U.S. soldiers in Basra, Iraq. Credit: PEOSoldier/CC-BY-2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 21 2014 (IPS)

Despite their ubiquity on television talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages, neo-conservatives and other hawks who propelled the U.S. into war in Iraq 11 years ago are falling short in their efforts to persuade the public and Congress that Washington needs to return.

Indeed, in contrast to the uncritical position taken by virtually all of the country’s media in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, a number of mainstream outlets are openly questioning the advice now being dispensed by the hawks about what to do about the dramatic advances by radical Sunni Islamists across northern and central Iraq over the last ten days.

The most stunning example – if, for no other reason that it took place on the hawks’ favourite news channel – came this week when Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly introduced former Vice President Dick Cheney as “the man who helped lead us into Iraq in the first place.”

“It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” -- Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank
“You said (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “You said we would be greeted as liberators. You said the (Sunni) insurgency was in the last throes, back in 2005. And you said after our intervention that extremists would have to ‘rethink their strategy of jihad.’ Now, with almost one trillion dollars spend there, with 4,500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, ‘You were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many’?”

“Well,” Cheney, who had just co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with his daughter, Liz Cheney, in which they had used the same phrase to describe President Barack Obama’s policy, replied. “I just fundamentally disagree, Reagan – uh, Megyn.”

Similarly, the normally staid and respectful New York Times published what could only be described as a mocking profile of Bush’s former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, for his tirades against Obama’s policies. The article referred to the “homecoming week for the Bush administration” featuring a “cavalcade of neoconservatives newly emerged on cable television and in hawkish policy seminars to say ‘We told you so’ on Iraq.”

And when Republican Sen. John McCain, perhaps the strongest voice in Congress for intervention in Syria, called on the Senate floor for “immediate action” against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to prevent their further advance toward Baghdad, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank asked simply, “When John McCain makes a case for war, does anyone hear him?”

Indeed, the scepticism that has greeted the Iraq war hawks over the past week has been so strong that Michael Rubin, a colleague of Bolton’s at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – the neo-conservative think tank that played a leading role in both planning and cheerleading the 2003 invasion — felt compelled to complain about “Media McCarthyites” who are allegedly stifling legitimate policy debate.

But, as Milbank pointed out, “It’s a lonely job being an interventionist these days.” Polls over the past several years have consistently shown a public that is more than war-weary. Disillusionment has grown not only with Washington’s military interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but also with the effectiveness of U.S. military power in general.

A poll conducted by Ipsos/Reuters last week found that 55 percent of respondents opposed U.S. military intervention of any kind, while only 20 percent supported it, and that there was little difference between self-identified Republicans and Democrats.

Those trends have clearly damaged the political standing and credibility of the hawks, especially those – such as Cheney, Bolton, former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol – who played such prominent roles in promoting the Iraq war and are now calling for renewed intervention, at least in the form of air strikes, if not re-introducing U.S. combat forces.

Their diminished influence was made clear already nine months ago when they failed to rally lawmakers – even most Republicans – behind air strikes against military and other government targets in Syria after Obama accused Damascus of carrying out a chemical-weapons attack that killed hundreds of civilians.

The hawks now face a similar problem on Iraq. Thus far, even the Republican leadership in Congress appears satisfied with the steps announced by Obama Thursday – enhanced aerial surveillance by U.S. drones and aircraft and the dispatch of up to 300 military advisers to help reverse ISIL’s advance, possibly in preparation for air strikes against targets deemed threatening to U.S. national-security interests.

Washington is also pressing Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, whom virtually all observers here blame for systematically alienating Iraq’s Sunni population, to renounce a third term or agree to share power in a way that can swing major sectors in the Sunni opposition to the government’s side.

While most Iraq specialists here have insisted that air strikes or any additional U.S. military commitment be conditioned on Maliki’s agreement to these terms, as well as a major diplomatic effort designed to enlist the help of Iraq’s neighbours – most importantly Iran and Saudi Arabia – in stabilising the country, the hawks have argued that Washington lacks the military leverage (meaning tens of thousands of U.S. troops) to bring about such a solution.

For this, they blame Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in 2011 after the Iraqi parliament declined to act on a deeply unpopular Status of Forces agreement (SOFA) that would have provided legal immunity to any remaining U.S. forces.

Indeed, consistent with their more general efforts at depicting Obama’s foreign policy as one of weakness and retreat, the hawks have focused most of their commentary on the withdrawal decision as the cause of the current crisis – as opposed to their own responsibility for the 2003 invasion and its consequences, including the destruction of the Iraqi state and the rise of sectarianism – than on what the U.S. should do now in the face of ISIL’s offensive.

Israel-centred neo-conservatives are especially worried about the administration’s interest in engaging Iran on Iraq, a development that began last week with a high-level – albeit brief – meeting alongside ongoing international talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

When a prominent Republican hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham, endorsed the notion that Tehran, which, like Washington, has supported the Maliki government, could play a key role in dealing with ISIL – thus giving the administration political cover for pursuing the option – neo-conservatives objected vehemently.

“The idea that the United States, a nation bent on defending democracy and safeguarding stability, shares a common interest with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a revolutionary theocracy that is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world, is as fanciful a notion that Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler could work together for the good of Europe,” wrote neo-conservatives Michael Doran, a top Bush Middle East aide, and Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the Washington Post.

That theme was picked up by the Cheneys who wrote that “only a fool” would engage Iran on Iraq, ignoring the “reality” – as former Secretary of State James Baker (and Dick Cheney’s colleague in the Bush I administration) – put it, “that Iran is already the most influential external player in Iraq and so any effort without Iranian participation will likely fail.”

Of course, one of the many unintended consequences of the 2003 invasion and the Shi’a ascendancy during the U.S. occupation was to move Iraq much closer to Iran.

