Category Archives: Commentary

White House criticizes Democrats, gives GOP a pass

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BEIRUT — U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi came under fierce crit­i­cism from the White House for her pro­posed trip to Syria tomor­row, but, oddly, a Repub­li­can con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion yes­ter­day to Syria was given a free pass by the same White House.
As Dana Perino, White House spokes­woman, “said”:http://newsblaze.com/story/20070331153944tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html:

I do think that, as a gen­eral rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this appar­ent trip that she is going to be tak­ing — that we don’t think it’s a good idea. We think that some­one should take a step back and think about the mes­sage that it sends, and the mes­sage that it sends to our allies. I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what she’s hop­ing to accom­plish there. I know that Assad prob­a­bly really wants peo­ple to come and have a photo oppor­tu­nity and have tea with him, and have dis­cus­sions about where they’re com­ing from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Fair enough. But Reps. Robert Ader­holt, R-Ala., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Joe Pitts, R-Penn., “met with Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/04/02/international/i083853D66.DTL&type=printable
The Repub­li­cans released a state­ment that said, “We came because we believe there is an oppor­tu­nity for dia­logue … We are fol­low­ing in the lead of Ronald Rea­gan, who reached out to the Sovi­ets dur­ing the Cold War.“
_Quelle horreur!_ Dia­logue? Crick­ets were the only response from the White House.
Again in fair­ness, I spoke with a source at a West­ern embassy in Beirut about this, and the source said the Repub­li­cans had been dis­cour­aged from going, just as Pelosi and her del­e­ga­tion had been. But, the source said, if a Con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion is deter­mined to go to Dam­as­cus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut would help them out. (He asked for anonymity because he’s not autho­rized to talk to the press — he also com­mit­ted the unpar­don­able sin of call­ing Con­gress a “co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment.”)
Pelosi is the high­est U.S. offi­cial to visit Syria since Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in the mid-1990s.

John Bolton at it again

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For­mer U.N. envoy John Bolton is mak­ing the rounds of the talk shows — includ­ing The Daily Show with Jon Stew­art — mak­ing deeply dis­hon­est state­ments that include the whop­per that Pres­i­dent Bush never made the case that Iraq was an immi­nent threat. He’s also out charg­ing that regime change is nec­es­sary in Iran and boast­ing that the U.S. delayed the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbol­lah last year because it hoped the Jew­ish state would defeat the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group.
Who let this guy out of his cave?
He must have a book to sell, because I thought he had slunk off into igno­ble obscu­rity after his term at the U.N. expired and it was made clear to Bush that his re-appointment would not be approved. Appar­ently not.
His first state­ment, today, on Late Edi­tion with Wolf Blitzer, was the one that Bush never made the case that Iraq was an “immi­nent threat.” This is an old one, and one eas­ily dis­proved, for while Bush may not have uttered the words, “immi­nent,” “threat” and “Iraq” in the same sen­tence, the “first result”:http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/iraqimminent.html on “Google”:http://news.google.com/news?q=bush%20iraq%20imminent%20threat&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn reveals a _Los Ange­les Times” story after his 2003 State of the Union Address head­lined, “Bush Calls Iraq Immi­nent Threat.“
The Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress, a Demo­c­ra­tic think tank, has assem­bled a “col­lec­tion of quotes”:http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b24970.html from admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who affirmed that Iraq was, indeed, an “immi­nent threat.“
For example:

“The world is also unit­ing to answer the *unique and urgent threat* posed by Iraq whose dic­ta­tor has already used weapons of mass destruc­tion to kill thousands.”

– Pres­i­dent Bush, 11÷23÷02

“The Iraqi regime is a *seri­ous and grow­ing threat* to peace.”

– Pres­i­dent Bush, 10÷16÷02

“The Iraqi regime is a threat of *unique urgency*.”

– Pres­i­dent Bush, 10÷2÷02

There are oth­ers, from such Bush admin­is­tra­tion lumi­nar­ies such as Don­ald Rums­feld — “Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not immi­nent … I would not be so cer­tain” (9÷18÷02) — and offi­cial spokesman, Scott McClel­lan — “This is about immi­nent threat” (2÷10÷03).
So, once again, Bolton is just wrong: deeply, pro­foundly wrong. And so was I. From my perch out­side the United States — I’ve been away for sev­eral years now — I had the impres­sion that the neo-cons were dimin­ished or on the run, that the right-wing noise machine was wind­ing down and that Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ism had devel­oped a least a mod­icum of skep­ti­cism toward the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. (Thank­fully Jon Stewart’s inter­view with Bolton — while gra­cious — was at least more hard hit­ting.)
Turn­ing to Iran, he again goes on to say regime change is nec­es­sary and wanted by Ira­ni­ans. “In an interview”:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3380195,00.html with Ynet​news​.com, he says:

