Iraq in the Balance

[Dakota435]

A very thoughtful and insightful article. Those of us who are natural optimists will see hope, those who are natural pessimists (you know who you are) probably won't.


Iraq in the Balance
In Washington, panic. In Baghdad, cautious optimism.

BY FOUAD AJAMI
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

BAGHDAD--For 35 years the sun did not shine here," said a man on the grounds of the great Shia shrine of al-Kadhimiyyah, on the outskirts of Baghdad. I had come to the shrine at night, in the company of the Shia politician Ahmed Chalabi.

We had driven in an armed convoy, and our presence had drawn a crowd. The place was bathed with light, framed by multiple minarets--a huge rectangular structure, its beauty and dereliction side by side. The tile work was exquisite, there were deep Persian carpets everywhere, the gifts of benefactors, rulers and merchants, drawn from the world of Shi'ism.

It was a cool spring night, and beguilingly tranquil. (There were the echoes of a firefight across the river, from the Sunni neighborhood of al-Adhamiyyah, but it was background noise and oddly easy to ignore.) A keeper of the shrine had been showing us the place, and he was proud of its doors made of teak from Burma--a kind of wood, he said, that resisted rain, wind and sun. It was to that description that the quiet man on the edge of this gathering had offered the thought that the sun had not risen during the long night of Baathist despotism.

A traveler who moves between Baghdad and Washington is struck by the gloomy despair in Washington and the cautious sense of optimism in Baghdad. Baghdad has not been prettified; its streets remain a sore to the eye, its government still hunkered down in the Green Zone, and violence is never far. But the sense of deliverance, and the hopes invested in this new security plan, are palpable. I crisscrossed the city--always with armed protection--making my way to Sunni and Shia politicians and clerics alike. The Sunni and Shia versions of political things--of reality itself--remain at odds. But there can be discerned, through the acrimony, the emergence of a fragile consensus.

Some months back, the Bush administration had called into question both the intentions and capabilities of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But this modest and earnest man, born in 1950, a child of the Shia mainstream in the Middle Euphrates, has come into his own. He had not been a figure of the American regency in Baghdad. Steeped entirely in the Arabic language and culture, he had a been a stranger to the Americans; fate cast him on the scene when the Americans pushed aside Mr. Maliki's colleague in the Daawa Party, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

There had been rumors that the Americans could strike again in their search for a leader who would give the American presence better cover. There had been steady talk that the old CIA standby, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, could make his way back to power. Mr. Allawi himself had fed these speculations, but this is fantasy. Mr. Allawi circles Arab capitals and is rarely at home in his country. Mr. Maliki meanwhile has settled into his role.

In retrospect, the defining moment for Mr. Maliki had been those early hours of Dec. 30, when Saddam Hussein was sent to the gallows. He had not flinched, the decision was his, and he assumed it. Beyond the sound and fury of the controversy that greeted the execution, Mr. Maliki had taken the execution as a warrant for a new accommodation with the Sunni political class. A lifelong opponent of the Baath, he had come to the judgment that the back of the apparatus of the old regime had been broken, and that the time had come for an olive branch to those ready to accept the new political rules.

When I called on Mr. Maliki at his residence, a law offering pensions to the former officers of the Iraqi army had been readied and was soon put into effect. That decision had been supported by the head of the de-Baathification commission, Ahmed Chalabi. A proposal for a deeper reversal of the de-Baathification process was in the works, and would be announced days later by Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani. This was in truth Zalmay Khalilzad's doing, his attempt to bury the entire de-Baathification effort as his tenure drew to a close.

This was more than the political traffic in the Shia community could bear. Few were ready to accept the return of old Baathists to government service. The victims of the old terror were appalled at a piece of this legislation, giving them a period of only three months to bring charges against their former tormentors. This had not been Mr. Maliki's choice--for his animus toward the Baath has been the driving force of his political life. It was known that he trusted that the religious hierarchy in Najaf, and the forces within the Shia alliance, would rein in this drive toward rehabilitating the remnants of the old regime.

Power and experience have clearly changed Mr. Maliki as he makes his way between the Shia coalition that sustains him on the one hand, and the American presence on the other. By all accounts, he is increasingly independent of the diehards in his own coalition--another dividend of the high-profile executions of Saddam Hussein and three of the tyrant's principal lieutenants. He is surrounded by old associates drawn from the Daawa Party, but keeps his own counsel.

There is a built-in tension between a prime minister keen to press for his own prerogatives and an American military presence that underpins the security of this new order. Mr. Maliki does not have the access to American military arms he would like; he does not have control over an Iraqi special-forces brigade that the Americans had trained and nurtured. His police forces remain poorly equipped. The levers of power are not fully his, and he knows it. Not a student of American ways--he spent his years of exile mostly in Syria--he is fully aware of the American exhaustion with Iraq as leading American politicians have come his way often.

The nightmare of this government is that of a precipitous American withdrawal. Six months ago, the British quit the southern city of Amarrah, the capital of the Maysan Province. It had been, by Iraqi accounts, a precipitous British decision, and the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr had rushed into the void; they had looted the barracks and overpowered the police. Amarrah haunts the Iraqis in the circle of power--the prospect of Americans leaving this government to fend for itself.

In the long scheme of history, the Shia Arabs had never governed--and Mr. Maliki and the coalition arrayed around him know their isolation in the region. This Iraqi state of which they had become the principal inheritors will have to make its way in a hostile regional landscape. Set aside Turkey's Islamist government, with its avowedly Sunni mindset and its sense of itself as a claimant to an older Ottoman tradition; the Arab order of power is yet to make room for this Iraqi state. Mr. Maliki's first trip beyond Iraq's borders had been to Saudi Arabia. He had meant that visit as a message that Iraq's "Arab identity" will trump all other orientations. It had been a message that the Arab world's Shia stepchildren were ready to come into the fold. But a huge historical contest had erupted in Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid caliphate had fallen to new Shia inheritors, and the custodians of Arab power were not yet ready for this new history.

For one, the "Sunni street"--the Islamists, the pan-Arabists who hid their anti-Shia animus underneath a secular cover, the intellectual class that had been invested in the ideology of the Baath party--remained unalterably opposed to this new Iraq. The Shia could offer the Arab rulers the promise that their new state would refrain from regional adventures, but it would not be easy for these rulers to come to this accommodation.

A worldly Shia cleric, the legislator Humam Hamoudi who had headed the constitutional drafting committee, told me that he had laid out to interlocutors from the House of Saud the case that this new Iraqi state would be a better neighbor than the Sunni-based state of Saddam Hussein had been. "We would not be given to military adventures beyond our borders, what wealth we have at our disposal would have to go to repairing our homeland, for you we would be easier to fend off for we are Shiites and would be cognizant and respectful of the differences between us," Mr. Hamoudi had said. "You had a fellow Sunni in Baghdad for more than three decades, and look what terrible harvest, what wreckage, he left behind." This sort of appeal is yet to be heard, for this change in Baghdad is a break with a long millennium of Sunni Arab primacy.

The blunt truth of this new phase in the fight for Iraq is that the Sunnis have lost the battle for Baghdad. The great flight from Baghdad to Jordan, to Syria, to other Arab destinations, has been the flight of Baghdad's Sunni middle-class. It is they who had the means of escape, and the savings.

Whole mixed districts in the city--Rasafa, Karkh--have been emptied of their Sunni populations. Even the old Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyyah is embattled and besieged. What remains for the Sunnis are the western outskirts. This was the tragic logic of the campaign of terror waged by the Baathists and the jihadists against the Shia; this was what played out in the terrible year that followed the attack on the Askariya shrine of Samarra in February 2006. Possessed of an old notion of their own dominion, and of Shia passivity and quiescence, the Sunni Arabs waged a war they were destined to lose.

No one knows with any precision the sectarian composition of today's Baghdad, but there are estimates that the Sunnis may now account for 15% of the city's population. Behind closed doors, Sunni leaders speak of the great calamity that befell their community. They admit to a great disappointment in the Arab states that fed the flames but could never alter the contest on the ground in Iraq. No Arab cavalry had ridden, or was ever going to ride, to the rescue of the Sunnis of Iraq.

A cultured member of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars in Baghdad, a younger man of deep moderation, likened the dilemma of his community to that of the Palestinian Arabs since 1948. "They waited for deliverance that never came," he said. "Like them, we placed our hopes in Arab leaders who have their own concerns. We fell for those Arab satellite channels, we believed that Arab brigades would turn up in Anbar and Baghdad. We made room for al Qaeda only to have them turn on us in Anbar." There had once been a Sunni maxim in Iraq, "for us ruling and power, for you self-flagellation," that branded the Shia as a people of sorrow and quietism. Now the ground has shifted, and among the Sunnis there is a widespread sentiment of disinheritance and loss.

The Mahdi Army, more precisely the underclass of Sadr City, had won the fight for Baghdad. This Shia underclass had been hurled into the city from its ancestral lands in the Marshes and the Middle Euphrates. In a cruel twist of irony, Baathist terror had driven these people into the slums of Baghdad. The Baathist tyranny had cut down the palm trees in the south, burned the reed beds of the Marshes. Then the campaign of terror that Sunni society sheltered and abetted in the aftermath of the despot's fall gave the Mahdi Army its cause and its power.

"The Mahdi Army protected us and our lands, our homes, and our honor," said a tribal Shia notable in a meeting in Baghdad, acknowledging that it was perhaps time for the boys of Moqtada al-Sadr to step aside in favor of the government forces. He laid bare, as he spoke, the terrible complications of this country; six of his sisters, he said, were married to Sunnis, countless nephews of his were Sunni. Violence had hacked away at this pluralism; no one could be certain when, and if, the place could mend.

In their grief, the Sunni Arabs have fallen back on the most unexpected of hopes; having warred against the Americans, they now see them as redeemers. "This government is an American creation," a powerful Sunni legislator, Saleh al-Mutlak, said. "It is up to the Americans to replace it, change the constitution that was imposed on us, replace this incompetent, sectarian government with a government of national unity, a cabinet of technocrats." Shrewd and alert to the ways of the world (he has a Ph.D. in soil science from a university in the U.K.) Mr. Mutlak gave voice to a wider Sunni conviction that this order in Baghdad is but an American puppet. America and Iran may be at odds in the region, but the Sunni Arabs see an American-Persian conspiracy that had robbed them of their patrimony.

They had made their own bed, the Sunni Arabs, but old habits of dominion die hard, and save but for a few, there is precious little acknowledgment of the wages of the terror that the Shia had been subjected to in the years that followed the American invasion. As matters stand, the Sunni Arabs are in desperate need of leaders who can call off the violence, cut a favorable deal for their community, and distance that community form the temptations and the ruin of the insurgency. It is late in the hour, but there is still eagerness in the Maliki government to conciliate the Sunnis, if only to give the country a chance at normalcy.

The Shia have come into their own, but there still hovers over them their old history of dispossession; there still trails shadows of doubt about their hold on power, about conspiracies hatched against them in neighboring Arab lands.

The Americans have given birth to this new Shia primacy, but there lingers a fear, in the inner circles of the Shia coalition, that the Americans have in mind a Sunni-based army, of the Pakistani and Turkish mold, that would upend the democratic, majoritarian bases of power on which Shia primacy rests. They are keenly aware, these new Shia men of power in Baghdad, that the Pax Americana in the region is based on an alliance of long standing with the Sunni regimes. They are under no illusions about their own access to Washington when compared with that of Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and the smaller principalities of the Persian Gulf. This suspicion is in the nature of things; it is the way of once marginal men who had come into an unexpected triumph.

In truth, it is not only the Arab order of power that remains ill at ease with the rise of the Shia of Iraq. The (Shia) genie that came out of the bottle was not fully to America's liking. Indeed, the U.S. strategy in Iraq had tried to sidestep the history that America itself had given birth to. There had been the disastrous regency of Paul Bremer. It had been followed by the attempt to create a national security state under Ayad Allawi. Then there had come the strategy of the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, that aimed to bring the Sunni leadership into the political process and wean them away from the terror and the insurgency.

