The Next Campaign Heats Up

Almost five years ago to the day, then-White House chief-of-staff Andrew Card noted that, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

The Iraq War is not a 'new product', but it clear that a new campaign has begun to try and continue the Administration's efforts there. Yesterday, after months of denying a parallel between Iraq and Vietnam, the President in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, embraced the connection:

Finally, there’s Vietnam. This is a complex and painful subject for many Americans...Then as now, people argued the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.

The argument that America’s presence in Indochina was dangerous had a long pedigree. In 1955, long before the United States had entered the war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called, "The Quiet American." It was set in Saigon, and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism -- and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

After America entered the Vietnam War, the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. As a matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people...

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

The President's personal relationship with Vietnam -- and for that matter, that of VP Cheney -- makes the parallel with Vietnam a remarkable one. And he seems to be implying that the killing at the end of the Vietnam conflict could have been avoided if the US had committed to a permanent and on-going presence there, as we did in Korea. Gen. David Patraeus is scheduled to speak, on September 11th no less, to Congress on the status of Iraq. The next (marketing) campaign for Iraq has begun.

Dick Lugar, Meet David Stockman

Reliable GOP Senator -- and respected foreign policy mind(*) -- Richard Lugar raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill yesterday when he essentially declared that he has run of patience with the current strategy:

'In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,' Lugar, R-Ind., said in a Senate floor speech. 'Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.'

While Lugar's statement is probably the third or fourth biggest political news of the week (after, in no particular order, Dick Cheney's declaration of the Office of the Vice President as being a de facto fourth branch of government; cloture vote on the immigration law; the Washington Post's disclosures about Cheney's procedural end-arounds in the White House, and news about the 2008 GOP candidates (Fred Thompson's lobbying past, Mitt Romney's investment in his own campaign, Rudy's problems with the Catholic Church)), it was not missed by the White House. Apparently, Lugar has been 'invited ' to a sit-down -- or perhaps a visit to David Stockman's woodshed -- at the White House with NSA Stephen Hadley later in the week. No word on whether a 'surge' will be applied to Lugar himself.

(*-Ohio Senator George Voinovich echoed Lugar's remarks today, but the bet here is that Lugar's comments will carry more weight.)

The Battle of Algiers

When one watches the "The Battle of Algiers," it is hard to believe that the issues identified in the movie -- terrorism, reprisal, torture, martial law, Islamic resistance, and the clash of civilizations -- was not more well-known (or more widely-screened) before the war in Iraq. The Pentagon apparently watched it in during 2003 (according to the trailer above), but by that time, the policymakers had already determined to go to war.

(Also interesting: music for "La Battaglia di Algeri" was by Ennio Morricone.)

"Enhanced Interrogation"

Andrew Sullivan's must-read post yesterday on 'enhanced interrogation' techniques has resonated throughout the blogosphere, and for good reason. The very euphemism -- "enhanced interrogation" -- was apparently coined in the late 1930s by a Nazi party that was concerned (at least at that time) about public appearances:

Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president.

To his credit, Sullivan has been writing about torture for some time, and taking on the Administration's position. His post focuses on a post-WWII trial in Norway, wherein 3 Nazis were convicted for the war-crimes of 'enhanced interrogation', aka torture.

Sullivan concludes:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

How did NYC's Emergency Center Get Sited?

More controversy on the decision back in the late 1990s to locate NYC's Emergency Management Center in the World Trade Center (Building 7), despite the fact that the WTC had been a previous terrorist target (in 1993).

Today's Times has a long piece on Jerome Hauer, a former Giuliani confidante who has left the inner circle and recently been interviered for a book about Rudy's emergency preparedness. (The title of the book speaks as the authors' perspective: "Grand Illusions.")

From the NYT article:

One of Mr. Hauer’s first tasks was to find a home for an emergency command center to replace the inadequate facilities at police headquarters. Mr. Hauer suggested an office complex in downtown Brooklyn as a “good alternative” in a memorandum.

But Mr. Hauer said the mayor insisted instead on a site within walking distance of City Hall. Given that concern and others, Mr. Hauer said he decided that offices on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, next to the twin towers and just a few blocks from City Hall, seemed the best choice.

The site was immediately controversial because it was part of the trade center, which had already been the location of a truck bomb attack in 1993. City officials, though, including Mr. Hauer, have long defended their decision, even after the command center had to be evacuated during the 2001 terror attack.

Last week, in an interview with Fox News, Mr. Giuliani again faced questions about the site. He put responsibility for selecting it on Mr. Hauer.

“Jerry Hauer recommended that as the prime site and the site that would make the most sense,” Mr. Giuliani said. “It was largely on his recommendation that that site was selected.”

Mr. Hauer took immediate exception to that account in interviews. “That’s Rudy’s own reality that he lives in,” he said. “It is not, in fact, the truth.”

With the GOP campaign heating up (witness McCain's sharp comments on Romney yesterday), it seems likely that Rudy's opponents will be returning to the preparations for 9/11 before too long.

Jack Bauer for President?

