John Moyibi Amoda
18 November 2008
column
Perhaps recognizing that the meeting had been both directly critical of Khalilzad and Casey, Cheney offered praise for the hard work that both the men were doing: "I support you guys 100 percent" Bush, chimed in, taking the cue.
"But we need to ask tough questions. I hope that Ambassador Khalilzad and General Casey understand that so that we can be confident, I have to tell you folks what's on my mind. If you can't answer the question, that makes me nervous.
These are difficult times; we need to ask some difficult questions" ...some of the hard questions remained unanswered. Bush later told me that he was intentionally sending a message to Rumsfeld and Casey: "If it's not working, let's do something different...I presume they took it as a message" (The War Within, p99).
There are events which define the character of power elites and mark them out as publicly confident of their policy choices. These events say about these elites - "We are who we are and the logic of our approach to power and its defence we are prepared to have publicly scrutinized so that we ourselves can see whether our approach to power and pre-eminence are rational and disciplined.
If it takes having to explain ourselves to an objective critic, who we know will deal with our opponents with the same scale with which he weighs our decisions; we will make ourselves available to his search light no matter how our opponents exploit the result of his scrutiny.
We are able to take this position, for we know that this critic will always deal with public affairs no matter the crises involved with the same detached but passionate objectivity.
We know this critic is not any one's payroll or an ego trip. He is the cost of our commitment to democratic access to information no matter how inconvenient such commitment may occasionally become".
Bob Woodward is such a critic of American Superpower and the elites that administer its policies. He is an associate editor at the Washington Post where he has worked for 37 years. We quote from the jacket on his latest book - The War Within - A Secret White House History 2006 - 2008 published by Simon and Schuster.
He has the following credit to his name: He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first for the Post's coverage of the Watergate Scandal, and later for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He has authored or co-authored eleven #1 national non-fiction bestsellers, including three on the current administration - Bush at War (2002) Plan of Attack (2004) and State of Denial (2006)". He wishes it to be known he has two daughters, with his wife, who is also a writer.
Bob Woodward is an inconvenient friend of the Establishment who is given uncommon access to the top echelons of American Decision Makers in order that a non-sycophantic audit of the mechanism and results of decision making on issues bearing on the global standing of America can be objectively described while the policies are still being implemented.
An elite that will allow such objective external observer scrutiny of its conducts without any mystification or deification of its First Eleven cannot be undermined by enemy intelligence in its decision making. Bob Woodward is therefore the definition of Americans' confidence as super powers. This article is not a book review but a salute to a quality of freedom of the press which Africa and the world can well imitate.
Why? America has many Bob Woodwards working within and can well say "we do not need an outsider to audit our actions".
But precisely because America can boast about its talent pools and the institutions that produce them, we still see this humility where there should be hubris; for the Bob Woodwards are not suffered, they are a part of a network that includes the Larry Kings.
This is why we can learn about the world and America's place in the world from the writings and interviews of American Press.
Washington is brought to the Bookshop level when those in Washington allow the publication of The War Within in an election year of unprecedented contest for the post of President, where the content of such a book may feature prominently in the election.
I call attention to Bob Woodward at such a time as this because through him we have a front-line view of America's grappling with the issues of regime change politics. In both Iraq and Afghanistan Africa has much to learn about Regime Change Analysis, policy making and institution building.
Every facet of regime change is in prominent and on public display in Iraq because Bob Woodward is allowed to chronicle the course of decision making journalistically. And there are many things that we can learn about regime change wars, insurgency, counter insurgency, state making, formation of governments, and establishment of security forces, nation building and economic development as features of regime change wars and peace enforcement from what President Bush allowed Bob Woodward to know.
In this particular piece I am only focusing on discussion on the establishment of Iraq Police in the context of the post invasion reconstruction state making and the formation and legitimation of governments in Iraq.
This discussion is of relevance to my current comments on the Nigerian Police as an instance of regime change security sector reform.
I have endeavoured to show in the piece on the parameters of reform of the police or the Army for that matter, that such reform cannot be undertaken institution by institution. This is so, because institutions of government are "members" of the Body of Government whose head in the State Power Party.
We have shown that government can only be instituted where the contestants for power have secured control and can therefore hold such where (territories) and build an order of rule there by the laws of the holders of such grounds through the institutions of government.
When we focus on the functional requirement for the effectiveness of government on secured control of a place we call attention to the process for establishing proprietary holding of the place. Without such proprietary hold there is no security of control, for a secured control can be temporary, when the place has not been cleared of all enemy action.
When we read Woodward we see review of the strategy of "clear, hold, and build". Creating governments and institution of security are aspects of building. Where clearing has yet to be done, holding of any place is still a goal, and a project - it is a task premised upon the clearing phase of state making. Buildings can always be destroyed, when the place built up can no longer be held because such has become contested territory.
This is the case in some places in the Niger Delta Region presently and why building is problematic there and why what was hitherto built there are threatened.
These parts of the Niger Delta are beingn changed from a region governed by law into a region where "holding of the place" is contested. Since holding is consequent to clearing the built structures of government are under threat, for the place is now a contested ground.
Because of this, the Police is structurally constrained, since clearing must preceed holding just as holding precedes building of government, of economies, of legitimacy and societal safety.
Clearing is thus a feature of the phase of pacification after the peoples and territories have been militarily defeated.
Whatever therefore the JTF may say about their mission in the Niger Delta, this much can be said of their presence in the Niger Delta; it is a pacification presence in the most optimistic description of Nigeria's state making prospects in the Niger Delta Region.
If one must clear and hold before having a secured place to build up into an ordered society, can the police function adequately in that place?
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