The Buie Knife

Dispelling Four Popular Myths About the Iraq War

Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, four popular myths about the war should now be dispelled:

Evidence presented to American and British leaders was overwhelming that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. NOT TRUE.

"Bush lied" about WMDs and the rationale for war. NOT TRUE.

WMDs were the central reason the US invaded Iraq. NOT TRUE. 

If the WMDs had been found, the war would have been justified. NOT TRUE.

New evidence reveals American and British intelligence officers were informed by reliable high-level sources in Iraq (1, 2, 3--video available only if you have a British IP address) before the invasion that Saddam did not have WMDs.

In addition, former US Marine and Iraq weapons inspector Scott Ridder in 2002 waged a very public campaign to persuade American and British officials that whatever biological weapons Saddam stored from the late 1980s had turned into "harmless goo."

A U.S. Senate report concluded that American leaders discounted this evidence and "misled themselves." After 9-11, they were guilty of fear-mongering and hysterical group-think.

Intelligence officers had a "fixed mindset" that caused them to "see only evidence that supported this possibility" that Saddam had WMDs, US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer has concluded. The Bush administration chose Duelfer to him to head up the US investigation of Iraq's weapon's program. In a March, 2013 essay, Duelfer maintained "no books were cooked," but that "alternative possibilities fell by the wayside." Intelligence officers "fell victim to fabricators who told us what we expected to hear." Nevertheless, "intelligence reports should not be the only basis for making decisions, and they were not for the Bush administration."

Even if it were known that Saddam had no WMDs, a sizeable number of policy-makers favored his removal anyway. For them, wmd's were beside the main point. Remember that the desire for regime change in Iraq was a US goal since 1998, because of the belief that Saddam Hussein represented a long-term threat to his neighbors and ultimately, US and British interests. 

"Imagine, for a moment, that US infantry units rolling into Baghdad in April, 2003 had found a couple of warehouses full of VX gas and mustard gas component chemicals and warheads, or a refrigerator full of botulinum toxin. That would have been enough to 'prove' the Bush administration's case for war - 'pre-empting' the threat posed by Saddam. But would proving that Saddam's regime had some unconventional weapons capability have made the Iraq war any less of a debacle? That invading Iraq was an epic blunder is a commonly held view today in the US strategic establishment, and any discovery of stocks of WMD on Iraqi soil would not likely have altered that assessment. The problems inherent in the case for war were obvious to anyone who cared to ask the more difficult questions." -- Tony Karon, The (UAE) National newspaper, in an article titled "Media Failed to Ask Right Questions on Weapons Claims."

Why would the possession of WMDs by Saddam necessarily require war with Iraq?  The question applies not only to Saddam's Iraq, but nuclear weapons in Iran, and biological weapons possibly used by Assad's forces in Syria.  

In none of these cases can the governments prove they do not possess such weapons. Even giving United Nations' weapons inspectors full, free and permanent ability to search for "needles in haystacks" would not necessarily prevent a rush to war. Weapons inspectors who declared definitively that Saddam had no WMDs would not have been believed. Or if they were believed, Saddam would have been exposed as vulnerable to his enemies, foreign and domestic. He had a stake in making the case on WMDs ambivilant.

So, the continuing debate over WMDs ("Bush and Blair lied; people died") is a great over-simplification of the rationale for the Iraq war. They should not be accepted as "gospel truth," Duelfer writes. "Certainly, there were plenty of mistakes made then that should be avoided in the future. However, many of these arguments seem grounded in politics rather than reality."

Yes, the Bush administration, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair exaggerated the case for war -- magnifying Saddam as an "imminent threat" because he supposedly had WMDs. Over-selling was a marketing and public relations tactic to manipulate a divided public to support war. 

But it was not nearly as bad as the far more substantive blunders that were made. Americans had nearly complete lack of understanding or appreciation of Iraqi history, culture or even understanding of the Arabic language on the part of intelligence officers. The US Embassy in Iraq, with more than 1,000 staffers in 2006, had only six fluent Arabic speakers.

In the run-up to the war, as Fred Kaplan reported, Bush was warned by Iraqi exiles that American forces "would have to tamp down the sectarian tensions that would certainly reignite between Sunnis and Shiites in the wake of Saddam’s toppling.

