Operation Iraqi Occupation
It has been a while since this discussed Iraq. I ran across this article in the Washington Post and I was interested in what this blog's members would have to say about the questions posed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800941.html
The article says "while chairing a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner suggested that the president might need a new congressional resolution authorizing our presence in Iraq, since the conflict there has become (or, best case, may yet become) a civil war."
And to expand on the issues raise in the article, do we think that the United States can realistically fix Iraq? If so, how long will the american people accept our diminished military power to react to other needs (N. Korean, Iran, Somalia, the hunt for Osama, etc.)? Personally, I maintain that it was never our goal to get in and then get out. We are there to stay regardless. It would just be a better PR story if it had all went cleanly. Damn those proud muslims for not going against the concept of Islam itself and accepting our form of government and religious freedom! Who do they think that are anyway?!?!
posted by John Dickman @ 2:33 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
I was against the war from the outset because I thought it was a pointless distraction from the serious job at hand of defeating terrorism. In my view Iraq was never central or even relevant to the war on terrorism. I stood aghast as the vast majority of my friends, family and the general American public followed blindly along with the administration's bogus assertions that Iraq was somehow connected with, central to or even related in an way with the war against Islamic fascism. I became apalled as we took our eye of the ball to go intervene in Iraq. If anything we have only set the West back in its struggle with this new global enemy by our misadventure in there.
But until recently I was against pulling precipitously out of Iraq. My feeling was that we needed to clean up the mess we created or risk making things even worse by just pulling out right away and leaving anarchy in our wake. But my view on this is beginning to evolve given the realities on the ground in Iraq. Time to stop whistling through the graveyard to tunes of "building a democratic Iraq" and "birth pangs of a new Middle East" and to start taking a realistic accounting of what our bungling intervensionism there has wrought and how we can stop the bleeding as quickly as possible. So, in answer to your questions:
Do we think that the United States can realistically fix Iraq? - No. I for one never thought we could fix Iraq before the war and didn't feel it was in our interest to even try. The United States carried on just fine, thank you very much, for 200 plus years without engaging in a policy of "preemptive" war or nation-creation. Suddenly foisting Western-style libertarian democracy on closed cultures that have been effectively governed for eons by force, non-empirical traditions and the primacy of ethnic, tribal, racial and religious affiliation is an obvious exercise in lunacy. I am still shocked that someone as supposedly intelligent and learned as Condoleeza Rice signed on to this. Let this be a hard earned lesson to us, and to the next adventuresome inhabitant of the White House. Bush's naive vision of a stable republic of Iraq comprised of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites living in perfect harmony with a represetative democracy to protect all their interests is a pipe dream. I now believe the only stable Iraq is a divided Iraq. The best we can hope for now is to prop up the ineffectual central government we've created long enough to gerrymander Iraq into three separate states along ethnically geographic lines and then get the hell out of dodge as fast as our poorly armored humvees can carry us.
How long will the american people accept our diminished military power to react to other needs? - In my view we've already cut the administration way too much slack. Iran has been the only beneficiary of the Iraq war, and the recent events in Lebanon, not to mention their intransigence over the nuclear development issue, only bear this out much too clearly. Events around the world are quickly moving beyond our ability to deal with them diplomatically, much less militarily. Again, we need to move quickly to split Iraq up and get the hell out.
Also, I disagree with you on one major point - you state that it was never our goal to get in and get out. I would argue that the bill of goods this administration sold the American people was precisely a "wham, bam thank you maam" proposition that would go reasonably well and be over quickly. But that was the actual invasion - they never wanted to talk about what would come next. Had the American people been presented with the truth about potential long term outcomes in Iraq the war would never have happened. Everything Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al said in the lead-up to this disaster was that it would be over in a fortnight and that the Iraqis would shower our troops with flowers (to use Cheney's predictions of the affair). Then it would be off to the voting booth and democracy would reign while the US could get out and get on with the next premptive invasion in its quest to spread freedom, democracy and the ideal of liberarian tolerance to all the yearning masses of the middle east.
