Iraq, aims and evaluation

I am an evaluator and analyst by training and profession. When I have an initial meeting with the stakeholders who want me to do an interim or a post-facto outcome evaluation of a big project I ask three initial questions.

1) Is it okay to park where I parked?
2) Where's the coffee?
3) What were the reasons/objectives that this project/program was started and what are the desired end-states?

The third question allows me to start building an analytical framework to see whether or not the project was able to achieve desirable outcomes. Any action has to be fitted into a matrix of past history, surrounding environment, capabilities, constraints, worldviews, resources, and value based outcomes. Actions should be taken that further goals, and these goals should fit into a comprehensible and coherent strategy of change. Benchmarks, way points, quick-look dashboards, indicators of some sort should be built into every phase of a project so that the basic question of 'does this action make sense in relationship to a larger goal' and ' is this doing what needs to be done' can be asked and quickly answered.

A good indicator of a program in trouble is one in which the benchmarks frequently and randomly change, low accountability is rampant, individual actors are engaged in activities that are mutually contradictory to any strategic outcome and evaluation does not occur or is a farce. This basic policy analysis framework can and should be applied to most public policy problems and programs, including an analysis of the war in Iraq.

Tigerhawk, a proud 24%-er is kicking the goal posts so far that soon American football will be played on a cricket pitch as he engages in both objective re-setting and evaluatory punting

other than to say that the many contemporaneous objections to OIF -- including fatuous assertions by presidential candidates and their surrogates that it was the greatest foreign policy mistake in American history -- will shrink into nothingness upon the full rendering of the verdict of history. That will depend on one result and one only -- whether the Persian Gulf and the Arab world are much changed in the time elapsing before the writing of that history and whether that change has a salutary impact on the many in competencies of that region, or not. And who will write that history? A young scholar who was born too late to have experienced the passionate arguments and sharp politics of the last five years.

He is arguing that we can not evaluate properly for at least another ten to fifteen years (figure a 10 year old in 2003 will be finishing up his dissertation when he is between 27 and 30) and only if we assess against one, often unstated, metric of success that was not central except to a bunch of fringe bureaucratic infighters. And also while we ignore any concept of opportunity cost. Wow, Tigerhawk had a reputation a couple of years ago as a 'smart' warhawk.

Let's go back to the tape and see what the stated war aims were. Let's see what case Congress thought it was authorizing, what President Bush stated in his biggest address to the country concerning Iraq, and what was stated the night the war started. I think this is a fair collection of documents to read to discern the stated intentions of the United States government.


From the March 19, 2003 pre-war speech by President Bush ---

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the
early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to
defend the world from grave danger....
The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

Okay, so we got the precursor of 'fight them over there so they don't come here' as well as fear mongering on WMDs. We also get a hint of liberating the Iraqi people, although as soon as they wanted early local elections in the summer of 2003, we quashed that notion of local autonomy. But the primary stated purpose of this war was disarm Iraq. Iraq was already effectively disarmed years ago and the UN was able to verify that this process was nearing completion. Whoopsie!

From the 2002 Joint Authorization to Use Military Force (CSPAN PDF)

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the
Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary
and appropriate in order to—
(1) defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council
resolutions regarding Iraq.

The pre-amble full of Whereas... is not legally binding but it mostly contained statements on disarming Iraq, enforcing UN sanctions or allegations (cleverly worded of course) on the connections between Iraq and Al-Queada. Again, this is being framed as a war of self-defense against a terrifying threat of a secretly re-armed Iraq.

Let's move to the next selection to see what the stated war aims are.
2003 State of the Union

America is making a broad and determined effort to confront these dangers. We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm. We're strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world.....
The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.
Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families....
If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him....
And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom.

Again, the war aims here are disarming Iraq and assisting the United Nations in enforcing its resolutions and sanctions. Nothing is written in the official war aims as promogulated by both Congress and President Bush in his two biggest speeches about the war concerning the creation of a cascade of positive externalities (which btw we aren't seeing) in the entire region.

Furthermore his analytical framework excludes both opportunity cost and the closely related concept of the counterfactual which are some of the core tenets of anything that vaguely wants to be called high quality policy analysis. As an whimper of begging for intellectual mercy, Tigerhawk and the sentiment he expresses of neglecting the next twenty years so that it can be properly analyzed while continuing on the same path is a joke, and not even a particularly funny one at that.

