Total Information Awareness

Prolonged military occupations breed resentment and hostility amongst the occupied population. That is not a particularly piercing insight, but then as Fred Kaplan observed, the Bush administration "has violated so many precepts of International Relations 101 that clichés take on the air of wisdom." Speaking of which:

Monday, Iraq's largest Sunni Arab party said it rejected an apology made by the U.S. military after an American sniper used a Quran for target practice. The unidentified soldier was disciplined and removed from Iraq, the military said Sunday.

The Iraqi Islamic Party called the shooting of Islam's holy book a "flagrant assault on Muslim sacraments" and that the "apology alone" was not enough. It said the U.S. military should impose the "severest punishment" on the soldier to ensure others do not repeat his act.

The Quran, with 14 bullet holes and graffiti marked on its paged, was found on May 11 by Iraqis near a former base outside the town of Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad.

On Saturday, the top U.S. commander held a formal ceremony apologizing to Radwaniyah's Sunni tribal leaders, vowing the act would not be repeated.

Paul Bremer (unintentionally confirming his inability to grasp basic human nature and its political ramifications) recently claimed that using the term "occupation" to describe the US presence in Iraq was "in many ways more important" in terms of generating opposition to the US presence than the many inevitable, if regrettable, provocations of the occupying army/political authority. The belief that good marketing can overcome the facts on the ground is a particular affliction of the Bush administration, and its contingent of Mayberry Machiavellis.

However, as Juan Cole points out while commenting on the Koran desecration incident mentioned above, the marketing message isn't even that good - or at least, there are key elements that work against each other:

The incident crystallizes the contradiction in Bush administration policy, between promoting Islamophobia among Americans while attempting to cultivate Muslim allies abroad.

Fareed Zakaria neatly summarized this conundrum:

This is the [Republican] party's dilemma -- it wishes to spread liberty to people whom it doesn't really like.

The Boys with the Arab Trap as I termed it. Even Rich Lowry can see the cracks in the facade:

Bush’s emphasis on the inherent hunger for freedom is powerful. It clothes his foreign policy in an undeniable idealism. It puts his liberal opponents in a tight spot, because it is awkward for them to object to the kind of sweeping universalism they have always embraced. It might be simplistic, but that is often an advantage in political communication.

The problem with Bush’s freedom rhetoric is that it appears to not be true.

That is a problem, isn't it.

I was so leaning towared Obama, but this platform is hard to beat. Behold, John McCain's plan for victory, whisky, sexy:

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.

The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.

The usual liberal doom and gloom purveyors have, as expected, been whining about how McCain's platform amounts to nothing more than a fantastical wish-list, not an actual plan. Ponies, etc.

"Fools," I say. You have fallen ever-so-haplessly into McCain's trap. McCain has already explained, in painstaking detail, how he will achieve these modest outcomes. For example, he laid out his comprehensive strategy at a closed door fundraiser in 2006:

"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

What do you have to say about his plan now Mr. Wonkypants? Come to think of it, 2013 is a conservative deadline.

Not that he needs anything other than the Bullshit Doctrine, obviously, but I've put in a request to the McCain camp for comment on whether their candidate would also be employing the Glenn Reynolds Field Manual (to be taught at West Point next semester):

It's a war. The way to win it is, well, to win it.

Or, as Reynolds elaborated in a Reason Magazine interview some months later:

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

Win.

Heh. Indeed. Obama is so toast.

This is...just...well...unbelievable:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Oh for fuck's sake. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead. DEAD!!!! Families torn apart. Widows. Orphans. Brothers without brothers, sisters sisters. Hundreds of thousands of people are maimed for life: blind, deaf, missing limbs, psychologically scarred, and this man thinks he has sacrficed because he stopped playing golf for a few years? Yeeeeaaarggghhhhhhhh!!!!!

As you most likely have come to expect, it gets worse:

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization's high commissioner for human rights.

"I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life," he said. "I was playing golf - I think I was in central Texas - and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, 'It's just not worth it anymore to do.'"

Great story with one minor flaw: it's a lie. Bush played golf at least as late as October of 2003, some two months after he supposedly swore off it. Further, there are medical reasons (muscle tear and sore knees that caused him to give up running for a span) that might have forced him to take a hiatus at the time regardless.

And as Brad Le Roque points out, Bush might have "“sacrificed” playing golf, [but] he still managed to set the all-time presidential record for vacations back in 2005."

Yeah, but he needed all those vacation days. Think of how stressful it was for him to persevere in the face of a life without golf. Now I know what Laura was getting at when she scolded the nation by pointing out about the war:

No one suffers more than their president and I do.

Rumor has it, she gave up macrame.

In a recent interview given to Al Jazeera, Paul Bremer discusses his tenure as head of the CPA in Iraq and some of the problems associated therewith. One of the more curious, though telling, passages comes as Bremer explains how one word supposedly proved detrimental to the Bush administration's efforts:

In my view, one of the more unfortunate aspects of having lawyers involved in the project was they determined that under international law, we became an occupying force and that was confirmed by the UN security council resolution.