“I think there are a lot of Ira­ni­ans that are unsat­is­fied with the regime, I think that there is more unrest there than what peo­ple believe, I think that the gov­ern­ment is con­strained because of the fall of oil prices and there is mis­man­age­ment of the oil sec­tor of Iran’s econ­omy, they’ve got fewer resources to spread around to keep the pop­u­lous happy.
“There’s a large Iran­ian dias­pora that know what the sit­u­a­tion is. So, I think that there are a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties. It won’t nec­es­sar­ily be easy or quick, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t be pur­su­ing it.
“In think it’s very close to the point where Iran will have com­pletely indige­nous mas­tery over the fuel sites, that is to say the point in which stop­ping the things from the out­side will not be suf­fi­cient, so I don’t think we have much time. That’s why all these nego­ti­a­tions with the Euro­peans have played to Iran’s advan­tage, because time is on their side, time is not on our side.“
How can the Iran­ian regime be top­pled?
“Well, I wish we had started four years ago, but I think through inter­nal dis­sent and out­side pres­sure, those in gen­eral terms are what we have to do.” (Empha­sis added)

Are peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton still talk­ing about chang­ing the regime change in Iran? I mean, hon­estly? And lis­ten­ing to the Iran­ian dias­pora? That worked so well with the Iraqi dias­pora, as led by Ahmad Cha­l­abi.
And finally, Bolton admits to what every­one in Lebanon already knew: That the U.S. dragged its feet in call­ing for a cease-fire — allow­ing Lebanese civil­ians to be slaugh­tered — so that Israel might have some more time to fin­ish off Hezbol­lah.
As reported by the BBC, an early cease-fire, he said, would be “dan­ger­ous and mis­guided.“
It was only when it was obvi­ous that the Shi’ite group would be a tougher enemy to beat that ini­tially thought did Amer­ica sign on to a ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties.
Thank good­ness his time is up.

Jumblatt shoots his mouth off

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BEIRUT — Well, this is just great. Druze leader Walid Jum­blatt said that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Hezbol­lah was “impos­si­ble” because the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group wants to replace the cur­rent plu­ral­ist state and soci­ety of Lebanon.
This is bunk. I have my crit­i­cisms of Hezbol­lah, but they don’t want to take over the whole coun­try. For one, they don’t want the respon­si­bil­ity. They want to be a resis­tance move­ment fight­ing the Israelis; they don’t want to be in charge of fill­ing pot­holes in Tariq el-Jdeide. They want enough power within the cur­rent sys­tem to guar­an­tee the south remains theirs, so they can move freely in and out of it and keep their weapons, which is the real base of their power. Does any­one think Iran and Syria would con­tinue to finance them if they weren’t such an effec­tive tool against Israel? If Hezbol­lah had no weapons, then they have no money. If they have no money, they have no abil­ity to sup­port their social ser­vices, which are a strong draw to Lebanon’s poorer Shi’ite pop­u­la­tion. With­out that loy­alty, they’re noth­ing — and Hezbol­lah knows it. As Hezbol­lah sees it, they _have_ to pro­tect their weapons if they want to remain polit­i­cally viable.
But back to Jum­blatt (or “Jumbo” as he’s affec­tion­ately know to local jour­nal­ists). He’s long had a rep­u­ta­tion as a dial-a-quote politician/warlord, but he rep­re­sents one of the small­est com­mu­ni­ties in Lebanon. (Druze make up maybe 5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion.)
What’s dan­ger­ous about his com­ments, how­ever, is that he’s lis­tened to by the rank and file of March 14, and his com­ments can harden atti­tudes to any kind of com­pro­mise — which is sorely needed these days. Hezbol­lah ain’t going away, and it has to be inte­grated into the Lebanese polit­i­cal sys­tem some­how — fully and non­vi­o­lently. Jumblatt’s com­ments make that more dif­fi­cult.
At any rate, his com­ments came in the wake of the dis­turb­ing dis­cov­ery of two caches of explo­sives and det­o­na­tion fuses scat­tered around Beirut and the rest of the coun­try. Per­haps some­one was just try­ing to dump them, but it’s set the place on edge. Care­less com­ments from polit­i­cal lead­ers are not the best way to calm the situation.

A response to the Jerusalem Post

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BEIRUT — A response is in order to the Jeru­asalem Post’s story today, in which Michael Tot­ten is inter­viewed and my name comes up in the arti­cle.
The _Post_ says, “Chris Allbrit­ton, who some­times works for Time Mag­a­zine, briefly men­tioned on his blog dur­ing the war that sev­eral jour­nal­ists he knows were threat­ened by Hizbul­lah because of what they were writ­ing.“
Let’s look at what I “actu­ally wrote”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/07/tales_from_the_south_sort_of.php:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbol­lah is launch­ing Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s pass­port, and they’ve already has­sled a num­ber of us and threat­ened one.

