Wayne White, adjunct scholar with the Middle East Institute
By Laura Rozen
October 18, 2007
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/11/iraq-war-wayne-white.html
Mother Jones: When we leave Iraq, what equipment do we leave behind?
Wayne White: You have to keep something in mind, and that is if there has been an escalation in the sheer monetary value of certain military items, that reduces flexibility in leaving things behind. In other words, in World War II, a $250,000 Sherman Tank could easily be left behind as with a lot of vehicles that could be towed out on a barge off France and dumped into the deep blue sea rather than shipping them home, because it wasn't very expensive. Whereas an M1 Abrams, to leave something like that behind, you are talking about a piece of equipment that has a far, far higher replacement cost to the U.S. military. They will not be left. So some of the pieces of equipment that would have been considered expendable in the old days are not now.
Also, we have to presume in drawing up these scenarios and assessments that we won't have a coherent military or government to turn things over to. In other words, a lot of M48 tanks were turned over to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. That's probably not going to be an option in this day, because probably they would just become equipment for use by one side in the civil war.
MJ: The theory that we have created and trained security forces strong enough to leave it to seems like a fiction.
WW: I think I am most worried about Muqtada al-Sadr. He does get Iranian support. It could extend to groups beyond him, but he is clearly the one with the most serial and anti-occupation sentiment, and somebody who probably couldn't resist either taking his last lick at us as we withdraw, or keeping control of elements that are part of his organization who want to do that.
There are a lot of scores that people might want to settle.
MJ: What do you think of the argument that we should leave residual forces in the country for a number of years to keep it glued together?
WW: I regard that as...I think it's moot. There won't be domestic support for [doing that]. And Iraq won't look better in order to make people think this is a good thing. The casualties will continue to trickle in.
We have to keep in mind, like that general who was quoted [recently] in the New York Times, who asked 40-odd soldiers, "How many of you trust our new best friends?" And not a hand went up. He said, "Good, I want it to stay that way." Essentially, the thing is watch your back, because these people who are cooperating with us now are the most virulently anti-occupation of any constituency in the country, and they regard the government in Baghdad as a Shiite-Kurdish government that will not only deny them a fair share of what happens with the budgetary pot and energy pot in the country, but will most likely use the new Iraqi Army to actually wreak vengeance on these people.
Iraq is a very, very tough place. People don't get mad; they get even. The Sunni Arabs know that they have done plenty to get people mad.
MJ: Would you move our troops out, or would you move them to bases, sort of behind big walls?
WW: No, bases are a very bad idea. Bases really aren't a way to withdraw. Bases are a way to first of all create immense resentment in a country in which the issue of British faith became so significant under the monarchy that it was one of the reasons the monarchy fell. As we know from the Vietnam experience, retention or establishment of bases is the same. It's the way to get into a war, not out. If you keep something like that, you are going to have to defend it, and that means you are going to have to retain a large force, and that large force has to be deployed, and that large force has to have air cover.
MJ: Can we trust the Sunnis to be our sort of proxy in fighting Al Qaeda?
WW: You can't completely trust them, because in some cases you are going to have the efforts disrupted by tribal and familial issues.
MJ: After the elections in '08, do you see the new president bringing the troops home as fast as possible?
WW: No, I see a very gradual withdrawal. It's an agonizing process, withdrawing and drawing down. I don't know whether you can go fast.
MJ: Could troops be replaced by private contractors, just so we could say, "Hey, we don't have so many troops in the country anymore"?
WW: Well, they have their own problems though. They don't want to be at the forefront of the military action out there. They have their large elements that are performing essentially security duties, but those guys didn't sign up for infantry duty. They signed up to be prepared to defend against occasional violence.
MJ: How much do these companies start basically localizing their employee base? I mean, do they start hiring Iraqis to do what they had people from Texas doing before?
WW: They do have people who are Iraqis already working for them, but I would think if we are drawing down, the contractors are going to be drawing down also. They aren't going to be hiring more people. They will be hiring less.
MJ: Is there any hope of getting the international community involved at this point in Iraq, the U.N. or NATO?
WW: No. They know it's a very dangerous place, and they don't want to lose people. The international community wants to stay as far away from this as possible. Humanitarian organizations want to help very badly, but they know that their people cannot operate in a hostile environment. In other words, if you take care of Sunni Arab refugees, let's hope you don't run into any Shiites.
MJ: If there is a partition of Iraq, where the U.S. reduces its presence there, who does make humanitarian efforts there?
WW: I think until the worst settles down, you can only do it on [the borders]. A lot of the refugees are already on the borders.
MJ: Do we take the Iraqis who have worked with the Americans with us?
WW: Yes. This would be a vital aspect of a withdrawal. In other words, if you are banning these people, a lot of them are going to die, their families will die. This will be flashed all over the media throughout the world as a horrific thing that the United States allowed to happen. In addition, some of them, if they are turned away embittered, will join the people attacking us, because they know a lot about our facilities and installations, and could actually be a tremendous help to anyone wanting to harass us during the withdrawal.
So in order to have their help and have their loyalty, and to avoid a bloodbath in certain dangerous areas, they must come out with us along with their immediate families. If that means 350,000 people, that's what it means.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Returning Home (Part 2): The Pentagon's Take
Colonel Gary Anderson (USMC, retired), Pentagon consultant
By Bruce Falconer
October 18, 2007
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/11/iraq-war-gary-anderson.html
Mother Jones: What do we need to do and when would we need to do it to get out of Iraq by a certain date?
Gary Anderson: Well, the first thing is that that date hasn't been set yet. If the Pentagon had its way, it would be a very staged, orderly thing. They do logistics very well. Now if for some reason the Iraqis or Congress said, "You have to get out right away," logistics would be the least of our concerns.
MJ: What needs to be done to move, say, one brigade out of Iraq?
