A hopeful end to optimism/Sunni sheik who backed U.S. in Iraq is killed

A hopeful end to optimism
By Christopher Caldwell
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: September 14 2007 19:18 | Last updated: September 14 2007 19:18


For six months, Americans assumed the testimony of General David Petraeus about the effectiveness of the US troop “surge” in Iraq would be a cathartic moment – either showing that new tactics for policing an insurgency were possible, or setting the stage for a painful retreat. It surprised most Americans this week when neither happened. It appears now that there will be no bold change of direction in Iraq. Barring the unforeseen, Iraq policy will continue as it has been going, with piecemeal successes here and there.

There is, however, a shift in American political sentiment and Iraq may be at the root of it. For almost a century – roughly since Franklin Delano Roosevelt called New York governor Al Smith “the happy warrior” when nominating him for the presidency at the 1924 Democratic convention – optimism has been the semi-official mood of presidential candidates. This has been as true in bad times as in good. Even in April 1968, weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination and at the very trough of the Vietnam war, Hubert Humphrey, the vice-president, announced his candidacy by saying: “Here we are ... the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose, the politics of joy.”

The people shooting for the highest office this time, whether they approve of the war in Iraq or not, are speaking in tones of gloom unprecedented in a presidential campaign. “The course we’re on,” said Illinois senator Barack Obama, an Iraq sceptic, on the Today show this week, “is unsustainable.” At his first campaign appearance in Iowa, the Republican Fred Thompson, a surge supporter, said: “If we show weakness and division, we will pay a heavy price for it in the future.”

That the sunniest candidate always wins is a dogma that has united campaign consultants of both parties: the two most successful presidents of the last century – FDR and Reagan – are also remembered as the most optimistic. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” said Roosevelt in 1933. “America’s best days, and democracy’s best days, lie ahead,” said Reagan in 1984. From Reagan’s time until a few months ago, the use of forward-looking rhetoric has been formulaic. Bill Clinton, with his “bridge to the 21st century”, excelled at it. In 2004, the journalist Michael Kinsley noted with amazement that the Bush campaign was running an anti-Kerry advert entitled “Pessimism” and John Kerry was countering it with one about his campaign called “Optimists”.

This year, the only candidate who has sought consistently to accentuate the positive is Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts. At a June debate in New Hampshire, Mr Romney said (drifting out of a discussion on abortion): “America is a land of opportunity. And our future is going to be far brighter than our past.” Then (drifting out of a discussion on immigration): “We are the party of the future, and we have to stop worrying about the problems and thinking we can’t deal with those. We have to focus on the future and our opportunity to make America a great place for our kids and grandkids.”

Once optimism becomes the dominant mood of oratory and policymaking, it is hard to shake. In a democratic society, optimism tends to be unfalsifiable. Who, after all, would doubt capabilities that the president has vouched for? No one but a bunch of naysayers. Pessimists are derided as people who underestimate either (depending on which president is trying to bully them) the ingenuity of the American businessman, the generosity of the American taxpayer or the valour of the American military. Pessimism carries with it a whiff of deficient patriotism.

In the case of Roosevelt and Reagan, optimism is the quality that their supporters focused on after the fact to recast a divisive partisan hero as a unifying national one. Their former opponents collude in this. Anti-Roosevelt Republicans prefer to think that Roosevelt’s great achievement in the face of the Depression was his happy talk, not his policies. (This was the view of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said FDR had a “second-class intellect but a first-class temperament”.) Anti-Reagan Democrats prefer to believe that Reagan won because he bamboozled people with pie-in-the-sky promises, not because their own party had run out of ideas.

While voters have always seemed to like optimism, what they really like is something else. What they like is good judgment. Good judgment is looking at a situation where opportunities and risks exist and avoiding the risks. Bad judgment is looking at the same situation and ignoring the risks. Optimism can be the outward manifestation of either, but this is less obvious when opportunities are many and risks are few.

Optimism was bound to be revealed eventually as a faulty index of presidential mettle. But the Iraq war accelerated the process. Whatever one may think of the war, it is, of all policy initiatives in recent decades, the one that most bears the mark of presidential optimism. One could even say cock-eyed optimism, given the low amount of planning and manpower that were deemed necessary for its success.

In his 1991 masterwork The True and Only Heaven, the late historian Christopher Lasch drew a contrast between optimism and what he called hope. “Progressive optimism rests,” Lasch wrote, “on a denial of the natural limits on human power and freedom, and it cannot survive for very long in a world in which an awareness of those limits has become inescapable. The disposition properly described as hope, trust, or wonder, on the other hand ... asserts the goodness of life in the face of its limits. It cannot be defeated by adversity. In the troubled times to come, we will need it even more than we needed it in the past.”

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

Sunni sheik who backed U.S. in Iraq is killed
By Alissa J. Rubin
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: September 13, 2007


BAGHDAD: A high-profile Sunni Arab sheik who collaborated with the American military in the fight against jihadist militants in western Iraq was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday near his desert compound. The attack appeared to be a precisely planned assassination meant to undermine one of the Bush administration's trumpeted achievements in the war.

