Posted 2005-11-27
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 27, 2005
THIS WEEK IN
THE NEW YORKER
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Seymour M. Hersh on the Future of the War in Iraq
In “Up in the Air” (p. 42), in the December 5, 2005, issue of The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh reveals the growing dispute within the armed forces over the use of airpower in Iraq. Hersh talks to current and former military and intelligence officials with knowledge of several withdrawal scenarios currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon, who disclose to him that “a key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower.” Hersh adds, “The ongoing American air war inside Iraq is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency.”
Hersh reports that military authorities do not regularly provide information regarding bombings, the frequency of which has increased in recent months, and there have been no significant discussions of the air campaign in Congress. He writes, “Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease.... Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis will eventually be responsible for target selection.” A senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon says, “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame it on someone else?... Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?” The military planner adds that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, the bulk of the bombing is adaptive, that “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets—it’s a reversion to the Stone Age.” Hersh reports that despite reservations by senior military officials, substituting air for ground power remains a key element in any drawdown scenario. “We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tells Hersh. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting.... The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.... The President is prepared to tough this one out.”
Hersh speaks with several senior officials who confirm that President Bush “remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq.” One senior official, who served in President Bush’s first term, tells Hersh that, after September 11th, he was told that the President felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror, and a former defense official says that the President has grown detached, leaving more to Karl Rove and Vice-President Dick Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” he says. Bush’s public appearances, Hersh notes, are always scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades earlier, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to the same public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official says, “but Bush has no idea.”
Also this week in the magazine:
n “Darwin in the Dock” (p. 66), Margaret Talbot reports on the first lawsuit to ask whether it is constitutional to mention intelligent design as a challenge to Darwinian evolution theory in public-school science classes, and one of the first to explore, in depth, the science of evolution. Judge John E. Jones III will likely render his verdict in the case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, by the first week in January, Talbot reports, noting that if Jones sides with the school district the students will be read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on the validity of Darwinian theory and touting intelligent design as an alternative. If Jones sides with the plaintiffs, she explains, he will establish the precedent that including intelligent design in a public-school curriculum represents a tacit endorsement of Christianity—thus violating the First Amendment. Citing numerous court cases that have consistently defended the teaching of evolution, Talbot reports that several recent cases have confirmed that school districts which prevent public-school teachers from teaching creationism, or that mandate the teaching of evolution, do not violate free-speech rights. “Considering these precedents, the Dover Area School District is not likely to emerge victorious,” Talbot writes. “The plaintiffs made a very strong case that the primary motive behind the school board’s embrace of intelligent design was religious.” Edward Larson, who teaches law and history at the University of Georgia, tells Talbot that he would not be surprised if Judge Jones rules that the Dover Area school board had also “entangled itself in a sectarian religious controversy.” He explains, “There is a large element among many religious believers who accept evolution or integrate it into their faith. So this is a religious dispute in which the state is intervening, potentially lending its authority to one side.... If you look at Dover, you see a town where the churches were divided, Christians were divided, families were divided over this.”
Talbot, who attended the trial and talks with leading experts and local participants in the matter, writes, “If Judge Jones does rule against the school board, he may simply say that its actions did not have a sufficiently secular purpose—that whether intelligent design is science or not, the board’s motive for putting it into the curriculum was religious, not pedagogical. But he could also make a more ambitious ruling—one that explicitly counters the claim that intelligent design is science.” She notes that Judge Jones, who admitted a great deal of expert testimony and, in his rulings, showed a preference for more rather than less scientific information, “suggests that he may similarly assess the credibility of intelligent design’s arguments. If not, he may at least incorporate into his opinion the fact that virtually every mainstream scientific group mentioned during the trial...describes intelligent design as unscientific.” The new school board, comprised of eight candidates who are opposed to the introduction of intelligent design into the science curriculum, has said that it would abide by Judge Jones’s decision. Therefore, his ruling may be the final word on the case. But, Talbot concludes, if intelligent design is defeated in the Dover case, its backers will undoubtedly find subtler ways of promoting it elsewhere.
Plus: Hendrik Hertzberg, in Comment, on the reaction to statments made by Congressman John P. Murtha regarding American troop withdrawal from Iraq (p. 35); Alec Wilkinson on the master typeface designer Matthew Carter (p. 56); Peter Schjeldahl on new works by the German artist Gerhard Richter (p. 104); David Denby on “Syriana” (p. 109); Shouts & Murmurs by Bruce McCall (p. 55); and fiction by Alice Munro (p. 80).
The December 5, 2005, issue of The New Yorker goes on sale at newsstands beginning Monday, November 28th.