GA: The last experience we had that was a major withdrawal from the theater was after the Gulf War. We got a lot of stuff out of there very, very quickly. Your major concerns are, first of all, what equipment are you going to leave behind? Are you going to leave some behind for the Iraqi Armed Forces? And then you've got some training issues, you've got some logistics issues and how they're going to take care of it. Is some of the gear even worth taking? Is it something you might want to junk and sell for scrap? A lot of the stuff is worn out and might not even be worth taking home. I think in most cases, we will take it and try to refurbish it. So first decision is what we actually leave and what stays behind as residual for the Iraqis. And then the second question is how you secure getting it out of the country, assuming there's still a significant military. You're going to want to organize convoys that are protected, and that's really a no-brainer. Our logisticians do that all the time. When you start thinking about bringing it back to the States, there are some actual agricultural and just general U.S. regulations that the Department of Defense has to conform to, like washing down the vehicles, making sure that they don't have any hazardous material aboard them, making sure of all the ammunition is properly taken away from the vehicles for storage because neither the Navy nor commercial people like live ammunition aboard ships or places that aren't supposed to have live ammunition. There are a lot of very detailed things that have to be done to each vehicle before it's certified as ready to get back aboard a ship or an airplane or whatever the case may be.
MJ: Do you have any idea how much time that actually takes per vehicle?
GA: It depends on how fast you want to move. We wrapped up the war in March, and I think the vast majority of our gear in 2001 was gone by mid-July. That includes the mountains of ammunition and supplies that we had dumped down the thing thinking we were going to have a bigger war than we had.
MJ: What kind of a presence do you imagine we would maintain after the primary drawdown?
GA: It's going to be a case-by-case, division-by-division basis as the Army decides it doesn't have to be there anymore. You'll probably see a two-step approach. It'll probably start where they stop operating jointly with the Iraqis, and then go out to a remote base where they can still get in quickly if they get in trouble. Take a look at how they do when they first get into an independent mode, and at some point in time, once they're competent enough that they can control that area, then the American unit disengages and goes home.
MJ: I saw you on CNN saying that your primary concern in the post-American Iraq is not Sunni versus Shiite, but the Shiite factions battling one another.
GA: When I was a U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon, when they weren't actually shooting at the Israelis the various Shiite factions were fighting amongst each other and then fighting with the Palestinian camps on the border. And that's unfortunately in their nature. If they don't have anybody else to argue with, they argue with each other, which is part of the problem, other than that they've never been able to really get their act together running any given country. And that's going to cause some problems. You can see that happening already in Iraq on a small scale, but I think absent us, it's going to become more of a problem.
MJ: How much of a problem? Is this an apocalyptic scenario?
GA: From a Shiite on Shiite standpoint, I don't think you're going to see genocide or a mass bloodletting and major street battles involving thousands of people. I think it'll look very much like the Lebanese civil war, where not only did you have various ethnic and religious groups fighting with each other, but you had struggles within those groups for control. You've got all those dynamic tensions in the Shiite community that are playing up against each other that, absent us as being the main irritant, you're going to see play out. So I think there will be some definite ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis, but the Sunnis just don't have the mass to really put up much of a stand-up fight. I think you're going to see them pushed into Al Anbar, and I don't think there's going to be an attempt to follow them and create genocide. I think they're just going to leave them out there and let them fend for themselves because there's nothing out there that the Shiites or the Kurds want.
MJ: What about Al Qaeda? Do they pretty much leave the country when the Americans are gone?
GA: Oh, no. No, no. I think Al Qaeda's game is to, having lost Afghanistan, turn Al Anbar Province into the new Afghanistan, and that's a major issue. Now, what I think will happen is there are three neighbors out there that are very, very concerned with Al Qaeda, probably more concerned—or should be more concerned—than we are because they're a lot closer to home and that's Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. So I think what you're going to see in Al Anbar is these tribal sheikhs that have aligned themselves up with us lately, the Saudis and the other nations will approach them and there'll be an attempt to fund them to continue the attempt to get rid of the foreign fighters, and given the fact that the Americans will be gone, they only got one group of foreigners to really think about. What's very, very likely to happen is that they'll be feeding competing Saudi, Jordanian, and Syrian finance factions that'll probably start bickering amongst each other and then you've got sort of a three-way within a Sunni community.
It would be to their advantage to the three Sunni countries to seriously consider pulling their resources and try to turn Al Anbar both economically and security-wise into something that they could live with, but just given the nature of the way these guys operate, I'm not saying whether that'll happen.
MJ: You're picturing these breaks within both the Shiites and Sunnis. What about the Kurds in Turkey?
GA: That's a whole issue unto itself. I don't see the Kurds declaring independence. It'll be suicidal. But the Turks would put an end to it. And they've got the military power to overrun the place, but it would be a massive…they would end up bogged down in a guerrilla war, but it would be disastrous for the Kurds—all that prosperity they've built up in the last four years would be gone, and it would be a mess.
The other potential lightning rod there is the Turkoman down in Kirkuk. The Turks consider them to be clients and little brothers and so forth, and if something really bad happens ethnic-cleansing-wise, that might also cause the Turks to get involved. So no matter which way you turn going out of Baghdad, you can see potential trouble on the horizon. Minus some kind of moderating influence on our part.
MJ: What does Iraq look like in 10 to 15 years?
GA: I would say there will still be something called Iraq. What governing mechanism it has, I don't know. Frankly, I think Kurdistan will be part of it, at least de facto—you know, by lip service—simply because it would serve their purposes, not because they love the Arabs. And the question is whether or not some kind of compromise between the Sunnis and the Shiites could occur. It doesn't look real good right now.
There's always a possibility that when we leave the Army may step in and establish a strong, centralized dictatorship unprecedented in that part of the world. And that assumes that the Army gets to a point where it's actually strong enough to do that. There's a whole bunch of scenarios you can play with, but I don't see these three separate Iraqi nations that some people have talked about. There is a real strong feeling of nationalism among the Iraqi Arabs. The Kurds have their own reasons for trying to stay part of that, but how powerful that central government is is really a major question in my mind right now.
MJ: Another consideration of leaving is what to do with the Iraqis who have collaborated with the United States.
