John McCain: An Absence of Character

John McCain--while much better than the other Republican candidates--does not have the character to be a good president.

Here are Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter. They should be ashamed of themselves for their "he said, she said" journalism, but the story gets through if you read their article recognizing that everything said by "the Bush administration" or "Kenneth Pollack" is a lie:

McCain, Iraq War and the Threat of "Al Qaeda": As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand "Al Qaeda" to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.... Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused by the name "Al Qaeda" since the Sept. 11 attacks.

There has been heated debate since the start of the war about the nature of the threat in Iraq. The Bush administration has long portrayed the fight as part of a broader battle against Islamic terrorists. Opponents of the war accuse the administration of deliberately blurring the distinction between the Sept. 11 attackers and anti-American forces in Iraq. "The fundamental problem we face in Iraq is that there is not a single center of gravity, as in the cold war, but a whole constellation of contending forces," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism and counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University.... The entity Mr. McCain was referring to... Al Qaeda in Iraq... did not exist until after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003....

[S]ome students of the insurgency say Mr. McCain is making a dangerous generalization. "The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it's been fighting Iraqis," said Juan Cole.... the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army's unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.

The current situation in Iraq should properly be described as "a multifactional civil war"... Ira M. Lapidus, a co-author of %u201CIslam, Politics and Social Movements%u201D and a professor of history at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley... wrote in an e-mail message....

In recent months, Mr. McCain has also been talking more about the threat posed by Iranian influence in Iraq, bringing him in line with American military officials, who in the wake of the Basra fighting seem increasingly convinced that Iranian support for Shiite groups now constitutes the primary security threat in Iraq.... talking about both threats, Mr. McCain tripped up last month on a visit to the Middle East, when he mistakenly said several times that the Iranians were training Qaeda operatives in Iran and sending them back to Iraq.... And Mr. McCain went beyond what he usually says and what his foreign policy advisers believe during a back-and-forth with Mr. Obama at the end of February.... Mr. McCain... said at a town-hall-style meeting in Tyler, Tex. "Al Qaeda is in Iraq.... My friends, if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base. They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen."

Mr. Obama's views track with those of many independent analysts. In a speech last August, he criticized President Bush by saying: "The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of Al Qaeda's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates Al Qaeda in Iraq -- which didn't exist before our invasion -- and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan."...

Few, including Mr. McCain, expect Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, to take control of Shiite-dominated Iraq in the event of an American withdrawal.... Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, said during a recent conference call with reporters that in the event of an American pullout, "you might not necessarily see a single entity taking charge." But such a withdrawal could empower Shiite militias in the south and Kurds in the north, leaving Al Qaeda "free to try to impose its will" and lead to increased sectarian violence that "would be very likely to draw neighbors into the conflict," he said...

And Matthew Yglesias has a point to make about this, and about the ethics of Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter going to Kenneth Pollack for "balance":

Matthew Yglesias: Ken Pollack's Defense of Lying: This New York Times article about how John McCain's political strategy is based on fundamentally misleading people about the nature of the situation in Iraq, but that's okay with the media not because they're fooled but just because they like John McCain, has gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. But this particular paragraph is especially telling:

In longer discussions on the subject, Mr. McCain often goes into greater specificity about the entities jockeying for control in Iraq. Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain's portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a "perfectly reasonable catchall phrase" that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that "does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing," said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

At a time like this, you have to ask yourself what is the Brookings Institution for. According to the Brookings website:

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research [...] The research agenda and recommendations of Brookings experts are rooted in open-minded inquiry and our scholars represent diverse points of view. More than 200 resident and nonresident fellows research issues; write books, papers, articles and opinion pieces; testify before congressional committees and participate in dozens of public events each year. The Institution's president, Strobe Talbott, is responsible for setting policies that maintain Brookings's reputation for quality, independence and impact.

To me, that sounds inconsistent with offering a public defense of the practice of using the term "al-Qaeda" to refer to entities that are not al-Qaeda. High-quality research would be that if some large number of public officials and media personalities started referring to something as "al-Qaeda" when it was not, in fact, al-Qaeda you try to correct the record. Instead, Pollack seems to feel his job is to help push back against the people who are trying to correct the public record.

