As Nancy Pelosi makes history by becoming the first female Speaker of the US House and Democrats take control of both chambers, Bush, as I wrote yesterday, faces formidable political obstacles to his plans for a surge in troop strength in Iraq. But he also faces the ultimate obstacle - no strategy will be able to deliver the “victory” which he believes will redeem his legacy.
Why doesn’t Bush then cut his losses? He can’t. His entire presidency revolves around the Iraq war. If he tries to cut his losses, he admits that he is responsible for a national disaster. So he has no choice but to try to bluff his way into 2009 and turn over the disaster to someone else. That is, he has no choice acceptable to him. But Bush is going to learn something in the next eighteen months. The situation is out of control and even the president of the United States can be forced to do things he finds abhorrent.
Wallerstein also observes that the real purpose of the Baker Study Group report was to legitimate criticism from the traditional bipartisan Washington foreign policy/military establishment. While Bush fans have spent much energy decrying “realism” in foreign policy (and there’s no necessary reason why it should be the only paradigm from a liberal point of view), it’s Bush’s own unrealism which dooms him to defeat on his own terms.
The Independent reports:
Although a 30,000 increase to the existing deployment of 145,000 troops is feasible, by delaying rotation of units and lengthening tours of duty, many senior generals say it could only be temporary, given the existing overstretch of the military. At some point the troops would have to leave, irrespective of the level of violence at the time.
New figures show that 1,930 Iraqi civilians died in December, which was also the deadliest month in two years for US servicemen, taking the lives of 111 soldiers. Since the 2003 invasion, more than 3,000 have been killed and about 25,000 injured. More American troops would merely invite more casualties, critics contend.
The President’s new approach also would signal the abandonment, at least temporarily, of the strategy of turning security over to Iraqi forces. This was the policy favoured by General George Casey, the highest-ranked US general in Iraq.
All the insurgents have to do is wait the Americans out, while causing the maximum amount of damage, death and destruction in the process.
The same strategic objections which were made in opposition to a date certain for troop withdrawal apply as forcefully to a surge which the US cannot sustain.
It’s also very difficult to see how the strategy of pacifying Baghdad can possibly work when the US doesn’t have one “enemy” but rather is caught in the middle of a sectarian civil war, which is only going to intensify as Saddam’s execution marks the limits of Al-Sistani’s game. The end of “Iraqification” begs the question, too, of whether Iraq’s enfeebled government and militia ridden army and police become recognised for what they are in reality already - forces contending for power and legitimacy through violence rather than arms of the state.
James A. Baker once dismissed the break up of Yugoslavia as unworthy of American intervention because “we don’t have a dog in this fight?”. Who is the American dog in the Iraqi fight?
As Wallerstein argues, after six months or less of surge, Bush will be forced to realise what most everyone else already knows - he has thoroughly lost control of this mess.
Elsewhere: At Blogocracy, Tim Dunlop critiques the “silence of the chickenhawks”. At Slate, an interesting piece by Fred Kaplan on Bush’s belief that he’s channelling Truman.
Mark
Given the usual quality of your commentary, I am stunned you would cite a tedious Trotskyist has-been like Wallerstein!! On Leftwrites, we would absolutely expect this sentiemntal tip-of-the-hat to those halcyon days of The International, but I am sure we can do better here.
I kind of thought IW was Mark’s guru.
John, I’m not in the habit of judgeing the quality of analysis by the politics of the analyst. Yesterday I quoted Bob Novak with approbation, and he’s a conservative Republican.
And I very much doubt Wallerstein currently sees himself as a “Trotskyist”.
Whatever people might think about world systems theory (and as with a lot of macro theorising, it has its pluses and minuses), Wallerstein is an extremely acute analyst of US and international politics, as I think people can see from the archive of his commentaries:
[link]
He’s been proved right on quite a number of occasions.
But I don’t want to focus this debate on the politics of people I quote, but on the issues, please.
No doubt JG has at his fingertips a definitive refutation of the points Wallerstein makes that don’t rely upon ad hominem jibes.
Here’s a start JG.
1. Is Bush in a losing situation? (Wallerstein thinks so. Do you?)
2. Can he cut his losses? (Wallerstein thinks he can, but at great personal cost. Do you?)
3. If so how? (Wallerstein thinks it requires him to accept responsibility for a national disaster. Do you?)
4. Can he do it without accepting responsibility for a national disaster? (Wallerstein doesn’t so. How would you argue against that proposition?)
5. If so, where is Wallerstein’s analysis flawed?
And don’t forget that the “enemy”, or potential enemy, now extends to every household in Baghdad. As has been widely reported, it’s anticipated that the new strategy will require house to house searches in every neighbourhood, seizing ‘weapons caches’ (and what sane household in Baghdad wouldn’t possess an AK47?) and making arrests.