Sharia Fearmongering

By Cernig

There's been a lot of Islamophobic mouthbreathing over the Archbishop of Canterbury's comment yesterday that Sharia Law in the UK is "unavoidable". British politicians and pundits on both sides of the pond have picked up on the bare bones of the story and fallen over each other to demand the Archbishop's resignation or to complain that this would be the "thin edge of the wedge".

But all he actually said (see the BBC's original story) was that Muslims should have the same option to choose a private court (using Sharia Law) for civil disputes as Jewish Brits do. Indeed, Williams said he was fully aware of how draconian full Sharia Law can be:

He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".

...Dr Williams noted that Orthodox Jewish courts already operated, and that the law accommodated the anti-abortion views of some Christians.

"The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to custom and community, that's already there," he said.

People may legally devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process.

Muslim Sharia courts and the Jewish Beth Din which already exist in the UK come into this category.

The country's main Beth Din at Finchley in north London oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes.

So why the outcry over a reasonable call for parity? Well, mostly it seems to me because Islamophobia is the new anti-Semitism and politicians are appeasing such "Protocols of the Elders of Islam" rightwing conspiracy theorists as long as their Blimpoid bigotry goosesteps to a nationalistic beat.

Meanwhile, over at Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball is using King Henry II's words which were interpreted as a command to assassinate a previous Archbishop of Canterbury as a headline, then with weasel words hidden in the article takes them back - sort off:

I certainly would not wish to have the question “Who will rid us of this troublesome priest?” answered as Henry’s question was answered. But where Becket faithfully served his church and was savagely punished for it, Rowan Williams loses no opportunity to besmirch his Church and is lavishly praised for his perfidy.

There will continue to be more outrage directed at Archbishop Williams for suggesting parity of rights for Jews and Muslims than there will be at the US art critic and ideologue for sailing so close to a call for the assassination of the clerical head of the Church of England. That's your appeasement right there.

German Conservatives' Immigration Card May Backfire With Voters

By Cernig

The BBC is reporting that Bush ally Angela Merkel may have problems coming, with state elections showing how nest year's federal race may be run.

German voters are voting in two state elections, in Lower Saxony and Hesse.

Opinion polls suggest Angela Merkel's party, the conservative CDU, may lose its majority in Hesse - a politically and economically important state.

The current governor of Hesse, the CDU's Roland Koch, is running for a third term in office.

Mr Koch has provoked a storm of protest with calls for tougher sentences and the deportation of what he called "young criminal foreigners."

Mr Koch is known as the "crown prince" by conservatives.

But his campaign, which has focused on crime and immigration, has recently alienated many voters.

According to the latest opinion polls, support for the ruling conservatives has dropped, paving the way for a victory by the Social Democrats (SPD).

Professor Hajo Funke, a political scientist, says the conservatives' anti-foreigner campaign may have backfired.

"If Roland Koch wins, it will have effects not only for this election, but for the next state elections and the next federal elections," he told the BBC.

"Because then you will have a different CDU, with more foreign hatred, with more national conservative elements - in the party, and in the strategy."

Parallels with the US are obvious, where hardline conservatives are absolutely determined that the Democratic nomination contest be framed as race-based and that the coming presidential fight be framed as who will best keep the brown people from America's door.

Let's all remember one thing that's been proven time and again over decades. It doesn't matter what party sign they hang around their neck - if they're banging on about race wars and fear of foreigners, they're conservatives.

Karzai Blamies Britain, US, For Taliban Resurgence

By Cernig

Afghan president Hamid Karzai has said he made a mistake in listening to US and British officials who said they had things under control and that their mistakes directly led to the resurgence of the Taliban in Helmland province.

"There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces," Karzai said. "Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge.

"They came and said, 'Your governor is no good'. I said 'All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?'. Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them.

"And when they came in, the Taliban came."

This is big news in Canada and the UK - where the British government has scurried to parse Karzai's statement in a way that lets them deny it without denying the facts - yet it's hardly even on the radar in primary-obsessed America. Even if the primary race was about policy rather than mud, stories like this might get an airing (after Britney's latest meltdown, of course) but right now the US electorate regards its primaries as if they're American Idol, not selecting someone who is meant to be able to get a handle on s**t like Afghanistan. No wonder you end up with idiots like Dubya in charge.

