Right Wing Nut House

Superb article by David Nather today in CQ Politics about the “quagmire” in which the anti-war movement finds itself.

I should start out by saying that the lack of progress made by the coalition of groups who want to bring the troops home does not mean that the American people have still bought into the war, or George Bush, or the surge, or anything else. By clear majorities, the American people believe the war was a mistake and want the troops home.

But…

The inconvenient truth that the anti-war crowd can’t seem to grasp is that the American people are also ambivalent about how they wish our Iraq misadventure to end. For that reason, the people are all over the lot on the timing of troop reductions, the number of troops to come home, and what kind of mess we should be leaving in Iraq after we’re gone.

Nather grasps this which is why the article is so good. And he points up many of the problems - both internal and external to the coalition:

These are frustrating times for the collection of political, veterans, labor, and grass-roots organizations that make up the modern anti-war movement. At a time when a solid majority of the American public wants to pull some or all troops out of Iraq, these groups have been unable to turn the public support for their goals into enough votes to get a withdrawal proposal through the Senate, much less override a presidential veto.

Some of the groups have made tactical blunders along the way — most famously, the MoveOn.org advertisement in The New York Times last month deriding Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq — that have alienated their own Democratic allies. But that isn’t why the movement to end the Iraq War has failed to gain more traction in Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers and outside analysts of the movement.

Instead, they say, it’s because the groups simply have won all the Democratic votes they’re going to get. The only place to pick up more votes, at least for the next year, is on the Republican side.

I said at the time that the “Betray-us” ad was “the dumbest, the most spectacularly ignorant political maneuver in modern history.” To continue the idiocy by featuring the ad on their website as Moveon is doing only highlights their tone deafness about the nature of politics and what it takes to be right and win at the same time.

And the gimlet eyed hard left radicals at Moveon and Code Pink have no intention of working with Doubting Thomas Republicans to bring about a true national consensus on when and how to leave Iraq:

Most of the groups in the anti-war coalition have appeared unwilling to work with Republican skeptics of the war on a plan they could all support. “They’re exercising their constitutional rights, and that’s fine, but by and large they aren’t doing anything to help us find a positive solution,” said Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who has been pushing for goals, rather than deadlines, for troop withdrawals based on the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana.

Some anti-war activists say they’re just not interested in dealing with the GOP and want to apply more pressure to the party now in control. “We’re looking at some of the Democrats who were voted in on a platform of fighting against the war, and we’re not really seeing that,” said LeiLani Dowell, a member of the Troops Out Now Coalition, which wants to end war funding and staged a rally at the Capitol last month that reportedly drew fewer than 1,000 people.

But in the view of lawmakers from both parties, the groups have also failed to connect with potential GOP allies because they have unrealistic expectations of how quickly the United States could withdraw from Iraq.

To coin a phrase, “Aye, there’s the rub.” The de facto position of Code Pink, Moveon, and most others in the anti-war coalition is an immediate withdrawal from Iraq - a repeat of Saigon, 1975 complete with the last helicopter lifting off the roof of the unfinished, overbudget boondoggle that is the American embassy being built in Baghdad. They would like nothing better than to see a humiliating bug out of American troops, preferably within 6 months of the day it is begun.

That ain’t going to happen. Even rational Democrats don’t want us to leave that way. At least most of the Democratic timetables include a semblance of rationality in that they stretch the withdrawal out over a year or more. The Moveon bunch wants every American soldier - no residual forces, no bases, - out in 6 months. It’s madness and Republicans won’t even discuss it:

“I think they’re actually counterproductive. They don’t seem very thoughtful,” said Republican Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who opposed President Bush’s troop increase this year but wants any troop withdrawals to be based on benchmarks of progress in Iraq rather than a timetable. Democratic Rep. Zack Space, a freshman who will be up for re-election in a Republican-leaning part of Ohio next year, said of the antiwar groups, “By embracing a kind of impractical view of the situation, I think they hurt their cause.”

Ya think? The last Gallup poll showed 18% of Americans believe we should follow the advice of the Moveon crowd and bring the troops home now without regard for what is going on in Iraq or even the military practicality. We would have to leave vast stocks of military equipment in Iraq if we simply loaded 160,000 troops on planes and flew them home. Billions of dollars of stuff left to rot - or be used by both friend and foe in whatever kind of country Iraq will become after we leave it in the lurch.

That 18% is half that of the number who don’t want any timetable or benchmarks at all - 38% want to stay until the “job is done.” What does that say about the political acumen of the anti-war coalition?

And their public personae is nothing to get excited about:

Demonstrators from Code Pink, a peace group formed just before the Iraq War started, routinely disrupt congressional hearings and speeches, drawing the wrath of even Democratic lawmakers who share their views. Last month, when members of the group interrupted a House Armed Services Committee hearing where Petraeus was testifying, Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri angrily described them to a colleague — and to a national television audience — with a vulgarity.

Even the most anti-war Democrats are scratching their heads at activist Cindy Sheehan’s decision to run for the Democratic nomination for the House in San Francisco next year against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They insist Pelosi has fought the war every way she can. “This isn’t a weakness for her. It’s one of her strengths,” said one House Democrat who did not want to be identified speaking candidly about his disagreements with the groups.

I suppose this is to be expected of radicals in any age. I fondly recall the Robin Hood aura that surrounded many anti-war types when I was in school during Viet Nam. I would think that young people today would probably look up to the Cindy Sheehans of the anti-war movement in a similar fashion.

But I also remember my anti-war parents thinking the radicals at the time were scruffy looking as well as being a little dangerous. They were used to the 1930’s radicals who were anything but scruffy looking but perhaps even more dangerous considering from where their orders came. Moscow liked their stooges and plants to blend in to the background.

This crowd is scruffy looking and politically inept - which makes for a not very dangerous coalition:

But most of the Republicans who have voiced skepticism about the war say they’ve seen little, if any, effort by the anti-war groups to find a compromise they could all support. “There were so many attempts to score media points rather than actually engage,” said Phil English of Pennsylvania, one of the House Republicans who opposed the troop “surge” in Iraq. He said he has seen anti-war demonstrators in his Erie-area district with out-of-state license plates. One anti-war group, he said, invited him to a rally in August with just a week’s notice — and after his schedule was full — then announced at the rally that he had failed to show up.

