Bush's Boy Blunder

NEW YORK -- How the many intelligent people in U.S. President George Bush's administration can continue to make so many enormous blunders both astounds and dismays. Two examples:

Australia is facing a tight electoral race between Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who eagerly sent troops to Iraq, and Labour party challenger Mark Latham, who, like Spain's new PM, vows to bring his nation's troops home from Iraq. A majority of Australians opposes the Iraq war.

U.S. Ambassador Tom Schieffer, a Texas pal of Bush, warned Australians of "serious consequences" if they elect Latham.

Australians love America, but any worldly person knows you do not threaten Aussies. They will come out swinging. Schieffer should be fired.

Far worse, however, is America's ham-handed Iraq proconsul, Paul Bremer. A neo-conservative ideologue, Bremer was responsible for two of the Bush administration's most disastrous mistakes in Iraq: Disbanding Iraq's army, and firing tens of thousands of government bureaucrats because they were Baath party members.

Any junior imperialist knows the first thing you do when you conquer someone's country is to buy the loyalty of its existing armed forces, government and police. Otherwise you will have armies of angry, unemployed potential rebels roaming the streets -- Iraq today being Exhibit A.

Bremer's third horrible blunder came last week. The U.S. pro consul, who is supposedly bringing the light of democracy to Iraq, shut down a tiny, 10,000-circulation Shia newspaper and arrested its editor for "spreading anti-American views" and calling Bremer rude names. The paper's publisher was firebrand Shia mullah Muqtada el-Sadr, who has been calling on Iraqis to resist U.S. occupation.

Bremer turned Sadr, a little-respected junior cleric with a limited following, into an overnight hero to restive Shias, and a new American villain.

Bremer's latest imbecility caused Iraq's Shia majority, which was simmering with anti-American passions, to explode into violence. Washington and U.S. forces were caught totally by surprise, though warnings abounded.

This writer, for example, said on CNN's Paula Zahn show -- exactly three days before the explosion of Shia rage -- "the Shia and the U.S. are on a collision course ... their younger mullahs are calling for armed resistance ... what we've seen so far (Sunni resistance) is only a foretaste of the violence to come."

For months, Iraq's Shia have heeded calls for patience from their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He tried to get Washington to agree to genuine democratic elections in January, 2005. But it's painfully clear the U.S. will not allow Iraq's Shia majority (60%) to gain real political power, and intends to keep troops based there indefinitely.

The Bush administration's definition of "democracy" in Iraq means a puppet regime that goes through the motions of democracy, "invites" U.S. troops to stay on, permits U.S. business to exploit its oil riches and co-operates with Israel.

An interesting side note: Reza Pahlavi, pretender to Iran's throne, opined to me recently in Washington that Iraq's Ayatollah Sistani actually outranks all of Iran's clergy, including Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iraq's holy city of Najaf outranks Iran's theological centre, Qum.

Revelations of Washington's plans to colonize Iraq, and Israel's assassination of the Palestinian leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, intensified pent-up Shia fury.

Americans can thank Bremer and his bosses in the White House for opening this two-front war in Iraq and driving the Shia and Sunnis together.

The savage punishment of the rebellious city of Fallujah after the brutal killing of four U.S. mercenaries ("civilian contractors") there sharply recalls Israel's ravaging of the rebellious West Bank town of Jenin.

As this column predicted a year ago, "liberated" Iraq has become a copy of the strife-torn Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Iraq is not going to be "liberated" or taught democracy by means of American heavy tanks and helicopter gunships. Quite the contrary. What we have seen this week is the sowing by heavy-handed U.S. occupation forces of a whole new crop of terrorist dragon's teeth in Iraq's bloodstained soil.

The only bright note for the Bush White House: If it can't kill Osama bin Laden in time for November's elections, then maybe pesky Mullah Muqtada will do.

This is as far as I could read this ignorant rant.

I will agree that the administration has committed monumental blunders, but those listed aren't them. History will clarify everything, eventually. Among those blunders that I see in decreasing order of significance:

Islam is a religion of peace. This one is so blatantly false both historically and comtemporarily, that any refutation should be unnecessary, for anyone with eyes and ears.
We must win their hearts and minds. As a Freeper said it best, how can one win the hearts and minds of the heartless and the mindless?
We must rebuild anything we destroy. This is so at odds with traditional war in the "western" sense that it defies belief. To think, even for a moment, that any islamic country is the equivalent of Germany or Japan, is so monumentally stupid as to border on the criminal. There are two purposes for a war, where it is unavoidable. Neither of them is intended to make them "love us":
To utterly and decisively defeat the enemy; and to deprive him for generations from even thinking about a repeat of that utter defeat. Granted, that is a tough thing to imagine for a culture where, as one of its own educated members said, make constructive and destructive use of the enemy's creativity, like cell phones, but utterly unable to produce even the tiniest screw that holds that phone together.

