Realistic analysis by Max Boot. An excerpt:
…Who could be against diplomacy and dialogue, as compared with roadside explosions and body bags? Unfortunately, however, even the world’s greatest negotiator would be hard-pressed to resolve the internal conflicts that beset Iraq today. Simply finding interlocutors who can reliably deliver on their promises has been, so far, beyond the capabilities of our most experienced diplomats.
Among Iraq’s major groups, only the Kurds are relatively united, with two major political parties that have been able to work closely together. The Shiites, by contrast, have three major parties that are often at odds (and each of which has its own mutually suspicious factions), while among the Sunnis’ three “moderate” parties and numerous radical groupings, none possesses true credibility as a communal representative. Moreover, even if some kind of deal to end the fighting could be reached with the various leaders in Baghdad, many armed groups operating around the country would almost certainly refuse to abide by its terms.
As if Iraq’s internal divisions were not bad enough, the country’s neighbors, in particular Iran and Syria, have contributed greatly to the current unrest. This is the challenge that the ISG’s “diplomatic offensive” proposes to meet. But how? Iran, according to the ISG report, “should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shiite groups to encourage national reconciliation.” Syria, for its part, “should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents, and terrorists in and out of Iraq.”
Well, all that would surely be nice. But how exactly are we to convince Syria and Iran that they should do what the Iraq Study Group thinks they should do? The “United States,” says the ISG somewhat redundantly, “should engage directly with Iran and Syria.” There is, however, little reason to think that such talks would yield progress in the desired direction.
In the Iranian case, one indicator of interest—or, more accurately, lack of interest—in negotiations is that on May 28, even as talks were in fact being held in Baghdad between the American and Iranian ambassadors, the Tehran regime was detaining four Iranian-Americans on fabricated charges. Another is that the Iranians have been stepping up the flow of funds, munitions, and trainers to support terrorism in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Syria and Iran are also deeply complicit in backing Hamas, Hizballah, and other radical groups working to undermine two other democracies in the Middle East: namely, Israel and Lebanon.
The ISG report suggests that Syria and Iran have an interest in an “Iraq that does not disintegrate and destabilize its neighbors and the region.” That may be so—but not if it means that Iraq emerges as a democratic ally of the United States and an active partner in the war against terrorism. For a terrorism-sponsoring Iranian regime, that would be the worst outcome imaginable. Much better, from the strategic perspective of both Syria and Iran, to continue fomenting chaos in Iraq so as to prevent the emergence of a unified state capable of threatening them.
Syria and especially Iran have been waging a proxy war against the United States in Iraq that could well end with Iran as the dominant player in most of the country. By means of the Jaish al Mahdi and other front groups, Tehran is doing in Iraq what it has already done with Hizballah in Lebanon: expanding its sphere of influence. Why should Ayatollah Khameini and his inner circle voluntarily put a stop to a policy that appears to be achieving their objectives at relatively low cost?
Tehran might veer from its belligerent course if it feared serious military and economic retaliation, ranging from an embargo on refined-petroleum imports to air strikes against the ayatollahs’ nuclear installations. But with a few brave and prophetic exceptions like Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has continued to call attention to Iranian aggression, there is scant political support in the United States for such a tough policy, however justified it may be.
Highly recommended.
Finally, George W. Bush has secured the support of the “traditional ally” most favored by the American left. You would think the New York Times would be delighted. You would be wrong.
If diplomacy in the absence of “threats” — implicit or otherwise — were so effective in restraining rogue states, then there really is no excuse for Switzerland, Sweden, and New Zealand not to be doing their fair share to contain Iran, is there? After all, their diplomats are as capable of doing the talking part of diplomacy as anybody. Why aren’t the smooth-talking and experienced Irish settling wars all over the world? Because it’s the threats that make diplomacy work.
Presumably the editors might then say, “well, sure, but you do not have to stoke the nationalist passions of the Iranian people by making the threats in public.”
Well, you do if your most important intended audience is the French electorate. Sarkozy’s speech was obviously intended to build support within France for a sanctions regime that will not come cheap to the French economy.
