Our guest blogger is Maggie Fick, Special Assistant on the policy team at the ENOUGH Project.

Last week, the New York Times, Human Rights Watch, and the Enough Project provided detailed accounts of the summary executions of an estimated 150 civilians by rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP militia in the key town of Kiwanja in eastern Congo. While the rebels terrorized the population of Kiwanja in what HRW called “one of the worst killing sprees” in North Kivu province in the past two years, a contingent of over 100 U.N. peacekeepers was stationed less than a mile away. The New York Times called the Kiwanja massacre a “textbook example” of the continuing failure of MONUC (Mission of the United Nations Organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the world’s largest international peacekeeping force, to protect Congolese people.

Some have already characterized MONUC’s tragic failure in Kiwanja as a “lack of capacity” problem among UN peacekeeping missions. I agree with UN Dispatch blogger Mark Leon Goldberg, who argues that Kiwanja should not be used as a chance to rant against UN peacekeeping. However, an Enough Project report released yesterday makes the important argument that MONUC’s consistent failure to protect civilians and deter ongoing violence is due “less to inadequate force levels and more to a glaring lack of political will” in the international community.

When the Security Council renews MONUC’s mandate (pdf) this month, it must work with troop-contributing countries to make explicit that peacekeepers can and should use deadly force to defend civilians against armed groups (including the predatory Congolese army). Furthermore, the Security Council should make clear that failure to execute this mandate will not be tolerated.

On the subject of political will, it should be noted that MONUC will yet again be left out to dry unless the international community throws its full weight behind sustained diplomatic efforts to deal with the root causes of the chronic crisis in Congo: the FDLR, the illicit trade in minerals, longstanding land and citizenship issues, and the war economy that has allowed warring parties — including regional governments — to reap profits from the warfare in Congo for over a decade.

Today, Vice President Cheney continued the Bush administration’s legacy tour by appearing on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Limbaugh’s hard-hitting questions included, “What are you most proud of?” and praise such as, “Over the years when I’ve spoken to you, you have purposely avoided any partisanship, because I know that this has been a policy of the administration.

At one point, Limbaugh mocked President-elect Obama’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Cheney agreed and defended Guantanamo, saying that it has been “very well run”:

CHENEY: I think so. I think Guantanamo has been very well run. I think if you look at it from the perspective of the requirements we had, once you go out and capture a bunch of terrorists, as we did in Afghanistan and elsewhere, then you’ve got to have some place to put them. If you bring them here to the U.S. and put them in our local court system, then they are entitled to all kinds of rights that we extend only to American citizens. [...]

So Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they’ll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition.

Listen here:

One reason that Obama has a better chance of closing Guantanamo is that he won’t have Cheney over his shoulder. President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have all said that they would like to close the detention facility. However, these efforts have been repeatedly blocked by officials in Cheney’s office, who object to moving detainees into the United States.

Guantanamo is not well-run, and its presence is putting U.S. servicemembers at risk rather than saving lives. As former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora has explained, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are “the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.” (CAP’s Ken Gude has put together a plan on how to safely close Guantanamo and transfer the detainees.)

In recent months, other current and former White House officials have been out highlighting Guantanamo as a positive part of Bush’s legacy. Last week, former attorney general John Ashcroft said that detaining terror suspects has been a “humanitarian act,” and Rice disputed that the U.S. image has been “tarnished” by torture.

Transcript: Read more

Putting the best possible face on the Bush administration’s disastrous legacy in the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press in a farewell interview “that Iran has chosen to scale back much of its most troubling interference in Iraq, and she credits the strength of U.S. pressure.”

“I don’t think it’s goodwill…They’re in a much more difficult situation in terms of Iraq,” Rice said. “[Iran] did everything they could to stop the strategic forces arrangement – they couldn’t do it.”

As I wrote last week, the idea that the SOFA represents a major defeat for Tehran is the pro-war right’s latest talking point. Leaving aside that the Bush administration’s new story about the relationship between Iraq and Iran has about as much basis in fact as their old story about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it says a lot about the administration’s significant readjustment of goals and expectations in Iraq that Rice is now trying to present Iran’s failure to exercise a veto in Iraq’s parliament as a success for the United States.

But, apparently, nobody sent Rice’s memo to Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, who told the LA Times why he thought that “Iran had taken a more ‘positive stance’ in recent months.”

Dabbagh said a new security agreement between Baghdad and Washington has helped ease Iranian fears about American intentions.

“The Iranians have noticed finally that the American… presence in Iraq is not going to be a threat to them and that helps reduce the temperature,” he said.

This tracks with what CNN’s Michael Ware said in our interview last month, that “during these negotiations between Baghdad and Washington, Tehran — whether we like it or not — was in the room.”

Tehran, in some ways, in some fashion, is a party to this agreement. And you’ll see that some of the sticking points and some of the nuances within the negotiations were issues that were very close to the heart of Tehran….Iran is in a position where it didn’t get everything that it wanted, but then neither did Washington — and indeed neither did Baghdad — but Iran still will feel that it has something of a comfort zone as a result of this.

