The Iraqi people seem to have spoken – and pretty loudly. With the nominal end of US troops in Iraqi cities, “Victory Day” was declared a national holiday across the country, accompanied by considerable celebration.
Iraq, of course, remains a deeply divided country, as this ABC online op-ed suggests. American troops may, theoretically, be out of the cities, but thousands of “advisors” remain part of the Iraqi government’s security apparatus. National reconciliation between the various ethnic and religious groups doesn’t seem to have progressed very far. The country’s ability to secure its own borders is also non-existent, ensuring a continued American presence for years to come.
It’s important to remind ourselves what a complete and utter disaster the Iraq war has been, with thousands of foreign soldiers killed, and many times the number of Iraqi civilians dead as a result (Wikipedia summarizes some studies – 100,000-odd at the absolute low end, and probably several times that). Several trillion dollars spent and still Iraq and the wider Middle East are far more dangerous places than when the invasion occurred.
So, seven years on, was the Iraq war the worst foreign policy decision made by a US president? And where does Australia’s responsibility lie, with a government at the time that, if anything, egged the US on in this monumental blunder?
Unfortunately, the more ardent supporters of the war still consider it to have been a complete success, and regard GWB as something of a visionary.
Meanwhile, the oil fields have been thrown open to foreign investors:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=831069
That’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ for you.
was the Iraq war the worst foreign policy decision made by a US president?
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I reckon Eisenhower probably steals that one. If it wasn’t for the CIA knocking out democratically elected govts in Iran and Guetemala none of this would’ve happened. Difference: Ike knew it. He understood responsibility.
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And where does Australia’s responsibility lie?
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Hey we just do what we’re told.
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this monumental blunder
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Was it. I reckon from the point of view of Cheney, Bush et al it was a spectacular success. They’ve managed to get their country to permananently garrison the country with most of the stuff their comopanies need to stay in business.
Does the partial withdrawal of US military personnel cover private security operators – mercenaries – as well?
There is a precedent to this: with the highly publicized withdrawal of US troops from (south) Vietnam, many thousands of these same personnel continued the war, albeit dressed in civilian clothes and employed by civilian contractors, working for the US military.
With tens of thousands of mercenaries – sorry private security operatives – already in position in (what is left of) Iraq, have they too received their marching orders – or are they now shouldering the full load, formerly done by national servicemen and women?
Are these mercenaries liable to prosecution for atrocities under Iraqi law – or will they continue to be able to evade accountability for their actions?
I bet many Iraqis are deeply interested in the answers to questions like this.
Not even close to your usual standard on matters military, Robert. I’m rather disappointed – you are usually more analytical on important matters.
‘Hundreds of thousands of dead’ This is a bit retro, isn’t it? It’s just the old pre-04 US election anti-Bush Lancet propaganda again. But I guess the old slogans about it all being about the oil no longer work now that the “preshizzle” is in the top job (one has to love Paco’s term for Hussein O: it’s so edgy).
Besides, is not the new meme from the new US admin all about: The illegal and despised Iraq war ending on 20 Jan 09, and it now being a noble experiment fanning winds of change throughout the Middle East?
You DO need to keep up with the current Orwellian newspeak, Robert.
MarkL
Canberra
MarkL: Even the Iraq Body Count project gives over 90,000 dead through violence, none of which was occurring before the invasion.
Do you disagree with the assessment that the Iraq was a) unnecessary, b) enormously costly on any dimension you care to nam, and c) left the region in a lot worse state than it was before? If so, which part?
Who lost Iraq?
Questions will be asked.
Names will be taken.
Backstabbing will be avenged.
*/end wingnuttery.
“was the Iraq war the worst foreign policy decision made by a US president?”
I suppose it depends how one defines “worst”. The Americans had some doozies such as the war of 1812 (Madison) which went far from well, and the Spanish-American war of 1898 (McKinley) which was infamous for its non battle casualties resulting from disease, quite apart from foreign policy considerations.
The 1898 war is interesting because it started after the US media whipped up public opinion to the stage where McKinley had to take action for home grown political reasons even though there was little if any evidence of Spanish misdeeds. There was far more pre-war evidence to provoke 2003’s Iraq II war (Bush II) than for the Span-Am war, so it may be that 1898 was “worst”.
Then there’s the much smaller 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco (Kennedy), which led to the far more serious 1962 missile crisis in which, fortunately, the US prevailed. Neither was strictly a war but the former was a demonstrably lousy foreign policy decision which brought the world within a gnat’s whisker of global disaster.
Was Iraq II the “worst”? Maybe, although a bunch of Kurds may think otherwise. The jury will be out for some years to come.
In Iraq people, citizens and US troops, are gaining confidence in the Iraq police force. This new surge stems from trust. The dark age of 2005-2007, Iraq saw a corrupt police force. Now, hopefully, while the troops withdraw from Iraq, the police force will be able to keep things under control. http://www.newsy.com/videos/u_s_troops_in_iraq_gone_for_good
Yes Caitlin, al Maliki has surprised everybody by turning into an effective strong man who has systematically suppressed opposition groups.
Saddam was pretty good at keeping things under control with a polics force; if order and stability was the objective I’m buggered if I know why they didn’t just leave him in power and give the whole war thing a miss. But then consistency and clarity of war aims were never the Bush Administration’s strengths.
Oh that’s right I remember now … 9/11 changed everything … and the neo-cons were determined to show the world who was boss. Or in Howard’s latest revisionist justification for the invasion, some people believed that Saddam might at some future date support terrorist activities against the USA. It goes without saying that any number of Iraqi deaths are a price worth paying to avoid the hypothetical risk of another 9/11.
The degree of leftist bitterness at the collapse of all their hopes of an Allied defeat in Iraq never ceases to amaze.
We won, people. The West won, and so did the people of Iraq. The Iraqi’s are no longer under a dictatorship. Why do you think this is bad? Why do people not understand that sometimes you have to choose between bad and worse?
Why did the left always seem to choose the side of the dictators and mass-murderers?
IT
OUR effort in Iraq passed a major milestone today: Our troops are leaving the cities.
Advisers remain in place. Joint patrols will still occur. And our forces will wait nearby to respond to Iraqi calls for support. But the last of the bases and US-only outposts within Iraq’s urban centers will be vacated.
Terrorists have already begun testing the new security arrangements. Iraqi forces won’t always pass with flying colors.
Yet this situation seemed a pipe dream not so long ago: Iraq’s security forces, serving an elected government, assume primary responsibility for the good order of their own country.
We all recall the delighted leftist claims that Iraq had entered a hopeless civil war. Wrong. That Iraqis preferred al Qaeda to us. Wrong. That Shia militias represented the people. Wrong. And that Iran would seize control. Wrong again.
Looking back over six years of good intentions, tragic errors, generosity, arrogance, partisan vituperation, painful deaths and ultimate vindication, two things strike me: the ever-resisted lesson that human affairs are more complex than academic theories claim, and the simple truth that most human beings prefer a measure of freedom to immeasurable repression.
I agree totally that sometimes you have to choose between bad and worse. Its just that the evidence comes down pretty strongly on the side that the invasion was much worse than leaving Saddam in charge.
‘We won, people.’
Yeah, we are THE MEN.
Just out of curiosity IT, who in your peculiar world view ‘lost’? The Forces of Evil? Islamofascism? Da Terrorists? Or can you perhaps be a bit more precise and analytical?
Thought not. Let’s just emphasise the positive – the yanks didn’t have to leave via a helicopter on the embassy roof. WE WON WE WON WE WON!!!! SUCK IT UP LEFTIES!!!!!!!
Pathetic.
Of all of the major political parties Nouri al-Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party is the major party most closely associated with Teheran. The US has spent trillions of dollars establishing in power a client of their most inveterate rival in the region!
Moreover, under al-Maliki, the ethnic cleansing of Iraq continues.
Is this the most egregious foreign policy blunder in US history? Hard to say. Both Shiites and Sunni despised Bush. But if there is to be a sovereignty called Iraq, then the fact that it is Shiite dominated seems to be appropriate. On the other hand, the Sadrists, who are more independently-minded and Iraqi nationalist than Dawa, would appear to be more expedient allies for the US. But, then again, the Sadrists are more committed to exerting national control over Iraq’s oil resources. So perhaps oil politics favoured Dawa.
The egregiousness of Vietnam as a US foreign policy blunder has to be assessed. Vietnam turned out not to be the first falling domino. But on the other hand, Vietnam became the cookie cutter for guerrilla actions everywhere.
And Vietnam had huge domestic blowback, causing massive social and political disruption which precipitated the most serious constitutional crisis in US history.