Laying Down With Dogs

By Cernig

I've been deriving some quiet amusement from the way in which Islamophobic American rightwing bloggers have been under fire over the last couple of weeks from their kissing-cousins at Europe's neo-nazi groups. Having spent so long telling Europeans that they should beware the Islamic menace - something these groups rightly took as code for "hate the brown people" - people like Little Green Footballs, Jawa report and Jihad Watch are under fire from European Belang-ites and BNPers. After pointing out that the neo-nazis' attendant anti-semitism is too rich even for their Muslim-hating blood, the U.S. wingnuts are now being called "leftists" and worse. The potential irony of the situation is too rich. What's a Zion-supporting white supremacist to do?

I wonder what Islamophobe guru Mark Steyn would say about it all?

Will This Do?

By Cernig

The xenophobic right, vocal in the UK but far more so in the U.S., would have it that Muslims don't speak out against terrorism and therefore must condone it. The worst of the xenophobes would have it that all Muslims, secretly or up-front, believe the jihadist, extremist linethat their religion is one of violence against unbelievers.

Will this do? to explode those myths?

British Muslims are leading a new campaign condemning the recent attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
The campaign, titled "Not in Our Name", will be launched across the UK with adverts in newspapers.

It emphasises "the Muslim community's rejection of any attempts to link any such criminal attacks to the teachings of Islam", organisers said.

Muslims from various professions have backed the campaign, including doctors.

The advert, accredited to "Muslims United", also carries a quotation from Koran reading: "Whoever kills an innocent soul, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind.

"And whoever saves one, it is as if he saved the whole of mankind."

'Calm response'

The emergency services have been praised for "working tirelessly and courageously" while the government has been commended for handling the crisis "calmly and proportionately".

The advert, which will also appear on billboards, buses and underground trains, calls for the community to stand united against terrorism.

The campaign has received support from Conservative Muslim Forum, Islamic Relief, the Islamic Society of Britain and Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association among others.

And the Muslims United website gives the text of the poster:

The Muslim communities across Britain are united in condemning the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow.

We are united with the rest of the country at this critical time and are determined to work together to avert any such attacks targeting our fellow citizens, property and country.

Islam forbids the killing of innocent people. We reject any heinous attempts to link such abhorrent acts to the teachings of Islam.
• British Muslims should not be held responsible for the acts of criminals.
• We commend the government for its efforts to respond to this crisis calmly and proportionately, and welcome both the Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s and the Home Secretary’s emphasis on the need to distinguish between the overwhelming majority of British Muslims who are law-abiding citizens and a few criminals who seek to inflict harm and terror on our country.
• We express support for the emergency services who are working tirelessly and courageously to avert these attacks and ensure the safety of our country.
• We urge the media and all politicians to continue to maintain the values of our open society, free from prejudice and discrimination, sustained by tolerance and mutual respect for all.
• We call on our government to work towards a just and lasting peace in areas of conflict around the world and to take the lead in helping eliminate the injustices and grievances that foment division and nurture violence.

The unity of our society must be maintained and we must not allow divisions to emerge between us. We must remain friends, neighbours and colleagues, and take Britain forward as one nation – towards a Greater Britain.


Muslims United Campaign Supported by

Al Birr Foundation UK Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust Al-Quran Society Arab Club of Britain Association of Muslim Lawyers Algerian Assembly of Europe Al-Khoei Foundation Algerian League of Britain Bradford Council of Mosques Bristol Muslim Cultural Society British Lebanese Association Confederation of Sunni Mosques- Midlands Conservatives Muslim Forum Council of European Jamaats El- Nour Association Eritrean Muslim Community Association European Academy for Islamic Studies European Trust Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe Federation of Student Islamic Societies FOSIS Glasgow Central Mosque Imams and Mosques Council Imams Forum- UK IMWF Dewsbury Islamic Cultural Centre ICC / Central Mosque Islamic Forum Europe Islamic Foundation Islamic Relief Islamic Sharia Council Islamic Society of Britain Kensington Mosque Trust Lancashire Council of Mosques Lebanese Muslim League Leeds Grand Mosque Leeds Islamic centre Leeds Muslim Forum London Muslim Centre Luton Council of Mosques MAB Youth Markazi Jamiat Ahl e Hadith UK Masjid Al Tawheed-Leyton Mayfair Islamic Centre Moroccan Citizen Advice Bureau Muslim Aid Muslim Association of Britain Muslim College Muslim Council of Wales Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre Muslim Directory Muslim Doctors & Dentist Association Muslim Health Network Muslim News Muslim Parliament Muslim Safety Forum Muslim Scouts Fellowship Muslim Student Society Muslim Welfare House Trust Muslim Women Society Muslimat UK National Association of British Arabs Noorul Islam Mosque- Leyton North East Scottish Muslims North London Central Mosque- Finsbury Park Pakistan Foundation Pakistan Human Development Funds UK Pakistan International Forum UK Q News Shariah Council Somali Association of Britain The Islamic Shariah Council Tower Hamlet Council of Mosques UK Islamic Mission West London Moroccan Wedadiya World Federation of Khodja Shia Ithna Ashariya WF KSIMC World Islamic Mission - Scotland Young Muslims Organisation

