The continuing fuckup of Iraq will continue because the fuckups who fucked it up will continue to fuck it up with their indomitable fuckuppery

1. Another Thousand Lives -- by BOB HERBERT/NY Times

How long can this go on?

Saddam is dead. The weapons of mass destruction were a mirage. More than 3,000 American G.I.s and scores of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Voters in the United States have made it clear that they no longer support American involvement in this exercise in sustained barbarism. Incredibly, the U.S. military itself is turning against the war.

And yet the president, against the counsel of his commanders on the ground, apparently is ready to escalate — to send more American lives into the fire he set in Iraq.

In a devastating critique of the war, the newsweekly Army Times led its current edition with the headline: “About-Face on the War — After 3 years of support, troops sour on Iraq.” The article detailed a Military Times Poll that found, for the first time, that “more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it.”

Only a third of the service members surveyed approved of the president’s conduct of the war, while 42 percent disapproved. Perhaps worse was the finding that only half of the troops believed that success in Iraq was likely.

The service members made it clear that they were not attacking their commander in chief personally. His overall approval rating remained high. What has turned them off has been the wretched reality of the war. In the article, David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said, “They’re seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress.”

In other words, they’re seeing the same thing everybody else is seeing — except, perhaps, Mr. Bush.

On New Year’s Day, readers of The New York Times could see the excruciating photo layout of the latest 1,000 American service members to die in Iraq. As in all wars, most of them were young. Many of them were smiling in the photos. All of them died unnecessarily.

The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement continues — with no end in sight, no plans for withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed — as if the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.

And who is paying the price for this insanity — apart from ordinary Iraqis, who are paying the most grievous price of all? The burden of the war in the U.S. is being shouldered overwhelmingly by a contingent of Americans whom no one would categorize as economically privileged.

As Lizette Alvarez and Andrew Lehren wrote in Monday’s Times:

“The service members who died during this latest period fit an unchanging profile. They were mostly white men from rural areas, soldiers so young they still held fresh memories of high school football heroics and teenage escapades. Many men and women were in Iraq for the second or third time. Some were going on their fourth, fifth or sixth deployment.”

There is no way that this can be justified. It is just wrong.

I’ve said many times that if a war is worth fighting the way to do it is to mobilize the entire country, drawing the warriors from as wide a swath of the population as possible and raising taxes on everyone as part of an all-out effort to defeat a common enemy.

This war is not worth fighting. And if there were ever serious talk about enacting a draft or raising taxes to fight it, you’d see quickly enough that the vast majority of Americans would not find it worth fighting.

There must be a leader somewhere who can shake the U.S. out of this tragic hypnotic state, who can see that it is beyond crazy to continue our involvement in this war indefinitely, to sacrifice another 1,000 young lives, and then another thousand after that.

All of the tortured, twisted rationales for this war — all of the fatuous intellectual pyrotechnics dreamed up to justify it — have vaporized, and we’re left with just the mad, mindless, meaningless and apparently endless slaughter.

Shakespeare, in “Henry VI,” said: “Now thou art come unto a feast of death.”

We should end our participation in the feast of death in Iraq. It is criminal to continue feeding our troops into the slaughter.

If there were politicians here at home with some of the courage of the troops in the field, we could begin saving lives rather than watching helplessly as the Bush White House continues to sacrifice them. Three thousand and counting is enough.


2. Getting the Middle East Back on Our Side -- by BRENT SCOWCROFT/NY Times

THE Iraq Study Group report was released into a sea of unrealistic expectations. Inevitably, it disappointed hopes for a clear path through the morass of Iraq, because there is no “silver bullet” solution to the difficulties in which we find ourselves.

But the report accomplished a great deal. It brought together some of America’s best minds across party lines, and it outlined with clarity and precision the key factors at issue in Iraq. In doing so, it helped catalyze the debate about our Iraq policy and crystallize the choices we face. Above all, it emphasized the importance of focusing on American national interests, not only in Iraq but in the region.

However, the report, which calls the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating,” does not focus on what could be the most likely outcome of its analysis. Should the Iraqis be unable or unwilling to play the role required of them, the report implies that we would have no choice but to withdraw, and then blame our withdrawal on Iraqi failures. But here the report essentially stops.

