Price of flawed policies

In a May 13, 2007, Washington Post opinion piece titled What We Got Right in Iraq, the modest American Proconsul (May 2003-June 2004), L. Paul Bremer compared Washington's goal to de-Baathify Mesopotamia to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's de-Nazification of Germany at the end of the Second World War. According to Allen Quicke, Bremer allegedly declared: "Every Sunni is a Baathist, every Baathist is a Saddamist and every Saddamist is a Nazi."

Referring to Iraq's Sunni tribes, Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defence whose flawed strategic calculations are now so evident, declared to Vanity Fair in 2009 that he did not recall whether he had written to a colleague, "They are Nazis!", though he admitted that he often referred to "ideological Baathists as Nazis". In the same vein, the White House asserted in 2004 that the United States did not "talk to terrorists and we don't talk to anyone who does" (page 59), confirming a long-standing public policy.

One is reminded of such erroneous qualifications when reading Talking to Terrorists, a smoothly-written journalistic policy book by Mark Perry, who tries to figure out why officials seldom admit in public what they practise, sometimes with vengeance, in private. Perry is anxious to provide various examples, from Iraq and Palestine and Lebanon, to help Western audiences get a grip on what the real costs of convoluted policies might be.

While the first half of his book is devoted to Iraq and how American military officers met and negotiated with Sunni-led Iraqi insurgents, the blow-by-blow account of fighting in Al Anbar province throughout 2005 tells an incredibly confusing story but is valuable discussion. One gets a sense that the killing of American soldiers and Iraqis diminished and eventually stopped after so called "terrorists" and US Marine officers learnt to tell the difference between a terrorist, a Nazi or a "Saddamist" and ordinary people caught in the whirlwind of violence while trying to protect their families.

Questioning decrees

The discussion is astounding, even comical, yet so critical that Perry and his readers begin to think about who the "enemy" might actually be. Perry would like to impress upon naïve citizens not to simply assume that carefully doled out profiles, identified by officialdom and unquestionably vetted by docile — even embedded — reporters, may not be what they seem.

He questions such decrees issued by wily politicians and cites how "Wolfowitz was also taking cues from Ahmad Chalabi's ideas about de-Baathification" (page 11). "Chalabi," he writes, "had provided Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy, with a paper on German de-Nazification" and claimed that American occupation of Germany was successful because of de-Nazification. In fact, the author quotes an American army colonel who reviewed the study and who confirmed that "no one checked to see if it was true", as "Feith and his crew just took it on faith" (page 11). This is truly good stuff indeed and the book is filled with such reassessments that will enlighten future generations on official ia [in lower case, ignorance and arrogance].

In the second part of the book, the narrative switches to Perry's adventures in Palestine and Lebanon as he discovers "political Islam" and talks with a few "terrorists". This is not all that serious but conversations with Usamah Hamdan (Hamas) and Nawwaf Mousawi (Hezbollah), whom he identifies as advisers to "terrorist organisations", enlighten the author. It must be acknowledged that much of the material assembled here was first published online at the Asia Times page in 2006. Still, Perry's goal is to figure out how not to lose the "war on terror", perhaps by doing the right thing, which may well require, he concludes, changing policies.

This is, of course, easier said than done, especially when the US flexes its military muscle around the entire Muslim world.

Nevertheless, even if most of this discussion is elementary and not necessarily original, there are light moments that are instructive and highly entertaining.

For example, we learn that Mousawi, the head of Hezbollah's department of external relations, apparently "loves cigars and is always pleased to offer one of his best to those Americans who share this taste". Perry recounts how Mousawi delights in telling his guests: "It is from Cuba … smiling. You are not able to get them in America" (page 147). Though such fare is widely available, it is Mousawi's mischievousness that is interesting, as we read about classic cat-and-mouse games.

Perry is the latest policy wonk to discover that the largely meaningless mantra, "We don't talk to terrorists," is untrue. On the contrary, Washington and others have almost always maintained open channels of communication, even if more recent military preferences tend to rely on killing first and talking later.

Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons (2008).

Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its EnemiesBy Mark Perry, Basic Books, 253 page, $26.95