Iraq’s only major domestic consequence so far is the eclipse of the Republican Party. That would have to be accounted as a Good Thing.
Has the US failure in the Middle East undermined seriously US confidence in military adventurism as a characteristic arm of US foreign policy? Too early to tell. The politics of US military expenditure in the next eight years will be interesting to watch.
Ken @9
Saddam was being disobedient so he had to be removed. He was signing oil deals with the French, Russians and Chinese so the oil fields were slipping away from the Yanks before their very eyes. They needed a pretext to grab them back and Saddam had to be replaced with a friendly client – dictator or otherwise.
9/11 didn’t change anything. It was used as a pretext to keep things exactly as they were, namely Middle East Oil under US Control. But, yes, it was also used to show ‘who was boss’. As Bush Snr. put it in 1991, proclaiming a New World Order which was exactly the same as the Old World Order “What we say goes”
- Barra
MarkL is hilarious. I can see how our defence bureaucrats get an erection at the thought of spending taxpayer money on overseas misadventures, it’s a pity they have such policy status.
Which was worse for the US; Iraq or Vietnam?
Surely the increase in US soldiers by Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon would be up there in terms of awful US presidential decisions.
12 Ken
How to say this gently, to an hysteric…
‘We’ is the non-totalitarian ‘we’. The personal freedom ‘we’. The human rights ‘we’.
It’s the Western Enlightenment ‘we’.
If what is done is done, and the bad choice was what occurred, and the worse choice was leaving a people under a dictatorship, which do you choose? I’ll take the one that has a freer outcome for the Iraqis. Would you really prefer the other?
IT
Integer Tone, I hate to tell you this, but the real inheritors of the Enlightenment tradition are people like Ken Lovell, not you and Dick Cheney.
You seem to be using words like “won”, “non-totalitarian”, “freer”, “worse choice” and “dictatorship” with specialised and highly idiosyncratic meanings.
Been here before, but I couldn’t let this pass
“I’ll take the one that has a freer outcome for the Iraqis. Would you really prefer the other?”
What is it with RWDB’s that they have to think in bloody BINARY – are they really transformer -style autobots ?
I mean, taking the quoted statement, even a reasonably intelligent neural network could identify more than two possibilities.
Just imagine what such an NN could do if one were to include a parameter such as
“ensure nobody dies from our actions”
Indeed, Pterosaur.
Obviously it’s impossible to prove a counter-factual, but Saddam’s regime wasn’t the stable entity it was painted as being – there’s every chance it may have collapsed of its own accord, given that it was fairly tottery anyway.
Based on the arguments seen here against ousting saddam, 6 June 1944 should have just been another quiet day while Rommel celebrated his wife’s birthday.
True, Mark. Kurdistan had become effictively independent as of the mid-90s, and the speed with which local authorities be they religious or tribal (or both) took charge during and immediately after the invasion bespeaks the fragility of Saddam’s control outside his tribal heartland.
I’m amused at some of the comments here with their delightfully retro-2004 tinge. This is a momentous occaision in Iraqi history but the heavy focus of some here on the US belies the fact that it has always been one of just dozens of actors on the Iraqi stage, not the leading player (hero or villain).
Hmm. Just imagine what such an NN could do if one were to include a parameter such as
“ensure nobody dies from our actions”
Shorter Pterosaur: Who cares if lots of little brown people get killed or oppressed, so long as my hands did none of it?
IT
#21 – Godwin FAIL.
The crucial question is whether the US achieved what it set out to do. Quite clearly it did not.
But if we want to do a nostalgia trip back to 2003 and rehearse some of the humanitarian arguments for and against toppling Saddam by military means, then the US comes out much worse.
Under Saddam, about 2,000,000 people fled the country, mostly Shiite and mostly to Iran (approx. 1,400,000).
Under US occupation at least 4,000,000 Iraqis were displaced, mostly Sunni. Most of these folks fled from the Shiite militia aka the Iraqi Army who were armed and funded by the US.
To claim that US invasion and occupation has enabled the establishment of a viable civil society for Iraqis is utterly bizarre.
It’s very enlightening reading all the US wingnut blogs about the awesome victory in Iraq that has made such fools of the left in general and President Terrorist Islamofascist Socialist in particular.
It seems the war actually began in 2006, when vicious insurgents spread death and destruction across Iraq and the pansy liberals wanted to cut and run and leave the gallant Iraqis to their fate. Instead, President Soon-to-be-vindicated-by-history Bush and the magnificent loyal fighting men and women of the US military launched Teh Surge, which crushed the insurgents and ensured Freedom and Democracy can reign supreme.
There’s no mention of what the US was doing there in the first place, they just were. The important thing is WE WON WE WON WE WON, meaning we didn’t have to pull out under enemy fire.
Razor was that a world war 2 analogy? How startlingly original and insightful.
Integer Tone @17
If its good enough for us its good enough for them
If we can kill 100,000 Iraqis because we judge a dictatorship worse than a democracy, they can kill 100,000 of us if they judge say an Islamic Fascist Theocracy better than a democracy (and ‘they’ certainly do).
Of course it would be better if Kevin Rudd agreed to teh demands of Bin Laden anmd stepped aside peacefully, but since he isn’t they are justified to bomb our cities until we are smasked to pieces.
100,000 dead Australians? Regrettable. But noe Australians are better of than before, free to live under the enlightened demands of God in the false freedoms of our corrupt, pornographic humanistic God-hating cess-pool we call a society.
That’s how they would see it anyway.
Are they justified ?
Baraholla – I beleive you will find that the vast majority of your estimated 100,000 dead were killed by terrorists, not Coalition forces.
Of course wingnuts are going to keep with this simple dictator-gorne thang – it is, and is still the only thing they ever had ….and the baby mincing machines.
On the other hand – Iraq in 2002 was country whose airspace had been controlled for over a decade, who WMD program had been disabled by UNSCOM, the Kurds had a protected zone in the north and there were regular plots by Republican Guards and so on to topple Saddam. It was totally ripe.
But the PNAC boys used one of the greatest tragedies to befall their country – 9/11 to tie together Saddam and Osama, enraging the Arab Street who knew this was a total lie, and enraging Middle East Allies in the region who knew it was a lie and providing succor to all all enemies of the US.
FTR:
Other than the above…….it was a great victory.
(In a rush sorry for typos etc)
The smilely/sunglass face above is a typo accident, if someone wants to take that out for me.
ta.
jo: tried to fix it with proper HTML, but numbers didn’t reappear. Is the version OK as it is now?
Razor @28
OK. Assume zero casualties.
Is it alrigth for Bin laden to carpet bomb our cities in order force Kevin Rudd from power and establish an Islamic Fascist Theocracy in Australia ?
Australians would be better of than before, free to live under the enlightened demands of God than in the delusional freedoms of our corrupt, pornographic humanistic God-hating cess-pool we call a society.
That’s how they would see it anyway.
Are they justified ?
jo – you must take great heart from the fact that Iran is able to run sham elections, kill demonstrators and establish a nuclear weapons capability unmolested by the West. Bravo!
Robert I rather liked Jo’s smiley face at number 8, although I thought that the Coalition Provisional Authority was supposed to be a subsidiary private company of Halliburton, as was the White House under the baleful influence of Dick Cheney.
Razor: so when are we invading Burma?
When it suits.
Like East Timor. When it suits.
Bara @ 32 – do you really believe that Al Queda, the Taliban and Bathist regimes are morally equal or superior to the West and democracy? Why don’t we allow Aboriginals to marry 9 year old girls? That was their culture but for some reason we impose our western sense of moral superiority on them too – do you also disagree with that?
32 – Barra – and could you please give some evidence of the use of carpet bombing in Iraq since 2003.
I do know of specific examples of carpet bombing in Iraq – but that was in 1991 as flank protection for the UK 7th Armoured Brigade (the Desert Rats) by B52 “carpet bombing” on Republican Guard positions during their advance. This was initally questiond by the Australian Brigade Major but his concerns about its effectiveness were resolved as his Warrior Armoured fighting vehicle was shifted sideways by the shock waves.
Razor:
Razor @38
So those who are superior get to bomb those who are inferior for their own good ?
By that reasoning when Bin Laden rains Cruise Missiles down on Sydney he will be entirely in the right by your own reasoning. Correct ?
I think that Al-Queda and the Taliban possess inferior moral codes to the West broadly speaking, but I do not think that this gives us the right to bomb them to force them to accept Western moral standards or democracy.
I do believe that it is correct for the government of Australia to prevent 9-year old girls getting married. This action is enforced by policing, courts and jail, not by carpet bombing Aboriginal communities.
