The Scribe

Jeff Sharlet on how fundamentalists are "reimagining" American history

Jeff Sharlet has been coming at us over the past several years with a series of studies which should scare the pants off any small-d democrat.  He reveals myriad ways in which fundamentalism is succeeding in changing American politics and culture. 

We see fundamentalists as a relatively contained group of self-righteous crackpots who are tiresome to deal with on local school boards and, god knows, in the White House.  After all, we're smarter than they are.  But winning majorities in both houses of Congress last week should not comfort us with the belief that the nation has returned to "normalcy," that Bush has been disarmed, that the fundamentalist leadership has suffered a setback.

The threat of fundamentalist persistence – and in his latest article in Harper's,*  Sharlet reveals the taste for violence in his subjects – is not behind us.  America is not more sane now than it was a month ago.  As Sharlet writes in his latest piece for Harper's, fundamentalists are not “a burp in American history... an unpleasant odor that will pass.”

We don't like to consider the possibility that they are not newcomers to power but returnees, that the revivals that have been sweeping America with generational regularity since its inception are  not flare-ups but the natural temperature of the nation. We can't conceive of the possibility that the dupes, the saps, the fools – the believers – have  been with us from the very beginning, that their  story about what America once was and should seems to some great portion of the population more compelling, more just, and more beautiful than the perfunctory processes of secular democracy. Thus we are at a loss to account for this recurring American mood.

We all have our theories as to where fundamentalism came from and where it’s going.  We are wising up, we think, about the character or personality defects which lead people to follow fundamentalist leaders. Sharlet thinks we’re wrong.

If the term "fundamentalism" endures, the classic means of explaining it away – class envy, sexual anxiety – do not. We cannot, like H. L. Mencken, writing from the Scopes "monkey" trial of 1925. dismiss the Christian right as a carnival of backward buffoons jealous of modernity's privileges. We cannot, like the Washington Post, in 1933, explain away the movement as "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”  We cannot, like the writer Theodor Adorno, a refugee from Nazi Germany who sat squinting in the white light of L.A., unhappily scribbling notes about angry radio preachers, attribute radical religion – nascent fascism? – to Freudian yearning for a father figure.

We’re not only wrong, we’re at risk of becoming dangerously unwary.  The new fundamentalist movement is using everything from new curricula to promises of mind-blowing orgasms to persuade parents and their children to follow a new path.

The new Christ, fifty years ago no more than a corollary to American power, twenty-five years ago at its vanguard, is now at the very center.  His followers are not anxiously awaiting his return at the Rapture; he's here right now. They're not looking for a hero to lead them; they're building biblical households, every man endowed with "headship" they promise sacred sex to those who couple properly – orgasms more intense for young Christians who wait than those experienced by secular lovers.

Jeff Sharlet has immersed himself in the new curricula of fundamentalism.  One of the most potent tools is a very ordinary one used by every American classroom – the retelling of history.  Let's face it:  history has been conveniently altered in American schools since the nation came into being, and not just by fundamentalists.   But now Christian fundamentalists making careers of rewriting history – and science –  to “prove” they are right, and have been right all along.

The cause behind every effect, says fundamentalist science, is God. Even the inexorable facts of math are subject to His decree, as explained in homeschooling texts such as “Mathematics: Is God Silent?”  Two plus two is four because God says so. If He chose, it could just as easily be five.

It would be cliche to quote Orwell here were it not for the fact that fundamentalist intellectuals do so with even greater frequency than those of the left. At a rally to expose the "myth" of church/state separation I attended this spring, Orwell was quoted at me four times, most emphatically by William J. Federer, an encyclopedic compiler of quotations whose “America's God and Country” – a collection of apparently theocentric bons mots distilled from the Founders and other great men, “for use in speeches, papers, [and] debates" has sold half a million copies. "Those who control the past," Federer said, quoting Orwell's) 984, "control the future." History, the practical theology of the movement, reveals destiny.

They’ve got the “separation of church and state” argument wrapped up. Public schools without religion are an invention of the 1930's and – thanks to recent appointments to the Supreme Court – they will soon be gone.  Sharlet reminds us:

Well into the nineteenth century, most American schoolchildren learned their ABCs from The New-England Primer, which begins with "In Adam's Fall/We sinned all" – and continues on to "Spiritual Milk for American Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments." In 1836, McGuffey's Eclectic Rentiers began to displace the Primer, selling some 122 million copies of lessons such as "The Bible the Best of Classics" and "Religion the only Basis of Society" during the following century.”

Homeschooling and fundamentalist schools are growing and with them a burgeoning industry producing " educational materials.

Who, knowing the facts of our history," asks the epigraph to the 2000 edition of “The American Republic for Christian Schools,” a junior-high textbook, "can doubt that the United States of America has been a thought in the mind of God from all eternity?" So that I would know the facts, I undertook my own course of homeschooling. In addition to “The American Republic,” I read the two-volume teacher's edition of “United States History for Christian Schools,” appropriate for eleventh graders, as well as “Economics for Christian Schools,” and I walked the streets of Brooklyn listening to an eighteen-tape lecture series on America up to 1865 created for Christian college students by Rousas John Rushdoony, the late theologian who helped launch Christian homeschooling and revived the idea of reading American history through a providential lens.

Military history – and the godliness of savage war – is a big part of fundamentalist teaching.   Sharlet reports from the front.

One afternoon last year I found in my mail an unsolicited copy of "The Vision Forum Family Catalog," a glossy, handsomely produced, eighty-eight-page publication featuring an array of books, videos, and toys for "The Biblical Family Now and Forever." This catalogue, I think, is as perfect and polished a distillation as I've found of the romance of American fundamentalism, the almost sexual tension of its contradictions: its reverence for both rebellion and authority, democracy and theocracy, blood and innocence.  The edition I received was titled "A Line in the Sand," in tribute to the Alamo. There, in 1836, faced with near-certain annihilation at the hands of the Colonel William. Barret Travis rallied his doomed men by drawing said line with his sword and challenging them to cross it. All who did so, he said, would prove their preparedness "to give their lives in freedom's cause."

A boy of about eight enacts the scene on the catalogue's cover. He is dark-eyed, big-eared, and dimple-chinned, and he's dressed in an idyllic costume only a romantic could imagine Lieutenant Colonel Travis wearing so close to his apocalyptic end – a white planter's hat, a Confederate gray, double-breasted jacket, a bow tie of black ribbon, a red sash, and shiny black fetish boots, spread wide. The young rebel seems to have been Photoshopped in front of the Alamo at unlikely scale: he towers over a dark wooden door, as big as an eight-year-old boy's imagination.”

