An open letter to President George W. Bush

Originally published in Reader Weekly
December 4, 2003

Note: most of the links are no longer available.

Dear President Bush:

You have said dozens of times that you will “do whatever it takes” to win the war on terrorism, the latest being when you signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2004 on November 24, 2003. (1)  At that time you said, “We will do whatever it takes to keep our nation strong, to keep the peace, and to keep the American people secure.”

I submit that you are not doing everything it takes to do all that you promised.  Here are some ideas of what it takes to leave Iraq satisfactorily and continue the “war on terrorism.”

First, accelerate training in Arabic.  I have read that the Army is short of Arabic translators (2)(3) and I have read how effective good translators are (see Stars and Stripes among others).  I have also seen it reported that troops have killed unarmed people because they could not speak Arabic and had no translator.  However, nowhere in your speech or in the Defense Authorization Act do the words Arabic or language appear.

You should not only accelerate training for more Arabic translators, but you should provide training for all Iraq-based troops to learn as much Arabic as they wish.  This latter could be with CDs, small-classes, or just a mass distribution of phrase books.  I know from personal experience that speaking the local language even a little bit builds better relations.

Second, you should start reading newspapers and magazines and stop depending on your staff to filter the news for you.  The best you can depend on your staff to do is to tell you what they think you want to hear, not what you need to know.  I recommend that you read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Spectator, The Progressive Magazine, Stars and Stripes, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The Daily Star of Lebanon, and Dawn of Pakistan, especially the editorials in all of these.  They should give you a very wide range of opinions to provide you a much better basis for your decisions.  Among recent articles I highly recommend is “Tour of Duty” in the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly; it includes accounts of now-Sen. John Kerry’s experiences as a Navy officer on river duty in Viet Nam.  It will give you some insight in the disconnect between what is happening on the battlefield and what is happening in the Pentagon.  Read some books on recent Iraq history – an example is Sandra Mackey’s The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein.  Iraq is a very complex country with a long history of domination by outsiders.  One cannot make judgments about Iraq without understanding these complexities.

Third, have a long private talk with General John Abizaid, no advisors present, just you and him.  Let him tell you what he thinks needs to be done to get Iraqis governing themselves peacefully.  Not only does General Abizaid speak Arabic, but he has lived and studied in the Middle East.  He also has made a specialty of unconventional warfare using semi-independent units rather than big coordinated units.  This style is much better for fighting small-scale insurgencies such as occur in Iraq on a daily basis.

Fourth, have a long private talk with Senator John Kerry.  Again no advisors.  He should be able to give you a good understanding about what really happens in war.  He understands that what headquarters thinks is happening or wants to happen is not always what is really happening or should happen.

Sixth, rename the “War on Terror”.  The struggle against terrorism really is more a police investigation on a massive scale.  Are you going to bomb Germany, France, Turkey, England, and Canada because they are “harboring” terrorists?  Bombs did not arrest those who were found in these countries, police did. On the other hand bombs dropped on civilians are a good recruiting tool for any resistance.

Finally, don’t worry about re-election.  Which would you rather do - pass your successor in 2005 a plan that is bringing about your goals or pass your successor in 2009 a mess that is spiraling out of control?  Short-term actions that may please a large number of voters may work against long-term interests that would “keep our nation strong, … keep the peace, and … keep the American people secure.”  If you are going to do whatever it takes, do the right thing.

(1) Signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2004, November 24, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031124-2.html

(2) "Expert: Lack of Arabic hurts U.S. in Iraq", Washington Times, July 25, 2003, http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20030725-032406-5262r.htm

(3) "U.S. 'desperately in need' of Arabic speakers to hold Iraq", World Tribune.com, July 9, 2003, article no longer available online

P.S. May 26, 2007, one of my sources for this article was "Iraq Today, The Independent Voice of Iraq".  I can find no direct reference to it.  The URL http://www.iraq-today.com cannot be found.  The editor, Hassan Fattah, left Iraq in March or April 2004 when his situation became too dangerous.  See "Goodbye, Baghdad", by Hassan Fattah, published in the July/August 2004 Columbia Journalism Review.  This article is not available directly from CJR.

©2003, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree

Lies, damn lies, and misstatements

Much political hay is being made about President Obama saying that people could keep their current insurance.  As thousands find that their current insurance is being cancelled, there is a clamor that Obama lied.

Did he really lie?  That is, did he make a statement that he knew with certainty to be untrue?  Or did he make a statement that he believed to be true given the information that he had?