Once again – I ask for your evidence of capret bombing.
Action against the Taleban was based on their refusal to hand over Bin Laden. The fact that they are 7th century misogynistic islamofascists just adds to the reasons to help lift the yoke of their perfidious rule.
Razor – Do you think that the West bombed Iraq ?
Robert if you do wish to tag this war as the worst foriegn policy disaster maybe you can explain why it is worse than the other wars the USA has entered. Why it was worst than Vietnam despite far lower casualties, likewise Korea and back we go. Literally go through point by point so to speak and substantiate that position.
It is very very easy to blithely say “Iraq is the US’s worst foriegn policy blunder ever”.
Likewise the other meme of George Bush was the worst POTUS ever. Start actually comparing him to other POTUS’s on each of their triumphs and failures and I think you’ll find it is murky at least to make these essentially pretty lazy claims.
If you went back in time to 1944 and told Patton that in the future the USA would invade and occupy a country the size and population of Iraq and be able withdraw to base within 6 – 7 years with casualties only in the 4000,s after fighting a fierce inurgency for a good portion of it he would have thought you were having a lend of him.
THere is an awful lot of laziness in the anti war analysis ( and yes on the pro side too)
DI(NR), you are aware, are you not, that Ken Lovell is a supporter of the Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, (whom Ken considers to be much misunderstood) doesn’t believe that the Soviet Union under Stalin was an appalling society run by a psychopath and didn’t really understand what a bad place Cambodia was under Pol Pot until the event -the event being, by the way, the genocide by Pol Pot and his comrades of a quarter of its population.
Just read Ken’s enlightened comments on the Iran Election Open Thread of the 13th June-you’ll find it all there.
I don’t recall Voltaire writing extensively in favour of totalitarianism, genocide, mass starvation or psychopaths as models of governmental leadership.
Are your sure that you have the slightest clue at all of what a real inheritor of the Enlightenment tradition is all about? It appears not.
Biggest military blunder in US history!?
Pig’s Arse!
Gotta love this thread. Rommel, 9 year old Aboriginal girls getting married, Patton (!), Bin Laden, the Desert Rats (ah for the moral clarity of WW2 eh? But NVM, we’ll just make believe Saddam was Hitler and everything becomes luminously clear), Iranian elections, the ‘Western Enlightenment’ (yep, it’s a little-recognised fact that Diderot actually called it ‘l’encyclopédie de lóuest’) and lest we forget, references by MarkL to obscure nicknames for President Socialist Terrorist Muslim.
Any irrelevancy in fact to avoid having to explain in a coherent manner how the hopelessly screwed-up occupation of a country invaded on the grounds of a giant deception represents a victory for anyone (or indeed a defeat for anyone else).
Kingsley, you’ll notice that I posed it as a question, not an assertion.
Wow, the WW2 comparions… straight outta 2002-3! Now we just need someone to link to Steven Den Beste or John Cole. Oh wait.
Saddam’s sunning himself in the Caribbean then, is he, Ken, laughing at what fools the Americans were in thinking that invading his country could possibly be a defeat for him?
Robert, the problem with that is that in posing the question as you have you have suggested the answer you want to hear.
You have excluded from being entertained by you the possibility that it wasn’t a foreign policy blunder at all, and that however imperfectly executed (as jo details so well at 29 above- despite her total nonsense that “there were regular plots by Republican Guards and so on to topple Saddam”) it may have long term strategic benefits and not have been a strategic blunder at all.
Thanks, guys, home from shift and I needed some serious cheering up: you have accomplished that in spades. I think that the funniest thing I have ever seen on any blog is a pack of lefties calling IT (of all people) a RWDB.
I’ll give IT a ring, as I think the mood will be also deeply amused.
MarkL
canberra
Well you know MarkL, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck..
In fact, as we all know, the US did not invade Iraq to liberate the women there, or to eradicate Al-Quaeda (Saddam and AQ = enemies, not enablers), or to stamp out the unlocatable WMD. After killing, or being indirectly responsible for killing, numerous Iraqi noncombatants, RWDBs and decents alike have been retrofitting these explanations onto what was pretty much a US adventure with desired outcomes known only to those in the American Enterprise Institute.
Oops.
If “IT” is a decent rather than a RWDB, the difference is only in the degree of bad faith argument, really.
It’s a little hard not to notice that leftists are rather fond of Chou En-lai’s wry remark about the French Revolution (viz., “too soon to tell”) but are awfully keen to pronounce a quick verdict on the messy and historically complicated war in Iraq.
It’s one of those things in life that you learn to take in stride. Some day, eventually, somebody will probably say something genuinely intelligent about this misbegotten and unhelpful war that caused enormous needless misery but also produced a few serious benefits, albeit vastly in disproportion to one another.
But I wouldn’t look to find those intelligent analyses coming from the left. Do keep on however with the insights about the Spanish-American War and so forth; it’s ever so fascinating from an anthropological viewpoint.
Well at least we can all agree that George Bush was the worst American president between Andrew Johnson and Obama. There aren’t enough ways in the English language to condemn Mr. Bush. (though I suspect that by the time Mr. Obama is through, there won’t even be an English language left to curse in.)
I think my argument in favor of electing a baked potato gets stronger every day.
“Decents”, Helen? I suppose so if you define decency as rushing to the defence of genocidal dictators at every turn, just as long as it scores a point for you against the evil US. You’d be better called “smugs”- it captures you so much better.
But I’ll leave you to your Humpty Dumpty definition.
Bara @ 42 – I don’t think bombs were used in Iraq – I know. Some of my mates were calling them in. You, however, make the sweeping claim of carpet bombing – giving the impression of indiscriminant bombing targetting civilian targets. That is an outright untruth. Despite your obvious disdain for professional western militaries – they actually operate within the rules of war and rules of engagement. A lot of time and effort is spent on attempting to accurately target enemy and avoid civilian casualties. As opposed to the terrorists.
GregM – the term “decent” is not mine. Educate yourself here. “Decent” is the colloquial term for this kind of person, but Wikipedia hasn’t yet caught up. This is the best we have so far.
You’ve got to wonder how the right can make such a habit of being wrong so consistently.
Oh those bombs. It’s only 1,477 in a year – so easy to overlook.
Against my better judgment, I clicked adrian’s link to see what he was on about.
It was a single missile. Not a bombing campaign. Certainly not a carpet-bombing campaign. Nobody likes even missiles, but we also value things like accuracy and perspective.
Why couldn’t the left check the war hawks? Because nobody believed the left. Why didn’t people believe the left? Well you could start by asking adrian.
What utter tosh.
Thanks for proving my point jpz. From the link I provided:.
I take it you can read.
Razor
OK. Let’s even say no bombs were used in Iraq despite your own comments at 39, and that hardly any Iraqis were killed by Coalition actions (you @ 28) (cue Twilight Zone theme)
You say that the actions of the West in Iraq resulted in a praiseworthy aim the ‘ousting of Saddam’ i.e. removal of dictatorship (you @ 21) and hence was a good thing. You also say @41 that military action against the Taliban was aimed at a praiseworthy objective, i.e. punishment for disobeying Western demands to hand over Bin Laden and punishment for being a misogynist Islamic Fascist Theocracy.
So what’s right for us is also right for them.
Would Bin Laden be justified if he gently bombed and/or invaded Australia causing hardly any casualties in order to punish us for being a pornographic, God-hating bunch of infidels who maintain a cesspool of a society (as he sees it) ? Would Bin Laden be justified in lightly bombing and/or invading the US if they refused to hand over the war criminals Bush Jr/Sr (as they see them) to an Islamic Court and establish an Islamic Fascist Theocracy in the US ?
If not, why not ?
I do not hold Western militaries in disdain, only the politicians who traffic in your blood for their own grubby ends.
Helen, if you were using the term “decent”in the Euston Manifesto context then you’d support the US intervention in Iraq, although critically, not misusing it as you have to mean its opposite, which I rightly characterised as the “smugs”. Again my Humpty Dumpty point is made. Do try to keep up.
No, GregM, describing a school of thought doesn’t commit me to supporting whatever it is that they support. That’s just weird. And talk about smug: I wouldn’t, mate, I just… wouldn’t. That’s all.
GregM: OK, here’s your soapbox. Make your case that the invasion of Iraq will deliver long-term strategic benefits worth the gargantuan cost.
I’d really like to hear it.
So this was all about removing an evil dictator. Justified, even.