War is celebrated.  In a meeting at Danbury, Connecticut  – chosen because it was the site of a church which received a letter from Jefferson in 1802 first using the phrase “wall of separation” – Sharlet witnesses a Christian revival, a mourning for the “oppression” suffered by fundamentalist Christians in America.

Rusty began the day's preaching, pacing back and forth between Danbury Baptist's foundation stones. He looked like an exclamation point – tiny feet in thin-soled black leather shoes, almost dwarfish legs, and a powerful torso barely contained by a jacket of double-breasted gray houndstooth. But he had one of the most nuanced preaching voices I've ever heard, a soft rasp that seemed to come straight from a broken heart  "We are here to start a gentle revolution,"  he whispered. "To reclaim the godly heritage." He sounded sad, for his sin and mine – we were all guilty of turning our backs on the lessons of history. But then he growled up to a full fury that made even the flaxed-hair pastor beside me literally blink before leaning forward into Rusty's thunder.

'"And when you go to war in your land'" – Rusty recited from the Book of Numbers– "and make no mistake about it, we are in a war– “

"Amen!" hollered Reverend Flip.

'"And when you go to war in your land,'" continued Rusty, "'against an adversary who oppresses you”’ – and here he interrupted himself.  “How many besides me are vexed by what is happening in the United States of America today?"

The crowd, shedding jackets and coats beneath a wan but warm spring sun, murmured amens.

"Your soul is vexed," Rusty moaned. Then he cried out: "We are under oppression!"

"AMEN!" responded the crowd, rising up to match Rusty's increased volume. The bill of grievances was hard: "Are we not in mourning?" Rusty asked, repeating the question and drawing it out as the women among us closed their eyes and said, plain and simple, Yes.  “Are we not in mournnnning?” he moaned.  “As terrorism strikes us from without, corruptions from within?" Yes, said the women, the men seemingly shamed into silence.  “How many know we’re losing our children?" Yes. "Our marriages are failing!" YES....

... "There's going to have to be a great fundamental shift," Rusty preached near the end of his sermon. Not just in society but among the believers. There is a "mothering" church, he said, and a "fatherhood" church, separate but equal aspects of God. The mother church nurtures and holds a child when he's done wrong; the father church is the church of discipline. The mother church feeds the poor, comforts the dying, attempting to remind nations of righteous behavior. But to Rusty the lesson of American history – the lesson of Valley Forge and Shiloh; Khe Sanh and Baghdad; Dallas, 1963; Roe v. Wade, 1973; Manhattan, 2001 – is clear: this nation is too far gone to be redeemed by mercy alone.  It is the father church's time.

Nothing illustrates the perfervid belief which produces the self-righteous militancy of fundamentalists better than the place of Stonewall Jackson in their American history books.

In the pantheon of fundamentalist history, the man revered above all others is General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederacy, perhaps the most brilliant military commander in American history and certainly the most pious. “United States History for Christian Schools”  devotes more space to Jackson, "Soldier of the Cross," and the revivals he led among his troops in the midst of the Civil War, than to either Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant; “Practical Homeschooling” magazine offers instructions for making Stonewall costumes out of gray sweatsuits with schooling "fun day." The Vision Forum catalogue offers for men a military biography and for the ladies a collection of Jackson's letters to his wife; both books extol his strategic and romantic achievements as corollaries to his unparalleled love of God.

Fundamentalists even celebrate the Confederate hero as an early civil rights visionary, dedicated to teaching slaves to read so that they could learn their Bible lessons. For fundamentalist admirers, that is enough; this fall saw the publication of “Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man's Friend,” by Richard G. Williams, a regular contributor to the conservative Washington Times. Jackson fought not to defend slavery, argues another biographer, but for religious freedom; he believed the North had usurped the moral jurisdiction of God. "The North seemed to be striving to alter basic American structures,” writes James I. Robertson Jr. "Such activity flew in the face of God's preordained notion of what America should be."

Jackson's popularity with fundamentalists represents the triumph of the Christian history that Rousas John Rushdoony dreamed of when he discovered, during the early 1960s, the forgotten works of the theologian Robert Lewis Dabney. including “Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson).  Dabney had served under Jackson, but more important he was a theologian in the tradition of John Calvin – that is, he believed deeply in a God who worked through chosen individuals – and he wrote the general's life in biblical terms. Rushdoony imagined the story as transcending its Confederate origins, and so helped make it a founding text of the nascent homeschooling movement.

In 2003, Vision Forum sponsored a national essay contest and awarded first prize to a pretty,  freckle-faced young woman named Amanda Freeborn for her essay, "How Stonewall Jack- son Demonstrated a Biblical Vision of Manhood." "There is a name," writes Freeborn, “that casts upon the screen of our imaginations the image of the personification of godly manhood.  That name is Stonewall Jackson... His life was a testimony to the world of what God can do through a man consecrated to his purposes...

...Civil War buffs study his military maneuvers and wonder whether, had he not been mistaken for a Yankee and shot by his own men in 1863, he might have outflanked the Union Army and fought the North to a standstill. But Freeborn chooses as case study not a Civil War battle but his first victory as a lowly lieutenant out of West Point. Sent to the Mexican War, he defied an order to retreat, fought the Mexican cavalry alone with one artillery piece, won, and was promoted, later commended by General Winfield Scott, commander of the U.S. forces, for "the way in which [he] slaughtered those poor Mexicans."

Many of the poor Mexicans Jackson slaughtered were civilians.  After his small victory had helped clear the way for the American advance, Jackson received orders to turn his guns on Mexico City residents attempting to flee the oncoming U.S. army. He did so without hesitation – mowing them down as they sought to surrender.

What are we to make of this murder? Secular historians attribute this atrocity to Jackson's military discipline – he simply obeyed orders. But fundamentalists see in that discipline, that willingness to kill innocents, confirmation of Romans 13:1; "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." Obeying one's superiors, according to this logic, is an act of devotion to the God above them.

But wait – fundamentalists also praise the heroism that resulted from his defiance of orders to retreat, his rout of the Mexican cavalry so miraculous – it's said that a cannonball bounced between his legs as he stood fast – that it seems to fundamentalist biographers proof that he was anointed by God.  Is this hypocrisy on the part of his fans?  Not exactly.

Key men always obey orders, but they follow the command of the highest authority. Jackson's    amazing victory is taken as evidence that God was with him – that God overrode the orders of his earthly commanders. And yet the civilian dead that resulted from Jackson's subsequent obedience of those very same earthly commanders are  also signs of God's guiding hand. The providential God sees everything; that such a tragedy was allowed to occur must be evidence of a greater plan. One of fundamentalist history's favorite proofs comes not from Scripture itself but from Ben Franklin's paraphrase at the Constitutional Convention: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”   

To put it in political terms, the contradictory legend of Stonewall Jackson – rebellion and reverence, rage and order – results in the synthesis of self-destructive patriotism embraced by contemporary fundamentalism.