Some groups say they have not given up on bringing members of Congress around to their side, but many activists say they have grown so frustrated with Congress’ failure to end the war that they’re in no mood to try to reason with lawmakers from either party. “I think people are done being polite and obsequious with their members of Congress. People are fed up,” said Sue Udry, legislative coordinator for United for Peace and Justice.

Somehow, I don’t think Sue or any of her friends are going to be writing a sequel to “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

The fact that both the radicals and liberal Democrats in Congress are dealing with a severely wounded, lame duck President with approval numbers nearing Nixon territory only highlights their total inability to win the day. Politics is the art of the possible. And both the hard right and hard left have always had trouble defining what is possible and have reached instead for the unattainable. Failure and defeat follows such folly.

We are going to leave Iraq - probably long before George Bush wishes we would. But we are not going to leave on terms set by the radicals in the anti-war movement. It would be best for all if Bush, the Democrats, and the Republicans could all sit down and work to get us out of Iraq as quickly as possible with the least damage to our national security interests.

That’s what grown ups would do. Unfortunately, I hold out little hope for such a meeting of the minds given the poisonous political atmosphere and the constant yammering from the anti-war left who have sabotaged their own cause time and time again.

Ezra Klein, saying it nicely:

I genuinely don’t understand the quaking fear over Ahmadinejad’s interview at Columbia. When did America become so weak, so insecure, that we mistrust our capacity to converse with potentially hostile world leaders? Do we really believe the president of Columbia is so doltish as to be outsmarted by a former traffic engineer from Tehran? Do we really see no utility in publicly grilling prominent liars in such a way that their denials lose credibility? What do we have to lose from a foreign leader, even a hostile one, somberly laying a wreath at the site of a tragedy? When did we become so afraid?

Others on the left are not so nice in making the same point; that the right are a bunch of bedwetters and cowards, quaking in fear at Ahmadinejad which is why we want to go to war with Iran.

Of course, this “bedwetter” meme is brought out many times. We see it when the right sees fit to report on the latest foiled terrorist attack, or when authorities smash a terrorist cell, or any other time that the left feels that the right is taking the issue of terrorism too seriously.

Daniel Larson has a few thoughts on this phenomena:

There’s a curious idea, one popularised earlier this year by Obama, that a refusal to negotiate or to dialogue with this or that dreadful government and/or individual is an expression of fear. This follows the usual drill: everyone else embraces the politics of fear, but Obama and those like him embrace the politics of hope, blah, blah, blah.

Evidently, it takes courage to stand up and, just like everyone else, denounce the president of another country under the guise of “conversation” and “debate.” After all, what is the point of letting Ahmadinejad onto your stage so that you can tell him that he’s a “cruel dictator”? Are we trying to hurt his feelings? Obviously persuasion isn’t the goal, since calling someone a dictator in front of an audience of students is not going to make him break down and have a conversion experience: “Thank you for showing me the light, Mr. Bollinger! I will do better!”

Similarly, there’s no point in holding talks simply for the symbolism of holding talks and showing that We Are Not Afraid To Talk. How impressive. All of this attempted appropriation of the rhetoric of toughness and fearlessness is an attempt to steal a page from the (stupid) foreign policy book of militarists. Instead of “showing resolve” by not talking to someone, we show resolve by talking to someone.

I must confess to being puzzled by this line of attack from the left. If I didn’t know any better, I would believe that the left was projecting their own fears about terrorism, about Ahmadinejad by referring to “bedwetters” on the right. But of course, that’s not true, is it? It’s just that the left wants to discuss terrorism and these other issues on their own terms - root causes, sins of America, post colonial insecurities, resource raiding, etc. - and find it inconvenient that someone wants to get up and shout “They’re trying to kill us, you ninny!”

I don’t feel any fear whatsoever when talking about Ahmadinejad and the threat Iran poses to American interests and ultimately, America herself. It is a completely rational, objective response to a nation that seeks the ability to enrich uranium beyond the level needed to fuel power plants. This is the basis for the concern expressed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - that some of Iran’s program is of a “dual use” nature; that it can be used to both build fuel rods for power plants and enrich uranium to the 85% level necessary to build a bomb. When nations as diverse as France, Belgium, and Russia have expressed their firm opposition to Iran becoming a nuclear power, surely opposition to their plans cannot be construed as “fear” but rather common sense.

The visit of Ahmadinejad has illuminated a great difference between right and left. Kevin Drum senses it:

Still, I guess I’m curious about something. Am I the only liberal who believes all that stuff but is still pretty queasy about letting this lunatic engage in some wreath-laying crocodile tears at Ground Zero? There’s a difference between being unafraid to let someone speak and being unwilling to let him use the most venerated site in the country for a crass PR stunt, isn’t there? Hell, a lot of us complain when Rudy Giuliani does this, let alone a guy who denies the Holocaust and has made a career out of chanting “Death to America.” Am I off base here?

Kevin is getting skewered in the comments for saying what some on the right have been angry (not scared) about Ahmadinejad’s visit here. This is a man who leads “Death to America” chants after Friday prayers. And we already know that his public utterances about peace, love, and harmony, fly in the face of his nation’s actions in Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, and other places Iranian money and supplies funds the enemies of the west.

I happened to agree that he should be allowed to speak at Columbia for the simple reason I was sure he would convict himself out of his own mouth. While this is exactly what happened, I didn’t count on the use Iran would make of his visit as a vehicle for international propaganda:

On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.

Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.

He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.

Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians’ resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement.

This is how the event was reported in Iran. Not a word about Bollinger’s hectoring opening remarks - something that many on the left criticized heatedly and caused many in the audience at Columbia to applaud vigorously when Ahmadinejad complained about the “insults.” It would seem then that being “brave” enough to give the tyrant a public forum at a prestigious educational institution didn’t do anything except make liberals feel good about themselves. It sure didn’t minimize Ahmadinejad’s stature anywhere in the world.

It would seem then that bedwetting is not the problem but rather fear on the left that their own prescriptions for dealing with terrorism might not be the best way to deal with the problem.

Of course, the advantage they have is if they are wrong, we probably won’t realize it until it’s too late.

