Train wreck of an election
By James Carroll | February 1, 2005

IN THINKING about the election in Iraq, my mind keeps jumping back to last week's train wreck in California. A deranged man, intending suicide, drove his Jeep Cherokee onto the railroad tracks, where it got stuck. The onrushing train drew near. The man suddenly left his vehicle and leapt out of the way. He watched as the train crashed into his SUV, derailed, jackknifed, and hit another train. Railroad cars crumbled. Eleven people were killed and nearly 200 were injured, some gravely. The deranged man was arrested. Whatever troubles had made him suicidal in the first place paled in comparison to the trouble he had now.

Iraq is a train wreck. The man who caused it is not in trouble. Tomorrow night he will give his State of the Union speech, and the Washington establishment will applaud him. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. More than 1,400 Americans are dead. An Arab nation is humiliated. Islamic hatred of the West is ignited. The American military is emasculated. Lies define the foreign policy of the United States. On all sides of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is wreckage. In the center, there are the dead, the maimed, the displaced -- those who will be the ghosts of this war for the rest of their days. All for what?

Tomorrow night, like a boy in a bubble, George W. Bush will tell the world it was for "freedom." He will claim the Iraqi election as a stamp of legitimacy for his policy, and many people will affirm it as such. Even critics of the war will mute their objections in response to the image of millions of Iraqis going to polling places, as if that act undoes the Bush catastrophe.

There is only one way in which the grand claims made by Washington for the weekend voting will be true -- and that is if the elections empower an Iraqi government that moves quickly to repudiate Washington. The only meaning "freedom" can have in Iraq right now is freedom from the US occupation, which is the ground of disorder. But such an outcome of the elections is not likely. The chaos of a destroyed society leaves every new instrument of governance dependent on the American force, even as the American force shows itself incapable of defending against, much less defeating, the suicide legions. The irony is exquisite. The worse the violence gets, the longer the Americans will claim the right to stay. In that way, the ever more emboldened -- and brutal -- "insurgents" do Bush's work for him by making it extremely difficult for an authentic Iraqi source of order to emerge. Likewise the elections, which, as universally predicted, have now ratified the country's deadly factionalism.

Full blown civil war, if it comes to that, will serve Bush's purpose, too. All the better if Syria and Iran leap into the fray. In such extremity, America's occupation of Iraq will be declared legitimate. America's city-smashing tactics, already displayed in Fallujah, will seem necessary. Further "regime change" will follow. America's ad hoc Middle East bases, meanwhile, will have become permanent. Iraq will have become America's client state in the world's great oil preserve. Bush's disastrous and immoral war policy will have "succeeded," even though no war will have been won. The region's war will be eternal, forever justifying America's presence. Bush's callow hubris will be celebrated as genius. Congress will give the military machine everything it needs to roll on to more "elections." These outcomes, of course, presume the ongoing deaths of tens of thousands more men, women, and children. And American soldiers.

Something else about that California train wreck strikes me. As news reports suggested, so many passengers were killed and injured because the locomotive was pushing the train from behind, which put the lightweight passenger coaches vulnerably in front. If, instead, the heavy, track-clearing locomotive had been leading and had hit the Jeep, it could have pushed the vehicle aside. The jack-knifing and derailment would not have occurred. The American war machine is like a train running in "push-mode," with the engineer safely back away from danger. In the train wreck of Iraq, it is passengers who have borne the brunt. The man with his hand on the throttle couldn't be more securely removed from the terrible consequences of his locomotion. Thus, Bush is like the man who caused the wreck, and like the man who was protected from it. Deranged. Detached. Alive and well in the bubble he calls "freedom," receiving applause.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

Congress has long had a knack for micromanaging national security policy into unworkable programs. But hara-kiri seems to be the latest fad for some congressional masochists.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair was America's most loyal ally when President Bush decided to invade Iraq with a view to regime change. He risked his political career, battled his own hostile Labor Party and dispatched to Iraq the second-largest contingent of troops after the U.S. Republican senators decided this was worthy of tangible recognition. Britain and Australia were to be exempt from State Department rules requiring that U.S. companies get special licenses for exporting unclassified military technologies.

The waiver was written in to the 2005 defense authorization bill, which the Senate voted last Oct. 9. But it was dropped in conference when two distinguished but geopolitically astigmatic Republican representatives — Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the House Armed Services panel — decided Britain was not entitled to anything.

With everyone on the Hill impatient to get on the campaign trails, the xenophobic partners defied Sen. John Warner, Virginia Republican, and his Armed Services Committee and President Bush — and convinced Tony Blair it was time to reassess the special Anglo-American relationship.

Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Democrat Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, chairman and ranking minority member respectively of the Foreign Relations Committee, stood by Mr. Warner on the need to exempt Britain and Australia from an obsolete, cumbersome Cold War licensing process.

While British soldiers risk their lives and shed blood in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Mr. Blair risked his political career, some Republican legislators do not trust the United Kingdom to prevent weapons from showing up on the global black market arms market. Evidently, it didn't occur to them that arms could be stolen in the United States as well. Nor do they seem to understand the benefits of trans-Atlantic technology transfers. British and French defense firms have opened plants in the United States that employ some 36,000 Americans.

So internationally tone-deaf are Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hunter, they didn't realize they had set in motion a shift in the tectonic plates of geopolitics. Vis a vis his own Labor Party, Mr. Blair had little choice but to plan retaliatory action against the U.S.

This week, the special relationship was cast aside as Britain lifted its longstanding opposition to scrapping the European Union's embargo on selling arms to China. What was a solid, united Bush-Blair front against military sales to China was suddenly in tatters, scuttled by two Republican congressmen.