Witness the bungled planning for the war's aftermath. Witness the administrtion's insistence on minimal troop commitments to carry out the fighting and way to few to carry out the peacekeeping and nation-building. If you had told the American people about the need to anticipate a potentially decade-long presence in Iraq, about the potential for civil war, that George Bush would announce after three years that he was leaving the decisionon on pulling out to HIS SUCCESSOR, and about umpteen other realistic but unpleasant scenarios for a long engagement that were shouted down by the White House and their propoganda machine we might have had a more lucid and pragmatic debate prior to March 2003 and we might be in a much better position today.
We have lost much time, blood, money and global power and prestige in Iraq. We have gained nothing. The time has come to admit our failures, take decisive action to minimize our losses and fix what we broke as best and as quickly as we can. What we need now is a realistic and pragmatic policy to get us out of there as quickly as possible while leaving as much civil stability as we can hope for. Splitting up Iraq is the only way to achieve this and even the Sunnis, who were previously the most against this outcome, are starting to come around to it.
-Ico
I have one more question to all those scratching their heads over the current state of things in Iraq and our unenviable position there three years and counting -
What else did you expect?
-Ico
Ico,
Unfotunately you went on too long of a winding road for me to respond to but a couple of points:
1) Hindsight is 20/20 and I think most would be offended to say we blindly backed the administration. Being wrong does not equate to being stupid. Being wrong is just that.....
If you were on top of all these bogus assertions then you should join the intelligence agency for several countries as most of them had it wrong too.
2) I do agree that this war was mismanaged but I still do not think the intent was wrong or bad but just executed poorly. Rumsfeld should have been gone, tactics should have been switched, etc. etc. etc. There will be a referendum on the war this fallbut for the wrong reason. American won't be voting on wheter we did the right thing just that we didn't win in 5 minutes or less and put up a new high score in today's video game wars.
3) I do not see a real plan when I read your response which is much like the Democrats. Cut and run is fine, let's just call it what it is because I don't undersatnd when you say 'fix what we broke as best we can'. That to me sounds exactly what we are doing.
And my last two points on the Islamast Facisits....
- If not us - Who?
- If not now - When?
P.S. I do not see how splitting up Iraq is any sort of plan. The oil is pretty much centralized and Turkey will not allow the Kurds to have their own country. We surely do not want to lay those two problems on the world's lap now do we?
- Nym
"I have one more question to all those scratching their heads over the current state of things in Iraq and our unenviable position there three years and counting -
What else did you expect?"
Come on now Nostradamus, you didn't predict where we are now. What did people expect? Not this and I do not remember many if any thinking we'd be here now.
If so, why did the VOTE for the fucking thing?
In respectful and wordy response:
1)Hindsight is 20/20...............
I will proudly say that I do indeed feel like Nostradamus on this one cuz I did predict it at the time Brother Nym, you were there to hear me. All I got then from everybody was grief. I was labeled with that most cherished of modern epithets - "liberal" - because I wasn't blindly backing Bush in this nonsense. So please pardon my swollen bossom when three years later I make the simple point that all this turned out as badly as I (and a few others who were then pilloried) feared. I never aggreed with the Iraq adventure from the beginning and I made it plain during many heated debates at Lil Hoolis. Perhaps you don't recall many others saying so, but I'm sure you recall me saying so.
2) I do agree that this war was mismanaged but I still do not think the intent was wrong or bad but just executed poorly.
We totally agree on this point. I've never believed that there was some evil conspiracy to enrich oil companies or any of that other nonsense that some on the fringes profess. I DO believe that Iraq has been the single worst foreign policy and global strategic disaster that any administration has engineered in at least three generations and the effects of it will haunt us for years if not decades to come. So we agree - this mess is the result not of evil intent, but rather of pure, unvarnished incompetence.
3)I do not see a real plan when I read your response..............