Apparently…
“While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
But out littlest digger, JWH said:
“That has not been one of our policy objectives. That could be a consequence. Because of the circumstances in which military action might take place. But our goal is the removal of weapons of mass destruction”
He didn’t seem to think that regime change was worth going to war over!
Oh no… “I would have to accept that if Iraq had genuinely disarmed, I couldn’t justify on it’s own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I’ve never advocated that”
Even Paul Wolfowitz said it wasn’t worth risking Americans lives to get rid of a creep who had done most of his dirtiest work under US cover.
But that’s just history innit?
tigtog: “what utter tosh.”
Good grief, Socrates, your superior logic has triumphed yet again!
adrian — on what planet do you think that dropping “four bombs a day” in the midst of a war in a large country (when one of your advantages is air/missile superiority) counts as excessive?
Seriously. To my mind it reads as relative restraint. If your argument is the pacifists’ position that war is always unacceptable, then I hear you; and even if your argument is that the US incursion was so utterly unjustifiable that any military action at all would be perforce unacceptable, I could at least credit your reasoning. But I’m not convinced those conditions fully apply. On the whole I believe the Iraq war was a bad and stupid idea. But in military terms I think you (or we) have to address things with greater care than we are using here.
IT ‘The degree of leftist bitterness at the collapse of all their hopes of an Allied defeat in Iraq never ceases to amaze.’ It is precisely that bitterness that marks these people out as nothing whatsoever to do with anything that is recognisably left at all!
They have had to tell themselves this is not really happening; the Iraqi people are not being led by their own political forces freely established and competing in free and fair elections. They have to tell themselves that these brave Iraqi peoples are being led by Quislings!! A proportionally representative system in a country with its own constitution and separation of powers in this (now obviously quite strange) world view is not a revolutionary transformation at all. Its all a tragic blunder!!
The western people that are still not prepared to unite with right wingers in order to defeat fascists -even after it has been demonstrated that it is the masses of the Iraqi people that are fighting for a) the liberation of their nationalities, b) in the context of the independence of their country as they c) experience and force through the revolution that the people are demanding- are garden variety right-wingers only distinguishable by the cloud of left-ish sounding jargon that they shroud their policy position of not fighting fascists in.
The revolution sweeps on but it’s not in their name. As far as they are concerned the US didn’t overthrow 60 years of rotten to the core policies in the ME (yet the US realists in the foreign policy establishment were screaming that this was exactly what was happening to their policies.
The anti war movement has dissolved into an absolute shattered absurdity while the Obama Administration follows the path laid down clearly under GWB.
Pseudolefts simply haven’t been able to grasp the reversal in US policies that have been since WW2 the greatest obstacle to the spread of the bourgeois democratic revolution in the entire region of the Middle East and as we know they often are the very same individuals that opposed standing up to the Baathists when they attempted to annex Kuwait. They have no coherent position on what to do about Afghanistan and simply can’t grasp that the US is now demanding that the failed war for greater Israel be brought to its end.
Total confusion and phony pacifism while the swamp continues to drain before their very eyes.
j_p_z your comment illustrates the deep confusion that always accompanies attempts to justify US behaviour. GregM earlier demonstrated his incisive wit by implying that the war had been against Saddam. If that’s the case, what war are you referring to that was being waged in 2007?
The USA with the enthusiastic token support of a handful of other countries, including to our eternal shame Australia, waged aggressive war against Iraq without just cause. The war was over in a few weeks. Attempts since then to pretend that a war was still going on have all been desperate efforts to disguise the simple reality, which was that the invasion unleashed dreadful instability in the country which the occupying forces were incapable of controlling, even though that was their responsibility under international law and custom. The invasion apologists have just invented – totally and completely fabricated – one falsehood after another both to retrospectively legitimise the USA’s conduct and to rationalise the latest twists and turns in events on the ground.
Now of course they are home free. Anything bad that happens from here on will be Obama’s fault, undoing all the glorious work of Teh Surge.
The whole exercise has been an unmitigated catastrophe which no amount of sophistry will ever conceal, least of all from the Iraqi people.
Ken — you’re taking the simplistic position of an absolute moralist (e.g. look at your use of “always” in your first sentence.) From a purely moral point of view I’d say there’s more right than wrong in your stance, but it’s not terribly helpful in the real-time problems of ‘Given This Mess, What Next?’ This affair unfortunately is not a game of checkers, it’s sixteen games of chess plus a lot of illegal poker and a porno studio over in the house next door.
If I could go back in time and lock Bush and Cheney and the neocons in a basement filled with hungry zombies, I’d be hard-pressed to resist. But the position you’re taking cannot undo the past and teaches us next to nothing about how to handle the future. I honestly don’t think the purists understand the stakes of all this.
If what you want is to gloat over misadventure, well, knock yourself out. But ask yourself (as I asked above earlier): what is going on in the political culture that made Bush’s opponents so impotent in the face of such folly? If you want to stay cozy and contemplate your righteousness then be my guest. Nothing will be learned for the next crisis. Personally I’m not interested in bragging rights when about such ugly matters.
Helen
You identify yourself as leftwing. You say leftwingers had two different attitudes towards the Iraq war: the first, you call “decents” even though not even Wikipedia registers this moniker and assessment. Secondly, you present yourself, presumably in your silence, as “Indecent”.
What is it in your position on the Iraq War that leads you to think of yourself as “Indecent”?
I’ve never seen such a candid admission of moral degeneracy.
Okay, you’re joking, right???
The stuff that needed to “be learned” was clear long before the aggression started. Millions of people around the world took to the streets and tried to draw attention to that common knowledge. Diplomats, intel wallahs and ex-military types as well…
But the war-mongers just kept on going.
Spare me your contrived outrage j_p_z.
mars08 — you don’t actually understand how language works, do you.
Stop the condescending crap j_p_z and spare us the convoluted metaphors that try to give an appearance of substance to comments that essentially say zip. If you want to ‘address things in military terms’, whatever TF that means, that’s your privilege, but it’s my privilege to feel nothing but contempt for smug ‘realism’ that dismisses morality in favour of dealing with fabricated ‘crises’. ‘I honestly don’t think the purists understand the stakes of all this’ … what patronising bullshit.
Ask the Iraqi people what the stakes were, and tell the millions of dead and maimed and bereaved and the millions of homeless that they should stop being such moral absolutists cos, you know, we masters of the universe have to solve REAL problems.
And if you sincerely believe that ‘what is going on in the political culture that made Bush’s opponents so impotent in the face of such folly?’ is a strikingly original insight that nobody else has thought to discuss yet, I really don’t know what you have been reading for the last six years.
Now I’m out of here. We’ve listened to six years of these slimy rationalisations of invasion and slaughter and it’s just stunning that people with any intellectual self-respect at all can keep trotting them out. They make me sick.
Ken — OK Frankenstein, fine with me.
Invade Iraq: baaaaad.
But somehow, now Frankenstein army stuck in Iraq anyway.
What Frankenstein do?
Don’t ax Ken! He already told you: baaaad!
j_p_z
If you think the invasion of Iraq was unhelpful, messy, gosh perhaps even wrong what did you ever do to oppose it? You attribute all opposition to the US-led war to the Left, which as you said failed to stop it. Why do you absolve yourself from all responsibility for it, responsibility for the million-plus people your government’s actions killed?
In fairness to Ken, being sick about all this is probably the only legitimate response to it, so I apologize for getting contentious. It seems to me that an accurate anatomy of all this would be a helpful tool for making a future with fewer trainwrecks. I don’t find the available narratives conclusive, is all. It would be better if the various opposing camps would try harder to credit one another’s bona fides. And now I’m going to shut my yap.
Hey! Maybe the reason we can’t PICK UP the reasoning g_p_z puts forward or GRASP it’s full meaning…. is that it’s so flippin’ slimy.
Exactly like these arguments have been from the beginning.
Don Quixote and his righteous war.
Must be lonely up there on his high-horse.
SCENE: Outside the Garden of Eden.
EVE: So, Adam, what do you think is the significance of our eating that apple?
ADAM: It’s too soon to tell, my dear.
This is an intelligent question.
I’d tentatively suggest that the Bush Clique were particularly effective at harnessing the sense of shock and outrage kindled by 9/11. It was very difficult for Bush’s opponents to acknowledge the emotional responses of Americans while at the same time insisting that Bush’s policies were the morally wrong and practically inappropriate ways to act them out.
Moreover, too few of Bush’s opponents in the political classes were willing to stake their political careers upon opposition. Where was the Senator Fulbright of the Iraq War?
The Bush Clique proved to be much more effective at hijacking American emotions than at running an occupation. This combination proved to be fatal.
