Liberal psyches be preserved! It seems that elements of the mainstream press have embarked on extensive retrospective analyses that seek to trace all anti-American sentiment back to origins in Bush administration policy. A recent Pentagon report on the Guantanamo Bay military prison was ordered by President Barack Obama. In spite of its conclusion that detainee treatment meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, a remarkable front page story in the Washington Post tries to make the case that Guantanamo is turning otherwise likable young men into jihadists as a result of their detainment.
'Since his death, U.S. intelligence agencies have sought to determine when Ajmi became a hard-core jihadist. Was it in the late 1990s, when he came under the sway of a radical preacher while serving in the Kuwaiti army? Was it in 2001, when he allegedly joined the Taliban? Was it upon his release in 2005, when extremists back home celebrated him as the "Lion of Guantanamo"?
Or is the answer potentially more alarming: Was his descent into unrepentant radicalism an unintended consequence of his incarceration?'
In March 2008 Ajmi drove a pickup truck packed with explosives onto an Iraqi army base outside Mosul killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounding 42 others. U.S. military officials at Guantanamo had Ajmi pegged as a trouble maker at best, but according to the Post, his lawyerThomas Wilner says the problem was Guantanamo.
'Wilner tried to talk to Ajmi about his upcoming administrative review board hearing -- the Guantanamo equivalent of a parole board meeting -- saying it would give him an opportunity to tell the truth about what he was doing before his capture. But Ajmi wasn't interested. He wanted to talk about how he was being treated at Guantanamo, about the IRFing, about how the guards rifled through his papers.
Wilner urged him to focus on legal issues. If he wanted Shearman to keep representing him, he needed to sign a form to that effect. If he did not sign, Wilner said, he would not be able to see him anymore.
Ajmi tried to change the subject again. Wilner's interpreter, a young Egyptian American man, interjected. "This guy is just trying to help you," he said. "Can't you address him?"
Ajmi glowered. He bared his teeth. Then he threw a cup of hot tea in the interpreter's face.
Wilner ended the session, but he soon forgave Ajmi. The detainee's hostility, he believed, was a result of mental deterioration caused by his confinement at Guantanamo.'
The forces that drive suicide bombers to their explosive ends stand revealed. How fortunate that we have a savior in President Barack Obama who will end the scourge by closing Guantanamo. Suicide bombing will be soon be a distant memory. Well maybe not, but at the very least liberal consciences will be salved in the conviction that future bloody deaths from human bombs are not their fault.
But this is just one of many stories intended to place blame where the press would like it to be. Unfortunately for the Washington press, their ongoing campaign to discredit the Bush administration is running into obstacles. For one thing, it's becoming clearer by the day, that what the press considers the worst foreign policy disaster in recent American history, the invasion of Iraq, has planted the seeds of democracy and they have taken root. The recent Iraqi election has resulted a resounding victory for secular government, a rejection of Islamic religious rule, and a rejection of control by Iranian sponsored parties. The establishment of a democratic government in Iraq represents a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East, and it' has shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S.
This is not good news for Washington Post reporter extraordinaire, Thomas Ricks, who has a new book. According to Mario Loyola his new one is as wildly off the mark as his last one. (Disclosure: Aside from the excerpts of "Fiasco" that appeared in the Post, I haven't read either and it's not likely I will.) In Loyola's analysis Ricks' new book "The Gamble" promotes the conventional media wisdom on the War in Iraq. You know the drill. Democracy in Iraq is doomed to fail and would already have done so but for the dumb luck of the surge, and even that was a political failure.
'Following the Woodward method, Ricks interviewed enough people that he can quote somebody saying pretty much whatever he wants said in support of his narrative, and he puts those who gave him the greatest access in the most favorable light. Ricks had surprising access to a lot of senior people. Gen. Jack Keane, one of the signal proponents of the surge, reports being surprised at how much information Ricks already had by the time of their interview.
But in the absence of archival research, this mountain of quotations fails to communicate so many critical aspects of what happened — and of how decisions were made — that it would risk incoherence if it had to stand on its own as history. Ricks solves that problem by weaving his reportage around the most familiar propositions of the conventional media narrative: 1) Rumsfeld and his senior generals stubbornly refused to implement a proper counterinsurgency strategy and nearly caused a disaster; 2) the surge has succeeded militarily but failed politically; 3) democracy is a pipe dream in Iraq, where “lots of little Saddams” have replaced the one we toppled; 4) the Iraq war has been most of all a victory for Iran; and 5) Obama will be fighting the Iraq war long into the future, with an uncertain outcome. Each of these propositions is seriously flawed if not completely wrong.'
But there is a method to the madness in all this. The sad fact is that the media and many of liberal intelligentsia really wanted America to lose the war in Iraq. It wasn't so much the war that was objectionable as the pain of having to acknowledge that George W. Bush might have been right about it. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown wondered aloud on February 1, 2005, shortly after the Iraqis first went to the polls, "What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?" Brown wrote:
'But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?
