This week, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush stood up before the national con­ven­tion of the Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars and unspooled a whole lot of odd analo­gies to make the case that we need to stay in Iraq for… well, for­ever, I guess. I’ve not been in Iraq for more than a year but it’s still a cen­tral focus of my report­ing here in the Mid­dle East. So, this week, let’s step away from Lebanon — which is depress­ing any­way — and focus on Bush and his fan­tasies about Mesopotamia.
Because some days he makes it just too easy.

Bush’s VFW speech has received a lot of ink. Everyone’s been report­ing on it, but what’s bizarre is that Bush was point­ing to past wars in Asia — World War II against Japan, Korea and, most enig­mat­i­cally, Viet­nam — as lessons to learn from. For this White House, Impe­r­ial Japan was the al Qaeda of its day. The Korean War was a war to instill democ­racy on the Korean penin­sula. And Viet­nam was muffed up by Defeato­crats at home — pulling the plug lead to the deaths of millions.

“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 said.
Really, it’s hard to know where to start.

Con­tinue read­ing →

My friend Mitch Prothero [writes a roundup of the cur­rent Lebanon situation](http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2007/08/deadlock_over_l.php) — *al wada* in Ara­bic — neatly sum­ma­riz­ing the triple con­flict that’s hit­ting this small coun­try for the *Guardian*. It’s noth­ing you’ve not read here before, but it’s nicely packaged.

For­mer Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter and CIA asset Ayad Allawi kicks his cam­paign up a notch to get restored to the premier’s office in an op-ed for the *Wash­ing­ton Post*, in which he out­lines a plan for Iraq.
What’s the plan? (Other than return­ing Allawi to power, of course.) First: fawn over the United States as hav­ing lit­tle blame for the prob­lems in Iraq. Sec­ond, harshly crit­i­cize Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki for sec­tar­i­an­ism and being unable to orga­nize a two-car parade. (Totally jus­ti­fied charges, by the way.) Three: Know which way the polit­i­cal winds in Wash­ing­ton are blow­ing and sug­gest a with­drawal of Amer­i­can troops over the next two years and a change in mis­sion before that.
After that, it’s mostly details. Declare a state of emer­gency in Iraq (which was pretty much the *sta­tus quo* under Allawi) and absorb the var­i­ous Sunni and Shi’ite mili­tias into the secu­rity forces. Allawi comes out strongly against a loose con­fed­er­a­tion model for Iraq and praises the Kurds for their democ­racy. It’s an op-ed long on ver­biage, but short on specifics. Just how will he incor­po­rate the mili­tias into a non-sectarian com­mand struc­ture? How will he “empower local and provin­cial insti­tu­tions at the expense of sec­tar­ian pol­i­tics and an all-powerful and over­bear­ing Bagh­dad”? No clue. One of the few specifics: The ex-Ba’athist calls for the rever­sal of the de-Ba’athification law.
[Here you can read an inter­view I did with Allawi while he was still in office back in 2004.
](http://​www​.back​-to​-iraq​.com/​2​0​0​4​/​0​8​/​a​_​c​h​a​t​_​w​i​t​h​_​i​y​a​d​_​a​l​l​a​w​i​.​php)

This week marked the anniver­sary of the end of last summer’s war between Hezbol­lah and Israel. It was a stu­pid war, as most wars are, but the end of the con­flict on Aug. 14, 2006 after 34 days of fight­ing saw a defi­ant Hezbol­lah and a chas­tened Israeli mil­i­tary. The day also saw a flat­tened Lebanon and a United States pol­icy for the region in tat­ters. It was a dis­as­ter for almost every­one involved.
But a year later, it’s a good idea to come back and take a look at who really won the war and who lost. Where do all the major play­ers stand and how sig­nif­i­cant was the “divine vic­tory”?
Hezbol­lah
There’s lit­tle doubt that Hezbol­lah came out of the war polit­i­cally stronger, at least ini­tially. The group’s leader, Has­san Nas­ral­lah, had Lebanon in the palm of his hand, which is another way of say­ing he had it by the balls.

Con­tinue read­ing →

[New col­umn on Spot-on up](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/08/lebanons_war_one_year_later_2.html), with a longer ver­sion to appear here tomor­row. A sample:

This week marked the anniver­sary of the end of last summer’s war between Hezbol­lah and Israel. It was a stu­pid war, as most wars are, but the end of the con­flict on Aug. 14, 2006 after 34 days of fight­ing saw a defi­ant Hezbol­lah and a chas­tened Israeli mil­i­tary. The day also saw a flat­tened Lebanon and a United States pol­icy for the region in tat­ters. It was a dis­as­ter for almost every­one involved.
But a year later, it’s a good idea to come back and take a look at who really won the war and who lost. Where do all the major play­ers stand and how sig­nif­i­cant was the “divine victory”?