Robert: I’ll address this seriously, as asked, and discuss this with you on that basis. That means both of us will have to ignore the howler-monkeys and breach the length guidelines, so this may better be continued offline.
Yes, I do disagree with this, on strategic terms.
1. AQ and the other islamic terrorist organisations had the appearance within the islamist world from 1993 of being ‘the strong horse’. Following their destruction of the Towers in 01, the reputation of these groups soared, as did recruiting, state and private financial support. So there was a generic ramp-up in their prestige in islamist circles, and this presaged (according to them, anyway) many more islamist attacks.
2. Additionally, that faction of the Guardian Council in Iran which had created Hizb’allah, for example, was vindicated and the Iranian use of that ‘plausibly deniable’ proxy arm of the Iranian state became accepted policy. Also, the joint Iraqi-Syrian-Libyan-North Korean nuclear warhead/ICBM program, intended to provide both those countries and their clients with nuclear weaponry, was extant and operational.
3. The Western strategy was two-pronged. There was an immediate ‘hasty’ counter-attack in Afghanistan on AQ and its sheltering ‘government’. This addressed the immediate symptom, AQ and the Taliban, but not the disease, seventh-century fundamentalist islamism on a prestige high. Oh, knocking over the Rockpile so quickly had unexpected benefits, such as Gaddafi’s rollover on his part of the joint nuclear weapon/ICBM program, but it did not address the disease.
4. Iraq did that. There were two choices: Iran or Iraq. Iraq was preferable because all of the UN resolutions for re-activation of Gulf War I were already activated by Iraqi breaches of the Armistice, so the full legal basis was already in palce. Iraq is also in the Arab heartland. A counter-attack there would destroy the prestige earned in New York and have many other strategic benefits, right down to attracting radicalised individuals to a killing ground they could deliver themselves to with ease. That worked very well. Finally, a better civil model has resulted than the traditional one of native Arab despotism – but that’s in the long term game never even dreamed of among the sort of audience you generally get here.
1. Robert, this is of marginal relevance. Costly compared to what? Conflict is always costly. Your assumption here may be that Iraq was a ‘war’. That assumption is incomplete. It was merely another campaign in the long war. It only takes one side to consider itself as being at war to have one. That you do not consider yourself to be at war does not matter if the other guy (in this case the islamist) considers himself to be at war with you: and that is hardwired into all fundamental interpretations of islam. That’s life. We have to deal with it
2. The economic impact of the Towers attack was of a similar order of magnitude in cost terms to the campaign. In terms of human life, it is way smaller than Darfur (islamists warring on other islamics plus Christians), which attracts zero attention. But war is war, and Iraq was merely one medium sized campaign in a continuous religious war nearly one and a half millennia old. And war is always costly. So what? You have made a motherhood statement.
1. Yes and no. A worse state compared to what? If one liked the old stability: we get oil, Arabs get despots, then you have a point. But that gave us AQ as they exported their extremists. The old ’stability’ had failed. What do we do now was the issues. A valid Allied option was the classic punitive raid writ large – the standard butcher and bolt: level Baghdad and the other cities, smash all national infrastructure and force the general population to starve. Once the population had dropped by 50% due famine they might get the point: but if not, rinse and repeat. This was the old Soviet/Byzantine/islamic way of doing business (ask the Ukrainians/Pechenegs/Christian kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula) and it works.
2. Instead, we have spent time and money to develop a better model of governance in Iraq, one which allows considerably more personal and economic freedom than before, and increases living standards. This is a better strategy by far: it’s also a valid long term strategic function because it breaks the mold of all Arab states being despotic, dysfunctional economic basket cases and permits individuals to better their lives at the family level. If the population is busy bettering itself economically by their own efforts then it is more difficult for the islamists to divert them to islamist ends. But to better themselves they have to have things they did not have before: the major reform in Iraq is one the howler-monkeys never think of. Reform of property laws and removal of arbitrary confiscation by despots: property and law reform. If rule of law takes hold, the classic zero-sum game of Arab economic thinking may erode. And not before time.
Apologies for length. Should you actually want a serious discussion on this matter, here may not be the place.
MarkL
Canberra
1. There was no AQ in Iraq until after the US invasion. AQ in Iraq was an artifact of misbegotten US policy. Saddam Hussein was no islamist. He suppressed Islamism ruthlessly.
2. Where is it stated in US strategy that the US has picked up a “long war” that according to you began before the first European set foot in North America? Or do you believe that US policy makers are simply useful cats’ paws for folks who really understand what this war is about? And if so, who are these folks? US taxpayers would like to know who is really calling the shots.
3.
Half of the Sunni population of Iraq (4,000,000) or about one sixth of the population of the nation have fled from their homes. This refugee crisis arose during the US occupation. I can see why it is impossible for apologists of the Iraq fiasco to acknowledge these facts. How is it possible for you to frame this human catastrophe as permitting “individuals to better their lives at the family level”. It’s grotesque.
4. The model of government arising from the US occupation of Iraq is Islamist!
And now we know – funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 70/80’s was a long term strategy to flush out the Islamists from around the world and train them, so when the long planned Iraq invasion occurred they could be crushed in one single campaign….all so obvious now.
What Katz said.
And of course, if we asked the mass of educated middle class Iranian demonstrators still on the streets in Terhran…they would have way preferred the US to have bombed and occupied their country to liberate them (or whoever wasn’t killed or maimed) from their repressive Govt. War, terror, violence, just the perfect environment for the growth of civil society and reform.
MarkL, hopefully this type of neo-con daydreaming doesn’t go any further up the chain, than whatever Oz military link you are situated on, otherwise god help us.
Balderdash.
A summary, (in part) of Attorney General’s Legal Advice on March 7 2003. (before he was ‘got at’ by Blair, to give a different advice)
MarkL @78, Robert
If you guys agree to an extended discussion could you please both blog it ?
I would be interested to see how your discussion pans out.
Baraholka: I’m not sure that I have time, which is a pity.
In short, I have a number of serious problems with MarkL’s argument, some of which have already been pointed out by jo and Katz.
To pick just one, I fail to see how knocking over Saddam’s regime in Iraq was going to hurt Al-Queda or Iran, both of whom were sworn enemies of Saddam.
“MarkL, hopefully this type of neo-con daydreaming doesn’t go any further up the chain, than whatever Oz military link you are situated on, otherwise god help us.”
I wouldn’t worry too much, jo. Mark L’s meteoric rise to the position of AHD (Assistant Head Cleaner) is unlikely to go any further now that we have an IFF (Islamic Fascist Friendly) government in power in Canberra.
Also inquiries into reported leaks in Defence headquarters toilets may reveal a high level mole in defence cleaning which is apparently giving everyone the shits.
Cause fact is stranger than a airport action thriller, here is an article on the sorts of intelligence the neo-cons still rely on…and all the way back to delivering sophisticated weaponry to Iranian ‘moderates’ who may or may not be able to secure hostage release… or may or may not actually be who they are…oh, well, you may as well deliver them to the Iranian army.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=9361
MarkL, your justification for the invasion on the basis that this facilitated the imposition of a superior economic and legal system is invalid.
Using your logic, AQ are therefore permitted to force us to become an Islamic Fascist Theoocracy because in their view it is immeasurably superior to the corrupt, God-hating, pornographic legal and economic system of the sick West (as they see it)
Whoever has the better system can bomb their inferiors for their own good. Correct ?
You said:
..and compared that ‘We’ to
So in your view the enlightened west has kindly bombed Iraq into accepting superior Western economic and legal values for the betterment of backward Arabs.
Mark – AQ see the West as backward, dysfunctional, materialistic with a highly unjust system of government and economics, not the other way around.
Are they allowed to bomb us ?
September 11, 1973 was a bad day for Muslim militants in Chile.
Can’t really agree with Katz @79. Iraq is not an Islamist state. Certainly the people, recently, have shown themselves to be more nationalist and less pro-theocracy. Secularism survives. That said… things may have been different in the communal shock, power vacuum, chaos and infrastructure collapse of the first months of occupation.
Robert – your blog not mine but I reckon what might be an interesting post on Iraq would be if this withdrawal to base by the US succeeds? As much as it would be essentially crystal ball gazing by us all it would be interesting to see different people’s takes.
It would have implications politcally back in the States but also opens up Obama and Petraeus’s options nicely in Afghanistan.
M08
Have you read the Constitution of Iraq?
No. I haven’t read the Constitution of Iraq. Nor that of Australia for that matter.
But I still believe that the average Iraqi would rather put their religious differences back in the box.
The Medium Lobster says:
….and I realise that’s backtracking a lot on my original comment.
