Hoagie seeing sense?
The WaPo's Jim Hoagland, for so long the uber-hawk of the inside-the-Beltway commentatariat, may at last be seeing some sense on Iraq? I live in hope...
His column today, Perception Gap in Iraq, seemed about the most sensible I've seen him write for a long time...
He starts off by recognizing that,
- nearly three weeks of partial sovereignty may have helped the Bush administration's drive to reduce its political vulnerability on Iraq at home.
Reducing that vulnerability is now the White House's most urgent goal...
Read through or watch Allawi's blunt, sparse statements and you too may be impressed by how much of his message is intended to reassure his American audience, rather than Iraqis. They [I guess he means Iraqis] are more keenly aware of the huge obstacles that Allawi faces in carrying out his ambitious promises.
To the relief of the White House, the American public and media seem to be slowly trying to tune out Iraq's continuing violence.
- Iraq and the world will benefit if Allawi can deliver on his promises to establish stability and democracy. Wish him well. But a dangerous gap is opening up between the determinedly upbeat pronouncements in Washington and from Allawi, and more disinterested reports from the field.
Last Friday, Jim Krane of the Associated Press quoted unnamed U.S. military officers saying that Iraq's insurgency is led by well-armed Sunnis angry about losing power, not by foreign fighters. They number up to 20,000, not 5,000 as Washington briefers maintain, Krane added in his well-reported but generally overlooked dispatch.
The point is not 5,000 vs. 20,000. The insurgency's exact size is unknowable. The point is that enough officers in the field sense that what they see happening to their troops in Iraq is so out of sync with Washington's version that they must rely on the press to get out a realistic message. That is usually how defeat begins for expeditionary forces fighting distant insurgencies.
Of course, it would be strongly preferable were Hoagie to do a proper, three-star mea culpa and explain to all of us how it was he got duped by Chalabi and ended up being for so long a cheerleader for this whole grisly war. And if he then wrapped himself in sack-cloth and ashes and begged forgiveness from the families of everyone who's been killed in it...
Well, dream on, Helena. For now, I'll take his admission that things are looking pretty darn' shitty out there as a good first step. "That is usually how defeat begins for expeditionary forces fighting distant insurgencies." Indeed. Except that, of course, some of us "called" the strategic defeat of the US plan in Iraq quite a bit earlier than today. Like here, JWN, April 9.
To dream of the mea culpa comeuppance of pro-war columnists, to say nothing of W (whose backers will always grant allis ("problem started with Clinton," etc), may be fruitless.
Repentance has no rewards in politics, unless as a mask for a "I'll be more clever next time" strategy. People hate to be sorry about anything, except losing or getting caught. Failure is attributed to others or insufficent pride (aka self-esteem), never to ones own sins or conceits.
More important, what could or should the US government do? Whether Bush, Kerry, or even Nader win in November, won't either administration have to work with Allawi and achieve some sort of withdrawal that does not lead to a Saigon '75 type of collapse? Doesn't this boil down to whether Allawi can constitute some sort of neo-Baath security apparatus that crushes rivals, sectarians, and ethnics? Won't elections be incompatible with restoration of order unless Allawi can create a ruling party that steamrolls kooky clerics and dissidents? And won't state patronage and graft reappear as the essential tools to grease the wheels of state? This appears to be the sad destiny of countries that mainly depend on oil.
If Allawi need not be the next Saddam, must he not be at least its Ataturk, Calles, or Matathir? And, if not Allawi, then who?