Many Signs of Bush's Incompetent Foreign Policy

Karl Rove has been trying to sell Americans on the idea that Bush and his fellow Republicans know what they're doing when it comes to terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq. The evidence says otherwise.

Let's go back to a story earlier this month published in several places about NATO in Afghanistan; let's go to Paul Garwood of the Associated Press where his story appears in the Boston Globe:

NATO's top military commander said Thursday that he needs more troops to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, where a widening insurgency has left hundreds dead, including 21 militants in the alliance's latest air and ground attacks.

U.S. Gen. James L. Jones acknowledged NATO had been surprised by the "level of intensity" of Taliban attacks since the alliance took over from American-led coalition forces in the south in August.

Iraq-style suicide bombings, highly organized ambushes and dogged resistance have become hallmarks of Taliban holdouts who are fueling Afghanistan's worst violence since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the hard-line regime in late 2001.

NATO officials say current troop levels are enough to combat militants in southern deserts and mountain ranges, or crossing from neighboring Pakistan. But the vast battlefield in the south provides ample cover for insurgents familiar with the terrain and the region's tribes. Additional air support and as many as 2,500 new, highly mobile reserve troops would help finish the conflict faster, the officials said.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf acknowledged Thursday that al-Qaida and Taliban militants are crossing from his country to launch attacks in Afghanistan, but he denied his government sponsored them.

Remember that things like Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallujah, torture, the support of Israel's blanket bombing of Lebanon and Bush's many unfortunate comments have damaged the credibility of the United States around the world making it harder to deal with places like Pakistan who are becoming less reliable as allies. The war in Afghanistan should have been done a long time ago with the rebuilding phase clearly underway. But Bush ran off to Iraq.

And how are things in Iraq? Nancy A. Youssef of the McClatchy Washington Bureau (formerly the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau) does not have good news:

A top-ranked U.S. military officer in Iraq said Wednesday that the United States thought that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki was running out of time to prevent Iraq from dissolving into outright civil war.

"We have to fix this militia issue. We can't have armed militias competing with Iraq's security forces. But I have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that," said Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the second-highest-ranking American military official in Baghdad.

Chiarelli's comments to a gathering of reporters were a part of a growing chorus of concerns from U.S. political and military leaders about the Iraqi government's ability and willingness to tackle corruption and militia-run death squads. They suggest that top American leaders are growing frustrated with the pace of reforms and may even be starting to argue for eventual U.S. withdrawal.

Saddam Hussein was a bad leader but if you're going to replace a bad leader with someone else, you better know what you're doing. Bush does not know what he's doing. And yet, there talk of going to war in Iran. Here's Laura Rozen of War and Piece (her post also includes comments by General Batiste):

Secretary Rodman, you'll remember, is assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs Peter Rodman, the guy below undersecretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman. And what falls under Rodman in the massive DoD org chart? As I earlier reported, the new Pentagon Iranian directorate, which is de facto overseen by Abram Shulsky, a special advisor to Edelman, and the former director of the Office of Special Plans. As I reported yesterday, according to the recently released Senate Select Intel committee Phase II report on the INC, Rodman also introduced one of the INC defectors to the DIA who later turned out to be a fabricator on quite a scale. "Source Five" as he's referred to in the Senate report (.pdf, page 92) "claimed publicly that Osama bin Laden had come to Baghdad." The spouse of the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs who introduced "Source Five" to the US government is an official at the think tank where Iraq academic Laurie Mylroie is affiliated. Now he oversees the Iranian directorate. How long until the DIA is generating reports based on sources who claim bin Laden is having tea in Tehran?

The incompetents who led us into Iraq, a war we now know we did not need, are working now on developing the same kind of cherry picked 'intelligence' for Iran.

And how is the "War on Terrorism" going? Worse, apparently, thanks to our Commander-in-Chief who's hoping a little more public relations, a few more appearances by arm-twisted foreign leaders, a few more photo ops and a little posturing at a news conference lectern will make Americans forget the most failed presidency in our nation's history and the fact that Congress led by Republicans refuses to question the president and refuses to do its homework. Here's former Defense intelligence officer AJ of Americablog (bold emphasis mine):

The recently-declassified NIE titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States", which was finalized nearly six months ago, is a devastating repudiation of virtually everything leading Executive and Defense Department leaders have told Americans about the war on terror.

As I've written before, the most important thing to look for in this kind of analysis is trends. Events are different than how things are going in general, and here's an example: the report states that U.S. efforts have damaged the leadership of al-Qa'ida and "disrupted" is operations, which is almost certainly true. There have been plenty of operations disrupted. But that's a summary of events, not a trend. More important is the follow-up that "the global jihadist movement . . . is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts." Event: we've done some good. Trend: things are getting worse, not better.

Watch Karl Rove do ads on events where we've done some good; his ads, though, will say nothing about the trends and certainly nothing about the incompetence of the President of the United States. A president who at least will admit that he has made some mistakes will usually do what he can to try and get things right. For five years, Bush has not tried very hard to get things right. It's dangerous when a president thinks he has all the answers and would do everything exactly the same way over again. When a president is floundering, it is the responsibility of Congress to make sure that the president gets it right. The Republican Congress hasn't even tried.