Bush looked at the exiles as if they were speaking Martian. They spent much of their remaining time, explaining to him that Iraq had two kinds of Arabs, whose quarrels dated back centuries. Clearly, he’d never heard about this before.

Few things are more frightening than ignorance in action, the German philosopher Goethe said. Bush made the same mistake American presidents made in Vietnam -- stumbling and bumbling arrogance and ignorance of the history and culture of the country the US was invading.

Related:

• Nostalgia for Saddam Hussein in Iraq Leads To Questions About Syrian Future With Or Without Assad
• Would Bill Clinton Or Al Gore Have Invaded Iraq After 9/11? Quite Possibly

Related articles

Washington Post Prints Iraq Lies, 2013 Edition

Saddam Hussein had WMD after all

War Propaganda: 'Very high probability' Iraq hid WMDs in syria

The Lie That Got Us In: The Bush Administration Knew There Were No WMDs in Iraq

Washington Post Prints More Iraq Lies

New Evidence: Tony Blair Was Told Before Invasion Iraq Had No WMDs

Nostalga for Saddam Hussein in Iraq Leads To Questions About Syrian Future With Or Without Assad

Watch This AFP (French News Agency) Video on Youtube.com

Watch this video on CBSNews.com or read the text.

Those opposed to the US/UK intervention in Iraq are obliged to ask, "Would the country, or the region, or the world be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power?" Sure, the intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was wrong, but wmd's were only one reason for the invasion and occupation. On the 10th anniversary of the war, some argue that Iraq, the United States, and the world, would be better off if Saddam were still in power. Saddam's Sunni brethren are merging with opposition groups in Syria, and organizing in opposition to the central governments of both Syria and Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reports. To stop civil war and stabilize the country, the Iraqi prime minister may become a dictator like Saddam, many predict.

This may be shocking, but as someone who encountered everyday people in Russia -- bus drivers, clerks, even school teachers -- who longed for a leader like Stalin, it's not terribly surprising to me. Saddam idolized Stalin and modeled his regime on Stalin's, biographer Said K. Aburish said in an interview for a PBS Frontline broadcast in 2000.

"Stalin is his hero. (Like Saddam) Stalin came from a humble background. Stalin was brought up by his mother. Stalin used thugs. Stalin used the security service. Stalin hated his army. And so does Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein models himself after Stalin more than any other man in history."

Imagine if the US had invaded Russia, toppled Stalin and tried to establish democracy in Russia in the early 1950s. What a backlash that would have created. Some citizens favor a strong-man form of government, even if it's a dictatorship, because they value "law and order" -- security and stability -- above all else.

Unlike Stalin, Saddam had "no ideology whatsoever." He was "into realpolitik. He wanted to take Iraq into the 20th century. But if that meant eliminating 50 percent of the population of Iraq, he was willing to do it," Aburish observed. 

The argument has special relevance because of what's happening in neighboring Syria. "Saddam was probably 20 times as bad as Assad in Syria," former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a recent interview justifying the toppling of Saddam. "Just think (if Saddam) was trying to suppress an uprising in Iraq. Think of the consequences of leaving that regime in power."

If the US/UK had not intervened in Iraq, once the Arab Spring came, Saddam would have either slaughtered his people or there would have been a long, bloody war to topple Saddam (or his successor sons) like the war to topple Assad in Syria. In the first two years, more than 40,000 Syrians have died in civil war. The death toll in Iraq from a campaign to topple Saddam would probably have been far worse, many believe. And the United States, as well as the international community, would have faced enormous pressure to intervene in Saddam's Iraq, just as they do today in Assad's Syria.

Yet in all likelihood, Saddam would have survived the Arab spring, reporter Bobby Ghosh wrote for Time magazine, because of his ruthless brutality and willingness to restrict access to the outside world. 

Even some Western analysts wonder if Western interests would be better served if Saddam were still in power. Toby Dodge, a British strategic thinker on the Middle East, told Thomas Ricks of Foreign Policy magazine:

Well, you used to have an oppressive dictator who at least was a bulwark against Iranian power expanding westward. Now you have an increasingly authoritarian and abusive leader of Iraq who appears to be enabling Iranian arms transfers to Syria.

