Chicago Boyz

My sister sent me this remarkable video of interviews of anti-war protesters in New York.

The vapidity of their comments is about what I’d expected it to be. The deadpan person interviewing them highlights how thoughtless their positions are.

Fortunately, just as with the Vietnam war protesters, the Nuclear Freeze movement, etc., this movement provides primarily an opportunity for an outdoor party and self-affirmation-fest for its participants. However, the political effect of these movements and their displays of public stupidity is, as usual, to alienate ordinary middle-class opinion and to strengthen the hand of the government being protested against.

Bush’s rising support in the polls is due in some degree to these antics. Good.

It seems as if attorney general Ashcroft is putting more effort into fighting drug-use than terrorism, and this shortly before a war on a Muslim country. This isn’t just a misallocation of resources, it also sends the wrong signal to federal law-enforcement agencies. During the the decades-long war on drugs promotions were mostly awarded based on the number of drug-related arrests an agent made. Due to institutional inertia it is to be expected that agencies as well as individual agents will continue to give the war on drugs preference over the war on terror; field agents have to know that lip-service to fighting terrorism aside, their superiors will continue to make drug-related arrests the main yardstick for evaluating their performance. Resources and personnel assigned to counter-terrorism had been inadequate for years, leading to such failures like this and this. If only one of these leads had been properly been followed, 911 could arguably have been prevented, but the FBI lacked the manpower. To avoid repeating those mistakes, Ashcroft presently needs not only to increase resources and personnel for fighting terrorism, he also has to make sure that they aren’t shifted towards busting drug-rings. Bureaucrats who won’t get with the program should be weeded out. But instead he emphasizes the importance of fighting drugs, positively encouraging to continue the misallocation of resources. If the pre-911 failures are replicated and the terrorists manage to pull off some large-scale attacks the Bush Administration will have to accept the lion’s share of the blame.

Yes, Bush is willing to take a big risk when he thinks it is justified by the likely payoff. Contrast his successful, calculated risk taking with the behavior of the French leadership, which is betting France’s geopolitical status on a pissing match with the U.S. which the U.S. seems certain to win. Who is really the reckless cowboy?

Jim Bennett’s new column is the first one I have ever seen by him that I don’t agree with at all. He argues that Bush should now go to Congress and get a declaration of war, before going into Iraq. He does not take the declaration passed by Congress last Fall to be sufficient. I disagree. I do not think that the Iraq war is going to require a massive mobilizing of the economy for war, for example. We will win it with what is in place. We could win it with half of what is in place.

More importantly, Bush cannot win a Congressional vote at this point. The Democrats, like any political party, have to satisfy their core constituencies. That core is violently anti-war. The core anti-war group is a community of activists that have worked and organized together for 35 years. They are planning civil disobedience in the event of war. Opposition to the war is becoming a litmus test for Democrat Presidential contenders. (See this piece, cited by Instapundit.) In other words the anti-war community is fired up and fully mobilized.

The pro-war group is not organized, not nearly as fiery in their views, and is growing demoralized by the President’s endless foray into the United Nations, and the President’s own seeming qualms about going to war.

The Democrats smell the possibility of a major victory against Bush. They smell weakness and hesitation on the part of Bush. They see that his supporters are hardening in their views but not increasing their numbers. And so they are on the attack. This is Politics 101: attack where your opponent is weak. If they can somehow cause Bush to back down they can declare victory and they can repudiate everything Bush has done in foreign policy since day one as a failure, a joke, a disaster. If Bush were insane enough to seek a new vote in Congress, the Democrats would see this as a gift from the Gods. It would be a concession of fear, of weakness. They would now have a rallying point to oppose Bush. They’d filibuster if necessary. They’d put millions of people into the street. They’d do anything to beat Bush. There would be euphoria on their side.

There is no way whatever that Bush could get a declaration. And there is no way he could be reelected if he asked for one.

In this post, I expressed my fear that General Powell and the apparatchiks in the State Department were going to push for a too-limited effort to emplace a more liberal and democratic government in post-War Iraq. Various straws in the wind make me less worried, and the consensus seems to be that the reestablishment of some “stable” authoritarian apparatus is not in the cards.