Mr. Khalilzad had become, in his own sense of himself, something of a High Commissioner in Iraq, and his strategy had ended in failure; the Sunni leaders never broke with the insurgency. Their sobriety of late has been a function of the defeat their cause has suffered on the ground; all the inducements had not worked.

We are now in a new, and fourth, phase of this American presence. We should not try to "cheat" in the region, conceal what we had done, or apologize for it, by floating an Arab-Israeli peace process to the liking of the "Sunni street."

The Arabs have an unerring feel for the ways of strangers who venture into their lands. Deep down, the Sunni Arabs know what the fight for Baghdad is all about--oil wealth and power, the balance between the Sunni edifice of material and moral power and the claims of the Shia stepchildren. To this fight, Iran is a newcomer, an outlier. This is an old Arab account, the fight between the order of merchants and rulers and establishment jurists on the one side, and the righteous (Shia) oppositionists on the other. How apt it is that the struggle that had been fought on the plains of Karbala in southern Iraq so long ago has now returned, full circle, to Iraq.

For our part, we can't give full credence to the Sunni representations of things. We can cushion the Sunni defeat but can't reverse it. Our soldiers have not waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against Sunni extremists to fall for the fear of some imagined "Shia crescent" peddled by Sunni rulers and preachers. To that atavistic fight between Sunni and Shia, we ought to remain decent and discerning arbiters. To be sure, in Iraq itself we can't give a blank check to Shia maximalism. On its own, mainstream Shi'ism is eager to rein in its own diehards and self-anointed avengers.

There is a growing Shia unease with the Mahdi Army--and with the venality and incompetence of the Sadrists represented in the cabinet--and an increasing faith that the government and its instruments of order are the surer bet. The crackdown on the Mahdi Army that the new American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has launched has the backing of the ruling Shia coalition. Iraqi police and army units have taken to the field against elements of the Mahdi army. In recent days, in the southern city of Diwaniyya, American and Iraqi forces have together battled the forces of Moqtada al-Sadr. To the extent that the Shia now see Iraq as their own country, their tolerance for mayhem and chaos has receded. Sadr may damn the American occupiers, but ordinary Shia men and women know that the liberty that came their way had been a gift of the Americans.

The young men of little education--earnest displaced villagers with the ways of the countryside showing through their features and dialect and shiny suits--who guarded me through Baghdad, spoke of old terrors, and of the joy and dignity of this new order. Children and nephews and younger brothers of men lost to the terror of the Baath, they are done with the old servitude. They behold the Americans keeping the peace of their troubled land with undisguised gratitude. It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath.

One can never reconcile the beneficiaries of illegitimate, abnormal power to the end of their dominion. But this current re-alignment in Iraq carries with it a gift for the possible redemption of modern Islam among the Arabs. Hitherto Sunni Islam had taken its hegemony for granted and extremist strands within it have shown a refusal to accept "the other." Conversely, Shia history has been distorted by weakness and exclusion and by a concomitant abdication of responsibility.

A Shia-led state in Baghdad--with a strong Kurdish presence in it and a big niche for the Sunnis--can go a long way toward changing the region's terrible habits and expectations of authority and command. The Sunnis would still be hegemonic in the Arab councils of power beyond Iraq, but their monopoly would yield to the pluralism and complexity of that region.

"Watch your adjectives" is the admonition given American officers by Gen. Petraeus. In Baghdad, Americans and Iraqis alike know that this big endeavor has entered its final, decisive phase. Iraq has surprised and disappointed us before, but as they and we watch our adjectives there can be discerned the shape of a new country, a rough balance of forces commensurate with the demography of the place and with the outcome of a war that its erstwhile Sunni rulers had launched and lost. We made this history and should now make our peace with it.

Mr. Ajami, a 2006 recipient of the Bradley Prize, teaches at Johns Hopkins and is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2006).

[Kitsune]

Mr. Ajami, a 2006 recipient of the Bradley Prize, teaches at Johns Hopkins and is author of "The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq" (Free Press, 2006).

One might also add that Mr. Ajami is a Shiit, a personal friend of Paul Wolfowitz and a longstanding supporter of the Iraq War. But what the hell? He sees "cautious optimism in Baghdad" so that probably means that things are finally getting better. And it is highly improbable that someone like he could be wrong, right? In the end, it is all just a matter of holding out, isn't that so?

[Dakota435]

One might also add that Mr. Ajami is a Shiit, a personal friend of Paul Wolfowitz and a longstanding supporter of the Iraq War. But what the hell? He sees "cautious optimism in Baghdad" so that probably means that things are finally getting better. And it is highly improbable that someone like he could be wrong, right? In the end, it is all just a matter of holding out, isn't that so?

What's wrong with Paul Wolfowitz?

Are you saying he can't possibly be right? Only CNN's propaganda for you?

If holding out means outlasting the psychos until the central gov't is able to deal with them on its own, then yeah. How is running away a moral decision?

[joedirt]

whats wrong with paul w. lets see its his lies and idea of neo con revolution that got us into this mess in the first place. I could care very little what anyone who shares wolfies views at this point.

[Kitsune]

What's wrong with Paul Wolfowitz? Paul Wolfowitz is a dyed-in-the-wool neocon, as much as otherwise perhaps only Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle. He is one of the most hawkish figures even among that hawkish group and has been the principal author of the Wolfowitz doctrine, which is also known as Bush doctrine. That is wrong with him.





Are you saying he can't possibly be right? Only CNN's propaganda for you? Of course there is the remote chance that Mr. Ajami is right. It is just that, after seeing so many articles claiming that "things in Iraq would be getting better now" over the last years, I became a bit sceptical. Plus, as I pointed out, the author of that specific article isn't really unbiased. As said, he was an ardent first minute supporter of the US invasion and his claims that a Shiit controlled Iraq would be a better thing than one controlled by Sunnis don't sound more credible if one considers that he is a Shiit himself. (He also largely ignores that Shiit Iran, without being balanced by a Sunni Iraq might become just too powerful and therefore a threat in the region that more than just replaces the one of Saddam.)
In short: my impression is that this guy is massively biased because of his heritage and, when he travelled to Iraq, he just found the opinion supported that he wanted to believe in. But then, it is certainly possible that I am wrong and things do indeed get better from now on. We all will find out soon enough.




If holding out means outlasting the psychos until the central gov't is able to deal with them on its own, then yeah. How is running away a moral decision? First, that is easy to say for somebody sitting in Canada. And second: while running away is certainly not always a moral decision, irrationally holding out and thereby prolonging a conflict (the victims of which include American soldiers, remember?) is not always a moral one.

[Dakota435]

Paul Wolfowitz is a dyed-in-the-wool neocon, as much as otherwise perhaps only Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle. He is one of the most hawkish figures even among that hawkish group and has been the principal author of the Wolfowitz doctrine, which is also known as Bush doctrine. That is wrong with him.




Of course there is the remote chance that Mr. Ajami is right. It is just that, after seeing so many articles claiming that "things in Iraq would be getting better now" over the last years, I became a bit sceptical. Plus, as I pointed out, the author of that specific article isn't really unbiased. As said, he was an ardent first minute supporter of the US invasion and his claims that a Shiit controlled Iraq would be a better thing than one controlled by Sunnis don't sound more credible if one considers that he is a Shiit himself. (He also largely ignores that Shiit Iran, without being balanced by a Sunni Iraq might become just too powerful and therefore a threat in the region that more than just replaces the one of Saddam.)
In short: my impression is that this guy is massively biased because of his heritage and, when he travelled to Iraq, he just found the opinion supported that he wanted to believe in. But then, it is certainly possible that I am wrong and things do indeed get better from now on. We all will find out soon enough.



First, that is easy to say for somebody sitting in Canada. And second: while running away is certainly not always a moral decision, irrationally holding out and thereby prolonging a conflict (the victims of which include American soldiers, remember?) is not always a moral one.

So you don't want a reformed reasonably democratic and less dysfunctional middle east? You prefer the current cesspool obviously. That's sad.

We have soldiers in Afghanistan. I would be horrified at the idea of the Canadian Army running away from a fight, and so would the soldiers.

Your last comment is very revealing of left lib thinking. American soldiers, volunteers all of them, and who are largely proud of what they are doing, are victims to you. You see them as little children that need to be protected. Ironic that they are the ones who LEAST want to run away.

[Kitsune]

So you don't want a reformed reasonably democratic and less dysfunctional middle east? You prefer the current cesspool obviously. That's sad.
It would be sad, if that would be true. But in fact it is just that I do not believe and did never believe that the situation could be bettered as easily as the George Bush jr administration chose to believe. Even worse, many really knowledgable people did predict that the invasion of Iraq would lead to desaster but they were not listened to, because Wolfowitz et al believed they knew better. They didn't, and that is what is really sad.




We have soldiers in Afghanistan. I would be horrified at the idea of the Canadian Army running away from a fight, and so would the soldiers. I am not talking about "running away". Withdrawing and thus ending a senseless conflict is not the same as fleeing. Of course, it would been even better not to start it in the first place. In any case, let us keep A-stan out of our discussion and concentrate on Iraq, shall we?




Your last comment is very revealing of left lib thinking. American soldiers, volunteers all of them, and who are largely proud of what they are doing, are victims to you. You see them as little children that need to be protected. Ironic that they are the ones who LEAST want to run away. Since my sister has married an American soldier, I know a couple of those guys (voluntary soldiers who served in Iraq that is) personally. He and his pals do not strike me as leftist, but all of them are pretty disillusioned when it comes to Iraq. This is not only due to the fact that they lost a few friends there over the last years. It is also because they all got the impression that things aren't getting better and, above all, that one cannot really cooperate with most Iraqis, simply because one cannot trust them. According to him (and this opinion was confirmed by all his army friends in the room), this is the case with virtually everybody one works with, wether they are translators, civilians, bureaucrats or soldiers of the Iraqi armed forces and it goes especially for Shiits.

[Dakota435]

It would be sad, if that would be true. But in fact it is just that I do not believe and did never believe that the situation could be bettered as easily as the George Bush jr administration chose to believe. Even worse, many really knowledgable people did predict that the invasion of Iraq would lead to desaster but they were not listened to, because Wolfowitz et al believed they knew better. They didn't, and that is what is really sad.



I am not talking about "running away". Withdrawing and thus ending a senseless conflict is not the same as fleeing. Of course, it would been even better not to start it in the first place. In any case, let us keep A-stan out of our discussion and concentrate on Iraq, shall we?



Since my sister has married an American soldier, I know a couple of those guys (voluntary soldiers who served in Iraq that is) personally. He and his pals do not strike me as leftist, but all of them are pretty disillusioned when it comes to Iraq. This is not only due to the fact that they lost a few friends there over the last years. It is also because they all got the impression that things aren't getting better and, above all, that one cannot really cooperate with most Iraqis, simply because one cannot trust them. According to him (and this opinion was confirmed by all his army friends in the room), this is the case with virtually everybody one works with, wether they are translators, civilians, bureaucrats or soldiers of the Iraqi armed forces and it goes especially for Shiits.

On the other hand there are plenty of Iraqi soldiers fighting and dying alongside soldiers and marines. They don't count? Lots of Iraqis want the Americans to succeed. They don't count?

You may be right, that Iraqis are unreformable, backward wogs, but I don't think we're at that point yet. Why don't you want to bring Afg into it. Same thing there no?

And yes pulling out this soon is running away. You can't spin it any other way.

[Kurdistani]

On the other hand there are plenty of Iraqi soldiers fighting and dying alongside soldiers and marines. They don't count? Lots of Iraqis want the Americans to succeed. They don't count?

You may be right, that Iraqis are unreformable, backward wogs, but I don't think we're at that point yet. Why don't you want to bring Afg into it. Same thing there no?

And yes pulling out this soon is running away. You can't spin it any other way.

