Losing The War On Terror — Everywhere

The Nation: From Ethiopia To Pakistan, Bush's Foreign Policy Is In A Meltdown

(The Nation)  This column was written by Tom Engelhardt.

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You know there's trouble ahead when Iraq, in its present state, is the good news story for Bush Administration policy. While various civilian and military officials from the president on down have been talking up "success" in Iraq and beating the rhetorical war drums vis-a-vis Iran, much of the remainder of foreign policy in what the neocons used to call "the arc of instability" began to thoroughly unravel.

In the Horn of Africa, U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a disastrous occupation of the Somali capital, harried by a growing Islamist insurgency. Despite endless shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the administration's Middle East peace conference, to be held at Annapolis, is already being dismissed as a failure before the first official invitations are issued. Meanwhile, the Turks are driving the administration to distraction by threatening to invade and destabilize the only moderately successful part of the new Iraq, its Kurdish region (while the Iraqi government in Baghdad calls on Iran for help in the crisis).

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently landed in Tehran and brazenly indicated that any U.S. attack on Iran would be considered an attack on Russia. He then convened a local "mini-summit" and formed a regional Caspian Sea-based alliance with Iran and three energy-rich former SSRs of the departed Soviet Union implicitly directed against the United States and its local allies. On the day Secretary of State Rice announced new, tough sanctions against the Iranians, Putin commented pointedly: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end? It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand."

Meanwhile, one country to the east, the resurgent Taliban has, against all predictions, just captured a third district in Western Afghanistan near the Iranian border -- and, as the most recent devastating suicide bomb indicates, attacks are spreading north. And then, of course, there's the president's greatest ally in the Muslim world, Pakistan's ruler Pervez Musharraf.

Remember Bush's nightmare scenario, the one that guaranteed a surefire "preventive" attack from his administration: an autocratic and oppressive ruler with weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear ones, presiding over a country that functionally offers a safe haven for terrorists? Well, that's now Pakistan, whose security forces are busily jailing hundreds of lawyers, while the Taliban, al Qaeda, and extremist Islamists, well armed and backed by their own radio stations broadcasting calls for jihad, are moving out of safe havens in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and into Pakistan proper to fight. And there's essentially nothing the administration can do, except mouth platitudes and look the other way. As Paul Woodward of the War in Context Web site has pointed out: When it comes to nuclear Iran and nuclear Pakistan, we have been living in "a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined." Now, not much imagination is needed at all.

Strangely, from Ethiopia to Pakistan, despite all the signs, all the predictions, the Bush administration, as far as we can tell, expected none of the above. How often can it be caught off guard by the consequences of its own decisions and actions? Eternally, it seems. The possible collapse of the president's foreign policy across the entire arc of instability was first written about by the always prescient Juan Cole at Salon.com. He commented that, "like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf." And he ventured a prediction: "The thunder of the bomb [that blew up as former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home] in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his 'war on terror.'" Over at TPM Cafe, Todd Gitlin was the first to offer a wry, if grim, suggestion, as he considered Bush's "failure to crush the Taliban & Co." from Tora Bora 2001 on. "Talk about dominos," he wrote. "How about this for a Democratic slogan: Who Lost Pakistan?"

With the price of crude oil threatening to hit $100 a barrel and prices at the pump surging over $3 a gallon domestically -- while, on the nightly news, experts mutter about oil at $150 a barrel and gas at $4 a gallon by next summer -- a meltdown might be in the works. Invaded and occupied Iraq, like some festering sore, remains at the heart of this spreading disaster, the end of which is nowhere in sight. The U.S. military, the sole instrument with which Bush's top officials and his neocon followers imagined they could launch their "expeditionary" sorties around the globe, as if they were so many nineteenth-century British imperialists, has proved incapable of responding to such an essentially political situation. The president might as well be using a hammer to ward off gnats. No wonder, as retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and historian of early twentieth century Germany William Astore made clear recently, the military and right-wing politicians are already preparing their own exit strategies in the form of stab-in-the-back explanations of what happened that will shift all responsibility from them to the American people. As he puts it: "Is it possible that our own version of this [myth], associated with Vietnam, enabled an even greater disaster in Iraq? And, if so, what could the next version of the stab-in-the-back bring in its wake? Only time will tell. But consider yourself warned. If we lose Iraq, you're to blame."

[libsluvsuvs]

mbcsmith. right wing loonies just don''''t get it! Who was President when 9-11 occurred? Ha!Ha!


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Posted by leftyintexas at 10:43 AM : Nov 09, 2007
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and do you think osama and his desire was ''born on 9/11''? his plans were in effect during the clinton years..clinton''s incompetence during his tenure allowed osama to gain so much momentum that even up to now..LEFT WINGED LOONIES are incapable to accept the fact that we have terrorists in our midst.

and for ever effort to pro-actively prevent another such attack..the very spitefull people aka LEFT WINGED LOONIES are working feverishly to hinder and stop that ability.

[taxguydave]

"mbcsmith. right wing loonies just don''''t get it! Who was President when 9-11 occurred? Ha!Ha!"--leftyintexas

It wouldn''t be the same one who called the dogs off of Osama on his very first day in office, would it? Bush rescinded all of Clinton''s executive orders, and never reinstated the order calling for the CIA to find and kill bin Laden. He''s never reinstated it to this day.