To quote Fred Barnes in the Oz recently [link]
In other words after the house-to-house certain families will be evicted to make way for the troops remaining behind. And how do these
targetsprotectors choose who to ‘reward’ for their ‘co-operation’, and how?It’s folly piled upon folly stacked upon folly. This administration knows nothing, learns nothing, and cares nothing.
How many more people are going to have to die for this mistake?
The desperate need to re-align foreign policy, after 60 years of propping up tyrants (AKA ‘moderate Arab leaders’) in the Middle East is the USA’s strategic interest in Iraq.
That is, overturning the policy that was supported by ‘realists’ like Baker III, and that led directly to September 11 2001.
Even those who don’t agree with me that the Iraq invasion was justified should be asking:
“What do we do about the fascist regimes in the Middle East like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and so on?”
and
“Should tyrants like Sadaam be toppled or not?”
David, I think you’ve mistaken my meaning. I wasn’t asking what America’s strategic interest was, but which of the parties/militias/factions/sects/gangs/thugs/governments in the civil war they are supporting?
The “Iraqi Government” is basically a vehicle for putting in place Al-Sistani’s game plan.
The US seem to have belatedly realised that.
If there’s to be a victory, who are the US backing to be the winner?
Presumably it’s no longer “the government” since they’ve finally woken up to the fact that it’s partly a front for Moqtada al-Sadr. If he’s now the “enemy”, who are they supporting?
There’s not even any candidate as the “party of order” so to speak.
And Saddam’s execution appears to be the final nail in the coffin for a lot of Sunnis. As well as revealing the “state” to be basically a gang of murderous amateur hour thugs.
I’m surprised you think the invasion justified. You’re the only person self identified as “far left” I’ve seen taking that position!
My answer to the second question is - no. It would have been better to continue to apply pressure externally - as the Indonesian example shows, dictatorships tend to collapse eventually and allowing the people of the country themselves to sort out what comes next produces superior results (if not perfect ones, or ones perfectly to “our” liking) to armed and illegal intervention with no game plan for what comes next.
As to the first, Lord only knows. But why is it “we” who have to decide what to do? Doesn’t the whole history of imperialism in the Middle East show that it’s very often “we” who create and exacerbate the problems?
Paulus, in regard to your remarks on another thread.
1. Just because you can by Marighella’s book is no proof that the book isn’t banned in the US (indeed it is). all it proves is that the US Govt has been less vigilant than it might have been to police its own laws.
2. John Keegan hasn’t tired of making a prat of himself over Iraq. Here’s a gem hilariously entitled “The American Triumph”, vintage 2003. (Ah yes, it’s like returning to another universe, where RWDBs were fuelled by hope, not denial.)
I think IW’s completely on the money with this:
Christine Keeler: I know little about Fred Barnes, but I think he is an idiot. To quote a little later:
Utter nonsense on two counts. The first thing about the South Vietnamese “control” is that they basically retreated themselves to the cities and larger townships, leaving the countryside behind. While the VC were not what they werre pre-1968, they still survived, and supplied intel to the NVA. The VC had a presence in the Delta, and the highlands. The Keane-Kagan plan didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.
The second is that the South Vietnamese actually had the funding and the arsenal to keep them going to 1976. It’s just that a lot of the cash was either wasted, stolen from, or lost in the files. (The U.S. sent some auditors there around 1974. About $500 million worth of weapons and money was “unaccounted for”, I believe.)
Personally, I think the Dolchstosslegende theory of “How the US lost Việt Nam” needs to be taken out the back and shot. Otherwise, they’re going to mutate into “How the US lost Iraq”. (It was those eeevil Democrats!)
Well, David, you have your answer on the pages of this blog. Assuming that Bush’s new policy is to no avail, the old style realists will triumph. The minority on the left who thought it was a good idea to actively attack tyrants, as exemplified by Christopher Hitchens, will go back into their shell; the right will turn isolationist; and tyrants will have many happy decades of ruling in peace.
Sanctions too have been discredited over the last decade, and will join military means on the list of unavailable options. So the left will revert to the old tried and true methods of tackling dictators, such as writing letters through Amnesty International, and calling for resolutions at the UN.
Paulus, come on. I think there’s a fair bit of evidence that Saddam’s regime was on its last legs because of the approach Clinton had adopted.
Surely you’re not saying “we got rid of the tyrant, but we disclaim responsibility for what comes after”…
That appears to be the last ditch justification in US (mad) right wing circles - it’s all the Iraqis’ fault that the place is in such a godawful mess. We gave them “liberty” and they stuffed it up horribly.
“as the Indonesian example shows, dictatorships tend to collapse eventually”
As the North Korean example shows, “eventually” can be a mighty long time. Half a century and counting …
As Hitchens argued, Saddam had survived so many uprising and assassination attempts, and was clearly preparing dynastic succession for his sons, so it was amazingly wishful thinking to believe he would have collapsed any time soon.