Michael Barone, in this column assesses the likely next steps following the conquest of Iraq, and opines

The course of military action is never completely predictable, and horrors may lie ahead. But few in Washington doubt that we can occupy Iraq within a few weeks’ time. Then comes the difficult task of moving Iraq toward a government that is democratic, peaceful, and respectful of the rule of law. Fortunately, smart officials in both the Defense and State departments have been doing serious work planning for that eventuality for over a year now.

Examples of this planning are discussed in this article entitled “Full U.S. Control Planned for Iraq”:

The Bush administration plans to take complete, unilateral control of a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, with an interim administration headed by a yet-to-be named American civilian who would direct the reconstruction of the country and the creation of a “representative” Iraqi government, according to a now-finalized blueprint described by U.S. officials and other sources.

The article notes that Iraqi opposition leaders were informed ” that the United States will not recognize an Iraqi provisional government being discussed by some expatriate groups.” This may be the reason for the initial outcry from Iraqi expats. I think Chalabi wanted to be an Iraqi de Gaulle, taking power behind American tanks. We apparently are not going to play that. Rather, “some 20 to 25 Iraqis would assist U.S. authorities in a U.S.-appointed ‘consultative council,’ with no governing responsibility.” Also, the article makes clear, there will be a process of “de-Baathification.” See also Paul Wolfowitz’s speech to Iraqi Americans in Michigan: “We have one of the most powerful military forces ever assembled” now on the borders of Iraq. “If we commit those forces, we’re not going to commit them for anything less than a free and democratic Iraq.”

Nicholas Lemann’s article, which I saw in the New Yorker, is available in two parts here and here. Lemann quotes at length from an interview with Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. Feith talks about bringing “institutions of democracy to Iraq”

“I use the term ‘institutions of democracy’ carefully. I don’t like to talk just about ‘democracy,’ because that connotes that there’s a particular system that works for everybody, and I’m too much a respecter of Burke to assert that.” He paused and said, “But the notion that when you have governmental institutions that are free, and allow for a greater degree of political and economic freedom, and people are protected from tyranny by having multiple institutions in their society that have power-the principle of checks and balances-it leaves open a tremendous amount of room for how societies organize their governments, and their societies in general. The notion of checks and balances as a safeguard against tyranny is something that I think can have applicability all around the world. It’s not peculiar to a particular culture.

“Then, you have the phenomenon that this greater freedom that came to Latin America, that came to various parts of Asia, largely missed the Middle East. And there is all kinds of writing on the subject, on whether there is anything inherently incompatible between either Muslim culture, or Arab culture, and this kind of freer government. This Administration does not believe there is an inherent incompatibility. And if Iraq had a government like that, and if that government could create some of those institutions of democracy, that might be inspirational for people throughout the Middle East to try to increase the amount of freedom that they have, and they would benefit both politically and economically by doing so.”

Feith goes on to assert that this process would spread, less out of U.S. compulsion, but because:

“There are people throughout the Middle East who have interests in promoting greater freedom,” he went on. “You have various people in various countries who have an interest in improving their country. And if there were to be a model of political success along these lines in the Middle East, in Iraq, one can imagine it would be impressive and influential. If somebody elsewhere in the Middle East looks at this and says, ‘If the Iraqis can have these benefits, perhaps we can get some of these benefits for our own people,’ I think that’s really more the mechanism.”

(Trent Trelenko had previously linked to this Lemann article.)

Perhaps most reassuring was the President’s recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute:

The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq’s new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet, we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected.

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before — in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq — with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people — is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.

That all sounds like a “maximalist” approach I have been hoping for. Bush, the gambler, the risk-taker, is swinging for the fences.

Finally, as if to make sure our false friends, the bigots in Saudi Arabia, will be “maximally” offended, comes news that the person chosen to “run Baghdad after the defeat of Saddam Hussein” is one Barbara Bodine. She is described as “the senior civilian on the Pentagon task force that is charged with reconstructing Iraq.” She sounds like a tough cookie. She has actually been a terrorist hostage. The story was in the Chicago Sun Times, but I can’t find it online. I’ll update this post if I can find a link.

UPDATEThis news story references Ms. Bodine, though it is not the one I referred to above.