Robert Dreyfuss

The Civilian Toll in Afghanistan

Robert Dreyfuss on May 15, 2012 - 8:04 AM ET

In the 1970s, Americans asked, à la John Kerry, who will be the last American to die for a lost cause in Vietnam? In 2012, many Afghans—including President Karzai—are increasing asking: Which Afghan will be the last to die for America’s misguided, hopeless war in Afghanistan? For each American killed in Afghanistan since 2001, probably a dozen or more Afghans has died, and the toll is mounting.

Karzai is engaged in a delicate balancing act between the United States, which funds his government and supports his very existence, and his domestic constituents, more and more angry and bitter over the civilian toll, from air strikes, night raids and other incidents of “collateral damage.” Last week, Karzai tilted explicitly in favor of Afghan civilians, just days after signing a long-term strategic accord with the United States intended to govern US-Afghan relations through 2024.

“If the lives of Afghan people are not safe, the signing of the strategic partnership has no meaning,” said Karzai. His comments came after a particularly egregious series of NATO air strikes in Logar, Kapisa, Badghis and Helmand provinces that left at least eighteen Afghan civilians dead. Karzai’s office said that the toll was higher, and that “tens of civilians” were killed in the attacks.

Local officials and members of parliament in Afghanistan charged that the Badghis incident alone resulted in fifteen dead civilians, including women and children. Before being summoned to meet Karzai, the NATO-ISAF command said only that three insurgents were killed. It’s very possible that had Karzai not spoken out, no investigation at all would have happened.

Countless such incidents have occurred since 2001, and a depressing and familiar pattern has followed each one: villagers claim civilian casualties, the Afghan government protests, NATO promises an investigation and then little is heard about the story again. In this case, the US-led command conducted “preliminary investigations” into the bombings and issued a statement expressing “deepest regrets and sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who died or were injured during coalition airstrikes on May 4 in PanKalay and May 6 in Nowbar villages.” It added:

The preliminary investigations into these events have determined that our actions resulted in a number of deaths and injuries to Afghan civilians. The coalition takes full responsibility for these tragic and regrettable incidents, and we will meet with the family members of those who died or were injured to express our sincere condolences.

In this case, “condolences” usually means a payment of $2,000 or so to the survivors of each victim. But it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see the (classified) results of the final investigations into these incidents, which are almost always kept under wraps.

Six other civilians died in Helmand, reports AFP:

In a separate incident, in the volatile Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on Friday, six civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike, an Afghan official said. “Six people—a woman, two boys and three girls—were killed in a foreign forces airstrike on Friday in Sangin district,” provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

In advance of the NATO meeting in Chicago, the United Nations announced that its most recent figures show that, overall, civilian casualties in Afghanistan are down by 20 percent in 2012, and they’re expected to release a report this week reflecting that fact. And, of course, most of the civilians killed in Afghanistan die as the result of attacks by the Taliban and its allies, including suicide bombings and roadside IEDs. But most Afghans don’t make distinctions between civilians killed by the United States and its allies or by the Taliban. The dead are dead, and they’re killed because foreign forces are waging a war on Afghan soil.

Hillary Clinton, Obama and the Chen Saga

Robert Dreyfuss on May 9, 2012 - 3:51 PM ET

There’s a lot we don’t know about the Chen Guangcheng story, and why it became a crisis that almost derailed the US-China relationship. But the New York Times account of the saga, which appeared Wednesday, is the closest we’ve come to getting the story, and it begins to look like the State Department, overly concerned with the welfare of a single anti-abortion activist, almost sent relations with China into a tailspin—without the White House’s input.

Chen is leaving China soon, and the tumult is over. But it’s clear that the case might have inflamed relations badly enough that Chinese hardliners, who are engaged in a behind-the-scenes struggle over policy toward the United States and over the next leadership in Beijing, could have retaliated in ways that would not have been good for either China or the United States.

According to the Times, President Obama wasn’t even notified of Chen’s sudden arrival to seek asylum in the American embassy in Beijing until after the fact. “Obama,” reported the Times, “was first notified when Mr. Chen was already in the embassy.” Huh? Is that possible? That an event so momentous and rare can occur with the president’s knowledge?