My lesson out of all of this is not to abandon the concept of ‘regime change’ — just make sure you do it right and have a ‘Plan B’ for reconstruction in case things don’t go quite as smoothly as you hoped.
The North Korean regime would be in significantly more trouble if China hadn’t decided to prop it up because they don’t want to contemplate what will happen if it falls, Paulus.
Anyway, diverting as this is, I don’t know that David’s questions really go to the theme of the post - what would victory look like? And can Bush achieve it?
Is “the approach Clinton had adopted” a euphemistic way of referring to the sanction regime? One might alternatively call it a “Final Solution” for the Iraqi problem. According to critics, those sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis — even more than the recent Lancet figures for the post-war death toll. Mark, you are a heartless beast!
Interestingly I read the other day that they also sent Army Chief of staff Frederick Weyand there in 1975. He concluded that even if the US increased aid South Vietnams chances of survival were “marginal at best.”
And Paulus I don’t think you have to worry about Hitchens crawling back into his shell any time soon.
The first thing “we” should do is to define who “we” are.
Having decided who is who, and who is likely to “stay the course”, then the next thing to do is to match ends with means.
The next thing to do is to set a time frame. The West, for example, sat out the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union over almost 40 years after the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine.
If 40 years seems time enough, then the vast power of western ideas and lifestyle might be sufficient to weaken ME fascist states. (and yes, as a libertarian leftie, I’d love to see the last priest, imam and rabbi shack up in a happy threesome in some location where the pink dollar is very welcome.)
If that seems too long or too uncertain, at least do the people “we” are trying to save the courtesy of understanding their cultures at least to the extent of not turning the objects of our benevolent attentions into enemies when “we” turn up to “shock and awe” them.
Looks like Chimpo flubbed all these tests.
There are also the Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War!, and of course Last Superpower, which is based around people who also supported the 1991 Gulf War.
While the Alliance for Workers Liberty (UK) opposed the war, they also oppose the attitude of the Stop The War Coalition in calling for troops to leave immediately, and so are worth looking at for dissenting far-left views.
But yes, it is a minority position among those who identify as far left.
I haven’t studied this enough to know who the USA is supporting at the moment, but I would imagine they are hoping (more than planning) that an Iraqi government will emerge that can defeat and control all the militias, and get back to non-gun-driven politics.
I’d also suggest that Baker III’s comment was meant to imply that the USA had no need to intervene in Yugoslavia, and was a concise statement of the ‘realist’ idea that democracy is not that important.
We may indeed decide that it is only our place to support and not take the lead, but we certainly have to decide for ourselves what our position is.
We should take a concious decision that either (for instance) the Saudi regime deserves to be overthrown, or that it does not. (In my opinion it does deserve to be overthrown).
I would disagree, and suggest that assuming as a norm that dictatorships collapse eventually is (in my opinion) a too passive approach.
I think that the issue of ‘illegality’ is not that relevant in the Iraq war, for two reasons, one practical, and one deeper.
Practically: What does ‘illegality’ mean in a world where there are over 200 sovereign countries? Very little, IMO.
Deeper: A course of action should be judged on its merits first of all, not the law. Laws can be wrong. As is detailed here, people in the 1960s in Australia (and much more importantly, the USA) broke the law to help defeat the US and Australian Government’s war aims in Vietnam, and were successful.
I’d wager that the prevailing feeling among the core people at this site is that the US defeat in Vietnam was not a bad thing. I’d also wager that at least some at this site could see their way clear to morally accepting an illegal action if it would end the US occupation of Iraq.
I would agree with this quote from Paulus:
Paulus, there are very few options which don’t involve violence and death when countries attempt to impose their will on others. I’m not supporting Clinton’s policy, just pointing out that I think it had a better chance of achieving the downfall of Saddam with a relatively better outcome afterwards. Though many mistakes were undoubtedly made, I doubt that what was always a foreign occupation would have ever delivered optimum results no matter how well organised.
I’m always suspicious of violence launched in the name of humanitarian ends.
And, yes, Chris, I don’t anticipate a renivention of Hitchens as a shrinking violet.
His latest on Iraq is interesting:
[link]
Victory would be a strong central Iraqi government bringing an end to sectarian violence.
It is not up to Bush to achieve this, it is up to those in the elected Iraqi Government who are democratically inclined to make this happen. Bush can only ever be a spectator in this endgame, so it is not he who will achieve it.
But the USA should keep enough troops in Iraq to stop those who attack Iraqi civilians. Unlike attacks on the US forces (which 6 in 10 now support), a vast majority of Iraqis utterly reject attacks on Iraqi government facilities, or civilians, according to this recent poll (pdf link)
Katz, I wish that people who oppose Bush’s policies would stop referring to him by insulting nicknames such as ‘Chimpo’.
