Iraq, January 2005, George Bush Impatient. 
Speaking Sunday 23 to State Department veteran Robert Earle, author, "Nights in the Pink Motel: An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq," re Mr. Earle's year in theater working directly for Ambassador John Negroponte. Mr. Earle came out of medical retirement to
travel June '04 to the Green Zone (pictured here, which the author calls the "Pink Motel") and take up an office in Saddam Hussein's ex Palace and study the insurgency and the enemy. He writes extremely well, hypnotically, a gift of gab, Graham Greene and Rolling Stone together, and he has the wit to observe closely how human beings are both predictable and compelling. Baghdad in the summer of '04 was opera. In Mr. Earle's eyes, it resembles a 132 degree Saigon 1963 wedded to Berlin 1946. This is the moodiest book I have found on the tragedy of the Bush administration in Iraq. From the moment Mr. Earle climbs into the Rhino, the armored vehicle to make the six-mile run from the airport to the Green Zone, this story is excitement and doom. The Iraqis are mysterious, violently childish, frightened to madness, helpless, and just short of cannibalistic. The Americans are mostly in it for the money. A few of the Americans are charming lunatics who believe that there is principle involved -- democracy, law and order, peace, some sort of civilization to reestablish. Mr. Earle is one of these lunatics and he meets others whom he characterizes by their attitudes or obsessions. "True Hero" or "Baseball Cap." One female stands out, Kay at five feet with red hair, whom he meets enroute home for leave while she is mourning a friendship with a Navy Seal who has lost a hand. Kay has spent the previous three years seeking her own destruction in war zones. Kay's delusion in 2004 is that she will abet establishing the rule of law in Iraq. Mr. Earle's illusion is to write a George
Kennan "Long Telegram" length super memo that the president will read and therefore understand that victory in Iraq is impossible in less than decades and that the majority Shia will dominate any government no matter how it is organized. Mr. Earle writes this super memo, and his boss and comrade John Negroponte makes sure it is delivered to the President. Ambassador Negroponte reports to Mr. Earle, in January 2005, that the president has read the report and rejected it. Mr. Earle is discouraged, despairing. Mr. Negroponte's explanation, while they sit in Saddam Hussein's gargantuan architecture (right, the American Embassy in the Green Zone) , awaiting the results of the first post-Saddam Iraqi vote, is that President Bush is impatient: "He wants something now, not in five or ten years."
Chicago, January 2005, Barack Obama Ambitious.
Reading this melancholy scene from the Green Zone (below, the Palace pool), I thought about another kind of drama in Hyde Park in January 2005, when Tony Rezko met with newly sworn-in Senator Obama to
walk over the mansion at 5046 South Kenwood Avenue. Mr. Obama was 99th senior senator, and he had won his overwhelming victory the previous November 5 because his trite rivals had self-destructed and because he had established himself as the anti-war senator. The result, in January, was that John Kerry was defeated, Bush was returned, the Senate and House remained in the hands of the Republicans, and Mr. Obama's future was assured -- a lifetime position, at 43, as a modest, little known, slight minority party senator from Illinois. It would not have been in anyone's imagination that the president's impatience with success in Iraq would soon transform the political landscape into a political minefield for his second term. And that the chaos in Iraq would turn into a crazed civil war driven by Iran an Syria in order to humiliate and defeat the Americans across the Middle East. And that the quietly ambitious Mr. Obama would launch a quixotic campaign for the presidency in February 2007 that would result in 365 Electoral College votes in November 2008. And that in January 2009, four years after Mr. Earle's disappointing conference with Mr. Negroponte, Mr.Obama and his newly appointed and confirmed Secretary of State Mrs. Clinton would begin their time of impatience with Iraq.
Well, if taxpayers don't want to bail out the Big 3, I guess we can always borrow the money to keep our automobile industry running for a few more months from the Middle East:
"US seeks 300 billion dlrs from Gulf states: report"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081120/bs_afp/financeeconomyusgulf_081120072928
I don't see any way that this is good. That doesn't mean I know what to do. I don't.
Maybe this explains why some very wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia are in a hyper gold buying frenzy:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/106526-all-the-gold-in-saudi-arabia
I just got back from Brazil where I visited my father and sister, Mara; both of whom I hadn't seen or heard from in 30+ years. My father was dying; whereas my sister turned out to be an accomplished, vibrant young woman, supremely confident and entirely competent. She works as a tax lawyer locally for the Federal District.
None of us were entirely sure of what to expect. It was with considerable trepidation we all made eye contact at the airport when I arrived. From my sister's point of view, there hardly could have been more on her plate, what with the juggling a career; taking care of sick parents, as well as raising her own family. Enter a long lost brother from America; one, not all young anymore and presumably set in his ways (as she envisioned it). She had every reason to be suspicious of my motives.
Needless to say, my visit there would turn out better than anyone might have imagined. Mara put it down to my being half Indian (not American), which happens to be a stretch. Naturally, with the American elections going on, I was asked for my opinion. I gave it honestly and they listened politely. When I had finished, my sister simply said, “We'll talk about it again in five years."
I doubt that in five years things will be any clearer. They never are. Time seems to have the habit of tying knots even tighter. Only the young can expect to slip the noose by virtue of their lithe limbs. I never dared propose my worst case scenarios as I have previously done in this blog. This would have been pointless; a wasted exercise for the benefit of some, floating so perilously on mere oil slick deep security, knowing (but not admitting) that the rest of the country (Brazil) is out of bounds and ceded to corruption and lawlessness.
I agreed and let it drop; hoping that my own adopted country will not attempt to emulate failure in the days we still have left to us. Impatience comes from the expectation that in the fullness of time a pay-off can be expected for one’s singular sacrifice. There is always a pay-back for good and honorable intentions. Of this I have no doubt. Where the concept misses its mark is in the expectation that it will happen within any given time frame or even that it will accrue to the particular party that has put forth the effort.
The thing that still sits in my craw is that the Brits occupied Iraq in the 1920s under a League of Nations Mandate, and a very similar scenario played out. People tell me there was no time to consider this. "Act in haste, repent in leisure."
That Kennan's "Long Telegram" was written in postwar Moscow makes sense. But poor Mr. Earle's doomed attempt to produce another "Long Telegram" from the Green Zone makes about as much sense as my composing a treatise on explosives safety after I've pulled the pin on a hand grenade. Once you've made the mistake of invading Mesopotamia it's too late for reflection.
Coincidentally, "Taki's Magazine" is currently running an excellent piece on George Kennan here:
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/george_kennan_and_the_discovery_of_realism/
Who would have guessed that George Kennan was a Tolkien buff?
Americans think in very short time frames. We have only been around for 232 years and with administrations changing every 4-8 years, we've become accustomed to rapid change based on the demands of the populace. Wasn't it Zhou Enlai that was asked what he thought of the French Revolution and he replied not enough time has past to see the results, or something like that. With the Brits in Iraq, the saying goes, there's never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it twice. Or thrice.
Peter,
Sorry to hear about your father's illness. And welcome safely back to the U.S.
I wonder if you ventured to ask anyone in Brazil if their distaste for American foreign policy was sufficient that they would refuse the rather substantial foreign aid package we recently gave them?
See, I do think it's important that we try to be a good citizen of the world, but I think that in order for a country to be fit to sit in judgment with us, they have to have their side of the street reasonably clean first. Can't give you an exact list of who fits in that category but don't think Brazil does, anyway.