Running around Capitol Hill, their white flags flapping majestically in the breeze, Senate Democrats have desperately been searching for Republican allies to help them in their quest to hand Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

To be sure, the Bush Administration has spent much of the last 4 1/2 years doing the same thing, albeit not trying quite as hard and with considerably less planning. But for the Democrats and their hard and fast timetable for withdrawal of the bulk of American troops (and if the netnuts get their way, there won’t be a corporal’s guard left by the time the withdrawal is done), there don’t appear to be too many takers among Republicans:

Senate Democrats, who have spent weeks trying to woo Republicans to help end the war in Iraq, have taken a hard turn against compromise.

They now believe their best political strategy is to continue to play to a stalemate and blame an intransigent President Bush and his Republican congressional allies for refusing to negotiate an end to the war.

This is actually the safest political strategy possible. Knowing full well that pulling out the troops the way they are advocating would lead to a bloodbath, the Democrats will seek to cash in on people’s war weariness in 2008 by pointing out the obvious; that it was Republicans who got the country in this mess in the first place.

Not that people are liable to forget the previous 4 years of blunders, stupidities, mistakes, and miscalculations that have contributed in no small way to the chaos in Iraq today. But politicians like to think of the American people as children, the difference being the Dems want to play nanny to all of us while Republicans think it best that voters be seen and not heard. So rather than act like grown-ups themselves and cooperate on an Iraq policy that would serve our interests while allowing us to disengage, leaving behind something less than an unmitigated disaster, the two parties insist on playing “Pin the tail on the party that lost the War.”

“We haven’t found much movement with the Republicans. They seem to be sticking with the president,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday. “I think they’ve decided they definitely want this to be the Republican Senate’s war, not just Bush’s [war]. They’re jealous. They don’t want him to have it as only his war.”

That’s our Harry. First, last, and always the fool. Of course GOP Senators aren’t “jealous” of Bush nor do they ” want him to have it as only his war.” That may be the silliest political barb tossed on Capitol Hill this century. In fact, it’s borderline incoherent which makes one ask what time of day he was quoted and from which Capitol Hill watering hole Harry was coming from.

The calculus for getting the 60 votes needed to end the GOP filibuster on Iraq legislation apparently became too difficult for Reid to achieve, and a compromise could have forced anti-war Democrats to vote on softer goals for troop withdrawal, something staunchly opposed by the party’s base.

So Reid has forged ahead with an aggressive list of Iraq proposals, including a key amendment that would place hard timetables on troop withdrawal, shifting the mission in Iraq for U.S. forces from combat to supporting the Iraqi security forces, and completing the deployment.

Reid’s move essentially brings to an abrupt halt the delicate lobbying Democrats had engaged with moderate Republican senators whom they thought were vulnerable on the war issue.

Does anyone actually believe that the “base” would be satisfied with “shifting the mission in Iraq” to supporting Iraqi security forces? This has always been the dirty little secret of the Democrat’s “timetable.” No one is going to be “supporting” the Iraqi security forces. That’s because for the foreseeable future - 2 to 3 years according to the report issued by retired General James Jones - we will have to take the lead in operations involving the Iraqi army and police because only 6 or 7 brigades are judged competent enough to go it alone with Americans in support and advisory positions.

What this means is that beyond the 30,000 or so troops expected to be gone by next summer, there isn’t a whole lot we can do to reduce our troop commitment without severely damaging Iraqi security. But this isn’t about Iraqi security or American interests or fighting al-Qaeda, or any other military/political goal we might aspire to. This is about the raw, cynical use of politics by the Democrats in calculated effort to garner as many votes in 2008 as possible. That, gentle readers, is the bottom line. And what is truly shocking is that the Dems aren’t even trying to hide this fact from anybody. They are boasting about it. They are glorying in the notion of it. They are congratulating themselves, patting themselves on the back for being so clever.

But hey! Don’t call them unpatriotic.

The Iraq Tar Baby has well and truly trapped both parties. Unless Dennis Kucinich is elected president, the next Commander in Chief will come into office facing exactly the same situation in Iraq on January 20, 2009 that George Bush faced on January 19, 2009 and will have to manage the situation in Iraq so that the kind of disaster that would surely follow any “hard” timetables for withdrawal currently being pushed by Democrats can be avoided.

Some are grumbling about Bush “kicking the can down the road” so that withdrawal will be up to his successor. That may be true but I doubt whether the President - any president - would prefer that to be the case. Nor should Democrats fear that anyone who hasn’t lived in a cave for the last four years will blame them for any disasters that would befall Iraq or the Middle East following an American exit - unless they force a withdrawal under the worst possible circumstances and at the worst possible time as they are advocating now.

Simply put, the “hard” timetable pushed by the Democrats will not end up with any kind of “redeployment” but rather a full scale retreat for which their rabid base has been agitating these last few years. To pretend otherwise is to ignore both political reality and the cynicism of those who promote the surrender of American interests in Iraq to the forces of death and destruction.

The New York Times didn’t like it. The Washington Post was lukewarm. The netroots dismissed it. The right embraced it.

I could make this the shortest post in the history of The House and just leave it at that but then, what fun would that be?

After more than 4 years of war, several different failed strategies for success, three commanding generals, two elections, 70,000 dead Iraqis, 26,000 wounded Americans, and 3700 dead patriots, the single most telling aspect of the debate over the war is how little it has changed. The same arguments, the same criticisms of each side, and we all end up in the same place; irreconcilably divided.

George Bush may think there are some Americans who want to bring the troops home now that would jump at the chance to embrace his token withdrawal of American forces. But on Capitol Hill and other places where it counts - the newsrooms and control rooms of the American media - he has zero chance of finding additional support for his policies.

Whatever small bump in political support the President received this past week was due solely to the calm, unhurried, and forthright testimony of General David Petraeus. Nothing Bush said last night altered the debate. There is nothing he can say about Iraq that will deflect the long term trend toward withdrawal. Both parties are in favor of it, albeit with different objectives. The Iraq Tar Baby has well and truly captured the Republican party and only the stupidity of the Democrats will save the GOP from total disaster in 2008. And perhaps not even then.

The Democrats have cynically tried to exploit the unpopularity of the war while trying to undermine the efforts of Petraeus and Co. who may have hit upon a strategy that will allow us to leave behind something less than roses and buttermilk but also something considerably less than total disaster. In fact, the Dems have failed to acknowledge any change in strategy at all and when they have, they switch tactics and go after General Petraeus by attacking him personally - a dubious strategy that has already backfired spectacularly (see above, “…stupidity of Democrats…”).