I'm kidding of course - for the xenophobes and Blimpoids there can never be enough proof that Muslems as a whole are no more or less enamoured of terrorism to advance their religion than Christians as a whole, or Hindus, or Jews. Which should in itself be sufficient proof that the xenophobes who decry Islam in such generalized terms are as much a part of the moral problem, the problem of fostering hate and misinformation, as the vocal islamist extremists who encourage a mirror-image of their extreme views.

Update Told you so. Dan Riehl writes that this won't do because, he says, "its primary goal is to suggest Islamist terror is not linked to Islam." Dan seems to be basing that on a sentence from the poster saying that "We reject any heinous attempts to link such abhorrent acts to the teachings of Islam", coupled with deliberately ignoring any interpretation of that as meaning such links made by the terrorists themselves, despite the preceeding sentence saying that "Islam forbids the killing of innocent people." It's pretty clear to me that the poster is saying that while the terrorists try to hide behind religion, Muslims should not allow them to do so and call them out. Dan's deliberately misconstruing that as an attempt at dodging the issue.

Or if not, perhaps he'd like to castigate Christians who don't accept that anti-abortion acts of violence such as clinic bombings and doctor shootings have their basis as form of Christianity and who thus try to seperate such nutcases from Christianity as a whole. They're just being denialist, according to Dan. He would surely say "Sorry, it is, whether so-called moderates like it, or not." Wouldn't he?

Malkin, The Human Rights Concern Troll

By Cernig

Let's get something straight first. The picture above, of masked Iranian police beating a yound man for the crime of non-Islamic clothing and behaviour (he's wearing a soccer shirt) is of a reprehensible and horrid act of mindless repression. I'm with Michelle Malkin 100% on that.

Malkin has a bunch more pics today and you should go look at them. Especially if you are, like me, opposed to the neocon narrative for yet another U.S. war of aggression against a despicable regime that is, even so, no threat to the U.S. It's worth reminding ourselves that our purpose in opposing that narrative is not to defend a brutally repressive regime but to prevent a senseless destruction of lives that would be utterly ineffective.

Such a war would only harden that regime's determination to repress and earn it a new mandate for its existence from the very people being brutalized in Malkin's picture. It would only serve to turn their more moderate members away from any possibility of compromise. It would not end any nuclear threat nor would the people rise up to attack their own homeland while it was being attacked by a foreign superpower.

Michelle tries to deny, in advance, that she's shilling for war with Iran today:

This is not about calling for war. It’s about confronting reality, exposing the threat of sharia, and calling out libs who pay lip service to human rights only when America is accused of violating them.

But if she was really interested in human rights rather than pushing her own xenophobic and pro-war agenda, that paragraph would have mentioned the threat of extremism of any kind and calling out all those who only pay lip service to human rights when it serves their own preconceptions.

For Michelle, too, is guilty of looking the other way when it suits her. Human Rights Watch has a whole page of documents about rights violations worldwide, with scores of nations included. If Malkin wasn't being a concern troll in pursuit of the neocon agenda - an attack on Iran and general bigotry about Islam - she might have been expected to mention human rights abuses in a few of those nations over the years, whether or not they were Islamic states.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and their neighbours - the neocon's favorite little dictatorships in the former Soviet Union, where dissidents are boiled alive and minority groups massacred but where the U.S. has basing rights? Nope.