Iraqi's in the sunni triangle especially are sick and tired of the endless violence which is killing them and a lack of basic services such as water, electricity, health care. e.t.c. They are told by there community leaders (Al qaeda) that as long as the US troops are here we will fight them.

The Shias in the south haven't had it this good for a very long time.. but idiots like Sadr (backed by Iran) don't like the coalition presence.. and Sistani has asked for them to leave... so of course shias dont either..

The truth is... the violence we see now is miniscule to that if The coalition troops leave.. The Sunni and Shia will totally destroy eachother... the sunni centre will become a breeding ground for Al Qaeda...

So troop withdrawl is not an option... because the same population asking for the withdrawl will be begging for coalition troops to come back within 6 months of bieng left alone.

[Kitsune]

On the other hand there are plenty of Iraqi soldiers fighting and dying alongside soldiers and marines. They don't count? Lots of Iraqis want the Americans to succeed. They don't count?

For whatever reason, there are Iraqis fighting alongside the Americans, aye. But if there would be a poll today in which every adult Iraqi could vote wether the Americans should leave now, the majority would vote for leaving. For whatever reason. Does that count?




You may be right, that Iraqis are unreformable, backward wogs, but I don't think we're at that point yet. Why don't you want to bring Afg into it. Same thing there no? They aren't wogs. It is simply that you cannot force feed democracy to a people. In this regard, Afghanistan is similiar, because it will not work either to "build a nation" there. As somebody wise said: "Nations aren't build. They grow like mould."




And yes pulling out this soon is running away. You can't spin it any other way. The real important problem is that nobody, not even the present American government or people allied to it, can spin things the way that Iraq will be a success (despite attempts to do so like the article above). It won't be. Even with the present surge and even if the troops stay a few years longer. Some more soldiers will be sacrificed, simply because some guys on top simply won't accept that they were wrong. Not that this is the first time in history that something like this happens, and most probably it won't be the last. But it is senseless every time.

[Dakota435]

For whatever reason, there are Iraqis fighting alongside the Americans, aye. But if there would be a poll today in which every adult Iraqi could vote wether the Americans should leave now, the majority would vote for leaving. For whatever reason. Does that count?



They aren't wogs. It is simply that you cannot force feed democracy to a people. In this regard, Afghanistan is similiar, because it will not work either to "build a nation" there. As somebody wise said: "Nations aren't build. They grow like mould."


The real important problem is that nobody, not even the present American government or people allied to it, can spin things the way that Iraq will be a success (despite attempts to do so like the article above). It won't be. Even with the present surge and even if the troops stay a few years longer. Some more soldiers will be sacrificed, simply because some guys on top simply won't accept that they were wrong. Not that this is the first time in history that something like this happens, and most probably it won't be the last. But it is senseless every time.

There are in fact polls done regularly and they show that most Iraqis want the coalition to leave yes, but only AFTER the insurgency and Al Qaeda is reduced to a manageable level.

Worked with the Japanese. Does it occur to you that possibly most Iraqis would like to have a normal life? You seriously think they want to go back to a dictatorship????

I took almost 10 years to stabilize Japan and Germany. It took the British 12 years to defeat the Malaysian insurgency. It took the US Army about 5 years to reduce the Viet Cong to an insignificant threat at which point the NVA had to step in. You have no long term view, you just look at difficulties and declare failure. 4 years is short in a counterinsurgency campaign.

So are you going to be happy with an abandoned Iraq descending into total chaos and becoming a new Al Qaeda base? That's what you want? Don't try to tell me that won't happen.

[Kitsune]

I took almost 10 years to stabilize Japan and Germany.


No, it did not. The alleged analogy to Japan and Germany is used often, but the simple problem is that there is no real analogy. Both Germany and Japan are very resourceful people who also happen (or at least happened) to be very disciplined. Both had a strong sense of being a nation. Both countries also had largely disarmed societies.

Germany is a European country that also had a strong democratic tradition to tap into. There had been an almost successful revolution in 1848 that nearly managed to transform this country in what would have been one of the most advanced democracies of the time. Imperial Germany had many elements of a democratic society and showed all signs to develope to a full blown one. The so called Weimarian Republic after WWI failed out of a variety of reasons (the most important of which were Germanies shock to lose WWI, its cruel treatment by the victors and the unfortunate stock market crash and world economic crisis from October 1929 on). Nonetheless, even that democratic period lasted longer than the Third Reich.

Japan may not have been European or have a democratic tradtion, but they are downright notorious for loving order (similiar to the Germans). Also, even before 1945 the Japanese had been willing imitators of the West. That way they had come to Imperialism (largely by imitating succesful Empires like the British one). And after the end of WWII, they simply imitated the West again. This time it lead them to discard militarism and imperialism, which were largely dead among the Western nations as well, to concentrate on trade. On top of this, Japan has a strong isolationist tradition, they did this for hundreds of years in the past. That made it even easier to renounce Imperialism and Expansionism.

Neither Germany nor Japan had to be artificially stabilized over a period of 10 years, both nations were pretty stable from the start. In the case of Germany, no effort had to be undertaken to keep it together, actually, the US contributed to the country being ripped apart and even then there was no large instability or ever any danger of civil war. In the case of Japan there was also never any larger military operations necessary to put down an insurrection or to prevent any part of the country to seceed from the rest.

As a result of all this, both Germany and Japan were very fastly on the track to prosperity again, with comparatively little help necessary. In the case of Germany the US payed less than 1.5 billion dollars of financial help which may amount to perhaps 10 billion today. This was still considerably less than the value of the scientific and technical knowledge that had been taken from Germany after WWII.

Both Iraq and, if you will, Afghanistan, are completely different on virtually all accounts above. They have no sense of being a nation and they have no democratic history nor is their tradition to imitate the West very ****ounced. In fact, both are open for the present surge of Islamism, which wants exactly the opposite. Both societies are more or less artificial Imperial contructs with ample reason for internal strife and both are also well armed and used to violence (which in the case of Iraq was by no means started by Saddam). Iraq has oil resources that might promise prosperity, but the oil fields are not evenly distributed among the various ethnic groups. Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, does not even possess oil or larger supplies of other raw materials.

In short: neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is anything like Germany or Japan. To think that was a mistake by the present US administration.





It took the British 12 years to defeat the Malaysian insurgency. It took the US Army about 5 years to reduce the Viet Cong to an insignificant threat at which point the NVA had to step in.
These xamples are not very convincing. The glorious and often quoted British defeat of the insurgency in Malaysia? The problem here is that the British only fought against an uprising of the Chinese minority in that country and besides that, had declared beforehand that they would grant independency and leave once they had done so. So, in a way their so called victory was more of a face saving measure.
And Vietnam? Great example. That was a debacle if I remember it correctly, was it not?





You have no long term view, you just look at difficulties and declare failure. 4 years is short in a counterinsurgency campaign.
Since you insist to learn out of history, let me point out that history shows that the majority of the counterinsurgency campaigns after WWII failed. Many of them did so actually in a quite miserable way.

[Argyll]

Is this the same Chalabi who lied about the Iraqi Regime, and ripped the Iraqi people off, by stealing Millions of dollars, and was very very influential in getting the Bush Administration to Invade Iraq?

[ElHombre]

A very thoughtful and insightful article. Those of us who are natural optimists will see hope, those who are natural pessimists (you know who you are) probably won't.

'A pressimist is an optimist with a better grasp of realty.'

Sorry, I don't know where that quote came from. In any case, it certainly seems to apply with the continuing fantasies that war supporters keep coming up with now that even they are having to admit they lost a war.

[Dakota435]

'A pressimist is an optimist with a better grasp of realty.'

Sorry, I don't know where that quote came from. In any case, it certainly seems to apply with the continuing fantasies that war supporters keep coming up with now that even they are having to admit they lost a war.

Lost? When did that happen? The US Army surrendered recently? Are you in this solar system or some other one?

[Dakota435]

No, it did not. The alleged analogy to Japan and Germany is used often, but the simple problem is that there is no real analogy. Both Germany and Japan are very resourceful people who also happen (or at least happened) to be very disciplined. Both had a strong sense of being a nation. Both countries also had largely disarmed societies.

Germany is a European country that also had a strong democratic tradition to tap into. There had been an almost successful revolution in 1848 that nearly managed to transform this country in what would have been one of the most advanced democracies of the time. Imperial Germany had many elements of a democratic society and showed all signs to develope to a full blown one. The so called Weimarian Republic after WWI failed out of a variety of reasons (the most important of which were Germanies shock to lose WWI, its cruel treatment by the victors and the unfortunate stock market crash and world economic crisis from October 1929 on). Nonetheless, even that democratic period lasted longer than the Third Reich.

Japan may not have been European or have a democratic tradtion, but they are downright notorious for loving order (similiar to the Germans). Also, even before 1945 the Japanese had been willing imitators of the West. That way they had come to Imperialism (largely by imitating succesful Empires like the British one). And after the end of WWII, they simply imitated the West again. This time it lead them to discard militarism and imperialism, which were largely dead among the Western nations as well, to concentrate on trade. On top of this, Japan has a strong isolationist tradition, they did this for hundreds of years in the past. That made it even easier to renounce Imperialism and Expansionism.

Neither Germany nor Japan had to be artificially stabilized over a period of 10 years, both nations were pretty stable from the start. In the case of Germany, no effort had to be undertaken to keep it together, actually, the US contributed to the country being ripped apart and even then there was no large instability or ever any danger of civil war. In the case of Japan there was also never any larger military operations necessary to put down an insurrection or to prevent any part of the country to seceed from the rest.

As a result of all this, both Germany and Japan were very fastly on the track to prosperity again, with comparatively little help necessary. In the case of Germany the US payed less than 1.5 billion dollars of financial help which may amount to perhaps 10 billion today. This was still considerably less than the value of the scientific and technical knowledge that had been taken from Germany after WWII.

Both Iraq and, if you will, Afghanistan, are completely different on virtually all accounts above. They have no sense of being a nation and they have no democratic history nor is their tradition to imitate the West very ****ounced. In fact, both are open for the present surge of Islamism, which wants exactly the opposite. Both societies are more or less artificial Imperial contructs with ample reason for internal strife and both are also well armed and used to violence (which in the case of Iraq was by no means started by Saddam). Iraq has oil resources that might promise prosperity, but the oil fields are not evenly distributed among the various ethnic groups. Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, does not even possess oil or larger supplies of other raw materials.

In short: neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is anything like Germany or Japan. To think that was a mistake by the present US administration.





These xamples are not very convincing. The glorious and often quoted British defeat of the insurgency in Malaysia? The problem here is that the British only fought against an uprising of the Chinese minority in that country and besides that, had declared beforehand that they would grant independency and leave once they had done so. So, in a way their so called victory was more of a face saving measure.
And Vietnam? Great example. That was a debacle if I remember it correctly, was it not?





Since you insist to learn out of history, let me point out that history shows that the majority of the counterinsurgency campaigns after WWII failed. Many of them did so actually in a quite miserable way.

Umm.... so the British defeating a Chinese minority insurgency and then promising to leave after, is different from defeating a Sunni minority insurgency and promising to leave after, how?

You certainly don't know any history about Vietnam. It wasn't a debacle, it was a GIFT from the good ole Democratic Party to the Government of North Vietnam. You see, the Viet Cong was in fact defeated by 1970 and was no longer a major player. By then most major combat ops were against NVA regulars. The ARVN successfully beat back an NVA spring offensive in 1972 with only US adviser support and some air support, major US combat forces being gone by then. The failure of the '72 Spring Offensive such a disaster for the North that General Giap was fired over it.

Note that from 1972 to the fall of Saigon was 3 years. What happened in the intervening period? After the Paris Accords of '73, the country was at peace, no? What happened is the Dems had a veto proof majority in the congress and passed first a law preventing the President from ordering military action against the North, then in the final betrayal that they would REALLY like to see stay in the memory hole, they cut off all aid funding to the Gov't of South Vietnam. This while the Soviets boosted their funding of the North in violation of the Paris Accords.

