# Posted 7:39 AM by Patrick Porter  

THE SCENE IS BERLIN, but this reflects Europe's general reaction to an American Presidential candidate who backs wiretapping and bombing targets within a volatile, nuclear state.

This reinforces the view that politics is often not about the content of policy. It is about who you want to conduct that policy.

Dismantling civil liberties is not necessarily an unpopular move in Europe (viz. widespread surveillance and preventive detention), and a tough stance on Al Qaeda is not an electoral liability, as the recent election of solidly Atlanticist governments proves.

But I would guess that Europeans are drawn to Obama more because of his overarching symbolic status (what he seems to represent) than his stance on specific issues. His fame as the unifying, visionary progressive overrides his increasingly centre/centre-right policy positions.

True, many of those in the crowd may not know in detail about Obama's record on policy. But given that their enthusiasm is likely to be based on Obama's image and brand, the fact that he is the 'anti-Bush', and the celebrity vibe around the occasion, we may doubt whether they would change their mind if they knew more about his record.

Obama is a skilful exponent of images. He deliberately plays to the affectionate memory of John F. Kennedy, the charismatic and youthful man of the future.

But he is like Kennedy in less obvious ways. His global brand may be one of cosmopolitan multilateralism, where the United States restores itself as a good international citizen. But like Kennedy the Cold Warrior, beneath that aura there is not only a political opportunist, but a hawk who is willing to outflank his enemies to the right.

A few years ago, Robert Kagan argued that America and Europe were drifting apart into different moral worlds, where power and weakness respectively gave both sharply different outlooks on force, diplomacy and world order. But a President Obama may reveal that things are trickier and more interesting than that. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:17 AM by Patrick Porter  

IT AIN'T OVER: This from Michael Yon seems rather premature:

‘The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it’s time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.’

Now, lets get a few things clear: General Petraeus should be richly decorated for his work in Northern Iraq; Al Qaeda in Iraq has been battered, discredited itself and alienated old allies and many Muslims, the shape of things to come; people who are invested emotionally and politically in the certainty of defeat in Iraq need to pay attention to what is happening; and the new Iraqi state is showing signs of great strengthening in its capacity to keep order, a process tied to us getting out. This is about more than one’s opinion of Bush and the wicked ‘neocons’, its about a vital cause, and folk who would rather Iraq go up in flames than America succeed need to take a more reflective view.

But can we stop the continual, round-the-clock declarations of victory and defeat? Because of a momentary realignment of forces in the Sunni triangle, the restraint of Sadr and the lull in violence, we should resist the urge to announce finality of any kind. There are too many unknowns: various Shia groups may simply be waiting out the savaging of Al Qaeda and the departure of the US. The new US allies, a coalition of gangsters, tribal leaders and opportunists, as well as a widespread revolt by former Sunni supremacists, may not see this phase as the last battle before the new federal democracy springs into life. They may see it as the latest tactical phase in which the US funds and arms them to battle AQ before they turn their violent attention elsewhere. And if we have ‘won’ overall, and a new Iraq can be salvaged, that is an extraordinary achievement by the US military, but it still tastes of ashes. Iraq has been a tragedy.

Secondly, notice how Afghanistan is now being redefined as the ‘hard’ war and Iraq as the ‘doable war’:

‘ I wish I could say the same for Afghanistan. But that war we clearly are losing: I am preparing to go there and see the situation for myself. My friends and contacts who have a good understanding of Afghanistan are, to a man, pessimistic about the current situation. Interestingly, however, every one of them believes that Afghanistan can be turned into a success. They all say we need to change our approach, but in the long-term Afghanistan can stand on its own. The sources range from four-stars to civilians from the United States, Great Britain and other places. A couple years ago, some of these sources believed that defeat was imminent in Iraq. They were nearly right about Iraq, although some of them knew far less about Iraq than they do about Afghanistan. But it’s clear that hard days are ahead in Afghanistan. We just lost nine of our soldiers in a single firefight, where the enemy entered a base and nearly overran it.’

One of the problems with fighting two wars in tandem is that we are drawn to evaluate each via a spurious comparison. When Iraq was collapsing into horrific communal violence, Afghanistan was touted as the ‘winnable’ war, despite the profound and wildly unfavourable conditions in which it is being fought. An unwieldy coalition, many of whom have little stomach for the effort, fighting in difficult terrain to prop up a weak and corrupt central state against insurgents who have sanctuary over the frontier and can regenerate themselves, amongst survivalist Afghans who know that the turbaned jihadists will always return. How was that ever conceived as the realistic war? Because Iraq looked worse.