Dodge writes elsewhere that "the trajectory of Iraqi politics clearly is heading towards a new authoritarianism with the concentration of power in the hands of one man, Nuri al-Maliki." Dodge fleshes his argument out in a new book out, Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism. 

Nostalgia for Saddam can still be found in Iraq, especially in his hometown of Tikrit, Salam Faraj of Agence France reports. The country was relatively stable when he was in power, secular in outlook, and independent of Iranian influence, Tikrit residents say.

Iraqis still come to Saddam's hometown to pay homage, though his gravesite is now closed. "Most visitors said they recalled days under Hussein when their children could go to school without fear of improvised explosives on roadways and when the electricity stayed on far longer than it does these days," Aaron Davis reported for The Washington Post in 2011. “He was a dictator, but he was one dictator; now we have many,” said one Sunni.

Joost Hiltermann, who has studied the Iraq conflict for the International Crisis Group, said the increase in visitors to Hussein’s grave represents only a swath of Iraq’s population. “There are many Shias and Kurds who say, ‘The dictator is gone and we live more freely now.’ But Iraq is still an unhappy place,” Hiltermann said. “A significant part of the population is nostalgic for strong leadership, unhappy about the endemic instability, and fears growing influence by Iran and senses that Iraq as a regional power is weakened.”

In Baghdad, residents recalled that they had full electricity under Saddam, and the regime ran a substantial food-for-the-poor program.

Banen Al-Sheemary, an Iraqi-American student at the University of Michigan, asked her parents what Iraq was like in their youth, during Saddam's early reign. She blogs:

During the seventies and eighties, Iraq was a powerhouse of academia, with a thriving economy. In 1979, an Iraqi dinar was equal to $3.20. Nowadays, an Iraqi dinar is practically worthless. Saddam’s effort to lead in the Arab world led to many positive reforms, especially for women. My mother enjoyed free transportation to work as required by the state and a six month fully paid maternity leave. Despite his cruel methods of subjugation and obsession with monopolizing and maintaining power, his push to make Iraq the leader of the Arab world, meant economic and social reform.

It was after the first Gulf War, particularly with international sanctions against Saddam's regime, that life in Iraq deteriorated greatly for Banen's parents, and they fled the country for the US.

During Saddam's reign, Iraq had about 1.5 million practicing Christians. But after the American invasion, Christians were targeted as an "alien and infidel minority supposedly in league with the West," David Blair reported for the (UK) Telegraph.  About 85 percent of Christians fled the country, leaving only about 200,000 struggling to survive.  While Shia and Sunni clerics have issued a rare joint fatwa forbidding attacks on religious minorities, Christians are still under a lot of pressure in Iraq. 

Some Sunnis, particularly in places like Fallujah, say Saddam's government treated them more fairly than the current Shia-led government. The government of Nouri Al Maliki is increasingly allied with the Shiites and Iran. The Sunni vice president was arrested on terrorism charges, and the Sunni deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, told the BBC's Robin Lustig that "he regards Mr Maliki as a worse dictator than Saddam Hussein."

Yes, Saddam ruled by autocracy, and fear if not terror -- those who did not obey Saddam were ruthlessly oppressed, tortured or killed. One cannot really say that life was better under Saddam until one reads the full litany of the crimes he committed, as exposed in his trial. A PBS Frontline documentary, "The Survival of Saddam," aired in 2000 and explored the secrets of his life and leadership.

In the run-up to both the first Gulf War and the American war in Iraq, U.S. propagandists portrayed Saddam as either stupid or crazy, a megalomaniac as dangerous as Adolph Hitler. But in reviewing the archives of Saddam's reign, historians are coming to a different conclusion. Mark Stout of Johns Hopkins University and co-editor of The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant's Regime 1978-2001, told reporter Omar Karmi that Saddam was "a very capable leader."

"He was neither stupid nor crazy. He was very good at what he did, which was to survive in a cut-throat political environment."

If Iraq cannot establish stability, another totalitarian like Saddam may be in its future. 

Which begs a difficult question:

Ten years after Assad goes, might there be Syrians and international historians who argue that Syria was better off when he was in power?