GA: Well, in best-of-all-possible worlds, the Army is strong enough to take care of itself and do what Iraqi governing elites have always done, which is live in walled compounds and protect themselves from the on-watch masses and so forth. Worst-of-all-possible worlds, then we really have to seriously consider making arrangements for those people who have worked for us and so forth like we did with many of the Vietnamese.
I can't really tell you how a new Congress/the '08 election is going to react to the whole situation. I'm a lot more confident in telling you what I think the various Iraqi factions and local regional neighbors will do than I am about what the United States is going to do.
MJ: It's been reported that to maintain the surge level, tours would have to be extended beyond the 15-month period to as long as 18 months.
GA: I frankly think we're going to see a drawdown. There's going to be some kind of decision made if it appears that the Iraqis are just incapable; the reality of the surge was to try to buy them time. They appear to have herded away a lot of that, and I think if it comes to a point where it looks like good money going after bad, we will probably come up with some other plans. The Army cannot sustain this level of commitment. So I think one way or the other, you're going to see a drawdown. I do not imagine the surge there lasting too much. I honestly don't foresee a major flight from Iraq between now and next November. But the Army cannot sustain this level of commitment without really straining it to the breaking point.
MJ: You mentioned the Lebanese civil war as a good example from history of what we might expect. Are there any other historical examples we can turn to?
GA: Well, I think that calling it "civil war" is dignifying what would probably happen. It's going to be a messy, confusing series of grabs for power and a series of bumps and grinds and so forth, much like the Lebanese civil war was. But this kind of apocalyptic struggle between the Shiites and Sunnis—I frankly don't see that happening.
MJ: What about the actual withdrawal of troops? Some people have said that as the Americans leave Iraq, they'll be taking fire. Will our withdrawal be like the Soviets leaving Afghanistan?
GA: No. Basically, it depends on how the opposition plays it. Some will probably be glad to see us go. Quite frankly, I think the people in Iraq who are going to be most sorry to see us go are Al Qaeda. We're the only rationale for them being around. Absent us, they become foreigners.
I think we're capable of making a much more orderly exit than that just based on what I know of our capabilities and so forth. It certainly wouldn't look like Dunkirk. The Russians—and quite frankly, the Israelis, when they left Lebanon—did not think this through particularly well, and I think their army's heart wasn't in it and they didn't want to do it, so they didn't plan for it. But I give our planners a little bit more credit for being able to get a handle on that sort of thing.
I'm not saying there won't be casualties. I'm just saying some group of bad guys might not really go after us. I'm just saying we don't want to give them credit for being that much better than they are.
By Bruce Falconer
October 18, 2007
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/11/iraq-war-gary-anderson.html
Mother Jones: What do we need to do and when would we need to do it to get out of Iraq by a certain date?
Gary Anderson: Well, the first thing is that that date hasn't been set yet. If the Pentagon had its way, it would be a very staged, orderly thing. They do logistics very well. Now if for some reason the Iraqis or Congress said, "You have to get out right away," logistics would be the least of our concerns.
MJ: What needs to be done to move, say, one brigade out of Iraq?
GA: The last experience we had that was a major withdrawal from the theater was after the Gulf War. We got a lot of stuff out of there very, very quickly. Your major concerns are, first of all, what equipment are you going to leave behind? Are you going to leave some behind for the Iraqi Armed Forces? And then you've got some training issues, you've got some logistics issues and how they're going to take care of it. Is some of the gear even worth taking? Is it something you might want to junk and sell for scrap? A lot of the stuff is worn out and might not even be worth taking home. I think in most cases, we will take it and try to refurbish it. So first decision is what we actually leave and what stays behind as residual for the Iraqis. And then the second question is how you secure getting it out of the country, assuming there's still a significant military. You're going to want to organize convoys that are protected, and that's really a no-brainer. Our logisticians do that all the time. When you start thinking about bringing it back to the States, there are some actual agricultural and just general U.S. regulations that the Department of Defense has to conform to, like washing down the vehicles, making sure that they don't have any hazardous material aboard them, making sure of all the ammunition is properly taken away from the vehicles for storage because neither the Navy nor commercial people like live ammunition aboard ships or places that aren't supposed to have live ammunition. There are a lot of very detailed things that have to be done to each vehicle before it's certified as ready to get back aboard a ship or an airplane or whatever the case may be.
MJ: Do you have any idea how much time that actually takes per vehicle?
GA: It depends on how fast you want to move. We wrapped up the war in March, and I think the vast majority of our gear in 2001 was gone by mid-July. That includes the mountains of ammunition and supplies that we had dumped down the thing thinking we were going to have a bigger war than we had.
MJ: What kind of a presence do you imagine we would maintain after the primary drawdown?
GA: It's going to be a case-by-case, division-by-division basis as the Army decides it doesn't have to be there anymore. You'll probably see a two-step approach. It'll probably start where they stop operating jointly with the Iraqis, and then go out to a remote base where they can still get in quickly if they get in trouble. Take a look at how they do when they first get into an independent mode, and at some point in time, once they're competent enough that they can control that area, then the American unit disengages and goes home.
MJ: I saw you on CNN saying that your primary concern in the post-American Iraq is not Sunni versus Shiite, but the Shiite factions battling one another.
GA: When I was a U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon, when they weren't actually shooting at the Israelis the various Shiite factions were fighting amongst each other and then fighting with the Palestinian camps on the border. And that's unfortunately in their nature. If they don't have anybody else to argue with, they argue with each other, which is part of the problem, other than that they've never been able to really get their act together running any given country. And that's going to cause some problems. You can see that happening already in Iraq on a small scale, but I think absent us, it's going to become more of a problem.
MJ: How much of a problem? Is this an apocalyptic scenario?
