Bush faces rising criticism over Iraq
Bush faces rising criticism over Iraq
By Brian Knowlton
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: November 19, 2006
WASHINGTON: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man who regularly advises President George W. Bush on Iraq, said Sunday that a full military victory was no longer possible there. He thus joined a growing number of leading conservatives openly challenging the administration's conduct of the war.
"If you mean, by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," Kissinger told the British Broadcasting Corporation.
In Washington, a leading Republican supporter of the war, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said that U.S. troops in Iraq were "fighting and dying for a failed policy." But he continued to argue vigorously for a short-term surge in U.S. forces, and he gained a vocal ally in Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another influential Republican, who said, "We're going to lose this war if we don't adjust quickly."
The comments came at a sensitive time, just as the Bush administration, deeply frustrated by the persistent chaos in Iraq - where more than 50 people died in violence Sunday - and stung by Republicans' electoral setbacks Nov. 7, has undertaken an intense search for new approaches to the war.
Kissinger, in the BBC interview, said that the United States must open a dialogue with Iraq's neighbors, pointedly including Iran, if progress is to be possible. Bush has said the United States was ready for such talks, but only if Iran moved to halt its nuclear enrichment work. U.S. officials say low-level talks with Syria have produced little progress.
But Kissinger also said that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would have "disastrous consequences," leaving not only Iraq but neighboring countries with large Shiite populations destabilized for years. He said the United States would probably have to chart a road between military victory and total withdrawal.
The comments reflected a markedly more pessimistic view than Kissinger had expressed publicly in the past. The book "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward quotes Kissinger as saying in September 2005 that the only exit strategy for Iraq was victory.
Analysts of the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies are working feverishly to complete a report for the White House meant to lay out U.S. options in Iraq.
They hope to do so before a much- awaited review from a bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, which is expected by mid-December. The Baker group has sought Kissinger's advice.
As those projects go forward, three proposals - not necessarily mutually exclusive - have emerged, and on Sunday, senior lawmakers argued them all: to quickly begin a phased troop withdrawal as a means to compel the Iraqi government to seize greater responsibilities; to temporarily increase U.S. troop strength to bolster security before initiating a withdrawal; and to engage Iraq's neighbors in talks aimed at halting their support for unrest in Iraq.
McCain, a respected figure on military matters who is exploring a presidential campaign in 2008, has argued before for more troops, and he made the case passionately on Sunday.
"I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic," McCain said on ABC- TV. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened."
Graham, a fellow member of the Armed Services Committee, hinted on Wednesday, when his committee questioned General John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, that he backed McCain; and he made that clear on Sunday.
"We need an overwhelming presence in Iraq for the short term," he said on CBS-TV.
Abizaid said Thursday that while the U.S. military could find an additional 20,000 troops for a short deployment, the ability to stay longer was "simply not something that we have right now with the size of the army and the Marine Corps."
Graham said he disagreed with Kissinger about the impossibility of a military victory. But as someone who was able to visit the souks of Baghdad to buy a rug on his first Iraq visit - but had to travel in a tank during his latest - Graham said that matters were "absolutely" worse.
And Kissinger said that a rapid withdrawal could have "disastrous consequences."
"If you withdraw all the forces without any international understanding and without any even partial solution of some of the problems, civil war in Iraq will take on even more violent forms and achieve dimensions that are probably exceeding those that brought us into Yugoslavia with military force," he said.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat who will chair the Armed Services Committee when the new Congress convenes in January, has led the calls for a phased withdrawal, to begin within months, as a way to jolt Iraqi leaders into grasping greater control.
"If you don't do that, they're going to continue to have the false assumption that we're there in some kind of open- ended way," he said Sunday on CNN.
But a phased withdrawal could leave Iraq perilously vulnerable, analysts say, not just to internal violence but to its neighbors - Iran, Syria and possibly even Turkey, should it decide to send forces into the north to pursue Kurdish guerrillas.
A growing number of lawmakers, and reportedly the Baker commission, favor intense direct negotiations with those neighbors to ensure their cooperation.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, cited Kissinger's own negotiations with the North Vietnamese in arguing for engagement with Iran and Syria.
"If you pursue legitimate diplomacy, the way Henry Kissinger did when he made multiple trips, night after night, day after day, twisting arms, working; if you make the effort that Jim Baker did to build a legitimate coalition, I'm confident we can do what's necessary to get the neighborhood - and I include in that Iran and Syria - to take greater stakes," Kerry said on Fox-TV.
McCain said he was not opposed to talks with Syria and Iran, but he questioned whether Iran had sufficient reason to cooperate. "Iranians are on the ascendancy if we fail" in Iraq, he said, "so it's going to be very difficult to find common interests."
Several neoconservatives who had strongly supported the war have since fallen out with the administration. One of them, Kenneth Adelman, a former assistant secretary of defense, said on CNN that the management of the war "just breaks your heart."
Adelman, who had predicted that the invasion of 2003 would be a "cakewalk," criticized the decisions that allowed widespread looting after the fall of Baghdad, as well as the dismissals of Iraqi military and civilian officials.
He is no longer on speaking terms with Vice President Dick Cheney, according to The Washington Post, which quoted him Sunday as saying: "This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's awful."
Outcry over Italian protest
Politicians and relatives of Italian soldiers killed in Iraq condemned the burning of three cardboard cutouts dressed as Italian, U.S. and Israeli soldiers during a march for peace in the Middle East, The Associated Press reported from Rome.
"It was a very grave and irresponsible act," Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Sunday, a day after leftist extremists in Rome burned the dummies and waved banners with such slogans as "Italy must leave Iraq; 10, 100, 1,000 Nasiriyas."
The slogan referred to an attack in the southern Iraqi city in which 19 Italian troops were killed in the bombing of a military barracks on Nov. 12, 2003.