My money is still on a cruder skepticism: This isn’t World War Two. The surge is not Okinawa. It ain’t over. (6) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:38 PM by Patrick Porter  

BETWEEN THE STRATEGIC AND THE HEROIC: Either this sort of thing gives you a lump in your throat, or it doesn’t.

Two thoughts come to mind when watching this film (or for me, anyway). First, that we are moved by brave and unyielding soldier-politicians of the likes of Churchill, Roosevelt or even the white-haired veteran, John McCain. A little defiance against the enemies of liberal society, against those who delight in the weakening of America and all it stands for, is uplifting. Like Lincoln, McCain has staked his election campaign on a firm belief in victory, a word deeply unfashionable in the post-modern discourse of war studies. To his credit, McCain also believes in preserving something to defend, committing to shutting down the disgrace of Guantanamo. The spirit of his advertisement is not only one of granite belief and determination. It is that heroism sometimes entails persistence against ridiculous odds. In recommitting Americans morally to a cause that may be unlikely to succeed, heroism cuts against calculated common sense. If Winston Churchill said ‘Never give in, never give in…except to convictions of honour or good sense’, the part of our instincts that loves heroism pays little heed to Churchill’s ‘good sense’ caveat.

Yet in being part of ‘war studies’, we insist and tell our students that war must be approached strategically and cautiously, as an exceedingly unpredictable and dangerous instrument. Take national security policy and Iraq. There are very good arguments for believing that we need to limit and tighten the conditions in which we would commit ground forces anywhere. A war of 2 billion US dollars a week is hardly sustainable. And there are too many dead people. Even if Iraq becomes an Arab Switzerland tomorrow, or even if Afghanistan became a gentle Islamic Republic with the Taliban routed, the large-scale military occupations in those countries have resulted in crises on the flanks, in the menace of nuclear theocracies in Tehran and Islamabad. Sure, we didn’t ‘make’ the Iranian leadership say what it says, but having troops stationed on either side of a paranoid regime has mobilised it, stifled domestic dissent, and accelerated its quest for nuclear capability. Politics in Pakistan is unquestionably radicalised by the war raging on its frontier. Like Austria-Hungary in 1914-1918, we could start with a war against an underground terrorist movement, and end with war against powerful states.

In other words, we can be caught between two instincts, the heroic and the strategic. So in Iraq, American and local forces have struck hard against Al Qaeda, in offensives that mark a staggering shift in the struggle. Building on a bottom-up revolt by former Sunni insurgents and tribes and powers who have learnt to hate AQ’s brutality (not to mention its competition for crime markets), the coalition has pulverised the tv beheaders and amputating thugs. In a virtuous cycle, their atrocities have alienated Muslims everywhere, even their own old allies. Then reduced to ineffectual and sporadic violence, they are further discredited. They look worse than bad. They look weak. Iraqis are tired of the violent onslaught on their civil society, their constitutional government is holding on and getting stronger, and violence is being lowered. Under General Petraeus, the US has helped drive a heroic turnaround, with unbelievably brave people creating a critical space in which some now talk of victory. As Margaret Thatcher might say, ‘just rejoice.’

Yet the strategist in us never ‘just rejoices.’ We recall that triumphalism is often premature. That these gains may be reversed and snuffed out by new waves of ethnic cleansing and sectarian killings, by AQ’s ability to regenerate itself in new training camps. Even in the best-case scenario, if AQI is decisively beaten, the newly empowered northern tribes are flush with weapons, cash and experience, and may turn this new strength against other Iraqis. The dream of a stable federal democracy, freed by new alliances of Americans and Arabs, may go the way of the confidence that was building amongst US troops who were steadily mastering the art of counterinsurgency in Vietnam, circa 1969.

This is one of the real problems faced by the ‘big story’ of the war on terror, which was then rebranded as the Long War, and lately, the Global Counterinsurgency. It is based on the view of a long-term, complex and shifting struggle, where we won’t have the clarity of victory and defeat. Yet politically, and as humans, many people haven’t lost their instinct for the climactic language of heroism. There remains something down in our gut where we can’t only think in terms of pure strategy. The leader who announces that this war, unlike those of our grandfathers, will not be settled by a formal surrender and a fixed terminus, is the same man who declares combat operations over against a banner saying ‘Mission Accomplished.’ (2) opinions -- Add your opinion