Considering that the New York Times constantly accuses the Bush administration of propagandizing to build support at home for its forward foreign policy, you would think its editors would notice when the leader of another democracy does the same thing.
Of course, Sarkozy was also speaking to Iran’s government. Much as the Times might deplore it (”What’s scary is that his comments may reflect his understanding of where American policy is headed”), Sarkozy was sending the message to Tehran that Saddam’s strategy of dividing the West will not work this time. That ought to increase the credibility of the G-3 (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) and improve their chances of forcing the mullahs to fold, just as the Times itself recognized when it said “the U.N. Security Council must remain united.”
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute says there are now 14 nations with flat taxes, 10 of them in nations formerly behind the Iron Curtain. “The pace of tax reform in these nations is so frantic, that it’s hard to keep up to date with the changes,” he says.
Unfortunately the U.S. Democratic Congress wants to go the other way: cut economic growth by increasing taxes.
Some of this tax chopping in Old Europe is a response to the success of the U.S. tax rate reductions and the fast pace of job creation that ensued from economic growth — though few European officials will acknowledge that reality. But a bigger factor more recently has been the impact of the flat-tax revolution in Eastern Europe.
The Hassett/Metcalf paper from the American Enterprise Institute is excellent:
…A twenty-first century U.S. energy tax policy would include: 1) an end to energy supply subsidies, 2) a green tax swap, 3) an end to the gas guzzler tax loophole and possible use of “feebates,” and 4) conservation incentive programs. Ending subsidies to fossil fuel production would level the playing field among energy sources and shift us from a policy of promoting fossil fuel supply to encouraging a reduction in fossil fuel consumption. In addition, it would move us away from the reliance on inefficient corn-based ethanol.
We should also implement a green tax swap. A green tax swap is the implementation of environmentally motivated taxes with the revenues used to lower other taxes in a revenue-neutral reform. For example, Congress could reduce reliance on oil and other polluting sources of energy through the implementation of a carbon tax. The revenues could be used to finance corporate tax reform or to finance reductions in the payroll tax.[12] Consider a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. Focusing only on carbon[13] and assuming a short-term reduction in carbon emissions of 10 percent in response to the tax, a $15-per-ton tax rate would collect nearly $80 billion a year, a number that represents 28 percent of all corporate taxes collected in the United States in 2005. Assuming the carbon tax was fully passed forward into consumer prices, it would raise the price of gasoline by 13 cents a gallon, the cost of electricity generated by natural gas by 0.6 cents per kWh, and the cost of electricity generated by coal by 1.4 cents per kWh.
We note that a carbon tax is preferable to a carbon cap-and-trade system, as is currently implemented in Europe. While a carbon charge and a cap-and-trade system could be designed to bring about the same reduction in carbon emissions in a world with no uncertainty over marginal abatement costs, the instruments are not equivalent in a world with uncertainty. Given the uncertainties with respect to the introduction of new technologies to reduce carbon emissions, tax and permit systems can have very different efficiency costs. Because global warming depends on the stock of carbon in the atmosphere rather than on emissions in any one year, the expected efficiency costs of a carbon charge policy are likely to be much lower than the costs of a carbon cap-and-trade system.[14]
Moreover, while a cap-and-trade system could be designed in which the carbon permits are sold rather than given away, experience to date suggests that they will be given away. In that case, governments give up substantial revenue with cap-and-trade systems with which they could lower other distortionary taxes, as discussed in this On the Issues. In a related vein, cap-and-trade systems generate substantial rent-seeking behavior, as firms lobby for grandfathering and generous allowances of permits once a program is put in place. While firms are likely to lobby over the specific carbon charge rate and possibly coverage of the tax, a carbon charge is not conducive to lobbying over allocations, unlike permit systems.
….Why should Ayatollah Khameini and his inner circle voluntarily put a stop to a policy that appears to be achieving their objectives at relatively low cost?
…Notwithstanding some positive preliminary results, the surge might still fail in the long run if Iraqis prove incapable of reaching political compromises even in a more secure environment. But, for all its faults and weaknesses, the surge is the least bad option we have. Its opponents, by contrast, have been loudly trying to beat something with nothing. If they do not like President Bush’s chosen strategy, the onus is on them to propose a credible alternative that could avert what would in all probability be the most serious military defeat in our history. So far, they have come up empty.