The Republican debate was interesting political theater. The format was surprisingly good, with a series of somewhat related questions asked in sequence to the candidates. The Fox reporters were able to induce some back-and-forth, some follow-up, and even some criticism of 'fellow Republicans.'

In the end, you got the sense that McCain felt that the night seemed to go badly. While his opponents were busy trying to spin unworkable fantasies about who would cut taxes the sharpest, and who could act more Reagan-like, McCain was left trying to justify his votes -- and bills -- that passed Congress and became the law of the land.

But the crux of the debate was in the last 15 minutes. Fox's Brit Hume spun a scenario where the US was already the victim of one terrorist incident, and yet had captured an operative who seemed to have information about a forthcoming attack. Virtually each of the candidates was falling all over themselves to prove that they would be tough enough -- "tell the CIA: whatever it takes"..."I will take the heat"..."I'd approve enhanced interrogation techniques." At one point Tom Tancredo stated the obvious subtext: he'd get Jack Bauer in the room, and let him work over the terrorist. After all, it works every Monday night on Fox.

Yet the man who has actually seen shots fired in anger -- and indeed has been the victim of torture himself -- stuck to his guns: no to torture, because it doesn't work, and because the consequences of such action on our captured troops is so grave.

"We could never gain as much we would gain from that torture as we lose in world opinion. We do not torture people," he said. "It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know."

Yet when the debate was over, even McCain seemed to move away from his moral position. No to waterboarding (invented, he noted, by the Spanish Inquisition), he said on the spin session with Hannity and Colmes, but 'you have to do what is necessary.'

Giuliani, speaking on the same post-debate session, was even more interesting. During the debate, he staked out his bona fides on security, claiming that 'no one on the stage knew more about it' than he did. (Which begs the questions of, among others, why the City's disaster center was located where it was, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, or how he came to hire Bernie Kerik.) During the discussion on 'enhanced interrogation', no one was more enthusiastic about giving the CIA (or whomever, as Rudy seemed unsure) 'the tools' they need.

In the post-debate spin, Giuliani defended his position (along with his attack on Congressman Ron Paul's claim that the 9/11 attacks were caused by US bombing of Iraq, among other places). Giuliani said: "When you raise you right hand, and take the oath of office as President, you swear to preserve and defend, um, the United States of America."

Well, not exactly, Rudy.

Romney on Osama

In an Associated Press story last night, Governor Mitt Romney apparently discounted the importance of catching Osama bin Laden:

[Romney] said the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said.

What is Victory?

Tony Lake's op-ed in the Globe today focuses on what has gone wrong in Iraq:

[He] asked why some who supported the war were arguing that we must persist because we could not afford another "defeated army " of the kind we had seen after Vietnam. Here is what I told him:

Their argument is wrong in fact and unintentionally unfair to our troops. Our Army was never defeated in Vietnam. They were not driven out of Vietnam. They won their battles. The fault lay not in their performance, but in their civilian leaders in Washington. They were given an unattainable goal. "Success" in Vietnam could only be achieved if we could leave behind a Vietnamese government that could survive on its own -- a political goal. And even after the longest war in our history, it was unattainable. Lacking enough support by its people, the government in Saigon became more and more dependent on the United States -- further limiting its political support among a highly nationalistic Vietnamese people.

Lake was Clinton's National Security Adviser, and served in Vietnam with the State Department.

And Now Pakistan?

Yesterday was a huge news day, as commentators tried to unpack the President's speech from Wednesday, and absorb Hill testimony from Sec of State Condi Rice and Sec of Defense Robert Gates, together with Congressional reaction to the surge/escalation itself.

However, lost in the US coverage of the events was disturbing testimony from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte accusing Pakistan of turning a blind eye to al Qaeda's 'rebuilding' within that country's borders. So far, only the BBC is seeming to feature the story prominently, with this comment:

The BBC's James Westhead in Washington says that until now the US has not been so specific about where it believes al-Qaeda's leaders are hiding.

Such a claim will be embarrassing for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who Mr Negroponte described as a key partner in America's war on terror, our correspondent says.

Putting pressure on Pakistan (which has been described as a key ally in the region since 9/11) would seem to be risky when so many other parts are moving at the same time.

Important (and Sobering) Post-Christmas Reading

In the pre-holiday rush of parties, presents, and preparations, important articles and news items are sometimes missed (and of course, sometimes meant to be missed.) One such article that I got a chance to read last week was William Langewiesche's "How to Get a Nuclear Bomb" in the December Atlantic.

Although mostly focused on the vulnerabilities of the West to a determined terrorist, the piece also contains a concise summary of where we are in the "Long War":

The danger comes from a direction unforeseen in 1945, that this technology might now pass into the hands of the new stateless guerrillas, the jihadists, who offer none of the targets that have underlain our nuclear peace—no permanent infrastructure, no capital city, no country called home. The nuclear threat posed by the jihadists first surfaced in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s, and took full form after the fall of the World Trade Center. With so little to fear of nuclear retaliation, and having already panicked the United States into historic policy blunders, these are the rare people in a position to act.

(Emphasis added)