The problem doesn’t just lie in the contradictions of fundamentalist teaching about Stonewall Jackson.  It recurs now, today, in the Pentagon.  Sharlet sees “a joyous disregard for democracy.”

The most striking example is a short video on faith and diplomacy made in the aftermath of September 11,2001, by Christian Embassy, a behind-the-scenes ministry for  government and military elites. It almost seems to endorse deliberate negligence of duty, Dan Cooper, an undersecretary of veterans' affairs, announces  that his weekly prayer sessions are "more important than doing the job." Major General Jack Catton says that he sees his position as an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a "wonderful opportunity" to evangelize men and women setting defense policy. "My first priority is my faith," he says. "I think it's a huge impact.... You have many men and women who are seeking God’s counsel and wisdom as they advise the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and the Secretary of Defense."  Brigadier General Bob Caslen puts it in sensual terms: "We're the aroma of Jesus Christ." There's a joyous disregard for democracy in these sentiments, for its demands and its compromises, that in its darkest manifestation becomes the overlooked piety at the heart of the old logic of Vietnam, lately applied to Iraq: In order to save the village, we must destroy it.

How that plays out will depend on how many Americans go along with fundamentalist Christian leaders who believe “we may need another 9/11 to bring about a full spiritual revival.”

We are nothing if not confused as a nation and a culture.  Liberals don’t own the past (or the truth) either. Sharlet reasons:

Fundamentalism embraces its mythic past; our more comfortable, liberal histories declare their own myths simply a matter of record. The imagination with which we, the levelheaded masses, view the demigod Founders and the Civil War, the "Good Fight" against Hitler and the American tragedy of Vietnam (the tragedy is always ours alone), is almost as deeply mystical as that of fundamentalism's, thickened by destiny, blind to all that does not square with the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a nation. There are occcasional attempts at recovering these near-invisible pieces, "people's history" and national apologies and HBO specials about embarrassing missteps in the march of progress, usually related to race and inevitably restored to forward motion by the courage of some key man of liberalism: Jackie Robinson at first base, 1947; Rosa Parks on the bus, 1955; Muhammad Ali refusing to fight in Vietnam. But such interventions are not much different than fundamentalism's addition of Martin Luther King to its pantheon; they are attempts to persuade ourselves that the big "We" of nationalism was better than the little people of history actually were.

The actual past no more serves the imagination of secularism than that of fundamentalism.  Liberals like to point out that many of the Founders were not, in fact, Christian but rather deists or downright unbelievers.  Fundamentalists respond by trotting out the Founders' most pious words, of which there are many (Franklin proposing prayer at the Constitutional Convention; Washington thanking God for His direct hand in revolutionary victories; etc. etc. ). Liberals shoot back with the Founders' Enlightenment writings, and note their dependence on John Locke; fundamentalists respond that Locke helped the Carolinas write a theocentric constitution.  But fundamentalist historians can also point, accurately, to the subsequent instances of overlooked religious influence in American history – not just Sergeant York's Christian trigger finger and Stonewall Jackson's tragic example but also the religious to convert or kill Native Americans, the violent piety of presidents – not just Bush and Reagan but also Lincoln and McKinley and Wilson and even sweet Jimmy Carter, die first born-again president, led by God and Zbigniew Brzezinski to funnel anti-Communist dollars to the bloodthirsty Salvadoran regime.

The dupes, the saps, and the fools – the believers – prefer their re-enchanted past, alive to the dark magic with which all histories are constructed.  For them America’s past merely charts God's love, its meanings revealed to His key men, presidents and generals, preachers and a goy with a shofar. The rest of us are simply not part of the dream. Fundamentalism is writing us out of history.

*Not available online

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Earlier posts about Jeff Sharlet's research:

Lest We Forget

The secretive Council on National Policy Revisited

New Life Church, Pastor Ted, etc.

Robert Gates: what's his track record? what motivates him? why was he nominated to succeed Rumsfeld? will he be confirmed?

11/13/06:  A discussion of what Robert Gates "would bring to the job and what his nomination signals for the future of the U.S. in Iraq."

Host:  Diane Rehm

Guests:  Amb. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of policy planning for the Department of State. Author of "The Opportunity: America's Moment To Alter History's Course." Melvin Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, author of the forthcoming book "The Decline and Fall of the CIA." He served at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. Jeff Stein, national security editor and SpyTalk columnist for Congressional Quarterly. Former Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam.

Diane Rehm:  Whatever direction the US takes in Iraq, the military aspect of that policy will likely take place under the direction of former CIA director, Robert Gates... Jeff Stein, if I could start with you, what does the selection of Gates suggest about the direction of the Department of Defense or the hoped-for direction?

Jeff Stein:  Do you mean to the reforms that Donald Rumsfeld began?

DR:  Whatever!

JS:  I think these reforms began in terms of the kind of army -- the kind of military we would have.  The reforms began many, many years ago in the Carter administration.  I don't see any quick change in that because weapons systems take a long time to develop as well as reconfiguring the forces to the light and lethal units that Donald Rumsfeld wanted -- that's going to continue.  I don't see that's going to change at all.  Certainly not in the next two years. 

DR:  Are you surprised that he accepted the position, considering that he had committed himself to serve as president of Texas A&M until 2007? 

JS:  Well, he's had a lot of time to think about it because he's been offered previous positions -- running CIA and then running the new National Intelligence Directorate.  He turned those down.  So I think what's going on is that Bush Sr.'s advisors are all rallying around trying to get the car out of the ditch and back on the road.  They prevailed on Mr. Gates to take this position as a patriot -- to help the country and help, of course, the Administration for the next two years as we run up to the election.  I'm not surprised at all.  I don't think he was enthusiastic about it.  Running the Pentagon is a pretty heady job...!  You have a lot of hardware underneath you and a lot of troops to move around.  On the other hand, the Iraq situation is quite dire and it's going to be a very, very hard job for him.

DR: ...Turning to you, Richard Haass:  as you just heard, Jeff Stein says there's  been some pressure put on Robert Gates.  Some have described the pick as reflecting the younger President Bush falling back on his father's team.  Others say it's a lot more complicated.  What do you think?

Richard Haass:  Well, in terms of Bob Gates' motivation, he himself has talked quite openly about public service.  His career has been dedicated to public service and he said this is a time of war and he felt the necessity of serving.  I know it's an odd thing in Washington, but sometimes you've just got to take people at their word!  I would think it's both understandable and sincere.  In terms of the larger administration/policy question, I think there has been something of a re-emphasis on what you might call more traditional internationalism, a greater emphasis on multilateralism.  I think this is simply born of necessity.  The United States is militarily bogged down in Iraq.  We're economically stretched, to say the least.  We're now politically divided.  The US is now simply facing a whole raft of international challenges from North Korea to Iran to Iraq to Darfur to Venezuela and you name it!  We don't have the means to do it all by ourselves.  So the idea that the Administration is becoming somewhat more multilateralist or internationalist, I would think is both necessary and understandable.

