Nice roundup.

Surprised you missed "From the Top" in today's WaPo Outlook section. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40195-2003Dec5.html)

Worthy of a read on how military commanders measure their success in occupied Iraq.

SP

My bust Andrew,

I missed it by jumping right down to the meat! For shame!

My humblest apologies.

SP

Thanks for this.

Why the hell hasn't the CERP program been a top priority? Am I the only one who thinks it ought to be given much more money, and fast?

RE: Israel/Palestine-
Here's an interesting Wolf Blitzer interview with King Abdullah of Jordan.

No, I'm right there with you. CERP ought to be given much more money, and fast.

Nice pics of mass graves. Does this mean that we are now going to deal with all those other nations were such attrocities have (or are) taking place?

Now can you show me the picture of WMDs?? Y'know-the ones Bush said was the reason we were going to war? Or would that only be an impeachable offense if Clinton said it?? In the meantime could you make a post when they find Bush's credibility? I really want to know.

Wow, that's some pretty desperate flailing, "Anyone".

Regarding CERP:

Here's an interesting Newsweek article about Tom Petraeus, the general who by all accounts ought to be holding Paul Bremer's job.

Petraeus and his troops have produced a textbook example of waging peace, empowering the civilian populace, repairing the economy, even sending local kids to summer camp. Mosul had the first functioning city council in post-Saddam Iraq. ...
In the past six weeks, 31 of Petraeus’s soldiers have died in action, including one who was killed last Friday in a direct mortar hit on division headquarters.
...
The 101st has tried to do things right. The city had endured weeks of chaos before the Americans arrived. Four rival leaders were claiming to be mayor. Looters, revenge killers and roving armed militias owned the streets. To impose order with a minimum of bloodshed, Petraeus used a massive —airlift, bringing in some 1,600 troops within a few hours. They reached out to the locals by patrolling the streets on foot rather than in tanks and armored vehicles. The general, a veteran of nation-building programs in Haiti and Bosnia, personally worked to broker a power-sharing agreement among local leaders representing Kurds, Christians and Turkomans as well as Arabs. The 101st also opened 400 schools by using $35 million in “commander’s emergency-response funds” confiscated from the previous government, and disbursed a total of $155 million in U.S. aid for local farmers and big infrastructure projects.
...
Now the cash is gone, and the first installments of Congress’s new appropriations have yet to arrive. (emphasis mine)

Coincidence? Of the $87 billion request, only about $180 million went toward these commander's emergency-response funds (CERP); most of the money instead went to large contractors operating in a tightly-controlled, top-down fashion. I think they got it backwards.

• The money empowers Iraqis to rebuild their own little piece of the country, building civil infrastructure in the process.
• The money is a useful way to, in effect, buy the support of important community leaders. Generals like Petraeus, along with his troops, probably has a better sense of what is needed in Mosul than the CPA in Baghdad.
• Iraqis are much less likely to support attacks on their own people than on foreign contractors.

should read "civic infrastructure"

Hmm, ending NATO is a good idea. In fact, I am sure that Rumsfeld's recent "non-criticism" of the creation of a EU military planning cell, etc. is largely due to his desire to move the US out of its bases in Western Europe and into other areas of the world.

As this is the case, one has to ask why NATO is neccessary from the standpoint of Europe?

(a) Dependence on the U.S. makes Europe weak; I think this creates a lot of problems by itself.

(b) Europe should be able to police itself and care for its own security and not depend on the US to do so; we shouldn't be at the shims of a potentially fickle American President or public in other words.

© European weakness opens Europe up for attacks that US will likely be unwilling at least at first to respond to (this goes with the issue of potential fickleness above).

(d) We cannot always count on the US to be a dominant military power.

(e) Other areas of the world will challenge US military hegemony; it is best that we not be left weak in a multi-polar world.