Katz: Robert and yourselffall into the ’serious person’ context here, worth both reading and replying to.
A bit beside the point. We know from their own documents now that his regime funded and supported AQ outside Iraq in a similar manner to the way Iran funds and supports Hizb’allah outside Iran, Saudi supported AQ, and the US supported the Contras. The meetings between his senior intellgence staff and subsequent data and cash handovers in Malaysia prove this.
The long war is an historical reality. The US was drawn into it in the 18th century and has been there ever since, but so what? We are all designated as enemies by the islamists.
I’d suggest looking at US War College, Naval War College etc open output for strategic discussion papers relating to it. There is quite a body of such work.
Concur, war is grotesque and obscene and nobody knows that better than those who fight in them. The tens of millions of refugees in Europe showed this grotesquery in 45-48 and the Darfur refugees show it now, even though they seem invisible to the self-styled elite-and-nuanced class.
In the past Robert and yourself have shown the ability to step back from the emotive in general and such tactical details in particular and look at the strategic picture. Have a go at this now – the Iraqi economy is booming and the benefits of that flow to the population, not to a totalitarian regime. And this saps both the attraction of islamism and the hold of other Arab totalitarian regimes by breaking the Arab view of
Islamist? Or Islamic? The Iranian totalitarian state is Islamist. The Tunisian state is Islamic: which does Iraq more resemble?
MarkL
Canberra
Concur, and here is not really the place for a rational discourse between reasonable men with divergent views, and time availability is always the issue. I suspect, though, that we would both learn useful things. Example below, from your comment.
A good point from a tactical basis. From the strategic basis, more emerges.
A. AQ has been badly shattered by:
- ending direct and indirect financial support from Iraq (short term problem for them)
- ending intelligence support from Iraq (short term again)
- destruction of much of their recruiting base through killing of jihadi-wannabes in Iraq: AQ began openly lamenting the collapse of their recruit flow by 2005 and funding later in that year (medium/long term)
- literal annihilation of their experienced leadership cadre after a large fraction of it moved to Iraq (long term)
- rejection of ‘foreign jihadi’ and of the AQ version of islamism by both Shiite and Sunni tribes after they experienced it at first hand, saw that it displaced the tribal elites, brought poverty, malice, caprice, vicious and indiscriminate terrorism, and misery, then drew in other foreign forces which it could not fight, which destroyed it, but which then brought local economic revival. This is a represents a strategic achievement of value. The ‘host’ self-immunised against the ‘disease’ of islamism while remaining islamic, and gained the opportunity to obtain local economic benefit.(strategic disaster for AQ)
It’s worth noting that the new administration is following the Bush plan, and will retain substantial ground and major air forces in Iraq.
B. Iran. Iran was given an object military-strategic lesson, and then geographically contained. The oft-stated Iranian aim is to become the regional power which dominates the Persian Gulf in general and Saudi Arabia in particular, displacing the US. The impossibility of this was clearly demonstrated by how quickly, cheaply and completely the baathist totalitarian state was obliterated. The ’shock and awe’ bit of the aerial offensive was aimed squarely at the Guardian Council: ‘can you handle this level of networked aerial supremacy?’ The MSM missed the point completely, of course.
At the end of 2002, the Guardian Council could look around the compass and see either US/NATO forces or their Allies, on most of their borders. And all within aircraft range. That was the short term strategic lesson. The fought back with islamists as a proxies. These were annihilated. The long term strategic lesson (which the Obama administration appears to be as determined to implement as was the Bush administration: but it’s early days yet and the new administration is alarmingly incompetent), is to develop a more successful economic model in Iraq. This is aimed so as to worsen tensions within Iran between the population and the theocrats, and between the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guards. (Remember, the Iranian oil industry is in an appalling state of decay and it even has to import LNG to meet domestic demand. Despite massive gas reserves, it has totally failed to develop that industry. So the armed forces and RG fight all the time over who gets the available cash.)
Obviously, Robert, you’ll quickly see that there’s much more to it, but these are the most obvious outcomes.
MarkL
Canberra
1. “A bit beside the point.”
It isn’t beside the point because one of the justifications for the occupation was to stymie AQ in Iraq, not to punish Saddam Hussein for his alleged relations with AQ elsewhere. Ex poste facto any justification for any bellicose action can be cobbled together if you accept that provoking the rise of a resistance force is justification for being there in the first place in order to suppress resistance.
2. “The long war is an historical reality.”
Under the US constitution it is a reality only if it is acknowledged to be a reality and is incorporated into a formal declaration of war aims. Otherwise, under US law it is extra-legal and therefore potentially impeachable.
3. “Islamist? Or Islamic? The Iranian totalitarian state is Islamist.”
There are many unattractive aspects of the Iranian regime, but being totalitarian isn’t one of them. This trope, which is an artifact of Nazism and Stalinism, doesn’t apply to Iran.
“Islamist” isn’t a quality of totalitarianism. Rather, it is a label that identifies the ambitions of a regime: that is to convert the world to Islam. There is nothing in the constitution or identifiable ambitions of Iraq’s Islamic Dawa Party that distinguishes it from their sponsors in Iran in regard to this ambition. Thus, if the political classes of Teheran can be designated as Islamist, so can their clients in Baghdad. The irony of the regime in Baghdad is that it is funded by the US, who you allege is engaged in a “long war” against Islamism.
We know from their own documents now that his regime funded and supported AQ outside Iraq in a similar manner to the way Iran funds and supports Hizb’allah outside Iran, Saudi supported AQ, and the US supported the Contras.
Gee, MarkL, Q. Would it be too much for you ie. the rationalist reasonable bloke with the diverging view (snigger) to actually put up any links to any like evidence or reports which support this assertion?
On the other hand, here is a link and a goodly chunk of the exec summary of latest Pentagon report into the link between Saddam and AQ & terrorism in general. A report summarising from the regime’s own records, what we in the reality based universe could have told, wait, did tell you, in 2002.
http://media.npr.org/documents/2008/mar/gjeltenexecutivesummary.pdf
IIRC, Saddam used to appear on the news shaking hands with Palestinian suicide bomber families, it was never a secret.
And here’s a report you wouldn’t ever link to:
But why rely on facts when you can just bullshit your way through and if they do it at the very highest levels of government, no problems for anyone else either, is it MarkL?
Oh, but everything is justified in this long war isn’t it? – so it doesn’t really matter if they were pan-arab terror groups not AQ – they’re all the same, they’re all Arabs or Muslims.
We are all designated as enemies by the islamists.
Are ‘we’ all US soldiers in Iraq now? Nous somme tous americains?
Have a go at this now – the Iraqi economy is booming and the benefits of that flow to the population, not to a totalitarian regime.
No, everything has been privatised, including the oil now. The benefits are ‘flowing’ elsewhere. But considering the Iraqis have spent the past few years being shocked and awed, and before that, embargoed, that’s probably an improvement.
Well actually yes. That is precisely how the Islamists see you.
But you’d be too stupid to make the very basic effort to find that out and prefer to see your ignorance as the at the cutting edge of progressive thought.
THR I’ll add a further remark on my comment on your smug indecency, above.
Look up the reasons given by the Bali bombers for their atrocity in 2002 which killed 182 people, 91 of whom were Australians. How many of them were American soldiers in Iraq? I won’t bother to provide a link. You’d be too lazy and self-indulgent to follow it. Others here will be aware of what I am referring to.
Helen, you have accused me of smugness. Look at THRs post and then marvel at the self-restraint I show when I respond to such nonsense, of which I notice you have never made the slightest criticism, being as you are at the cutting edge of progresive thought.
No, Helen,I am not smug. You misinterpret my contemptuous comments as smugness. What gets posted here as “progressive” thought with its smug ignorance gets my contempt and then you accuse me of being smug when I respond to it trying to bring some factual reality to the subject.
If you want to see smugness you should see what was posted at 92 above. Any person with a half a bit of intelligence (and I don’t accuse THR of that) would see that as being smugness personified.
I know that when you see what was posted at 92 (holding the high moral ground as you always do) you will agree with me and would not want in any way to defend it.
The bombing in Bali was carried out by some locals who thought mass murder would advance their cause. No different to the London underground bombing, really.
So dropping GPS-guided bombs in the Middle East helps… how?
You see, Helen. It’s not just THR who is smug, stupid and unwilling to find out the facts.
mars08, I know that it will be a struggle for you, but find out something about Inonsesia. Ther bombing occurred in Bali and killed Balinese. The killers were Javenese. In Indonesia they are not “some locals”. To the Balinese they are definitely not local. They are to the Balinese, alien killers.
