Lounsbury: On the Bierut model

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August 24, 2003

On the Bierut model

Although I am not in full agreement Baer's comments in

Where Do They Go From Here?
We Pulled Out of Beirut. We Can't Abandon Iraq

By Robert Baer
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30829-2003Aug22.html

are of no small interest.

Baer, as some may note, recently wrote a book on the Saudis. I rather did not find his overall thesis convincing, however the fellow is on firm ground in looking at these issues as ex-CIA and a regional specialist of sorts. The comments are to a "Beirut template" - and notes the worrying similarities between the fractured Lebanese situation and Iraq.

[edited to add link 10:47]
Also see this discussion with Baer online http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27439-2003Aug21.html
I rather agree with most of his comments. Highly advise reading this.

[edited to add excerpts 10:10]

If I may add the following illustrative excerpts:
"The truck was packed with enough explosives (more than a thousand pounds of military munitions) to blast through a 12-foot wall. Although the FBI says the bomb itself wasn't particularly sophisticated, I know from experience how difficult it is to string explosives together and make all or most of them detonate at the same time. And remember: This was the second successful bombing in just 13 days. Combine this well-coordinated attack with the Aug. 7 car bombing of the Jordanian embassy, which killed 17, and it is starting to look as if we are up against a lot more than the "remnants" of Saddam Hussein's regime.

One bomb is an outrage. Two bombs are a campaign. Anybody who was dealing with the Middle East in the early '80s can tell you exactly when things began to change: April 18, 1983, the day a suicide bomber drove a beat-up GMC pickup truck through the front door of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and detonated it. The blast killed 63, including 17 Americans.

I was working for the CIA in the Middle East at the time. As best we were able to figure out, the target of the attack was Ambassador Philip Habib, the president's special representative to the Middle East. Habib, who was trying to help negotiate a truce between Lebanon and Israel, was not in the embassy when the bomb went off. But the bombing had a larger goal than killing Habib: As we later realized, it was the opening shot in a well-coordinated and well-financed effort that eventually drove the United States out of Lebanon. After the second suicide bombing at the barracks, President Ronald Reagan ordered the Marines "re-deployed" off shore.

....

Those of us who lived through the Lebanon horror can't help wondering whether Beirut 1983 is a template for what's happening in Iraq. While Iraq isn't Lebanon, there are enough similarities that we should be worried. Starting with the obvious, unaccounted for weapons and explosives abound in Iraq, as they did in Lebanon. Secondly, neither Lebanon then nor Baghdad now has a functioning government. At the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, that country's government collapsed. By 1983, there was no army or police to protect our embassy, let alone an effective internal intelligence service to warn us of possible attacks.

Iraq today is probably worse off than Lebanon was in 1983. There is not even the skeleton of an army or a police force. Members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council now claim they warned us of a bombing, possibly aimed at the United Nations. But don't forget the council includes some of the same people who were telling us that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, deployed and ready for his orders. The only intelligence in Iraq that we can count on is our own.

Both Iraq and Lebanon are fractured societies, deeply divided by ethnic and religious differences. Foreigners have tended to get caught up in these conflicts, inevitably paying a price in blood. In 1983, Lebanon's Christian Maronites, who once ruled Lebanon, were fighting for their survival, while Lebanese Muslims were fighting to take their place. Because the Muslims thought the United States was propping up the Maronites, we became the Muslims' target."

Those of you who have followed my commentary will I hope have some clicks.

I note that Baer also discounts the Chalabi "intelligence" - but worse I note his oblique raising of the issue of 'side taking' and enemies. In Lebanon it was the Maronite (E. Catholics) community, in Iraq it may be the Kurds and the Shiites. Or just the Kurds. In both cases ignorance of the interplay in fractured societies, worse in Iraq for its added tribal divisions that are more profound than Lebanon and you get a nasty little brew.

Unfortunately, people like myself warned of this witches brew before the war, my "Pandora's Box" but the war crowd in their full blooming idiocy paid no attention. Now I see from the SDMB that the "fly paper" theory has been invented to justify the emerging mess.

August 24, 2003

On the Bierut model

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