What we have seen this past week with the Petraeus testimony and the Bush speech is that facts don’t matter as much as political calculation with regards to the war. No one has been swayed by anything anyone has said about what is happening in Iraq. And no one is likely to be affected in the future by any arguments or even facts on the ground coming out of that country. Everyone’s mind appears to be made up except for a handful of GOP Senators and Congressmen who know what they believe about the war but have not quite taken the step of abandoning the President yet. That may change by January when the funding issue is revisited. Until then, Petreaus gets to continue his good work, hoping to build upon his small successes while Bush can try to push a reluctant Iraqi government toward at least the appearance of reconciliation.

We have been at this point in the Iraq debate for close to two years and nothing has changed. I suppose that there is some benefit of reiterating the same positions over and over, if only to remind us of how very far apart we are on this and other issues. Perhaps that reminder will spur us to greater efforts to bridge the gap between the two sides so that we can find an honorable way out of Iraq without leaving behind a Middle East blood bath but I’m doubting it.

For that to happen, someone would have to make the first move. And as it stands now, both sides are too proud, too rigid to make that happen.

Attacking the President over his Iraq policies and for the sunny side up way in which the Administration has been reporting progress on the war over the last 4 years is fair game. This is politics in America today, albeit much of the criticism is vicious and personal, and therefore appropriate in the context of what constitutes a debate over our policies.

But leave it to the left to lower the bar so that even rattlesnakes can’t get under it.

This is an ad that appeared in the New York Times today from that bastion of restraint and decorum, Moveon.Org:

At least give them credit for originality. I can’t remember the last time a general officer in the United States Army was all but called a traitor.

The body of the ad is unimportant if only because it links to reports from the GAO and others that show the surge isn’t “working.” If there is anything about Iraq that we can say with certainty, it is that in the relatively short amount of time (about 3 months since our force buildup was complete) that the surge has been in full motion, good progress has been made in some areas, no progress in others, and some places have gotten worse.

Duh.

The fact that al-Qaeda and the sectarian murderers (many of whom are not free agents but are being paid by outside actors) can read the newspapers and watch al-Jazeera, knowing full well the political situation in this country and are further aware that a supreme effort on their part to kill as many innocents as possible will likely bolster calls for an immediate withdrawal of our troops places people like Moveon.Org and the netroots who have also been sliming General Petreaus over the last few days in a de-facto alliance with the killers. Both want exactly the same thing; America totally out of Iraq. To not acknowledge that using the enemy’s deliberate attempt to escalate casualties in hopes that war opponents will gain the upper hand in this country is self-deluding. It doesn’t mean that the left are traitors or unpatriotic or anything else except pure, unadulterated dupes, easily manipulated and trained like dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Only in this case, they are trained to say “I told you so” about the surge after every mass casualty attack.

As long as the situation is even marginally better, we should continue to do all in our power to help the Iraqi government somehow come to grips with its numerous problems. I have little confidence the crew currently in charge - Maliki and his sectarian mob - are anxious to get anything done in this regard. But the “bottom up” reconciliation being effected in Anbar and elsewhere may work to force the national government to deal with the Sunnis sooner rather than later. When 50 Sunni tribes representing the great majority of Sunnis in Anbar form a secular political party to participate in the political life of the country, Maliki and his henchmen will have political difficulty in not working with them and others, although I imagine we will have to exploit the Shia fears of a well armed Sunni population in order to do get them off the mark.

Unfortunately, Baghdad and its environs are a different story. Here, the national polity has been so fractured, the factions so numerous and violent that it would be best if we allowed the Iraqi army alone to handle security there. Given that the army and police are riven with Shia militia sympathizers, this probably means a virtually “Sunni free” Baghdad in the future. This, along with the power of the Shia militias in the south are beyond our military’s capability to deal with. The militias ultimately are a political problem for the government.

Is the situation likely to turn around in 6 months? A year? No one, including Moveon and their smear machine can say. But given the stakes and given what has occurred so far, we should at least give General Petreaus the benefit of the doubt and allow him to continue his work, revisiting the issue again next March and on a regular basis after that.

Sliming General Petreaus, calling him a liar, a stooge, an Administration lackey is a sign that the left can’t win the debate on the merits of their arguments. All they have left is to attempt to kill the messenger by destroying his credibility. General Petreaus has more integrity in his little finger than all those who have sought to damage his well deserved reputation have collectively. And judging by what I’ve been hearing at the Congressional hearing this morning, their tactic has backfired badly.

If, as Cicero wrote, “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things,” then it is safe to say that the farther away our world moves from 9/11, the more our memories of that day should enrich us and keep us from taking actions that will make another equally devastating terrorist attack more likely.

Alas, the old Roman republican never knew a country like America. If he had, he would almost certainly have found an exception to his logic. For us, the past has always been an annoyance that gets in the way of our determined and dedicated march to the future. There is no malice in it, this flight, this mad dash from our history. In some ways, it is necessary for us to forget or ignore what has transpired in order to be free of the consequences the past sometimes imposes on those who would use our collective memory to keep the future at bay, standing in the way of progress in the name of hidebound “tradition” or “custom.”

So it has come for 9/11, a date but 6 years in the past and already seeing the effects of what James Earl Jones in the film Field of Dreams referred to as the erasure of history:

And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

Jones’ character was talking about baseball as a cultural touchstone by which each succeeding generation maintains contact with the past. But even here, that paean to baseball neglects the very real history of the game. Jones himself grew up during a time when members of his race were barred from playing the game. To say that baseball “reminds of us of all that once was good” ignores the fact that even a cursory glance at the historical record would flip those words and posit that baseball, in fact, also reminds us of all that once was bad about America.

It is this kind of schizophrenia - a duality of mind regarding our past - that so angers and fascinates many of us who love American history. We can glory in the words of the Declaration of Independence while realizing the hypocrisy of demanding freedom as we kept three million human beings in bondage ourselves. Similarly, we can marvel at the elegance and simplicity of the Constitution while acknowledging that its words still ring hollow for so many and have for so long.

Although aware of the dichotomies, the Founders gave these little discrepancies scant thought, believing it would be up to future generations to right the wrongs that they had neither the political or moral will to fix themselves. Right or wrong, much of American history is carelessly strewn about our national attic like a bunch of old steamer trunks and hope chests, examined (if at all) not for what the curios inside can teach us about ourselves but rather how their contents can be used in the present to propel us into the future.