GA: From a Shiite on Shiite standpoint, I don't think you're going to see genocide or a mass bloodletting and major street battles involving thousands of people. I think it'll look very much like the Lebanese civil war, where not only did you have various ethnic and religious groups fighting with each other, but you had struggles within those groups for control. You've got all those dynamic tensions in the Shiite community that are playing up against each other that, absent us as being the main irritant, you're going to see play out. So I think there will be some definite ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis, but the Sunnis just don't have the mass to really put up much of a stand-up fight. I think you're going to see them pushed into Al Anbar, and I don't think there's going to be an attempt to follow them and create genocide. I think they're just going to leave them out there and let them fend for themselves because there's nothing out there that the Shiites or the Kurds want.
MJ: What about Al Qaeda? Do they pretty much leave the country when the Americans are gone?
GA: Oh, no. No, no. I think Al Qaeda's game is to, having lost Afghanistan, turn Al Anbar Province into the new Afghanistan, and that's a major issue. Now, what I think will happen is there are three neighbors out there that are very, very concerned with Al Qaeda, probably more concerned—or should be more concerned—than we are because they're a lot closer to home and that's Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. So I think what you're going to see in Al Anbar is these tribal sheikhs that have aligned themselves up with us lately, the Saudis and the other nations will approach them and there'll be an attempt to fund them to continue the attempt to get rid of the foreign fighters, and given the fact that the Americans will be gone, they only got one group of foreigners to really think about. What's very, very likely to happen is that they'll be feeding competing Saudi, Jordanian, and Syrian finance factions that'll probably start bickering amongst each other and then you've got sort of a three-way within a Sunni community.
It would be to their advantage to the three Sunni countries to seriously consider pulling their resources and try to turn Al Anbar both economically and security-wise into something that they could live with, but just given the nature of the way these guys operate, I'm not saying whether that'll happen.
MJ: You're picturing these breaks within both the Shiites and Sunnis. What about the Kurds in Turkey?
GA: That's a whole issue unto itself. I don't see the Kurds declaring independence. It'll be suicidal. But the Turks would put an end to it. And they've got the military power to overrun the place, but it would be a massive…they would end up bogged down in a guerrilla war, but it would be disastrous for the Kurds—all that prosperity they've built up in the last four years would be gone, and it would be a mess.
The other potential lightning rod there is the Turkoman down in Kirkuk. The Turks consider them to be clients and little brothers and so forth, and if something really bad happens ethnic-cleansing-wise, that might also cause the Turks to get involved. So no matter which way you turn going out of Baghdad, you can see potential trouble on the horizon. Minus some kind of moderating influence on our part.
MJ: What does Iraq look like in 10 to 15 years?
GA: I would say there will still be something called Iraq. What governing mechanism it has, I don't know. Frankly, I think Kurdistan will be part of it, at least de facto—you know, by lip service—simply because it would serve their purposes, not because they love the Arabs. And the question is whether or not some kind of compromise between the Sunnis and the Shiites could occur. It doesn't look real good right now.
There's always a possibility that when we leave the Army may step in and establish a strong, centralized dictatorship unprecedented in that part of the world. And that assumes that the Army gets to a point where it's actually strong enough to do that. There's a whole bunch of scenarios you can play with, but I don't see these three separate Iraqi nations that some people have talked about. There is a real strong feeling of nationalism among the Iraqi Arabs. The Kurds have their own reasons for trying to stay part of that, but how powerful that central government is is really a major question in my mind right now.
MJ: Another consideration of leaving is what to do with the Iraqis who have collaborated with the United States.
GA: Well, in best-of-all-possible worlds, the Army is strong enough to take care of itself and do what Iraqi governing elites have always done, which is live in walled compounds and protect themselves from the on-watch masses and so forth. Worst-of-all-possible worlds, then we really have to seriously consider making arrangements for those people who have worked for us and so forth like we did with many of the Vietnamese.
I can't really tell you how a new Congress/the '08 election is going to react to the whole situation. I'm a lot more confident in telling you what I think the various Iraqi factions and local regional neighbors will do than I am about what the United States is going to do.
MJ: It's been reported that to maintain the surge level, tours would have to be extended beyond the 15-month period to as long as 18 months.
GA: I frankly think we're going to see a drawdown. There's going to be some kind of decision made if it appears that the Iraqis are just incapable; the reality of the surge was to try to buy them time. They appear to have herded away a lot of that, and I think if it comes to a point where it looks like good money going after bad, we will probably come up with some other plans. The Army cannot sustain this level of commitment. So I think one way or the other, you're going to see a drawdown. I do not imagine the surge there lasting too much. I honestly don't foresee a major flight from Iraq between now and next November. But the Army cannot sustain this level of commitment without really straining it to the breaking point.
MJ: You mentioned the Lebanese civil war as a good example from history of what we might expect. Are there any other historical examples we can turn to?
GA: Well, I think that calling it "civil war" is dignifying what would probably happen. It's going to be a messy, confusing series of grabs for power and a series of bumps and grinds and so forth, much like the Lebanese civil war was. But this kind of apocalyptic struggle between the Shiites and Sunnis—I frankly don't see that happening.
MJ: What about the actual withdrawal of troops? Some people have said that as the Americans leave Iraq, they'll be taking fire. Will our withdrawal be like the Soviets leaving Afghanistan?
GA: No. Basically, it depends on how the opposition plays it. Some will probably be glad to see us go. Quite frankly, I think the people in Iraq who are going to be most sorry to see us go are Al Qaeda. We're the only rationale for them being around. Absent us, they become foreigners.
I think we're capable of making a much more orderly exit than that just based on what I know of our capabilities and so forth. It certainly wouldn't look like Dunkirk. The Russians—and quite frankly, the Israelis, when they left Lebanon—did not think this through particularly well, and I think their army's heart wasn't in it and they didn't want to do it, so they didn't plan for it. But I give our planners a little bit more credit for being able to get a handle on that sort of thing.
I'm not saying there won't be casualties. I'm just saying some group of bad guys might not really go after us. I'm just saying we don't want to give them credit for being that much better than they are.
Returning Home (Part 1): The Activist's Take
Interview With Medea Benjamin of Code Pink
By Josh Harkinson
October 18, 2007
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/11/iraq-war-medea-benjamin.html
Mother Jones: How soon should the U.S. leave Iraq?
