Wednesday, May 28, 2003

[1:25 PM] In the run up to Gulf War II, I put my money on Saddam unilaterally destroying his weapons of mass destruction to avert war and have sanctions lifted, while maintaining his capacity to reconstitute any WMD programs in the future. Donald Rumsfeld is now coming around to the conclusion that Saddam may have destroyed any unconventional weapons before the war. So Fields Report may have in fact been correct. However, the administration as many put it, wouldn’t take ‘yes’ for an answer as UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors continued to come up empty—just like U.S. forces are now, even with the run of the country. The only miscalculation of my part was inevitability of war (so wouldn’t that be a push and I get my bet back?).

Secretary Rumsfeld made his remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday. Check out a transcript here.

# posted 1:29 PM

[1:07 PM] Here’s an article in the Globalist by Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Institute for International Peace confronting the elephant in the room of Middle East security—Israel’s nuclear weapons. Washington strategically ignores Israel’s nuclear weapon program; but now that this administration has its eyes on other WMD proliferators in the region, Cirinciones writes that perhaps it’s time to look at the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons. He writes

Of course, the United States does not see Israel as a threat — but other nations in the region do. That is the whole point.

By ignoring Israel’s programs in order to protect the people of Israel, we may actually be increasing their danger.

Cirincione examines this issue from the security standpoint and doesn’t mention the powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S. But with Israel being forced into concessions on the Palestinian issue, perhaps now is the time to confront the nuclear issue as well. Establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East would give the U.S. considerable leverage with potential nuclear weapons states like Iran. But someone must first point out the elephant.

# posted 1:11 PM

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

[3:31 PM] Two nice items from The Nation. Stephen Cohen presents seven questions to consider when assessing whether U.S. national security has improved after/because of Gulf War II. Here are two that interest me

(3) Will the war, and the long US occupation that seems likely to ensue, reduce the recruitment of young Arabs by terrorist movements or will it inspire many new recruits?
(4) With or without more recruits, will the war decrease or increase the number of terrorist plots against the United States, whether at home or abroad?

I wrote here numerous times in the lead up to the war (which I should mention in light of the Cohen piece of the previous post, I predicted never would happen. Wrong!) a question worth asking was how much safer we would be from the threat of an attack from al-Qaida on day one after the war. The Saudi bombing came before any good will or considerable resentment could build from the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The second Nation piece extols the BBC World Service. I have the link to the left. I highly recommend it. The article quotes Americans who became fed up with U.S. media coverage of the war in Iraq and turned to the BBC online or through local public radio to get a different perspective (and better and more intelligent reporting). Now that the war is over keep tuning in. Its coverage of international affairs is excellent. As an example, this morning there was scant coverage in the U.S. broadcast media of the suicide bombing in Chechnya. The World Service, however, was on the job even though conflicting reports were still coming in. If you’re an NPR listener, you’ll love it.

# posted 3:36 PM

[11:54 AM] Eliot Cohen had an op-ed in yesterday’s Financial Times titled “How a war makes fools of experts.” He enumerates several assumptions that pundits and analysts made prior to the war in Iraq that did not come true. He writes

In the early autumn, advocates of the war (myself among them) believed that France, after a period of obstruction, would participate in the war, if only to secure a place at the peace table. Wrong. President Jacques Chirac may have sent the Charles de Gaulle to the eastern Mediterranean but it seems he and Dominique de Villepin, his Napoleon-entranced foreign minister, had no intention of anything but opposing the Americans to the bitter end.

More seriously, we expected Turkey to grant access to US troops, allowing a grand pincer movement to close on Baghdad. Wrong.

If yesterday’s bombing in Saudi Arabia is any indication, he may have been premature in writing “The local eminences who warned about the firestorm of terror that would begin with the first shot. Wrong.”

Maybe not with the first shot, but it appears that al-Qaida is still very operational. Does the attack constitute a firestorm? Perhaps not. It does suggest that American and Western interests are still vulnerable to attacks from determined terrorists and this may be the delayed onset of what some predicted would be a terrorist response to the war in Iraq (of course it could be business as usual for Islamists who want the United States out of the Gulf).

It was curious that Cohen’s piece was published on the day of the attack. It was also curious that the attack occurred in the midst of the Homeland Security Terrorism bioterror drill in Chicago. We still most fear an attack from terrorist using biological weapons (and the Chicago drill cost $16 million) when the Saudi bombing shows the preference is still for big bang attacks. This shouldn’t diminish domestic preparedness for any type of terrorist attack, but the formula of assuming that bad people will seek the worst weapons they can for a terrorist attack seems intuitive yet unproven.

# posted 11:59 AM