The North launched it final offensive in the new year of '75 confident that nobody would come to the aid of the South, which simply ran out of ammo and food for its military.

A quarter million S Vietnamese died on the high seas thanks to the McGovernites.

This is the legacy that you are wishing on Iraq, because you think they are too backward and stupid to govern themselves.

[nahimov]

The sooner US leaves the sooner violence will end. Yes there will be a surge of violence at first just like in Vietnam but after that things should stabilize one way or the other. Staying in Iraq just ensures that there is no winner and the fighting will continue on until US eventually leaves anyway.

[Dakota435]

The sooner US leaves the sooner violence will end. Yes there will be a surge of violence at first just like in Vietnam but after that things should stabilize one way or the other. Staying in Iraq just ensures that there is no winner and the fighting will continue on until US eventually leaves anyway.

So if it stabilizes into another terrorist state you'll be happy with that?

[nahimov]

So if it stabilizes into another terrorist state you'll be happy with that?

It would be up to Iraqies to decide what it is going stabilize as. Back in 60s everyone was afraid of Communist Vietnam. So Vietnam became communist, so what? It still is, and it's a very good trading partner.

[Dakota435]

It would be up to Iraqies to decide what it is going stabilize as. Back in 60s everyone was afraid of Communist Vietnam. So Vietnam became communist, so what? It still is, and it's a very good trading partner.

Yup, that the modern anti war movement... so caring about others.

[nahimov]

Yup, that the modern anti war movement... so caring about others.

I'm not part of any organization or movement or party (guess putting labels on me wins the argument in your mind).
For once I would like US government to be pragmatic and not patriotic/ideological. I think less Iraqis would die if US leaves right now than if we stay. Right now it is very obvious (well maybe not to you) that US will leave Iraq sooner or later without making Iraq stable. It is obvious, because Americans don't want to continue to fight there and the next president will withdraw or he/she simply will not get elected. Bush had his chance and blew it, no one is going to give him or his war a second one. Given that, it is obvious that leaving right now will be the best most pragmatic decision. But Bush anything but pragmatic.

[ElHombre]

Lost? When did that happen? The US Army surrendered recently? Are you in this solar system or some other one?

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious to you: This is a guerilla war. If the US isn't winning, it's losing. If the insurgency isn't losing, it's winning.

The US isn't winning and the insurgency isn't losing. No amount of 'natural optimism' is going to change that basic fact.

[Dakota435]

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious to you: This is a guerilla war. If the US isn't winning, it's losing. If the insurgency isn't losing, it's winning.

The US isn't winning and the insurgency isn't losing. No amount of 'natural optimism' is going to change that basic fact.

That is total nonsense.

So what is the defining moment when you know you are beat? How did you come to decide what is the defining moment?

As a natural pessimist, your first instinct is to run away in the face of difficulty. That's the guaranteed road to failure for sure.

Aren't you just a little embarrassed to have the psycho jihadis are on YOUR side?

[Dakota435]

I'm not part of any organization or movement or party (guess putting labels on me wins the argument in your mind).
For once I would like US government to be pragmatic and not patriotic/ideological. I think less Iraqis would die if US leaves right now than if we stay. Right now it is very obvious (well maybe not to you) that US will leave Iraq sooner or later without making Iraq stable. It is obvious, because Americans don't want to continue to fight there and the next president will withdraw or he/she simply will not get elected. Bush had his chance and blew it, no one is going to give him or his war a second one. Given that, it is obvious that leaving right now will be the best most pragmatic decision. But Bush anything but pragmatic.

All the same, you want to do the "pragmatic" thing, run away, and don't give a rats ass about the victims of that policy.

[Skullknight]

I've been a pessimist about this war since its beginning. You can check my old posts for proof of that. I've been following the war about as closely as anyone could for the last 4 years, and now I finally feel like we're starting to see some progress. Nationwide deaths have declined about 25% in the last two months compared to the two months prior. On Friday only 20 civilians were killed in Iraq, for Thursday I can't find the numbers, on Wednesday it was 28, on Tuesday 52, and on Monday 25. Security is being established in a few key Sunni cities. If we can get monthly deaths below 1,000, I think it will give the Iraqi government a little room to breathe.

The US is certainly paying a price for the slightly increased security. April is going to be a deadly month with probably over 100 soldiers killed. We've still got about 10,000 troops coming in by June, so I'm hoping we'll continue to see gradual progress until the American military is forced to withdraw for political purposes. The presence of death squads, who were killing almost a hundred people a day at their peak, has shown that if we pull out the situation in Iraq will be Rwanda 2 with the mixed Sunni-Shia areas becoming killing fields--and there are about 10 million Iraqis living in these mixed areas. But I don't think there will be any Kurdish-Arab ethnic cleansing.

[ElHombre]

So what is the defining moment when you know you are beat? How did you come to decide what is the defining moment?

As a natural pessimist, your first instinct is to run away in the face of difficulty. That's the guaranteed road to failure for sure.

Aren't you just a little embarrassed to have the psycho jihadis are on YOUR side?

Finished? Then let's all look at this from a point of cold calculation instead of your immature railings ('natural optimism'?) for a while. The cliche is 'amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics'. The Iraqis are waging a bloody struggle for control of Iraq. If the US wants this stoped, it's going to need the hundreds of thousands of troops (an idea dismissed from the start by the admin) to secure the country. Those troops are not there. Never have been, never will be. The 'surge' is just a gimmick whose purpose is to put off a little longer (specifically, January of 2009) the responsibility of our country's leaders to admit their failure. This was pointed out from the start of the war by a wide ranging series of folks who noted that the admin's ideas of how this war would be fought were detached from reality to a point that redefines 'murderously incompetent'. As the joke goes, 'I'm not saying the Bush admin doesn't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if they were on the other side.'

Then there's the whole idea of forcing democracy at the point of a bayonet. This brought another group of experts out warning that the Bush admin approach wasn't going to work. As I saw posted, the idea that people could be pulled into a democracy was a farce from the start. They have to walk into it on their own. As it is, Iraq's system (set into place by the Bush plan) is causing Iraq to split further as each group tries to use its voting bloc into amassing greater power for its own. As one nation-building expert said, voting is actually the last thing you put into place. Before that, there has to be a Bill of Rights agreed to by all parties. Instead, Sistani blackmailed the admin (in short, 'give us elections now or I let the Shia riot'. The admin was in no position to argue) into holding early elections which is cementing Shiite control of Iraq.

[Dakota435]

Finished? Then let's all look at this from a point of cold calculation instead of your immature railings ('natural optimism'?) for a while. The cliche is 'amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics'. The Iraqis are waging a bloody struggle for control of Iraq. If the US wants this stoped, it's going to need the hundreds of thousands of troops (an idea dismissed from the start by the admin) to secure the country. Those troops are not there. Never have been, never will be. The 'surge' is just a gimmick whose purpose is to put off a little longer (specifically, January of 2009) the responsibility of our country's leaders to admit their failure. This was pointed out from the start of the war by a wide ranging series of folks who noted that the admin's ideas of how this war would be fought were detached from reality to a point that redefines 'murderously incompetent'. As the joke goes, 'I'm not saying the Bush admin doesn't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if they were on the other side.'

Then there's the whole idea of forcing democracy at the point of a bayonet. This brought another group of experts out warning that the Bush admin approach wasn't going to work. As I saw posted, the idea that people could be pulled into a democracy was a farce from the start. They have to walk into it on their own. As it is, Iraq's system (set into place by the Bush plan) is causing Iraq to split further as each group tries to use its voting bloc into amassing greater power for its own. As one nation-building expert said, voting is actually the last thing you put into place. Before that, there has to be a Bill of Rights agreed to by all parties. Instead, Sistani blackmailed the admin (in short, 'give us elections now or I let the Shia riot'. The admin was in no position to argue) into holding early elections which is cementing Shiite control of Iraq.

What utter rubbish.

Shiite control of Iraq is inevitable, since the Sunni Arabs are only 15% of the population, and the Kurds are content with their enclave. How could it be otherwise?

What's this imposing democracy at the point of a bayonet BS? The bayonet was used to remove the psychopath that you'd prefer to have seen stay in place. The bayonet is now being used to protect the majority that do want a normal life.

Anyway, root for the jihadis bud if you want to. I'm sure you'll cheer when the slaughter starts if the US pulls out.

[ElHombre]

Shiite control of Iraq is inevitable, since the Sunni Arabs are only 15% of the population, and the Kurds are content with their enclave. How could it be otherwise?

Of course, that would leave Iran with a friendly client-state on its border. Exactly how this would help the US security situation isn't known. Nor are the Kurds 'content' with their enclave. They want oil-rich Kirkuk. The Shia and Sunni are saying 'forget it'.


The bayonet is now being used to protect the majority that do want a normal life.

Forgetting the sectarian militias, aren't you? Is there a particular reason for that?


Anyway, root for the jihadis bud if you want to. I'm sure you'll cheer when the slaughter starts if the US pulls out.

Hardly, but unless you been told how this 'surge' is supposed to work when all the previous identical attempts have failed, feel free to inform the rest of the country.


Aren't you just a little embarrassed to have the psycho jihadis are on YOUR side?

Which group are you referring to? The insurgents? Al-Qaeda? You always lump several different groups together into one category. It's a fault that decreases your chance of actually making rational decisions in a critical manner.

[Argyll]

Dakota435....you're blinded by a lot of ignorance, have you ever been to Iraq and seen the state of the place for yourself?

[Dakota435]

Dakota435....you're blinded by a lot of ignorance, have you ever been to Iraq and seen the state of the place for yourself?

Don't be ridiculous. I know perfectly well that in many ways it's a mess. But that doesn't mean you abandon the place to the psychos and run away.

Do you want the US to fail?

[nahimov]

Don't be ridiculous. I know perfectly well that in many ways it's a mess. But that doesn't mean you abandon the place to the psychos and run away.

Do you want the US to fail?

:) And I thought you worried about poor Iraqis. That last sentence speaks volumes. You don't care about Iraqis, you just want US to win. Otherwise US is a loser and that is bad. Just like in kindergarten. Sometimes when you lose you can actually win. By "losing" in Iraq US government will now think twice before getting us into another mess and that will probably save a lot of lives.

[Dakota435]

:) And I thought you worried about poor Iraqis. That last sentence speaks volumes. You don't care about Iraqis, you just want US to win. Otherwise US is a loser and that is bad. Just like in kindergarten. Sometimes when you lose you can actually win. By "losing" in Iraq US government will now think twice before getting us into another mess and that will probably save a lot of lives.


Oh geeeezzz.....

A US failure will be a disaster for Iraqis and for the ME in general and ulitmately for the world because of the long term fallout. Therefore I want the US to succeed. You want the US to fail because of the satisfaction of seeing the US failing. You are completely ok with a disaster for Iraqis if that is the result, as you have already stated. This is very childish.

[Argyll]

Don't be ridiculous. I know perfectly well that in many ways it's a mess. But that doesn't mean you abandon the place to the psychos and run away.

Do you want the US to fail?


Sorry, I didn't realise that the US was the ONLY country involved in Iraq......my bad!!:roll:

[Dakota435]

Sorry, I didn't realise that the US was the ONLY country involved in Iraq......my bad!!:roll:

Thanks for the correction. Do you want the "coalition" to fail?

Question stands. Answer it please.

[name already taken]

OK:

Thanks for the correction. Do you want the "coalition" to fail?

Question stands. Answer it please.
Question:

Don't be ridiculous. I know perfectly well that in many ways it's a mess. But that doesn't mean you abandon the place to the psychos and run away.

Do you want the US to fail?
Answer:

Dakota435....you're blinded by a lot of ignorance, have you ever been to Iraq and seen the state of the place for yourself?
Any other topic ?

[Dakota435]

OK:

Question:

Answer:

Any other topic ?

Why don't YOU answer the question instead of more stupidity.

[name already taken]

Why don't YOU answer the question instead of more stupidity.
Because it's already (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2435372&postcount=35) answered.