Medea Benjamin: I would say, just to pick a time, by the end of the year [2007]. We have been saying troops home by the holidays, but we’ve been saying that for the last four years. And then in terms of when we would leave, that’s a very different story. I think if we left a year from now, that would be not my ideal, but it would certainly be positive. I doubt even that is going to happen.
MJ: When you say, “by the end of the year,” do you mean you want to pull out every last U.S. soldier by then?
MB: Well, I think it’s kind of silly to talk about it because it’s just not going to happen. I think it makes more sense to talk about what is in the realm of even the possible. If we said we would like the troops to withdraw by the end of 2008, let’s say, I would think that is totally doable physically. Certainly you will hear different generals tell you different things. I had McCaffrey tell me that you could do it in six months; some say it would take two years. So I would think if we began the withdrawal, like Senator John Warner is saying, by the holidays and had all U.S. troops out by the end of the year, that would give over a year to try to put into place the mechanism for trying to move for a real reconciliation plan and if necessary have some international peacekeeping troops come in.
MJ: After most troops pull out, should the United States leave any bases behind?
MB: No, I don’t think there should be U.S. bases; I think having U.S. bases in the Middle East was part of the reason we were attacked on September 11th and will keep us vulnerable and less secure. I think with the modern military the way it is, you don’t need to be based on somebody’s soil.
MJ: Should we station troops at the border?
MB: I don’t think there should be U.S. troops anywhere. I think the U.S. should help pay other countries, if they are willing to contribute troops, and it’s needed. I would say no country that has been part of the “Coalition of the Willing” would be considered legitimate in Iraq right now, but there are plenty of other countries that didn’t participate and that, if paid by the U.S., might be willing to contribute troops. They could be countries like Indonesia, Nigeria. It could be forces from countries from the Muslim community that are not the neighboring countries.
MJ: Under what conditions would you redeploy American troops to Iraq?
MB: I think that the U.S. is part of the problem, not part of the solution. And there definitely needs to be a plan in place, but the U.S. troops should not be a part of that plan. If the violence escalates and the troops went back in, it would just get worse.
MJ: What will prevent Iraq’s civil war from flaring into genocidal violence?
MB: We have to get the international community—the U.N., the Arab League—involved. The transition plans should set up different scenarios that could include an increase in violence and how the international community, not the U.S., should respond to that.
MJ: What will make the world stop genocide in Iraq when it didn’t in Rwanda or Darfur?
MB: The Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese are all concerned about the flow of oil. The First World will be affected by this, as they weren’t in Rwanda. Come on, there is a hell of a lot of difference, unfortunately, between the international community’s concern about a small, resource-poor nation like Rwanda and a region like the Middle East.
MJ: Should having an international force at the ready be a precondition for a U.S. withdrawal?
MB: Yeah, especially as a contingency plan. We’re spending $3 billion dollars a week on the war, and we could certainly be spending the money better in helping to pay for an international peacekeeping force to be in the ready.
MJ: Is assembling such a force even being seriously discussed right now?
MB: There has been more of a hopelessness this year [2007] with the increase in violence and the sense the U.S. wasn’t going to leave, so why even bother planning such scenarios? So I think it will really only happen seriously once there is a timetable for withdrawal. The more we put off the timeline, the less likely it is that any of those plans are even talked about in a serious fashion.
MJ: Is there any contradiction between supporting U.S. military intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide and opposing U.S. military intervention to prevent ethnic cleansing in Iraq?
MB: It’s a totally different situation. We are looking at a case now where our presence is a major part of the problem. The United States cannot, in my opinion, be construed at all as part of the solution, and we have got to recognize that we have zero possibility of stopping the violence and helping Iraq become a functioning stable country. And that it’s only by leaving that the possibility of that will exist. But yes, we do have to have contingency plans, because there is a possibility that the violence could get worse.
By Josh Harkinson
October 18, 2007
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/11/iraq-war-medea-benjamin.html
Mother Jones: How soon should the U.S. leave Iraq?Medea Benjamin: I would say, just to pick a time, by the end of the year [2007]. We have been saying troops home by the holidays, but we’ve been saying that for the last four years. And then in terms of when we would leave, that’s a very different story. I think if we left a year from now, that would be not my ideal, but it would certainly be positive. I doubt even that is going to happen.
MJ: When you say, “by the end of the year,” do you mean you want to pull out every last U.S. soldier by then?
MB: Well, I think it’s kind of silly to talk about it because it’s just not going to happen. I think it makes more sense to talk about what is in the realm of even the possible. If we said we would like the troops to withdraw by the end of 2008, let’s say, I would think that is totally doable physically. Certainly you will hear different generals tell you different things. I had McCaffrey tell me that you could do it in six months; some say it would take two years. So I would think if we began the withdrawal, like Senator John Warner is saying, by the holidays and had all U.S. troops out by the end of the year, that would give over a year to try to put into place the mechanism for trying to move for a real reconciliation plan and if necessary have some international peacekeeping troops come in.
MJ: After most troops pull out, should the United States leave any bases behind?
MB: No, I don’t think there should be U.S. bases; I think having U.S. bases in the Middle East was part of the reason we were attacked on September 11th and will keep us vulnerable and less secure. I think with the modern military the way it is, you don’t need to be based on somebody’s soil.
MJ: Should we station troops at the border?
MB: I don’t think there should be U.S. troops anywhere. I think the U.S. should help pay other countries, if they are willing to contribute troops, and it’s needed. I would say no country that has been part of the “Coalition of the Willing” would be considered legitimate in Iraq right now, but there are plenty of other countries that didn’t participate and that, if paid by the U.S., might be willing to contribute troops. They could be countries like Indonesia, Nigeria. It could be forces from countries from the Muslim community that are not the neighboring countries.
MJ: Under what conditions would you redeploy American troops to Iraq?