It's hard to swallow, isn't it?
Americans cross own barrier
If you fit the previously stated profile, I know you're fighting the idea, because I am, too. And if you were with the president from the start, I've already got your blood boiling.
For those who've been in the same boat with me, we don't need to concede the point just yet. There's a long way to go. But I think we have to face the possibility.
I won't say that it had never occurred to me previously, but it's never gone through my mind as strongly as when I watched the television coverage from Iraq that showed long lines of people risking their lives by turning out to vote, honest looks of joy on so many of their faces.
Some CNN guest expert was opining Monday that the Iraqi people crossed a psychological barrier by voting and getting a taste of free choice (setting aside the argument that they only did so under orders from their religious leaders).
I think it's possible that some of the American people will have crossed a psychological barrier as well.
Deciding democracy's worth
On the other side of that barrier is a concept some of us have had a hard time swallowing:
Maybe the United States really can establish a peaceable democratic government in Iraq, and if so, that would be worth something.
Would it be worth all the money we've spent? Certainly.
Would it be worth all the lives that have been lost? That's the more difficult question, and while I reserve judgment on that score until such a day arrives, it seems probable that history would answer yes to that as well.
I don't want to get carried away in the moment.
Going to war still sent so many terrible messages to the world.'
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart had similar misgivings.
'Jon Stewart, late in the Daily Show last night to Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria: "I’ve watched this thing unfold from the start and here’s the great fear that I have: What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.'
Here we are four years down the road with another Iraqi election in the books, but no implosions on the left, no facing of possibilities, no worrying over whether or not Bush was right. Instead we have denial. Yes, the surge that was doomed to failure, but it "succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated." Obama's words. And that's the ticket. Nobody with a brain could possibly have figured the surge would actually work. What else could it be but luck?
So as long as things go well in Iraq, we can expect the Rickses of the world to remain locked into a cycle of "investigative" journalism and "non-fiction" literature that will explain to their self satisfaction how luck saved the situation in Iraq, after George W. Bush made such a mess of it. They will endlessly explain how anything that worked was less a result of administration purpose and planning than it was of pure chance. Or if it can't be written off to chance pundits will opine that the flowering of democracy in Iraq is really not such a good thing anyway.
Of course, it's not clear that President Obama will help them out of their liberal quandry. Sure he was as big a critic as the best of them, but the buck stops on his desk now, and talk is cheap. Easy to say invading Iraq was a mistake, but now that security has improved and Iraqis are deciding issues with ballots rather than bullets, can the liberals keep saying it's a huge mistake and do it with a straight face. Will Obama really want to risk having a democratically governed allied country disappear on his watch by pulling up stakes and leaving as he promised early on in his campaigns. As with other campaign promises, this one may also have passed its expiration date.
'WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama faces split opinions within the military on whether to make the speedy withdrawal from Iraq he championed as a candidate.
Obama's top generals in Baghdad are pressing for an elongated timetable. Some influential senior advisers inside the Pentagon are more amenable to a quicker pullout.
Obama has yet to decide the matter. But his recent announcement that he is sending thousands more combat troops to Afghanistan implies a drawdown of at least two brigades from Iraq by summer.
That does not answer the question whether Obama will stick to his stated goal of a 16-month pullout or opt for a slower, less risky approach.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American commander in Baghdad, favors a longer timetable for leaving Iraq. He sees 2009 as a pivotal year, with parliamentary elections set to be held in December; he doesn't want to lose more than two of the 14 combat brigades that are now in Iraq before the end of the year. And he believes the U.S. military will need to remain engaged in Iraq, to some degree, for years to come.
Odierno's boss at U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, leans toward Odierno's view.'
Meanwhile, back on the liberal ranch, the Ajmi saga continues in Post pages this morning. Just in case anybody missed the story on Sunday.
'When Thomas Wilner learned that his client had become a suicide bomber, he said he felt physically ill. He thought of the victims, and he thought of Ajmi. "Here was this poor, dumb kid -- I really don't think he was a bad kid -- who was thrown into a hellhole of a prison and who went mad," he said. "Should we really be surprised that somebody we treated this way would become radicalized, would become crazy?"'
A Kuwaiti national was captured with al Qaeda in Pakistan after fighting in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance. And the Washington Post thinks it's Guantanamo that turned him to jihad. It's sounds like a typical liberal mea culpa. "Yes, America is to blame, particularly the America that isn't me." There. Doesn't that feel better? It's George W. Bush, who's really to blame. That will be the media theme for the next four years, anyway. It's something liberals can swallow.
I heard this story on an NPR show yesterday. You hit the nail right on the head.
Posted by: David Shea | February 24, 2009 at 07:24 AM
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Posted by: jorod | February 25, 2009 at 01:47 PM