Consider that any leader has to rely on the advice and information provided by hundreds of people.  If that leader had to verify every piece of information he or she was given, would anything ever get done in government or business?

What Obama and his staff had no control over was all the insurance companies deciding it was not in their best interest to have people keep those older policies.  I’ll leave that to historians to figure out who was right or wrong, truthful or deceitful.

Now the shoe is on “the other foot”.  Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is accused of lying about the deliberate traffic jams caused around Fort Lee by his staff and associates.  He had directly asked some of them if they had any involvement in the situation.  They all said no.

Christie has worked with some of these people for years and has relied on them for good advice.  Should he believe anything differently?  If he was suspicious, how much time should he spend finding out more?  If he did so, how many other things that he should attend to would be ignored.

If Christie was not actively involved in the traffic jams, he did make the mistake of being gleeful about Fort Lee’s problems.  After all, the Democratic mayor did not support him in his reelection.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is probably one of the most infamous lie and even damnedest lie ever made by a U.S. President.  Bill Clinton later backed off that strong denial, but the Republicans jumped with joy over his predicament.  Lots of federal money was spent on this investigation and that investigation and an impeachment.

But the whole mess rings hollow when Republicans have done similar acts and made similar denials.  I wish politicians would spend more time on thoughtful evaluation of laws and policies and less on personal attacks.  What a way to run a country!

Many have criticized President George W. Bush for a long string of lies about Iraq, for example Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction”. Now, was he just parroting what his advisors were telling him because of their own agendas or was he directly involved in creating these falsehoods?  We may never know.

But I can guess about one misstatement that he made that has become infamous – his advice that in response to the World Trade Center attacks Americans should go shopping. It was a stupid remark, but consider its underlying meaning.  The attacks were meant to disrupt the United States.  If people went about their ordinary business, then the planners of the attack would have failed in their attempt to disrupt the country.  In other words, if we shopped as we normally did, then the country would not have been disrupted as much as planned.

We probably all have experiences of sales people telling us what they think we want to hear, not what we need to know.  Sometimes they withhold details; sometimes they really do lie; and sometimes they divert us.  How often have you heard, “It’s a standard contract”?  In other words, just sign, don’t bother reading it.  Do you wonder why we had a mortgage crisis?

My favorite misdirection was decades ago when we bought a TV in a big box store.  We told the salesman that we liked a particular model, and he replied that he had one in the back room.  Only later did we see that as a ploy to get us to buy on the spot.  Of course he had one in the backroom; he may have also had one dozen.

This whole column is a misdirection to write about an irate phone message I had last week.  The caller was upset that I had spoken badly about Gannucci’s in my column of January 2.  I was flabbergasted!  I meant no such thing!

OK, let’s parse what I wrote to find the irritant.  Remember that I was writing about going to a plant-based diet and doing my best to stick to it.

“Just my luck that every item on the menu had cheese and/or meat.”  Many restaurants have meat, dairy, or eggs in most if not all of their menu choices.

“So I went with a turkey sandwich, figuring that was the leanest meat that I could get.”  I thought that was a neutral statement.  Maybe I should have said the turkey sandwich was delicious.  It was, but is that relevant to that fact that I made a choice?

“The organizers of the monthly social plan to go back in January.  I think I better call ahead to Gannucci’s.”  If I want to join the group and would like to avoid meat, dairy, and eggs, I should ask the restaurant in advance if they have any alternatives.  If not, maybe I’ll have a turkey sandwich again.  I am a vegan not because I object to turkeys having their heads cut off but because I don’t like what the turkeys might do to me.

This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2013-01-16 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/01/16/2766_lies_damn_lies_and_misstatements

Quote of the Day: "Everyone knows"

"If you hear that 'everyone' supports a policy, whether it’s a war of choice or fiscal austerity, you should ask whether 'everyone' has been defined to exclude anyone expressing a different opinion."

- Paul Krugman, "Marches of folly", New York Times, 2013-03-17

Coleen Rowley, Iraq War, and good quotes

I sent a note to Coleen Rowley about her op-ed column "Ten Years After Iraq" in today's Star Tribune.  I included a couple of the relevant quotes from Washington's "Farewell Address.  I also went to one of her web pages that included several relevant quotes.  Note that some of them are from well-known Republicans or conservatives like Theodore Roosevelt and Margaret Chase Smith.

A Microscopic Insurgent

Op-ed by Mark D. Drapeau
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04drapeau.html

Cholera is a real danger in Iraq with at "least 30,000 Iraqis [having displayed] cholera-like symptoms"

Cholera is spread through untreated water, insurgent areas have less treated water creating poor areas, poor areas breed more insurgents, insurgents make having treated water more difficult, untreated water creates poor areas...