Probably nobody who needs to read this Max Boot essay will read this post…
…It is easy to see why. Who could be against diplomacy and dialogue, as compared with roadside explosions and body bags? Unfortunately, however, even the world’s greatest negotiator would be hard-pressed to resolve the internal conflicts that beset Iraq today. Simply finding interlocutors who can reliably deliver on their promises has been, so far, beyond the capabilities of our most experienced diplomats.
…The current build-up of American forces in Iraq—universally known as the “surge”—was unveiled by President Bush on January 10. The earliest units shipped out in the middle of February, and the full complement of roughly 160,000 troops arrived only in June. Yet, by then, a vociferous chorus of voices back home—consisting mainly of Democrats but also of a growing number of middle-of-the-road Republicans—was already pronouncing the entire operation a failure and demanding a “change of course,” a “new strategy,” a “Plan B.”
Such a new strategy would of course involve not more troops on the ground but fewer, in response to the overwhelming impetus of public opinion to start bringing soldiers home. Nevertheless, while increasingly eager for an end to American involvement in the Iraq war, most legislators have continued to endorse what Senator Richard Lugar, in a much-heralded June speech, declared to be “four primary objectives” in Iraq. These are: “preventing Iraq or any piece of its territory from being used as a safe haven or training ground for terrorists or as a repository or assembly point for weapons of mass destruction”; “preventing the disorder and sectarian violence in Iraq from upsetting wider regional stability”; “preventing Iranian domination of the region”; and “limiting the loss of U.S. credibility.”
That is a very tall order. And so, all summer long, and even as reports surfaced attesting to initial successes of the surge, the search has been on for a plan that could accomplish these goals with a smaller commitment of resources. Does such a plan exist? It is worth surveying the major proposals to see if any of them offers a credible way forward.
And the “reality”, which hasn’t really changed in the past 30 years:
As if Iraq’s internal divisions were not bad enough, the country’s neighbors, in particular Iran and Syria, have contributed greatly to the current unrest. This is the challenge that the ISG’s “diplomatic offensive” proposes to meet. But how? Iran, according to the ISG report, “should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shiite groups to encourage national reconciliation.” Syria, for its part, “should control its border with Iraq to stem the flow of funding, insurgents, and terrorists in and out of Iraq.”
Well, all that would surely be nice. But how exactly are we to convince Syria and Iran that they should do what the Iraq Study Group thinks they should do? The “United States,” says the ISG somewhat redundantly, “should engage directly with Iran and Syria.” There is, however, little reason to think that such talks would yield progress in the desired direction.
…The ISG report suggests that Syria and Iran have an interest in an “Iraq that does not disintegrate and destabilize its neighbors and the region.” That may be so—but not if it means that Iraq emerges as a democratic ally of the United States and an active partner in the war against terrorism. For a terrorism-sponsoring Iranian regime, that would be the worst outcome imaginable. Much better, from the strategic perspective of both Syria and Iran, to continue fomenting chaos in Iraq so as to prevent the emergence of a unified state capable of threatening them.
WHEN NOBODY IS SHOOTING IT MEANS YOU ARE WINNING!
Yon caption: Back in 2005, many Iraqi Soldiers and Police preferred to hide their identities.Today it seems that most Iraqi Soldiers and Police want their photos taken. Their confidence is growing and their attitude toward the terrorists is increasingly one of being more the hunter than the hunted.
More from Michael in “A model for success“:
…Iraqis respond to a sense of justice. The importance of this fact cannot be overstated, and it is this sense of justice on an international scale that gets undermined when people are held in prisons without being charged with any crimes.
To many of the Iraqis I’ve spoken with, terrorists are fair game. Kill them. But if we kill justice while doing so, we will create terrorists out of farmers. Here the Marines are creating farmers, police officers, shepherds, and entrepreneurs out of insurgents. To do that, they have to be seen as men who respect and honor legitimate systems of government and justice.
