The Strident Centrist Blog

Lt. Gen. William Odom (Ret.), writing in the Los Angeles Times, offers a four point plan for unwinding our position in Iraq in such a way as to minimize the damage to our national interests beyond what has already been done by the invasion and occupation. He recognizes, however, that the Bush-Cheney administration is, shall we say, unlikely to take his advice. William Lind, in a posting at Defense In the National Interest, sees in the tea leaves the likelihood that they’ll take a far different course, one that poses calamitous risks for our military and our country, ” . . our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover”. (more…)

Writing in the Asia Times Online Ann Jones, who has spent much of the past four years in-country working on education and women’s issues, describes how the West’s contradictory policies are greasing the path our interestes in Afghanistan are following down the tubes.

Undeniably, the poppy trade and the resurgence of the Taliban are intimately connected, for the Taliban, who briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain US diplomatic recognition and aid, now both support and draw support from that profitable crop. Yet Western policies aimed at the Taliban and the poppy are quite separate and at odds with each other. While NATO troops scramble, between battles, to rebuild rural infrastructure, US advisers urge Afghan anti-narcotics police to eradicate the livelihood of 2 million poor farmers.

So far the poppy-eradication program, largely funded by the US, hasn’t made a dent. Last year, it claimed to have destroyed 15,380 hectares of poppies, up from 4,850 the year before; but during the same period overall poppy cultivation soared from 104,000 hectares to 165,000.

. . .

Still, the counterproductive eradication program succeeds in one thing. It makes life miserable for hundreds of thousands of small farmers. What happens to them? The Senlis Council, an international drug-policy think-tank, reports that the drug-eradication program not only ruins small farmers but actually drives them into the arms of the Taliban, who offer them loans, protection and a chance to plant again. Big farmers, on the other hand, are undeterred by the poppy-eradication program; they simply pay off the police and associated officials, spreading corruption and dashing hopes of honest government.

. . .

Like Musharraf in Pakistan, Karzai walks a tightrope between domestic politics and US demands for dramatic actions - such as ending the drug trade - clearly well beyond his powers. The trade penetrates even the elected parliament, which is full of the usual suspects. Among the 249 members of the wolesi jirga (lower house) are at least 17 known drug traffickers in addition to 40 commanders of armed militias, 24 members of criminal gangs, and 19 men facing serious allegations of war crimes and human-rights violations, any or all of whom may be affiliated with the poppy business. For years the Kabul rumor mill has traced the drug trade to the family of the president himself.

.  .  .

So you see what I mean about the weird policies a government such as the United States’ can develop when it can’t talk about real facts. When it cozies up to people it professes to be against. When it attacks people whose hearts and minds it hopes to win. When it pays experts to report false conclusions it wants to hear. When it spends billions to tear down the lives of poor Afghans even as NATO allies pray for a break in battling the Taliban so that - with time running out - they can rebuild.

As in Iraq, it is increasingly obvious that whatever chances there might have been for a positive were thrown away soon after the venture began. In the case of Afghanistan it was the flittering attention span exemplified by the Iraq invasion itself.

Abu Aardvark, the Arabist from Williams College, translates the essence of a post by an unknown person on a al Qaeda-friendly website, speculating on whether or not bin Laden will attempt to influence this year’s USA elections, as he did in 2004. (Ron Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine that the unanimous consensus of the CIA people who analyzed the statement in the tape that was released about 10 days before the 2004 elections was intended to promote the re-election of Bush and Cheney.)

This is a posting in Arabic on a jihadi forum, whose author has little reason to believe that it will be picked up by the English language media - and so can not be dismissed as an attempt to manipulate American public opinion. It reflects only the views of that anonymous author (”Nowami”, who for the sake of convenience will be assigned a male gender), and should not be considered an official al-Qaeda document - a disclaimer which should be made about most of the items quoted off of these internet forums, but which I think bears repeating.

The post argues that the coming two weeks represent a pivotal moment in al-Qaeda’s long-term jihad strategy. Since 9/11 and the Afghan war, al-Qaeda has been pursuing a stage in its long-term strategy which the author calles ‘direct combat’. Keeping American in Iraq has been the key to its strategy. America has suffered great losses through this stage, both economic and its people, and many of its allies have already abandoned the fight. The next two weeks (giving a clue as to when it was written) will reveal whether al-Qaeda’s leadership believes that this stage of direct combat has served its purpose of weakening America sufficiently. If it does, al-Qaeda will remain silent, allowing the Democrats to win the Congressional elections and initiating a new phase of the conflict. If it does not (as the author hopes), it will intervene through a bin Laden tape or an attack in order to ensure a Republican victory which will keep the Americans trapped in Iraq longer in order to weaken it more before moving to the next stage.

The author’s premise is that al-Qaeda has consistently intervened in American domestic politics where necessary in order to ensure that America stays in Iraq. Whenever America seems like it might withdraw, he writes, Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri pops up to remind Americans that if they do then al-Qaeda will triumph in their wake - thus goading them to remain. This predictably silences those reasonable voices calling for withdrawal, who are even accused of national treason, and strengthens the voices of stupidity.