 

Related articles

Iraq 10 years on: the grissly last show of Saddam Hussein

Iraq: A Decade Later Nostalgia For Saddam On Rise

Saddam Hussein's Legacy in Iraq

Saddam nostalgia lives on in Iraq

Saddam Would Have Survived the Arab Spring

Iraq War: Britons give verdict 10 years on

Iraqis feel "nostalgia" for Saddam Hussein

Islamists claim Iraq anniversary attacks

Would Bill Clinton Or Al Gore Have Invaded Iraq After 9/11? Quite Possibly

Former President Bill Clinton on Dave Letterman Show in 2002 sure bought into the faulty intelligence on Iraq, and greatly under-estimated the ease of toppling Saddam: “[Saddam] is a threat. He’s a murderer and a thug. There’s no doubt we can do this. We’re stronger; he’s weaker. You’re looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I’d be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished.” (Hat tip, AndrewSullivan.com, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.)

"If he's got these stocks of chemical and biological weapons, and if he knows he's toast, don't you think he'll use what he can and give away what he can't to people who'll be using them on us for years to come so he can have the last laugh...." 

Mr. Clinton clearly supports his successor.

"I think the President is doing the right thing to go to the United Nations, to ask them to do something and I hope that whatever we do - I think we need to turn up the heat, I think it's just a mistake to walk away from this," said Mr. Clinton.

But he finds the idea of the U.S. acting against Iraq - with only British support – problematic. Even President Bush has expressed such reservations.

Mr. Clinton told Letterman that - for now - the next step should probably be more weapons inspections.

"I wouldn't be opposed to trying these inspections one more time because I know that they did work even when he was trying to undermine us, we kept getting tons of stuff out of there," he said.

Clinton also wrote an op-ed for the (UK) Guardian urging Britons to trust Prime Minister Tony Blair's judgment in favor of war. In 2004, he told Time magazine that "I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over." President Bush, he said, "did the right thing" on Iraq. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) pointed out Clinton's "dishonesty slide" on Iraq when he thought he could help Hillary's 2008 campaign.

Many Democrats still bitterly believe that a "stolen election" in 2000 -- Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million -- and that an illegitimate leader and stupid George W. Bush caused America to stumble into a disastrous war in Iraq. Yes, it's true that Gore presciently warned against the invasion in 2002, and as president may not have pulled the trigger on Iraq. But Gore's vice president, Joe Lieberman, his national security advisor Leon Fuerth and former President Clinton were in favor of removing Saddam and under-estimated the difficulty of governing Iraq afterwards. "Given the changed climate produced by Sept. 11, 2001, we should aim from the beginning to destroy the Iraqi regime, root and branch," Fuerth wrote in November, 2001.

Kenneth Pollack, a member of Mr. Clinton’s National Security Council staff, would later write in 2002 that it was a question of “not whether but when” the U.S. would invade Iraq. He wrote that the threat presented by Saddam was “no less pressing than those we faced in 1941.”...We owe it to history—and, more important, to all those who died—to recognize that this wasn’t Bush’s war, it was America’s war.

Clinton was more popular than Gore in 2000, and if he were constitutionally allowed to run for a third term, he probably would have handily beaten Bush. Ironically, his third term -- or Gore's first term -- could have ended disastrously, with a quagmire in Iraq and Democrats deeply divided over that quagmire, not unlike what Lyndon Johnson faced on Vietnam in 1968.  

Related articles

What If...No Gulf War to Liberate Kuwait in 1991?

| A decade later and the Iraq debate is still contaminated with myths!

Tom Cotton's truths about Iraq

Architects of the Iraq War: Where are they now?

10 Years After Iraq

10 Yr Anniversary of OIF: The Lie that Bush Lied

Irak/10e: Attention, un mensonge peut en cacher un autre ! (When Everyone Agreed About Iraq)

One Purpose of Travel

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness” -- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad."

Or, sometimes, if one doesn't probe deep enough, travel can reinforce stereotypes. In some societies, especially those with lots of "guest workers" where your passport pre-determines how much money you make and your station in life, and people generally live in segregated compounds based on nationality, one has to make a special effort to see beyond stereotypes. The default position is to think of certain nationalities as the "servant classes," and certain nationalities as the "ruling classes." And yet, paradoxically, "guest workers" in wealthy countries who send money back home are viewed by their compatriots as having escaped the economic confinements of home for adventure and success abroad.