Helen will explain to you, however, for she holds the high moral ground in all mattters (and doesn’t need to make the slightest factual enquury to validate her opinion), that the opinion of the Balinese does not matter.
So what the facts are and what the Balinese think doesn’t matter. Your ininformed opinion does. Helen will tell you so and if you disagree you are smug (see 92 above). And if there is a dissenting opinion on this site it will be deleted, no questions asked.
Don’t tell me what I think or don’t think about Bali. Also, I have not deleted any opinions from anyone, dissenting or otherwise. You might like to fantasize about a noble persecution but it ain’t happening. If any of your comments have actually disappeared it may be that they contained keywords which have been set to consign a post to the moderation queue. Why don’t you contact the moderators via the email supplied and find out.
Re 92, Fafblog is one of the oldest and most popular satirical blogs on the net. You might find them offensive, but I find the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure/ family life and loss of life offensive. De gustibus non disputandum.
You just said a bucket-load of nothing, GregM. They murdered a bunch of innocent people -including Australians- at a bar. And the killers weren’t Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Afghan, Guatemalan, or Saudi.
Good Grief! Are you always like this, or are we only seeing a persona you reserve for the internet?
As for your all your jabbering about smugness ….the lady doth protest too much, methinks
Helen, No you did not delete that post by someone called “Detente”. Your moderators did. It was a post that I would never have made and would never agree with.. But in a society and a community which values free speech it was a post which deserved a vigorous response, and condemnation, but not censorship.
You’re a self-righteous, waffling prat, GregM. Your real surname isn’t Sheridan by any chance?
And nothing to say about Iraq being
denudedliberated of its national assets?Well how about you try not telling anyone else about what they think about anything, as you constantly do.
Talk about smugness personified.
Re post 92. You’ve made my case. You can do what you want without criticism (De gustibus non disputandum) but heaven help anyone who criticises you:- no such rule applies. You are the moral arbiter and their dissent from your judgement is proof of their failure. I am sorry for them that they don’t live up to the standards ypou impose upon them. But when they don’t I’ll be around and eager to remind them that “De gustibus non disputandum”.
MarkL, I shouldn’t have upped the snark, but frankly your attitude from the beginning on this thread is that your are posting from authority, the authority however only being yourself. Sorry, but line up buddy.
FTR, I have never believed that Saddam was just some cracker dictator that could be left to his own devices to suppress by whatever means at his disposal his citizens or fund terrorist activities outside Iraq, however, this doesn’t mean that the course of action taken the US and the COW was the right strategic move at the right time nor it was undertaken competently. Quite the opposite.
You posted that The Western strategy was two-pronged. There was an immediate ‘hasty’ counter-attack in Afghanistan on AQ and its sheltering ‘government’. This addressed the immediate symptom, AQ and the Taliban, but not the disease, seventh-century fundamentalist islamism on a prestige high. Oh, knocking over the Rockpile so quickly had unexpected benefits, such as Gaddafi’s rollover on his part of the joint nuclear weapon/ICBM program, but it did not address the disease.
What “Western strategy” are you talking about- as Katz keeps pointing out – this strategy was never formalised by any western government. It’s quite ludicrous to keep posting that there was some overall properly formalised strategy that all Western Govts had agreed to pre- or in the wake of 9/11. Plans however to invade Iraq were resurrected very quickly inside the White House and possibly a strategy developed as to how this potential action could be sold to the US Congress, public and the world. Sorry, but that is not the same thing as democratically elected Govts having decided on some long term strategy vis a vis your long war.
Rather, the world public and the citizens of Afghanistan in particular, were promised by Bush, that his Administration would take responsibility and finally rebuild that country – I think the term – new Marshall Plan was even trotted on that misty eyed Presidential moment and not this “hasty counter-attack”.
Now considering that in the main it was citizens of client US states like Saudi and Pakistan who had or were committing most of the terrorist acts against the west, this made sense as the on-going instability in Afghanistan had for decades provided a base, live training, laundered funds and so on, for all sorts of no-good activities. A proper reconstruction of Afghanistan -would have demonstrated that the west firstly and importantly was keeping its promises and secondly would have provided a counter to the increasingly unstable nuclear Pakistan next door. It also would have made it harder for Islamists to argue that the evil west was just about oil, supporting Israel and humiliating Muslims, all besides the concrete result of helping to rebuild that country.
But according to you – this neo-Marshall Plan – was just pure doublespeak by the White House and understood to be so, by all Western Governments – as the real western strategy was to…knock over the “rockpile” on the way to Baghdad, all along?
The other striking omission of your post-hoc rationalisations ie. your ‘western strategy’ scenario – is that the Bush administration and most pertinently Condi Rice ignored all the warnings and the threat posed by AQ in the lead up to 9/11.
If there was ever a smoking gun that points to your scenario being like entirely wrong – these now well documented facts, are it. ie. they didn’t have a clue and they abrogated their direct responsibility to their own citizens by ignoring what the previous Administration had considered of the most important domestic security issues of the day. As Clinton had to point out himself, in a startling admission by a US President, in contrast to this blundering oversight by the new Bush Admin, that he had authorised the assassination of Bin Laden in 1998, and that they had only missed getting him by one hour in Pakistan in one particular attempt on his life.
I don’t expect or even want a response, however, I think it’s important to work through systematically some of your talking points. And not everything you have posted is incorrect – rather some of positive outcomes or even the unintended non-negative outcomes shouldn’t be overlooked, as I think jpz was wanting to discuss – however, these can only be discussed however, if it always acknowledged and always understood that these were built on and over the graves of so many Iraqi citizens who were not given any choice by anyone when making this ultimate sacrifice.
That’s pure genius!
You can JUSTIFY a war against a sovereign nation by starting a war against that nation. As long, of course, as that nation is teh enemy… which… because you are at war with them… THEY CERTAINLY ARE!!!
And teh “long war”. Oh, brilliant. That would mean that Saddam was our stalwart ally, back in the 80s, when he went to war against Islamic Republic of Iran. Coincidentally at a time he was overseeing the worst crimes against some of his own people. With political cover from the US. Then, despite no WMD or connections to the WTC attack, he becomes an excuse to attack Iraq. Strategically speaking he was a handy chap to have around…
What rollover?
Qaddafi had been trying to come in from the cold since the mid 90s. The Clinton administration finally started secret talks with the Libyans back in 1999. Libya had indicated that it was willing to abandon it’s support of terrorism and scrap it’s weapons programs in return for diplomatic talks aimed at ending sanctions.
Nice use of evidence, Jo.
Straussians among the neo-cons are addicted to the fantasy of a shadow government of cognoscenti who pull strings, tell “noble lies” and generally manipulate the unregenerate masses of “the West” for their own good.
Your careful recitation of actual facts demonstrates just how deluded are neo-con apologists in relation to their “secret history”.
In truth, the Bush Clique were driven by pique, impatience and ignorance. They weren’t Darth Vader. They were Emperor Maximilian.
From the tossers at PNAC (Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Perle as founding members) we got: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for substantial American force in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
“One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today…”
~Michael Ledeen {August 6, 2002}
Over the years it’s been about several different things… various aims… But it has NEVER been about the welfare of the people in the Middle East.
Quite right, jo.
If you followed through on what happened with that order of Clinton’s which you have cited then you’d be too embarrassed to admit it.
Katz would, of course, with his precious knowledge of the US Constitution, (along with 19th century British policy in Ireland, post War South Korean trade policy and Cuban democracy,to mention a few) point out that such an order would have been certain grounds for Clinton’s impeachment.
Jo _ I always felt the review of intel into links b/w AQ and ISI to be pretty damn weasley. They had to slip the word “operational” in or they would have been forced to come to the conclusion they were absolutely desperate to avoid. ie because you can’t point us to an actual joint operation by ISI and AQ we are going to infer there was no link. If the question was
“were there contacts b/w AQ and ISI figures? ” or “were there AQ figures in Iraq with ISI knowledge” the answers would have been far less comfortable for people on your side of the fence.
From what I have read all that prevented bin Laden from cooperating more fully with Saddam was he was suspicious Saddam was seeking to gain control of AQ which may well have been a justified suspicion. If they could have come up with a pact that enabled them to cooperate without bin Laden fearing losing control they probably would have. I think Bush and Co. were quite entitled to be worried by such a prospect.
The anti-war crowd have placed way way too much faith in the idea that they were the antithesis of each other ( AQ & Ba’Athists) and therefore couldn’t possible cooperate. The concept of my enemy’s enemy is my friend or the wonderful bonding abilities of a common enemy seem to be willfully ignored.