In a “follow-up post”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php, I expanded on this, as this one com­ment was taken com­pletely the wrong way by many, many right-wing blogs and pub­li­ca­tions (Such as Totten’s and the JPost.)
The begin­ning of my response was this:

Let’s set aside that the Lebanese Inter­nal Secu­rity also has pho­to­copies of our pass­ports. The rea­son for the has­sling and the threat was that a reporter had filmed or described either a launch­ing site or Hezbol­lah posi­tions. (I’m not sure which.) To the best of my knowl­edge, that’s been the extent of the has­sling. I’m going to get in trou­ble for this, but I think it’s a rea­son­able restric­tion. This is the exact same restric­tions placed on jour­nal­ists by the Israeli army and by the Amer­i­cans in Iraq. I don’t think threat­en­ing jour­nal­ists is cool at all, and it cer­tainly doesn’t endear me to them, but that has been the extent of Hezbollah’s inter­fer­ence in our coverage.

You can read the rest of it, and I hope you do, “here”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php.

Why didn’t you say so?

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TIME Mag­a­zine is run­ning what it calls a “full-throated” cri­tique of the Iraq war by Marine Lt. Gen. Greg New­bold (Ret.) He’s one of two gen­er­als who opposed the plans before the war, call­ing the Iraq war “unnec­es­sary” and a dis­trac­tion from Afghanistan. As he says, “I would gladly have traded my general’s stars for a captain’s bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Tal­iban and al-Qaeda.“
So opposed was he that he resigned his posi­tion as direc­tor of oper­a­tions for the Join Chiefs four months before the war … and then kept his mouth shut until now.

I am dri­ven to action now by the mis­steps and mis­judg­ments of the White House and the Pen­ta­gon, and by my many painful vis­its to our mil­i­tary hos­pi­tals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the bro­ken bod­ies but unbro­ken spir­its of sol­diers, Marines and corps­men return­ing from this war. The cost of flawed lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to be paid in blood. The will­ing­ness of our forces to shoul­der such a load should make it a sacred oblig­a­tion for civil­ian and mil­i­tary lead­ers to get our defense pol­icy right. They must be absolutely sure that the com­mit­ment is for a cause as hon­or­able as the sacrifice.

Well, gee, for­give me if I don’t think he should be given a lot of credit. If he was so opposed to the war, why did he stay silent? Why did he sit by for three years while oth­ers “paid in blood” for what he feels is a flawed pol­icy? It’s easy to be opposed to the war now. Why come out now? A clue is here:

Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice’s recent state­ment that “we” made the “right strate­gic deci­sions” but made thou­sands of “tac­ti­cal errors” is an out­rage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strat­egy by shift­ing the blame for fail­ure to those who have been res­olute in fight­ing. The truth is, our forces are suc­cess­ful in spite of the strate­gic guid­ance they receive, not because of it.

It’s a valiant sen­ti­ment to sup­port the men and women fight­ing the war, and his cri­tiques of Condi’s state­ment and Rumsfeld’s micro­manag­ing is dead on. But we’ve heard all this before. Any­one fol­low­ing the war can see it’s being run poorly from the big office at the Pen­ta­gon and that the civil­ian lead­er­ship has done every­thing to push blame else­where. Again, why now? Why didn’t you say some­thing ear­lier, Lt. Gen. New­bold, once you were *retired* and could with­out fear of retal­i­a­tion? You blame oth­ers for timid­ity or thick-headedness. “A few of the most senior offi­cers actu­ally sup­ported the logic for war. Oth­ers were sim­ply intim­i­dated, while still oth­ers must have believed that the prin­ci­ple of obe­di­ence does not allow for respect­ful dis­sent.“
And, incred­i­bly, you go on to blame Con­gress and the the media.

Mem­bers of Con­gress — from both par­ties — defaulted in ful­fill­ing their con­sti­tu­tional respon­si­bil­ity for over­sight. Many in the media saw the warn­ing signs and heard cau­tion­ary tales before the inva­sion from wise observers like for­mer Cen­tral Com­mand chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insuf­fi­cient weight to their views. These are the same news orga­ni­za­tions that now down­play both the heroic and the con­struc­tive in Iraq.

Nice, cheap shots. Repub­li­cans con­trolled Con­gress and were in lock­step with the Bushies. The Dems, as minori­ties, have almost no power to exer­cise over­sight. A high-profile res­ig­na­tion of — oh, I don’t know — maybe the Joint Chiefs’ direc­tor of oper­a­tions might have pro­vided them some polit­i­cal cover to get some­thing done. And, gee, maybe it might have got­ten some atten­tion from the media, who then might have given Zinni and oth­ers’ more weight. And now you say we down­play the heroic and the con­struc­tive. “Is this the kind of hero­ism you mean?”:http://www.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,1174682,00.html
Don’t lec­ture us about hero­ism and con­struc­tive roles to play, Lt. Gen. New­bold *(Ret.)* You could have done some­thing then, and you didn’t. You could have been a pow­er­ful sym­bol, even if you would have taken a lot of flak from your old bosses. You say offi­cers swore an oath to the Con­sti­tu­tion, not the men appointed above them, yet you betrayed it with your three-year silence. It’s been said that for evil to tri­umph, all it takes is for good men to do noth­ing. Well, you did noth­ing. You don’t get to be con­sid­ered good now.