[Dakota435]

Because it's already (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2435372&postcount=35) answered.

No it's not. I asked do you WANT them to fail, not where they have failed according to someone's opinion. Will you be satisfied by failure? Does it make you happy?

You won't answer that. You will dance around it until the cows come home same as the other lefties, because the cognitive dissonance is too much to face.

[name already taken]

No it's not. I asked do you WANT them to fail, not where they have failed according to someone's opinion. Will you be satisfied by failure? Does it make you happy?

You won't answer that. You will dance around it until the cows come home same as the other lefties, because the cognitive dissonance is too much to face.
Answer:

Dakota435....you're blinded by a lot of ignorance, have you ever been to Iraq and seen the state of the place for yourself?
Argyll answered better than I could ever do. It's not my fault.

[Firetxmi]

"Do you want to fail?" "Does it make you happy?" "Do you like that the terrorists root for your side?"

I see how you like to call everyone who's opinion you disagree with a "leftist" or a "lefty." Does that black and white thinking serve you well? Could a person who leans to the right be against the war?

On a side note, how many good friends, or God forbid family members, have you lost in this war that you throw all your unquestioning support into?

[Argyll]

Off course I don't otherwise I'll have wasted 3 years of my life in that country........The Iraqi people deserve this more than anyone, it's not about the US, it's about the Iraqi people, they have to chose their paths, the Coalition are there to assist, but by no means and end to justify the means.

What is winning?........An Insurgency that has not been defeated, or has not surrendered cannot be classed as a win, the insurgency has grown stronger and experienced and become more sophisticated over the past 3 years which really doesn't spell success either.

[nahimov]

Oh geeeezzz.....

A US failure will be a disaster for Iraqis and for the ME in general and ulitmately for the world because of the long term fallout. Therefore I want the US to succeed. You want the US to fail because of the satisfaction of seeing the US failing. You are completely ok with a disaster for Iraqis if that is the result, as you have already stated. This is very childish.

I don't want US to fail just to see US fail. I want US out of Iraq so that Iraqi people can decide and build their own country plus I don't want to pay for it anymore. It was wrong in first place to try and dictate how other countries should be run.
I don't belive in doomsday predictions if we leave Iraq. Same predictions were made before US left Vietnam and so what?

[Dakota435]

Off course I don't otherwise I'll have wasted 3 years of my life in that country........The Iraqi people deserve this more than anyone, it's not about the US, it's about the Iraqi people, they have to chose their paths, the Coalition are there to assist, but by no means and end to justify the means.

What is winning?........An Insurgency that has not been defeated, or has not surrendered cannot be classed as a win, the insurgency has grown stronger and experienced and become more sophisticated over the past 3 years which really doesn't spell success either.

Thanks for giving a reasoned answer. Those other guys won't because they really are hoping for failure just so they can see Bush look bad. Were you there as a civilian or are you a combat vet?

Isn't it fair to say that success will come when the Iraqi military can do all the heavy lifting without major help and there is little risk of the insurgency bringing down the government without major coalition combat support? How long will that take? I've been saying from the start that it will take 5-10 years to stabilize Iraq. I seem to remember Joe Biden saying something similar in 2002.

Winning for the insurgency is not the status quo. That's BS. The status quo is stalemate for both sides. Winning for the insurgency means a collapse of the Iraqi government and army. That cannot be done while the coalition is there.

Insurgencies have been defeated numerous times in the past, when the opposing force has staying power. Therefore, the insurgency's, Iran's and Al Qaeda's PRIMARY strategic objective is to get the coalition to leave. The campaign they are running is a media campaign in large part. Their primary DE FACTO allies outside or Iraq are the abandonment crowd, media like CNN, and from the looks of things, the Democrats. They have the same objectives, to get the coalition to leave. When the coalition leaves, the REAL bloodshed can start and the abandonment crowd will be happy and can say "I told you so".

I don't expect Iraq to turn into an Arab version of Western Europe, but surely a free Iraq with all of its problems with corruption and internal squabbling is better than dictatorship under a murderous psychopath. The Kurds are building a prosperous society up north after being screwed by the US twice. They are terrified of a pullout. Don't they deserve to be protected?

[Dakota435]

I don't want US to fail just to see US fail. I want US out of Iraq so that Iraqi people can decide and build their own country plus I don't want to pay for it anymore. It was wrong in first place to try and dictate how other countries should be run.
I don't belive in doomsday predictions if we leave Iraq. Same predictions were made before US left Vietnam and so what?

A quarter million dead fleeing South Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands sent to concentration camps. You know absolutely no history do you.

[name already taken]

A quarter million dead fleeing South Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands sent to concentration camps. You know absolutely no history do you.
And no more dead GIs.

[Dakota435]

And no more dead GIs.

You don't know the history any better... sheesh

The GIs were OUT by '72. Saigon fell 3 years later because of a POLITICAL betrayal by the Dem party in '74, when they cut off aid. I work with a victim of that betrayal who found himself in Canada in '79.

Why are many Americans so freaking clueless about their own recent history?

[Argyll]

What you all need to remember is that as well as 3000 plus US personnel have given their lives for Iraq, the Iraqi's in uniform, themselves have given 10 times this amount.

[Dakota435]

What you all need to remember is that as well as 3000 plus US personnel have given their lives for Iraq, the Iraqi's in uniform, themselves have given 10 times this amount.

Which is why I am so against just bailing out. What a way to spit on their sacrifice.

[Noble713]

Let me start by saying that I have virtually no concern for the plight of the Iraqi population. My sole interest is the maintenance (or, better yet, expansion) of American power, and to a lesser extent that of the English-speaking world as a whole. If I have to make a choice between creating shaky, unstable, chaotic democracies or embracing brutal but organized regimes (*cough* China *cough), I'll take the brutal regimes most of the time. Stability is good for business. Instability...isn't. War is a business too. You make an investment in resources with the expectation of a positive return (or, at the very least, the smallest negative return). If it becomes apparent that you stand to lose more by continuing operations then you terminate them, figure out where you went wrong, and ensure you don't repeat those mistakes next time.

Now, let's take a look at the options the US has for coming out of the Iraq situation:


Economically:
So far the war has cost us ~$500 billion, or about $125 billion a year. To recoupe this investment, US-held assets and exports to Iraq would need to amount to tens of billions of dollars annually for at least 10 years. What is there in Iraq of value?

Oil: The oil infrastructure is in terrible shape, requiring billions of dollars of additional investment to reach worthwhile output levels. While we could make some good money exporting and installing this equipment, where would the Iraqi government get the money to buy that stuff? From the US of course, so we would basically be taking money out of one pocket and putting it in the other. If US corporations were able to weasel their way into holding majority positions on the Iraqi oil fields, we might see a healthy return, but the probably of that happening is virtually nil.

Agriculture: This is the fertile cresent, right? Again requires heavy investment to reach US-levels of productivity. Either way, it is likely to have a far slimmer profit margin than oil, and the magnitute of this sector of the economy isn't large enough for quantity to make up the difference.

Tourism: Lots of historical sites to visit. They could rebuild the Hanging Gardens too. I'm thinking a Middle Eastern version of Las Vegas....but without the booze, hookers, gambling....or really anything of interest outside crumbling ruins, palm trees, and weird Middle Eastern music. Ok scratch that.

Manufacturing: Manufacturing plants eat up great gobs of electricity, and we all know the state of the Iraqi power grid. Also, most of the educated Iraqis have either been killed or fled the country. Definitely not a skilled labor force anymore, and they probably cost more than the Chinese anyway.

Export Market for US goods: I seriously doubt the Iraqi people are eager to buy US consumer products other than McDonald's and Coca-Cola, which aren't going to reel in billions on their own.

Bottom Line: We have virtually no chance of getting a positive return on our investment within a predictable timeframe (I'm thinking 10-15 years, hard to predict stuff beyond that). So there are no economic incentives to stay.


Militarily:
Every day we get new articles about how the Army is reaching the breaking point. Worn out equipment, lower troop quality as we try to bulk up our numbers as quickly as possible, etc... It's pretty obvious that these wouldn't be issues if we weren't trying to maintain 150,000 troops in a warzone. The extended COIN ops are also giving our enemies more time to learn, adapt, and develop counters to our methods of warfighting. That's never a good thing.

On the flip side, the conflict has spawned/accelerated the development of some really nifty pieces of kit (UAVs, new medkits, CROWS, Strykers, new body armor, MRAVs, etc.). Also, we are gaining valuable experience at all levels of the Army.

Bottom Line: The services could definitely benefit from a breather. Take a step back to get the Army and Marines back into fighting shape (i.e. equipment reset) and fully absorb all those nifty lessons learned. Take all those garbage soldiers (criminals, fatbodies, etc.) and turn them into something that is worth a damn (training, training, and more training!). Almost no military gains to be made by staying.


Diplomatically:
This one is more complex. I guess the fundamental question is "How do we keep our enemies in check so the region stays peaceful and we keep getting rich?"

The only country that is in a position to "rock the boat" is Iran. With Saddam gone there is no longer a counter-balance to their power, so how do we re-establish one?

1. Turn Iraq into Iran's great antagonist again. Considering the Shia majority now holds sway over most of the country, and taking into account the level of Iranian infiltration/influence, this just isn't going to happen. The Sunnis, the only people who could maintain such a hostile stance, hate our guts for ruining the nice little gig they were running. Even if we did find some Sunnis to take over, we'd then have to overthrow or otherwise undermine the present Shia government and suppress any dissent from the vast majority of the country's population. Given our current (lack of) success in such matters, such a scheme is unlikely to work.

OR

2. Let Iraq develop into a functioning democracy. Hope that they'll like us more than the Iranians. After all, we gave them FREEDOM! Nevermind that most of them regard us as the Great Satan, or hate our guts for getting their relatives killed.

Bottom Line: No amount of @$$-kissing, cajoling, or skullduggery is going to pry the Iraqis away from the Iranians and put them firmly in our camp. Iran will remain a virtually-unchecked antagonist of the US in the region whether we stay in Iraq or not.


So, Dakota435, in light of all that I've said above, please explain to me how the US *loses* by terminating the Iraq Project?

[Noble713]

Which is why I am so against just bailing out. What a way to spit on their sacrifice.

Is it better to sacrifice 5,000 or 50,000? Where is the cut-off point? Can we lose 10 and still go home?

This "dishonoring their memories" argument always reminds me of a gambling addict, desperately trying to win back his losses by throwing even more money into the pot and hoping he hits it big. Instead of losing $50, they find themselves sitting on the street with no money, no cell phone, no watch, etc... Anyone with some sense would have told him to leave long before then.

[name already taken]

Is it better to sacrifice 5,000 or 50,000? Where is the cut-off point? Can we lose 10 and still go home?

This "dishonoring their memories" argument always reminds me of a gambling addict, desperately trying to win back his losses by throwing even more money into the pot and hoping he hits it big. Instead of losing $50, they find themselves sitting on the street with no money, no cell phone, no watch, etc... Anyone with some sense would have told him to leave long before then.
That would certainly be better than the strategy of proclaiming "Were the Best !"

Or in the case of the gambler: "I'm Lucky !"

[Dakota435]

Is it better to sacrifice 5,000 or 50,000? Where is the cut-off point? Can we lose 10 and still go home?

This "dishonoring their memories" argument always reminds me of a gambling addict, desperately trying to win back his losses by throwing even more money into the pot and hoping he hits it big. Instead of losing $50, they find themselves sitting on the street with no money, no cell phone, no watch, etc... Anyone with some sense would have told him to leave long before then.

What a dopey analogy. Yeah, wars are just like casinos.

The reason it dishonors their memories is bailing out now is leaving a job unfinished, and 20 million Iraqis left to fend for themselves with Al Qaeda triumphant. Ah yes, if the coalition leaves, Al Qaeda will just pack up and go home to watch tv. Yes that makes perfect sense on planet Pelosi.