The anonymous author goes on to a surprisingly well-informed analysis of domestic USA electoral politics, discussing how the dynamics are changing as the GOP loses support.

. . . keeping America in Iraq has been so central to its strategy. If al-Qaeda believes that this stage has accomplished its goals, then the author thinks that it will permit the withdrawal and then reap its gains. But the author says that in his personal opinion, the time for the next stage has not yet arrived, and it would be better to keep the stage of America’s being stuck in Iraq extended as long as possible.

. . .

The author fears that al-Qaeda’s leaders will fall prey to the temptation to move on to the next stage too early, and not intervene to keep the Republicans in power and the Americans in Iraq. Total silence from al-Qaeda prior to the election should be read as a signal that its leadership believes that the time has come to move to the next phase. A tape or attack by al-Qaeda prior to the election means that its leaders are not yet satisfied with the American blood and treasure lost in Iraq and want more time before moving to the next stage.

Why, oh why, did we elect the Baluchistanian Candidate in 2000, and reelect him in 2004?

After a raging rant about the descent of the 2006 election campaign season into the foreseeable frenzy of attack ads, Billmon cools off to consider what it all might mean:

The mass media — the TV networks, the news weeklies, the large, national circulation newspapers like the New York Times — have been under enormous economic pressures for over a decade now, and those pressures are only getting worse. The mass market itself is being torn apart, into smaller and smaller niches. For most old media, the networks in particular, it’s become a zero sum game. Just trying to hold the audiences they have is a losing battle. This loss of market power is one of the forces driving the trend towards consolidation (oligopoly). It’s a defensive reaction in an industy that is getting more competitive, not less.

In this kind of environment, the old journalistic tradition — balancing partisan viewpoints across a relatively narrow, centrist ideological spectrum — becomes more and more problematic. So does the old “liberal bias,” which could more accurately be described as a kind of cool, technocratic disdain for populist passions, which in this country since about the 1950s, has meant the populist right. The market for that kind of centrist pablum is receding almost as quickly as David Broder’s hairline.

Combine those commercial realities with the progressive polarization of the electorate (and the conservative reach for hegemonic power) and the old media have a serious problem: That which appeals to some bits and piece of the old mass audience may drive away other bits and pieces.

. . .

It’s a triage operation, in other words — and to me it looks as if a conscious, corporate decision has been made to try to hold (or win back) the conservative “red state” audience even if it means losing the liberal “blue state” audience. Whether this is because the conservative audience is larger and more affluent, or because the strategists at Viacom, Disney, GE and Time Warner have decided that liberals are less likely to change channels when their ideological beliefs are offended, or because the more demographically desirable blue state audiences have long since “self selected” their way out of old media’s reach all together, I don’t know. But when Mark Halperin promises Bill O’Reilly he will feel his pain, or the CBS Evening News gives every conservative nut job in America a spot on “Free Speech,” or NBC refuses to accept an ad for the Dixie Chicks documentary because it disrepects Shrub, or Time puts Ann Coulter on the cover, I think they’re making economic statements as much as journalistic ones.

. . .

Maybe I’m wrong — I hope I am. But if I’m right, then in years to come progressives may look back and sigh for the good old days when journalistic “objectivity” still encouraged the corporate media to give the truth and conservative propaganda equal weight, instead of just mindlessly repeating the latter.

An obvious, but unstated, extrapolation from all of this is that maintaining network neutrality will be more important than ever.

“War Support Among Evangelicals Collapses
Bush Incompetence Said to Delay Second Coming”

How can you beat that?

Mostly political discourse in the United States is dictated by the ruling party in Washington, and the mass media and press are most often nervous about getting out in front of the elected officials. But in an election season, the press is suddenly allowed to cover at least a narrow range of dissident views intensively– that is, the views of political opponents of the incumbents. Since the vast majority of incumbents in the mid-Atlantic and Southern states are Republicans, the upshot is that a Democrat point of view is suddenly getting aired and reported on. And the Dems are mostly pretty critical of Bush’s Iraq War.

You have to wonder, as well, if the Foley scandal has, so to speak, opened the evangelicals’ ears to criticisms of the Republican Party status quo more generally, allowing the bad news about Iraq to sink in. I suggest it only because the story broke around the time that their approval for the Iraq War began to plummet.

Christy of Firedoglake continues to track the legal woes of Scooter Libby and yesterday was not a good day for them. Team Libby’s mission of the day was to get the court, during a procedural hearing, to accept expert testimony on memory from one Dr. Elizabeth Lofthus. Patrick Fitzgerald had done his homework and tore her apart using her own published works.

That Fitzgerald was able to pick this memory testimony apart at its very inception — before a judge has even ruled on whether he will even allow any memory expert at trial in the first place, is an enormous blow to the Libby legal team. That Fitzgerald was able to do so with their first witness out of the box on the subject…priceless.

I’m not saying that Team Libby cannot call other witnesses and turn this around somehow, and rehabilitate the subject and the potential testimony, but this is really devastating for them. Especially since they started the hearing with one strike already. Judge Walton indicated to the courtroom before testimony began that he was predisposed against allowing such memory testimony, but that he would allow Team Libby to attempt to convince him otherwise.