Europe has the ability, if it so desires, to have a large, effecient military (in fact, the building blocks of such can already be found in the UK and French militaries); technology-wise, in areas of civilian technology that mirror military technology, Europe is a world leader in aircraft design and production, civilian information gaterhing technologies, etc., so it would not be hard to turn these into our favor in a military sense.

Re: mass graves - if that were a significant cassus belli, Saddam's ill-treatment of Iraqis and general thuggery, one wonders why the US isn't sending a few hundred thousand soldiers to the Congo. Estimates of deaths there in the past few years range from 2 million to 8 million; its an episode of genocide not seen since WWII. Or is that the lives of Iraqis are more important than the lives of Congolese?

And before you return fire with (a) there were multiple rationales, (b) we couldn't just stand by, etc., I think one might reflect on the fact that there are also multiple rationales for invading the Congo, and that the same question "We can't just standby" can also said of the Congo.

Hey AnyoneButBush - Want buried WMD? Try *this*. They found something like 2 dozen of these. They found these only because one of the tails was sticking out of the ground. Notice the horizon in the background. Do you think there might be something else out there, or have we found everything? Of course a bomber is not considered a WMD, but try telling that to one of the 300,000 Iranians that died.

Saddam's one and only hope now is that a Democrat gets back into power and decides to pay a peace dividend to his constituency in some new spending program. The first WMD that is found is worth at least 10 percentage points of approval rating to Bush. Saddam is not going to look kindly on whoever lets one be found.

Regarding preventing attrocities, it wouldn't be hard for the industrialized world to make that happen if countries like France and Germany weren't more worried about their oil contracts than people when deciding whether or not to help us.

What are the multiple rationales for invading Congo, Jean? I say that if it's in our interest, and morally permissible because it saves innocents and spreads liberty, then let's do it, just like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jon Cohen,

What oil contracts? Especially regarding Germany?

Jim,

To end a genocide; to keep uranium out of the hands of "evil doers"; to staunch the weapons trade in Africa, that in turn aids terrorists; etc.

JB, why don't the French and Belgians take care of the Congo?

So Jean, have a few spare divisions available to pull this off?

BTW, did you ever criticize the invasion of Iraq by using the "we don't have enough troops" argument?

I think that anyone who supported the war and saw the pictures of limbless Iraqi children had to ask themselves some pretty tough questions.

In the same vein, anyone who opposed the war and opposes the occupation needs to take a look at the mass graves and ask themselves a similar question.

JB- Contracts? How about *these ones?

That took 60 seconds on google.

JB- Contracts? How about *these ones?

That took 60 seconds on google.

You know, the Group Blog awards we're receiving and being nominated for really have to include our comments section as well. It enhances the blog

...and praktike, I've added your link, with credit, to today's report.

Jon Cohen,

In other words, you don't have anything to say. Unsubstantiated reports of "contracts" are not much in the way of proof in other words. You argumen strikes me as similar to those prattle on about Haliburtin and "no blood for oil."

Patrick Chester,

"BTW, did you ever criticize the invasion of Iraq by using the 'we don't have enough troops' argument?"

No.

Praktike,

I thought America's roll was to end tyranny everywhere. Why are you shirking that role now? Something is rotten in the "mass graves" argument, and it happens to be the sanctimonious attitude of certain Americans.

Jean Bart: Something is rotten in the "mass graves" argument, and it happens to be the sanctimonious attitude of certain Americans.

Jean, the argument is sound, and not sanctimonious. It is that since the liberation saved Iraq from oppression and mass murder, it was morally permissible. (Since it was in our interest, it was also rational for us to do.)

Stating that we were right to liberate the Iraqis people does not commit us to liberating every oppressed people on earth. You're confusing what we have a right to do with what we're obligated to do. We have a right to liberate people. We are not always obligated to do so, though sometimes we are. The appeal to humanitarian reasons sometimes justifies a right, but not an obligation, to invade. In other cases it may prove an obligation to invade. Don't confuse the two kinds of case.

