After Neoconservatism

By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Commentary
The New York Times
February 19, 2006

Blog editor's note: Evidently, the neoconservatives, who many credit with having brought us the Iraq war, have lost one of their star theorists. Fukuyama is author of "The End of History," which neoconservatives seized upon as intellectual justification for their world view following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. As this piece indicates, Fukuyama has broken ranks. [I am substituting this article for "Americans Promoting Democracy" in the supplementary reader, which will be required for the next section of course study.]

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document.

To read the full text, see New York Times Magazine

'The Biggest Secret'

By Thomas Powers
New York Review of Books
February 23, 2006 Issue

A Review Essay of
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
by James Risen
Free Press, 240 pp., $26.00

Blog editor's note: This review essay of a new book by James Risen of the New York Times is by one of this country's preeminent experts on intelligence. He addresses some of the most pressing questions facing Americans today, and provides answers that are troubling, to say the least. It is a great companion piece to the preceding item.

The challenges posed to American democracy by secrecy and by unchecked presidential power are the two great themes running through the history of the Iraq war. How long the war will last, who will "win," and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, the President decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press, and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.

Explaining this fact is not going to be easy. Commentators often now refer to President Bush's decision to invade Iraq as "a war of choice," which means that it was not provoked. The usual word for an unprovoked attack is aggression. Why did Americans —elected representatives and plain citizens alike—accede so readily to this act of aggression, and why did they question the President's arguments for war so feebly? The whole business is painfully awkward to consider, but it will not go away. If the Constitution forbids a president anything it forbids war on his say-so, and if it insists on anything it insists that presidents are not above the law. In plain terms this means that presidents cannot enact laws on their own, or ignore laws that have been enacted by Congress.

To read the full text, see New York Review of Books

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
February 10, 2006; A01

Blog editor's note: One of the questions that has mystified me for some time is how it is that so many Americans can still believe in the face of so much evidence that the Bush Administration did not "cook" the intelligence books in the run-up to the 2003 war with Iraq. The most recent evidence comes from a former CIA official in an article in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs.

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

To read the full text of Pincus' news account , see Washington Post

To read the full text, see Foreign Affairs

The Art of Saying Nothing

The New York Times
Editorial
February 8, 2006

We thought President Bush's two recent Supreme Court nominees set new lows when it came to giving vague and meaningless answers to legitimate questions, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made them look like models of openness when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday about domestic spying. Mr. Gonzales seems to have forgotten the promise he made to the same panel last year when it voted to promote him from White House counsel to attorney general: that he would serve the public interest and stop acting like a hired gun helping a client figure out how to evade the law.

The hearing got off to a bad start when Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican who leads the committee, refused to have Mr. Gonzales testify under oath. Mr. Gonzales repaid this favor with a daylong display of cynical hair-splitting, obfuscation, disinformation and stonewalling. He would not tell the senators how many wiretaps had been conducted without warrants since 2002, when Mr. Bush authorized the program. He would not even say why he was withholding the information.

To read the full text, see New York Times

The gap between U.S. rhetoric and reality

By Anatol Lieven
Commentary
International Herald Tribune
JANUARY 30, 2006

Blog editor's note: Anatol Lieven, of course, is author of one of this course's textbooks, "America Right or Wrong."

WASHINGTON The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections ought to lead to a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy in the Middle East, especially since it follows electoral successes for Islamist parties in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The most important lesson of the elections is that the United States cannot afford to use the rhetoric of spreading democracy as an excuse for avoiding dealing with pressing national grievances and wishes. If the United States pursues or supports policies that are detested by a majority of ordinary people, then these people will react accordingly if they are given a chance to vote.

Above all, U.S. policy makers must understand that other peoples have their own national pride and national interests, which they expect their governments and representatives to defend. In Russia in the 1990s, the liberals helped to destroy their electoral chances by giving Russian voters the impression that they put deference to American wishes above the interests of Russia.

To read the full text, see International Herald Tribune

Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan
Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01

Blog editor's note: There would indeed appear to be nothing new under the sun. For those whose memory does not go back to the 1980s, let alone the 1960s, it might be useful to review in any standard history of clandestine operations since WWII the notions of counter insurgency (JFK era) and Low Intensity Conflict (Reagan era).

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.

Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.

China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.

To read the full text, see Washington Post

BUDGET REQUEST EVIDENTLY DOES NOT INCLUDE $$$ FOR IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN
Bush's Bill for War Is Rising

By Mark Mazzetti and Joel Havemann
Los Angeles Times
February 3, 2006

Blog editor's note: The figure used by AP in the previous item apparently does NOT include the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. See the LATimes story below. It's interesting to note that at the end of the cold war, the defense budget was 283 billion. In 1980, the federal government's total revenue was less than 520 billion dollars.

