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Friday, March 28, 2003 World War III?I wasn't absolutely serious when I first suggested the Iraq invasion could turn into a third world war, but the possibility won't go away. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:32 PMMonday, March 24, 2003 Whose War?Andrew Sullivan has his latest column up from the Sunday Times, called "Whose War? A roll-call of the architects." It makes the provocative case that this war is not George Bush Jr.'s fault. That's true, up to a point — but then Sullivan goes on to blame Clinton and the U.N., skating neatly past the notion that the war is George Bush Sr.'s. To wit:Back in 1991, U.S. and U.K. forces were only a few hundred miles behind the positions they advanced to in the middle of last week. Saddam was reeling, after a coalition invasion to repel his aggression against Kuwait. Both the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shi'a in the South, emboldened by the war in Kuwait and encouraged by Washington, launched an uprising against the same tyrant we are still battling today. With American air-cover, they could have succeeded. But the Americans, in the greatest military miscalculation of the last few decades, hung back. Then-president George H.W. Bush insisted that his war aims did not include the removal of Saddam Hussein, but were limited to the liberation of a small oil company known as Kuwait. Why, after sending hundreds of thousands of troops halfway around the globe, did Bush suddenly turn modest? Because the United Nations was the rubric under which he fought the war; the terms of his enormous coalition were dictated by the U.N.; and those terms were strictly limited to the reversal of Iraq's invasion, and nothing more. Sorry, Andrew, but it's more complicated than that. Remember the ’91 war was not a humanitarian enterprise. We didn't send hundreds of thousands of troops halfway around the globe to liberate a little kingdom called Kuwait. We did it because Saddam was threatening Saudi oil fields. It was a bald-faced war for oil; even Norman Schwartzkopf has said so (on Frontline). The prospect of having so much oil under a brutal tyrant's control was enough to mobilize the U.S. military and even motivate the French. On the surface, not a bad idea. I wouldn't want Saddam in charge of that oil, either. But there's a catch. When you move so baldly in your economic interests, one thing you don't do — for the sake of world peace — is knock off a head of state. We couldn't have justified changing regimes in Baghdad for "American security" or any of the usual bromides. We were just protecting the world economy. Bush Sr. knew that as well as his cabinet, his generals, and most of the civilized world. Matt Welch has excerpted a few of the passages from then-Secretary of State James Baker's 1995 memoir on why we didn't take Baghdad. We should have done it, in retrospect, but there was no will to knock off Saddam even in the highest, most hawkish military circles. So the Gulf War itself — its oily nature — led to the current mess. In that sense George Sr. is the supreme architect of Gulf War II. And if you listen to Laurie Mylroie (which no one seems to do anymore; she no longer fits into either camp's design), Gulf War I led to a covert war of revenge by Saddam and his terrorist agents throughout the 1990s, involving the first World Trade Center explosion in 1993, a plot to use 12 airliners as missiles in ’95 (by Khalid Sheikh Mohmmed and others), and, just possibly, September 11. This was the theory advanced by Mylroie and the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute in 2000, when Clinton was still in the White House. The men on the board of the American Enterprise Institute — Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, just to name a few — are also the draughtsmen of the current war. They know all about Mylroie's theory; they published her book, for God's sake, and if Clinton or Gore were still in power the theory would have been kicked around in public as a radioactive example of how Clintonism is no match for terrorism. (That was the whole purpose of Mylroie's book.) Unfortunately, Mylroie did good work: Her case is not airtight, but it's alarming enough to be worth a public debate. So the neo-con silence on the Saddam theory, at least around Radio Free Mike, has been deafening, I mean nothing short of dazzling. But Sullivan makes a pretty good point that begins to explain the mystery. He says the neo-conservatives ...weren't natural Bush [Sr.] allies. Men like the Pentagon's Richard Perle or Douglas Feith or Paul Wolfowitz or the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer and Bob Kagan, or the New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan or the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: all these had been bitter foes of Bush's father, brutal critics of his foreign policy ... The reason they rallied behind Bush in the wake of 9/11 was simply because he was the president. So any theory pointing a finger of blame back to the President's father (such as, Saddam has been working with al-Qaeda since Gulf War I, precisely because of Gulf War I) can be discussed in back rooms, but soft-pedaled in public until another time, in order to keep from embarrassing the royal family. I think when the history of this ugly era is written there will be surprises on both the right and left. Saddam will be seen as a real and festering threat, with real weapons of mass destruction, and George Herbert Walker Bush will be seen as the man who encouraged him to hoard them, and truck with terrorists like Bin Laden. He'll be known as the American leader who wasn't great enough to solve the international problem of Saddam Hussein without involving his nation in a Machiavellian war for its "economic interest" -- at the expense of so many others. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:14 PM Where is Saddam?He seems to be alive, but wounded and lacking blood, maybe incapacitated, in spite of the recent "live" TV appearance. What Tommy Franks said at the press briefing last weekend is interesting, though. It suggests that even if Washington could prove Saddam's demise, they wouldn't necessarily tell us about it. Not just yet. They must know that Radio Free Mike, along with a thousand other blogs, would agitate to wrap up the war. Here's what Franks said, from a news conference transcript at Centcom:I don't know if he's alive or not. But interestingly, the way we're undertaking this military operation, it would not be changed, irrespective of location or the life of this one man ... It is not about that one personality. In fact, it is about this regime. And so that's what we're going to focus on. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:38 PM Ring Them BellsThe good news is that Salam Pax is alive. The bad news is, well, just about everything else on his blog. Here's an alternate URL for the Salam site in case the first link doesn't work: http://www.dearraed.blogspot.com posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:48 PMFriday, March 21, 2003 Looking really stupidFrench politician Dominique Dord's pronouncement — "We would look really stupid if Iraqis applaud the arrival of Americans" — applies just as well to my own city of San Francisco, especially now that some Iraqis are applauding. (Via Instapundit.)To keep this sentiment from getting out of hand, though, read Salam Pax's pre-war rant, from Baghdad, about "bombing Iraq into democracy." By the way, has anyone heard from Salam Pax since his post about a B-52 raid? Almost six hours ago, as of this post, he wrote: "2 more hours until the B-52s get to Iraq." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:49 PM Tariq Aziz... did not defect. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:12 AMThursday, March 20, 2003 Shutting down the CityThe protesters trying to shut down San Francisco have blocked about forty intersections, including a stretch of Market Street. While I was down by the library this morning some of them formed a human chain (and one human speed bump) in front of a paddy wagon. The police van was just trying to turn down Eighth Street -- away from the demonstration -- but a crowd of people ran over to it because they had nothing else to do, locked arms, shouted, and forced the driver to turn around and find some other way to get where he was going. The crowd went wild. They hollered, "Our street! Our street! Our street! Our street!"Yeah, your street and no one else's. At large in the City there's a heavy and irritating atmosphere of which-side-are-you-on. Apparently fire trucks can't get through certain intersections, and the firemen are pissed. It reminds me of what a homeless woman shouted at a candlelight vigil on Sunday night: "A candle and a Dixie cup ain't gonna change the world!" No, but it tells the world which side you're on, and so, apparently, does blocking fire trucks. UPDATE: It's really stupid out there. Buses are stacked along Mission Street, motionless and empty. The mean combative atmosphere from this morning has curdled into political bickering on streetcorners, random shouting by anyone with a beef (especially rants about "shopping," as if shoppers were to blame for the war), useless idiots with bullhorns, at least one fistfight, bottle-throwing (in an Oakland BART station, where employees wouldn't let protesters on for free), loose bands of protesters marching up and down like guerrilla factions, a reported take-over of administration buildings at UC Berkeley, and protesters lying down in front of ordinary cars to keep them from moving. What are these people trying to prove? Almost everyone in San Francisco hates the war. Of course, the cops respond to this kind of thing by acting like stormtroopers; when I asked one of them why a stretch of Mission was blocked by a line of cops in riot gear, he said it was the protesters who had blocked it off — as if he and a dozen other cops weren't standing there with billy clubs. I said protesters were blocking streets everywhere; why were the cops here? He just shook his head. I hate San Francisco when it gets like this. The protest doesn't feel like a movement for peace and justice, but a fractured, angry surge of narcissism. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:00 PM Pre-emptionI assumed the shooting in Afghanistan was not just a hunt for Bin Laden but also a pre-emptive strike against the mujahideen who've been waiting for spring (or some distraction like war) to destabilize Kabul, but it seems the mujahideen may have struck first. Anyway, the U.S. is taking to pre-emption pretty fast. A unit of the 82nd Airborne involved in Afghanistan is actually called the White Devils.Some Marin County Iranians are already hoping -- with Richard Perle -- that the mullahs in Tehran will be next in line for pre-emptive regime change. What a fucked-up idea. I can't think of a better way to convince the Arab street that we hate their guts. But I may have spoken too soon about the probability of the War on Terrorism stopping in Baghdad. Yesterday Zbigniew Brzezinski brought up the danger of a brisk victory in Iraq (which of course we're hoping for around here) on the NewsHour: If we win big this time, there could be rather dangerous hubris, kind of a feeling, gee, we can do anything we want so we go after Syria or we go after Iran next. And there may be pressures for us to do that. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:04 PM Wednesday, March 19, 2003 TickertapeDebkafile reports that Tariq Aziz fled Baghdad for northern Iraq and got captured. They also claim that Marines have flowed into Iraq from the south and that Iraqi speedboats are buzzing around in the Gulf. Reliable? Not sure. But NPR, The New York Times, and the White House all say the invasion hasn't started. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:58 PMWorth reading... as usual, is Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. And my old classmate Greg McIlvaine has not just a blog, but a kid! posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:54 AMTuesday, March 18, 2003 War Footing at Radio Free MikeTonight we watched the President's speech on TV, felt relieved, then confused, then depressed, and got drunk. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:10 AMSunday, March 16, 2003 Bungled Diplomacy, 3A three-way summit on a little mid-Atlantic island sounds to me like a secret war council, not a last try for diplomacy. And here's a pop quiz: Which corporation has been tipped to extinguish any blazing oil fields left behind by Saddam? a) Halliburton b) Halliburton c) Halliburton, or d) Halliburton?On March 6 the Pentagon, breaking its previous silence on the matter, announced that a division of Halliburton, the oil-services firm previously headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney, will co-ordinate the oil-fire fighting efforts if they are needed. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:54 PM Saturday, March 15, 2003 Just to be clearWhether an invasion will lead to a third world war or "another Vietnam" is just speculation. I'm a hawk, but not an optimistic one. I understand the war will be a season in hell for the Middle East. The goal of this blog is just to see the thing clearly: Is offing Saddam worth it? He really does have chemical weapons, and the means to distribute them; he really has made a fool of Hans Blix as well as the United Nations -- the White House is not lying about that. "Containing" Saddam will involve years of more sanctions, which haven't worked. And an oil-motivated war to topple a Nazi-style totalitarian state and install a democracy is, anyway, not the worst thing the U.S. has ever done. (World War II had its economic motivations, too.) The real question is: Would it be a sane response to September 11? At Radio Free Mike we mainly want to avoid a random swing of American power that uses September 11 as a phony pretense to wage a decades-long war of imperialism around the globe. That would not only be a disaster for the U.S. as a nation; it would also let the real crooks get away.So is Saddam a real crook? I started forming my opinions on September 11, with open-minded research, long before the conservative and liberal sides took shape. What I learned was that Saddam had every logical reason to work with terrorist fronts like al-Qaeda. He probably did work with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and various idiots from Baluchistan in a plan to collapse the World Trade Center in 1993. He really might have helped organize 9/11. So ending Saddam's regime might really be a logical response to an anonymous act of war. It might really weaken al-Qaeda. It might not all be about oil. The nation hasn't had a serious debate about this, frankly, in part because the White House tends to treat its citizens like children. The Iraq invasion's rank unpopularity may be the best thing about it. Bush has almost no chance of extending the official war beyond Iraq — thanks to the protesters — especially if Bin Laden gets caught. The state sponsors of September 11 are probably more varied and obscure than Saddam, but if the War on Terrorism stops with him, fine. It's more than we could hope for a year ago. Of course, Gore Vidal thinks even an Iraq invasion would be a random swing of American power that uses September 11 as a phony pretense, etc., but it's amazing how incoherent and basically emotional he can be on this point in interviews. He won't even deal with the idea that Baghdad might have terrorist agents. He ignores Afghanistan and Germany as models for rebuilding Iraq. And he suggests that any free-thinking writer who fails to agree with his vision is either a professor trying to keep his job or an undereducated product of failing American public schools. He's been saying this for generations, not that he spent much of his own time in school. He seems to think no one but Gore Vidal can be self-educated. These days he sounds more and more like an old man, mouthing a yellowed script from his better days as a cocktail-party controversialist. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:23 AM Thursday, March 13, 2003 Brain prostheticAn artificial hippocampus is being tested in California. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:55 AMWednesday, March 12, 2003 Slipping the nooseBin Laden may or may not, again, be captured, but Washington remains skeptical, at least until the war is underway. Support for an Iraq invasion would vanish if they caught him. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:47 PMTold you soAt last Sullivan admits that elements of the Bush administration can be arrogant, self-destructive, and clumsy. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:27 PMWorld War III?Steve over at Golgonooza doesn't agree with my vision of a Third World War in the Middle East. I know it's a bit off the wall, and Debkafile can be alarmist. But if we invade Iraq, and the Turks secure Kurdistan, and the Kurds fire at the Turks, and Israel invades Syria to keep Hizbollah from bombing the Golan Heights and al-Qaeda fights a guerrilla war for the land of the socialist infidel (with bin Laden's blessing) -- well, that's a world war. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:40 AMAnd while we're at it, dump Teachout, tooAs a drama critic I would be embarrassed to start a piece on young American classical composers by admitting that I almost never listen to their stuff, and go on to argue that most of it must be worthless anyway, especially compared to the music of a genius who lived through the tragic heart of the twentieth century, like, say, Prokofiev. But Terry Teachout does pretty much that in the Wall Street Journal. Teachout's a music critic for Commentary who decided to move his bowels all over contemporary American fiction on the basis of a few things he's heard about Dave Eggers and Alice Sebold. Teachout strikes a pose that Journal readers will accept — not enough gravitas in recent American writing — but can't hold it up, because he hasn't done the reading. The word for that, around Radio Free Mike, is "poseur." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:59 AMDump the press corpsThe reporters who enabled our President's "news conference" last week get diced and skewered in a magnificent shish-ke-bob served up by the NY Press. Via Golgonooza. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:46 AMTuesday, March 11, 2003 They're not really French!The House of Representatives has changed the name of French fries and French toast, unbelievably, to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast, on all House cafeteria menus. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:19 PMMonday, March 10, 2003 The Ugly BalanceMost of us at Radio Free Mike still (reluctantly) favor the invasion if it happens with U.N. support, and we agree that it's not the inspectors' job to scour every inch of Iraq for weapons. Saddam can easily turn around tomorrow and comply. (France knows this. I think they just feel pushed around by the U.S., and why wouldn't they?) Still, Debkafile's report of a Middle East on high alert -- along with reports of Al Qaeda fighting a guerrilla war for Iraq -- raise the ugly notion of not just Gulf War II, but World War III. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:41 AMFriday, March 07, 2003 Bungled Diplomacy, 2Another thing that makes Bush look arrogant: Not answering journalists' questions. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:13 AMBungled DiplomacySullivan thinks Josh Marshall has to give "some real reasons as to what the Bushies did wrong" diplomatically. He lists all the UN hoops the White House has jumped through and says "the current neo-lib whining about the Bush team's alleged incompetence" may be "partisan hooey." But the administration's failures have everything to do with how its members act in public. Bush started this run-up to war with the formula "you're either for us or you're against us" -- addressed to the whole world -- and his administration went on to give leaders everywhere the idea that we were prepared, by ourselves, to devastate a sovereign government. Now, I'd like to see Saddam toppled, too, and I think the inspections regime (as well as the vague hope that Saddam might leave) exists because of American firepower. But it's a massive failure of diplomatic finesse to have most of the world against you after September 11. And it doesn't help for Bush to keep shoving his foot in his mouth by calling Kim Jong Il, for example, a pygmy. Or Ari Fleischer treating the press like children. Or for us to publicly sell out the Kurds. This is what people mean by arrogance, and it only encourages smaller, insecure states to go nuclear. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:00 AMTuesday, March 04, 2003 Bomb Saddam?I just re-read Josh Marshall's really fine article from Washington Monthly (last June) about a possible war in Iraq, and it's amazing how right the guy is. An inspections regime was still a glimmer in Colin Powell's eye, and Marshall predicted exactly how real inspections would play out with Europe, Russia, and China. He also talked to an Iraqi general, Najib Salhi, and heard things that are still surprising -- still news -- nine months later. The Bush Administration seems to have read this piece and then gone on to bungle its diplomatic approach anyway, even while it took Marshall's advice on a patient buildup to war. Marshall's getting a PhD at Brown and writes solid journalism. He's a liberal who knows the subtleties of conservative hawk-think, poses hard questions (to himself), and avoids easy Cold-War cliches. If I were a Washington pro, like him -- which isn't my ambition, even on this blog -- I could only hope to be as nimble and sophisticated. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:03 PMSite updateRadio Free Mike has been updated, mainly with seven new articles in the Politics and Prose section. Still the same old cover story, though. Sorry. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:29 AMWar plansSteve over at Golgonooza points out that the war, in many ways, has started. One former Pentagon official says flat-out, "We've already got a lot of stuff underway -- the air campaign, psychological operations, Special Ops." This very blog on Radio Free Mike began with under-reported news last August about the air campaign. (Special Ops were underway by then, too.) The bright hope for me was that Saddam might still step down, with all the hardware aimed at his head, but that looks unlikely. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:14 AMSunday, March 02, 2003 That's more like itRemember that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is not just a Qaeda leader but also a cousin and co-conspirator of Ramzi Yousef, who led the plot to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Which was probably orchestrated by Iraq. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:23 AMTurkeyJosh Marshall has some keen observations about the White House's diplomatic hackwork in Turkey and Kurdistan. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:53 AM | |
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