And now this battle between the past and future has come for 9/11 as the open wounds of that day scab over and the emotional impact of the event becomes hard for even the vividness of searing memories to arouse in our breasts the same feelings of anger, outrage, and the terrible, aching sadness felt by virtually all Americans. For many of us, what remains is a determination not to forget and a realization that “The Long War” is upon us. For others, remembering 9/11 is an unwelcome intrusion or worse, a political construct to try and revivify feelings of patriotism and the war spirit. To these citizens who cling to the latter - most of whom could fairly be said are on the left - identification of 9/11 with their rabid opposition to the Administration of George Bush and the Iraq War builds an unreasonable resentment about remembering the attacks at all.

This excellent article in the New York Times by N.R. Kleinfield about the battle over how to best remember the history of 9/11 reveals both the pathos and the agony memories of that day engender as well as the desire by many to try and simply wish those memories away:

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

It isn’t just family members who wish to commemorate 9/11 as solemnly and fully as possible. However, the “moral authority” of those who lost loved ones that tragic day should be respected. They are stand ins for the rest of us who still see 9/11 as a day that changed America in ways that a mere 6 years after the event we are still trying to understand.

Superficially, there is the debate over increased domestic security. Even the wars currently being fought by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan are only surface manifestations of something fundamental that is altering our political and cultural landscape as I write this. In this respect, it doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton or other Democrats want to take us back to a 9/10 world where the threat of terrorists and those who support and enable them occupies a much smaller space in our national politics.

Whether or not they realize it, the 9/10 Democrats can try all they wish to make 9/11 disappear into the mists of memory by downplaying its significance so that rather than a rallying cry it becomes a day marked by an inexpressible sadness with overtones of guilt that the attacks were actually our fault. They will not succeed because our enemies will not let them.

Sooner or later, our perfect record of preventing another terrorist attack on American soil will bump up against the reality that we can succeed a thousand times in thwarting the designs of those who contemplate mass murder but our enemies need to win only once. And then those memories that we have carefully stored in our national attic will come back in a rush and we will wonder if we shouldn’t have dusted them off every once and a while in order to glean whatever lessons in preparedness we might have missed the first time around.

To be sure, it is human nature to try and push unpleasant memories to the back of our minds lest the pain they cause become a part of our everyday lives. And we shouldn’t blame those who wish that 9/11 be relegated so soon to the status that other days of national tragedy have fallen:

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

A strong argument could be made that none of those other days of tragedy had the raw, emotional impact of 9/11. Perhaps the Kennedy Assassination echoes the surprise of what happened on 9/11. And Pearl Harbor certainly aroused similar feelings of anger and determination.

But 9/11 stands alone as a date that tears at our souls and requires us to re-examine uncomfortable truths. We are at war. Remembering or not remembering 9/11 won’t change that fact nor will denying the reality of that statement make it less true. The reason is simple. It takes two sides to make war. And our enemies will find ways to remind us that our denial is silly, stupid, and self defeating as often and as painfully as we let them.

It may be a different kind of war but war it is and pushing the proximate cause of the conflict into the recesses of our memory because remembering is too painful, or too much a bother, or gives political advantage to one side or another is simply putting off the day of reckoning when those in denial will be forced once again to look 9/11 full in the face and realize the overwhelming truth that America is in danger. And if we are vouchsafed the time to allow the emotional scars of 9/11 to heal, we should also use that time to prepare for the next onslaught while doing everything in our power to prevent it.

Once again, America is steamrolling our history into a flattened state of forgetfulness. This time, it is happening in record time and partly being done so that any political advantage in remembering 9/11 can be neutralized by an opposition that plays upon the emotional weariness of the voters in fighting a war few understand and many wish would just go away. Part of this problem can be laid at the feet of the current Administration who has, at times (not as often as they have been accused), employed the imagery and played upon the emotions that 9/11 brought to the surface; feelings of patriotism and unity that seem somewhat quaint when we look back on them today. Not because they were not genuine but because the opposition has determined that these emotions are inappropriate and not germane to the political realities of today.

Instead, the dominant emotion we should be feeling about 9/11 is outrage. Not at Osama Bin Laden but at George Bush for using 9/11 as an “excuse” to get us embroiled in the morass that is Iraq and to skirt the limits of Constitutional authority in order to protect the homeland from further attacks. This is what the Democrats will run their campaigns on in 2008. It remains to be seen whether they will be successful or not.

Meanwhile, the 6th anniversary of 9/11 approaches and once again we will try and conjure up what it felt like to be alive and an American that day. Whether the exercise in remembrance is useful or not is immaterial to those who lost loved ones on that horrible day. For them, the war to remember 9/11 is irrelevant to their bereavement. They are beyond comforting and need only our understanding. I would hope that both sides in this battle for the degree of poignancy with which we recall September 11, 2001 keeps them in their thoughts and prayers as the history of that day fades into myth and legend, becoming a touchstone for all we hold dear as Americans.

I would love to say that the agreement reached yesterday by the Iraqi leadership is a huge step on the road to peace and reconciliation. But I don’t see how anyone who has watched this crew in action over the last year can honestly say what was agreed to yesterday by the major sectarian factions is anything except Washington-inspired window dressing:

Iraq’s top Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.

The agreement by the five leaders was one of the most significant political developments in Iraq for months and was quickly welcomed by the United States, which hopes such moves will ease sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands.

But skeptics will be watching for action amid growing frustration in Washington over the political paralysis that has gripped the government of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

While certainly significant in the sense that they were all able to sit down in the same room and basically agree that there are things that must be done to start Iraq down the road to peace, the devil, as always, is in the details:

Iraqi officials said the five leaders had agreed on draft legislation that would ease curbs on former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party joining the civil service and military.

Consensus was also reached on a law governing provincial powers as well as setting up a mechanism to release some detainees held without charge, a key demand of Sunni Arabs since the majority being held are Sunnis.

The laws need to be passed by Iraq’s fractious parliament, which has yet to receive any of the drafts.

Again, I hate to be a party pooper, but these laws have been in “draft” form for months - some of them for more than a year. The oil revenue sharing law was passed in the spring and has yet to be taken up by Iraq’s parliament. In fact, precious little has been taken up by Parliament which usually has trouble finding a quorum of members to conduct business.