Apparently, it was the doing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department, especially Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state:

After a late-night meeting at the State Department on April 25, Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to spirit him into the embassy, an operation that involved hustling him from one car to another twice. “Everyone understood the magnitude of the decision, how unpredictable it was, and that there would be consequences,” the senior official said.

With Mr. Chen inside the embassy, the administration held a series of meetings in Washington to decide how to manage the crisis—with the State Department leading the effort and the White House overseeing it through frequent secure videoconference calls. On April 27, Mr. Campbell informed the Chinese ambassador in Washington, Zhang Yesui, of Mr. Chen’s whereabouts. The diplomat appeared stunned.

Stunned, and angry.

The delicate dance that followed included a series of misunderstandings, apparently, with Chen first agreeing to leave the embassy for a nearby hospital, then changing his mind. He accused the United States of conveying a threat from the Chinese that his family might be harmed, although US officials say that’s not true. An American diplomat who was in the hospital room with Chen left so that Chen could have private time with his wife, and in the great hubbub of the news cycle, cable TV and politics, that even was transformed into the United States abandoning Chen. Later, it turned into a near–Keystone Kops event, according to the Times:

The Americans, fearing that the Chinese would restrict access to Mr. Chen’s hospital, even considered disguising an employee as a nurse to gain entry.

Really.

There’s no doubt that Chen, and many, many other Chinese dissidents are treated miserably and often cruelly. But the last thing that United States–China relations needs is another irritant. It’s bad enough that Clinton’s State Department has sided repeatedly with Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries as part of what’s looking more and more like an American “Great Wall” around China as part of the so-called “pivot” toward Asia.

The future of America is Asia is as China’s partner, not China’s adversary.

The Osama-Obama Drama

Robert Dreyfuss on May 1, 2012 - 12:49 PM ET

Let’s unravel this a bit: Why did the White House yesterday tell John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism adviser, to speak publicly about drone strikes?

First, here’s what Brennan said:

Let me say it as simply as I can. Yes, in full accordance with the law—and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives—the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.

There’s a lot of reason to question the accuracy of nearly everything in that statement: the law, especially international law but also constitutional protections against killing American civilians, is not on Obama’s side; the drone strikes have certainly not always been aimed at “specific Al Qaeda terrorists” but often targeted locations, not specific people; and few of those killed were actively engaged in planning “terrorist attacks on the United States” but, instead, involved in local conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. And Brennan ignored the civilians killed in drone attacks. But let’s leave those questions aside. Really, what’s going on is politics, led by Obama’s desire to present himself as King of the Antiterrorism World.

Obama and Vice President Biden—who, it ought to be noted, opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden—are now throwing the killing of bin Laden in Romney’s face. Yesterday, in a speech, Biden repeated the glib slogan: “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” and he added that if Romney were president, bin Laden might still be alive. Obama, doubling down on Biden’s comments, added:

I said that I'd go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they'd do something else, then I'd go ahead and let them explain it.

True enough, in 2008 Obama said, in a debate with John McCain, that if he had information about the location of bin Laden and his allies, he’d go into Pakistan unilaterally. McCain reacted in horror, saying that it was wrong to send US forces into Pakistan without coordinating with the government in Islamabad. There’s no question that, on that issue at least, McCain was the dove.

To be sure, McCain wasn’t the dove because he opposed using force but because he, like many conservatives, supported the long alliance between the Pentagon and the Pakistani military, including its intelligence service, the ISI and cozy relationship that for half a century or more lined the United States up with Pakistan’s military dictators who repeatedly seized power from civilian governments.

Yet McCain was right.

Did the killing of Osama bin Laden really change much? Was it worth it to kill him, if the result was the destabilization of Pakistan, the undermining of its current civilian government, the provocation to Pakistan’s substantial hard-core Islamist constituents, the breakdown of US-Pakistan relations and the fact that now it’s a lot more difficult for the United States to get out of Afghanistan safely and easily because Pakistan is no longer cooperating with the United States?

Sure, it’s a political plus for Obama to tell revenge-minded American voters that bin Laden is dead—even if we have to listen to Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, repeatedly use the word “kill” when talking about bin Laden, as if it were a video game.

Maybe Mitt Romney is right when he says that “even Jimmy Carter” would have ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden if he had the chance. And, for sure, Romney’s foreign policy would be a lot worse than Obama’s, on issues from Iran and Syria and China and Russia. But let’s not cheer Obama et al. when they tout the great victory of last May 1. To me, it sounds like Mission Accomplished all over again.