Apparently Jean Bart wants to apply the "cookies in kindegarten" rule to liberation from tyranny: if you don't bring enough for everyone, you can't give them to anyone.

Jean to be consistent you'd have to apply your rule to Kosovo and Bosnia, right? I mean we can't stop ethnic cleansing everywhere, so why there?

Thanks, Joe. It seems this addition has sparked the interest of blog kingmaker Glenn Reynolds as well...

JB - Here is more authoritative information on *pre-war trade with Iraq*. It is a 4/03 report from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. Page 12 shows $86 million in exports from Germany to Iraq in 1998. The only countries higher are France, Australia, Jordan, US, and China. Page 16 describes the Iraqi debt: "Iraq is
believed to owe France about $5 billion to $7 billion, although the figure might be
as low as $2.25 billion, and Russia is owed almost $8 billion. Germany is owed
about $4 billion. Some press reports say Iraq owes at least $1.1 billion to South
Korean companies. Poland is owed about $1 billion."

Page 16 also lists the countries that held oil contracts that were contingent on sanctions being lifted. Although Russia and France are probably the major players, this lends considerable credence to the evidence I cited earlier.

So while Russia may have had more explicit contigent deals with Iraq, the greater prosperity in Germany suggests that it should contribute more towards fighting attrocities.

Regarding your remark on how my comment was similar to the prattle about "no blood for oil," that was intentional so as to suggest that the prattle has it exactly backwards.

Honestly, I think domestic politics had a lot more to do with everyone except Russia (who does not want low-extraction-cost Iraqi oil dumped on the world market). If you don't accept the neo-Marxist view that we invaded Iraq for Halliburton, how can you argue that the Europeans' decisions were based on greed?

praktike,

Well, do you think that Saddam's financing of George Galloway was the only instance of purchased politicians? Linking the Iraq invasion to Halliburton involves tenuous accusations with no documented money trail. The Galloway incident provides a documented money trail, and implies the existence of others, so I think allegations of specifically French backing based on greed is more plausible than "parallel" theories about Halliburton.

Sam, got a link?

praktike will this one do? Mind you after admitting to it he's now suing the telegraph for libel, which goes to either prove the guy is daft or a bit delusional or perhaps waaaaaaaay too much of a politician.

I'm confused. Isn't Britain part of the coalition. What does this have to do with oil contracts?

Geneva = Suicide

http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief3-9.htm

If tomorrow morning I saw a cancelled check from Halliburton to Bush with "Iraq" in the memo section, it would not change the fact that liberating Iraq was the right thing to do. It doesn't matter that we can't free everyone on Earth right now. I have to ask why then did France and Germany not work with us, especially given the history of those two countries within the lifespan of people now living.

Perhaps they wanted to minimize American hegemony. But what they have accomplished is to solidify it. Any everyone knew what has happened would happen, just as the Bush administration warned them that it would.

"No blood for oil" makes no sense because Iraqi oil was already for sale at prices well below the cost of an invasion.

So what I am left with is that like in America, there are many people in France and Germany that are prepared to believe the worst of America if their leaders tell them so. Had the leaders of France and Germany stood up and said, "It's our turn now," the majority would have been in favor of the war. The evidence of corruption being filed against the leadership France I think settle the issue in that country.

Perhaps the leadership of Germany did just see an easy way to win an election. But the price they have paid is yet another generation of guilt.

1. What Schroeder did during his campaign was shameful, but he wouldn't have done if it wasn't politic. But Germany is helping us now in material ways.

2. I don't know who here is making the "no blood for oil" argument. Not me. I actually think protecting our oil supplies is a vital interst, but the calculus was different in this case than in Gulf War I. Note that turning up the spigots in Iraq benefits the French and German economies just as much as it does ours, as it lowers the price of oil worldwide.

3. Note that in Spain, public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to the war.

What do I make of all this? That the argument that France and Germany were against the war because of oil contracts is just as specious an argument that the US was for the war because of reconstruction contracts.