And frankly, it remains to be seen how much sway these gentlemen have with their various factions. Maliki has only nominal control over the Shia coalition that runs the Parliament. Vice President al-Hashemi has problems with his own party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, who walked out of the government last month over Maliki’s rank sectarianism.

As for the Kurds, as always, they have their own fish to fry. Since their long term goal is an independent Kurdish state, they can afford to be generous to the Sunnis while cooperating with the Shias when it suits them. They will support any deal that maintains their virtual independence from Baghdad.

In short, the senior Iraqi leadership has given General Petreaus one more arrow in his quiver when he gives his report to Congress in about two weeks. In addition to some progress in the security situation about which Petreaus will be able to boast, he can now claim that his deals with many of the Sunni tribes and this latest accord in Baghdad proves that his counterinsurgency strategy is working.

Unfortunately, Petreaus and the military cannot address the huge political and security problem brewing in the south as the British continue their withdrawal:

Shiite militiamen from the Mahdi Army took over the police joint command center in Basra on Sunday after British soldiers withdrew from the facility and handed control to the Iraqi police, witnesses said.

Police left the building when the militiamen, loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, arrived, the witnesses said.

The British military disputed the reports, saying they had been in contact with the Iraqi general in charge of security in Basra, who has said the Mahdi Army was not there.

But the witnesses said the Mahdi Army emptied the building — taking generators, computers, furniture and even cars, saying it was war booty — and remained there in the early evening.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Until Maliki can enforce the will of the central government in the south, all the reforms and agreements between the factions wil largely be moot. The writ of Baghdad law does not run in Basra and other towns and villages where the Mahdi and other militias are fighting for control - an intolerable situation that has gotten worse since the British have pulled back their forces and allowed the militias to move in.

This means a final and direct confrontation with Maliki’s friend and supporter, Moqtada al-Sadr is in the offing. Will the Mahdi be the next target for Petreaus if Congress gives him the go-ahead to continue the surge? One would think that the General would be forced to deal with the Mahdi if for no other reason than to plug the holes that will be left by the British drawdown of troops. That would mean some very hard fighting for our boys.

Cynics will question the timing of these accords as well as their utility. Coming two weeks before Petreaus’s report to Congress, the agreement smacks of gamesmanship by both the Iraqi and American governments. The parties all know that the Iraqi parliament will be months, perhaps even years, examining, debating, and amending these laws. For that reason alone, Congress should give little weight to this agreement when the debate over funding the surge picks up next month.

Dear Constituent,

As your Congressman, it is sometimes my duty to travel to far off, exotic places in order to inform myself on the issues of the day.

As you may know, these trips usually involve strenuous and exhausting activities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten sunburned from brutal rounds of golf played in Caribbean sun or pruned hands from spending too much time in the resort swimming pool. But as your Representative, I feel it necessary to bear any burden and pay any price in order to familiarize myself with issues on which I will have to vote in your name.

Just recently, I returned from a very different kind of fact finding mission. I would like to report on my visit to Iraq and what I think is going on there was well as inform you of how I am likely to vote next month on whether to continue funding the war.

First of all, as fact finding missions go, I found out a lot of interesting facts. Did you know that it gets very, very hot in Iraq? So hot it “feels like a hair dryer on the back of your neck.” And I found out that wearing a flak jacket and Kevlar helmet when going outside the green zone is not very flattering from an aesthetic standpoint but looks terrific on television and in the newspaper photos. Oughta be worth 10,000 votes next election.

Of course, the highlight of the trip was the very pleasant “nice napkin lunch” with General Petreaus. He certainly sets a fine table and I particularly approved of his wine selection. Then the General showed us all sorts of charts and graphs with incomprehensible acronyms and even more puzzling numbers that he said pointed to the surge giving our troops “tactical momentum.”

What kind of momentum can be considered tactical? I wish I had thought to ask him at that point but I was on my third glass of Pinot Blanc and really wasn’t in any shape to ask that kind of probing question. I guess it has to do with a drop in violence in some areas of Iraq as well as some interesting political developments in Anbar Province and other parts of the Sunni Triangle. It seems a lot of the Sunnis in those areas are switching sides and joining us in our fight against the terrorist from al-Qaeda in return for arms and help in reconstructing their infrastructure.

Now I hate to be a worry wart about these things but considering the fact that until recently, many of these same Sheiks that we’re now embracing were trying to kill us, giving them arms might seem to be something of a risk. After all, just because they’re buddy buddy with us doesn’t mean they’ve gained any great love for their Shia masters in Baghdad. And if we’re seen as allied too closely with Prime Minister Maliki and his sectarian mob, they just might have another change of heart and start using those guns on us again. Especially after we start drawing down our forces, which we are going to be forced into doing in March when many of the units face the end of their deployments. If the Shias take advantage of that by upping the pressure on the Sunnis by escalating sectarian warfare, anything is possible.

All of this is fine as far as the surge goes. It is doing what the President said it would; improve the security situation in order to give the government of Prime Minister Maliki the time to try and effect a reconciliation with the Sunnis. But then I talked to Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Shia, who told me “There’s not going to be political reconciliation by this September; there’s not going to be political reconciliation by next September,” and I thought if this is true, why bother? If the Shias aren’t interested in living in a free, united Iraq with their Sunni countrymen, what possible reason is there to continue to prop up such a government?

But then, there is the “bottom up” reconciliation being carried out in many areas and you have to say to yourself “Here are a people worth helping.” For all their faults, their petty jealousies and hatreds, there may be just enough Iraqis - both Shia and Sunni - dedicated to trying to heal their country and bring it together that it makes sense to continue with the surge as long as we are able to maintain it.

What happens when we’re forced to draw down our forces? Given the change in many places in Iraq over the last few months that the surge has been fully operational, anything is possible - anything except movement toward peace by the Maliki government. There’s only so much our soldiers are able to do. But what is possible (and beyond), they are doing.

General Petreaus and the troops have earned the opportunity to carry on with their mission - at least until we start bringing the boys home in March. And that’s why I will vote to continue funding the mission as it currently stands.

Iraq will be a wretchedly violent place for many years to come. But if by our actions we can start them firmly on the path to peace and reconciliation, we should try. It may take a change at the top of the Iraqi government to begin the process in earnest. It may not. But whatever happens, much of the history that will be written in Iraq in the future will be penned by Iraqis and not Americans. Of this there is no doubt.