DR:  What does Robert Gates' work on the Baker-Hamilton commission tell us, if anything, about what kind of perspective he'll bring to the job?

RH:  What it tells me, or at least suggests strongly, is pragmatism.  The entire thrust of the Baker-Hamilton study group is to come up with a third approach.  I think the whole idea of more of the same was roundly rejected by the American people the other day.  The idea of simply pulling the plug... I think there's a broad consensus that it would be unwise and would lead to tremendous mayhem or worse.  People are looking for some kind of in-between, practical option, and that seems to be consistent with the sort of person Bob Gates is, which is essentially looking at the options in front us to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

DR:  ...Turning to you now, Melvin Goodman, I know you have some concerns about Robert Gates.  Spell them out for us.

Melvin Goodman:  Yes, I have major concerns.  I have a concern that Richard obviously doesn't have.  I think it's very difficult to take Bob Gates at his word and that's my major concern -- that of integrity.  In 1987, Bob was nominated to be CIA director and they had to pull his nomination back because David Boren, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said "Bob, I have bad news.  The majority of the Intelligence Committee simply doesn't believe your disavowals about Iran/Contra."  Boren had checked with Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor for Iran/Contra, and he knew what the facts of the situation were.  in 1991, there were 31 votes against Bob Gates when he was confirmed as CIA director.  That's more votes than against all other CIA directors in nearly six decades... If you go to the memoirs of George Schultz and Jim Baker, they had to brace and admonish Bob Gates in 1987 and 1989.  So I have a very serious issue of integrity because this is not a man who's established he's willing to tell truth to power.  He's been a servant for a master and now the master is the president and he will serve that master obediently.  But if you think this is the man who's going to look deeply into the Pentagon, look for innovative ways to resolve this problem of Iraq, which is probably the most difficult foreign policy problem we've had since the end of World War II, I wouldn't expect it.  Also I do have a problem of fitness.  I part company a little bit with Jeff here.  One thing that you can say for Donald Rumsfeld:  he came into a Pentagon that had acquired too much power, particularly over the past few years of the Clinton administration when Bill Cohen was Secretary of Defense.  What Rumsfeld was trying to do was to reform the defense acquisition process and get into real transformation.  Bob Gates has no background in any of these issues.  He doesn't have the military background.  He doesn't have the industrial background.  And frankly I think he's temperamentally unsuited to delegate authority.  He is a micro-manager and I think he has some of the worst characteristics of Bob McNamara and Don Rumsfeld who failed in this job before him.

DR:  ... Jeff Stein, how do you respond to the concerns about Robert Gates as expressed by Melvin Goodman?

JS:  Well, I wrote about the same things last week... The record on Robert Gates is extensive because he's been through a confirmation hearing in which a number of analysts under him at the CIA said that he twisted intelligence.  In fact, in my column last week I said he was sort of an odd pick in that way since the fabrication and misuse of intelligence has been a major theme for this administration.  To pick a man who has a very well documented background of doing just that is extensive.  So..

DR:  Why do you think they did pick him?  Why do you think he was the President's choice?

JS:  The people I talked to who had worked with him in past administrations said he was a very good facilitator and conciliator. Milt Bearden, for example, who ran a number of Soviet operations for the CIA said, "Everyone was wrong at the CIA on Russia and Bob Gates got stuck with it."  That's his analysis.  But he and others I talked said said he was a very good facilitator of different positions so that right now when the requirements of this administration are to get people talking to each other... I mean, you have Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld who weren't even talking to each other.  There's open warfare in the Administration and the idea is -- I'm not saying this is true, but the idea is that he will get them all on the same page and talking to each other.  Having said that, this is a very big page to get on with Iraq!  The options are dwindling very quickly and so he doesn't have a lot of room to maneuver.

DR:  Melvin Goodman -- a good facilitator in Bob Gates?

MG:  No.  He's not a facilitator, he's not a conciliator.  Everyone wasn't wrong about the Soviet Union.  What's interesting about Bob Gates:  in the 1980's he was wrong about all the Central Intelligence issues of our time.  He was wrong about Gorbachev.  He was wrong about what Gorbachev meant.  He was wrong about the implications of Gorbachev for Soviet/American relations. He was wrong about the implications of Gorbachev...

DR:  ...So why do you think they chose him?

MG:  I think they chose him for one very simple reason:  damage limitation.  I think the Iraq Study Group is all about damage limitation.  There is no way out of Iraq and Bush knows that and he's panicked.

DR:... Richard Haass, you've heard Melvin Goodman talk about some of the missteps of the management style, some of the critique he's made against Robert Gates including allegedly politicizing intelligence about the Soviet Union under Reagan.  What's his record as you understand it?

RH:  The record as I understand it is qualitatively different from what I've heard.  I worked closely with Bob Gates for several years during the presidency of the previous President Bush, the 41st president.  Bob at the time was the Deputy National Security Advisor serving under Brent Scowcroft.  I was the senior person overseeing the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and south Asia on the National Security Council staff.  So we worked together literally hours a day particularly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.  I would say that Bob is someone who is willing to speak truth to power.  He is someone I found of tremendous intellectual integrity.  He is someone who works with rather than against bureaucracy.  By that I mean he was willing, almost like the analyst he was trained to be, to build up the case based upon the evidence and then take it to the boss.  In that case, obviously the president.  I think this is what we need now, because we've reached a point in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where existing policy is clearly not on a successful trajectory.  So we're going to need intellectual honesty, a willingness to look at options that have up to now been deemed unacceptable.

DR:  So in your mind, Richard Haass, what are the realistic military options for Iraq that Robert Gates is likely to weigh?

RH:  I would think that not just he but the entire Baker-Hamilton commission is going to look at a set of options that rejects both "more of the same," which I think is a non-starter, and "pulling the plug."  I'd say it's going to involve three things.  One is going to be some gradual reductions in the US presence.  Secondly, some redeployments -- less American military presence in the center where sectarian is the most intense and moving it more towards, say, the north to make sure there's no Turkish-Kurdish problem, and towards the west to slow infiltration across the Syrian border.  I think there will also be a reorientation of the US presence away from operational war fighting and towards more emphasis on training and advising.  So this is what the "third way," at least on the military side, that it's likely to be about.

DR: You know, I hear that phrase "truth to power" a great deal.  In your mind, Richard Haass, give me an example of how you believe Robert Gates has demonstrated his ability to do just that.