MB: I think that the U.S. is part of the problem, not part of the solution. And there definitely needs to be a plan in place, but the U.S. troops should not be a part of that plan. If the violence escalates and the troops went back in, it would just get worse.
MJ: What will prevent Iraq’s civil war from flaring into genocidal violence?
MB: We have to get the international community—the U.N., the Arab League—involved. The transition plans should set up different scenarios that could include an increase in violence and how the international community, not the U.S., should respond to that.
MJ: What will make the world stop genocide in Iraq when it didn’t in Rwanda or Darfur?
MB: The Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese are all concerned about the flow of oil. The First World will be affected by this, as they weren’t in Rwanda. Come on, there is a hell of a lot of difference, unfortunately, between the international community’s concern about a small, resource-poor nation like Rwanda and a region like the Middle East.
MJ: Should having an international force at the ready be a precondition for a U.S. withdrawal?
MB: Yeah, especially as a contingency plan. We’re spending $3 billion dollars a week on the war, and we could certainly be spending the money better in helping to pay for an international peacekeeping force to be in the ready.
MJ: Is assembling such a force even being seriously discussed right now?
MB: There has been more of a hopelessness this year [2007] with the increase in violence and the sense the U.S. wasn’t going to leave, so why even bother planning such scenarios? So I think it will really only happen seriously once there is a timetable for withdrawal. The more we put off the timeline, the less likely it is that any of those plans are even talked about in a serious fashion.
MJ: Is there any contradiction between supporting U.S. military intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide and opposing U.S. military intervention to prevent ethnic cleansing in Iraq?
MB: It’s a totally different situation. We are looking at a case now where our presence is a major part of the problem. The United States cannot, in my opinion, be construed at all as part of the solution, and we have got to recognize that we have zero possibility of stopping the violence and helping Iraq become a functioning stable country. And that it’s only by leaving that the possibility of that will exist. But yes, we do have to have contingency plans, because there is a possibility that the violence could get worse.
Iraq in the Rearview Mirror
From Mother Jones:
http://truher.mojones.com/news/feature/2007/11/iraq-war-introduction.html
U.S. OutNow! How?: Introduction
It started as Bush's war, but we all own it now—and it's time we took a hard look at what that means.
By The Editors
October 18, 2007
"You break it, you own it." So goes the "Pottery Barn rule" that Colin Powell invoked in his last-ditch attempts to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all."
In the end, of course, Powell caved to Bush's geopolitical whims, played the good soldier, and did as much as anyone to lie to the world and sell the case for invasion—an invasion driven by blind ideology, wishful thinking, and a feckless refusal to consider the consequences. Stupefyingly, the administration maintains that attitude to this day—refusing, for example, to address the plight of 2 million refugees because, you see, they'll all go home soon to a pacified Iraq.
Yet it's not just the administration that has its head in the sand; to varying degrees, we all do. For those of us who argued against invading, it is tempting to simply demand an end to "Bush's War" and wash our hands of it. But as General Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told us, "Your conscience is not clean just because you're a peace demonstrator." In other words, just because you weren't in favor of going in doesn't mean you're not responsible for what happens when we pull out.
And pull out we will—if only because the military can't sustain current troop levels. Not that you'd know it from listening to the debate in Washington, with its farcical focus on timetables and surges and benchmarks. Take the grand unveiling of the Petraeus report, a PR blitz reminiscent of prewar opinion orchestration. First, Brookings Institution scholars Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon went on a Potemkin tour of Iraq and dutifully wrote an op-ed called "A War We Just Might Win." Only two qualifiers? No matter, the Washington commentariat took the cue and hastily fell in line. As did the media, some of which even bought Dick Cheney's canard that these two were "critics of the war." (Actually, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald forced O'Hanlon to acknowledge, "I was a supporter.") By the time General David Petraeus presented himself to Congress—his "report" long since leaked—the political theater had devolved into bad summer stock. General Petraeus was the very model of a modern major general; the Democratic candidates formed a spectral chorus; MoveOn played to type as the shrill left. And, most gratingly, Bush reprised his 2003 role: flinty-eyed, elbows on podium, warning of Al Qaeda evildoers on the one hand and genocide on the other.
Now, as then, this was a nice bit of political calculation designed to reconstitute the pro-invasion coalition of the worried, the gung-ho, and the humanitarian interventionists. True, Bush wasn't completely lying. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a threat—one entirely of Bush's making, but a threat nonetheless. (See: Al Qaeda in Iraq: How Dangerous Is It?) And there's the very real chance that withdrawal will precipitate more, perhaps even apocalyptic, violence. (See: Four Post-Occupation Scenarios)
There are no good options in Iraq, but the options narrow to the horrific the longer our leaders dawdle. Bush seems content—whether out of delusional optimism or cynical "strategery"—to run out the clock and stick the next administration with this mess; only 5 percent of Americans expect him to do otherwise. And the Democrats are playing the other side of the same game—content to let the GOP go down with its man.
So what is to be done? First and foremost, anyone running for or holding national office must be forced to answer these questions: What's your schedule for withdrawal, and what consequences do you foresee? Which comes first—withdrawal, a functioning Iraqi government, or a solid international peacekeeping force? What concessions would you make to get Iraq's neighbors to help? What degree of bloodshed are you prepared to stand by and watch?
We put such questions to five dozen military men, think-tankers, peace activists, academics, and politicians. Some of their responses follow, and we'll post the full interviews online, along with a list of those who refused to respond—including the architects of the war, leading presidential candidates, and the congressional leadership. Some, it should be noted, begged off because they were taking a summer break, even as Iraqi politicians were being criticized for doing the same. We hope that if we can't force them to reckon with reality, you can. As General Zinni notes, "the government is us. We made promises and commitments. The administration proposed the war; Congress—the voice of the people—authorized it; we are responsible for it. We can't claim, 'I didn't vote for him in the first place' or 'I changed my mind.' There has to be some sort of obligation that falls to us as a society for what our government does in our name."