[libsluvsuvs]

I am not suprised these anti-american liberals considered this effort to thwart terrorism lost even before it started.

What is our option?? Vote Kerry in office..Kerry assigns our safety to the UN and the Europeans..well what victory had those incompetent entities claimed lately???

[gaye5]

If we are losing The War On Terror in Iraq, then why are thousands of Iraqi people returning???

[quatrops]

You finally got one right, zoopster! Congratulations! And, I suspect that had we instituted the draft on 9/12, Bush would never have led us into Iraq because the American people would have been too attentive to what was going on that would affect their sons and daughters.

Come to think of it, perhaps instituting a REQUIRED period of military service for our sons and daughters might make more Americans pay attention to the absurdities extant in Washington, K Street, and environs (and it would help alleviate the problem of inner-city gangs!)

Anyway, ALL OF US SHOULD BE ASHAMED that we find the time to put our two cents into these posts, yet I would wager that NOT ONE OF US has written their senator or representative TODAY expressing our concern that 1 in 4 of our homeless are veterans! (well, I did, actually, so I could justify this post). In addition to recent articles about sub-standard medical treatment for veterans, this 1 in 4 figure really put it over the top for me.

Democrats and Republicans are EQUALLY to blame. They all have time for pork on appropriations bills, but not for veterans.

PLEASE, WRITE TODAY!

[zoopster1]

Regarding the sacrifice of our troops, I think that touches on the one huge mistake that we made, which predates the Iraq invasion by over a year.

To properly fight a war, especially a generational one, you can''t do it with just the army you had in peacetime. That is just dumb. On 9/12 the first thing we should have done was reactivate the draft, and then put our tank, Humvee and missile factories back on full capacity. We should have channeled vast national resources into the war effort. The "sleeping giant" should have awoken once again. It worked in 1941; it should work now. But GW didn''t do it. Now of course it''s too late. That was a major miscalculation, born of hubris, and we will regret it more than we already do before all is said and done.

[mbcsmith]

LOL...LOL again.. The LIBS just don''''''''t get it! Tell me all you whiny moaning LIBS. How many times has the homeland been attacked since 9-11-01. Oh, NONE. That''''''''s what the LIBS call failure? Clinton was a failure by not going after the multitude of attacks this country endured during his reign.

[zoopster1]

It''''s better to be a moonbat than a neocon with blood and money on his hands.

Don''t look now, but that blood and money is on YOUR hands too, unless you live in a cabin in the woods, don''t own a car, don''t use electricity, and use a woodburning stove for heat. Look at my previous post.

The serial killer is the better person... So because it could be worse, therefore it is not bad.

Ya right. I''m not even going to dignify the first one; that''s just uncalled for. As for the second one, you misunderstood. I was saying that from the paranoid and hysterical attitude people like you have, anyone who doesn''t watch the news would ASSUME stuff like that is already going on. So basically what I''m saying is that your emotionalism about this stuff is OVERBLOWN. Your freedoms are still there -- nobody has taken them away!

As for all that stuff about people with power seeking more, that assumption might fly in a society that doesn''t have elections every year, and doesn''t have a press that routinely crucifies people for judging an employee''s HALLOWEEN COSTUME. But until I see real evidence that Bush is about to make himself president for life, I''m just gonna do what everyone else will: ride it out for the next 14 months until the new guy takes over.

[zoopster1]

I see a lot of accusations and assumptions there. But to borrow a page from your collective book... ACCUSATION IS NOT PROOF.

Making Haliburton rich. Please. Oil and politics have been inseparable for over 50 years. Mossadeq in Iran was overthrown by the CIA back in the 50s because he tried to nationalize the oil industry and kick out British Petroleum. Or so the rumor goes. Where was the outrage then (or since)? The Iranians haven''t forgotten! Believe it or not, every time you start up your minivan to take the kids to soccer practice, plug in your electric car, switch on a light in your house or turn on the heat, or fill your styrofoam cup with coffee at the office, you PERPETUATE THAT SYSTEM. Don''t lecture me; the reek of hypocrisy here is stifling.

Cronyism. OK, I grant that is probably going on. If you have a friend who is a carpenter, and you recommend his services to other friends that''s OK, but if BushCo has a friend who can rebuild oil refineries, and he recommends that guy''s services to another government, that''s BAD. Gotcha. Haliburton got a no-bid contract, but who else was INTERESTED in bidding? I don''t recall anyone else stepping up.

"Winning". Like Patton said, Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser. It''s made all the more urgent by the fact we have lost 4000 brave soldiers already. I for one don''t want to see their sacrifice come to nothing. I don''t think a single one of their lives was wasted, unless we quit.

cont''d...

[quatrops]

Those of you who thought I was "comparing our president to a serial killer" misread me. No "comparison" was implied or intended. I was addressing the incorrect logic that just because Bush "got off his duff and DID something" there was a positive, nourishing, constructive result.

My hyperbole in using Dahmer in suggesting that "just doing something" was not necessarily healthy was NOT a COMPARISON of the two men, although I must confess that SOME of you that read it that way made some interesting points!

Someday, zoopster, I hope you will see that what you imagine to believe is "patriotism" is driving you to misconstrue both the content and the intent of those with a different mindset.