RH:  I think at times he was willing to make clear his views on the Soviet Union to various presidents, whether they were comfortable or not.  He had disagreements at times with Jim Baker in the previous administration about certain approaches to US policy towards the Soviet Union and then Russia in those transitional years when the Cold War ended.  Throughout the previous Gulf crisis he was willing to say what he thought, or even most recently he, along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-headed a task force here at the Council on Foreign Relations on US policy towards Iran.  One of the findings of the task force was that the US begin a dialogue with Iran.  That's obviously something very different from what this administration has, up to now, maintained.  So it seems to me you've a pattern here of someone who pretty much calls it as he sees it.

DR:  Jeff Stein, do you believe the appointment of Robert Gates will demonstrate a change in philosophy on the part of this administration toward our actions, our current policy in Iraq?

JS:  Yes, I think that's a fait accompli actually because the situation has gotten so bad that there's a bipartisan consensus rumbling beneath the decks that something had to be changed.  Everyone agrees that policy has to change before it changes for us.  That's the problem.  The options are dwindling very quickly.  So these ideas of having a timetable or not having a timetable -- these options are running out.  Pretty soon we're going to be a garrison force in Iraq and have very little mobility outside the Green Zone.  Though I think that's happening already and it began to be forced upon the Administration a couple of months ago when the Iraq Survey Group was set up under Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton.  Now there's a study group at the Pentagon.  General Pace has suddenly gotten new legs to confront Mr. Rumsfeld.  So I think there's a general movement here toward exploring options, diplomatic solutions with Iran and Syria and other parties in the Middle East.  That's a genie that can't be put back in the bottle.

DR:  Melvin Goodman, James Mann of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies wrote a piece on Robert Gates the other day -- and I'm quoting from this -- he described Robert Gates as "an ardent Cold War hawk who did not shrink from moral judgments.  The Soviet Union was an evil empire, Gates wrote, in the concluding chapter of his 1996 memoir."  Mann goes on to say that "others in Washington, including former Secretary of State George Schultz, complained that Gates and the CIA had repeatedly tailored intelligence to fit the policy interests they favored."  Is that how you saw it?

MG:  Oh, there's no question of that. Jim is spot on.  He was an ardent Cold War hawk.  He tried to undercut Schultz in the policy of detente.  He tried to undercut Baker -- Richard calls that a "disagreement" but I don't call it a disagreement.  He was giving speeches that were undercutting Baker's efforts to undercut relations with the Soviet Union and improve the way to arms control.  And also there's a terrible contradiction to what Richard was saying about Iraq.  On the one hand he says we can't pull the plug... we're not going to pull the plug.  And then he lists three steps that are obviously steps that will pull the plug -- gradually reduce our forces, redeploy to the north, reorient the mission of the troops.  That is, indeed, pulling the plug!  So Richard does want to cut and run!  He does want to get out!  And I hope he's right about Bob Gates moving in the same direction!

DR:  Richard Haass, what kind of relationship can Bob Gates expect to have with his commanders right off the starting block?

RH:  I think that's one of the most interesting pieces of this as we move forward.  We have this whole tradition in this country -- for good reason -- of civilian primacy over the military.  But I'd actually say in the past few years that we've almost had -- this will sound odd -- too much of it.  I think we haven't heard enough of an independent uniformed military point of view.  Again, based on my experience with Bob Gates, this is someone who is comfortable with allowing the system to work.  So I would expect that over the next few years the uniformed military is going to rediscover its voice and we're going to be hearing more of them as we're already seeing now about strategic options -- as to where we go with both Iraq and Afghanistan.  I would think that's a welcome development.

DR:   Would you agree with that, Jeff Stein?

JS:  Again, I think the options are really narrow.  And that the military men are really taking over control of policy right now along with -- in concert with -- the Iraq Study Group.  There has to be a new "realism" in policy.  The Republican policy of keeping going what we're doing is just not working.

DR:  But the top brass of the military apparently was not too terribly fond of Donald Rumsfeld.

JS:  They couldn't stand him! 

DR:  So -- are they likely to have a better relationship with Bob Gates?

JS:  I think they are -- for the very reason that the policy options of the past are gone.  Therefore, Mr. Gates has to work in concert with the military leaders, and new military leaders, to get us out of Iraq in one piece.  This is the problem we've got in Iraq.  This debate over "cut and run" or "stay the course" has an air of unreality to it.  The options are dwindling very, very quickly in Iraq.

DR:  Is Bob Gates, Richard Haass, likely to be more inclusive about who the US talks with.  For example:  on Iran.  Is he not more likely to urge that Iran come into a conversation with the US?

RH:  Well as.... Yogi Berra once said, Predictions are awfully tough, especially about the future. So I don't know if Bob Gates is going to explicitly say that, but all I can tell you is that 1) he's favored supporting a dialogue with Iran in the context of the task force report again, 2)  I believe it's highly likely that the Baker-Hamilton group will propose some sort of regional forum, akin to existed, if you recall, at the time of Afghanistan where the neighboring countries, the US, and Russia had a standing regional forum.  I think we're probably moving towards some version of that for Iraq with a half dozen or so neighboring countries along with the US, Russia, and Europe -- and perhaps others --would have a regular set of consultations about what can be done to prevent either the breakup of the country or the civil war getting even worse.  So I would think this is likely to be US policy and I don't see where people who have not been part of the Administration would have problems, necessarily, with signing on to that.

DR:  Now, is there any question that this lame duck Congress would delay confirmation and leave it to the 110th Congress that convenes in January?

JS:  No.  Mr. Gates is the morning-after-pill, he's the un-Rumsfeld.  Everyone can't wait to get to the next leader of the Pentagon.  So he's going to be confirmed very quickly.  But there's going to be some noise made by, I think, Senator Levin and others about Bob Gates' reputation and track record with regard to Iran-Contra way back when he was accused of not being forthcoming (at best!) during hearings for his first nomination to be CIA director...

DR:   ...which you think will simply come up and be passed over?

JS:  I do.  Because they want someone at the Pentagon now.  They need some leadership at the Pentagon.

[Listeners calls and emails]

"Joe":  My question is for Mr. Goodman.  If Mr. Gates is unacceptable to you, who would be your choice and why?

MG:  An excellent choice would be Sam Nunn.  In other words, Bush should have done what Bill Clinton did for bipartisanship in naming Bill Cohen to the Pentagon in his second term. Sam Nunn has the credibility; he has the integrity; he has the military experience; he has the industrial experience.  Sam Nunn knows the military.  The military has tremendous respect for Sam Nunn and they treat him with respect.  It's sad that we haven't used Sam Nunn since he left the Senate because he has all the skills that you want for Secretary of Defense.

DR:  You're nodding your head, Jeff Stein. Would you agree as well?

