May 5 Notes

U.S. and the Middle East

Beyond 2002

May 5, 2008

I. Road to 9/11

1. 2000 (Clinton foreign and domestic struggles; administration divisions; election)

2. Early Bush (Powell/Rice/Rumsfeld; role of Tenet & Mineta; bureaucratic divisions; Cheney?)

3. After 9/11 (9/11 and Saddam; U.S. and Northern Alliance; revising Musharraf relationship; Karzai solution)

II. Path to War

1. Domestic Response to 9/11 (Guantánamo and constitutional theories; failure to capture bin Laden; Patriot Act and civil liberties; Yoo and unitary executive theory; Lieberman and Homeland Security Department; Rove and political issues—Chambliss/Cleland race)

2. Run-up (sanctions and international diplomacy; Clinton and Iraq Liberation Act; significant obstacles: Shinseki; Turks and Kurdistan; French/German hostility; role of Eastern Europe; Iranian question; Blix and lack of WMD)

3. Rationale (schisms between Old Bush and New Bush; rationales: Tenet, Powell, and WMDs; neocons and democracy; Rumsfeld as test case; Cheney and Chalabi, Office of Special Plans and undoing excesses of 1970s; Rice)

4. National Response (New York Times and flawed coverage; role of Pincus and Hersh; divisions among Democrats; significance of Powell)

III. War & Consequences

1. Conflict (“Coalition of the Willing”: significance of Turkish refusal, role of Eastern Europe; Iranian question; from WMD’s and Republican Guard to fedayeen—Franks’ difficulty in adjusting; embedding press and U.S. public opinion)

2. Aftermath of War (looting; lessons of Balkans vs. Bush hostility to Clinton policies & Rumsfeld drawn-down approach; Wolfowitz and lack of contingency planning; Tommy Franks; difficulties of fedayeen; did a chance of success exist?)

3. Difficulties of Nation-Building (Garner, Franks, and start of insurgency; Garner/Bremer dispute and De-Baathification; Bremer qualifications; Moqtadr al-Sadr, Abu Ghraib: who’s in charge?; gap between abstraction and policy outcomes)

4. War on the Home Front (anti-European sentiment; superficial regional knowledge; Rove and domestic politics: “mission accomplished” banner; Democratic divisions—Dean vs. Kerry; Plame leak and calls for special prosecutor; administration response; response of the press; Iraq and 2004 elections; failed search for WMD’s)

5. Beyond Iraq (Iran: from Axis of Evil speech to confrontation over nuclear weapons; Saudi Arabia: limits of friendship?; Israel: U.S. and the Lebanon war; road to Annapolis; Syria: congressional engagement—Pelosi, Specter—vs. administration stand-offishness; Turkey: containing the Kurds and Islamist movement; Egypt: foreign aid and leverage; Afghanistan: limits of U.S. leverage?; fringes of region—Pakistan, Somalia; cultural diplomacy: lessons of Al-Jazeera)