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
+ report abuse


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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.

[quatrops]

" . . . I DON''T BELIEVE THIS WAR IS ABOUT MAKING A SMALL CADRE OF PEOPLE RICH WHO WERE ALREADY RICH TO BEGIN WITH." Although there are many reasons we''re in Iraq today, allow me to address just this one. Your passion may be admirable, zoopster, but to the extent that is based on this particular belief, it is unbelievably naive and misguided.

The drive for those possessing excesses of both wealth and power to acquire even more is so pervasive and powerful that it is a rare individual who can avoid the temptation. Until one understands that phenomena, the conclusions they reach absenting this dynamic are going to be off the mark.

In a way, it''s a "game", and the passions unleashed are as powerful as those of the avid sports fan. Unless they "win" even MORE than they already have, they LOSE! It''s not about the AMOUNT of wealth (or power)! IT''S ABOUT WINNING!

Additionally, as Kissenger said, "power (and the wealth implied) is the great aphrodisiac". Once you have it, you need it even MORE or you feel emasculated.

Look at the excesses of the Keatings et al. Look at the excesses of so many fundamentalist charismatic leaders. Most of us in the "middle" desire more wealth that we have, and have reasonably logical reasons for doing so. But don''t get trapped into believing that those who already possess an excess of wealth are driven by the same dynamics that drive us. If you do, your misconception will lead to faulty conclusions - - which I believe in your case it has.

[andor3]

"And please, stop comparing our elected president with a serial killer."

Well you have a point--most serial killers are loners and likely insane. The president is working within a large framework and carrying out a premeditated and deliberate agenda. The serial killer is the better person.

"People are not [blah]. Dissidents are not [blah], or [blahblah]."

So because it could be worse, therefore it is not bad. Faulty logic, and pretty desperate thinking.

[jerr11]

So please, give your paranoia a rest.

Posted by zoopster1 at 01:24 AM : Nov 08, 2007


Guess you''ll say that to the 4000 Americans who lost their lives.

Give your paranoia a rest!

As for the One_American, wrapping yourself in the flag does not make you a patriot.

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

[one_american]

Liberals love to be ignorant - and the Nation publication is where liberals come to wallow in their ignorance.

You are losing your grip on society, mootbats.

Soon you will become nothing.

[zoopster1]

Tell ya what. Show me some evidence that DOESN''T come from paranoid conspiracy theory-laden left-wing blogs, that can be backed up by official documentation, and I''ll pay heed. I have read many such documents, including the "Downing Street Memo", which only suggests that the Bushies were not interested in giving Saddam an escape route that would keep him in power. I saw nothing in it that suggested we had advance knowledge of Saddam''s non-conventional warfare capabilities.

And please, stop comparing our elected president with a serial killer. It really insults my intelligence. People are not being rounded up and shot in the streets. Dissidents are not being shipped to gulags, or thrown off the tops of buildings. That stuff happened in Saddam''s Iraq, not here. Even left-wing nutjobs are still free to say what they want without fear of being blackbagged by some secret police. So please, give your paranoia a rest.

[jerr11]

If so, some evidence please.

Posted by zoopster1 at 01:05 AM : Nov 08, 2007



If you''re still looking for evidence, you''re dumber than I thought.

But of course you''ll also give Dahmer the benefit of the doubt too. Maybe he didn''t know he was eating human flesh.

LOL

[zoopster1]

I expected a response like that. So, you are basically saying GW knew IN ADVANCE that Saddam had no significant stockpiles, he was not a threat to America or its interests, and that our inspectors would find nothing. Is that correct? If so, some evidence please. You''re giving ole Dubya a lot of credit, given that even the CIA couldn''t be sure what he had until after the invasion. You''re also ignoring the fact that our own inspectors went in without hindrance, and their report essentially proved we had made a mistake. If that''s NOT what you''re saying, then you''re just being a Monday morning quarterback. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I for one accept that we DIDN''T know for sure what Saddam had. And given the results of the last terrorist attack, I don''t think anyone was in the mood to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know I sure wasn''t -- in fact I wanted us to finish him off back in 1991. He had a lot to answer for (missile attacks on Israel, paying families of Palestinian suicide bombers, plotting the assassination of a US president, what his forces did in Kuwait, etc).

I am also pretty sure he wanted his capabilities to stay ambiguous. Not because of us; because of Iran. Remember them? You may recall they fought a little war a few years back... which Saddam started. If you were Saddam, would you want to clue 20 million crazy Shiites living right next door into the fact that your army couldn''t even secure a shopping mall?? I thought not.

[jerr11]

Jeffrey Dahmer was a pervert and a mass murderer. GW

Posted by zoopster1 at 12:10 AM : Nov 08, 2007


The comparison with Dahmer is very apt.

Bush/Cheney are no less evil than any of our serial murderers multiplied 2000 times.

And they''re getting away with murder because they also used the brainwashing techniques of the great cult leaders like David Koresh.

They terrorized the whole country into submission with their lies of yellow cake and "the next attack may be in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Any time there''s any dissent, raise the color coded threat level and attack the dissenters.

Brilliant strategy, almost as brilliant as Bin laden''s strategy to defeat us by bankrupting us with a permanent endless war on "terror."

[jerr11]

but we lost more soldiers on D-Day than we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined

Posted by zoopster1 at 12:10 AM : Nov 08, 2007


There''s a huge difference between D-Day and Iraq.

One was a war against an imminent threat to our borders, the other a war of choice, for personal and profiteering reasons. And the country was led into the war with fake intel and lies.

Even Afghanistan was a war of necessity, and no one was more happy to see the Taliban defeated than me.

But Bush and Cheney had other agendas on their minds, namely OIL and Halliburton''s bottom line!

No, they didn''t want Afghanistan, they wanted Iraq!!

When the prime instigator of a war is its chief benefactor (think ********), you have a problem!

[zoopster1]

"As for Bush "getting off his duff and DOING something", so did Jeffrey Dahmer, but we don''t hold up his activities as "accomplishments"!"

Jeffrey Dahmer was a pervert and a mass murderer. GW is a politician. Now some may, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, say there is no difference, but this is a serious discussion. It%u2019s unlikely that more than half the electorate would put Jeffrey Dahmer in the White House. And as for the mass murderer part, that is subjective. Lincoln presided over the most costly war in American history, resulting in nearly 1 million dead. FDR gave orders that resulted in the deaths of over 600,000 Americans as well as millions of Japanese and German civilians. Truman gave orders that resulted in the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities as well as the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. What makes Bush any worse (or better) than those guys?
I don''t mean to belittle the casualties we have suffered thus far in this war, but we lost more soldiers on D-Day than we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We lost more soldiers in ONE HOUR at places like Antietam and Gettysburg! What makes those sacrifices noble and the ones we''re facing now foolhardy?
Unlike you, I don''t accept that this war is about making a small cadre of people rich who were already rich to begin with. That''s just stupid. What I DO believe, is what goes on in the Middle East affects our society at large HERE. Without oil, our society would collapse. Period.