WAR IN IRAQ, NOW WHAT?

What about the war in Iraq, this most divisive of issues facing this nation? I am not going to say much about whether we should have gotten into conflict or not other than to admit that like a lot of Americans I was fooled by the Bush Administration into thinking that Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed more of a threat to us in the West than he actually did. Like most of our congressmen, I initially supported our getting into the war.

I now see Hussein as a maverick with only minimal connection to his Moslem neighbors, a maverick whose single greatest inspiration for governance was Josef Stalin. Hussein used political terror to cobble together a nation and to keep himself in power just as Josef Stalin, his role model, used political terror to keep his hold on the Russian people and then to extend his empire to the countries of Eastern Europe.

Blunder: Misunderstanding Iraq Ethnic Structure

By failing to recognize how the separate elements of Iraqi society were being held together and through blunders such as disbanding the defeated Iraqi army, the Bush Administration set us up for and put us in the middle of the disastrous civil war that ensued. There was, for example, no functional Al Qaida in Iraq until after the defeat of the forces of Saddam Hussein and disbanding of the Iraqi army.

So that’s my take on how we got where we are today. It’s a position that a lot of commentators on the war have staked out including a lot of people running for president in the 2008 election campaign. However, what these commentators aren’t presenting us with is a clear picture of what a so-called victory in Iraq would look like and, secondly, a strategy for withdrawing our forces that makes sense.

Is the Surge Working?

Is the surge in U.S. troops, currently going on, working or is it not? General David Petraeus, our new top general in Iraq, has asked for more time before he gives his own answer to that question. Meanwhile, we’re getting a lot of assessments from the media including from frequently quoted observers. These sources are all over the lot with their evaluations.

One commentator, Ken Pollock of the Brookings Institute, who says he previously was a critic of how the administration has managed the war, recently spent a week in Baghdad. He argues that the surge appears to be working and that he’s seen a substantial improvement in U.S. troop morale as a result, his first pro administration assessment, he tells us.

Inept Regime

If Pollock’s observations bear out as accurate, that’s all to the good, but what about the regime of Iraqis now governing the country? No reliable source that I have come across is telling us that this feeble organization is anywhere close to being able to effectively govern the country. Bringing democracy to Iraq was a stated goal of the Bush Administration in initiating the war in the first place. Remember the administration’s insistence on using the words “the war for Iraqi freedom” in describing the action? As of this writing, one would have to say that that policy is a sad failure.

Given the level of hostility, in fact, the extreme ruthlessness with which the two major ethnic groups, Shiite and Sunni, have exhibited toward each other, finding an accommodation that would make possible an effective governing body including representatives of the two groups strains credulity. It’s even harder to imagine democracy ever working in such a caldron of hatreds.

Democrats Call for Quick Withdrawal

Some presidential candidates on the Democratic Party side, despairing of ever resolving these issues, are saying that the solution is simply to withdraw our troops and quickly. In that case, what about Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia? The fear is that the more radical and aggressive Moslem states, namely Iran and Syria, would jump into the breach, and that that would force action by the Saudis. Some observers see the whole Middle East erupting into war as a result. What then would become of the world’s oil supply, most of which comes from the Middle East?

Then there is the issue of the Kurds in northern Iraq. The Kurds are the only people to have benefited from the U.S. invasion. Oppressed and the victims of poison gas attacks under Saddam Hussein, the Kurds in northern Iraq are free for the first time, and many of them are prospering. With a wider scale war erupting in the region, the area known as Kurdistan would inevitably be sucked into the conflict.

Turkey Won’t Stand By

Further complicating the issue is Turkey on the northern border of Iraq. The Turks are currently engaged in a battle with elements of their own native Kurdish population over the issue of political autonomy. These elements say they want to be free of Turkish control to establish their own government or to merge with their brothers and sisters to the south. In fact, they have taken up arms in support of their cause, and fighting has occurred.

The Turks are opposed to independence for their native Kurdish population and have accused the Kurds in Kurdistan of providing safe haven, money and arms to the dissident Kurdish population in Turkey. Were the U.S. to withdraw from the region, what would Turkey do? Would it invade Kurdistan in an effort to pacify its own Kurdish population and to prevent Iran, for example, from becoming the power broker in the world of the Kurds?

Politicians Responding to Polls

A quick withdrawal from Iraq sounds good and seems to be in keeping with what the current polls of the American public are telling us. Many of our politicians appear to be responding to those polls and frame their answers during questions in public debates accordingly. The trouble is a quick withdrawal is not in the interest of this country and not in the interest of the world at large.

Yes, we need an exit strategy from Iraq. No doubt about that, but that exit strategy is going to have to be phased in gradually. We have no other choice.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

A POLITICAL AND PUBLIC POLICY INVENTORY, WHAT DO I BELIEVE?

It’s time I took a look at the major issues of a political and public policy nature that are currently having a profound effect on the peoples of the world and on my outlook. I can’t possible cover all the issues nor can I possibly cover any one of them in any depth in one posting, and so this will be just a start.