RE: France's motives... equating the 2 arguments is unreasonable. "Blood for oil" makes no sense in the U.S. case, but may make a great deal of sense vis-a-vis France.

The short answer to the neo-Marxist argument, praktike... if the US really wanted Saddam's oil, it would have simply done a deal like the French did, and looked the other way while the mass graves filled up.

To its credit, the USA declined to repeat its shameful performance of 1991, at a direct cost of $100 billion+ for NOT acting like the French. Odds of recouping that, even if they took ALL of Iraq's oil production for the next decade? Zero. Even the Soviet Union had a better understanding of profit than this.

The only reasonable way to square that circle is to scrap the rationale of profit entirely, and look for other motives by the USA.

The French, on the other hand, knew that their oil contracts were concessionary. That was standard opinion among oil industry experts. Given their dirigiste economic policies, ties to large French corporations are actually closer than one finds in comprable U.S. corporations.

Now consider that given France's consistent support of Saddam over the years, it didn't take a genius to see that many of its contracts would vanish if Saddam did, repudiated by the Iraqis if not the Americans. After all, Chirac et. al. knew perfectly well what was going on in Iraq with the mass graves et. al. - and how Iraqis would feel about France's long-standing support for this mass murderer.

To which add the concept of "odious debt" (invented, deliciously, by a Frenchman) in light Saddam's outstanding loans to France. Again, even under normal circumstances loan forgiveness is a normal result when regimes change and a cripping mess must be cleaned up.

That's a heavy price to pay - and only Saddam's demise will trigger it.

We're looking to explain a French policy of active support for and collaboration with Saddam, one which strongly alienates America when avowed neutrality would have satisfied domestic opinion and avoided the consequences to its U.S. relationship. "Curious" is a restrained way to describe this.

There are 2 reasonable explanations for this massive moral and diplomatic blunder. [1] Extreme delusion; [2] An attempt to avoid paying this price by backing their client Saddam at all costs, no matter how many Iraqis (or Americans) it eventually killed.

Or perhaps a combination of both. But the combination of France's sunk interests (much greater than the USA) and its actions vis-a-vis Iraq (which make sense as a profit-maximizing play, and little else) make these possibilities reasonable on their face.

As for the Haliburton argument re: the USA, wouldn't it have been just as easy to set in motion huge, vote-getting domestic infrastructure projects if that was the desired end? Or set up foreign aid projects building pipelines in Russia, in return for progress in other fields? And of course, there's Robin Burk's series here describing how complex and many-layered the whole military procurement process in Iraq really is. Again, there were easier and more politically "profitable" ways to do this.

Again, therefore, "profit" fails - and this was clear before the war began. Even if one accepts these wacky motives (oil, Haliburton) as possible, therefore, America's actions make no sense. Not that this will stop those of ill-intent, like Jean Bart and the neo-marxists, from making such arguments. Hatred is not rational - yet it's all they have.

Unlike the U.S. situation, however, economic rationales have at least the potential to explain France's continued and unwavering sanction and support of state terrorism and mass murder, even at the cost of important diplomatic relationships. The case is circumstantial, but very strong given France's consistency over the last 30 years.

Dismissal of that case is neither reasonable, nor wise. Proof is rarely available in international relations, but what we have here is one case that's patently ridiculous on its face - and another that seems to be worth considering as a serious possibility.

praktike,

My apologies for no link...my HTML skills are not very good. Joe Katzman's response was basically what I was driving at.

Valentine, thanks for the link. :)

I wasn't saying that Galloway demonstrates anything about Britain's motives. Galloway was on the fringes of Parliament, not a major player. However, the story does demonstrate that Saddam used kickbacks to Western politicians in an attempt to protect his regime. As Joe pointed out, the oil contracts between Saddam and the French were concessionary to the point of being ridiculously obvious bribes. My point is that I think it's reasonable to detect a pattern of corruption here, while a parallel pattern of corruption involving Bush and Halliburton is unsupported by any evidence.