JS:  Absolutely!  And one of the things that Sam Nunn has been doing over the last several years is very very important.  He's been talking about proliferation of nuclear weapons.  This is really his area of particular expertise lately.  Although he's an expert on military matters across the board.  But in particular, he's been very critical of the administration for not working more closely with Russia to get control of possible black-market nuclear weapons which is the greatest threat we face in the US today.

"Eva":  I don't think it will change much to have Robert Gates.  He's a 30-year hawk, too.  And Mr. Goodman, I have a question. Why doesn't someone say to the Iraqi government "no more reconstruction without pacification" including the oil pipeline.  In other words, peace or no more taxpayer money down the drain.

MG:  Good point and good question. But the sad fact is, for the Bush administration this isn't about Iraq anymore.  It's about the Bush presidency.  It's about the Bush family legacy.  And it's about the reputations of all the people associated with this war.  I think somehow this defines fanaticism for me:  they've forgotten their objectives, they've forgotten their mission, they won't look at the positives and negatives of the situation and change course.  So there's a stubbornness here that's very frustrating in many ways.

"Lee":  I'd like to first commend Richard Haass for the proposals that he made on Iran when he was Assistant Secretary of State for Policy and Planning.  He came up with a pretty good, comprehensive proposal for a foreign policy which unfortunately was ignored by this administration.  I think had it been followed we would not have be in the mess with Iran that we currently are.  My second point is that I was dealing... in the intelligence community when Gates was there in the '80's and we were asked to do a National Intelligence Estimate on having to deal with the Soviet Union.  The intelligence community agreed completely on the results of that Estimate.  Gates did not.  He killed the Estimate. So I have real reservations about how he will handle intelligence and I agree with Mr. Goodman on the questions about his ethics.

DR: Richard Haass?

RH:  In terms of the latter point, again I wasn't involved in those studies.  Let me say something... because it comes up with me as someone who runs an institution that puts out intellectual work all the time.  Whenever you're in charge of such an institution, whether it's part of the intelligence community or part of a think tank like I am, and you criticize a piece of work or you kill it, the first charge is always that 1) you are somehow intellectually tilting the playing field.  And I'm not saying that on occasions that's not a fair charge.  But it is also possible that the head of an institution sent something back simply because they don't think either analytically it's strong enough or the prescriptions don't follow from the analysis or what have you.  So it's always easy to charge some sort of intellectual or political interference whenever someone gets in the way of the publication or release of work.  But it's not necessarily so.  So even if Bob Gates sent things back, it doesn't mean in any way it was necessarily political.

DR:  An email from Jesse in San Antonio who writes: Before deciding new ways and means, we must choose an objective.  Is it the Bush policy of "stay to win" or the contrary objective of "get out with the least harm to Iraq and us."  Jeff Stein?

JS:  I think it's the latter, get out with the least harm.  One thing that everybody agrees on is that there were not enough troops.  There have never been enough troops in Iraq to fulfill the objectives that the White House stated in the beginning -- which was to bring democracy not only to Iraq but to the Middle East.  Now we're just looking for stability and there are not enough troops to do that.  So do you double? triple? quadruple? the number of troops in Iraq?  First of all, we don't have those troops readily available.  So that's really off the table.  So when you take that off the table, you're really talking about managing a withdrawal and the rest is in the details.  The details are to draw out combat units and put in training units.  This is also in my personal opinion kind of a figleaf, but it's one way of perhaps stabilizing these Iraqi units and police units.  Which I think the chance of that is very low right now.  But that's one way to go about it.  Plans include withdrawing these combat units, as Mel suggested, to Kurdistan and to Kuwait.  Others are to withdraw to Basra and protect the oil enclave there.  These are kind of details.  There's no question whatsoever that the withdrawal is going to be managed, no matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge. 

DR:  And of course, Richard Haass, you've recently written a piece for the Council on Foreign Relations saying that all withdrawals are not equal.  You title this piece "The Withdrawal Syndrome."  You talk about performance-based, calendar-based and conditionally-based.  Now, what do you believe Robert Gates will choose as a recommendation from the commission that's about to make its recommendations?

RH:  I'd say it's the preference of almost every analyst for performance-based withdrawals.  That is, we would only leave when the Iraqis show they can take care of things.  The problem is that's unlikely to ever happen!  And also, most people I know are rejecting calendar-based withdrawals -- simply saying arbitrarily, that we're going to "leave by January" or whatever.  Even the Democratic leadership is rejecting that.  So I think we're clearly heading in the direction I would call "conditions-based withdrawals" where the US turn to the Iraqi leadership and say, Here's what we need you to do in terms of your military capabilities or in terms of sharing oil revenues or in terms of political power-sharing.  If you can do it, and if you can show progress ending or winding down the civil strife, we will stay.  But if you can't, we will begin to withdraw and reposition our forces.  My hunch is that we're moving in that direction.

DR:  Melvin Goodman, your concern right now is Iran?

MG:  Well, one concern I have with Iran -- and it's the same concern I had with North Korea -- is that this administration has never had a strategic approach, a programatic approach, to either country.  These are the two most serious problems we have going back to what my colleague, Mr. Stein.  Counterproliferation is, I think, the most serious problem we face in terms of our strategic policy challenges.  So until we deal with these countries and sit down with Iran and sit down with North Korea and have face to face discussions, end the Korean War from 1950-53, appreciate Iran's problems with the fact that we overthrew a democratically-elected government in Teheran in 1953 -- that was the role of the CIA -- so Iran understands we're serious, we aren't going to try to dictate to them.  Now, Jim Baker has talked about negotiating with your enemies and I'll give credit to Bob Gates.  He has talked about -- in the piece he coauthored with Brzezinski -- about the need to talk to Iran and not having any nuclear conditions.  So we must get on with that.  This administration has not had any strategic approaches to any of its problems.  When you look at the profligate decision -- and Iraq was the most profligate decision in the history, I think, of the US and national security affairs -- it's really been a seat of the pants kind of effort.  I wouldn't try to anticipate what Bob Gates is going to do because he'll take his marching orders from the White House and then he'll have to deal with a military that I think wants to put a significant number of troops into Iraq -- at least for the short term -- and that would be a dangerous road to follow right now.

"Lee" in Florida:  First, I just wanted to say that I've been trying since before 2004 to talk to someone in this administration.  It's amazing how they won't listen!  That said, I disagree with the statement that we can't get out of Iraq.  I think we need to first separate the Bush oil control agenda from the actual war on terrorism.  In doing that, we'll be able then to separate our mission.  Someone mentioned earlier that this hasn't been a strategically planned effort and I agree.  Or at least they've been mixing their strategic objectives in a way that's not compatible.  In doing that, we can then turn this to where it can then be dealt with militarily on the one part and then dealt with, I think, economically in terms of our oil independence on the other part.  And in that separation, there is a way out of this.