Counterinsurgency campaigns take 5-10 years. The military is meeting enlistment targets, retention is good, and desertion rates are below peacetime levels. It's a volunteer army. Why don't you let the soldiers themselves decide when it's done. They'll tell you by not re-upping or joining in the first place.

[name already taken]

Is it better to sacrifice 5,000 or 50,000? Where is the cut-off point? Can we lose 10 and still go home?

This "dishonoring their memories" argument always reminds me of a gambling addict, desperately trying to win back his losses by throwing even more money into the pot and hoping he hits it big. Instead of losing $50, they find themselves sitting on the street with no money, no cell phone, no watch, etc... Anyone with some sense would have told him to leave long before then.
You didn't tell me you work for Pelosi, did you ?

[Noble713]

What a dopey analogy. Yeah, wars are just like casinos.

The reason it dishonors their memories is bailing out now is leaving a job unfinished, and 20 million Iraqis left to fend for themselves with Al Qaeda triumphant. Ah yes, if the coalition leaves, Al Qaeda will just pack up and go home to watch tv. Yes that makes perfect sense on planet Pelosi.

As I said before, the plight of the Iraqis doesn't really concern me. Of course Al Qaeda isn't going to leave, nor did I ever suggest that they would. They will, however, be spending a good amount of their time trying to not get killed by the locals, who are largely getting fed up with their heavy-handed methods. And who cares what that crackpot Pelosi thinks? Why did you even bring her into the discussion?

You seem to have brushed over the crux of my casino analogy, possibly due to the assumption that "sticking it out" will inevitably lead to success...much like a gambling addict. What data is there to suggest that this is the case? Sure, there has been a slight dip in murders in Baghdad, but that level of security requires a force disposition that is unsustainable in the long run. (CBO document (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4706&sequence=0)) You do know that the insurgents are financially self-sustaining (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/26/africa/web.1026insurgency.php), right? So just waiting for them to go broke or run out of steam isn't an option.



Counterinsurgency campaigns take 5-10 years.

And can you list the successfully concluded COIN ops fought post-WWII, utilizing the "gloves on" approach the US is saddled with today? It would be interesting to see what the historical success rate has been (pretty poor, I'm guessing).


The military is meeting enlistment targets, retention is good, and desertion rates are below peacetime levels. It's a volunteer army. Why don't you let the soldiers themselves decide when it's done. They'll tell you by not re-upping or joining in the first place.

Ok, fair enough. *gets up and looks in the mirror*
"Hey Noble713, when do you think this was done?"
"Well Noble713, I'd say it was done 3 1/2 years ago after we kicked over their sand castle. We could have laughed in their collective faces and gone home, leaving them and their neighbors to pick up the pieces, and bad guys the world over quaking in their boots at the thought of a big bad US Army/Marine force coming to kick over their tin-pot regime and then going home in the space of a few months."

Gee, that was a real productive exercise. :roll: FYI, I re-enlisted in September for 6 years. Whether or not I enjoy my job has little bearing on whether I think it is strategically sound for the US to sit around in Iraq indefinitely.


Are you going to respond to all the issues that I brought up in my previous large post? Do you have any logical, substantive arguments of your own or are you just going to parrot the White House's press statements? What does the United States and its citizens have to gain by burning up our resources trying to teach the Iraqis how to not make their country suck?

[nahimov]

"Hey Noble713, when do you think this was done?"
"Well Noble713, I'd say it was done 3 1/2 years ago after we kicked over their sand castle. We could have laughed in their collective faces and gone home, leaving them and their neighbors to pick up the pieces, and bad guys the world over quaking in their boots at the thought of a big bad US Army/Marine force coming to kick over their tin-pot regime and then going home in the space of a few months."

Gee, that was a real productive exercise. :roll:

I loled :D :D

[name already taken]

As I said before, the plight of the Iraqis doesn't really concern me. Of course Al Qaeda isn't going to leave, nor did I ever suggest that they would. They will, however, be spending a good amount of their time trying to not get killed by the locals, who are largely getting fed up with their heavy-handed methods. And who cares what that crackpot Pelosi thinks? Why did you even bring her into the discussion?

You seem to have brushed over the crux of my casino analogy, possibly due to the assumption that "sticking it out" will inevitably lead to success...much like a gambling addict. What data is there to suggest that this is the case? Sure, there has been a slight dip in murders in Baghdad, but that level of security requires a force disposition that is unsustainable in the long run. (CBO document (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4706&sequence=0)) You do know that the insurgents are financially self-sustaining (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/26/africa/web.1026insurgency.php), right? So just waiting for them to go broke or run out of steam isn't an option.



And can you list the successfully concluded COIN ops fought post-WWII, utilizing the "gloves on" approach the US is saddled with today? It would be interesting to see what the historical success rate has been (pretty poor, I'm guessing).



Ok, fair enough. *gets up and looks in the mirror*
"Hey Noble713, when do you think this was done?"
"Well Noble713, I'd say it was done 3 1/2 years ago after we kicked over their sand castle. We could have laughed in their collective faces and gone home, leaving them and their neighbors to pick up the pieces, and bad guys the world over quaking in their boots at the thought of a big bad US Army/Marine force coming to kick over their tin-pot regime and then going home in the space of a few months."

Gee, that was a real productive exercise. :roll: FYI, I re-enlisted in September for 6 years. Whether or not I enjoy my job has little bearing on whether I think it is strategically sound for the US to sit around in Iraq indefinitely.


Are you going to respond to all the issues that I brought up in my previous large post? Do you have any logical, substantive arguments of your own or are you just going to parrot the White House's press statements? What does the United States and its citizens have to gain by burning up our resources trying to teach the Iraqis how to not make their country suck?
I'm so glad you don't work for Pelosi :grin:

[Firetxmi]

Which is why I am so against just bailing out. What a way to spit on their sacrifice.

So since you care about what the Iraqis want and their sacrifice, if they (the government and the people) asked us to leave then we should oblige?

[Dakota435]

So since you care about what the Iraqis want and their sacrifice, if they (the government and the people) asked us to leave then we should oblige?

If they did, yes. The opinion polls done over there show that most shiites want the US to leave, but only after their security forces can get by without major help. Shiite politicians have been asking the Dems "Are you out of your farkin' minds?" over the Dems' premature abandonment policy.

And now ironically, a majority of the Sunnis want the US to stay until Al Qaeda is reduced. The majority of the tribes in Anbar have switched sides and are now siding with gov't/US forces.

The Kurds overwhelmingly want the US to stay permanently a la S Korea. If there is a US pullout the Kurds will be begging for US bases to be set up in Kurdistan.

Do you believe the fiction that a majority of Iraqis want the US out now?

[Firetxmi]

Do you believe the fiction that a majority of Iraqis want the US out now?

Well, I haven't seen these polls that you cite. Care to link to them, I'd be interested.


How are the Iraqi troops going to be able to take over? What is your theory on how to expedite this process? As far as I can see right now we are enabling their inadequacies by picking up where they leave off. We need to put a little fire under their feet to motivate them to pick it up a notch, no?

[Atlantic Friend]

I took almost 10 years to stabilize Japan and Germany.

Not for Germany, it didn't. It was decided to let Germany rearm as soon as 1949. In terms of insurgency, Iraq is not comparable to post-WW2 Germany either. The Germans of 1945 were not embarked in a campaign against Western democracies, they did not kill 3,000 of Western troops in 4 years, and did not wage a war against their own population. No German city had to be retaken forcefully by Western troops the way Fallujah was, Berlin was not rocked by daily attacks killing dozens to hundreds, and Germany did not lose tens of thousands of citizens in a bitter civil war.

[XASA]

Not for Germany, it didn't. It was decided to let Germany rearm as soon as 1949. In terms of insurgency, Iraq is not comparable to post-WW2 Germany either. The Germans of 1945 were not embarked in a campaign against Western democracies, they did not kill 3,000 of Western troops in 4 years, and did not wage a war against their own population. No German city had to be retaken forcefully by Western troops the way Fallujah was, Berlin was not rocked by daily attacks killing dozens to hundreds, and Germany did not lose tens of thousands of citizens in a bitter civil war.

Ditto for Japan with the exception of rearming.

Generalizations from the far Right are par for the course when they are confronted with facts; i.e., the "stab in the back" generalization that the Vietnam War was lost because of the Democratic Party when, in actuality, Americans of both political parties had turned against the war after it became obvious it was a futile exercise. Conservatives conviently fail to acknowledge that the Vietnamese people waged successful wars of independence against the Chinese, French and Americans throughout their history. Despite claims that our withdrawal would lead to the "Domino Theory" and the fall of the Far East to the Communists, we now know that all the Vietnamese wanted was a unified country without any foreign interference.

If conservatives want to compare Vietnam to Iraq, they should bring up the facts that by 1971, when Vietnamization began, the U.S. military was demoralized, racially conflicted, devastated by drugs and fragging their own officers and NCOs. They should also realize that we couldn't stop the flow of men and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail despite dropping more bombs on it than we did on both Japan and Germany in WWII. Plus, the endemic corruption of the South Vietnamese establishment didn't help the situation. Although Vietnam was a "no win situation," I would like to think we didn't lose in Vietnam, but that we withdrew after bringing the South Vietnamese up to speed (sounds familar doesn't it).

[Atlantic Friend]

Generalizations from the far Right are par for the course when they are confronted with facts; i.e., the "stab in the back" generalization that the Vietnam War was lost because of the Democratic Party when, in actuality, Americans of both political parties had turned against the war after it became obvious it was a futile exercise.

That's true. But "stabs in the back" theories, as has been amply proven in History, allow their proponents to conveniently sidestep the issue of the goals and strategies pursued by their idols, and focus on blaming their opponents for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory".


Conservatives conviently fail to acknowledge that the Vietnamese people waged successful wars of independence against the Chinese, French and Americans throughout their history.

To be fair - and I say this as a Conservative myself - the tendency to disregard facts that do not fit the political agenda is widely used across every possible political, social, or religious fence.


Despite claims that our withdrawal would lead to the "Domino Theory" and the fall of the Far East to the Communists, we now know that all the Vietnamese wanted was a unified country without any foreign interference.

Americans had the advantage here - at least you had some theory. France's Indochinese War was sadly lacking in terms of coherent war goals.


If conservatives want to compare Vietnam to Iraq, they should bring up the facts that by 1971, when Vietnamization began, the U.S. military was demoralized, racially conflicted, devastated by drugs and fragging their own officers and NCOs.

Some would say the incidents involving Muslim US soldiers belonged to the same dynamic.


They should also realize that we couldn't stop the flow of men and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail despite dropping more bombs on it than we did on both Japan and Germany in WWII. Although Vietnam was a "no win situation," I would like to think we didn't lose in Vietnam, but that we withdrew after bringing the South Vietnamese up to speed (sounds familar doesn't it).

That's the part where, as French PM Georges Clémenceau said during WW1, War is too serious a thing to be run by the military. Neither you nor us had given much thought about what kind of victory we wanted in Vietnam - instead, we focused on more efficient means to wage the war, and we found them aplenty : fortified lines, sensors, mobile battle groups, search and destroy operations, helicopters, napalm... But none of these pretty trappings mean much if in the end we can't even say why this war is so important, and what we try to achieve here.

Now, to be fair with American Conservatives, and also their zealous Neoconservative cousins, they HAD a plan. That is part of what they are being blamed for, after all. When war opponent say the neocons or the Administration had the PNAC plan and were just looking for ways to implement it, they can't AT THE SAME TIME blame the Administration for not knowing where they are going.

From this man's outside point of view, the current problem is that the initial plan was largely build on faith instead on facts, and that nobody wants to assume the fact the plan has to change - and to change drastically. No rose petals on the way to Baghdad, no insurgency on its last throes, no Middle-Eastern blossoming from Arab country to Arab country, are simply waiting round the corner, ready to be picked by a Coalition which would only have to "stay the course" a little longer.

