It’s sixty years ago since the destruction of Dresden by British and American bombers an event that is still being debated. Chris Bertram at CT has some thoughts and links on the historical events. Here’s a personal, contemporary view from occasional guest poster Tom Oates.

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The Iraqi elections seem to have been about as successful as could have been hoped, and may represent the last real chance to prevent a full-scale civil war. The pre-election analysis suggests that the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite coalition, will get the biggest share of the votes, but probably not an absolute majority. If so, their leaders will face two immediate choices.
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The latest terrorist bombings in Iraq came closer than usual to home for Australia, with two soldiers suffering (reportedly) minor injuries in an attack on the Australian embassy[1], while 20 more innocent Iraqis were killed, adding to the tens of thousands already killed by both/all sides in this terrible war.

It’s pretty clear by now that Iraq has descended into something approaching full-scale civil war and that, as is usually the case in civil wars, the presence of foreign troops is only making things worse. But rather than arguing about this, it might be better to put it to the test. This NYT Op-ed piece by three researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests a referendum on US withdrawal to be held soon after the forthcoming elections. They make a pretty good case that it would be hard for the insurgents to justify disrupting such a referendum, or for nationalists like Sadr to justify a boycott.

I expect such a referendum would lead to a majority vote for withdrawal. But a majority the other way would certainly be an improvement on the current situation. The only really bad outcome would be the case where the Kurds voted solidly for keeping US troops, reversing a majority vote the other way among Arab Iraqis.

fn1. Despite this event, Australia has suffered far less direct loss in Iraq than many nations who were far less deeply involved in the decision to go to war.

While most attention has been (rightly) focused on the tsunami tragedy, mayhem has continued in Iraq, leading to suggestions that the elections due for Jan 30 should be postponed. It’s clear enough by now that, in this respect as in others, the Fallujah operation has been a complete strategic failure, as well as being a moral catastrophe for the US[1]. The population, forced by the threat of US terror to flee the city, has not returned, and the idea that elections can go ahead there is a nonsense. Things are little better in the rest of the Sunni triangle. As a result, the elections will be far from satisfactory.

That said, the only real hope is that the elections will be held on time, that they will produce a clear majority for the Shiite coalition endorsed by Sistani, and that the newly elected government will simultaneously reach out to the disaffected Sunnis and demand an immediate timetable for US withdrawal. It’s clear by now that the presence of US forces has done more harm than good in the long run. If Bremer had gone along with Sistani’s proposal for elections a year ago, things would be much better in every way. On the other hand, the situation is now so bad that only a gradual withdrawal can effectively be contemplated. It appears that Sistani and the groups he has backed recognise both of these facts.

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John Howard’s response to the tsunami catastrophe has been exactly what I would have (and in fact did) advocate. I’m sure there is some fine print, but a billion dollars is a big commitment. Assuming it’s all new money, it will roughly double our aid/GDP ratio. Even if some of it isn’t new, it’s a big effort.

Update As pointed out by PeterL in comments, my holiday mental arithmetic is out by a factor of ten – current aid is about $1.5 billion per year, and the package is $200m per year

Jack Strocchi sent me this piece by Anne Applebaum asking Does the Right Remember Abu Ghraib? . Since I’ve been critical of her recently, I’m pleased to endorse her comments here.

As recent comments on this blog have shown, the answer to Applebaum’s question is undoubtedly “Yes”. Commenters compared torture in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to fraternity hazing. As Applebaum observes

U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have, according to the administration’s own records and my colleagues’ reporting, used beatings, suffocation, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and dogs during interrogations. They probably still do.

The legal adviser who provided the advice supporting torture as government policy, Alberto Gonzales, will shortly become Attorney-General of the United States.

As most of the world tries to help those stricken by the tsunami disaster stave off starvation and disease, the most depressing news for me is that the Indonesian army is still fighting Acehnese rebels. If ever there was a good time for a unilateral ceasefire, this would surely be that time. I hope that the new Indonesian president will act firmly to put a halt to this, and more generally to bring the army under proper civilian control. I hope also that the rebels will realise that their energy would be better directed towards rebuilding Aceh than towards an almost certainly futile struggle for independence. Much the same could be said of Sri Lanka where the aid effort is being hampered by the long-running civil war there.