I used to say to the Iraqis it is also not very fun being an occupier, especially for an American; I always thought it was an unfortunate term.

There was nothing I could do to change the noun, occupation. When Iraqis raised their concerns with me all I could do is sympathise and say "I understand you’re problem but there it is, it’s the international law."

The political ramifications and psychological ramifications I think were in many ways more important because of the implication to the Iraqi’s that we were an occupying and not a liberating force.

For many Iraqis they were delighted we had thrown out Saddam Hussein and his cronies. But they wake up the next day and hear that we’re occupying them and look out the door of their house and see Americans in tanks… I think it had an important, negative political ramification.

This would be a shocking claim if it were not put forth by a member of an administration whose officials boast proudly of their ability to "create [their] own reality." However, the contention that the use of the word "occupation" and not the actual reality of being occupied by a 150,000 strong army had any measurable impact on our mission (hint: it was the tanks outside the doorway, not the semantics used to describe them) reflects a flawed way of thinking that has led to mishap after mishap for the Bush administration.

Throughout its two terms, the Bush administration has taken the position that America's image in the world (particularly the Muslim world) has been suffering not because of our implementation of wildly unpopular policies, but rather the lack of an effective communications strategy to explain these policies, and American ideals, to the target population. As Fred Kaplan observed:

You've probably never heard of a State Department official named Price Floyd...but his resignation-in-protest, late last March, is as damning a commentary on President George W. Bush's foreign policies as any of the critiques from retired military officers. [...]

[Floyd] explained his reason for quitting...Basically, he was tired of trying to convince journalists, here and abroad, "that we should not be judged by our actions, only our words." [...]

Shortly after the terrorist attacks, Bush hired Charlotte Beers, a prominent advertising executive, to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. She spent nearly a year producing a slick documentary, which preview audiences greeted with howls and catcalls, before hightailing it back to Madison Avenue. After Beers came Margaret Tutwiler, James Baker's can-do press aide during the presidency of Bush's father, who, it turned out, couldn't do this job, either. Then came Karen Hughes, Bush Jr.'s own former spin-master, who embarked on two disastrous trips to the Middle East early on in her tenure and has lain low ever since.

The problem wasn't Beers, Tutwiler, or Hughes personally. Rather, it was the assumption that led Bush to believe that they were qualified for the job to begin with—the assumption that public relations is a synonym for diplomacy.

The logical extension for one that espouses this way of thinking is to make the facially absurd claim that the Iraqi people would be more amenable to the upending of their society, and the continued presence and interference of our military, if we only had a better way of marketing the situation. In a sense, the reliance on this spin-based strategy of policy making is a product of the Bush administration's infamous preference for the political over policy, reinforced by the domestic electoral success produced thereby (until recently at least).

Foreign audiences, of course, are far less receptive: it's harder to convince someone with slick branding and scare tactics when their neighborhood is burning. Even staunch Bush supporter Richard Lowry was forced to concede this dichotomy:

Bush’s emphasis on the inherent hunger for freedom is powerful. It clothes his foreign policy in an undeniable idealism. It puts his liberal opponents in a tight spot, because it is awkward for them to object to the kind of sweeping universalism they have always embraced. It might be simplistic, but that is often an advantage in political communication.

The problem with Bush’s freedom rhetoric is that it appears to not be true.

Yes, I could see how that would be a problem. Especially when you're trying to convince people whose houses you're searching, whose family members you're arresting (and torturing) and whose relatives you've bombed that you're not really an occupying power, just a guest who brought over some democracy, whisky, sexy for the slumber party!

Matt Duss passes along news that the Sadrist trend is tightening the rope that binds Sistani to the Maliki government, in all its sagging popularity and misdeed:

An aide to Muqtada al-Sadr has lashed out at Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, for keeping silent over clashes that have killed hundreds in Baghdad. [...]

Speaking at Friday prayers, Sheikh Sattar Battat, an aide to al-Sadr, said he was "surprised" that al-Sistani had failed to condemn the violence.

We are surprised by the silence in Najaf where the highest Shiite religious authority is based," he said, referring to al-Sistani.

"For 50 days Sadr City is being bombed ... Children, women and old people are being killed by all kinds of US weapons, and Najaf remains silent."

Battat said the al-Sadr movement has not seen any "reaction or fatwa [religious decree] from Najaf" criticising the government assault on Shia fighters in Sadr City.

"For us this means that Najaf accepts the massacre in Sadr City," he said.

As Duss observes, Sistani's acquiescence will likely play to Sadr's advantage:

One of the central elements of the elder Sadr’s program (and now of Muqtada’s) was a distinction between the “silent clerics” (represented by Sistani and the Najaf establishment) — bookish sorts who stay remote from the lives of their people — and the “speaking clerics” who take part in the suffering and struggle of the Shia, as Sadeq did. And here the “silent clerics” once again stayed silent while Shia were crushed in Sadr City, of all places, while medical care, food, and shelter are being doled out in Muqtada’s name. It doesn’t require any math to see that Sadr benefits politically from this.