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Project for A New American Rubio

Robert Dreyfuss on April 26, 2012 - 2:34 PM ET

Marco Rubio, hardly the sharpest tool in the foreign policy tool shed, delivered an address yesterday to the Brookings Institution on “the American world order” and what he thinks about it. From the outset, it was clear that Rubio is trying to identify himself consciously with the neoconservative movement and its chief spokesman in the Senate, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who introduced Rubio. And both Lieberman and Rubio lavished praise on Robert Kagan, the neoconservative strategist who is the chief proponent of the idea that the United States is not in decline and should still pretty much run the world. At the start of his remarks, Lieberman issued a “special thank you to Bob Kagan for orchestrating and inspiring this event today.”

To emphasize the point, Rubio singled out “Scoop Jackson,” the neoconservative senator from Washington who, in the 1970s, launched the careers of nearly all of the leading lights of the neocon movement, from Richard Perle on down.

Rubio’s address might be seen as an audition for the role of vice president in a Mitt Romney administration, though that’s unlikely for two reasons. First, Rubio is sort of a male Sarah Palin, an untested local figure highly popular with know-nothing Tea Party types, and Romney isn’t likely to risk another Palin-style debacle. Second, though it’s little known, Rubio is a former Mormon, and it’s simply too much to believe that Jesus-loving GOP evangelicals will accept two Mormons on the same ticket, even if Rubio no longer subscribes to the tenets of the Latter-Day Saints.

So what did Rubio say?

Perhaps the main point, differentiating himself from the Obama administration’s ally-based, multilateral, old-school realist foreign policy, Rubio made it clear that, like Dick Cheney, Perle and the neoconservatives ensconced in think tanks and magazines around Washington, he believes in going it alone. After a few comments about the useful role of global institutions, Rubio went on to make it clear that he won’t let the United Nations, Russia, China and others get in our way when countries need to be bombed or invaded:

You can see this in the actions of —or sometimes lack thereof, of the World Trade Organization or the UN Security Council, and when American influence is diminished, for example, by the one nation, one vote formula of the UN General Assembly or the UN Human Rights Council, we see absurd and often appalling results. Multilateral international organizations can be a forum for forming international coalitions, but as we have repeatedly seen over the last few years, the more difficult the problem, the likelier bad actors will spoil meaningful solutions within the current system of international organizations.

For example, we can’t always rely on the UN Security Council to achieve consensus on major threats to international peace and security. As we’ve seen on North Korea, on Syria, on Iran, China and Russia simply will not join that consensus when they do not perceive the problem as a threat to their narrow national interests.

And he added:

Instead, they exercise their veto or threat of a veto to thwart effective and timely response. The Security Council remains a very valuable forum but not an indispensible one. We can’t walk away from a problem because some members of the Security Council refuse to act.

That’s not very subtle. And while it’s fair to say that Obama, too, threatens unilateral action now and then, he’s shied away from it and—as shown in the case of Libya—likes to lead from “behind.” That’s exactly what riles Rubio.

On Iran, where he waxed most hawkish, Rubio raised the bar by declaring that the dispute with Iran is not about its nuclear program but about Iran’s alleged desire to control the entire region:

Iran’s nuclear ambitions, by the way, are more than just weapons. Iran wants to become the dominant power in the Middle East. But given Iran’s history of human rights abuses, fomenting sectarian conflict and sponsorship of terrorism as a tool of state craft, the world must never allow that to happen.

Not only that, but Rubio declared that every single aspect of America’s Middle East policy must be subordinated to the goal of stopping Iran:

The goal of preventing a dominant Iran is so important that every regional policy we adopt should be crafted with that overriding goal in mind.

Naturally, that includes toppling President Assad of Syria.

Rubio barely mentioned Afghanistan at all, signaling the Republican party’s dilemma of how to support a lost war that the voters have abandoned already. (In fact, in the Q&A, Brookings’ Marvin Kalb said, “Let me, then, be specific and ask you about Afghanistan, which is a subject you barely touched on in the talk.” After which Rubio gave a half-hearted defense of the war, hardly a stirring battle cry: “I think it’s critical for public policymakers to clearly explain, and persuasively explain, to the American people why our engagement there is so important.” Right. Which Rubio didn’t do. At all.

