Rogue State/Failed State Conundrum

Prior to September 11, and even afterwards, Bush administration foreign affairs concern has focused on nations, and rogue states in specific. If you look at our activities prior to 9/11 and immediately after, we concerned ourselves with nations like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, in part, because they made up an actual target that we could aim at. Afghanistan was a much more difficult problem, in that it was hardly ruled from the center and we could exert little or no influence over the countryside, even when we could influence the Taliban who ran the country.

Our invasion of Afghanistan, and our subsequent actions there, have placed a premium on sovereignty and pututative control over the country, rather than actual control over all places within the country. This is because we did Afghanistan on the cheap, never really putting ourselves in there full force with the necessary troops to control the whole country. As a result, much of the countryside is under control of war lords with only tenuous loyalty to the central government. In many places, ex-Taliban and Al Qaida figures exert great influence. In other words, Afghanistan, while putatively an ally, is on the edge of becoming a failed state again. This appears to be of little concern to the Bush Administration.

Iraq was, by all accounts, a rogue state. Under Hussein, Iraq seemed to have little regard for international agreements or other niceties. However, they were a coherent, controlled state. All parts answered to the center, and no one entered or exited the country without the explicit or implicit consent or understanding of Hussein (except, obviously, for those areas which were under International control, like the Kurdish north).

Iraq is now becoming a failed state. It is very likely that the result of these "elections" will be civil war. I used quotes because this is the most farcical democratic enterprise Iraq has seen in, well, I guess only a few years, since their referendum on Hussein which produced a 99.9% yes vote. In this case, voters do not even know most of the people they are voting for - that's kept confidential for security reasons - they don't know their platforms, because there are none, they don't know any policies, because there are none. This is essentially a popularity contest based on tribal and religious affiliation - hardly a harbinger of good things to come.

However, as it stands right now, Iraq is veering dangerously towards the status of another failed state. So, I have to ask you, which is worse. A rogue state that acts outside the bounds of civil society and rejects international standards in most of their actions, but which is at least controlled enough so that the center is in charge, or a failed state where all of the above bad things apply, except the country is an open and fertile ground for the breeding of future terrorists, where huge amounts of weapons can be used against us there, or smuggled out (easily) to be used against us here. The country could easily break into 3 parts, with the center facing bloody civil war and failed state status for decades to come.

Remember, the only country which was a real threat to the US in the last decade has been Afghanistan, and not because they had an overtly anti-American government, but because they had no government at all. Additionally, places like Somalia were a threat and breeding ground for Al Qaida because they were lawless places where Al Qaida could spawn. Therefore, it appears as if Iraq is becoming a greater threat, not less of a threat, due to our invasion. I can only see one solution.

We need to ensure that a strong leader who can unify the country and control his borders and population takes power there. Someone who may not be our friend, but we can convince him not to be our enemy. We need someone who will work with us against some of the other dangerous and bad actors in that neighborhood (like Iran, who is greedily licking their chops in anticipation of the Shia takeover of Iraq and subsequent subservience to Iran). In short, I have a proposal about who can do this.

Saddam Hussein.

We have our answer, we have our man, we even have him in custody and available for immediate use. Now all we have to do is act on it.

Social Security - The Democrats' Chance

Listening to some of the Sunday morning talk shows yesterday (thank god for XM radio, which has CSPAN Radio, and replays many of these shows without commercials Sunday night), I sensed that the Republicans are very scared about the prospect of Social Security "reform" being an issue that they take a major hit on at the mid-terms in 2006. Some were saying that they fear losing their majorities in both houses (although that seems impossible). On the other hand, Talking Points Memo continues to document the number of people in the so-called "Fainthearted Faction" of the Democratic Party (those willing to sell-out SS for some variation of the Bush plan). Meanwhile, Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly continues to show how secure SS really is, and what a fraud is being run by Bush, probably in the greater goal of actually destroying SS rather than "save" it.

Two thoughts. One, if this is the issue with legs in this country, while we are spending hundreds of billions on a fraudulent war, then it speaks very poorly of our country. Imagine, we just had our president reelected while all of this crap was going on, but, god no, you cut my benefits by a drop and I'm willing to drop the president and his party at a drop of a hat. Waste hundreds of billions so Bush could call himself a "war president," lie about weapons of mass destruction, engage in the wholesale destruction of all of our longstanding previous alliances, embarrass our country beyond belief by deciding that torture and indefinite detention of suspects is acceptable (after decrying it in the Soviet Union all these years), lose jobs for a term for the first time since Herbert Hoover, all of these things pale in comparison to a possible cut in retirement benefits. And Bush calls our country a generous nation?

Finally, if this issue is so toxic (it's not called the 3rd rail of American politics for nothing), whey aren't the Democrats going to war on the issue. They've dropped the ball on every conceivable issue up to now, especially the war and tax cuts, but supporting them in numbers large enough to call Bush's legislative successes "bi-partisan." Why not coalesce at this point and fight the political equivalent of a street to street battle against this, something most people seem predisposed to oppose in the first place. This should be the time and place where liberals re-discover their backbone, not where they give bipartisan cover to another idiotic Bush proposal.