The ME will never be the same after Operation Iraqi Freedom - or more frighteningly, it will only be MORE of the same. And there will be a price to pay for that. What also worries me, beyond the ME situation, is the impact OIF will have on the US and the Western world, just like Vietnam, to continue with this comparison, had a terrible impact on them. So it might not be Iraq itself which is in the balance here.

[Dakota435]

Well, I haven't seen these polls that you cite. Care to link to them, I'd be interested.


How are the Iraqi troops going to be able to take over? What is your theory on how to expedite this process? As far as I can see right now we are enabling their inadequacies by picking up where they leave off. We need to put a little fire under their feet to motivate them to pick it up a notch, no?

It was a poll I read about last year. I'll have to hunt around. Most polls simply ask if they support coalition troops yes or no, and naturally they say no because nobody likes somebody else's army around all the time. There was a poll however that asked "do you want them to leave now?" and most who weren't happy with troops there at the same time said they didn't want them to leave right away.

I agree that picking up after them too much is a problem and I sometimes wonder if maybe a deadline for departure would help light a fire under their asses. On the other hand, a deadline just gives Al Qaeda and the Baathists a hunker down date.

Iraqi troops are starting to take over. It's a painstaking process, only partly achieved. They can now field very good combat units. It takes a lot of patience. In Vietnam, Melvin Laird laid out the Vietnamization policy in '69 and by '72 it was relatively successful with the ARVN able to fend off the North on its own. Iraq is much more dysfunctional so it will take longer and you can't expect perfection.

Here's a sample of Kurdish feelings:

From Micheal Totten's weblog (he is an independent journalist). Scroll down to Apr 5 post. It's a long article where he interviews Peshmerga officials.


<“There is some talk in the United States of moving American troops out of Baghdad and the surrounding areas into Kurdistan instead,” I said. “What would you think if that’s what happens next year instead of withdrawing American troops to the United States?”

“The main strategy for us is to bring American troops to Kurdistan,” he said. “That what we want in the future.”

He opened the refrigerator next to his desk and pulled out a box of sweets that are specialties in Suleimaniya province. In the center is hard sap scraped off tree branches that was left there some kind of insect. Wrapped around the sap center is white nougat made hard and brittle from freezing. The hard-as-rock candy is then rolled in powdered sugar. It takes sharp teeth and serious jaw strength to bite into.

“What do you think will happen in Baghdad if American troops leave?” I said.

“We believe if the Americans withdraw from this country there will be many more problems,” he said. “The Sunni and Shia want total control of Iraq. We are going to get involved in that. Iran is going to be involved in that. Turkey is going to be involved in that. Syria is going to be involved in that. The Sunni and Shia fighting in Baghdad will pull us in. We are going to be involved. Turkey and Iran will make problems for us. It is not going to be safe. All the American martyrs will have died for nothing, and there will be more problems in the future. Americans should build big bases here.”>


We are argue the merits of strategy all day but the bottom line is, if a certain policy is enthusiastically supported by your worst enemies, that policy is probably not in your interest. I don't understand why the Dems are pushing a policy that has the rock solid support of Iran, the Baathists, and Al Qaeda.

I just think a pullout is premature. In a couple more years if things are still a mess I'll be prepared to support bailing out but with bases in Kurdistan, and accept the idea that Arabs really can't rule themselves. We just aren't there yet.

[Firetxmi]

It was a poll I read about last year.

A lot has happened in a year!

I think the Iraqis need a little encouragement, and maybe even fear, in order to take over for themselves. Ultimately they are going to be responsible for their own destinies. We cannot stay there until the end of time because of our own fear that the terrorists will take over. In the end, Iraq needs to take the reins, but as of right now they have no need to because they know that if things go wrong we are there to bail them out. If we tell them, "alright, thats it, you have X amount of time to get your shi*t together or else we are done helping you and you are on your own" then maybe they will think a little bit harder, and work a little bit harder to rid their government, military, and police of corruption, and terrorists. I think they need a little bit of tough love in order to get them to work harder. I am all for staying a little longer (with possibly a reduced amount of troops) if the Iraqis truly step up to the plate and start playing a larger role, as of right now we are just enabling the status quo.

[name already taken]

That's true. But "stabs in the back" theories, as has been amply proven in History, allow their proponents to conveniently sidestep the issue of the goals and strategies pursued by their idols, and focus on blaming their opponents for "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory".



To be fair - and I say this as a Conservative myself - the tendency to disregard facts that do not fit the political agenda is widely used across every possible political, social, or religious fence.



Americans had the advantage here - at least you had some theory. France's Indochinese War was sadly lacking in terms of coherent war goals.



Some would say the incidents involving Muslim US soldiers belonged to the same dynamic.



That's the part where, as French PM Georges Clémenceau said during WW1, War is too serious a thing to be run by the military. Neither you nor us had given much thought about what kind of victory we wanted in Vietnam - instead, we focused on more efficient means to wage the war, and we found them aplenty : fortified lines, sensors, mobile battle groups, search and destroy operations, helicopters, napalm... But none of these pretty trappings mean much if in the end we can't even say why this war is so important, and what we try to achieve here.

Now, to be fair with American Conservatives, and also their zealous Neoconservative cousins, they HAD a plan. That is part of what they are being blamed for, after all. When war opponent say the neocons or the Administration had the PNAC plan and were just looking for ways to implement it, they can't AT THE SAME TIME blame the Administration for not knowing where they are going.

From this man's outside point of view, the current problem is that the initial plan was largely build on faith instead on facts, and that nobody wants to assume the fact the plan has to change - and to change drastically. No rose petals on the way to Baghdad, no insurgency on its last throes, no Middle-Eastern blossoming from Arab country to Arab country, are simply waiting round the corner, ready to be picked by a Coalition which would only have to "stay the course" a little longer.

The ME will never be the same after Operation Iraqi Freedom - or more frighteningly, it will only be MORE of the same. And there will be a price to pay for that. What also worries me, beyond the ME situation, is the impact OIF will have on the US and the Western world, just like Vietnam, to continue with this comparison, had a terrible impact on them. So it might not be Iraq itself which is in the balance here.
Changing the PNAC into something credible might bring up the oil issue.

That might be dangerous for this administration. So it will probably extend NSA spying on americans (http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/23279res20051229.html) programs instead. This way they will be able to swiftboat everything that's not in their agenda.

And keep the oil issue safely hidden.

[Dakota435]

A lot has happened in a year!

I think the Iraqis need a little encouragement, and maybe even fear, in order to take over for themselves. Ultimately they are going to be responsible for their own destinies. We cannot stay there until the end of time because of our own fear that the terrorists will take over. In the end, Iraq needs to take the reins, but as of right now they have no need to because they know that if things go wrong we are there to bail them out. If we tell them, "alright, thats it, you have X amount of time to get your shi*t together or else we are done helping you and you are on your own" then maybe they will think a little bit harder, and work a little bit harder to rid their government, military, and police of corruption, and terrorists. I think they need a little bit of tough love in order to get them to work harder. I am all for staying a little longer (with possibly a reduced amount of troops) if the Iraqis truly step up to the plate and start playing a larger role, as of right now we are just enabling the status quo.

That's a reasonable argument. Perhaps we aren't so far apart on this one and it's mostly a debate over timing and how much an effort the Iraqis are doing. From what I read they are trying. In two years if things are the same as now I'll be arguing for a pullback to the Kurdish zone myself probably. If the Shia and Sunni prove in the end they can't get along or govern themselves, the Kurds can and deserve to be protected.

[ElHombre]

That's a reasonable argument. Perhaps we aren't so far apart on this one and it's mostly a debate over timing and how much an effort the Iraqis are doing. From what I read they are trying.

Better double-check your sources.

[/quote]In two years if things are the same as now I'll be arguing for a pullback to the Kurdish zone myself probably. If the Shia and Sunni prove in the end they can't get along or govern themselves, the Kurds can and deserve to be protected.[/QUOTE]

There's a problem with your proposal. Northern Iraq is land-locked. The only way to supply troops in that region would involve ground convoys travelling either through Turkey (which would come with all sorts of political and diplomatic preconditions), or through... the rest of Iraq with the convoys travelling even further through hostile country.

[Dakota435]

Better double-check your sources.

In two years if things are the same as now I'll be arguing for a pullback to the Kurdish zone myself probably. If the Shia and Sunni prove in the end they can't get along or govern themselves, the Kurds can and deserve to be protected.[/QUOTE]

There's a problem with your proposal. Northern Iraq is land-locked. The only way to supply troops in that region would involve ground convoys travelling either through Turkey (which would come with all sorts of political and diplomatic preconditions), or through... the rest of Iraq with the convoys travelling even further through hostile country.[/QUOTE]

I sure as hell don't depend on CNN or the nets.

I'm sure Turkey would go along if it meant a more stabilized border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Are you in Austin? I was just there.

[Dakota435]

A lot has happened in a year!

I think the Iraqis need a little encouragement, and maybe even fear, in order to take over for themselves. Ultimately they are going to be responsible for their own destinies. We cannot stay there until the end of time because of our own fear that the terrorists will take over. In the end, Iraq needs to take the reins, but as of right now they have no need to because they know that if things go wrong we are there to bail them out. If we tell them, "alright, thats it, you have X amount of time to get your shi*t together or else we are done helping you and you are on your own" then maybe they will think a little bit harder, and work a little bit harder to rid their government, military, and police of corruption, and terrorists. I think they need a little bit of tough love in order to get them to work harder. I am all for staying a little longer (with possibly a reduced amount of troops) if the Iraqis truly step up to the plate and start playing a larger role, as of right now we are just enabling the status quo.

Here's an example of successful counterinsurgency. The Sunnis in the west are turning on Al Qaeda:

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/136296.aspx

[nahimov]

If they did, yes. The opinion polls done over there show that most shiites want the US to leave, but only after their security forces can get by without major help. Shiite politicians have been asking the Dems "Are you out of your farkin' minds?" over the Dems' premature abandonment policy.

And now ironically, a majority of the Sunnis want the US to stay until Al Qaeda is reduced. The majority of the tribes in Anbar have switched sides and are now siding with gov't/US forces.

The Kurds overwhelmingly want the US to stay permanently a la S Korea. If there is a US pullout the Kurds will be begging for US bases to be set up in Kurdistan.

Do you believe the fiction that a majority of Iraqis want the US out now?

Here is more or less recent poll (9/06). But somehow I don't think you care about Iraqis or what they think/want:
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf

"Seven in ten Iraqis want US-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year. An overwhelming majority believes that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. More broadly, most feel the US is having a predominantly negative influence in Iraq and have little or no confidence in the US military. If the US made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government. Majorities believe that the withdrawal of US troops would lead to a reduction in the amount of inter-ethnic violence and improvement in the day-to-day security of Iraqis. A modest majority, including a large majority of Shia, now believes that in the near future Iraqi security forces will be strong enough to deal with their security challenges without foreign forces. There is little interest in replacing US-led forces with an international peacekeeping force."

[Dakota435]

Here is more or less recent poll (9/06). But somehow I don't think you care about Iraqis or what they think/want:
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf

"Seven in ten Iraqis want US-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year. An overwhelming majority believes that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing. More broadly, most feel the US is having a predominantly negative influence in Iraq and have little or no confidence in the US military. If the US made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government. Majorities believe that the withdrawal of US troops would lead to a reduction in the amount of inter-ethnic violence and improvement in the day-to-day security of Iraqis. A modest majority, including a large majority of Shia, now believes that in the near future Iraqi security forces will be strong enough to deal with their security challenges without foreign forces. There is little interest in replacing US-led forces with an international peacekeeping force."

There's lots of great news in that poll! Things are moving along quite well from the looks of it. The place is nowhere near the mess, socially and politically, that the media makes everybody think. Thanks for posting it.

If a pullout can start this year or next without the government being compromised, I'm all for it. This IS in fact the plan, to get their army to the stage where they can do the fighting on their own. The problem is the Iraqi army while becoming a good fighting force is still dependent on the US military for logistics etc, so the job is unfinished yet.