Rubio spoke about challenges from Russia, China, the world economic crisis and other issues, mostly sticking to neocon talking points. If you are patient enough, read the whole thing.

US Must Back Syria Ceasefire

Robert Dreyfuss on March 29, 2012 - 10:56 AM ET

Writing in today’s Washington Post, David Ignatius suggests:

Maybe it’s time for Syrian revolutionaries to take “yes” for an answer from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and back a U.N.-sponsored “managed transition” of power there, rather than rolling on toward a civil war that will bring more death and destruction for the region.

I couldn’t agree more. Already the Times is reporting widespread cases of sectarian violence pitting neighbor against neighbor.

Syria, like its neighbors Lebanon and Iraq before it, is perched at the brink of civil war. So many people could die in a Syrian civil war that it would make the thousands dead so far look like a small down payment. Problem is, the Syrian opposition, badly divided and apparently dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, is either unwilling or incapable of making a deal.

Maybe it’s true that President Assad is only stalling for time when he says that he accepts the UN-brokered plan for a ceasefire and steps toward transition. But Assad has seemingly taken control of many of the hot spots, and there are few signs that his support among the Syrian security forces is ebbing. He’s got to keep one eye on Iran, his chief backer, which is reportedly considering hedging its bets. And Russia and China, who’ve opposed Western military action and calls for regime change, have been persuaded to support the UN plan.

It seems worth a try. The Obama administration, which continues to seek to work with Russia, is hoping for the best. So far, President Obama isn’t paying any attention at all to the likes of war-crazed fanatics such as Senator John McCain and his allies, the neoconservatives. McCain, Joe Lieberman and other senators are pushing radical legislation to demand US support for the rebels. But, worryingly, the United States is still edging closer to providing aid to the Syrian rebels, whoever they are.

As AP reports:

Despite U.S. and Arab assertions about the inevitability of the Assad regime’s fall, it is prevailing militarily and maintaining some support among Syrian minorities and even the Sunni business community. Defections have proved fewer than anticipated, and there’s little evidence to back Clinton’s prediction a month ago about a possible military coup.

More Than Two-Thirds Oppose Afghan War

Robert Dreyfuss on March 27, 2012 - 10:17 AM ET

The Panjwai massacre, the most horrific example of US-caused civilian casualties in the ten-plus years of the war in Afghanistan, has contributed to another sharp drop in public support for the war in both the United States and Britain.

According to a New York Times/CBS poll:

The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old.

The increased disillusionment was even more pronounced when respondents were asked their impressions of how the war was going. The poll found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who had those impressions in November.

Meanwhile, in the UK, according to the Washington Post:

A poll taken in Britain and released this month by ComRes indicated that the percentage of those saying the war is unwinnable has grown from 60 percent last June to 73 percent, with 55 percent saying British troops should be withdrawn immediately, up from 48 percent in June.

For President Obama, that makes getting out of Afghanistan quicker than 2014 a lot easier, if that’s what he intends. The president is keeping his cards close to his chest, but this fall, when the last of the 2009 surge troops have withdrawn, Obama will have to announce the next step. He might choose to wait until after the election, but the latest polls show that would be a winning issue for Obama if he chooses to accelerate the drawdown.

As Obama blabbed to the president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, he’ll have more “flexibility” after his reelection. That incautious blabbing to an open mike signals, unfortunately, that Obama believes that doing anything dovish has to await his re-election. Paradoxically, dovishness is popular these days, at least on Afghanistan, and in this case, by announcing a speeded up pullout, Obama might ensure that he actually is re-elected. If he loses, well, he’ll have lots of flexibility then, to write his memoirs.

Against the Muslim Brotherhood

Robert Dreyfuss on March 26, 2012 - 11:12 AM ET

For years, I’ve been writing critically about the Muslim Brotherhood and its reactionary politics, cult-like secrecy, cell-based structure and ideological zeal. Across the Middle East—in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and elsewhere, including via Palestine’s Hamas—the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining momentum. It’s something that scares liberals and progressives in the Middle East, and it ought to alarm readers of The Nation, too.

