadi." Unit casualties of 30 percent are more commonly associated with conflicts such as Vietnam, Korea and World War II, rather than encounters with a few "deadenders," who don't like our presence in Iraq. Worse, by Newsweek's analysis, at least, many of these casualties could have been avoided. "A breakdown of the casualty figures suggests that many U.S. deaths and wounds in Iraq simply did not need to occur," the magazine reports. "According to an unofficial study by a defense consultant that is now circulating through the Army, of a total of 789 Coalition deaths as of April 15 (686 of them Americans), 142 were killed by land mines or improvised explosive devices, while 48 others died in rocket-propelled-grenade attacks. Almost all those soldiers were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them, the study suggested. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs. "The military is 1,800 armored Humvees short of its own stated requirement for Iraq. Despite desperate attempts to supply bolt-on armor, many soldiers still ride around in light-skinned Humvees. This is a latter-day jeep that, as Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division, conceded in an interview, 'was never designed to do this ... It was never anticipated that we would have things like roadside bombs in the vast number that we've had here.' One newly arrived officer, Lt. Col. Timothy Meredith, says his battalion had just undergone months of training to rid itself of 'tank habits' and get used to the Humvees. 'We arrived here expecting to do a lot of civil works,' says Meredith." You'd think that as deeply mired in Iraq as we are now the Pentagon's civilian leadership would quit worrying about trying to further justify a theory of military "transformation" that has been shown to work only in limited circumstances and focus instead on getting as many of our men and women as possible back in one piece -- which requires giving them the equipment they need.

Posted by tbrown at 12:28 PM

So what's the future of 'white journalism?'

Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary this year, has a funny and sarcastic take on the meaning of the journalistic lies told by Jack Kelley of USA Today, a white guy, versus those told by Jason Blair of the New York Times, a black guy. "When a white person screws up, it ignites a debate on the screw up," Pitts says. "When a black person screws up, it ignites a debate on race." Yep. Pathetic, but true. " … you, my colleagues, have not asked the most important question: What does this mean for the future of white journalism?" Pitts says. "Granted, you've pontificated about our damaged credibility. You've felled forests with your weighty ruminations about what this portends for the future of our profession. But, evidently cowed by political correctness, you've ignored the most vital issues." "Did USA Today advance a moderately capable journalist because he was white? Did some white editor mentor him out of racial solidarity even though Kelley was unqualified? In light of this fiasco, should we re- examine the de facto affirmative action that gives white men preferential treatment in our newsrooms?" And so forth. Read it all.

Posted by tbrown at 12:23 PM

Richard Clarke has some modest proposals for the war on terror

Clarke, the former terrorism czar and 9/11 commission witness, fears that if we attempt big-picture cures for the the bureaucratic quagmire that led to so much bad pre-war intelligence we will be once again taking our eye off the real problem of how to effectively combat the threat of Muslim extremists. Some major points: -- Clarke rejects the notion of creating a new intelligence agency to deal with the threat of attacks within our borders. "We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the FBI a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the Al Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. …" -- Our existing intelligence agencies, which have huge budgets and substantial resources, need a few good leaders: "Rather than creating new organizations, we need to give the CIA and FBI makeovers. They cannot continue to be dominated by careerists who have carefully managed their promotions and ensured their retirement benefits by avoiding risk and innovation for decades. The agencies need regular infusions throughout their supervisory ranks of managers and thinkers from other, more creative organizational cultures." -- "Finally, we must try to achieve a level of public discourse on these issues that is simultaneously energetic and mutually respectful. … We need public debate if we are to succeed. We should not dismiss critics through character assassination, nor should we besmirch advocates of the Patriot Act as fascists." "We all want to defeat the jihadists," Clarke concludes. "To do that, we need to encourage an active, critical and analytical debate in America about how that will best be done. And if there is another major terrorist attack in this country, we must not panic or stifle debate as we did for too long after 9/11."

Posted by tbrown at 12:21 PM