It’s very irritating, and it makes it harder for people who support the war, (or those who generally support Bush, which I do not) to agree with you on the merits of your argument.
I happen to agree that Bush has made many mistakes indeed, while I agree with the original decision to invade.
I didn’t know that, David.
Intervention to “overthrow tyrants” or to “prevent a humanitarian disaster” in practice never occurs unless there’s national interest involved and/or hubris. Hence Darfur. And no one, as far as I can tell, was advocating that the recently deceased dictator of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, be overthrown. Yet his human rights record doesn’t bear much examination.
[link]
That’s the reason that there’s no plausible circumstances under which the Saudi regime gets overthrown from without. The only threat against it is internal - from Jihadists.
But there aren’t any such people. That’s the problem. The secular and non-ethnic parties got about 2% of the vote.
I think Roy Hattersley summed up the dilemma well:
[link]
There are, however, people in the Iraqi governing coalition who do not want to see Iraq tear itself apart, and who may be able to bring the militias to heel.
I would suggest reading this post and also this one from the Iraq the Model blog, where Iraqi bloggers Omar and Mohammed discuss the political situation and how Moqtada al-Sadr in particular might be brought to heel by manoeuverings inside the governing coalition.
comment spamilated
Ah but it is not that simple David Jackmanson. There are always going to be a limited number of factions able to form a viable government in any given country. The idea of a foreign power simply conjuring up their own substantial political force is extremely fanciful given how much an intervention on the scale required is liable to antagonize much of the population. What this means is that when dealing with foreign powers western governments must choose one of the existing powers to support. Indeed one of the biggest problems with the whole Iraq enterprise is that there is no nice, peaceful, secular force that can form a viable Government.
Sometimes (actually often) none of the viable options are at all nice. I would suggest that this is the case throughout most of the Middle East.
DJ,
You are free to agree or disagree with my arguments on their merits.
You are also free to agree or disagree with my arguments on any other basis you choose.
It’s completely immaterial to me if your assessment of my argument is influenced in one way or another by what I choose to call Chimpo.
And sometimes, as the US has found with Lebanon, supporting one mob in one country is pointless when you support the other mob in Israel more…
Chris, you are broadly correct in what you say. I was suggesting that first of all we need to decide what our attitude to a given government is.
If you were to decide that intervention is waranted, then the factors you talk about must be dealt with.
There is no secular force in Iraq capable of forming a government and imposing a democratic peace, but the links I provided above argue that some current members of the Islamist (different to Islamo-facist) Government may be willing to do that.
Katz, you are free to to reduce the effectiveness of your arguments by using unnecessary insults.
As far as Israel goes, this thread at Last Superpower suggests that the USA is doing its best to force Israel to settle the issue of the Palestinians.
It’s also been pointed out there that Bush is the first ever US President to use the words “Palestinian State” - Clinton never did. It is possible that those who condemn the US over its support for Israel are misreading the situation.
Now, would President Pelosi kindly take the necessary step of sacking those two born losers who are hindering her formal swearing-in as President of the United States …. and getting on with solving the Iraq Conflict.
DownAndOutInSa\iGo\n [at 6:38pm]:
Yes. Get ready for Bush, Cheney, Blair, Howard and the rest of those “surrender monkeys” to start trying to hoodwink people with their own 2007 version of der DolchdstoB. I’m not too sure exactly how it is that the Gold Star Mothers and suchlike folk could be in league with Saddam Hussein (isn’t he a bit dead these days?) and alQuaeda but no doubt we’ll have it all explained so we can understand … and believe.
Mark [at 6:49pm]
Right. And wasn’t there quiet concern back then that Turkey and Iran might be tempted to send troops across their respective borders to ensure some stability on their own frontiers WHEN the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq did collapse?
You sure you’re not preparing for a shift from the far left to the far right, David?
Clinton almost negotiated an agreement between Barak and Arafat which would have been far better than anything that’s on offer from Bush’s farcical road map.
I think you need to be a bit more discriminating about what you read on the net.
Just sayin…
Hmmm…the link in my above comment looks like a link…but it doesn’t work like a link…
Now when I try it again, either using the command in the comments box, or typing it in manually, the ” at the end of the URL somehow gets read as part of the URL, and you get a ‘page not found’ error.
So, cut and paste this URL for the LS thread:
[link]
Graham, yep, what we’re seeing is essentially close to what was feared when Bush overruled Cheney and didn’t push on to Baghdad. But it could get worse. And probably will.
The agreement that Clinton almost brokered has been widely condemned as one that would lead to Palestinian ‘Bantustans’ - certainly the Palestinians, judging by their actions of the last few years, did not appear to regard it as satisfactory.
The argument advanced at Last Superpower - that the Bush faction of the Republicans knows that US support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is the US’ biggest strategic liability, and wants the issue resolved - is argued there in a reasonable amount of detail.