Yes, Bush, a leader with all the impulse control of a petulant three-year-old, "broke" Iraq. But we own it now. Time to get ready with the apology, the checkbook, and whatever else is required.
http://truher.mojones.com/news/feature/2007/11/iraq-war-introduction.html
U.S. Out
It started as Bush's war, but we all own it now—and it's time we took a hard look at what that means.
By The Editors
October 18, 2007
"You break it, you own it." So goes the "Pottery Barn rule" that Colin Powell invoked in his last-ditch attempts to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq. "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all."
In the end, of course, Powell caved to Bush's geopolitical whims, played the good soldier, and did as much as anyone to lie to the world and sell the case for invasion—an invasion driven by blind ideology, wishful thinking, and a feckless refusal to consider the consequences. Stupefyingly, the administration maintains that attitude to this day—refusing, for example, to address the plight of 2 million refugees because, you see, they'll all go home soon to a pacified Iraq.
Yet it's not just the administration that has its head in the sand; to varying degrees, we all do. For those of us who argued against invading, it is tempting to simply demand an end to "Bush's War" and wash our hands of it. But as General Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told us, "Your conscience is not clean just because you're a peace demonstrator." In other words, just because you weren't in favor of going in doesn't mean you're not responsible for what happens when we pull out.
And pull out we will—if only because the military can't sustain current troop levels. Not that you'd know it from listening to the debate in Washington, with its farcical focus on timetables and surges and benchmarks. Take the grand unveiling of the Petraeus report, a PR blitz reminiscent of prewar opinion orchestration. First, Brookings Institution scholars Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon went on a Potemkin tour of Iraq and dutifully wrote an op-ed called "A War We Just Might Win." Only two qualifiers? No matter, the Washington commentariat took the cue and hastily fell in line. As did the media, some of which even bought Dick Cheney's canard that these two were "critics of the war." (Actually, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald forced O'Hanlon to acknowledge, "I was a supporter.") By the time General David Petraeus presented himself to Congress—his "report" long since leaked—the political theater had devolved into bad summer stock. General Petraeus was the very model of a modern major general; the Democratic candidates formed a spectral chorus; MoveOn played to type as the shrill left. And, most gratingly, Bush reprised his 2003 role: flinty-eyed, elbows on podium, warning of Al Qaeda evildoers on the one hand and genocide on the other.
Now, as then, this was a nice bit of political calculation designed to reconstitute the pro-invasion coalition of the worried, the gung-ho, and the humanitarian interventionists. True, Bush wasn't completely lying. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a threat—one entirely of Bush's making, but a threat nonetheless. (See: Al Qaeda in Iraq: How Dangerous Is It?) And there's the very real chance that withdrawal will precipitate more, perhaps even apocalyptic, violence. (See: Four Post-Occupation Scenarios)
There are no good options in Iraq, but the options narrow to the horrific the longer our leaders dawdle. Bush seems content—whether out of delusional optimism or cynical "strategery"—to run out the clock and stick the next administration with this mess; only 5 percent of Americans expect him to do otherwise. And the Democrats are playing the other side of the same game—content to let the GOP go down with its man.
So what is to be done? First and foremost, anyone running for or holding national office must be forced to answer these questions: What's your schedule for withdrawal, and what consequences do you foresee? Which comes first—withdrawal, a functioning Iraqi government, or a solid international peacekeeping force? What concessions would you make to get Iraq's neighbors to help? What degree of bloodshed are you prepared to stand by and watch?
We put such questions to five dozen military men, think-tankers, peace activists, academics, and politicians. Some of their responses follow, and we'll post the full interviews online, along with a list of those who refused to respond—including the architects of the war, leading presidential candidates, and the congressional leadership. Some, it should be noted, begged off because they were taking a summer break, even as Iraqi politicians were being criticized for doing the same. We hope that if we can't force them to reckon with reality, you can. As General Zinni notes, "the government is us. We made promises and commitments. The administration proposed the war; Congress—the voice of the people—authorized it; we are responsible for it. We can't claim, 'I didn't vote for him in the first place' or 'I changed my mind.' There has to be some sort of obligation that falls to us as a society for what our government does in our name."
Yes, Bush, a leader with all the impulse control of a petulant three-year-old, "broke" Iraq. But we own it now. Time to get ready with the apology, the checkbook, and whatever else is required.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
( ( ( Connecting the Dots ) ) )
In continuing to look at the opium trade, we again visit the work of Pierre-arnaud Chouvy, who published a report titled “Drugs and the Financing of Terrorism,” which helps to answer the following questions about the links that exist between opium and terrorism.
Pierre-arnaud is a research fellow at CNRS in France. He hosts the site www.geopium.org, which focuses on geopolitics of illicit drugs with a focus on Asia.
Q: From a bird's-eye view, how is the opium trade in Afghanistan linked with terrorism?
The financing of terrorism through illicit drug trafficking has been touted as a major problem since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Indeed, during the last decade, Afghanistan has been the most important opium-producing country in the world. It was under Taliban rule in 1999 that opium production reached its height with a 4,581-ton yield. Moreover, the fact that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden found a safe haven in that country raised concerns about the possible emergence of a more global and pernicious alliance between drug traffickers and terrorists.
But three years after the ouster of the Taliban, Afghanistan's opium production is expected to exceed even 1999's record high, thus raising concerns that the country is on the verge of becoming a "narco-state" and a bastion of "narco-terrorism." Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned of "mounting evidence of drug money being used to finance criminal activities, including terrorism," and declared that "fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism."
A few cases have been highlighted by the media as evidence of al-Qaeda tapping into the opium economy of Afghanistan, even though the claims in themselves do not constitute an argument for the existence of any organized form of "narco-terrorism."
Q: What does the term “narco-terrorism” mean?
Terrorist outfits are not less likely than others to at least try to benefit from such a resource, especially in a country like Afghanistan where the opium economy is estimated to equal half of the country's legitimate gross domestic product. However, for the term not to become hackneyed, it seems that "narco-terrorism" should not refer to terrorist groups that have been only partly funded by illegal drugs, but rather to identify organized narcotics traffickers who seek to affect the policies of a government by terrorist means.