Taiwan, another neocon favorite, where children as young as 15 serve in the armed forces? Nope. (Of 10 nations which are implicated in the use of child soldiers, 9 receive U.S. military aid.)

Pakistan, ally in the "war on terror" while terrorizing its own population and banning the media from reporting on many abuses? Well yes, but it's a prominently Moslem nation...and Malkin believes the U.S. should support Pakistan's dictator in his efforts to repress his own populace's search for freedom, democracy and human rights.

Indeed, Malkin's stance on human rights is, to say the least, ambivalent. In fact, she's not above distorting the facts in pursuit of her own xenophobia or simply ignoring them when they don't conform to her narrative.

The point of her post today, supposedly, is to ask why many call attention to U.S. or British human rights abuses like torture, rendition for torture and other more domestic abuse, while ignoring Iran's crimes. The answer's pretty simple. We know Iran is guilty of massive human rights abuses, just as we know other nations are likewise guilty. But we as citizens of those nations expect the U.S. and U.K. to cleave to a higher standard and when they do not we make a noise about it.

What's Malkin's point, then, in making a noise about Iran's abuses while ignoring other nations, in particular America's? The strawman that "libs" ignore such abuses is fragile indeed given her own ommissions of righteous outrage in other cases.

The only possible answer is that she wants to continue paving the way for war with Iran by demonizing that nation above all others. I submit that where these crimes occur in other nations towards which she doesn't harbor an agenda, she doesn't care one whit. She's a concern troll and a hypocrite, pure and simple.

And while we're on the subject of Iran's annual crackdown, an astute observer might wonder why this year the crackdown seems to be more ferocious than in previous years. The NY Times has part of the answer.

For the Iranian government, the democracy fund is just one more element in an elaborate Bush administration regime-change stratagem. (“Is there even a perception that the American government has democracy in mind?” Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, asked me recently in New York. “Except among a few dreamers in Eastern Europe?”) In recent months, Tehran has upped the pressure on any citizens who might conceivably be linked to the democracy fund and, by extension, on civil society at large, making the mere prospect of American support counterproductive, even reckless.

...Many Iranians have grown paranoid about anything vaguely linked to the West. Conference and workshop attendance, travel and even e-mail and phone contact with foreign entities is suspect. In the last three months, at least three prominent NGOs have been shut down indefinitely. Kayhan, the semiofficial newspaper, editorializes almost daily about an elaborate network conspiring to topple the regime. Called “khaneh ankaboot,” or “the spider nest,” the network is reportedly bankrolled by the $75 million and includes everyone from George Soros to George W. Bush to Francis Fukuyama to dissident Iranians of all shades. In this vision, the network gets its “orders” from the Americans.

It is particularly telling, perhaps, that some of the most outspoken critics of the Iranian government have been among the most outspoken critics of the democracy fund. Activists from the journalist Emadeddin Baghi to the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi to the former political prisoner Akbar Ganji have all said thanks but no thanks. Ganji has refused three personal invitations to meet with Bush. A member of a U.S.-based institution that has received State Department financing and who works with Iranians told me that the Iranians had expressly asked not to have their cause mentioned in presidential speeches. “The propaganda campaign surrounding the launch of this campaign has meant that many of our partners are simply too afraid to work with us anymore,” she told me on condition of anonymity. “It’s had a chilling effect.”

...Suzanne Maloney was on the policy-planning staff at the State Department for two years before she left last month to take up a post at the Brookings Institution. Her experience with the Iran portfolio demonstrates some of the difficulties inherent in democracy promotion. “In a small room it sounds terrific,” she told me. “You put some money on the table, we support freedom and it gets us some points at home.” Maloney, who was one of a handful of staff members at the State Department who spoke some Farsi and had actually been to Iran, said she found herself doing a lot of damage control during her policy-planning stint: “I was worried about the safety of those on the receiving end of the funds. But I also just wondered if this was feasible. I don’t see how a U.S. government that has been absent from Tehran for 30 years is capable of formulating a program that will have a positive effect.” [All emphasis is mine - C]

Malkin's zeal for regime change in Iran is what drives her writing on the subject, just as the neocon zeal for regime change and revenge for a decades-old insult is what drives Bush administration policy. Because of that, they are inevitably part and parcel of the problem - making matters worse - rather than of the solution.

Update Larissa pwns Michelle and has a photo-challenge of her own for Malkin. Go Read.