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it planned to ask Congress for an additional $70 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, driving the cost of military operations in the two countries to $120 billion this year, the highest since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most of the new money would go to the war in Iraq, which already has cost an estimated $250 billion since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The additional spending, along with other war funds the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly half a trillion dollars — approaching the cost of the 13-year-long Vietnam War.

To read the full text, see Los Angeles Times

Bush to Request $439.3 Billion Defense Department Budget, Nearly a 5 Percent Increase

By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON Feb 3, 2006 — President Bush's 2007 budget seeks a nearly 5 percent increase in Defense Department spending, to $439.3 billion, with significantly more money for weapons programs, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The budget figures, to be unveiled next week, come as the Pentagon prepares to release a separate long-range strategy to reshape the military into a more agile fighting force better able to fight terrorism, while still preserving its ability to wage large conventional wars.

To read the full text, see ABCNews.com

Rebels foil Iraq's reconstruction
Audit: U.S. forced to cancel projects, divert funds into security

By Jim Krane
Associated Press
February 2, 2006

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- American goals to repair Iraq's infrastructure will never be reached, in part because American intelligence failed to predict the country's potent insurgency, a U.S. government audit said.

Guerrilla attacks in Iraq have forced the cancellation of more than 60 percent of water and sanitation projects, mainly because insurgents have chased away contractors and forced the diversion of repair funds into security, according to an audit of the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Program released last week.

It is the latest in a series of auditing reports being issued by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. An earlier report uncovered extensive fraud and incompetence involving millions of dollars.

To read the full text, see Chicago Tribune

IRAQIS MAY HAVE DIFFERENT VIEW OF HOW THINGS ARE GOING THAN
THE ONE EXPRESSED BY BUSH IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)
January/February 2006

Blog editor's note: PIPA is one of the most highly regarded research organizations of its type in the U.S.

A new poll of the Iraqi public finds that a large majority of Iraqis think the US plans to maintain bases in Iraq permanently, even if the newly elected government asks the US to leave. A large majority favors setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces, though this majority divides over whether the timeline should be over a period of six months or two years. Nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces—including nine out of 10 Sunnis. Most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once the US-led forces leave, but are nonetheless uncertain that Iraqi security forces are ready to stand on their own.

The poll was conducted for WorldPublicOpinion.org by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and was fielded by KA Research Limited/D3 Systems, Inc. Polling was conducted January 2-5 with a nationwide sample of 1,150, which included an oversample of 150 Arab Sunnis (hereafter simply called Sunnis).

To read the full text, see PIPA.org

The Biggest Secret

By Thomas Powers
[To appear in Feb. 23 issue
of New York Review of Books]

Published in advance by TomDispatch.Com
31 January 2006

Blog editor's note: Thomas Powers, author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda," and a Pulitizer Prize winner, explores the meaning of the recent NSA spying scandal.. As he writes trenchantly, "In public life as in kindergarten, the all-important word is no." It's clear that the expansion of secret (and not so secret) "war-time" powers proved a heady, addictive experience for top officials of this administration.

A review of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen.

The challenges posed to American democracy by secrecy and by unchecked presidential power are the two great themes running through the history of the Iraq war. How long the war will last, who will "win," and what it will do to the political landscape of the Middle East will not be obvious for years to come, but the answers to those questions cannot alter the character of what happened at the outset. Put plainly, the President decided to attack Iraq, he brushed caution and objection aside, and Congress, the press, and the people, with very few exceptions, stepped back out of the way and let him do it.

Explaining this fact is not going to be easy. Commentators often now refer to President Bush's decision to invade Iraq as "a war of choice," which means that it was not provoked. The usual word for an unprovoked attack is aggression. Why did Americans - elected representatives and plain citizens alike - accede so readily to this act of aggression, and why did they question the President's arguments for war so feebly? The whole business is painfully awkward to consider, but it will not go away. If the Constitution forbids a president anything it forbids war on his say-so, and if it insists on anything it insists that presidents are not above the law. In plain terms this means that presidents cannot enact laws on their own, or ignore laws that have been enacted by Congress.

To read the full text, see TomDispatch.com

FACT CHECKING THE PRESIDENT'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

Blog editor's note: Someone once observed that a half a truth is like half a brick--you can throw both a long way. If you are interested in how this notion might apply to President Bush's fifth State of the Union address delivered last night to Congress, I recommend listening to a piece on National Public Radio's "Morning Editon" that does some revealing fact checking. It will be equally interesting to see whether mainstream news media provide similar context or whether they settle for stenography.

To listen to NPR's piece, go to NPR.org and click on the link to the right of the headline: "Fact Checking the State of the Union Address."