Related:

• Bigotry Rears Its Ugly Head
• UAE: So Many Nationalities In One Place

Prominent Historians Tackled the Great 'What If's' of 19th and Early to MId 20th Centuries

It is fascinating to discover American military historian Robert Crowley's collections of essays on counter-factual history known as "What If..." He edited three volumes between 2000 and 2004, in which prominent historians explored some of the close calls of history. Among the eminent historians contributing to these volumes were Stephen Ambrose, David McCullough, James McPherson, and Robert Dallek.

The American Revolution, Civil War and World War II provides many plausible alternative histories. Crowley, et al. explore:  

• Thirteen ways the Americans could have lost the revolution.
• What if Britain had kept the 13 colonies? Historian Caleb Carr makes a number of assumptions about how the 19th and 20th Century would have been different and in some ways, better off.
• What if the South had won Antietam (Sharpsburg) in 1862? Instead of a battle to a draw, the South could have inflicted devastating losses on the North if Gen. Lee's plans had not been leaked to Yankee Gen. McClellan. What if the South had won Gettysburg? Heavy losses in either/or both of these battles could have put enormous pressure on President Lincoln to negotiate a settlement with the South, allowing the Confederacy to survive. 
• Journalist-historian Tom Wicker asks what would have happened if Lincoln did not make the emancipation proclamation or if the 14th amendment granting full citizenship to freed slaves in the South was not enacted. 
• What if Lee had not surrendered at Appomatox? What if the North, in John Wilkes' Booth's wildest dreams, imposed such harsh punishment on the South that guerilla warfare broke out? America might resemble Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
• How Hitler could have won the war. What if Hitler had not attacked Russia when he did? He might have moved into the Middle East and secured the oil supplies the Third Reich so badly needed, helping it retain its power in Europe. 
• Could the wartime pope, Pius XII, have prevented the Holocaust?
• What if the Battle of Midway had been won by Japan? Or if Japan had never bombed Pearl Harbor? Would Americans have entered the war?
• What if D-Day had been a failure? The Soviet Union might have controlled all of Europe. Ambrose suggests that Allied defeat on D-Day would have meant nuclear devastation for Germany in the summer of 1945. 
• "What if" Eisenhower ordered American forces to seize Berlin ahead of the advancing Red Army in the spring of 1945 and Stalin quickly retaliated by firing on Americans? World War III could have developed quickly from the ashes of World War II.  

Drill Deeper:

The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.

• Volume one
• Volume two
• Volume three. 

Related:

• Alternative History Hangouts Offer Some Plausible, Many Implausible Stories

Some Good Economic News from Iraq, 10 Years Later

An American correspondent emails me: "I don't need to read books to know how they (the Iraqis) live.....I suspect they lead a miserable existence. And, looking at photos of their life before 2003 they led a miserable existence then. All you have to do is look at their ramshackle houses and dirty streets to know that. And, they were hungry under Saddam...imagine they are hungry now."

To the contrary, Erbil, Iraq has lots of millionaires, rapid modernization and great beauty. The locals aspire to transform it into "the next Dubai or Istanbul." Click.

Details on the economic boom in Northern Iraq.

More photos from Google images.

Erbil has been named the 2013 Tourism Capital by the Arab Council of Tourism. By 2014, Erbil expects to have four million tourists.

Perhaps so, but they need to get a better PR person....the only photos I've seen is narrow streets, brown adobe type houses, dirty streets.......I have to draw my conclusion with what the press presents since I have not been there and have no desire to go.

 They do need better PR, and recognize that they do. However, I doubt a big PR campaign will change the point of view of those who pays so little attention to Iraq news in particular or foreign news in general. They just don't want to hear about Iraq these days. That's probably because Americans feel rejected by the Iraqis, my correspondent contends. 

Ten years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country shows some positive economic news on which to build:

"The Iraqi economy grew 10.2 per cent last year and expects growth to accelerate to 14.7 per cent this year," according to the International Monetary Fund.