Not because the Muslim Brotherhood is pro-Al Qaeda or terrorist. It’s not, although its skewed version of what Islam means has frequently inspired those with more radical, and violent, ideas, just as ultraconservative Christian evangelicals abhor violence in the United States but inspire those who’d bomb abortion clinics.

And not because the Muslim Brotherhood is anti-Israel. Plenty of Arab middle-of-the-road and progressive political currents see Israel’s expansionist politics, and sometimes Israel’s very existence, as anathema. The Brothers, like most mainstream Arab politicians and activists, are pragmatic enough to understand that Israel isn’t going away, and they’re not likely to support a military mobilization against Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood has said, publicly, that it won’t abrogate Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that its politics is centered on a combination of all-out support for free-enterprise capitalism and ultraconservative views about social issues. For exactly that reason, the Brothers are tailor-made for a lasting partnership with the United States, and its global efforts to export unfettered capitalism. Investors who want to make a buck can easily overlook a bunch of laws and regulations against women’s rights, freedom of religion, and the like. That’s not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood will be a tool of the United States; it won’t. The Brothers are infused with a weird hybrid of “Islamic” nationalism and independence that will cause them to seek allies around the globe, not in the West. But unless you’re one of those neoconservatives who believe that there’s an ongoing “clash of civilizations,” you’ll grasp quickly that the Muslim Brotherhood will be happy to do business with the West, even as it draws on the vast financial support of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and other Arab kleptocrats.

Let’s review the news from recent weeks:

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is flexing its muscle. It recently announced that it is reconsidering its earlier, much-publicized decision not to run a candidate for president of Egypt. Those who understand the secrecy and duplicity of the Muslim Brotherhood cult may have suspected all along that the Brothers would run a candidate for president, and if they do they’re likely to win. Next, the Brothers— and their quarrelsome, even more radical partners, the Salafi movement in Egypt—completely dominate the 100-member commission that will write Egypt’s new constitution, leading several secular and progressive figures to resign from the commission in dismay. Already, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis control Egypt’s parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood is widely suspected of seeking a deal with the ruling military council, giving the generals some sort of amnesty from prosecution for crimes dating to the Mubarak era and to violent put-downs of street protests last year. Nevertheless, worried progressives have angrily walked out of the vote concerning the Muslim Brotherhood-run commission.

In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood has set up something called the Justice and Development Party, modeled directly on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The Muslim Brotherhood in Libya has always been close to the Egyptian branch, which is the heir to the original Muslim Brotherhood organization founded in Egypt in 1928. Many of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya today established themselves in exile in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, IkhwanWeb.com, a Brotherhood outlet, says: “Fleeing repression, the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was reborn in the United States, where members established the ‘Islamic Group – Libya’ in 1980 and issued their magazine The Muslim.” During the 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood opposed Muammar Qaddafi, they drew much support from Sudan, where the Muslim Brotherhood was playing a leading role in Khartoum. Libya is still in turmoil, with competing tribal and local militias struggling for power and Libya’s eastern half rumbling about seceding. But the Brothers are likely to play an ever greater role there.

In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood is emerging as a dominant, if not the dominant, current inside the factious opposition movement. No surprise: the Brothers have long had a strong underground presence in Syria, and they’ve been fighting the Assad regime for decades, inside and out. On Sunday, to the consternation of some Syrian oppositionists from the secular and progressive wing, three leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood held a news conference in Turkey to announce themselves as major players, pledging support for democracy and pluralism. (I’d be cautious at taking them at their word, but the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world has uniformly adopted principles in support for democracy since, it seems, it’s working for them and it provides a plausible path to power.) The Brothers’ stated support for democracy, respecting religious minorities, and the rights of women ought to be welcomed, but with a wary eye.

In Tunisia, happily enough, the Muslim Brotherhood-allied Al-Nahda party declared today that it would not support the idea of sharia as the basis for Tunisian law. The AP reports:

Islamic law will not be enshrined in Tunisia's new constitution, preserving the secular basis of the North African nation, Tunisia's ruling Islamist Ennahda Party said Monday. Ziad Doulatli, a party leader, said the first article of the new constitution would remain the same as in the 1959 version and it will not call for Shariah, Islamic law, to be the source of all legislation, as many conservatives had wanted.