…Earlier, at the Falahat station, I counted 24 armed Iraqis at one time, but there may have been as many as twice that. So it was just SSG Lee, me, and dozens of armed Iraqis. Some clearly had been insurgents just months ago. Nobody was denying it. Not us, not them. SSG Lee and I could have been killed or kidnapped at any time, yet I felt not a twinge of danger other than maybe watching for an enemy car bomb or sniper, or starting when someone accidentally fired a burst from an AK, which they occasionally do.
…Now I started to understand why the Army officers had been telling me the Marines are more advanced in counterinsurgency. Normal Marines have morphed into doing vintage Special Forces work. Many of our Army units are excellent at this work, but the Marines, at least these particular Marines, did seem to have an edge for it.
They were even studying Arabic in their filthy little compound. Lightweight study, but they were showing the Iraqis they were making the effort. The Iraqis appreciated it. I have yet to see an Army unit undertake such a clear effort to learn Arabic.
…Over the next several days, I saw how much the Iraqis respected Rakene Lee and the other Marines who were all courageous, tactically competent, measured, and collectively and constantly telling even the Iraqis to go easy on the Iraqis. It’s people like Rakene Lee who are winning the moral high ground in Iraq. It is people like this who are devastating al Qaeda just by being themselves. Over those same several days, I would also see the Iraqi Lieutenant Hamid treat prisoners with respect and going out of his way to treat other Iraqis the way he saw Americans treating them. Lieutenant Hamid, in his young twenties, seemed to watch every move of the Marines and try to emulate them.
Please do not miss this dispatch.
“Predicting peak oil,” Siegele tells me as we tour the drilling floor of the Cajun Express, “is almost like predicting peak technology” — an exercise, in other words, that to him seems inherently small-minded. Even absurd.
Via Glenn, an update on Chevron’s initial success overcoming the challenges of producing in 4,000 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Those of us with some experience in the “oil bidness” are generally a lot more optimistic than journalists about the cross-product of price and technology in bringing on new reserves.
…Siegele has reason to be giddy. He works for Chevron, and his team is sitting on several new record-breaking discoveries in the Gulf, a region that many geologists believe may have more untapped oil reserves than any other part of the world. On this trip, the 48-year-old vice president for deepwater exploration has come to a rig called the Cajun Express to oversee final preparations before drilling begins on the company’s 30-square-mile Tahiti field.
Looming like an Erector set version of Hellboy — with cranes for arms, a hydraulic drill for its head, and a 200-foot derrick for a body — the rig appears at once menacing and toylike. But the real spectacle is below the surface: A drill is plunging down through 4,000 feet of ocean and more than 22,000 feet of shale and sediment — a syringe prodding Earth’s innermost veins. That 5-mile shaft will soon give Chevron the deepest active offshore well in the Gulf. Some land drills have gone deeper, but extracting oil from below miles of freezing salt water and unyielding sediment creates a set of technical problems that far exceed those faced on terra firma.
…Even better, a recent discovery by Chevron has signaled that soon there may be vastly more oil gushing out of the ultradeep seabeds — more than even the optimists were predicting four years ago. In 2004, the company penetrated a 60 million-year-old geological stratum known as the “lower tertiary trend” containing a monster oil patch that holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of crude. Dubbed Jack, the field lies beneath waters nearly twice as deep as those covering Tahiti, and many in the industry dismissed the discovery as too remote to exploit. But last September, Chevron used the Cajun Express to probe the Jack field, proving that petroleum could flow from the lower tertiary at hearty commercial rates — fast enough to bring billions of dollars of crude to market. It was hailed as the largest publicly reported discovery in the past decade, opening up a region that is perhaps big enough to boost national oil reserves by 50 percent. A mad rush followed, and oil companies plowed more than $5 billion into this part of the Gulf.
It was a burst of good news for the oil industry. Today, many of the world’s largest fields — from Ghawar in Saudi Arabia to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska — are facing retirement, and the ultradeep frontier holds the industry’s best hope for big new discoveries. But there are still big questions to be answered before Jack starts filling gas tanks: How well will oil flow from these prehistoric rocks? Can Chevron’s equipment handle the increased temperatures and pressures at these depths? Can engineers successfully pump the oil back to shore?
