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Tag: saddam hussein
Afghan evacuees

Forgotten Lessons Led To Tragedy In Afghanistan

The spectacle of Americans and their local allies rushing desperately to evacuate from Kabul brought to mind similar scenes from Saigon in 1975. The repetition suggested that Americans and their leaders didn't learn from the earlier experience. In fact, we did learn. But then we forgot.

Maybe the surprise is not that we had to rediscover the difficulty of extricating our people and allies after giving up on an unsuccessful war. Maybe the surprise is that there was such a long interval between the two debacles. For a while, we avoided such failures, and not by accident.

In the 1980s, liberals depicted President Ronald Reagan as a trigger-happy warmonger. But his two terms stand out as a time when the United States, haunted by Vietnam, largely rejected direct military intervention abroad. He did dispatch Marines to Beirut as part of a peacekeeping force — but when a terrorist attack killed 241 American service members, he quickly withdrew our forces.

Reagan's Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger laid out a set of principles for deciding when to go to war. He argued that "vital national interests" must be at stake and that we must have clear objectives and the means to attain them.

By 1992, the "Weinberger Doctrine" was incorporated into the "Powell Doctrine" by Gen. Colin Powell, who served President George H.W. Bush as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among his contributions was the rule that we have "a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement."

This approach didn't mean the U.S. would never go to war: We did so in 1983 in Grenada to topple a Marxist government and rescue American students. We did so in 1989 in Panama to remove a dictator blamed for drug trafficking. Most notably, we did so in 1991 to evict Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait.

Whether these wars were wise and necessary is subject to debate. But in each case, we did what we set out to do and got out.

Success, however, bred amnesia. President George W. Bush had little choice but to invade Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden used it as a base for the 9/11 attacks. But once the Taliban were defeated and al-Qaeda was on the run, Bush chose to stay in an effort to cultivate freedom, democracy, and prosperity. It was the antithesis of the Powell Doctrine: an ill-defined mission that lay beyond our core competence and was not essential to our security — all without an exit strategy.

It has been clear for years that our efforts in Afghanistan were not working. But three presidents chose to prolong our involvement rather than admit futility.

What we learned when President Joe Biden refused to continue the war is that our failure exceeded our worst assumptions. We didn't know what was really going on in Afghanistan, and we didn't know we didn't know. We were clueless in Kabul.

The sudden, complete disintegration of the government revealed that it was no more viable than a brain-dead patient on life support. All Biden did was pull the plug.

It's fair to say that his administration should have been better prepared for the collapse so it could manage a more orderly withdrawal. But as Texas A&M security scholar Jasen Castillo tweeted, "There is no pretty way to leave a losing war." The nature of wars is that winners dictate the final terms. And the Taliban won this war.

It's commonly assumed that we could have preserved the previous status quo by maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan. But by May 2020, long before Biden arrived, the government had seen its control dwindle to 30 percent of the country's 407 districts, with the Taliban controlling 20 percent — more than at any time since the U.S. invasion.

Back then, one expert told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "The Taliban has so far been successful in seizing and contesting ever larger swaths of rural territory, to the point where they have now almost encircled six to eight of the country's major cities and are able to routinely sever connections via major roads." Sound familiar? The longer we stayed, the greater the risk of being forced into an even bigger commitment — with no hope of victory.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus said to a reporter, "Tell me how this ends?" Before we embark on a war, not after, is the time to answer that question. If we don't have an answer, the enemy will.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

#EndorseThis: Donald Trump Praises Saddam Hussein, Butchers English Language

#EndorseThis: Donald Trump Praises Saddam Hussein, Butchers English Language

It may be the case that Donald Trump speaks at the level of an elementary school student. However, at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday, he demonstrated his mastery of the coordinating conjunction “but” — while also managing to compliment Saddam Hussein.

For all you grammar nerds out there, let’s have some fun and break it down!

Here’s how he started:

“Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy. Really bad guy.”

Good start. See how he skillfully establishes his first point? He begins with a rhetorical question: Was Saddam Hussein a bad guy? Yes, he was! He was a “really bad guy.” In fact, Trump might not know this, but Saddam Hussein is actually connected to thousands of civilian deaths.