And it doesn't help that insurgents are using chlorine trucks as weapons.

My question is why U.S. and Iraqi authorities don't wage a bigger propaganda campaign on how insurgents are hurting Iraqis more than Americans.

U.S. Out How?

The latest issue of Mother Jones has a feature on the Iraq War, "U.S. Out How: the Moral Dilemma of Leaving Iraq". It offers quite a wide range of opinions on staying in Iraq or leaving Iraq, and if the U.S. should leave, when and how.

The key point is that it may have been Bush's war, but through the actions of Congress and the people, we all now own it.

I think you'll come away with your head swirling with all the possibilities and pitfalls of almost all plans and ideas.

See http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/11/iraq-war-index.html

Will the Republicans go the way of the Whigs?

n the 1850s the Whigs, a party founded partly on modernization of the nation and the overreach of the Democrat Andrew Jackson against Congress, began to fade. One of the reasons was they fractured over slavery with most northerners opposed. The Republican Party was founded in part by former Whigs who were dissatisfied with many of the party's policies, including the acquisition of Texas, "a land grab". In 1860, they elected their first president, Abraham Lincoln.

In the early 2000's more and more Republicans are becoming dissatisfied with the direction of their party, and the people's confidence in George Bush is dwindling. They are realizing that George Bush is pushing for more presidential power at the expense of Congress and that the Iraq War was an ill-conceived and poorly executed "land grab". As the Republican Party becomes more under the sway of ideologues, fewer thoughtful people will want to be involved.

The question is not so much will the Republican Party implode, but when and what will rise to replace it. We can only hope soon and that people who can better foresee consequences of their actions will create a viable new party.

The military needs to be green, too

Many have mentioned that a sound energy policy is also a national defense issue. Thomas Friedman, "Who Will Succeed Al Gore?", New York Times, Oct. 14, 2007, gives an interesting twist on this. He wrote that U.S. Army officers are desperate for distributed solar power so they don't have to depend on diesel generators. The diesel fuel has to be trucked in, and the trucks are regular targets for insurgents. Isn't one of the jobs of the Commander-in-Chief keeping the supply lines open to the military?

One of the strategic moves of the Allies in World War II was to bomb the oil fields in Ploesti, Romania, thus depriving the German Army of much needed fuel. Not using solar power in a sunny land like Iraq seems to be another case of not learning from history.

Iraq war and riding in a car

The post Iraq war? on Minnesota's in the middle had a comment about not knowing why we are in Iraq and implied the President knows more than we do.

Yeah, we ask someone to drive us somewhere and that person takes a "shortcut". The car gets stuck in the mud and we all have to get out and push, except the driver. The driver keeps encouraging us saying, "I can see solid ground ahead."

War in Iraq may lead to relative U.S. decline

I just read Thomas Friedman's "Iraq Through China's Lens" in today's New York Times. He points out that in a major speech Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, talked about economic progress made and economic, political, and environment challenges to be faced. On the other hand, Friedman wrote, the U.S. is focused on the war in Iraq.

It's time for many to reread Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000.

Kennedy's thesis is that the great powers rise and fall relative to each other, even if a power's economy and military is growing, others may be growing faster. Considering how fast China and India are growing relative to the U.S., the U.S. is squandering much of its resources in Iraq and will "fall" further behind China and India.

See also my articles Is the Asian Century coming? and More on a Possible Asian Century.

Whither Iraq?

In 1808, Napoleon thought he "decided" the campaign in Spain by "dispersing the formal Spanish armies," but "had inadvertently encouraged the local populace to resort to guerrilla warfare". He still didn't solve the problem in 1810-1811 sending 300,000 troops into Spain. Spain's population was over 11 million.

"Mission accomplished" was the banner in 2003, Iraq's army was vanquished. Four years later about 150,000 troops are trying to quell guerrilla warfare in a country of over 27 million.

And George W. Bush isn't as good a commander-in-chief as Napoleon was. Unfortunately, they both share the characteristic of hubris, thinking they knew better than anyone else.

For a hopeful outlook, see "How to Win in Iraq, and How to Lose", by Arthur Herman, Commentary, April 2007, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10856&page=all
Will George W. Bush put in the necessary diplomacy to make it work? Or will his strategy be lots of high-tech bang-bang?

What does "Support our troops" really mean?

Garry Trudeau had an interesting take on "Support our troops" in today's "Doonesbury". Two soldiers are discussing whether support means providing them with ammo and armor so they can keep fighting or letting them come home to their families and friends.