The last few weeks have been good ones for Europe, and for the EU, with the success of the democratic campaign for fresh elections in Ukraine, the court decision in Britain prohibiting indefinite detention without trial and now the decision of the EU to begin accession talks with Turkey (missed the obvious pun there). Negotiations with Iran were also a qualified success, certainly by comparison with the futile sabre-rattling coming out of Washington.

I predicted in February that the start of the EU admission process for Turkey would be the biggest geopolitical event of the year. Things dind’t go precisely to plan, but in the end it didn’t matter. Tobias Schwarz at a Fistful of Euros has more
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As the American ruler of Iraq, Paul Bremer had the amazing knack of being able to pick the worst possible decision on every occasion[1]. From the dissolution of the Iraqi army to his refusal to hold elections in 2003, when there was some chance they could have worked, he did everything wrong he possibly could. Now he’s gone, and most of his policies have been abandoned, but he’s left one last gift, which may turn out to be the most poisonous of the lot.

When Bremer set up the electoral system for the elections that are supposed to be held in January, he went for a single nationwide electorate, rather than having representatives of provinces or individual constituencies[2].

In any case, what this means is that, to the extent that fighting depresses the turnout in Sunni areas, Sunnis get less seats. Being a minority, they’re bound to lose most of the power they’ve traditionally held in any case, but under Bremer’s rules, they could be excluded almost completely. By contrast, under a constituency system, provided some sort of ballot could be held, Sunni candidates would be elected from Sunni areas.

To address this problem, Juan Cole is suggesting an emergency intervention, setting aside 25 per cent of the seats for Sunni candidates. It’s probably about the best that can be done in the circumstances, but the outlook is not that good.

Meanwhile, the onset of civil war has been announced, not by leftist opponents of the war, but by arch-hawk Charles Krauthammer who complains (haven’t we heard this before) about the unreliability of our native allies

People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shiites and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the United States.

I don’t recall Krauthammer mentioning civil war as part of the plan in 2003. But maybe this is one of those four-war things.

fn1. I don’t think this was simple stupidity. His orders were, as far as I can see, to establish a secular free-market democracy that would be a reliable ally of the US and Israel. Any halfway realistic policy would have required him to abandon these objectives, and settle for a moderately theocratic, semi-socialist and imperfectly democratic state, on the “Iran-lite” model, because that’s what a majority of Iraqis want. Instead, he followed the dream.

fn2. My guess is that his motive was to allow votes for Iraqi exiles who could be presumed to be more favorable to the occupation than the people who were actually experiencing it.

Columns in the Guardian by Jonathan Steele and John Laughland, asserting that demonstrations against the rigging of the Ukraine election were a Western-funded plot, have been the subject of a lot of criticism here and on other blogs. As far as Laughland is concerned, there’s a good rundown on his views and assocations (which could broadly be described as lunar right) from Chris Bertram and more, in the Guardian itself, from David Aaronovitch.

Now we get this column from Anne Applebaum (reprinted in the SMH with the appropriately paranoid headline The plot against Americaclaiming that Steele and Laughland are part of a leftwing plot

The larger point, though, is that the “it’s-all-an-American-plot” arguments circulating in cyberspace again demonstrate something that the writer Christopher Hitchens, himself a former Trotskyite, has been talking about for a long time: At least a part of the Western left — or rather the Western far left — is now so anti-American, or so anti-Bush, that it actually prefers authoritarian or totalitarian leaders to any government that would be friendly to the United States.

Applebaum is generally well-informed and, while she does not name either Steele or Laughland, she says “Neither author was a fringe journalist”, which implies some familiarity with their positions. In any case, she presumably reads The Guardian. Why then doesn’t she acknowledge that the views they put forward draw the (minuscule) support they have attracted from the right as well as the left ?