An American withdrawal before Iraq can, in the words of the president, “govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself” would be a strategic defeat for American interests, with potentially catastrophic consequences both in the region and beyond. Our opponents would be hugely emboldened, our friends deeply demoralized.

Iran, heady with the withdrawal of its principal adversary, would expand its influence through Hezbollah and Hamas more deeply into Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Jordan. Our Arab friends would rightly feel we had abandoned them to face alone a radicalism that has been greatly inflamed by American actions in the region and which could pose a serious threat to their own governments.

The effects would not be confined to Iraq and the Middle East. Energy resources and transit choke points vital to the global economy would be subjected to greatly increased risk. Terrorists and extremists elsewhere would be emboldened. And the perception, worldwide, would be that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its resolve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend — or the guarantor of peace and stability in this critical region.

To avoid these dire consequences, we need to secure the support of the countries of the region themselves. It is greatly in their self-interest to give that support, just as they did in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict. Unfortunately, in recent years they have come to see it as dangerous to identify with the United States, and so they have largely stood on the sidelines.

A vigorously renewed effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict could fundamentally change both the dynamics in the region and the strategic calculus of key leaders. Real progress would push Iran into a more defensive posture. Hezbollah and Hamas would lose their rallying principle. American allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states would be liberated to assist in stabilizing Iraq. And Iraq would finally be seen by all as a key country that had to be set right in the pursuit of regional security.

Arab leaders are now keen to resolve the 50-year-old dispute. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel may be as well. His nation’s long-term security can only be assured by resolving this issue once and for all. However, only the American president can bring them to the same table.

Resuming the Arab-Israeli peace process is not a matter of forcing concessions from Israel or dragooning the Palestinians into surrender. Most of the elements of a settlement are already agreed as a result of the negotiations of 2000 and the “road map” of 2002. What is required is to summon the will of Arab and Israeli leaders, led by a determined American president, to forge the various elements into a conclusion that all parties have already publicly accepted in principle.

As for Syria and Iran, we should not be afraid of opening channels of communication, but neither should we rush to engage them as negotiating “partners.” Moreover, these two countries have differing interests, expectations and points of leverage and should not be treated as though they are indistinguishable.

Syria cannot be comfortable clutched solely in the embrace of Iran, and thus prying it away may be possible. Syria also has much to gain from a settlement with Israel and internal problems that such a deal might greatly ease. If we can make progress on the Palestinian front before adding Syria to the mix, it would both avoid overloading Israel’s negotiating capacity and increase the incentives for Damascus to negotiate seriously.

Iran is different. It may not be wise to make Iran integral to the regional strategy at the outset. And the nuclear issue should be dealt with on a separate track. In its present state of euphoria, Iran has little interest in making things easier for us. If, however, we make clear our determination, and if the other regional states become more engaged in stabilizing Iraq, the Iranians might grow more inclined to negotiate seriously.

WHILE negotiations on the Arab-Israel peace process are under way, we should establish some political parameters inside Iraq that encourage moves toward reconciliation and unified government in Iraq. Other suggested options, such as an “80 percent solution” that excludes the Sunnis, or the division of the country into three parts, are not only inconsistent with reconciliation but would almost certainly pave the way to broader regional conflict and must be avoided.

American combat troops should be gradually redeployed away from intervening in sectarian conflict. That necessarily is a task for Iraqi troops, however poorly prepared they may be. Our troops should be redirected toward training the Iraqi Army, providing support and backup, combating insurgents, attenuating outside intervention and assisting in major infrastructure protection.

That does not mean the American presence should be reduced. Indeed, in the immediate future, the opposite may be true, though any increase in troop strength should be directed at accomplishing specific, defined missions. A generalized increase would be unlikely to demonstrably change the situation and, consequently, could result in increased clamor for withdrawal. But the central point is that withdrawing combat forces should not be a policy objective, but rather, the result of changes in our strategy and success in our efforts.

As we work our way through this seemingly intractable problem in Iraq, we must constantly remember that this is not just a troublesome issue from which we can walk away if it seems too costly to continue. What is at stake is not only Iraq and the stability of the Middle East, but the global perception of the reliability of the United States as a partner in a deeply troubled world. We cannot afford to fail that test.

(Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush. He is now president of the Forum for International Policy.)