JS:  I just would like to add that in one of the worst case scenarios that's floating up and around now -- it's based on first of all that you can't underestimate how grave the situation is in Iraq.  In comparison with Vietnam, Iraq is really a major league problem.  The tragedy of Vietnam was never really important to the US and it took a long time to get out of there.  But Iraq really is important.  But as I said, one of our scenarios is to negotiate a truce with the Shi'ites in the south and get our troops out that way.  I mean, we've got to physically get them out.  We have a lot of equipment we've got to get out of there.  When the end came in Vietnam, we had very few troops -- we really had no troops there.   Just advisors.  The equipment had either been turned over or we'd taken it out.  We've got lots of very advanced equipment in Iraq. We've got 160,000 troops and untold numbers of contractors doing military duties.  One scenario is negotiate with the Shi'ites and, by extension, Iran for a safe route out of southern Iraq into Kuwait.

DR: Richard Haass, with the nomination of Bob Gates and assuming he is confirmed, how much of a role to you expect Dick Cheney to play in negotiations, in consultations, from here on out?

RH:  I would expect that the Vice President will remain fairly central to this administration.  He's essentially been involved three different ways.  He's got this very large staff, in many ways unprecedented for a vice president, in the national security domain who are involved as though they were almost an independent agency in the US government representing his office.  He sits in on the principal's meetings and then he has personal time with the president.  So that gives him the proverbial three bites of the apple or three swings of the bat.  He's got a good deal of influence but even more important than than, he is respected -- at least up till now has been respected and trusted by the president.  Assuming that continues, he will continue to be influential.  Though again, and I can't remember which one of your other two guests mentioned it, at the end of the day this is the administration of George W. Bush and the vice president's role is ultimately dependent on what the president wants the vice president's role to be.  That extends as well to Mr. Gates as Secretary of Defense or Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.  At the end of the day, the president tends to get the national security process that he wants.

MG:  I just don't agree with Richard about the role of Dick Cheney.  Dick Cheney is finished, I think, with this administration.  I go back to an article which General Scowcroft wrote in the New Yorker nearly two years ago -- I'm sure with the endorsement of the President's father -- in which he warned George Bush about what was happening not only to his policy but to the legacy of the entire Bush family.  And he said something interesting about Dick Cheney.  He said that Dick Cheney "used to be a friend of mine, but I don't know this man any more" and he suggested that he was undercutting the Administration.  Dick Cheney has had to sit there while Rumsfeld is gone, Wolfowitz is gone, Feith is gone, Libby is gone -- all of his soldiers, all of his warriors are gone. So I think he's been thoroughly isolated.  I think he's been discredited.  He's probably the most unpopular man not only in this administration but I think in the history of recent administrations, if you look at public opinion polls. The unfortunate thing is that I think Dick Cheney has been defanged and we'll know that:  the test of that will be when John Bolton loses his ambassadorship to the UN when his recess appointment runs out.  I have a feeling there will not be another neocon going up to New York.  We're going to have internationalists or multilaterists and this will be good for American foreign policy interests around the world.

DR:  Richard Haass:  what do you think about Melvin Goodman's statement on John Bolton?  Will he be confirmed?

RH:  Extraordinarily hard to see how he's confirmed given the [November 7 election] results.  I would think it's ultimately likely the Administration will have to turn to somebody else.

"Duane":  I have two questions.  My first question is, why do the American military have to have a civilian leader, someone with no military experience?  It seems to me you want a general or someone independent to lead our military.  And my second point is, why did we wait so long to have an exploratory committee about Iraq?  Why didn't we do all those things before we went into Iraq?

JS:  I wrote a piece in the New York Times not long ago in which I recounted asking a number of senior officials and oversight members of the intelligence committees -- at the end of long interviews, I'd say, Do you the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite?  And almost to a man they couldn't answer.  They didn't know the basic things.  This included the new national security chief at the FBI.. .cannot answer this basic question.  So the caller's question is right on the point.  The hallmark of this administration is the dearth of military experience throughout from the President on down and across.  So it's not necessarily that you're a bright guy or you're a better administrator if you have military experience.  God knows we have lots of officers who are disasters!  Like we have in any business I should quickly say!

RH:  Well, Don Rumsfeld had military experience and clearly he was one of the more controversial secretaries of defense.  And we've had other secretaries of defense including Dick Cheney who didn't have military experience and presidents who didn't have military experience.  It seems to me there's no necessary correlation between one's success in making judgments and recommending policies and necessarily the personal experience you've had.  I think the caller's second point is an interesting one.   We've had to establish the Baker-Hamilton group essentially the policy is failing and the interagency process itself -- the government itself -- seems unable or unwilling to come up with a suitable set of alternative policies.  Essentially what the President has done is use the time-honored technique of establishing a commission outside the executive branch to help the executive branch do what it seems unable to do for itself.

DR:  Do you believe that commission will be able to do what the Administration could not do for itself?  Will it be able to convince the Administration that theirs' is the more appropriate path?

RH:  It will put forward the set of options. It's up to the Administration to convince itself that it wants to avail itself of those options.  But I think it's entirely likely that the Baker-Hamilton group will put forward a set of alternatives to what the Administration has been doing.  My guess is the Administration won't take all of them.  It doesn't want to look as though it has totally franchised out US foreign policy.  I do believe they will take up many of the recommendations...

DR:  What do you expect that variety of recommendations to include?

RH:  I think there will be two sets of recommendations.  One will be on the military side -- and we've talked about some of these.  Some types of reductions perhaps based on Iraqi government behavior.  Some change in the mission.  Some redeployments geographically.  But I think more interesting will be the diplomatic side.  I think you will have some sort of call for a greater emphasis on a regional diplomatic forum including contacts with Iran and Syria.  Probably also they will call for great pressure on the Iraqi government to meet certain behavioral milestones or benchmarks.  So I think you will get a set of options -- almost a menu.  And then the Administration will be able t pick and choose from this menu...

DR:  Jeff Stein, does this mean that Secretary of State Rice will have more of a voice in addressing what happens next?

JS:  You know.. again...the options in Iraq have narrowed so much that to give Condi Rice, for example, more of a role in reconstruction -- these options for reconstruction have dwindled very dramatically...

DR:  ... But if you give her more of a role in drawing in outside voices...

JS:  That's right. Absolutely. ... It couldn't get any worse than under Don Rumsfeld.  So I think Mr. Gates will be a better choice than that.  The question is what they say when they get together. They all like each other.  They sit down.  But then, what's next?  That's the big question.