(END)

Peace talks between the United States and the Taliban are due to begin later this week in Qatar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

Nearly 12 years after the United States ousted the Taliban from power, the White House announced Tuesday that the United States will begin formal talks with the militant Islamist group in Qatar later this week as part of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation process.

The announcement, which coincided with ceremonies marking the formal transfer of primary security responsibility from U.S.-led NATO forces to their Afghan counterparts, preceded a statement issued shortly afterwards by the Taliban itself in which it implicitly disassociated itself from Al-Qaeda.

The Taliban “would not allow anyone to threaten the security of other countries from the soil of Afghanistan”, Muhammad Naim, a Taliban spokesman, said in a televised broadcast from Doha. In addition, he pledged that the group seeks “a political and peaceful solution” to the conflict.

“These are two statements which we’ve long called for and together, they fulfil the requirements for the Taliban to open…a political office in Doha for the purposes of negotiation with the Afghan government,” said a senior official in a background teleconference for reporters.

“These statements represent an important first step towards reconciliation, a process that, after 30 years of armed conflict in Afghanistan, will certainly promise to be complex, long and messy, but nonetheless, this is an important first step,” said the official, who spoke on condition of not being identified.

He also called on the Taliban and the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai to begin direct negotiations “soon”."There will be a lot of bumps in the road."
-- U.S. President Barack Obama

Speaking at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, President Barack Obama also described the opening of the Taliban office an “important first step towards reconciliation” but stressed that “there will be a lot of bumps in the road”.

He also said Washington remained “fully committed to our military efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda and to support the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)”.

Critics of the U.S. military effort hailed Tuesday’s announcement as signalling a major change in policy in advance of the deadline at the end of 2014 for the withdrawal of virtually all foreign troops from Afghanistan.

Most experts in Washington believe that at most 10,000 U.S. troops – plus about 4,000 more from other NATO countries – are likely to remain beyond that date as trainers for Afghan forces and as counter-terrorist units focused on preventing the return of Al-Qaeda forces.

“The U.S. and Karzai know they have to cut a deal with the Taliban and that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily,” said William Goodfellow, director of the Centre for International Policy (CIP) here.

“The problem for the last 11 years is that it’s the (U.S.) military that’s been running the show, and to the military, negotiations equals defeat. We’re now shifting away from a policy of wanting to defeat the Taliban militarily to one of finding a political solution,” he said.

Tuesday’s developments – both the transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces and the announcement of U.S.-Taliban talks – come amidst indications of eagerness by both the White House and Congress to wind down Washington’s commitment to Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

Just last week, a majority of the Republican-led House voted for the first time to approve a bipartisan amendment to the defence authorisation bill in favour of accelerating Washington’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The amendment, which was adopted by a 305-121 margin, also deleted a provision of the bill that had supported a continued U.S. military presence after 2014, replacing it with a call for the administration to seek explicit Congressional approval for retaining any U.S. troops there after that date.

About 66,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan – down from a high of around 100,000 two years ago following two “surges” sent by Obama as part of an ambitious counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy overseen by General David Petraeus.

The administration is currently engaged in a major internal debate over the pace of withdrawal for the remaining troops before the 2014 deadline and how many troops Washington will retain in Afghanistan after that date.

The latter question presumes that Karzai – or whoever succeeds him after the 2014 presidential election – wants them and provides the necessary guarantees, including the thorny issue of immunity from criminal prosecution, to keep them there.

The Pentagon and its supporters want to keep as many troops there for as long as possible, including next year’s “fighting season”, which lasts from late spring into the fall. They believe that that U.S. forces can still deal major blows to the Taliban – thus weakening its position in any negotiations – and are still badly needed to back up the ANSF.

Though 352,000 strong and more battle-tested than two years ago, the ANSF suffers serious weaknesses in a range of areas, including air support and an annual attrition rate of about 30 percent. The United States and its allies have said they will continue spending more than 4 billion dollars annually to help maintain, supply and expand the ANSF after 2014.

Obama, who had described the Afghanistan conflict as a “war of necessity” during his 2008 presidential campaign, initially deferred to Petraeus but reportedly became increasingly disenchanted with COIN’s effectiveness.

As early as two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the administration’s support for direct negotiations with the Taliban.

But despite a series of informal meetings with Taliban representatives hosted by various European countries and Qatar, the State Department proved unable to wrest control of policy from the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress.

Other key actors, including Karzai himself, the Pakistani military, which is believed to exert considerable influence if not outright control over key Taliban leaders, and more hard-line factions within the Taliban, also opposed talks at various times.

U.S. officials who briefed the press said they believed that the Taliban Political Commission in Doha is fully authorised by all factions of the movement and its leader, Mullah Omar, to conduct negotiations.

The officials also stressed that talks between the United States and the Taliban would likely be limited in scope and that negotiations between the Taliban and the Karzai government, as represented initially by the High Peace Council, were far more important. They said they expected the Council to send representatives to meet with the Taliban several days after the U.S.-Taliban talks.

“I think that given the level of distrust among Afghans, it’s going to be a slow process to get that…intra-Afghan dialogue moving,” said one. “The United States will encourage and help facilitate that, but the talks are largely going to be paced by the success or failure in that dialogue, and so I wouldn’t be looking for early results.”

“There is no guarantee that this will happen quickly, if at all,” added another.

In addition, Washington, they said, would only sign a final accord if the Taliban met three conditions: “First, that they break ties with Al-Qaeda; that they end the violence; and that they accept Afghanistan’s constitution, including its protections for women and minorities.”

While the Taliban’s statement about not permitting Afghan territory to be used to threaten the security of other nations moved partway toward meeting the first condition, they said, the Taliban would have to be more explicit to fully satisfy it.