By Brian Knowlton
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: November 19, 2006
WASHINGTON: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man who regularly advises President George W. Bush on Iraq, said Sunday that a full military victory was no longer possible there. He thus joined a growing number of leading conservatives openly challenging the administration's conduct of the war.
"If you mean, by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," Kissinger told the British Broadcasting Corporation.
In Washington, a leading Republican supporter of the war, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said that U.S. troops in Iraq were "fighting and dying for a failed policy." But he continued to argue vigorously for a short-term surge in U.S. forces, and he gained a vocal ally in Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another influential Republican, who said, "We're going to lose this war if we don't adjust quickly."
The comments came at a sensitive time, just as the Bush administration, deeply frustrated by the persistent chaos in Iraq - where more than 50 people died in violence Sunday - and stung by Republicans' electoral setbacks Nov. 7, has undertaken an intense search for new approaches to the war.
Kissinger, in the BBC interview, said that the United States must open a dialogue with Iraq's neighbors, pointedly including Iran, if progress is to be possible. Bush has said the United States was ready for such talks, but only if Iran moved to halt its nuclear enrichment work. U.S. officials say low-level talks with Syria have produced little progress.
But Kissinger also said that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would have "disastrous consequences," leaving not only Iraq but neighboring countries with large Shiite populations destabilized for years. He said the United States would probably have to chart a road between military victory and total withdrawal.
The comments reflected a markedly more pessimistic view than Kissinger had expressed publicly in the past. The book "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward quotes Kissinger as saying in September 2005 that the only exit strategy for Iraq was victory.
Analysts of the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies are working feverishly to complete a report for the White House meant to lay out U.S. options in Iraq.
They hope to do so before a much- awaited review from a bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, which is expected by mid-December. The Baker group has sought Kissinger's advice.
As those projects go forward, three proposals - not necessarily mutually exclusive - have emerged, and on Sunday, senior lawmakers argued them all: to quickly begin a phased troop withdrawal as a means to compel the Iraqi government to seize greater responsibilities; to temporarily increase U.S. troop strength to bolster security before initiating a withdrawal; and to engage Iraq's neighbors in talks aimed at halting their support for unrest in Iraq.
McCain, a respected figure on military matters who is exploring a presidential campaign in 2008, has argued before for more troops, and he made the case passionately on Sunday.
"I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic," McCain said on ABC- TV. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened."
Graham, a fellow member of the Armed Services Committee, hinted on Wednesday, when his committee questioned General John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, that he backed McCain; and he made that clear on Sunday.
"We need an overwhelming presence in Iraq for the short term," he said on CBS-TV.
Abizaid said Thursday that while the U.S. military could find an additional 20,000 troops for a short deployment, the ability to stay longer was "simply not something that we have right now with the size of the army and the Marine Corps."
Graham said he disagreed with Kissinger about the impossibility of a military victory. But as someone who was able to visit the souks of Baghdad to buy a rug on his first Iraq visit - but had to travel in a tank during his latest - Graham said that matters were "absolutely" worse.
And Kissinger said that a rapid withdrawal could have "disastrous consequences."
"If you withdraw all the forces without any international understanding and without any even partial solution of some of the problems, civil war in Iraq will take on even more violent forms and achieve dimensions that are probably exceeding those that brought us into Yugoslavia with military force," he said.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat who will chair the Armed Services Committee when the new Congress convenes in January, has led the calls for a phased withdrawal, to begin within months, as a way to jolt Iraqi leaders into grasping greater control.
"If you don't do that, they're going to continue to have the false assumption that we're there in some kind of open- ended way," he said Sunday on CNN.
But a phased withdrawal could leave Iraq perilously vulnerable, analysts say, not just to internal violence but to its neighbors - Iran, Syria and possibly even Turkey, should it decide to send forces into the north to pursue Kurdish guerrillas.
A growing number of lawmakers, and reportedly the Baker commission, favor intense direct negotiations with those neighbors to ensure their cooperation.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, cited Kissinger's own negotiations with the North Vietnamese in arguing for engagement with Iran and Syria.
"If you pursue legitimate diplomacy, the way Henry Kissinger did when he made multiple trips, night after night, day after day, twisting arms, working; if you make the effort that Jim Baker did to build a legitimate coalition, I'm confident we can do what's necessary to get the neighborhood - and I include in that Iran and Syria - to take greater stakes," Kerry said on Fox-TV.
McCain said he was not opposed to talks with Syria and Iran, but he questioned whether Iran had sufficient reason to cooperate. "Iranians are on the ascendancy if we fail" in Iraq, he said, "so it's going to be very difficult to find common interests."
Several neoconservatives who had strongly supported the war have since fallen out with the administration. One of them, Kenneth Adelman, a former assistant secretary of defense, said on CNN that the management of the war "just breaks your heart."
Adelman, who had predicted that the invasion of 2003 would be a "cakewalk," criticized the decisions that allowed widespread looting after the fall of Baghdad, as well as the dismissals of Iraqi military and civilian officials.
He is no longer on speaking terms with Vice President Dick Cheney, according to The Washington Post, which quoted him Sunday as saying: "This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's awful."
Outcry over Italian protest
Politicians and relatives of Italian soldiers killed in Iraq condemned the burning of three cardboard cutouts dressed as Italian, U.S. and Israeli soldiers during a march for peace in the Middle East, The Associated Press reported from Rome.
"It was a very grave and irresponsible act," Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Sunday, a day after leftist extremists in Rome burned the dummies and waved banners with such slogans as "Italy must leave Iraq; 10, 100, 1,000 Nasiriyas."
The slogan referred to an attack in the southern Iraqi city in which 19 Italian troops were killed in the bombing of a military barracks on Nov. 12, 2003.
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