In 1988, his regime killed tens of thousands of Kurds and destroyed about 90 percent of Iraqi Kurdish villages, becoming the first government to use chemical weapons against its civilians. For example, in 1988 his forces used chemical weapons about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja. He was tried, convicted, and hanged for the 1982 massacre of about 150 Shiite men and boys in the town of Dujail. There are many more examples of Hussein’s crimes — a good place to check them out is this PBS Frontline feature. But I digress.

To the next part of Trump’s speech:

“But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists.”

Note how the word “but” establishes an interesting contrast. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, “but” he was also good at killing. Trump makes a little mistake when he confuses the word “civilian” for “terrorist,” though. It’s an easy mistake to make. In fact, before the 2003 Iraq invasion, Saddam’s own government was listed by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“He did that so good.”

This is unacceptable. The correct word is “well.” “WELL,” Donald! I cannot believe that you would stoop so low to confuse an adjective for an adverb! I mean, what is this world coming to?!

What’s next — is he going to split an infinitive? Is he going to use the word “who” instead of “whom” when used as an object? I swear to God, if he tweets the word “alright” I’m going to lose my mind. ALRIGHT IS NOT A WORD.

Photo: YouTube/NBC News

Obama’s Best Iran Role Model Is The First President Bush

Obama’s Best Iran Role Model Is The First President Bush

Richard Nixon won a Senate seat after implying his “pink lady” opponent was a communist, but went on to open relations with “Red China” in the 1970s. Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” then negotiated nuclear arms reduction agreements with his Soviet counterpart.

President Obama is comparing himself to those two Republican presidents as he seeks support for the new international deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. But he should add at least one more. George H.W. Bush sent U.S. troops to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, forced Iraqi troops to withdraw, and called it a victory. He defined a narrow mission and achieved it — which is exactly what Obama is attempting on Iran.

Bush’s success was immediately apparent, both on the ground in the Middle East and in public opinion polls at the time. In February 1991, as the combat phase of the Persian Gulf War ended, Gallup pegged his job approval rating at 89 percent. Clearly the country did not expect or particularly want him to storm Baghdad and oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The agreement forged by Iran, the United States, and other world powers requires Iran to keep its nuclear program “exclusively peaceful” for at least a decade. It is the best chance to avoid another war in the Middle East, Obama said in announcing the pact, and added that it also offers Iran a chance to “move in a new direction” — toward more tolerance, prosperity, engagement, and peaceful conflict resolution.

“But we’re not counting on that,” the president said Wednesday at a news conference. The agreement, he said, “is not contingent on Iran suddenly operating like a liberal democracy. It solves one particular problem” — a problem he says was our original No. 1 priority, “which is making sure that they don’t have a bomb.”

Obama drew on Reagan’s trust-but-verify approach to Soviet leaders when he told the nation that “this deal is not built on trust. It is built on verification.” Yet trust, while it may not be a cornerstone of the deal, is at the core of how much support Obama will be able to build for it.

Trust in our era is largely a partisan commodity. Every Republican presidential candidate came out against the deal, some before they even knew what was in it, most in apocalyptic terms. Even Sen. Rand Paul, probably the most war-averse candidate in the mix, called it “unacceptable” and said he would vote against it.

The trust gap showed up in headlines like this one from Fox News Radio: “Obama’s Iran deal: Nixon to China or Chamberlain to Munich?” It was also apparent in a tweet from Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist in 2012: “Advantage that POTUS’ like JFK & Reagan had selling treaties was belief they’d stand firm if pushed. This is when ‘red line’ drift hurts.”

It’s a conservative tenet that Obama is weak. He is not sending U.S. ground troops to help fight the Islamic State, a step some Republican presidential candidates say is necessary. And, as Stevens noted, he did not make Syrian leader Bashar Assad pay for crossing a “red line” that Obama defined as using chemical weapons. Iran knows that “we could knock out most of their military capacity pretty quickly,” the president told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But how many conservatives believe he would actually do that?

Yet Obama is steely in some ways, such as ordering the risky raid that killed Osama bin Laden and — in the face of non-stop GOP denunciations — sticking to his belief that diplomacy should be the first option, war the last. In that respect, he is on the same page as most Americans regarding Iran. Polls show majorities favor a deal, but support could fade as Obama makes the case for it and Republicans paint it as catastrophic.