…But Siegele is hardly worried. Technological breakthroughs have, decade after decade, revived the perpetually doomed oil industry. “Predicting peak oil,” Siegele tells me as we tour the drilling floor of the Cajun Express, “is almost like predicting peak technology” — an exercise, in other words, that to him seems inherently small-minded. Even absurd.
Michael Totten interviews Michael B. Oren, author of “Power, Faith, and Fantasy in the Middle East”. This is an excellent introduction to the book [which I’m currently reading]. Like Oren’s “Six Days of War” this will prove to be one of the four or five most important books on the Middle East. .
MJT: When speaking of the Barbary War you used the word “jihad.” I don’t think you used that word in your book, though, did you?
Oren: No, I didn’t really have to. There was the case in 1785 where Thomas Jefferson is sent to negotiate with the envoy of the Pasha of Tripoli. Jefferson says to him that America only wants peace with the Barbary states. And he says to Jefferson “No, we want war with you. We have a holy book called the Koran which says that we have to conquer and enslave all infidel states. And the United States is an infidel state. And moreover our holy book the Koran tells us that if we are killed in the course of carrying out this war that we’ll go directly to Paradise.” So I didn’t think I even had to put the label jihadist on there. I figured that remarkable report of Jefferson’s at the Continental Congress would suffice to alert contemporary readers what Jefferson was dealing with in the Middle East.
…
MJT: You have taken the long view of American involvement in the Middle East perhaps more than anyone else in the world. Having done that, are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
Oren: As a historian I’m optimistic. Listen, I view the war in Iraq not as a war, but as a battle in a much more protracted war. Iraq is America’s Bull Run in the war in the Middle East. It’s our first losing battle.
It is not Vietnam. You cannot withdraw from Iraq and be confident that the enemy is not going to follow you. Because the enemy is going to follow you. America can’t detach from the Middle East because the Middle East is not going to detach from America. And America’s going to have to learn to fight this fight to win in a much more prudent and effective way. And there are ways America can fight it more effectively.
MJT: What do you suggest?
Oren: I suggest America invest very heavily in intelligence and training an entire generation of service women and men to speak the languages, be conversant in the languages and the cultures of the Middle East. America has to invest much more heavily in intelligence gathering. America has to invest much more heavily in rapid response forces in the Middle East and retain them there.
America has to get involved in theology. We’ve been fighting a theology with an ideology. It doesn’t work. We have to get in the business of promoting a reformist Islam. It’s important. It’s controversial, but important.
MJT: How do we do that? Do you mean by promoting the moderates who already exist?
Oren: Well there are some moderates who exist. They don’t have any places where they can go out and speak and speak free of harm. We can help disseminate their ideas. Right now the extreme Wahhabi interpretation of Islam predominates in schools across Europe. The West has basically given up the field to these people.
Links to numerous reviews of Oren’s latest are here
Another remarkable dispatch from Michael, this time patrolling with Iraqi Police comprised of former insurgents near Fallujah:
Many people know the old adage about restaurant kitchens: to know if the kitchen is clean, check the bathroom. The same holds true for Soldiers, only it calls for checking windows. If you are going on a combat mission and Soldiers have not cleaned all their windows to a sparkle (during times when it is possible to do so), do not go with them. Soldiers with dirty windows are not watching for tiny wires in the road, nor are they scanning rooftops. They are talking about women, football, and the car they will buy when they get home. I will not go into combat with Soldiers with dirty windows.
I also look at the state of their weapons and ammunition. Does the machine gunner have lubricant? Before going out with them, does someone tell me what to do if there is any drama? Or do they just drag me into combat like a sack of potatoes? It’s usually very simple. A platoon sergeant will say, “Sir, you stay next to me and do what I tell you, we’ll probably get you back alive.” Although there are always exceptions, most of the Soldiers fall into the “ready, prepared and alert” category.