No doubt this issue will be revisited again. And circumstances might very well change - circumstances that would cause me to reverse my vote that I will be making in September. But as long as we are making progress, however small or even ephemeral, we should continue.

Perhaps it is too much to ask that President Bush just once try to be a little more realistic about what is going on in Iraq and the prospects for that nation becoming what he has defined as “free.” But if he was ever going to soberly address the enormous problems facing the Iraqi people and government - problems that must be addressed before we can claim any kind of “triumph” - he might not have been able to find a friendlier, more receptive audience than yesterday at the VFW Convention in Kansas City.

Bush delivered a well written speech to the supportive group of vets, touching all the familiar bases about 9/11, al-Qaeda, and the need for supporting General Petreaus and our military. But the closest he came to acknowledging the extraordinary challenges facing the Iraqi government was here:

A free Iraq is not going to be perfect. A free Iraq will not make decisions as quickly as the country did under the dictatorship. Many are frustrated by the pace of progress in Baghdad, and I can understand this. As I noted yesterday, the Iraqi government is distributing oil revenues across its provinces despite not having an oil revenue law on its books, that the parliament has passed about 60 pieces of legislation.

Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him. And it’s not up to politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position — that is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship. (Applause.) A free Iraq is not going to transform the Middle East overnight. But a free Iraq will be a massive defeat for al Qaeda, it will be an example that provides hope for millions throughout the Middle East, it will be a friend of the United States, and it’s going to be an important ally in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. (Applause.)

There is no “pace of progress” with regards to political reconciliation in Iraq. There is, quite simply, no progress at all. And it might be an arguable point that Iraq is, in any sense of the word, a democracy - not when 15% of the population is frozen out of power sharing and hunted down like animals to be slaughtered.

That latter point is the direct result of Mr. Maliki’s inability (or unwillingness) to do anything about the Shia death squads inhabiting the Interior Ministry of his own government as well as their enablers on the Iraqi police force and in the army. The symbiotic relationship between Mr. Maliki’s government and the thugs, militia men, and criminal gangs that make life in the Capitol and elsewhere a living hell for ordinary Iraqis (while giving him the support he needs to maintain his position) will never be addressed as long as the President of the United States keeps his mouth shut about them.

Not a word in the President’s speech about the British withdrawal from the south which has already precipitated a civil war within a civil war between rival militias for control of that vital area. The hand of Iran is most prominent here and there is little doubt that the mullahs will try their best to back the winner in this conflict thus giving them effective control of nearly one third of the country.

And what of our friends, the Kurds? They recently threw in their lot with the Shias by signing a power sharing agreement that froze the Sunnis out of effective representation in Baghdad. Hailed by Maliki as a triumph, the agreement is a recipe for disaster in that it gives the Sunni insurgents a reason to fight on.

I could go on with the familiar litany of catastrophes waiting to happen, missed opportunities, “beat the heat” vacations by the parliament (which never has a quorum to pass anything anyway), the inexhaustible supply of insurgents and their sympathizers - numbered in the hundreds of thousands by our own military - and the hopelessness of most ordinary Iraqis about the security situation.

Does all of this overshadow the genuine progress being made against al-Qaeda as well as some encouraging news about some of the Sunni tribes switching sides? I think any rational, fair minded person who doesn’t have a partisan agenda would have to agree that despite the relative success of the surge to date, the daunting task to make Iraq “free” and achieve any kind of “victory” remains a pipe dream.

The most controversial part of the President’s speech came when he warned against a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq leading to another “Viet Nam” aftermath. Here, the President is on firmer ground - except if you’re a reporter for the New York Times:

In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

The speech was the beginning of an intense White House initiative to shape the debate on Capitol Hill in September, when the president’s troop buildup will undergo a re-evaluation. It came amid rising concerns in Washington over the performance of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, who has made little progress toward bridging the sectarian divide in his country.

I had to read that amazing passage about our pullout from Viet Nam having “few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies” several times before I could believe it. Is the Times actually trying to argue that there were no “negative repercussions” for Thailand or Cambodia, both of them close US allies at the time? And the fact that the collective security group, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, was destroyed by our pullout from Viet Nam didn’t have repercussions for the United States itself? Or that our pull out didn’t damage our ability to deter the Russians?

Our mad rush out of Viet Nam certainly emboldened the Soviet Union to meddle in Africa by using their flunkie Castro as a proxy in Angola as well as giving direct aid to groups like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the El Salvador rebels. To say that our pull out didn’t have negative repercussions for the US or many of our allies is insane.

The President spelled out what some of those “negative repercussions” were:

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

[snip]

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that “the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.”

I think the New York Times, as most on the left in this country, have failed to come to grips with their abandonment of Southeast Asia to the communists. They have washed their hands of the bloodbath that followed, saying it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t gone in militarily in the first place. That is pure sophistry. The aftermath of Viet Nam - like the aftermath that will occur in Iraq - would have been manageable if we hadn’t pulled out so precipitously and completely. If we had made it clear to the North that bombing would have resumed the moment they reneged on the treaty and if we had kept a substantial residual force in Viet Nam with the promise that our troops would return if they broke the peace agreement, I doubt very much that Saigon would have fallen.

Now this position was not politically viable at the time. Ford was hamstrung by Congress in protecting the South from the North’s cynical refusal to abide by the Paris accords. The result was catastrophe.

Can we avoid a similar fate in Iraq? No one knows. But this quote from an unarmed official commenting on a much more pessimistic report than the President gave to the vets, highlighting the dire situation we face over the next 9-12 months seems to sum it up for both Democrats and Republicans alike:

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is “more dire in its assessments” than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

“It doesn’t take a policy position,” one official said. “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.”

If that doesn’t sober up both supporters of the war and those who wish a quick exit from Iraq, then nothing will.

Via the Asia Times, we discover that it is probable Pakistani President Musharraf gave a green light to the American military to go into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Provinces and take out the nearly 30 Taliban bases and severely curtail the incursions by enemy fighters into Afghanistan.

Alas, as has been the case many times it seems, we are too late:

The ongoing three-day peace jirga (council) involving hundreds of tribal leaders from Pakistan and Afghanistan is aimed at identifying and rooting out Taliban and al-Qaeda militancy on both sides of the border.