I’d suggest that what is on offer in Palestine has more to do with the fact that the Palestinians can continue to make Israel pay more than it is willing to, to hold down the West Bank.
Bush can’t force the Palestinians to accept something they don’t want to - if the US could do that, they would have done so at some stage since 1948 - but he can refuse to help Israel keep hold of what their expansionists want, and so help to move things along.
All I get when I hit that link is a catalogue of atrocities continuing from both sides, David. Probably somewhere on that bulletin board is the bit you’re talking about, but I can’t be bothered looking for it as the contention that Bush wants to usher in some amazing peace deal is absurd - he’s had six years, and all we’ve had is rhetoric and support for the Israeli government all the way.
Yes indeed, DJ.
And one of those political forces is Moqtada al-Sadr himself.
According to information posted by Juan Cole Moqtada has played a very clever game twin-tracking a strategy of building a coalition with Sunni political leaders. By one means or another Moqtada wants to form a coalition in the Iraq Parliament controlling the majority of votes. With that majority he wants to demand that the US withdraw from Iraq. This is Moqtada’s great aim.
Meanwhile, he is negotiating with the Shiite parties agreeing to return his members to the Parliament on condition that they merely agree to set a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq.
(By the way, the Iraq Parliament has not met for some time because a quorum has not been achievded Moqtada’s supporters now hold the power to prevent parliament from sitting.)
Don’t you see the genius of Moqtada’s political manoeuvres? By absolutely legal means he has jammed the cogs of constitutional government. In order to save constitutional government, the US must destroy it.
One way or another he’ll get his parliamentary resolution to remove the US fom Iraq.
And here’s an interesting rumour sweeping Iraq. It is alleged that Moqtada himself, under a ski mask, was Saddam’s executioner!!
“Chris, you are broadly correct in what you say. I was suggesting that first of all we need to decide what our attitude to a given government is.�
Then it is hear that we differ Mr Jackmanson. I take the view that in assessing wether or not we should support a particular government we must take a good hard look at the alternatives. Is the force most likely to take the governments place if we work for that governments downfall rather than its preservation likely to be better, or worse?
Or will instability be the result, in which case we no longer have the luxury of deliberating what the most likely and best outcomes will be. This, incidentally, is the reason many realists hate instability so much.
Assessing our position towards a government in this manner, rather than on an exclusively moral basis can make a big difference. Looking at things morally you would have a hard time finding even one Arab government worth saving. However if you look at the alternatives you will find that in pretty much every Arab state (except Iraq) the bad nationalist regimes and the bad absolute monarchy’s have their main opposition in the form of worse Islamist groups.
It seems to me like the Bush administration never bothered to carry out this sort of deliberation, simply assuming that something like a western style democracy would emerge in Iraq.
Had Bush not been so idealistic and naive he may have realized that most sources of institutional authority in Iraq outside Saddam’s regime (eg the Shiite Clergy and tribal leaders) were basically sectarian in character.
Katz, I don’t see how “In order to save constitutional government, the US must destroy it.” follows from the Cole article and your comments, which are interesting.
If al-Sadr obtains such a majority and the legitimate Government of Iraq then asks the US to leave, then I predict they will.
If I am wrong and they refuse, they will really find out what having a whole country fight them is like, instead of rejectionists and Islamofascists. Instead of losing 3000 soldiers in 3 1/2 years, they will lose over 500-1 000 a month, like in Vietnam.
The US has very little control in Iraq, and has to depend on the Iraqis working it out for themselves. All they can do is hold the ring as long as the Iraqi Government wills it, which they still do.
Mark, as I said previously, what Bush wants is not that relevant. The Israelis cannot continue to hold the West Bank. Bush has to accept reality. But even if you are right, and Bush is in fact following the old policies of unquestioning support for Israel (which I do not think is true), those policies are not going to work no matter what Bush and the Israeli expansionists want.
This comment at Last Superpower helps to sum up the take there on the Israel/Palestine question:
[link]
The theme of the LS argument is “the collapse of US and Israeli policy over the last few decades”.
Other key assertions are:
The key assertion of US intentions is a few comments further down:
Katz: from the same link, there are also rumours that “claiming that an image of Saddam in his military outfit and beret can be seen on the moon.”
Even in death, he’s a cunning bastard.
Chris, I very much hope that the Islamists in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood, who are closely related to Hamas) are able to take a place in the government based on the level of their popular support.
The argument you make is similar to the one made by realists: that Mid East dictators are better than Islamists, because of the fear that Islamism will result in ‘one person, one vote, one time’.
Islamists have a right to be in government if they have public support - that is the price of democracy and as a secular atheist I defend that right.
Of course, in the case of Egypt I would also want the secular ‘Kifaya’ (Enough!) movement to fight to defend modernity if/when an Islamist government became reactionary.