You will note that Iraqis don't want the US to leave completely (they still want aid), they're simply confident that their own military can do the job and US combat presence is counterproductive, and that is a reasonable position.

Looks like the whole project is turning out to be a success!

[PPSH41]

That is an interesting study. Its good that the Iraqis are beginning to feel confidence in their army and security forces. I hope it means we can start scaling down our presence and letting them take over, though they'll probably need logistical support/aid for quite some time.

I also tend to agree with them that we should stay out of their sectarian conflicts/disagreements. It is an issue only they can solve and hopefully the government they have is the tool by which they can solve it. I honestly think a nationwide referendum on whether or not they want us there would be good. If they vote us out and we in fact abide by their decision and leave could really help to counter the voices from AQ and the other foreign fighters and help the Iraqis to to unite and kick those lowlifes out of their country, thereby aleviating at least some of the civilian bombings.

[nahimov]

Great! I just hope that we get out of there ASAP and stop losing our young men! There is plenty to do in this country besides fighting. If Iraqis want us out lets oblige them. Too bad Bush still does not get :(

[Dakota435]

Great! I just hope that we get out of there ASAP and stop losing our young men! There is plenty to do in this country besides fighting. If Iraqis want us out lets oblige them. Too bad Bush still does not get :(

You think Bush wants to stay there any longer than necessary? Are you insane?

The pullout will start when everybody who has a stake agrees the time is right, including the Iraqi gov't. Right now Milaki is NOT pushing for an immediate withdrawal, and they aren't going to govern purely by opinion polls as would any other responsible government.

[Dakota435]

More good news. LOVE the last 4 paragraphs. So true!



By AMIR TAHERI

April 16, 2007 -- A FEW months ago, Wash ington circles saw Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "Tehran's man" in Baghdad. Today, Tehran circles label him "Washington's man" in Baghdad.

Maliki's government has the unenviable task of keeping the Americans in, when they don't want to stay - and the Iranians out, when they want to come in.

Some Americans blame Maliki for doing nothing to hasten the departure of U.S. troops, for not decreeing a blanket pardon of Baathists (regardless of what they did during four decades of despotic domination), and for rejecting federal schemes that could lead to the disintegration of the Iraqi state.

They also criticize Maliki because he refuses to share out Iraq's oil income as if it were loot among thieves.

These American critics want Maliki to throw Iraq to the wolves so that Jack Murtha and Michael Moore can prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was wrong.

Maliki's Khomeinist critics in Tehran have their own beef.

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) recently called Maliki "too pro-Arab." In plain language, that means he emphasizes the Arab identity of the majority of Iraqi peoples - rather than their sectarian affiliation, as Tehran would prefer.

Last month, Ali Khamenei, the top mullah in the Khomeinist system, attacked Maliki in a roundabout way. He recalled that many leaders of the new Iraq spent years in Iran as exiles, and he implied that it was payback time. Last week, the mullahs showed their anger by refusing to let Maliki's plane pass through Iranian airspace on its way to the Far East.

Maliki has offered no favors to the mullahs. He visited half a dozen capitals in the early stages of his premiership - but pointedly avoided Tehran. He also turned down Tehran's offer of hosting a regional conference on Iraq, preferring to hold the exercise in Baghdad and then, later this year, in Cairo.

Maliki has also given the green light to a crackdown on Shiite militias and death squads, serving notice that the war of the sectarians must end. Within the next few weeks, he is expected to further anger Tehran by dropping from his Cabinet all five Sadrist ministers, who are beholden to the Iranian regime.

Tehran indicated its displeasure by activating its networks in Iraq to organize last week's demonstrations in Najaf.

Despite months of pressure from Tehran, Maliki has also refused to scrap the maritime-inspection mission of the Coalition forces under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council. (The 15 British sailors captured by Tehran last month were operating on that mission.)

Tehran wants the mission terminated for two reasons:

* First, it wants to impose total control on the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway between Iran and Iraq, thus violating the 1975 Algiers agreement that established the thalweg (the deepest channel in the river) as the frontier.

This would quickly translate to Iranian control of access to Iraq's 75-kilometer-long Persian Gulf coastline - turning the Iraqi ports of Basra, Um-Qasar, Al-Bakr and Fao into strategic hostages.

* Second, the Islamic Republic fears that the United Nations might, at some point, use the inspection mechanism against the Islamic Republic in the showdown over the nuclear issue. (Recent Security Council resolutions would allow the monitoring of Iranian naval traffic in the Gulf to continue from Iraqi bases even after the U.S.-led Coalition has left.)

The Maliki government has also made moves to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over chunks of the border with Iran that had become no-man's land or seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG).

Shortly after Saddam Hussein's fall, the IRCG captured the Zaynalkosh salient, some 700 square miles, and built a number of fortifications there. The Maliki government has refused to accept this open theft of Iraqi territory.

Tehran is also sore that the Maliki government has re-imposed visas for Iranians, making it more difficult to smuggle Khomeinist agents among thousands of pilgrims who travel to Iraq each day.

Worse still, the Maliki government has arrested, or acquiesced in the arrest of, almost a dozen senior IRGC officers, including two generals still held by the Americans in Baghdad.

The most important cause of Tehran's anger, however, is Maliki's strategic vision of Iraq's relations with the Western democracies.

The mullahs want Iraq to become a theater of historic humiliation for the West, especially the United States. They hope to see the Americans running away, not withdrawing in the context of an agreement with a friendly Iraqi government. They want the credit for chasing away the Americans to go to Tehran and its Iraqi allies, notably Muqtada al-Sadr.

Maliki, however, wants the U.S.-led coalition out of Iraq only when the new Iraq is capable of defending itself against its enemies, including the Khomeinist regime in Tehran. Beyond that, he wants to maintain a strategic partnership with the Western democracies in the interest of Iraq's economic development.

Both the mullahs and the Jack Murtha Democrats hate Maliki because he is working to prevent their respective dreams from coming true.

The mullahs dream of that "last U.S. helicopter" taking off from a Baghdad rooftop, spelling the end of American hopes of bringing decent government to Iraq.

The Murtha Democrats may not want a humiliating American defeat in Iraq but would like something that looks like one. Only perceived defeat in Iraq would give their party something with which to unite its base and make a bid for the White House next year.

It may be a coincidence. However, each time Democrats throw a poisonous arrow at Maliki, they are followed by mullahs doing the same the next day. Maybe Maliki is doing something right?

Iranian-born journalist and author Amir Taheri is based in Europe.

[Argyll]

The Sadrist Politicians are not being dropped, they left of their own accord, this article is just Political Spin, if you swallow all this then more fool you.

The Iraqi's didn't arrest these Iranians, the Americans seized them in a raid in Erbil.

The Iraqi Military will NOT be able to call CAS, they will NOT have Hi Tec Weapons sytems at their finger tips, IF the Turks invade the North, the will also Lose the Kurds in their ranks, and that mighty Iraqi Army you think that the sun shines out it's arse will be defunct.....

If you want the Iraqi Army to succeed, you need to weed out it's rotten elements, it's been infiltrated all the way to the top, there have been direct attacks from members of the Iraqi Military and Police, on many Western PMC Security teams, I wish I shared your optimism, but until I see it for myself, the only uniform I trust in Iraq is ACU's.

Are things as bleak as they looked 5 months ago?.....probably not, but then again, the US had to bring in an extra 30K troops to pacify the killings in Baghdad, the troops that should have been there 2 years ago, when the support for the war was more popular, this Mission/Surge has no choice but to succeed, Failure is not an option for so many reasons.

Gen Patreus has not won himself many fans in the Private Security Sector, by signing and endorcing an order for his MP's to conficate weapons from PSC's unless on a US DOS/DOD contract, which effectively means everyone other than those on the WPPS program, are being left in a very precarious position, which Malaki himself had instigated....yeah right, he woke up one morning and said, lets disarm all the guys bringing in the Logistics for my countrys benefit.
I'll be back there next weekend, I'll see for myself if things have improved in the last 6 weeks.......I hope so.

[Dakota435]

The Sadrist Politicians are not being dropped, they left of their own accord, this article is just Political Spin, if you swallow all this then more fool you.

The Iraqi's didn't arrest these Iranians, the Americans seized them in a raid in Erbil.

The Iraqi Military will NOT be able to call CAS, they will NOT have Hi Tec Weapons sytems at their finger tips, IF the Turks invade the North, the will also Lose the Kurds in their ranks, and that mighty Iraqi Army you think that the sun shines out it's arse will be defunct.....

If you want the Iraqi Army to succeed, you need to weed out it's rotten elements, it's been infiltrated all the way to the top, there have been direct attacks from members of the Iraqi Military and Police, on many Western PMC Security teams, I wish I shared your optimism, but until I see it for myself, the only uniform I trust in Iraq is ACU's.

Are things as bleak as they looked 5 months ago?.....probably not, but then again, the US had to bring in an extra 30K troops to pacify the killings in Baghdad, the troops that should have been there 2 years ago, when the support for the war was more popular, this Mission/Surge has no choice but to succeed, Failure is not an option for so many reasons.

Gen Patreus has not won himself many fans in the Private Security Sector, by signing and endorcing an order for his MP's to conficate weapons from PSC's unless on a US DOS/DOD contract, which effectively means everyone other than those on the WPPS program, are being left in a very precarious position, which Malaki himself had instigated....yeah right, he woke up one morning and said, lets disarm all the guys bringing in the Logistics for my countrys benefit.
I'll be back there next weekend, I'll see for myself if things have improved in the last 6 weeks.......I hope so.

What do you do there?

[Belrick]

So if it stabilizes into another terrorist state you'll be happy with that?

Iraq will stabilize into a nation that best suits the Iraqi people. Either accept reality or kill a generation of Iraqi's to prevent this occuring. You simply have no concept of human nature IMHO. Besides who here claimed SH led Iraq was a terrorist state? What exactly is a TERRORIST state (tm)? I thought terrorism was a battle between idealogys not nations.

The US was niave in thinking they could force there trade mark brand of culture onto another populace with a very different culture. For people to chagne they have to ASK for help, you cannot force 'help' on people and expect it to be embraced.

Very niave and very childish but obviously four years of lessons is not long enough for you to learn this. Lets try for ten.

[Argyll]

What do you do there?

I'm in a PMC, and been here since April 2004, and will stay here till they no longer need us, or the clients no longer need us, and that'll be for some considerable time......they simply lack the logistical support that we provide.

[Slug69]

There was a video released today on LiveLeak just of a camera in a US Humvee, video taping out the window while driving through Ramadi.

It looked like a warmer version of Gorazde, Chechnya.

A very disturbing view. Razor wire strung along the footpath with kids playing behind it keeping them off the road I guess.

It looked really bad.

[ElHombre]

I sure as hell don't depend on CNN or the nets.

Try a map, then. How else is any US force based in Northern Iraq going to be supplied? Air supply won't cut it.


I'm sure Turkey would go along if it meant a more stabilized border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Not if it means Turkish Kurds have bases from which to operate.


Are you in Austin? I was just there.

Dallas.

[Dakota435]

Try a map, then. How else is any US force based in Northern Iraq going to be supplied? Air supply won't cut it.



Not if it means Turkish Kurds have bases from which to operate.



Dallas.

Ummmm... Turkey is a member of NATO possibly? We aren't talking about offensive operations here.

The Iraqi Kurds are going to be forced to do something about PKK sanctuary anyway.

[ElHombre]

Ummmm... Turkey is a member of NATO possibly? We aren't talking about offensive operations here.

Like I said, there would be some intensive diplomatic efforts and preconditions beforehand. Not making the southern Turkish border a war zone would rank pretty high. Not to mention that the Turkish gov't would likely tread verrry carefully so as not to piss off thier own folks.


The Iraqi Kurds are going to be forced to do something about PKK sanctuary anyway.

Which might touch off a Kurdish internal problem of their own. I recall a National Geographic reporter noting that Iraqi Kurdistan is less one monolithic bloc than two single-party states. All this is assuming that the Shia let them have their way, especially regarding Kirkuk.