On the command level, there are other indicators. In counterinsurgency, as our Vietnam veterans will vouch, press has both strategic and tactical influence. Commanders who are afraid of the press or who cannot handle it cannot win this fight. They are often the same people who alienate Iraqis. I remember one captain who had allowed his men to ransack an Iraqi home, much later shouting in my face while his lip quivered with anger, “You are a piece of shit!” He could not handle having press around, and resented the very air they breathed, and he made sure they knew it. Of course anyone whose idea of winning is to bully Iraqis would not want media around. I watched him for months as a study in how not to do certain things. Tactically, he was competent and knew how to win the gun battles, but he was incompetent and inadequate for counterinsurgency.
Dealing with the press is just a reality, like the weather. We would never put a commander in the field who refused to make plans for fighting in the cold or heat. Although it’s just a reality, cold weather, for example, could destroy a unit overnight if they had not prepared for it. As with the weather, the press also influences the enemy. Cold weather freezes everyone’s toes; bad press stalls progress. In either instance, he who is better-suited and more adaptable has a supreme advantage. There was a time when many of our enemies in Iraq were beating us in the press, both their press and ours, but now that is changing.
When I consider a unit, the first indicator I check is their glass (if they are using vehicles with glass). At command level, the leading indicator for me is media relations. These reliable indicators can be seen without going onto a battlefield.
Nick Schulz of AEI offers a very short summary of the congressional energy policy muddle.
…Capitol Hill is increasingly paralyzed by the opposing ideas it holds.
To understand the problem, consider the first idea Congress has in mind–lowering energy prices. Many members of Congress are rightly concerned about rising gas prices and want to put downward pressure on energy costs. In recent remarks, Sen. Reid said, “The gas prices that we see across the country today are, for lack of a better description, awful.”
What’s more, fuel prices could rise in the future as global demand from China and India continues to spike. A new report from the National Petroleum Council, a federal advisory group, makes this point plain. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman asked the council in 2005 to examine if oil and natural gas supplies could match future global energy demand. The council’s findings include an assessment that global energy demand is expected to rise 50 percent over the next two decades. Such a demand spike will likely put upward pressure on prices.
If there are environmental costs to energy use, Americans should be told what those costs are. And a tax will do just that.
At the same time, Congress has another idea in mind–reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy use. Indeed, Speaker Pelosi recently created a special congressional committee to push for reductions in carbon emissions.
Economists will tell you that if you want less of something undesirable you should tax it. And as new research from my colleagues Kevin Hassett, Steve Hayward and Ken Green at the American Enterprise Institute points out, the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to tax the carbon content of fuel to build in the cost of the environmental impact. Such a tax will, of course, raise the cost of energy use.
And this is where the two opposing ideas come into stark relief. Congress wants to cut both fuel prices and emissions. But it’s difficult to do both simultaneously.
Many members of Congress hope to get around this contradiction by instituting so-called cap-and-trade programs. The programs would set a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions permitted by economic activity. A federal agency would issue credits to firms permitting emissions up to that cap. If a company needed to emit more than it was allowed under the cap, it could buy credits from companies that were able to reduce their emissions and thus held excess credits.
For such a program to cut emissions, it will have to raise the price of energy. In other words, a cap-and-trade program is a tax by another name.
And therein lies much of its appeal. Since it is called a “program” and not a “tax,” members of Congress have some political cover to say that they didn’t vote to increase the dreaded ‘T’ word. The semantic difference is important. It helps to explain why as many as a dozen cap-and-trade programs have been proposed on Capitol Hill, while the calls for carbon taxes remain muted.
But some members of Congress are beginning to balk at this seeming sleight-of-hand. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) recently tried to focus on what’s at issue by proposing a carbon tax to tackle climate change. “I sincerely doubt that the American people are willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” Rep. Dingell said at the time. And so he called for the tax “just to sort of see how people really feel about this.”
We know how Congress feels about it at the moment. There is little enthusiasm for an explicit carbon tax, even though this is the simplest and most transparent way to begin reducing greenhouse emissions. It’s this simplicity and transparency that makes it less palatable in Washington than the cap-and-trade alternative. But if there are environmental costs to energy use, Americans should be told what those costs are. And a tax will do just that.
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