MG:  I'm not an optimistic person about this commission. I think it's really damage limitation. It's for politics, not for policy.  It gives the great impression that Bush is listening to other voices.  The thing that worries me about this study group is that there's not one person on there who has any claim to any middle eastern experience whatsoever.  The great flaw about Iraq was that it was not put in any context of strategic policy toward the arena.  So not only have we failed in Iraq, we have failed in the entire region of the Middle East.  It's going to be very hard to put that back together again.

Garrels and Shadid on the disintegration of Iraq: "One thing to remember is that we have even less control in Iraq than we think we do."

11/03/06: NPR

NPR:  After two veteran correspondents finished their most recent tour in Iraq, they had a chance to ask this question of each other:  Did it look as grim to you as it did to me?

Anne Garrels: Oh, it's just awful!  I've been there pretty regularly.  I go in for two months, then I come out for a month or two.  The inexorable slide...

NPR:  That's NPR's Anne Garrels, who's been in and out of Iraq since before the fall of Saddam Hussein.  This week, she is back in the US and we got her on the line with Anthony Shadid.  He's a Pulitizer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post and also just returned from Iraq.  Because they've gone again and again, their most recent trips gave them a chance to see how the country has changed. 

Anthony Shadid:  You know, I was really struck almost immediately after arriving there.  I've always thought that resilience was a quality that Baghdad had.  Anne will probably remember this:  during the invasion, after some of the worst nights of bombing, the next morning traffic would be in the streets, shops would be open.  It struck me almost immediately after leaving the airport how different the city itself looked.  There was less traffic; shops were closed; there weren't that many people in the street.  It's almost as though the face of Baghdad had undergone quite a change since I was there last time.

NPR:  Anne Garrels, I seem to recall that you told me once that every time you go back to Baghdad things seem a little big worse than the time before.  Is that still true?

Garrels:  Absolutely. And it's not just a little bit worse.  It's a lot worse.  Everyone I know has had a close relative and probably several close friends killed.  When you talk about economic activity, I was going around trying to find bankers.  Well, 25% at least of the leading bankers in the country have had to flee.  That has a huge impact on economic development.  You've got almost a million Iraqis, if not more probably now, in Jordan, and tens of thousands more in Syria.  These are the educated, the middle class, the people who could build Iraq -- and they're all leaving.

NPR:  When you do find a banker, what do they consider an acceptable business risk?  What do they want to loan money on these days?

Garrels:  They're actually not loaning a lot of money.  They're dealing more in securities, foreign bank stocks, that sort of thing.  At the moment, there's no loan insurance.  A lot of banks have gone belly-up. 

NPR:  I want to ask both of you about an incident that's taken place this week.  Iraq's government orders the US military to abandon its checkpoints inside Baghdad.  And, in fact, they did!  What does that signify to you?

Shadid:  On the surface of things, it speaks about the power of Muqtada al-Sadr, the young sheik-cleric, and the role he plays in some ways as a kingmaker these days in Iraqi politics.  But at another level it's this question of legitimacy and how does a government secure legitimacy when the Americans are seen by many Iraqis as a final arbiter.  In other words, how is the government ever going to look independent.  I think that's the struggle going on right now.  It's this government trying to secure some sort of legitimacy or credibility in the eyes of Iraqis. 

NPR:  It the Iraqi government still fighting the same war as the US?

Garrels:  Not at all!  The Iraqis, I think, are fighting quite frankly for their own...  The people in the government, for the most part,  it's quite venal.  They're fighting for power; they're fighting for money.  It's highly corrupt.  There is no sense of national unity. For all this talk of national unity, people are not working together for the betterment of the greater whole.  Far from it.  The ministries have enough money at this point.  Money is not the issue.  It's not filtering down to the people.  The American commanders have been tearing their hair out because they'd go in and clear an area and the ministers -- and ministries -- would not appear on the ground.  They did nothing to improve the infrastructure. 

Shadid: I was in Basra, down in southern Iraq, when I was there last time.  Just like Anne was saying, there is nominally a government in place in Basra but basically what you have on the ground is a free-for-all between competing militias vying for power, money and influence at this point.  The way they deal with each other is through assassinations and killings.  One morning we woke up...  The killing in Basra is not like the killing in Baghdad... You wake up one morning and twenty people have already been killed and most of those are assassinations. 

NPR:  Have you had an opportunity to ask an Iraqi leader a question along the lines of "what is the matter with you -- your country's falling apart and you're arguing over who's controlling some bit of turf?"

Garrels:  Absolutely!  But Iraqis tend to blame everybody but themselves.  This is an age-old problems.  They did it under Saddam; they blamed their Arab neighbors for their problems.  And now you ask them, "why aren't things working better," and they'll blame the Jordanians, they'll blame the Syrians, they'll blame the Iranians -- depending on who you're asking -- and then they'll blame the US!  They refuse to admit that Iraqis are behind most of the violence.

Shadid:  You know, it's so grim at this point. I have to say, a friend of mine I'd gone to see -- he's a professor at Baghdad University -- and I asked him a question.  I said, would it get worse if the American military withdrew?  And he looked at me for a couple of seconds, knitted his brow, and he said, "How could it get any worse...?"

NPR:  Let me pose the question the gentleman asked you:  can it get worse?

Shadid:  Oh, I'm sure it could get worse. 

Garrels:  It's really, really awful, but it could get worse.  Many Iraqis, be they Sunni or Shi'a, will say they hate the US but they don't want them to leave because the US at least keep some kind of a lid on it at this point.

NPR:  That incident I mentioned -- Americans being removed from the checkpoints -- reminded me of a conversation with an American who had just come back from Iraq not too long ago.  He said, "One thing to remember is that we have even less control in Iraq than we think we do."

Shadid:... there's no question...

Garrels: ...we're seeing that now, three years in.  From day one, there were never enough troops, there was very little understanding of Iraqi society, and we're seeing the legacy of cumulative mistakes. 

Shadid: That's such a great point. What it feels like to me now that these forces unleashed when the invasion happened -- the forces that were taking shape in the months after the fall of Saddam -- the sectarian divide, the role of religion, the influences of militias -- all of these forces have finally come together and intersected in this chaos, this anarchy we see in the country today.

NPR:  Either of you going back soon?

Shadid:  I don't have any plans right away.  I would like to get back.  I'm sure Anne feels the same way.  You spend so much time there and you meet people you want to stay in contact with.  But I think it's more and more frustrating on some level, as a journalist, trying to do the work you want to do.  I'm not sure how to do that work...

Garrels:  I'll go back in January.  It is frustrating but it's still possible.  I keep wondering when am I going to wake up and realize that it's simply no longer doable, it's simply impossible.  I anticipate one morning that I will wake up and say, okay, we've gotta get out of here now!

Last year, Anne Garrels gave a terrific report on life inside the Green Zone.  Recommended.