That’s good, and it’s not too surprising because, unlike Egypt, Tunisia is far more advanced in terms of liberalism, and the Islamist current is weaker than elsewhere. Still, Al-Nahda is a powerful voice, and it bears watching.

For the United States, and for Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood is a useful ally in the gathering confrontation with Iran, the Syrian government, Iraq’s Shiite leadership, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. That ought to worry everyone.

Sergeant Massacre

Robert Dreyfuss on March 13, 2012 - 8:57 AM ET

So far, at least, the US army hasn’t released the name or many details about the staff sergeant who slaughtered sixteen Afghans, including nine children, in Panjwai on Sunday. But here’s my own theory: first, he came from a troubled military base where officials had improperly downgraded soldiers who’d been designated as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sent 300 of them back to war; and second, the soldier in question, 38 years old, joined the army eleven years ago at age twenty-seven.

Pure speculation: was Sergeant Massacre one of those PTSD-sufferers sent back to fight after three tours in Iraq? (Reportedly, he suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, but continued on active duty.) And, did Sergeant Massacre join the armed forces after 9/11, eleven years ago, seeking revenge?

We’ll find out. But let me add one comment on PTSD. Why is it that when an American soldier slaughters people, he’s considered possibly mentally ill and suffering from PTSD, but when an Afghan villager who suffered through three decades of unimaginable violence, perhaps losing family members and friends, commits an act of horrific violence he’s considered a terrorist? Anyone who can answer that question in the comments section below will be awarded a gold start by The Dreyfuss Report.

The Washington Post, apparently, despite its zeal to comment on everything, couldn’t find the right words in this morning’s edition to respond editorially to the Afghan massacre. Perhaps the Post’s editors couldn’t bring themselves to write another “stay the course,” Romneyesque editorial even as the blood still seeps into the ground in Panjwai. But the New York Times found its voice, in an editorial called “Horror in Kandahar,” in which it managed to say:

The United States said Monday that an investigation is under way. It must be fast, transparent and conclusive so that Afghans can see that America is committed to justice and responsive to their outrage. The punishment must be swift.

To be sure. The Times also reports on an internal debate inside the Obama administration in which the generals are said to want to keep troops in Afghanistan as long as possible; Tom Donilon, the hawkish national security adviser, is willing to urge Obama to pull 10,000 more troops out by December and another 10,000 by next summer; and Vice President Biden wants to get the bulk of all troops out by mid-2013. Reports the Times:

At least three options are now under consideration, according to officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department. One plan, backed by Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, would be to announce that at least 10,000 more troops would come home by the end of December, and then 10,000 to 20,000 more by June 2013. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been pushing for a bigger withdrawal that would reduce the bulk of the troops around the same time the mission shifts to a support role, leaving behind Special Operations teams to conduct targeted raids.

And, good grief, listen to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Said Gingrich:

“We need to understand that our being in the middle of countries like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive. We’re not prepared to be ruthless enough to force them to change. And yet we are clearly an alien presence.”

Leave aside that some people might consider Gingrich to be an “alien presence” on earth. Meanwhile, Santorum:

“We have to either make the decision to make a full commitment, which this president has not done, or we have to decide to get out, and probably get out sooner.”

Santorum? Get out sooner? Are pigs flying?

Well, not all pigs are flying. Mitt Romney is still arguing for staying the course, and those who write editorials for the Wall Street Journal still want to—in the memorable words of Arlo Guthrie—“kill, kill, kill.” In an editorial entitled “The Perils of Retreat,” the Journal oinked:

One GI’s killing spree should not be able to undermine a war effort for which Americans have sacrificed so much. But that’s what can happen when everyone concludes that a President’s timetable is geared more to an election than to military success.

The Post, which couldn’t manage an editorial, instead carried a news article on page one that, like Romney and the Wall Street Journal, suggested that the Obama administration too wants to continue on its steady path:

The Obama administration’s hope for a smooth and successful ending to what it has always considered the “good war” in Afghanistan has become a determined, nose-to-the-grindstone effort to forge ahead toward the exit. As challenges mount, the administration has concluded that the only viable course is to continue trying to implement the strategy it has already set in motion, with a date certain for combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.

In this case, slow and steady doesn’t win the race. It just gets more Afghans killed, and for no good reason.