But reactionary Islamists with genuine popular support being in government is better than fascist dictatorships with no support IMO.
Right now in Egypt the Government is busy manipulating the electoral law to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of politics. Is this justified, or not, in your opinion?
Interesting thread rehashing the circle jerk history of intellectuals stroking themselves that peace comes from diplomacy and appeasement of warring factions. Whatever happened to the plain old logic that justifies killing the murderers before they bomb or torture/murder more innocents. Killing those who fund, harbor and pull the strings on those who’s only daily job is planning murdering their local tribal rivals is totally justified. Therefore in Iraq the plan should be obvious to GWB. His soldiers will never ever be able to police that populist, hell bent on murdering their way into power.
Use the troop surge numbers to whack the death squads of both the Shia and Sunni with no mercy, or regard, to their respective puppet masters. Pull cell phones from all Iraqi troop commanders as the phone calls only go to their Mullah/Cleric factional politician masters to determine which side that days targeted murderers take orders from….
Then buildout fortified MaxMax type encampments for our Soldiers well outside the major Iraq cities. (5-7 bases) Only rapid response soldiers and support personel needed. If the Iraq gov’t calls on them to put down some live firing insurgent group they coming in shooting to kill till the firing stops. No prisoners taken and it’s up to the Iraquis to worry about the wounded. If they don’t like the results… don’t call.
Let the Iraq civil war take place as the world watches the true nature of the ME populous. One step backwards from just being African tribal cannibals. Meanwhile GWB knows only one mission OF ANY IMPORT,since 9/11. DISARM ISLAM. All news worthy of print screams out for this as the only road to world peace for all of humanity since 9/11.
GWB should immediately poor money and arms into Ethopia and any AU forces whacking the Islamists in Somelia. Back them up with US special forces and coastal patrols to make sure every gun toting Somolia Warlord and Al-Quada Jehadi gets killed or disarmed in the next 30 days. Make that hell hole terrorist breading Semolia (Thanks to Clinton’s whimpy cur-n-run move) be the model the Muzzie tyrants and liberal press have to look at daily. Disarm Islam starting with Somilia and trun it from a hopeless failed state into a self sufficent neighbor friendly country.
Then Bomb the crap out of Iran’s nuke plants, while making the Syria/Iraq/Iran border a shoot on site closed border area. Give the USA flyboys that job.
Yes. That should fix things up nicely Mike. How many troops would that take do you think?
I like the way that Mike suggests that Iraqis are almost cannibals while simultaneously advocating that US soldiers kill indiscriminately in order to sort out the Iraq mess. I mean, they could just nuke the whole region, it would be a lot cheaper…
By the way, I hope people picked up the sarcasm in my last comment.
“Make that hell hole terrorist breading Semolia (Thanks to Clinton’s whimpy cur-n-run move) …”
Yes! I agree! The crisis in Semolia threatens the world semolina crop! Something must be done, OR WE WILL HAVE NO PORRIDGE! And then the terrorists will have truly won.
In fairness to Clinton, he wanted to keep US forces in Somalia even after the Battle of Mogadishu, but Congressional Republicans were demanding that the US pull out, and they got their way.
[link]
Mark: “You sure you’re not preparing for a shift from the far left to the far right, David?”
Look out, DJ, Mark’s apparently about to revoke your left-wing membership card over your views on Iraq.
It’s curious to me that, while the centre-left seems otherwise a reasonably tolerant broad church, Iraq seems to have become an acid test, and if you fail — i.e. by supporting the invasion — lefties start muttering that you no longer belong.
I’m thinking of the people writing how Christopher Hitchens should no longer be regarded as on the left, notwithstanding that on just about every other international issue he takes a position that no progressive would argue with (eg, on Pinochet, Kissinger, Palestinian self-determination, etc. etc.)
Mike,
As Clint Eastwood once said “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” It’s a pretty wise saying in all circumstances. (Even his, just after blowing up his boss in a car.) It also holds true for nations as well as people. Nations have their limits - even the United States.
So, Mike, in your extremely long and unhinged rant - did it occur to you that the US doesn’t have the resources any more? Or the manpower. You are aware that soldiers - even the national guard - are being stoplossed and sent back for their third or fourth term of duty. Or that military precruiters are so desperate that they’re now allowing the Category IV types - criminals and the less mentally well endowned. Or if the US decided to attack Iran, they’d retaliate by sealing up the Straits of Hormuz like a mosquitos bottom, send torpedos (really good Russian based ones, I hear) into the US Fleet, and hold American’s oil addiction to ransom?
Geez, man. Get a grip.
I am not well read enough to offer a quantitative opinion on this issue. Conceptually, however, the world trade centre event did not constitute an act of war. It was a very dramatic act of vandalism. Three thousand lives, two buildings and some planes lost to a nation the size of the US is as bee sting is to a person. The Titanic sinking was very as catastrophic.