Defeating them is not enough. Forcing them to create a real civilization is absolutely essential. A creative one, not a new destructive one. And they must to it all by themselves.
American investment in teaching them the hard lesson is more than enough when measured in precious life and blood. To expect the American taxpayer to kick in money, in addition, is obscene.

This person's rant brings to mind an article from newsmax.com in April 2003. See below for content. You'll enjoy the refresher.

Unleashing the Clowns of War
NewsMax.com ^ | April 12, 2003 | Barrett Kalellis

When George W. Bush issued the order in mid-March to unleash the dogs of war, little did he realize that he simultaneously let loose the clowns of war.

Finding comic relief in a war is a knotty proposition, but the great success of our military forces in the past month has inconveniently ripped the masks off the faces of those individuals and groups that oppose U.S. efforts, revealing themselves as self-absorbed, deluded clowns, scurrying around the fringes of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now some of them are trying to cover their collective butts.

King of the clowns, no doubt, was Iraqi “information minister” Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, a regime PR flack who obviously forgot to phone the home office. Ridiculed as “Baghdad Bob” by the military, al-Sahhaf brazenly heaped daily abuse on Coalition forces and denied their claims of battlefield victories — all the while U.S. tanks rolled in the background.

Then there was the “elite” Republican Guard and the “battle-hardened” Iraqi army, whose wartime strategy must have been planned by the Keystone Kops. The only consistent strategy that this insane clown posse exhibited was: fire off a few sniper rounds at the enemy; drop their weapons and run away; and finally, shed their uniforms and don civilian clothes. Some of the more fanatical members adopted terrorist tactics of blowing themselves up at military checkpoints, or shooting Coalition soldiers after they had previously surrendered.

During the ramp-up to war, and after it had begun, anti-war protesters acted like clowns run amok, stopping traffic, chanting silly slogans, and otherwise making nuisances of themselves, if not actually not breaking the law like those in San Francisco.

The “Axis of Weasel” leaders of France, Germany and Russia, along with the venal Turkish government, demonstrated their own brand of cowardice with their lack of support for U.S. efforts, primarily because of the financial deals they had cut with the corrupt Hussein regime.

On college campuses around the country, lunatic conspiracy theories are still propounded by university professors of political science, near-east cultures or international studies.

We learn that the war was hatched by ideologue neo-conservative Jewish advisers to President Bush so that Israel could get hegemony in the region. The war’s ultimate aim, they believe, is to reassert American imperialism around the world, whereby the U.S. president would in effect become “emperor.” Clowns.

Congressional Democrats showed their true colors by voting against the war, claiming that they “support the troops but not the war.” Well-informed in advance with classified intelligence about Saddam’s horrors, they chose instead to put politics above the national interest.

By conveniently pushing a multilateral, U.N.-based solution to the crisis, they knew full well that the feckless U.N. diplomats would do nothing, and that President Bush might end up with egg on his face in this arena if he pushed for a unilateral approach.

Party leadership looked particularly clownish as they tried in their mealy-mouthed way to have it both ways. Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi all made outrageous statements about the administration’s position, then tried to explain them away when they realized that what they originally said “wouldn’t play” with the general public.

Many in the media have revealed themselves as simpletons in their coverage as well. “Baghdad Pete” Arnett came as close to treason as he could, in a private interview with a regime official in which he indicated that his filed reports gave voice and inspiration to the anti-war movement.

The New York Times slanted its front-page coverage of the war, with stories putting the Coalition in a negative light, to reflect its anti-war editorial position.

The Los Angeles Times ran column after column by Robert Scheer, a notorious anti-war Bush hater. You’d think Peter Jennings, ABC News anchor, was reporting for anti-U.S. Arab network Al-Jazeera, since he couldn’t bring himself to find anything good to say about the Coalition’s efforts.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times (4/11), CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan spilled the beans that he has known about regime torture and murder for years, yet not only said nothing about it, but also allowed CNN to attack President Bush’s claims on a daily basis. It is only now that his conscience bothers him.

Finally, the Iraqi people themselves have turned liberation into a circus, impulsively looting offices and stores in ridiculous fashion: a woman pushing a grand piano down the street in Basrah; a boy in Baghdad wrestling with an upholstered sofa teetering on a hot dog stand with wheels.

War brings out the worst in human nature on many levels.

“Send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.”

Barrett Kalellis is a columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications.

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