Afghanistan's Haditha: An Atrocity to End the War

Robert Dreyfuss on March 12, 2012 - 8:44 AM ET

Anar Gul gestures to the body of her grandchild, who was allegedly killed by a US service member in Panjwai, a Kandahar province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, March 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

Iraq had its Haditha. Now, Afghanistan has its Panjwai.

Burning babies—yes, it has come to this.

Following routine bombings of wedding parties, hundreds killed in unchecked “night raids” by US Special Forces, the murders by the scandalous “kill team” in 2010, and, this year, the digitally recorded urination onto dead Afghans by Americans in uniform—not to mention the Koran burnings last month—it’s clear that there’s no hope of success for the “mission.” Whatever that is.

The massacre of sixteen Afghans by a US soldier on Sunday, including many children, is certain to inflame anti-occupation feeling in Afghanistan, send recruits into the Taliban and harden the opposition to a long-term treaty with the United States among politicians. It is also the death knell for President Obama’s plan to organize a dignified, orderly exit from the war. Forget an organized transfer to Afghan security forces in 2014—yes, that would be the selfsame Afghan security forces whose personnel are, more and more, assassinating US officers and enlisted men. If Obama has any sense whatsoever, he’ll accelerate the American pullout from Afghanistan this year, after the drawdown of 30,000 surge forces is complete in September.

Getting out of Afghanistan quickly, which could be announced before the election in November, is a guaranteed winner for Obama.

Even Newt Gingrich has gotten the message. Said Newt:

I think it’s very likely that we have lost—tragically lost the lives and suffered injuries to a considerable number of young Americans on a mission that we’re going to discover is not doable. Look at the things that are going on around the region and then ask yourself, ‘Is this, in fact, a harder, deeper problem that is not going to be susceptible to military force, at least not military forces in the scale we are prepared to do?’

Although only one soldier, a staff sergeant, is in custody, Afghan eyewitnesses say that several troops were involved in the massacre, and that they were “drunk and laughing.”

Reports the National Journal, a centrist, establishment publication:

Recent events in Afghanistan, including Sunday’s horrific shooting of Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier, are not just going to alter U.S. strategy there. They are very likely to upend it. Even before the latest tragedy, President Obama was trying to expedite his way out of that quagmire, which is already the longest war in American history, as he faced a tough fight at home for re-election. Now Obama is likely to only speed things up further.

The Journal concludes:

All of which illustrates a tragic truth: even after ten years into this war, one that has cost nearly 1,800 U.S. dead, 15,000 wounded, and some $400 billion, forward progress is barely discernible and relations with America’s two chief allies, the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments, are worse than they have ever been. And that is why both administration officials and members of Congress are saying it’s time to go.

John McCain, taking a break from demanding that the United States bomb Syria and Iran, says that Obama shouldn’t give up in Afghanistan:

I understand the frustration, and I understand the anger and the sorrow. I also understand and we should not forget that the attacks on the United States of America on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan.

But of course the United States has killed more people in Afghanistan than died on 9/11 dozens of times over.

The Washington Post reports that even Republicans have turned against the war, finally, and in a new poll it concludes that a large majority of Americans want out:

Overall, 60 percent of Americans believe the war has not been worth the loss in life and expense, according to the Post-ABC News poll, which was conducted Wednesday through Saturday, before Sunday’s attack in Kandahar province. There has been consistent majority opposition to the war for nearly two years.

A war that never should have started in 2001 now must come to a rapid end.

Obama's Dangerous 'Red Line' on Iran

Robert Dreyfuss on March 7, 2012 - 1:10 PM ET

Never did the Republican presidential field look more clueless than in the sharp contrast between President Obama’s nuanced Iran policy and the collection of GOP war advocates, especially now that the United States and Iran have formally agreed to resume negotiations. Mitt Romney’s bombast, even though his actual policy recommendations differ little from Obama’s, Rick Santorum’s war cries and Newt Gingrich’s foaming anti-Muslim rhetoric mark them as clearly unpresidential at best. At worst, they look like Benjamin Netanyahu’s Greek chorus.

But let’s not let Obama off the hook. Earlier this week, I wrote about Obama’s well-designed putdown of Netanyahu, and he followed that up by treating the Republicans as if they were misbehaving children who don’t understand that real people die in real wars. Today I want to write about what’s wrong with Obama’s policy on Iran.