The “war on terrorism” (that is really getting on my wick) and the The Iraq war (the Afghanistan war is different) amount to anihilating all sharks because of one shark attack at a beach. This whole horror show is about the egos of a few very immoral men.
There is an argument that says given 80% literacy in a population, freedom of speech, and 20 years or so and you get democracy. I think that events in Africa would require “and good will amoungst men” be added to the argument. Saddam Hussein would have eventually either died of old age Castro style, been deposed internally, or come of age Gadaffi style. Given his execution rantings “Iraq is nothing without me” I suspect the internal deposement was the only probable outcome. Regardless, America had no place being militarily involved. The external influence option is what should have happened. Given time Iraq will become truly democratic, for all of the right reasons.
The son of a friend of mine has done two tours to Iraq. His opinion is that the west does not have the moral (or rather immoral) structure to fight in this type of war. The opponent is absolutely ruthless. The only way to win is to be more ruthless. I agree with him. But this is not what the west does, so don’t be there. Nobody will win this war. It is a lose, lose, lose situation. So no matter what the US does the outcome will be the same. As Mark has suggested (I think).
You are probably correct in your assumption that the US would leave under those circumstances. But, as Wallerstein implies, Bush must ensure that those circumstances never arise.
What you don’t seem to appreciate is that the departure of US forces would entail the almost immediate termination of the political settlement (that is, constitutiional government) imposed by the COW on Iraq in the wake of the defeat of Saddam. In other words, the departure of the US would be the signal for the creation of an Islamist state dominated by the Shiites.
In other words, the US will have spent perhaps 2 trillion dollars and terminated thousands of lives in the cause of islamism.
The context of this discussion is the comments made by Immanuel Wallerstein:
Bush is now looking to his “legacy”. That is, Bush is worrying about what students will read about is presidency in their history textbooks. To leave Iraq under the circumstances outlined above is the ultimate humiliation. The American right have invested tremendous physical, psychological, emotional and political resources into laying the “ghost of Vietnam”. If Bush withdraws under the circumstances outlined above, not only are the Right not laying the “ghost of Vietnam”, they are giving that ghost a companion: the “ghost of Iraq”.
Therefore, if Bush wants to stay in Iraq in order to protect his “legacy”, he cannot tolerate Moqtada using the constitutional structures imposed by the US. Bush must therefore find some way of short-circuiting the Iraq constitution.
In other words, Bush must “destroy the constitution in order to save it.”
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Albert Langer’s “Last Superpower Website” pushes a line which quite internally consistent: that the US has an historic mission to bring the world to a point where it is ripe for world anti-capitalist revolution. This is a return to the Menshevist line in Russia in 1917. From the point of view of the history of Marxist micro-splinter groups it is interesting that an old-line Leninist would return to a theoretical position of an anti-Leninist group.
But let’s face it folks. This whole dialectic thing is a museum piece. No one’s buying their product. In the meantime Langer gets his jollies embracing the occasional RWDB keyboard warrior who checks in for a chat about how great the US is doing in its historic mission. It’s comical.
I do not agree with your assumption that an Islamist government will terminate democracy or constitutional government.
And despite what Wallerstein thinks Bush must ensure, Iraq is simply not in Bush’s hands to decide. It is in the hand of the Iraqi people, where it should be.
Mike Hyland, on the other hand, indulges in a reactionary right-wing fantasy that the the USA could in some way impose its will in Iraq by killing many people. This strikes me as the sort of misanthropic argument that comes from people who advocating nuking Israel/Palestine into glass, so ‘neither of them can have it’, as though that conflict was two naughty children fighting over an ice cream.
BillB said:
Which is simply incorrect. Vandalism is painting ‘No War’ on the side of the Opera House and killing…um…that’s right, NO people.
War, on the other hand, consists of a deliberate attack designed to kill people and damage major facilities.
However, the ‘war on terror’ is a silly idea, as BillB suggests and it should be replaced with the idea of a war on tyrants:
[link]
I’m not sure which part of Last Superpower Katz read to get the idea that we think the USA has a ‘historic mission’ to get the world ready for revolution.
It is fairly standard Marxism that the way capitalism operates helps to make people aware of their own power and therefore brings a revolution closer (I would say ‘more likely’ rather than fall into the vulgar assumption that it is inevitable).
What LS does say is that, since 9-11, the ruling faction of the USA realises that it is no longer in the interests of the USA to suppress democracy around the world:
I’d also suggest that we would be living up to the worst stereotypes of sectarian far-leftists if we rejected an analysis that we thought was correct, simply because a different faction of the far left once believed it.