And a commenter elsewhere brings up an intersting one - in the pics, the thugs' shirts say "Police" in English, not in Farsi. Is that standard in Iran, anyone know?

Fred! Shares Stage With Writer For Racist Website

By Cernig

So Fred Thompson thinks he can burnish his foreign policy and presidential credentials by flying to London to give a speech and to seek the endorsement of Maggie Thatcher on his claim to be the avatar of Ronnie Reincarnated.

Oops.

The speech itself was full of the usual platitudes, as James Joyner explains.

Seeking the blessing of Handbag Maggie is about the worst thing Fred! could do if he wants to repeair the international alliance so damaged by Blair's poodle act for Bush. Neither Gordon Brown nor David Cameron the conservative leader cleave to her version of stark raving mad hawkishness.

And standing on a platform with bigots like Anthony Browne, who makes at least part of his wages writing for the American racist website V-DARE, won't go un-noticed in Gordon Brown's circle either.

Both Brown and Cameron are likely to conclude that US/UK co-operation, especially in the Iraqi quagmire, is better dead than Fred!

Failed State

By Cernig

Today a study for Foreign Policy Magazine is released which says that Iraq is the second most failed state in the world, just edged out for bottom place by Sudan.

Iraq and Afghanistan, the two main fronts in the global war on terror, both suffered over the past year. Their experiences show that billions of dollars in development and security aid may be futile unless accompanied by a functioning government, trustworthy leaders, and realistic plans to keep the peace and develop the economy.

Reuters notes that "Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006" and had fallen from fourth place last year. Iraq scored highest (worst) in four out of twelve key indicators - group greivances, human flight, security apparatus and external interference. It also scored badly in human rights, having factionalized elites and the delegitimization of the state.

This is after four years of occupation - and no sign of betterment in the next decade.

Today in the UK's Guardian newspaper, there's a report on Jay Garner, the former US general appointed two months before the invasion to head reconstruction in Iraq, who believes the country is on the brink of a genocidal civil war and its government will fall apart unless the US changes course and allows a three-way federal structure. He also reveals that the US state department official in charge of postwar planning was prevented from joining Garner's team by Donald Rumsfield. The article is also full of details on how the British were aghast at the lack of planning for Iraq post-invasion.

Yet America's bi-partisan elite continues to profess that a U.S. troop presence is needed in Iraq, despite there being no end of evidence that the presence of foreign occupying troops is one of the key destabilizing factors there. Indeed, they continue to profess that American military might is a necessary factor in "fixing" the entire Middle East and so a bigger military is needed.

You would think that the last four years of failure to make peace grow from the barrel of a gun would have disabused the elite of these notions, but apparently not. They continue to blame other factors for that failure - most especially the Iraqis. It's a common refrain in the U.S. that, perhaps, the Iraqi people in particular and the Middle East in general aren't psychologically and culturally able to accept democracy. No-one seems to seriously consider the most likely other possibility - that Americans are culturally and psychologically unable to export the concepts of freedom, democracy and self-rule effectively at this time in their nation's history.

Still, on the bright side, somewhere in Iraq today a school - with no teachers and only a few students who haven't fled or aren't too scared to go outside - got painted.

Iraq Occupation...Forever

By Cernig

Reuters has the report from the White house on the plan to stay in Iraq forever:

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

...White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea.

"The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters.

Josh Marshall has the complete rundown on why a South Korea-style occupation won't work in Iraq.

Let's run through a few differences. First, Korea is an ethnically and culturally homogenous state. Iraq, not a culturally or ethnically homogenous state. And needless to say, that has been a point of some real difficulty. Second, Korea a democracy? Well, yes, for about fifteen years. Without going into all the details, South Korea was a military dictatorship for most of the Cold War.

A deeper acquaintance with the last half century of Korean history would suggest that a) a fifty year occupation, b) lack of democracy and c) a hostile neighbor were deeply intertwined. Remove B or C and you probably don't have A, certainly no A if you lose both B and C.

The more telling dissimilarity is the distinction between frontline troops and troops for stability. At least notionally (and largely this was true) US troops have been in South Korea to ward off an invasion from the North. US troops aren't in Iraq to ward off any invasion. Invasion from who? Saudi Arabia? Syria?