Iraq's oil industry has come back in a big way, April Yee reports in The (UAE) National newspaper. "In a relatively short time it has lured the world's biggest oil companies to redevelop its fields, topped its pre-war peak pumping levels and become the second-top producer in Opec."

Iraq's business tourism industry is growing rapidly, from 237,000 in 2011 -- 30,000 a year -- to a projected 350,000 in 2015. Major international hotel chains, including Marriott, Hilton, and Intercontinental, are opening hotels in Iraqi cities within the next two years, mainly in the stable northern region of Kurdistan.   

Iraqis are becoming tech-savvy. "Mobile penetration is at 83 per cent in Iraq. Internet penetration, while still low, is growing and satellite channels number in their hundreds," The (UAE) National newspaper reports. About one-quarter of the population has easy access to a computer, 10 percent of the population uses the Internet, and Facebook is growing wildly, connecting young people to a global social network. Facebook is the most visited website in Iraq, according to web measurement company Alexa.   

International fund managers "show very optimistic data for Iraqi GDP growth and massive share-price upside" on the Iraqi stock exchange, James Doran reports in The (UAE) National newspaper. The Iraq stock exchange has grown from 15 companies participating in 2004 to 88 companies participating in 2013,  The combined market capitalization of listed companies in the exchange has grown five to seven times since the exchange opened in 1997.  

The American decision to invade Iraq in 2003 will be debated for decades. From afar, it still looks like a catastrophe, with frequent news of suicide bombings, sectarian strife, and undependable electricity. But if you visit the thriving oil-rich Iraq city of Irbil, you'd probably say the decision was a good one. An economic boom fueled by oil production is helping the northern Kurdish region to develop rapidly, making it prosperous as well as stable. Sympathy for America runs strong in the Kurdish region, the AP reports, on the 10th anniversary of the American invasion:

Rebaz Zedbagi, a partner in the Senk Group, a road construction and real estate investment company with an annual turnover of $100 million, said his success would have been unthinkable without the war. The 28-year-old said he won't do business in the rest of Iraq, citing bureaucracy and frequent attacks by insurgents, but said opportunities in the relatively stable Kurdish region are boundless.

"I believe Kurdistan is like a baby tiger," said Zedbagi, sipping a latte in a Western-style espresso bar in the Family Mall, Irbil's largest shopping center. "I believe it will be very powerful in the Middle East."

Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2013/03/10/2389528/10-years-after-us-invasion-kurds.html#storylink=cpy

Iraq's overall economy is improving significantly. It is reliably and methodically producing oil again. In 2012, Iraq produced more oil than in any year since the first Gulf War. By some estimates, Iraq will soon overtake Russia as the world’s number-two oil exporter. (Source.)

In Abu Dhabi, I met an educator from an elite private school in Irbil who reported on the city's remarkable progress over the last decade. I also spoke with an American army veteran who talked about how much he loves the Iraqi people, and how industrious they are. In Turkey, I met businessmen who invited me to accompany them on one of their frequent trips to northern Iraq. As an American, I demurred, thinking it unsafe. But now I wonder if I was too influenced by sensationalistic media reports. All of these encounters have challenged my negative preconceptions of Iraq. 

So you're saying America's mission in Iraq has not been a complete catastrophe?

Not completely. The long-oppressed Kurds in the north, representing about one-fifth of the population, saw the weakness of the central government as their opportunity to create a long dreamed of semi-independent Kurdish state, a wealthy one with oil. They are actually doing better than they were under Saddam and have taken ownership of their own provincial government. In that sense, they are grateful to the Americans. 

Perhaps the American venture will be considered one-third successful if Kurdistan's "liberation" holds. But there are serious dangers because the central government wants much more of the massive oil revenues the Kurds are producing, so they may fall into civil war with Baghdad.

The question is how the Kurdish region, which spans from Iraq to Northern Syria and Southern Turkey, will develop, and how much autonomy it can grasp. Today's Zaman columnist GÖKHAN BACIK classifies this area as a "transnational border." He observes:

"The Syrian-Turkish border has failed. No matter how the Syrian crisis ends up, that border will become transnational in practice. The Kurds who live on its southern and northern flanks will not reinstate it. So, how will Ankara rule its Kurdish people who are in a transnational relationship with other groups in another country? There is now one simple fact: Turkey should be seeking harmony in its policy towards its own Kurds and Syrian Kurds under the control of the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Discord will draw backfire from both quarters."