The fiercely expressed differences between Last Superpower, and the sort of right-wingers who have debated us can be seen here:
[link]
where a right-winger angrily disagreed with our contention that the USA is weak and getting weaker, and also tried to justify the US policy of suppressing democracy over the last 60 years
and here:
[link]
Where the issue of capitalism vs socialism is being argued (quite poorly on my part)
As those two links demonstrate, LS goes far beyond “embracing the occasional RWDB keyboard warrior who checks in for a chat about how great the US is doing in its historic mission”, and actively seeks out those who differ so that our arguments do not get smug or stagnant.
Also, long comment is waiting moderation.
Bush has refused to accept that he’s in a losing position, and nothing will or can convince him otherwise. But he doesn’t matter.
What matters is the unity of American (and to a large extent, Australian) conservatism behind this case. Nobody currently involved in right-of-centre politics can convincingly distance themselves from this war. It is one thing to send troops to die in a war that can conceivably be won and will advance the interests of one’s nation, but now that it is clear this war is folly, it is a crime to send anyone else to die. While withdrawal would encourage terrorist attacks on the US (and not just from Islamists), the same may equally be said of persisting with the status quo.
But isn’t that the only choice we have? Maintain-the-rage Trotskyites on the left vs ex-Trotskyites like McGuinness or Windschuttle? Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right …
DJ, you’ve misunderstood the topic of conversation.
It’s not my assumption that’s being discussed here. It’s Bush’s assumption. If Bush’s advisors were able to convince Bush that after the US withdraws its troops, Iraq would take on the appearance of a working constitutional government more or less along the lines, then Bush, attentive to his “legacy”, might accept this supposition as an adequate grounds upon which to declare “victory” and then bug out. Wallerstein is arguing, and i’m inclined to agree with him, that Bush does not believe that this will be the outcome. Rather, the Islamists will quickly take over and the Bush “legacy” will be in the toilet.
There is another possible interpretation of Bush’s actions. It could be argued that he actually believes that Iraq will turn out OK, and that constitutional fors will be maintained. However, this argument goes, he must pretend to far the opposite in order to justify pursuing a continued geo-political presence in the region. Something similar happened in the case of the aborted handover of the Panama Canal Zone back in the 1980s. (FWIW, I don’t think this is guiding Bush’s thinking at the moment, but it may be guiding the thinking of some of is advisors, notably Cheney. It might be argued, though I have absolutely no evidence to support the proostion, that Cheney views his task to be to link these two views to cement a US military presence in Iraq.)
The Iraqi people have the capability of ensuring that Bush’s bellicosity fails. But they can’t stop him from trying, even if Moqtada gets his resolution through the Parliament.
(Earlier post spaminated.)
Katz:
Muqtada al-Sadr as Saddam Hussein’s hangman? Unlikely but not abso;lutely impossible (especially because of the death of his father)…. Wow! That’s one story that would keep conspiracy theorists busy for years ….
Mike Hyland [at 1:09am]
Even better are tactics that make terrorists/murderers forget all about their plans and find something more legal to do instead …..
From Tom’s Dispatch:
[link]
Listen to Iron Mike Hyland. He knows how to think like conqueror when conquering those who deserve to be conquered. By conquerors.
You must use all at your disposal - duodec, supermaulers, raving beams of energy, the boot and whip - without mercy when extending benevolent rule of Boskone to lesser beings. Any weakness would be sign of weakness.
But why oh Iron Mike are you wasting your wisdom on these soft juicy foolish Tellurians here? Your insights of penetration should relayed instead perforce on communication override beam to those who really need your strategy and tactical like CentCom, Pentagon and SecDef.
Mark
Of course he would not. There is no tenure in that pose anymore. We are all “progressives� now! Oh yes, the occasional humanities academic on the make might whisper sweet-Trotskyisms into a colleague’s ear as they crank up Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind� and share another joint, but by Monday morning, it will be back to “Orientalism,� “the other,� “the genocidal aim of European colonialism,� “ethnic cleaning on ‘Occupied Palestine,� and so on.
Indeed the last person to declare proudly his Insternational Socialist and Trot-cred was probably Isaac Deutscher and the bloke before that ended up with an ice-pick in the back of his head during a vacation in Acapulco. Oh, and I suspect that David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens might also have exchanged sweet-Trotskyisms circa 1962, and maybe Eric Hobsbawm and Tariq Ali still plot and plan.. So, yes, I concede that point that Wallerstein might not describe himself as a Trot nowadays, but how he “sees� himself is another matter. I’ve read him. And if it walks like a Trot and talks like a Trot……
Katz
Yes, I agree. I would find it difficult, even in a paid debate, to argue the contrary. However, on the question of whether or not the U.S. itself is in a losing situation, I remain agnostic. I know that puts me at odds with 99.95% of those with IQs above 85, but I have come over all Chairman Mao-like and think it is “too soon to tell.�
On the domestic political-front Wallerstein arg