No, US troops are in Iraq for domestic security, in so many words, to protect it from itself, or to ensure the continued existence of an elected, pro-US government. That tells you that the US military presence in Iraq will never be as relatively bloodless as the US military presence in Korea since it has no external threat it's counterbalancing against. In a sense that the US deployment in Korea has never quite been, it is a sustained foreign military occupation.

And we here at The Newshoggers were talking about all this on Saturday, including pointing out what those differences will mean in real terms.

The differences between Iraq and South Korea being, mostly, that the Iraqis are still likely to be using those American super-bases for target practise decades from now, ratcheting up the casualties a few at a time, and that the bases in Iraq will be a provocation destined to create more Islamist terrorists by their very existence than their occupants will ever manage to kill.

As commenter Zeitgeist over at the Carpetbagger Report points out, this has been the Bush plan all along, they just knew it would be political suicide to mention it before now - when they know the Democratic party will cave to any pressure:

The politics of this would be comically bad were it not so serious a matter. Can you imagine if BushCo had been remotely honest with the American public in late 2002 and said “We are planning to invade Iraq not because they have WMD or are an immediate threat to us, but because Saddam Hussein is a bad man - nevermind our past support - the world will be a safer place without him. The downside is that his removal will leave Iraq in sectarian chaos and all told it will cost us thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars to try and stabilize the country. In the end, I anticipate a Korea-like solution where we have several thousand peacekeeping troops there potentially for 20-30 years. I trust the American public will support me in this.”

Maybe, just maybe, the public would have gotten off their asses and into the process for that one.

Maybe they will now. And maybe Dem leaders will rediscover their vertebrate genetics.

Neo-Blimpism

As an addendum to my Memorial Day post on the insiduous nature of assertions of any "divine mandate", and the dangers of Imperial hubris such always brings, it's worth reading Glenn Greenwald today as he debunks Tony Blair's neo-colonial blimpism. I'm entirely in agreement with Glenn's finding that Blair, Bush and the neo-war crowd are guilty of Blimpism - the crime of thinking they know better than the Poor Bloody Natives, who they will save from their own uncivilized selves.

Glenn writes that he wants to "leave aside for the moment the inflammatory question of whether it is valid to compare our invasion and four-year-and-counting occupation of Iraq and previous policies of British colonialism."

But let's not. Let us instead confront it head on. Glenn quotes extensively from a 1926 rant by British colonial administrator Lord Frederick Lugard. Here's the bit that seemed most resonant to me:

If there is unrest, and a desire for independence, as in India and Egypt, it is because we have taught the value of liberty and freedom, which for centuries these peoples had not known. Their very discontent is measure of their progress.

We hold these countries because it is the genius of our race to colonise, to trade, and to govern. The task in which England is engaged in the tropics--alike in Africa and in the East--has become Part Of her tradition, and she has ever given of her best in the cause of liberty and civilisation.

There will always be those who cry aloud that the task is being badly done, that it does not need doing, that we can get more profit by leaving others to do it, that it brings evil to subject races and breeds profiteers at home. These were not the principles which prompted our forefathers, and secured for us the place we hold in the world to-day in trust for those who shall come after us.

Yet for all its talk of divine mandates and Empires on which the sun would never set, that era of British colonialism is gone the way of Rome and Ozymandias.

Tell me how this substantially differs from the pronouncements of the neocons or other war-hawks from the extreme Right of American politics.

Beware of Terr'ists In Diapers!

By Cernig

At last, the rightwing's xenophobes have evidence to back up their previous assertions (Rick Perry, anyone?) that the southern border of the US is an open door, nay a seven-lane highway, for dangerous terr'ists called Mohammed packing suitcase nukes.

Three of the Fort Dix plotters - after 17 months that's all they were still doing if it hadn't been for FBI informers giving them hints - came across the Mexican border at Brownsville, Texas.

Ruuuun, the Terr'ists are coming! No?

Steven Taylor explains why not:

Now, I will confess that I am surprised to learn that they possibly came across in Brownsville (although how this is know is unclear), not because I don’t see how it could happen (I can), but more because Brownsville is a long way from Jersey (and because there are so many ways to get in that going via Brownsville seems like a lot of trouble). Still, the fact that they were brought in as children hardly shows some vast al Qaeda plot to use the Mexican border as a means of penetrating the United States. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Michelle Malkin from crowing about how the Duka brothers came across the Mexican border (which is one of her great areas of interest). It is noteworthy that Malkin’s post doesn’t comment on the fact that the alleged crossing took place when the brothers were still in diapers (her update does have the information in a block of quoted information, and it is, to be fair, highlighted along with some other bits of information).