How is the average American to know who’s right? “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons,” says the 159-page agreement. That’s easy to understand, but hard to trust. And the parts that might make it easier to trust are incomprehensible. For instance: “For the full IR-1 cascade (No. 6), Iran will modify associated infrastructure by removing UF6 pipework, including sub-headers, valves and pressure transducers at cascade level, and frequency inverters.”

There’s no getting around it: If you like and generally agree with Obama, you’ll trust his judgment. If you don’t like him and generally disagree with him, you will trust opponents of the deal. The moves by Nixon and Reagan led to big changes and broad progress, and Obama’s might, too. But he says he’s not betting on it. That’s a page out of the first President Bush’s playbook, and the best way to avoid unrealistic expectations, charges of naiveté and, ultimately, the perception of failure.

Follow Jill Lawrence on Twitter @JillDLawrence. To find out more about Jill Lawrence and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo:  George H.W. Bush riding in a Humvee with General Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia, November 22, 1990. Via Wikicommons.

 

 

Nostalgia For Iraq’s Saddam Hussein Flowers On Social Media

Nostalgia For Iraq’s Saddam Hussein Flowers On Social Media

By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — On a recent Saturday evening, Ahmed al-Shabibi relaxed at a hookah cafe in England with other Iraqi friends — both Shiite and Sunni Muslims — when the conversation turned to the ongoing battle to reclaim the city of Tikrit from Islamic State jihadists.

A Sunni in the group lamented Iranian interference in the fight and boasted that such meddling never would’ve occurred under the former Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein. Al-Shabibi said he and the others agreed because, “Saddam, as you know, had a very interesting idea of security.”

But then the Sunni man went farther, chalking up Saddam’s atrocities to clairvoyance by asserting that “Saddam could see what Iran wanted to do” and had to keep a firm hand on the nation’s sovereignty. That’s when al-Shabibi and others from Shiite families who’d fled the old regime reminded their friend of a dark era that’s getting a whitewash these days because of the nonstop violence since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Nostalgia for Saddam is hardly new, but it appears to be reaching fever pitch these days because Iraq is in such bad shape, with vast territories lost to the Islamic State’s sadistic caliphate, the army in such shambles that Iranian-backed militias are filling the void and Americans once again bombing on behalf of a Shiite-led government whose sectarian policies are regarded as chief drivers of the Islamic State’s appeal.

The yearning for a more orderly time, coupled with social media tools that weren’t around a decade ago, has led to a burst of pro-Saddam memes, flowery apologies on Facebook for doubting his tactics, endless Twitter wars over his legacy, and several fan-created Tumblrs, including one that features a suave-looking Saddam smoking a cigar with a text bubble that asks, “Miss me?”

“I won’t say I have nightly arguments on Twitter, but it seems like it nowadays,” said al-Shabibi. “It’s from people who are clever and who, no doubt in my mind, love Iraq. But they keep talking about the ’80s like they were perfect. They think it was when Iraq was united and powerful. But they forget that it was also a time when people disappeared from the street.”

Part of the reason for the plethora of Saddam tributes now no doubt is owed to a confluence of events: the 12th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion on March 19, the April ninth anniversary of the toppling of the iconic Saddam statue in a Baghdad square and the fierce fighting going on now in and around Tikrit, just outside Saddam’s birthplace of Awja. Saddam’s mausoleum there was destroyed in the combat; Shiite militiamen filmed themselves cheering on top of the rubble, underscoring the broader sectarian score-settling that’s mixed up in the anti-extremist fight.

For Mohammed al Ani, Saddam’s toppling is at the root of the region’s current upheaval.

“Saddam was the tip of the spear facing Iran, and when it was broken, Arab countries fell one after another. He had been their strategic reserve of support and power,” said Ani, 36, a former member of Saddam’s Baath Party who’s seeking political asylum in Europe. “He was a man who understood his enemies and loved Iraq.”