Two guards were also killed in the attack on the sheik, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, who just last week shook hands with President George W. Bush during the president's surprise visit to Anbar to extol the Sunni cooperation that has made the province, once Iraq's most dangerous, relatively safe.

Iraqi and American officials were caught off guard by the assassination, which came just hours before Bush addressed the American people about his plans for Iraq. But they said it would not derail the collaboration of the alliance of Sunni clans, known as the Anbar Awakening Council, and groups in other provinces.

In his speech, Bush acknowledged the killing. "Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheiks who helped lead the revolt against Al Qaeda was murdered," he said. "In response, a fellow Sunni leader declared: 'We are determined to strike back and continue our work.' And as they do, they can count on the continued support of the United States."

Sheik Sattar, 35, who was also known as Abu Risha, had become the public face of the Sunni Arab tribes in lawless Anbar Province that turned against the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and began to fight on the side of the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the American military. His council was formed one day short of a year ago.

Local papers often featured photographs of the robed sheik talking with the American commander, General David Petraeus, with other American generals and with the Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But Sheik Sattar was not unequivocally supportive; he often complained about the government's failure to give his men the arms and support they needed.

He had credibility with the tribes because he and his family had suffered so much at the hands of jihadist extremists. In an interview earlier this year, he said that his father had been killed in an attack by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in 2004 and that two of his brothers had been abducted and never heard from again; a third was shot dead. He had survived three car bombs outside the Anbar home he shared with his wife and five children.

On Thursday, the American military said a bomb destroyed the vehicle he was in, but it was unclear whether it was a roadside bomb or a suicide bomber.

No group had claimed the assassination by late Thursday, but security officials in Iraq appeared convinced that responsibility lay with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the home-grown extremist group that associated itself with Osama bin Laden's wider group and is believed to be foreign-led.

But many groups in Iraq carry out assassinations, and Sheik Sattar may have had other enemies. Some other tribal leaders felt he drew more of the spotlight than was his due. More recently, there were tensions between him and Sunni Arabs in Parliament, who worried that his alliance's growing influence might encroach on their power.

Several Iraqis said they doubted the assassination would have a lasting impact in Anbar, where the tribes have now fought the jihadists for a year, but that it would send tremors through those elsewhere just starting to collaborate. The sheik is at least the sixth tribal leader to be killed since May. "The terrorist group set out this day to assassinate Abu Risha because they are targeting the security and stability in Anbar and in every part of the country," said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior political adviser to Maliki.

"The timing was critical; the assassination came at this moment because of the report of Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker," he said, referring to Ryan Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq. He added that the killing appeared intended to undermine the Bush administration's effort to claim success in fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

When the Anbar tribes first began cooperating, they told the Americans where the extremists were hiding weapons caches, burying bombs, and running safehouses. Then they set up checkpoints and began engaging in gunfights with Qaeda cells in the Ramadi area.

With attacks decreasing against both Americans and Iraqis in Anbar, and large numbers of tribesmen lining up to join local security forces, the American military has begun to try to replicate its success.

Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, the brother of the assassinated sheik, described the killers as "criminals" and, speaking in a low, resigned voice in a telephone interview, said they were "trying to send a message to everybody that whoever tries to help the humanity and to bring life again to Iraqis and also to improve the image of Islam will get killed."

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Many Iraqis expressed shock and grief when they learned of Sheik Sattar's death, and television channels had nonstop coverage when the news first broke.

While other tribal leaders had more experience and more influence, it was the media-savvy, charismatic Sheik Sattar who rallied popular support for the opposition to the jihadists. Most recently, he had sent his men into western neighborhoods of Baghdad that had been taken over by extremists.

"These Qaeda fighters started even to force some families to marry their young daughters to the fighters, otherwise they would kill the entire family," said Manal Imad, 27, a university student who lives in the far western Baghdad neighborhood of Amariya. "When Abu Risha sent his men to our neighborhood, everyone here welcomed them."

The extremists had required that women going outside their houses wear long robes and completely cover their hair, Imad said. Several months ago, she said, not wearing a head scarf "could be fatal to me and to my entire family."

"Now the neighborhood is very stable and most of the shops are open again. And even girls feel safer wearing what they used to wear during the normal day."

Especially sad were drivers who made their living bringing people and goods on the roads to Syria and Jordan that ran through Anbar. They said they owed their livelihoods to Sheik Sattar, because his men had forced jihadists off the roads.

"This change has really helped our business, because in 2006 we lost most of our customers because the families started to feel unsafe driving that road and mainly the Shia were getting stopped on that road and either kidnapped or sometimes killed immediately," said Haider Mohammed Ali, 35, who runs a travel company.

Sheik Sattar's brother said he would accept the job as leader of the Anbar Awakening Council if it was offered, and Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni Arab leader from the largest tribe in Anbar, said the sheiks had already agreed that the brother would be the successor.

"The martyrdom of Sattar will not affect this council because every member of this council has the same beliefs and the same motivations and this sad incident will not stop them from moving forward," said Sheik Risha. "Although they killed Sattar, there are a million Sattars in Anbar."