. . .

So, let me see if I understand this: Team Libby hired an expert to bolster the credibility of the memory expert they want to use at trial. Instead, she succeeded in solidifying the judges perception that juries usually end up getting it right most of the time, if they are given good information and time to talk amongst themselves about all of the evidence — thereby showing that the memory expert really isn’t needed so much, because the jury can make up their minds themselves whether Scooter’s hard job made him forget to follow the law or whether he’s just a liar trying to cover his behind (and perhaps others as well).

There’s more good stuff in the link, especially Christy’s comments on how hard it is to do what Fitzgerald did, based on her own trial experience.

Billmon.

It’s a big relief to know that the Department of Defense is keeping track of those terrorist Quakers. However I don’t know whether I should be relieved or not by the incompetence with which they’re doing it:

These new TALONs were issued with all of the competence and sensitivity to the value of human intel we have come to expect from the Global War on Anything We Decide to Label Terrorism. First of all, they misreported the second event as being in Springfield, IL, rather than Springfield Mass. Second, the Pentagon spies apparently found out about this event through the incredibly sophisticated method of “Subscribing to the AFSC emailing list.” You’d think that if they had the announcement for the event in front of them, they would get the city right.

(Link via Majikthise)

It’s always a wise precaution to have your tinfoil hat within reach when reading The Wayne Madsen Report, so be properly prepared. Today Madsen sets out a provocative scenario of what may go down following the mid-term elections as the Bush Family, Inc. cuts loose the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis after trying to hang Iraq and its other fiascos around their necks. Madsen’s site does not provide links to individual stories, so you’ll have to scroll down past the pitch for his book at the top and the latest stories. The story in question is dated October 24, and as of this writing it is the fourth one down.

But with the long knives soon to be out for scapegoats — what will happen in the White House will be one of the the nastiest political purges in U.S. history. Cheney, whose ideological fervor knows no bounds, is not about to concede that Iraq was a failure. He and his neo-con advisers do not intend to be scapegoated. The Bush faction, eager to protect the Bush family name during a series of intensive congressional investigations but more likely to admit to mistakes, does not intend to bear the brunt of blame for the Cheney faction’s misadventures.

2007 may turn out to be a dangerous year for America. The scapegoating will not be limited to the two emerging White House factions. If Joseph Lieberman wins re-election and then decides to accept the invitation of replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, thus allowing a Governor Jodi Rell in Connecticut (a good reason not to re-elect her) to appoint a Republican replacement, that could tip a 50-50 Senate or a 51-49 Democratic Senate to either total Republican control or turn it over to Cheney’s gavel-wielding tie breaking vote. Any such scenario could result in an American version of the infamous Dreyfus affair in France. America must be on guard against those with secret agendas to find scapegoats where they do not exist.

It remains to be seen whether Dubya can handle the humiliation of having Poppy’s fixers try to bail him out in so public a manner. It’s also hard to imaging Cheney going voluntarily.

Soldiers for the Truth publishes the testimony of recently-retired Major General John Batiste before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee:

My name is John Batiste. I left the military on principle on November 1, 2005, after more than 31 years of service. I walked away from promotion and a promising future serving our country. I hung up my uniform because I came to the gut-wrenching realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families out of uniform.

. . .

Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader. He knows everything, except “how to win.” He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq, or the human dimension of warfare. Secretary Rumsfeld ignored 12 years of U.S. Central Command deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build “his plan,” which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace, and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency, which was an absolute certainty. Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today.

Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and capability required to impose security, crush a budding insurgency, and set the conditions for the rule of law in Iraq. We were undermanned from the beginning, lost an early opportunity to secure the country, and have yet to regain the initiative. To compensate for the shortage of troops, commanders are routinely forced to manage shortages and shift coalition and Iraqi security forces from one contentious area to another in places like Baghdad, An Najaf, Tal Afar, Samarra, Ramadi, Fallujah, and many others.

. . .

I challenge the American people to get informed and speak out. Remember that the Congress represents and works for the people. Congressional oversight committees have been strangely silent for too long, and our elected officials must step up to their responsibilities or be replaced. This is not about partisan politics, but rather what is good for our country. Our November elections are crucial. Every American needs to understand the issues and cast his or her vote. I believe that one needs to vote for the candidate who understands the issues and who has the moral courage to do the harder right rather than the easier wrong. I for one will continue to speak out until there is accountability, until the American people establish momentum, and until our Congressional oversight committees kick into action. Victory in Iraq is fundamental and we cannot move forward until accountability is achieved.

While I agree with General Batiste’s sentiments about the competence of Rumsfeld et al (you never guessed, did you?), there is a disconnect between his MacArthurian assertion that “there is no substitution for victory” and his five point plan for action, which is at best a plan for mininizing the adverse consequences of the fiasco (aka defeat) of having invaded Iraq in the first place. Also, the problem obviously goes above and beyond Rumsfeld to Bush and Cheney. Coming so recently out of the US military culture, however, it’s understandable that he may not want to extend his assertions to the elected political leadership.