...Indeed, if al Qaeda is so smart that it was able (before it even existed, mind you) to smuggle in toddler sleeper agents who would one day be poised, in the post-911 world, to wreak havoc on New Jersey after some paint-ball training, well then we are as good as doomed and might as well quit now.

And what about Debbie? Well, she's in fine frothing form. "Islamic terrorists and illegal aliens know about sanctuary cities, and they purposefully locate themselves there so they can continue their terror plotting unfettered." The emphasis is mine. The screaming paranoia that says all illegal aliens are terrorists is entirely Debbie's.

Colonel Tony Blimp

By Cernig

Well, that's it then. Tony Blair finally revealed for who he truly is - a white, middle class Little Englander who has never struggled for a damn thing in his entire life and is entirely convinced that only people from his exact demographic should be allowed to lead the great unwashed into a bright future where the underclass will worship at the altar of Little Englandness.

Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.

One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.

Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it".

...Giving the Callaghan lecture in Cardiff, the prime minister admitted he had been "lurching into total frankness" in the final weeks of his premiership. He called on black people to lead the fight against knife crime. He said that "the black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids".

Mr Blair said he had been moved to make his controversial remarks after speaking to a black pastor of a London church at a Downing Street knife crime summit, who said: "When are we going to start saying this is a problem amongst a section of the black community and not, for reasons of political correctness, pretend that this is nothing to do with it?" Mr Blair said there needed to be an "intense police focus" on the minority of young black Britons behind the gun and knife attacks. The laws on knife and gun gangs needed to be toughened and the ringleaders "taken out of circulation".

Last night, British African-Caribbean figures leading the fight against gang culture condemned Mr Blair's speech. The Rev Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of the main organisations working against gang crime, denounced the prime minister.

Mr Obunge, who attended the Downing Street summit chaired by Mr Blair in February, said he had been cited by the prime minister: "He makes it look like I said it's the black community doing it. What I said is it's making the black community more vulnerable and they need more support and funding for the work they're doing. ... He has taken what I said out of context. We came for support and he has failed and has come back with more police powers to use against our black children."

Keith Jarrett, chair of the National Black Police Association, whose members work with vulnerable youngsters, said: "Social deprivation and delinquency go hand in hand and we need to tackle both. It is curious that the prime minister does not mention deprivation in his speech."

A "black culture" problem. Yeah. And the high rate of knife attacks in Glasgow and its surrounding towns is a "Scottish culture" problem...or maybe just a "Glaswegian culture" problem. The same kind of crimes are horribly common in Manchester. Maybe that's a "Northern culture" problem. How about Moscow? Or Latvia? A culture evolves due to multiple factors, but skin color is not one of them.

A study released by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies last August noted that children who have been a victim of crime may be more likely to carry knives. It also said that children, young people, those living in poor areas and members of black and minority ethnic communities were more likely to be the victims of knife crime. Calling government policy "incoherent" it said the government "should look at the root causes - the inclination or desire to resort to violence."

That inclination is something that is widespread and is certainly not based upon colour. It is heavily infuenced by social deprivation and given a local character by local gang subculture which themselves began in reaction to extreme poverty - in London, the "Yardies" and in Glasgow the "Neds" - but knife-wielding soccer hooligans are as likely to be from affluent Essex as from the poorest parts of Sunderland.

But let's keep some perspective here. Violent crime in 2005/06 was around half what it was in 1995

Blair and his clones managed to hijack the university Labour movement in the early Eighties and ever since have had as their guiding principle only their own lust for control. That lust has taken many forms since their electoral successes - based entirely upon a con-job that Blairites cared - including joining that other control-freak Bush in his Iraqi misadventure, their ceaseless search for new ways to spy on the British populace, their demands for ever more draconian powers to detain and imprison and, as in this case, their drive to demonise every segment of British society that isn't exactly like them. An entire new generation of Colonel Blimps in socialist clothing. Blair and his ilk would disguise their reading of the Daily Telegraph by hiding it inside the front pages of The Guardian.

(For a more American view of the story, with some interesting comments, check out The Moderate Voice.)