Please read it again. I don't undersatnd why there is such resistance to splitting up Iraq cuz its really not such a bad idea when compared to the alternative.
It is an undeniable fact that the climax governmental system in that part of the world is autocracy. Unity in Iraq, an amalgam of antagonistic tribes and religious sects that the British cobbled together, is impossible without an autocrat. We all need to get over this romantic notion that they must all be forced to stay together under some Jeffersonian style republic. We practically guaranteed the break up of Iraq when we toppled Saddam.
The Kurds already enjoy autonomy in every way except for their own seat at the United Nations and the Turks have uttered nary a peep about it. Did you know that it is now against Kurdish law to even fly the Iraqi flag in Kurdistan? That the Kurds have their own army and the Iraqi army is forbidden from entering Kurdistan? That Iraqis must present a passport when entering Kurdistan? Its no accident that the only truly autonomous region in Iraq is also the only peaceful one. And the idea that Turkey is against an autonomous Kurdistan is outdated. The secular Turks have come around to the view that a stable Kurdistan next door is better than an Iraqi religious civil war and they now view Kurdistan as a buffer against an Islamic state in Iraq.
The Sunnis have been the only group against division, but they are beginning to come around as well. The increasing sectarian violence and schism between them and the Shiites is beginning to reinforce the notion among the Sunni minority that living under a government, a police force and an army that would be at least 65%~70% Shiite dominated would be a disaster for them. Losing control of the oil fields would be the least of their worries. The US and the international community could spend millions upon millions in aid on a Sunni state Marshall plan to make the whole affair work and still save themselves BILLIONS over the cost of the current disaster we are currently throwing bad money and good lives after.
Lastly, if we divide Iraq we divide the insurgency. The Sunni insurgency in the North loses its impetus to foment civil war against a central government of the US's creation. The Shiite dominated police and militias now allowed to operate freely in the North and responsible for many revenge killings and violence would no longer be able to do so.
If we insist on keeping Iraq unified we maintain the environment in which the religious driven insurgency is flourishing. The longer we dicker with this "Republic of Iraq" nonsense the bloodier the insurgency will get and the more palatable the alternative will look not only to us but to the Sunnis, Turks and the rest of the world as well.
And on your two final points:
If not us now, who and when?
I've never denied our responsibility to lead the struggle against islamic fascism, and all other forms of fascism. But Iraq was never relevant to our struggle with Islamic fascism until we made it so. As far as I am concerned our war against Islamic fascism and our invasion of Iraq are two separate issues and any attempt to connect the two is just an effort to legitimize bad policy - Iraq - by attaching it to a necessary and noble enterprise - the struggle against Islamofascism.
The quickest way to diffuse the insurgency and establish a stable environment for the various groups there to peacefully govern themselves is to break the country up. This would not lay a problem on the world's lap, it would relieve a problem we laid on its lap three year ago.
And so, as a modern day Nostradamus I leave you with one final prediction: you will share a bottle of Pinot with The Iconoclast on the evening of the eighteenth day in August as you debate the various methods by which Iraq will be divided among its constituent peoples.
-Ico
I would love to let Iraq be partitioned. Unfortunately, I don't think anything can be started along those lines under the current administration because it would involve two things they are not good at:
1) Admitting they were wrong.
2) Changing their approach.
I have said many times that I favored the initial attack on Iraq on the basis of the mass destruction evidence. I have said many times that if we had known then what we know now... i.e. no wmd's, I would not have supported the invasion. I have also said that I am not a supporter of cutting and running.
All of that being said, we have to constantly evaluate our assumptions in this thing. Looking back at Vietnam now, does anyone say we "cut and run"? At some point, we have to recognize that our presence in Iraq is making some of the problems worse. What I don't know is how we get out of there without igniting a firestorm of innocent death with a civil war.
I think next time some two bit nobody threatens the U.S., we should roll in with the troops, wipe him out, and leave the people to themselves. If they want to kill one another, more power to them unless they threaten us, and then we flush them out again.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home