Naive Idealism Rules the Donkey's House

Special thanks to Congress for this one.

Turkey Requests Authority to Attack
By Molly Moore
Washington Post

ISTANBUL, Oct. 15 -- The Turkish government asked parliament Monday for a one-year authorization to conduct military operations in northern Iraq to attack Kurdish separatist guerrillas, but senior government officials attempted to play down the prospects of an immediate attack.

"It is impossible to speak for certain on a possible cross-border operation if the parliament approves it," Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of the Turkish General Staff, told reporters, according to the Anatolian news agency. "We will look at the season and go over our needs before launching a military operation."

Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said that "our hope is that we will not have to use this motion." But he added: "The reality that everyone knows is that this terrorist organization, which has bases in the north of Iraq, is attacking the territorial integrity of Turkey and its citizens.

"The motion targets PKK alone and is designed to prevent further bloodshed," Cicek said after a Council of Ministers meeting Monday, using the Kurdish-language initials of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. "We have always respected the sovereignty of Iraq, which is a friendly and brotherly country to us."

The parliament is widely expected to approve the authorization later this week.

Oil prices soared to a new high of just over $86 a barrel on Monday, largely on fears that Turkish military action could disrupt supplies as winter nears, industry analysts said.

The Turkish government sought the legislative authorization following a spate of attacks that have killed 30 soldiers, police officers and civilians in the past two weeks. There is also growing frustration that the United States and Iraq have done little to curb separatist activities in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

PKK rebels seeking a Kurdish state have waged a guerrilla war against Turkey for the past 23 years. During the 1990s, Turkey conducted numerous incursions into northern Iraq, but since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has pressured Turkey not to cross the border.

U.S. authorities have urged Turkey to use restraint in military operations, fearful of igniting one of the few relatively stable regions in Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he has scheduled an emergency meeting Tuesday with top aides to discuss the border problems and is prepared to meet with Turkish officials to calm the crisis.

Support for such a measure in Turkey was almost certainly acquired after we spit in their face last week by holding a vote denouncing the Turks for genocide over nine decades ago! Well thank you very much MRS. SPEAKER; thanks to this naive idealism we're gonna have a helluva time with the Kurds in the one successful area of our Iraqi occupation. These are not the days of Wilsonian foreign policy. You can't just preach idealism anymore; shit like this has consequences. I mean, why are we doing this NOW? What will it do? Calling genocide "genocide" does nothing but embarrass. It serves no ones' interests except a few congressmen who feel the need to play history's moral judge. This is liberal idealism run amuck.

We're gonna need State to step up here in a major way to keep this thing under control or we're gonna lose the Turks and the Kurds; we simply don't have the force strength to play border-babysitter in the north. Not to mention what will happen to our strategic options in the Middle East if Turkey curbs our logistic weigh station and basing area rights. This isn't totally the fault of Congress but they certainly opened the door. Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

Um Sanchez...are you serious?

Well, Gen. Sanchez let fly last week with a scathing indictment of White House policy in Iraq, claiming its strategy was catastrophically flawed:

In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”

In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.

General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities. General Sanchez, who is said to be considering a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.

“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

The White House had no initial comment. . . .

“National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone,” he said. “Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat.”

Asked after his remarks what strategy he favored, General Sanchez ticked off a series of steps — from promoting reconciliation among Iraq’s warring sectarian factions to building effective Iraqi army and police units — that closely paralleled the list of tasks frequently cited by the Bush administration.

But he said that the administration had failed to craft a detailed strategy for achieving those steps that went beyond the use of military force.

“The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” General Sanchez said.

Is this guy serious!!! If there is one military commander who is responsible for letting Iraq fall apart it is Gen. Sanchez. Under Sanchez, the U.S. Army mounted a reckless policy designed to neutralize enemy force strength and gather intelligence, but in actuality fueled the insurgent ranks by rounding up thousands of Iraqis with the slightest hint of insurgency connections and throwing them in jail. Not only would these procedures destroy the military’s detainee system and lead to Abu Ghraib, but it also humiliated the thousands of innocents who were rounded up with the guilty. This policy of humiliation and eventual abuse was exacerbated by the heavy-handed tactics of the 4th Infantry Division who rounded up thousands of Iraqis and dumped them on the steps of Abu Ghraib, almost 90% of which, had absolutely zero intelligence value.

Now this guy claims he is a victim of bad policy??? Well boo fucking hoo General! Last time I checked you were the military commander in charge of our Iraqi fiasco. So instead of blasting the civilian leadership who were thousands of miles away, why don't you act like a professional and pick up the pieces of your shattered career by doing something positive.

"Cold Worriers" Take Heed

Great piece from Tom Barnett on resurgent Russia.

Putin positions himself as Russia's Lee Kuan Yew
By: Thomas P.M. Barnett

One hears much about the death of democracy in Russia these days, especially as current president Vladimir Putin muses openly about slipping into the office of prime minister to sidestep constitutional term limits. As a former Sovietologist with a degree in Russian literature, I find this storyline all too familiar. But, rest assured, I likewise see America's Cold War victory remaining secure.

Russia enjoyed no real democracy in the 1990s, instead suffering an economic chaos that left society prey to all manner of gangsters. Not surprisingly, average Russians craved a return to order, which finally arrived in the political ascendancy of Putin's "siloviki," or "power guys," who spent their formative years working for the KGB.

During its final years, the dysfunctional Soviet system muddled along, thanks primarily to those who operated "on the left" (na levo), or in the black markets, and those who operated "on the right" (na pravo) or in the security services. The former kept the decrepit economy from collapsing; the latter kept the decrepit regime from collapsing. . . .

Befitting his Soviet roots, Russia's newest czar follows Vladimir Lenin's dictum that all politics can be summed up with one question: "Kto kovo?" or "Who dominates whom?" So we shouldn't expect Putin to leave Russia's political scene anytime soon, no matter which position he next assumes.

Coming out of the seven-decade coma that was the Soviet Union, Russia rejoins the world having substantially - and painfully - reinvented itself. Whatever economic statistics say, most Russians have adopted a middle-class mindset that places a premium on state-enabled stability and income growth. In this regard, it makes less sense to compare Putin to former Russian leaders and more sense to compare him to Singapore's founding father and long-time leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who after overtly ruling for many years, still covertly steers the country as "minister mentor" to his son the prime minister.

Putin's ruling cohort were all hand-picked by him, with the key common denominator being longtime service at his side going all the way back to his days running St. Petersburg. These are highly educated bureaucrats who, according to a recent, close-hold report by a U.S. Defense think tank, have been assembled by Putin to focus on a narrow agenda: economic growth, energy exports, national projects that improve the life of the Russian people, internal security and the regime's long-term political continuity.

Full article.

Barnett has cooled off lately due to some bad analysis on do-no-wrong China and Iraq, claiming everything would be hunky dory with partition without lending credence to the fact that partition could be a disaster for the Sunni due to a lack of resources without revenue sharing. Plus, I didn't think much of his second book; 20% analysis and 80% look how great I am. However, he gets back to his roots here. On Iran, North Korea, and Russia he remains solid.