Moreover, when one considers the direct and/or indirect involvement of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence in the drug trade, it further complicates the adequacy of a category such as "narco-terrorism" and would require comparing how different actors like resistance guerrillas, intelligence and counter-insurgency agencies, and terrorist organizations use the drug economy.
Pierre-arnaud is a research fellow at CNRS in France. He hosts the site www.geopium.org, which focuses on geopolitics of illicit drugs with a focus on Asia.
Q: From a bird's-eye view, how is the opium trade in Afghanistan linked with terrorism?
The financing of terrorism through illicit drug trafficking has been touted as a major problem since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Indeed, during the last decade, Afghanistan has been the most important opium-producing country in the world. It was under Taliban rule in 1999 that opium production reached its height with a 4,581-ton yield. Moreover, the fact that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden found a safe haven in that country raised concerns about the possible emergence of a more global and pernicious alliance between drug traffickers and terrorists.
But three years after the ouster of the Taliban, Afghanistan's opium production is expected to exceed even 1999's record high, thus raising concerns that the country is on the verge of becoming a "narco-state" and a bastion of "narco-terrorism." Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned of "mounting evidence of drug money being used to finance criminal activities, including terrorism," and declared that "fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism."
A few cases have been highlighted by the media as evidence of al-Qaeda tapping into the opium economy of Afghanistan, even though the claims in themselves do not constitute an argument for the existence of any organized form of "narco-terrorism."
Q: What does the term “narco-terrorism” mean?
Terrorist outfits are not less likely than others to at least try to benefit from such a resource, especially in a country like Afghanistan where the opium economy is estimated to equal half of the country's legitimate gross domestic product. However, for the term not to become hackneyed, it seems that "narco-terrorism" should not refer to terrorist groups that have been only partly funded by illegal drugs, but rather to identify organized narcotics traffickers who seek to affect the policies of a government by terrorist means.
Moreover, when one considers the direct and/or indirect involvement of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence in the drug trade, it further complicates the adequacy of a category such as "narco-terrorism" and would require comparing how different actors like resistance guerrillas, intelligence and counter-insurgency agencies, and terrorist organizations use the drug economy.
Q: Does al-Queda benefit from drug trafficking?
According to Western intelligence agencies, "recent busts have revealed evidence of al-Qaeda's ties to the trade." Such ties were inferred by various seizures of narcotics such as the one made by the U.S. Navy in the Arabian Sea on a small fishing boat aboard which "several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs" were found. In another case, the Kabul house of a drug trafficker was raided and a dozen satellite phones, used to call numbers "linked to suspected terrorists" in Turkey, the Balkans and Western Europe, were found. Hitherto, arguably the most serious case involving a connection between drug traffickers and "terrorists" is that revolving around the network of Haji Juma Khan, an Afghan national. According to some reports, western intelligence agencies are said to believe that Khan is the head of a heroin-trafficking organization that is a "principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists." Khan's boats would allegedly ship Afghan heroin out of the Pakistani port of Karachi and would return from the Middle East loaded with arms for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Mirwais Yasini, the head of Afghanistan's Counter Narcotics Directorate, who estimates that the Taliban and its allies derived more than $150 million from drugs in 2003, also alleges that there are "central linkages" between Khan, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.
The independent commission investigating the September 11th attacks recently declared that "the US government still has not determined with any precision how much al Qaeda raises or from whom, or how it spends its money." According to this report, al-Qaeda is mainly funded by rich individuals from the Persian Gulf and by some Islamic charities. Of greater interest, still, is the commission's assertion that there is "no substantial evidence that al Qaeda played a major role in the drug trade or relied on it as an important source of revenue either before or after 9/11."
Q: If it is true—if opium and illicit drug money serves al-Queda and the Taliban, do they benefit equally? Are they both equally involved?
If al-Qaeda is connected to the opium economy of Afghanistan, it would not be at the production level but higher up in the chain of drug processing and trafficking, most likely involving the protection of heroin laboratories and trafficking caravans. As for where the money generated from drug production and trafficking goes, it has always been divided iniquitously, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, among farmers who receive the smallest share; producers/warlords who condone or encourage production in their territory, and local and regional traffickers who get the biggest share.
Al-Qaeda is likely to have become involved in the drug trade after the ouster of the Taliban, who were after all levying taxes on the opium trade. It is also important to stress that it was the Taliban who benefited from al-Qaeda's funding and not the other way round. Indeed, as stated by the 9/11 commission, "prior to 9/11 the largest single al Qaeda expense was support for the Taliban, estimated at about $20 million per year."
Moreover, knowledgeable observers agree that the drug trade was at that time the Taliban's second source of revenue, estimated at $80 or $100 million in 1999. This reliable estimate casts serious doubt on allegations that the Taliban earned more from drugs in 2003 than in 1999 when opium production was higher and when they controlled 85% of Afghanistan. Besides, the 9/11 commission declared that "intelligence collection efforts have failed to corroborate rumours of current narcotic trafficking. In fact, there is compelling evidence the al Qaeda leadership does not like or trust those who today control the drug trade in Southwest Asia, and has encouraged its members not to get involved."Q: In linking drug trafficking to terrorism, is the connection really there—or is it fueled by political agenda?
The argument that the threat of narco-terrorism—whatever its definition—in Afghanistan and elsewhere is hyped by political and sectional interests rather than originating from hard intelligence is clearly not without foundation. Moreover, while there is little doubt that some proceeds of the illicit drug trade contribute partially to the funding of some terrorist outfits, drug trafficking is still far from being the main financing source of global terrorism. Indeed, it is clear that terrorists and drug traffickers have differing long-term goals, which should be considered in the methods used to counter both. Thus, fighting drug trafficking does not necessarily equate to fighting terrorism, even though "narco-terrorism," depicted as a threat by certain sectional interests, arguably legitimates and reinforces a failed global war on drugs.
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