Can Rand Paul Save the Republican Party?

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has inherited his father Ron's impressive Internet organizing and fundraising network. He has nothing to lose by launching -- early -- a campaign for president in 2016. At the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), he won the straw poll of nearly 3,000 attendees, with 25 percent of the vote, besting Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). Not too surprising since Paul's father, Ron, won the CPAC straw polls in 2010 and 2011. It will be interesting to watch how fast the Rand Paul 2016 Facebook page grows -- it's now at 807,454 "likes," compared to 454,823 "likes" for Marco Rubio's Facebook page.

If nothing else, expressing interest early makes Paul the de facto leader of the libertarian and Tea Party wings of the Republican Party. In a crowded field, he'd have a good chance of winning the early Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, making him a strong contender, Guardian blogger Harry Enten observes.

Paul won plaudits even from liberals for his 13-hour filibuster against President Obama's domestic drone policy, and for his advocacy of significant cuts in defense spending.

Traditional hawks like the editorialists for The Wall Street Journal, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have mocked Paul for showboating. Paul's filibuster was a "stunt" to "fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms," McCain charged. "We've done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them believe that somehow they're in danger from their government. They're not," he said. "But we are in danger from a dedicated ... enemy that is hell bent on our destruction."  

To become a majority party again, the Republicans will have to unite anti-government Tea Party libertarians, who detested the 2008 government bailouts of banks, and Wall Street, which gladly accepted the bailouts. The party will have to decide whether to take a consistent, principled free market approach or whether it simply favors, as the Bush administration demonstrated, huge deficit spending, crony capitalism, "socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor." 

It will also have to unite the internationalists and neo-cons, who strongly favored the Iraq war and want to hike defense spending before cutting the deficit, with the neo-isolationists, like Paul, who are disillusioned with aggressive American action in Iraq and Afghanistan and prefer to slash defense spending. 

Whether the Republican Party can bring these contradictory factions together will be one of the great political questions of 2016. At this stage it seems a libertarian like Paul could engender passion among a core group of ideologues and do well in certain primary and caucus states. But it's doubtful he could garner a majority of Republican primary votes without severely compromising his principals. He opposes the income tax, and would eliminate Medicaid.  He has taken domestic positions in favor of marijuana legalization, in opposition to civil rights -- opposing the Violence Against Women Act and going so far as to say business owners have a right to refuse service to customers on the basis of race. "Paul's libertarian streak ends on same-sex marriage and abortion. Paul is against both. Americans are for both," Enten points out.  

I've suggested before that both the Tea Party Movement on the right and the Occupy Wall Street movement on the left originate from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the financial crash and bailouts of 2008/9, and loss of confidence in the financial elites and the political establishment. They might unite around an agenda of breaking up the big banks, ending corporate welfare, ending the war on drugs, restricting both corporate and government surveillance, opposing Internet censorship, demanding more transparency and fairness in the financial system. That's a good agenda for the next few years.

If Paul could help enact it and unify libertarian impulses on both the right and left -- he might have a chance to actually win as either a Republican nominee or as a third party candidate in a general election. He'd probably have to drop his opposition to gay marriage and abortion, positions inconsistent with libertarianism.

In an insightful article, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner point to ways the Republican Party can modernize, "How to Save the Republican Party."

Both Paul and Rubio are up for re-election in 2016, so they both could be forced to decide early whether to run for re-election or run for president. It's a gamble, as Senator John Edwards (D-NC) discovered when he started grooming for a presidential run just two years after winning his Senate seat, and announced he would not seek re-election 16 months before his seat was up in 2004. Constituents back home resented his decision, thinking he never really intended to serve them, but only his own ambitions. He never secured his base in North Carolina, and his popularity in the state waned. Years on the road also took a psychological toll. Eventually, his promising career -- and his marriage -- were completely destroyed. 

Edwards provides a cautionary tale for both Paul and Rubio.

Karma

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. -- Buddhist Karma. Why Believe in Karma?