Not just politically, but religiously as well - to the extent the two are separate. Such a strengthening of Sadr vis-a-vis Sistani is, in my opinion, a shame for reasons beyond the silent/speaking distinctions set forth above (though, obviously, I am not an Iraqi and thus should not get a vote). Babak Rahimi has an excellent summary of some of Sistani's religious views, and how he espouses a brand of theology that can co-exist with liberal democratic traditions (at least, moreso than Sadr's):

Like his father, Sistani is an adherent of a democratic Shi'i tradition that dates back to the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to 1911 and continued with the Khatami reformist movement (1997–2005). [...]

Sistani’s insistence on recognizing Islam as a fundamental component of the Iraqi constitution is not intended to make Iraq an Islamist state based on juridical sharia strictures, but rather to limit the total secularization of the constitution, which would deprive a Muslim country of an “authentic” national identity based on its Islamic heritage.

Sadr, on the other hand, is much more amenable to vilayet-e faqih, or an Iranian style rule by clerical jurisprudence that pays less regard to individual rights. However, our continued assault on the Sadrist trend has been backfiring and increasing his popularity at the expense of religious leaders like Sistani that we should be acting to empower. Shockingly enough, military actions in densely populated areas leading to massive civilian casualties aren't very well received in the target population.

Sadly, the strategic thinkers in the Bush administration seem incapable of devising a plan to empower favored factions that doesn't involve the employ of self-defeating brute strength. It would be better if, instead, we adopted some of that fancy counterinsurgency doctrine that Petraeus is supposedly implementing.

Well, this is one way to influence the outcome of elections in Iraq I suppose (refer to Part I and Part II for background):

Iraqi security forces, after more than of 40 days of intense fighting, on Thursday told residents to evacuate their homes in the northeast Shiite slum of Sadr City and to move to temporary shelters on two soccer fields.

The military's call indicated the possibility of stepped-up military operations and came as Iraqi security forces raided a radio station run by backers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. In the southern port city of Basra, militants launched rockets that struck a coalition base, killing two contractors and injuring four civilians and four coalition soldiers.

Sadr City has been a battleground since late March, enduring U.S. airstrikes, militia snipers and gunbattles between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Sadr.

Already some 8,500 people have been displaced from the sprawling slum of some 2.5 million people, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. For weeks, food, water and medical shortages have affected about 150,000 people, aid agencies said.

Two soccer fields in east and northeast Baghdad are expected to receive some 16,000 evacuees from the southeast portion of the city where the fighting has been most intense.

The BBC offers one version of the grisly death toll:

In the last seven weeks around 1,000 people have died, and more than 2,500 others have been injured, most of them civilians.

Back to McClatchy:

In most of Sadr City, people haven't had food rations for more than a month and a half, and the Red Crescent has distributed thousands of food packs, 100 tons of flour and supplied four tons of medical supplies to the two main hospitals.

Wonder if this hospital was on the receiving end of those supplies:

IRAQI soldiers yesterday detained dozens of policemen and closed down a hospital suspected of treating Shiite militiamen in a Baghdad stronghold of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Or maybe this one?

A major hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City slum was damaged Saturday when an American military strike targeted a militia command center just a few yards away, the U.S. military said. [...]

The rocket strike near Sadr Hospital injured 30 people, shattered the windows of ambulances and sent doctors and hospital staff fleeing the scene, hospital officials said.

So let's recap the scene: the US military and its Iraqi "allies" are laying siege to a sprawling neighborhood in Baghdad housing roughly 2.5 million Iraqis, launching air strikes, artillery attacks, tank shells and other assorted ordnance, shutting down hospitals and bombing others, cutting off the supply of food and walling off entire sectors of the embattled region, causing a refugee crisis by their actions - and now actually pursuing a policy with the intent of creating a larger refugee crisis!

For what reason: because a majority of residents in these regions support a political movement, and militia, that oppose our presence. Can't have that. Because we have to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq to safeguard the Iraqi people. After all, whose gonna set up the tents in the refugee catch basins we so magnanimously helped set up to receive the overflow from our relentless assault on political movements that would make it harder for us to stay in Iraq. To safeguard the Iraqi people.

or study, or some other comfortable nook where you do your reading, dear reader. The reason? The Pentagon has recently released all the documents that it was forced to give to the New York Times in connection with the rent-a-general/pre-war propagnda story. There's a lot of documents, but there's bound to be some absolutely juicy nuggets nestled in those hills of pulp.

If anyone finds anything, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email. I can offer you fame and glory, or the utmost anonymity. Bonus points for anyone that tracks down O'Hanlon related payola. Happy hunting!