The idea of Saddam as a vital bulwark against Iran has resurfaced because of Iranian military involvement in some fronts of the war against the Islamic State. Particularly rankling for many Iraqis — of both Islamic sects — is Baghdad’s reliance on Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s covert Quds Force. Iranian-backed Shiite militias have been at the vanguard of the push to reclaim territories from the Sunni extremists; human rights groups have documented sectarian retribution in Sunni areas that have been “liberated.”

That argument’s twin is that extremists such as the Islamic State never would’ve found space under Saddam, who kept close watch on religious Iraqis and manipulated Islamists for his own interests. The group formed in the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion.

In a scathing essay this month in which he compared the Islamic State to Hitler’s Third Reich, the Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul called Saddam “the cat that kept the rats of Islamism at bay.”

“He may not have been a savory character,” Naipaul wrote, “but his overarching policies were holding on to power and modernizing Iraq.”

Even harsh critics of Saddam’s reign acknowledge that, in a turbulent region, he brought a measure of stability and security — that is, when he wasn’t waging war on neighboring Iran and Kuwait. Laws under Saddam guaranteed greater rights for women than in most Middle Eastern countries; rolling back women’s rights was among the first steps taken when conservative Shiites took power.

“I wouldn’t refute for a minute the good that he did, in terms of infrastructure. Generally, in terms of gender equality, not bad,” said Hasan Hafidh, whose Shiite merchant family went into exile after Saddam’s forces loaded them onto a pickup and dumped them at the Iranian border in 1978. “But in the grander picture, he was just — what can I say? — an autocrat who committed mass atrocities. That really overshadows any good that he did.”

Sick of what he considers historical revisionism, Hafidh, a graduate student in England whose focus is relations between Sunnis and Shiites, vented this month on Twitter: “How some people have the audacity and sheer nerve to practically venerate Saddam as if he were some holy figure will forever baffle me.”

One chief battleground for Saddam apologists vs. detractors is the official Facebook page of his daughter Raghad Saddam Hussein, who sometimes refers to her father in postings as “knight of the Arabs.” The comments section is typically ablaze with sectarian jabs in both directions. One debate topic is the widely held belief among Shiites that Islamic State militants are really just disgruntled former members of Saddam’s Baath party who switched clothes and espoused a new ideology in an attempt to reclaim power.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities have said that former Baathists and some Sunni tribes have worked in tandem with the Islamic State to hold territory but that the alliance is uneasy at best. Reports abound of retribution killings by the Islamic State when the traditionally secular Baathists challenge their tactics.

Raghad, Saddam’s daughter, only fueled the speculation of a Baathist-extremist alliance with a recent Facebook posting in which she hinted that her father’s old comrade, the fugitive Baathist Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, was involved in the current fight for Tikrit. She posted a photo of Douri with a message that said, “May God make you victorious.”

Ani, the Sunni former Baathist, said it was a myth that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, was just a new incarnation of the Baath party. The Baath party exists only on paper now, he said wistfully, with former members left jobless and sounding delusional about the prospects for restoring some kind of moderate, Sunni power.

With mainstream Sunnis caught in a tug of war between sectarian extremists, Ani said, is it any wonder that many are missing Saddam more than ever?

“I am a Sunni who is accused of supporting ISIS, and in the eyes of ISIS I am a Sunni who must be killed because I won’t join them,” Ani said. “So ask me if Saddam’s era was best now that a million people have died and many more have lost their homes.”

Al-Shabibi conceded that “Sunnis are having a hard time at the moment,” in part because of sectarian policies from Shiite leaders who’ve disappointed all Iraqis, not just Sunnis. But he said the ultimate blame lay with Saddam; his regime purged any promising leaders and drove out some of the country’s best minds. Such nuance is lost, however, when it comes down to a stark comparison of life now and under Saddam.

“Under Saddam, you knew who the enemy was,” he said. “Right now, it’s uncertainty. You don’t know who the enemy is.”

And, al-Shabibi said, he’s noticed the same kind of dictator nostalgia cropping up for other Arab leaders whose abrupt exits from power have led to a tangle of interconnected conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa.

“I’m hearing Libyans talk of Gadhafi with fondness,” al-Shabibi said of late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. “And I think, really? For them it’s only been three years.”

Photo: Raghad Saddam Hussein via Facebook