Again, it's the macroeconomic effects of cheap and stable oil prices that matter. Not profits. But I'm not saying we invaded for oil this time--we fought Gulf War I for oil, though, and I had no problem with that, because there was a huge risk of oil price shocks. Clearly, we fought to change the overall equation in the M.E.

As for France, I guess I'll retreat from "I don't believe it" to "I don't know." Kudos to JK.

I do think France's reasons for opposing the war and actively working to undermine us go far beyond profit motives, and must be considered in both historical and geo-strategic terms. Aside from playing to latent (and not-so-latent)domestic anti-Americanism, I think Chirac has a grand vision of restoring French relevance in the world, and he's very interested in establishing Europe as a counterweight to America.

Remember, inter-European politics have always taken place largely in an amoral space. They don't understand America's injection of moralism into foreign policy; they tend to see right and wrong in procedural terms, not in absolute terms.

The dirty little secret of American foreign policy is that to the large part of the world, we're realists too.

Most of us just don't know it.

I'm divided... should I encourage you Yanks to finally BE the realists everyone thinks you are, and behave that way by being bigger hardasses, consistently?

Or should I encourage you to leave the rest of the world alone in this belief, because then they won't see the quiet but devastating sucker punch of idealism coming when you finally get serious about using it?

Realism is a relic of the cold war. Back when she was just a superpower, America had to cut deals with some low-lifes because of constraints of not drawing in the Soviets and thus triggering a major war in Afghanistan, Iran v. Iraq, etc. Now that America is a hyperpower and 9/11 has provided domestic willpower, I don't think we will have to cut many deals like that anymore.

That's important because what animates alot of opposition to the US is memory of the CIA operations up until the 70s and support for brutal anti-communist forces in the 80s. As those become more distant memories, I think the animosity against the US will fade in the wake of what we are doing in places like Afghanistan and Iraq now.

No deals with low-lifes...hmmm...

Jon, you are deluded. I'm not saying we shouldn't do these things, because they're clearly necessary. Maybe you feel squeamish about our backroom dealings, so like many Americans, you pretend they don't exist.

These are our new friends:

Afghanistan
Northern Alliance: scumbags, to a man.

Pakistan
Musharref: military dictator
ISI: Complicit in terror

Iraq
Mukhabarat (e.g. Hijazi): murderers and thugs
anti-Iranian terror groups

Uzbekistan
Brutal dictator famous for boiling people alive, bizarre conversion of currency system to base 9

Saudi Arabia
Bankrollers of terrorism worldwide

China
Repressive communist dictatorship; given free rain to crush ethnic dissent

Russia
-Criminal oligarchy that just elected a national socialist majority parliament
-Free reign to conduct incredibly inhumane bombardments in Chechnya

Should I continue?

Fighting terrorism by any means necessary has replaced fighting communism by any means necessary Our allies have shifted, but our hard-nosed realism masked by Wilsonian rhetoric has not. As in the previous struggle, we will attempt to build democracies in strategic regions (e.g. ME), but we won't apply do so uniformly around the world.

Again, by and large these are necessary compromises. And I know it feels good to believe that America is always being nicey-nice.

But I prefer to keep my blinders off.

praktike,

Our new friends? Sure, we have diplomatic contact with each of those countries, and recognize them as the respective governments of their territories, but calling them "friends" is a bit over the top, I think. I'm not denying our support of, say, Musharraf in Pakistan, but that's an alliance of convenience (*cough* realism cough) rather than unqualified support.

I agree that the end of the Cold War was not the death of realism. However, I do think the end of the Cold War and our current hyperpower status has loosened the realism-based constraints on our idealism. Fortunately, the primary thrust of our foreign policy these days has unified the demands of realism and idealism, which I think is a rare thing in history.