Apparently, no one on Mr. Bush's foreign policy team warned him about the consequences of the Hunter-Hyde two-step into the unknown. And Mr. Blair himself simply explained to Mr. Bush that Britain could no longer be the lone holdout in EU against selling weapons to China. To mollify his White House friend, Mr. Blair assured Mr. Bush no hardware would be sold to China that might upset the delicate balance between China and Taiwan.

Unaware of what motivated Tony Blair, Mr. Hunter and Mr. Hyde will now find a new pretext to limit access to the U.S. market by further throttling technological cooperation between the United States and European defense manufacturers. This does not bode well for Mr. Bush's plans to fly to Brussels Feb. 22 to mend fences with traditional allies and launch a new beginning in the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Under the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, U.S. companies are legally bound to obtain a license from the State Department to export military equipment, services and data controlled by ITAR — the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Thus, State processes almost 60,000 license applications yearly.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and its NATO allies have worked more closely together to develop and build weapons systems. This also enables the United States to defray development costs. The $245 billion Joint Strike Fighter program, for example, involves work in Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and Canada, countries that have kicked in almost $5 billion for development.

European companies have also signed memoranda of understanding for joint development of missile defense systems, which the United States has also done with Israel for the Arrow antimissile project.

President Clinton first proposed an ITAR waiver in 2000 for U.S. defense firms trading in unclassified technology with British and Australian firms. Henry Hyde quickly responded with the Security Assistance Act of 2000, designed to curtail what the president could exempt.

The Bush White House followed up in 2001 and 2002 to obtain ITAR waivers, but Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hunter manned the congressional roadblock. Mr. Bush was convinced troop commitments from Britain and Australia would soften his Republican opponents.

Both Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hunter developed blocking tactics that stymied in quick succession a Lugar bill followed by a Warner waiver in the 2004 defense bill. Finally, Mr. Warner prevailed in the 2005 authorization act. But Messrs. Hunter and Hyde were waiting in ambush and again spiked the administration's guns.

A senior British BAE executive said privately, "I have never seen Tony Blair so angry. British papers keelhauled him for getting nothing from the U.S. in return for his Iraqi commitment to Bush. And he patiently waited for an opportunity to show the White House and Congress that Britain is bulldog, not poodle."

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

Card catalog description:

""In December 1962, the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, received an unpleasant surprise. Three months after the Cuban missile crisis ... he found himself facing an unexpected crisis of confidence with his country's closest ally, the United Kingdom." - from the Introduction."--BOOK JACKET. "In March 1963, President Kennedy asked Richard E. Neustadt to investigate that troubling episode in U.S.-British relations. His confidential report - intended for a single reader, JFK himself, and classified for thirty years - is reproduced in its entirety here."--BOOK JACKET. "The Anglo-American crisis arose from a massive misunderstanding between the two governments. The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, had been operating on the assumption that Washington would proceed with, and sell for British use, an airborne missile system named Skybolt. In its defense planning the United Kingdom relied on Skybolt to sustain its nuclear deterrence. The Americans, however, decided to cancel the program. This decision rocked the British government and seriously strained Anglo-American relations, while its hasty resolution gave President de Gaulle of France an excuse to veto British membership in the European Economic Community."--BOOK JACKET. "This volume adds to the report itself Kennedy's comments about it, a glossary, a cast of characters, new information gleaned from recently declassified British files, and Neustadt's comparison of British and American governments both at the time of the Skybolt affair and at present."--BOOK JACKET.

Product Description:

In March 1963, President Kennedy asked Richard E. Neustadt to investigate a troubling episode in U.S.British relations. His confidential report--intended for a single reader, JFK himself, and classified for thirty years--is reproduced in its entirety here. The Anglo-American crisis arose out of a massive misunderstanding between the two governments. The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, had been operating on the assumption that Washington would proceed with, and sell for British use, an airborne missile system named Skybolt. In its defense planning, the United Kingdom relied on Skybolt to sustain its nuclear deterrent. The Americans, however, decided to cancel the program. This decision rocked the British government and seriously strained Anglo-American relations.

Upon reading Neustadt's report, Kennedy passed it to his wife, Jacqueline, remarking, "If you want to know what my life is like, read this." She had it with her in Texas five days later, when he was killed. Today the document remains fascinating for the insight it provides into American-style foreign policymaking. This volume adds to the report Kennedy's comments, a glossary, a cast of characters, and new information gleaned from recently declassified British files.

I have known President Bush for 40 years — ever since we attended Yale College together in the 1960s. I'm a Democrat (and I was a Democrat then), but I liked him and I still like him, as a sincere and kind man and a good friend. [. . . ]

But despite what you may have heard or read, George was not just frat-house party boy. One of my most vivid memories is this: A few of us were in the common room one night. It was 1965, I believe — my junior year, his sophomore. We were making our usual sarcastic commentaries on those who walked by us. A little nasty perhaps, but always with a touch of humor. On this occasion, however, someone we all believed to be gay walked by, although the word we used in those days was "queer." Someone, I'm sorry to say, snidely used that word as he walked by.

George heard it and, most uncharacteristically, snapped: "Shut up." Then he said, in words I can remember almost verbatim: "Why don't you try walking in his shoes for a while and see how it feels before you make a comment like that?"

Remember, this was the 1960s — pre-Stonewall, before gay rights became a cause many of us (especially male college students) had thought much about. I remember thinking, "This guy is much deeper than I realized."