Some antiwar types cheered when Obama refused to endorse Netanyahu’s so-called “red line” for war, namely, that Israel and/or the United States should strike Iran when it develops some nebulous and ill-defined capability to manufacture a weapon—and that’s fine. On that Obama is correct. But there are plenty of problems with Obama’s own “red line,” which he defined as concrete evidence that Iran is moving toward militarizing its nuclear capability, say, by rushing to refine its stockpile of enriched uranium to weapons grade, kicking out the IAEA inspectors and overtly or covertly going for a nuclear bomb.

Even if Iran were to do all those things, and even if Iran were to acquire a bomb, it’s still a terrible idea to go to war. For years, inside the White House, there’s been a debate over exactly that: What to do if Tehran acquires, or almost acquires, a bomb? Because it’s difficult to talk about in public, especially to an electorate radicalized by the Israel lobby, the neoconservatives and the GOP, the White House has said next to nothing about its discussions over policy toward a “post-nuclear” Iran. In his speech to AIPAC, the president pleased Israel’s leaders by saying explicitly that he opposes “containment” of a nuclear Iran, and he emphasized that his policy is to prevent that from happening.

But short of war, and if negotiations fail, there’s not much Obama can do to prevent it. So, smart people in the administration know that they’ll have to develop a policy to live with it.

So Obama’s red line is a dangerous error. He’s committing himself to war, or something like it, if Iran gets the bomb or gets close. That’s not only dangerous but it’s politically stupid, because then if Iran gets the bomb either Obama has to go to war—with awful, unspeakable consequences, or he’ll look like he backed down.

Paul Pillar, a former top US intelligence official, wrote recently in The Washington Monthly that war with Iran is a bad idea even if Tehran gets the bomb. In a piece entitled, “We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran,” Pillar said:

One must ultimately ask whether the conjectured consequences of an Iranian bomb would be worse than a war with Iran. The conjectures are just that. They are not concrete, not based on nuclear doctrine or rigorous analysis, and not even likely. They are worst-case speculations, and not adequate justifications for going to war.

That’s why it’s passing odd that in a full-page ad in the Washington Post this week, paid for by the National Iranian American Council, a stellar group of former US military and intelligence officials, including Pillar, joined NIAC is saying: “Preventing a nuclear Iran is rightfully your priority and your red line.”

That’s too vague, and its lacks Pillar’s own courage in stating the obvious: that setting any red lines at all vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program is a bad idea. If we “can live with” Iran’s bomb, then why is that a red line? As Obama clearly told AIPAC, he’s ready to use American military force if Iran crosses that red line.

As Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense—who’s clearly in over his head—told AIPAC:

“Military action is the last alternative when all else fails. But make no mistake, when all else fails, we will act.”

God help us.

The second thing wrong with Obama’s Iran policy, which will be tested soon, is that so far he’s been unwilling to state the obvious: that Iran will not abandon its nuclear program, and that Iran has every right to enrich uranium on its own soil and through its own technology. Though he’s flirted with this idea, and so has Hillary Clinton—Senator John Kerry has said it explicitly—it’s time Obama to offer Iran a simple deal: You can enrich uranium, but in exchange we want the right to intensified inspections of Iranian facilities by the IAEA to ensure that the program isn’t being militarized.

Negotiations with Iran that say, “Stop enriching uranium, period!” will go nowhere, fast.

Now that the P5+1 have agreed with Iranian diplomats to resume talks, the pressure will be on Obama to make concessions like that in exchange for Iranian concessions. In an election year—for the United States, 2012, and for Iran, 2013—it just isn’t likely. Whatever else happens, both sides are probably going to maintain their inflexible no-deals policy through Iran’s presidential election in June 2013.

A final word on “containment.” Containing a nuclear Iran is a bad idea if it means containing it through a vast military buildup in the Persian Gulf, building a military alliance with Arab nations of the gulf against Iran and adopting a cold war–style approach. A better word than “containment” can be found, inspired by Pillar’s idea that the United States can “live with” an Iran that has the bomb. Perhaps, rather than containment, Obama can call it something else, and I’ll let the White House’s public relations shop figure that out—as long as it means avoiding war and avoiding the creation of a NATO-style “Maginot line” in the Middle East.