It's certainly an interesting development. A lot of very good people work at Brookings. I imagine they enjoy working at a place that has a reputation for "high-quality, independent research . . . rooted in open-minded inquiry" but it's a reputation they're in danger of losing. Strobe Talbott, who's "responsible for setting policies that maintain Brookings's reputation for quality, independence and impact" might want to think about some of this.

I don't think that it's a reputation Brookings is "in danger of losing" anymore. I think that it's a reputation that Brookings--outside of Economic Policy--has already lost. Certainly foreign-policy stuff from Brookings that shows up in my mailbox today goes to the bottom of the pile--intermixed with the stuff from AEI, well below the stuff from serious think-tanks.

It's probably too late for Strobe Talbott to think about this. But the Trustees of the Brookings Institution should be thinking very hard about this. Very, very hard.

Comments

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/mccain-and-myth-of-al-qaeda-in-iraq.html

April 20, 2008

McCain and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
By Juan Cole

I am quoted in this New York Times piece today * on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of "al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Those allegations don't make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will take over Iraq. He doesn't seem to realize that the US presided over the ascension to power in Iraq of pro-Iranian Shiite parties like Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. So which is it? There is a danger that pro-Iranian Shiites will take over (which is anyway what we have engineered) or that al-Qaeda will? It is not as if they can coexist. Since the Shiites are 60 percent and by now well armed and trained, how could the 1 percent of the 17 percent of the country that is Sunni Arab and maybe supports Salafi radicalism hope to take over?

Even if McCain only means, as his campaign manager tried to suggest, that "al-Qaeda" could take over the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, that doesn't make any sense either (McCain has actually alleged that al-Qaeda would take over the whole country.) The Salafi radicals have lost in al-Anbar Province. Diyala Province, one of the other three predominantly Sunni areas, is ruled by pro-Iranian Shiites. That leaves Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces. Among the major military forces in Ninevah is the Kurdish Peshmerga, some of them integrated e.g. into the Mosul police force. Hint: The Kurds don't like "al-Qaeda", i.e. Salafi radicalism. Jalal Talabani is a socialist.

So the Shiites and the Kurds among the Iraqis, now more powerful than the Sunni Arabs, would never allow a radical Salafi mini-state in their midst. They would crush them. And substantial segments of the Iraqi Sunni population have already helped crush them.

Moreover, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, Baathist Syria and monarchical Jordan would never put up with a Salafi radical mini-state on their borders. They would crush it. Jordan's secret police already appear to have played a role in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who had his own "Monotheism and Holy War" organization that for PR purposes he at one point rechristened "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (he actually never got along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri).

McCain's whole discourse on Iraq is just a typical rightwing Washington fantasy made up in order to get you to spend $15 billion a month on his friends in the military industrial complex and to get you to allow him to gut the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/us/politics/19threat.html

[elissaF]

Just to clarify, the group is named "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (or alternatively "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia"). It isn't a branch of Al Qaeda located in Iraq, it's a new organization that named themselves after bin Laden's group, to attract more American ire.

They are Sunni, which virtually guarantees no connection with Iran, which is Shia.

Additionally, most of the slowing of violence after the "surge" (several months after, in actuality) was due to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr calling a cease fire.

Sadly, the news of the week's so-called success in Basra is also mis-reported.

Fighting largely failed to take place due to large defections of the Iraqi army to Sadr's militia.

Sadr is winning because his militia provides humanitarian relief to millions of refuges.

Perhaps it's time to take another tack, stop trying to "win" the war, and figure out how to incorporate the various factions into the political process.

Rice is calling for more attacks, but they haven't yet worked in five years.

[psychohistorian]

My mind is a blur on where this came from but it just struck me as too appropriate to not pass on.

John Wayne McCain. It really fits the image.

I am just trying to figure out how Disney is going to get Pixar to do the movie remake and have it out before fall.

[Measure for Measure]

Ok then, what are decent reality-based sources of foreign policy info? Please include organizations in your list.