This was to be followed up with military strikes at militant bases in Pakistan, either by the Pakistani armed forces in conjunction with the United States, or even by US forces alone.

The trouble is, the bases the US had meticulously identified no longer exist. The naive, rustic but battle-hardened Taliban still want a fight, but it will be fought on the Taliban’s chosen battlegrounds.

Twenty-nine bases in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan that were used to train militants have simply fallen off the radar.

The US had presented Islamabad with a dossier detailing the location of the bases as advance information on likely US targets. But Asia Times Online has learned that since early this month, neither the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led coalition in Afghanistan nor Pakistan intelligence has detected any movement in the camps.

The jirga involved the leaders of the Pashtun tribes in northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani and Afghan officials have been trying to convince the tribes to stop allying themselves with the Taliban who have used a combination of bribes, religious fervor, and terror to operate in their territory.

StrategyPage reports the effort is not going well:

With increasing amounts of drug cash pouring into southern Afghanistan, comes more government, NATO and American troops. And more Taliban as well. This has sharply increased the level of violence in the area, partly because over the last two years, there have been more government officials around to record it all. It’s all about tribal politics. The Pushtun tribes on both sides of the border form a population of some twenty million of the poorest, and most heavily armed, people in the region. Leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan are trying to convince the tribal chiefs that it’s time to pay more attention to education and economic development. Many of the chiefs are willing to listen, but many others are siding with the Taliban, and a return to a mythical past. Pakistan has admitted it has been the source of most Taliban activity, because Pakistan has been less successful taking on the Taliban in Pushtun tribal areas, than has the Afghan government.

Taking into account the way Afghan politics works, the U.S. is offering a new anti-drug strategy that would involve financial incentives to provincial governors who reduce drug activity. That would mean the drug lords would have to pay higher bribes as well.

Rivalry with the dominant Punjabs in Pakistan is one reason for the Pashtun’s reluctance to abandon the Taliban and join with Islamabad in forging stronger ties with the central government. But now that it appears President Musharraf is dead serious about going after the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies in the NWFP - including the Waziristans - the Pashtuns don’t want to be on the losing side and appear ready to deal.

So where have al-Qaeda and the Taliban gone to?

The al-Qaeda leadership (shura) has apparently now installed itself in Jani Khel village in the Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). This includes Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Taliban leadership, most prominently Haqqani, is concentrated in the Afghan provinces of Khost and Gardez, where much fighting is expected to take place.

A spillover of al-Qaeda’s presence in Jani Khel is likely to spread to Karak, Kohat, Tank, Laki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan. Kohat in NWFP is tipped to become a central city in the upcoming battle, as the office of the Pakistani Garrison commanding officer is there and all operations will be directed through this area. In addition, Kohat is directly linked with a US airfield in Khost for supplies and logistics.

A second war corridor is expected to be in the Waziristans, the Khyber Agency, the Kurram Agency, Bajaur Agency, Dir, Mohmand Agency and Chitral in Pakistan and Nanagarhar, Kunar and Nooristan in Afghanistan.

The fiercest battleground, however, will be in Khost and Gardez, making the previous Taliban successes in Helmand and Kandahar during the spring offensive of 2006 a distant memory.

Here’s a link to a full page map showing the cities and provinces in question.

As has recently been reported, the Taliban has changed tactics thanks to successful strikes on their military leadership in the past few months. It appears that local Taliban commanders will be given much more autonomy to carry out attacks on NATO forces with more resources going to the most successful among them.

Will this make it harder to fight them? Not if we get more boots on the ground, as the excellent Canadian general Lewis Mackenzie says in this Op Ed:

Recent announcements indicate that Canada hopes to have 3,000 to 5,000 Afghan troops trained by the end of the year and that they will be able to conduct combat operations on their own. That is all well and good but it will not ensure victory, particularly with Taliban reinforcements readily available across the border in Pakistan and having easy access to unguarded border crossing points into Afghanistan.

If you add up the total regular army troops available to NATO, it comes to roughly 2.24 million soldiers. All we need in Afghanistan to reinforce the troops currently in theatre and win this thing is half of one per cent of that figure.

Where the hell are they?

Good question, general. I wrote about NATO’s lack of enthusiasm for putting their troops into harms way here. Basically, the NATO charter gives each country an “out” by allowing the individual governments to attach “caveats” to the use of their forces that would keep them out of combat zones. “How many battalions does it take to protect Kabul airport?” asked Colonel Fred Lewis, the deputy contingent commander. Indeed, the International Crisis Group concluded that NATO simply must do more:

“Only a handful of NATO members are prepared to go to the south and east and to go robustly—mainly the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, Australia and Denmark,” the International Crisis Group concludes in a blunt report published this month.

“Hard questions need to be asked of those such as Germany, Spain, France, Turkey and Italy who are not, and who sometimes appear to put force protection, not mission needs, at the fore.”

This may be the crucial period in the Afghanistan War - or perhaps we should redefine that war to include Pakistan as well now that Musharraf has reluctantly concluded to accept the help of the Americans in trying to defeat the Taliban. Be prepared for growing conflict in the south of Afghanistan where the Canadians and Dutch are currently operating. One of the goals of the aborted 2007 Taliban spring offensive was to inflict large numbers of casualties on the Canadians in hopes that the Canadian people - already ambivalent at best about the commitment of their troops to Afghanistan - would demand the return of their soldiers thus knocking Canada out of the war. They didn’t succeed thanks to some brilliant pre-emptive strikes by US, Canadian, and NATO forces on Taliban positions in Afghanistan where they were massing for their offensive. But they have hardly given up the fight.

The New York Times says we are losing the war in Afghanistan. Even Michael Yon, pointing to this report about our bases being attacked, says we are “losing in Afghanistan.” General Mackenzie says we need 10,000 troops immediately to stabilize the south. And the Musharraf-Taliban showdown is taking place amidst immense political turmoil in Pakistan where it is not even clear that the Pakistani president is committed to the long haul of fighting Islamic radicals in his midst.

Time for NATO to crap or get off the pot in Afghanistan. Time for Musharraf to throw caution to the winds and call upon American help for his war in the tribal areas. And it is long past time for the press to start paying attention to this conflict and inform the American people of the seriousness of the situation so that we all don’t wake up one morning and find the Taliban re-ensconced in Kabul with al-Qaeda right on their heels.