The first item is the State of Israel, which recently engaged in a war with Hezbollah that did not have to take place—unless, that is, the conflict was the only way for the nation’s military analysts to gage the current military strength of Hezbollah—for example, its arsenal of mobile rockets—a proposition that I doubt. Many people died in the conflict and much property was destroyed. Was all this bloodshed and all this destruction necessary? No, not in the least. The current leadership of Israel did not act with good sense and needs to be replaced.

Israel Needs to Survive

Having said that, I want to quickly add that I strongly support the State of Israel, and I strongly support its need to survive. The State of Israel needs to survive, but it needs to survive as a place where commitment to the highest ideals of humankind are exemplified and practiced. For one thing, its leaders must be vigilant about finding the moral high ground with respect to treatment of the Palestinians. In saying this, I realize that finding that high ground has never been more difficult given the current conflict between Fatah and Hamas with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza.

The Jews have a right to be in the Middle East, the birth place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the founders of the religion of one God and its Patriarchs, and they need to have their own country with their own elected government. One important lesson for Jews from past history is that a minority without political status, that is, without the status that comes from having a piece of geography associated with its ethnicity is even more vulnerable than it would be otherwise. One would like to believe that the vast majority of those in the majority in any nation will always be tolerant of their minorities, but history provides many terrible lessons that contradict such a hope.

Are You Being Fair Minded?

Some of the policies of Israel with respect to the territories it annexed in the 1967 war are certainly not beyond reproach. Many instances of injustice can be found, and these injustices need to be addressed and rectified. But I ask those who have taken stands against Israel including the use of boycotts of Israeli products and services and Israeli intellectuals whether they have scrutinized their own actions to determine if they are being fair or not?

First of all, have they taken stands against all examples of what they perceive as injustices sanctioned by governments in our current world, or have they chosen to single out Israel? Do they genuinely want peace in the Middle East and in the world, or do they want peace in a world without Jews, in a world in which all the Jews have converted to Christianity or Islam or some other majority faith?

Long History of Persecutions by Moslems

At the same time, have they stopped to consider that the persecution of Jews by Moslems predates the founding of the state of Israel by many centuries? The founding of Israel gave the Jew haters in the Moslem world a new script, but that is all. The hatred was pre-existent and often virulent. Many Jews--and Christians as well--died at the hands of Moslem fanatics long before the founding of Israel or even Theodor Herzl and the birth of the Zionist movement in the 19^th century.

Hitler, Haj of Jerusalem Sign Pact

In reading a recent issue of Newsweek magazine (June 18, 2007 issue), I made this startling and chilling discovery in an article by Robert M. Morgenthau and Frank M. Tuerkheimer. “In November 1941, Adolf Hitler and the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, met in Berlin and reached an agreement that a German occupation of Palestine and other mandated territories would result in the annihilation of the Jewish population, adding well over half a million Jews to the 6 million European Jews to be murdered by the Nazis.”

So much for any notion that the turmoil of hatreds coming out of the Middle East originated with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Had the State of Israel not been founded, one shudders to think what would have happened to the half a million Jews of Palestine. These Jews needed the protection of their own country with its own army and security apparatus to keep them safe.

The Problem of Germany

Finally for this posting the problem of Germany or more specifically the problem of the annihilation of the Jews of Europe by the Germans before and during World War II. Though now 62 years behind us, is this matter now closed? It may be in the minds of many people, but not mine. Was justice done with the Nuremberg Trials, the executions of some Nazis of rank and the payment of reparation to some Jewish heirs of holocaust victims? Not for me it wasn’t.

The Germans murdered not just millions of Jews, but the whole Jewish culture of Europe of which just a remnant remains today. What can be done about the loss of that culture—a culture based on the language of Yiddish and including a treasure trove of literature, theatre and other performing arts, painting and other visual arts, music and a thousand years of history?

Proposed: Jewish State of Europe

The people and all their heirs who should have existed but can’t because of mind numbing German atrocities and the lost Yiddish culture cannot be resurrected, but there should have been and there can now be a better settlement than that which was initiated with the ending of hostilities in 1945. The Germans should have been forced to relinquish land toward the founding of an independent Jewish State of Europe back then, but the political realities of the time made such a solution impossible.

The Soviet Union was intent on having its piece of Germany, and the U.S. and its Allies wanted to make sure that what was left was protected from the Russian lust for a socialist empire. Hence the East and West Germany solution, a division that ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

German or Nazi, Which?

In a future posting I will treat this concept with greater detail. However, let me call attention before closing to the fact that I am deliberately using the word “German” in this posting instead of the term most often used in describing the perpetrators of the atrocities in Europe just before and during World War II, namely the term “Nazi.”

Here is the fiction underlying what many commentators on what took place have adopted as their reality and the fantasy they want others to believe: Once upon a time a group of monsters masquerading as people appeared in the country known as Germany. These monsters were known as “the Nazis.” Lead by the arch villain called Adolf Hitler, these monsters forced the German people into waging a devastating war and to commit countless atrocities that they would not ordinarily have committed.

This piece of fiction is a rationalization that lets a criminal nation off the hook and prevents us from facing what really did take place in the period 1932 to 1945 and from looking at the numerous other atrocities in human history and, ultimately, at looking at ourselves—at our many insufficiencies and failings.