Early this morning, during a press conference in Kabul with Afghan President Karzai, President Bush attempted to paper over his previous declarations of victory over the now-resurgent Taliban. Bush claimed emphatically, “I never said the Taliban was eliminated.” Watch it:

In fact, Bush used the word “eliminated” to describe the state of the Taliban on several occasions:

September 2002: “The Taliban’s ability to brutalize the Afghan people and to harbor and support terrorists has been virtually eliminated.”

April 2002: “With the Taliban eliminated and al-Qaida badly damaged, we have moved into the second stage of our war on terror.”

At other times, Bush prematurely declared victory using similar language:

September 2004: “And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence. And the people of Afghanistan are now free.”

December 2004: “In Afghanistan, America and our allies, with a historically small force and a brilliant strategy, defeated the Taliban in just a few short weeks.”

October 2005: “Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago.”

While coalition forces made significant early progress against the Taliban, President Bush allowed the situation to deteriorate after deciding to invade Iraq in 2003. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, troops and resources have been diverted from Afghanistan. Consequently, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated dramatically in recent years. Currently, the Taliban has a “permanent presence” in 75 percent of the country and exercises control over the country’s “political and military dynamic.”

Likewise, the still-classified Afghanistan NIE reportedly paints a “grim” picture of the country. While Bush deserves credit for trying to bring his current rhetoric more in line with reality, he isn’t allowed to pretend that his past rhetoric wasn’t false.

Yesterday, Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush and shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” Bush said that he was unfazed by the incident.

Afterward, Bush continued to dismiss the incident to reporters aboard Air Force One. He said that Zaidi’s actions were “bizarre” and had no larger significance:

Q Well, not to belabor the point too much, on this man, but I have a serious question about it. Obviously he’s expressing a vein of anger that exists in Iraq, and —

BUSH: How do you know? I mean, how do we know what he’s expressing? Who — [...] I’ve heard all kinds of stories. I heard he was representing a Baathist TV station. I don’t know the facts, but let’s find out the facts. All I’m telling you, it was a bizarre moment. [...]

I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate. … That’s exactly what he wanted you to do. Like I answered on your question, what he wanted you to do was to pay attention to him. And sure enough, you did.

Similarly, in an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz yesterday, Bush laughed off Zaidi’s actions as “amusing.” “I don’t know what his beef is,” said Bush. “But whatever it is I’m sure somebody will hear it.” Watch it:

Zaidi’s actions were not “bizarre” or “amusing.” In fact, they were “[t]wo of the worst insults in Islam.” Additionally, Zaidi is not a lone protester with his own radical “Baathist” agenda. Since the incident, thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets to demand the release of Zaidi, who is now being interrogated by Iraqi authorities. These protesters include Shiites in Sadr City, who “are fed up with U.S. policy in the region” and calling Zaidi a “hero.” NPR reported that every single person they interviewed in Baghdad had “nothing but praise” for Zaidi.

Bush is still unable to grasp the “beef” that the Iraqi people have with him: their extreme frustration and unhappiness with the U.S. invasion and its subsequent mismanagement and occupation. Tellingly, one of the last high-profile shoe-throwing incidents occurred in April 2003, when Iraqis took their shoes and hit Saddam Hussein’s falling statue.

Yesterday, after an Iraqi journalist used “[t]wo of the worst insults in Islam” against him, an unfazed President Bush sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz for an exit interview in Iraq. When Raddatz asked Bush about his legacy, Bush first boasted about “52 months of uninterrupted job growth.” (There have been 1.9 million jobs lost in 2008 alone.)

Bush then turned to Iraq, and justified the war there by suggesting it had been al Qaeda’s home base. When Raddatz corrected him, Bush dismissively replied, “So what?“:

BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.

Watch it:

Continuing his refusal to take any responsibility for the consequences of his decisions, Bush suggests that al Qaeda came to Iraq by chance, that it simply “turn[ed] out to have been” the place where they “were going to take their stand.” But al Qaeda’s existence in Iraq is 100 percent attributable to Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq: al Qaeda never existed there before, and in fact, Saddam Hussein viewed Osama bin Laden as a threat and refused to support him.

Throughout the run-up to war, Bush repeatedly cited supposed links between al Qaeda and Iraq to drum up support for the U.S. invasion. When those links proved to be utterly false — and perhaps even willingly fabricated — Bush began insisting that al Qaeda had chosen Iraq as the “central front in the war on terror,” and so the United States was forced to stay there and respond. In the meantime, more than 4,000 Americans have been killed, 30,000 maimed, and nearly 100,000 Iraqis killed.

In an interview earlier this month, Bush cited the intelligence failures in the lead-up to war and said simply, “I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.” Bush’s indifference to the consequences of his decisions mirrors the scorn his Vice President displayed when dismissing American opposition to the Iraq war with a one-word answer: “So?”

Say you have two presidents of two countries, both of whom have established a relationship with a third country and are in competition there for greater influence and strategic depth.

When visiting the third country, the first president arrives unannounced and in secret, is whisked from the airport via helicopter to a heavily fortified compound in the capital, where he holds meetings for a few hours and then a press conference before being whisked back to the airport and departing the country.

The second president, on the other hand, announces his trip weeks in advance, travels from the airport to the capital via motorcade, is welcomed in an elaborate red carpet ceremony, and then leisurely visits various cultural and religious sites.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: The first president gets shoes thrown at him.

Based on these two scenarios, who would you say is winning this competition?