MarkL – you might remember awhile back you recommended me some books on Vietnam. Finally just got into Karnow’s book and really enjoying it. Thanks for th etip.
Well… like all wingnuts, you make a watertight case, kingsley.
“The concept of my enemy’s enemy is my friend…” Yeah baby!
By that logic, Saddam would have been BBFE with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I’m actually amazed that, after all these years of hearing/reading this sort of pitiful crap from the likes of you and MarkL, I still think it’s worth a reply. I really need to get a hobby.
What a load of sanctimonious twattery the pro-war supporters are spouting here. My god, it’s been 6 years and every part of the project failed, and you’re still pretending that you did it to “liberate” the Iraqi people? What happened while you were “liberating” the Iraqis?
1. a million died
2. 4 million fled
3. Iraq’s economy nose-dived
4. al Qaeda grew and got battlefield experience
5. a couple of 1000 western soldiers died
6. Afghanistan became more chaotic
7. Iran got more radical
8. An Iranian ally was installed in a previously independent state
9. a multi-racial, multi-religious modern secular state was destroyed and replaced with an islamic state that is only going to become more islamic
10. Liberal interventionism was buried as a philosophy
11. The republican party in America was severely damaged
12. a couple of hundred civilians in Spain and England were killed
Yet we’re supposed to pretend that this was a success? The worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years it may or may not be but a success it certainly wasn’t. Yet these stupid stupid interventionists are still whining on about how lucky the Iraqis are that we uprooted or killed a fifth of their population. You’d think they’d at least have enough shame to keep this ridiculous junk-think to themselves.
To the above I would add the plauge of birth defects and cancers caused by residue from Depleted Uranium weaponry.
It was the 1990’s version of the landmines and boblets of Loas and Cambodia.
Pure barbarism.
And then there’$ the co$t of thi$ little adventure.
Ad hominem attacks like #116 really do not progress
what is a largely interesting discussion.
Regardless of what one’s opinions are of kingsley,MarkL,
and GregM, they offer alternative viewpoints with a
degree of grace and politeness. That’s why LP is such
A good place for debate.
They deserve better than world weary, patronising
condescension exhibited by some.
Just an opinion of course.
Well good for you!
I withdraw my “wingnuts”
Does that make it acceptable?
via Collins, consider the opening line of comment #10:
and feel free to tell me where the “grace and politeness” lies in that one. I wasn’t hoping for an Allied defeat in Iraq, and neither were most of the millions of people who marched against the war. When idiots like Integer Tone quit with the accusations of treason, and fools like Markl quit with lines like “the anti-Bush lancet propaganda” we can talk ad hominem. Nothing else will be forthcoming until the chief losers of this war – the neo-con scum and their useful idiot Decents – admit that they screwed the pooch, and killed a million Iraqis while they were doing it.
Which, incidentally, wasn’t particularly graceful or polite either. Let’s not forget that.
I agree with you via collins
about the silly ad hominem
on threads such as these.
It tends to distract from the main, substantive issues.
I agree that LP is still a very good venue to find informed and detailed fact and opinion.
Many sides of many arguments use ad hominem, as sg showed.
Normally Ambigulous I would tend to agree, but the character of people who can complacently (or worse) support mass murder and immiseration as part of some great game of realpolitik cannot be divorced from the core issues surrounding Iraq. The personalities, motives and values of the invasion’s cheer-leaders IS one of the main, substantive issues.
GregM, I am not unaware of the overall failure of the Clinton Administration in respect including the convoluted mess involving the negotiations between the US and Sudan in respect of Bin Laden, documented by the 9/11 Commission, nor of possible links between Iraq-AQ that Clinton administration officials themselves pointed to in respect of the bombing of the suspected chemical factory which were also used in the Bin Laden indicment. My point was in respect of how the new Bush Admin. hadn’t even bothered to read the security assessments, which didn’t parlay at all with what MarkL was posting.
However these third party AQ-Iraq links and fellow passenger stuff were never enough to tie Saddam to AQ directly in respect of 9/11. It was always a stretch of the US’s credibility esp. at that time and the use of dodgy intelligence was just pathetic. Nor should any of this outweigh whether it was the best strategic move to invade Iraq at that time or ever, and it should go without saying without building a proper case and putting in the hard yards to gain a resolution. Besides having a plan for what happens after Shock & Awe.
The incompetence, lack of planning & execution post invasion and their dodgy contracting etc only really became evident to the US public when the winds of Katrina blew apart their wink, wink, nudge, nudge style of administration.
MarkL btw. referred to the Malaysian AQ meeting just prior to 9/11:
Although it is possible that Iraqi national Shakir who was at the meeting could have been relaying to Saddam foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks; we’ll never really know now and even if the Iraqi Govt knew and possibly other Govts – does this mean they were complict, after all they were bitter enemies of the US. Otoh, Saddam was a great survivor and directly attacking the US homeland would mean the end for him. And it did regardless of Iraqi Govt invovlement.
Kingsley can you post links to the sort of things you’ve been reading, I’m relying on reports from the Pentagon under Bush 2. I managed to get through 2 volumes of the captured documents and ‘banality of evil’ is a precise description of the mostly IIS documents.
Most of the documents are related to missions and plots undertaken by their own security forces mostly internal, some external included a failed bombing attempt in 93/94 against external American interests (US embassy in the Philippines). Support & reports for internal Islamist groups undertaking missions against the Kurds and/or Iran. Reports on IIS or internal groups undertaking internal missions against UN personnel, aid workers. Support and funding of Palestinian terror missions, some intelligence reports on what anti-Kuwaiti Govt and anti-Saudi/Yemeni Govt anti-US groups with links to AG were up to and over a longish period of time….. but no smoking gun as the exec summary states.
That said, it does amaze me that there is any surprise that Saddam and crew would not have had operatives, spies and paid informers working assiduously internally and eternally with links to all sorts of organisations, isn’t that the very definition of a repressive regime with a huge operational security apparatus?
Things have moved on considerably since 2003, and now a new Administration has to deal with any blowback from the previous administration as all do, and hopefully build on any achievements (even if gained at the expense of innocent lives.) So we’ll see again if diplomacy and negotiation rather than the use of force only can progress the interests of citizens in many countries and sponsor good governance and provide justice etc. But if or when force is required, then hopefully there will be the willingness to put in the hard yards to build global alliances, to obtain UN resolutions, plan and most importantly provide evidence and the moral case by transparent and accountable means.
Anyway that’s way more than enough from me on the subject, I have a gigantic pile of housework to do.
You would be incorrect, again. For better or for worse, there is nothing illegal under US law in Clinton’s use of the CIA for the stated purpose.
There are many introductory texts on the US Constitution. Most of them would be informative for you.
However, it was true that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives were successful in having Clinton impeached for lying about his sexual dalliances. Impeachment is a political process. It would therefore have been quite in character for the 1990s Republicans to impeach Clinton for not breaching US law.
So, accidentally, GregM, you may be correct.
Thanks to Ken@124. Clearly you understand my frustration.
But don’t you think calling the “cheer-leaders” was…. maybe… a bit harsh. They’re the real victims after all.
I wonder what Clare, the chk chk boom chick is doing these days???
To this day, most Americans on all sides of the argument who refer to ‘the human cost’ of the invasion tend to nominate the deaths of US troops as the primary consideration. The suffering of the Iraqis sometimes gets a cursory mention after that and frequently is not acknowledged at all.
One can understand why many citizens of the CoW are subconsciously reluctant to admit to the enormity of the consequences of the crimes committed in their name. Nevertheless the affair was significantly enabled by their moral and ethical blindness. It might be true that there are no stupid children, only stupid questions, but I don’t believe we should adopt a convention that there are no bad people, only bad arguments.
1. Be certain of your superiority.
2. Point to dodgy information and rumours. Either created by yourself or witless, useful tools.
3. Get some lazy meeja cronies on board to screech about the “evidence”
4. Add a distracted, stressed and politically disengaged electorate.
5. Demand that strong action be taken immediately
6. Claim the the other side is weak and morally corrupt
7. Stake you political future on it.
8. When you get caught out using lies, change the original reason for the attack.
9. When that doesn’t get traction, play the “victim” card.
10. Never apologise and fall back to the “yeah, but…” arguments.
But enough about that ute fiasco….
Katz
Katz, you are correct in that such post-facto justifications can be made: they DO have to be watched for, because they can distort perceptions of the strategic reality. This has occurred here: your assumption here is that all the strategic issues here were post-facto, and that is demonstrably not correct. Few governments act that way, even the ‘insane’ National Socialist government of Germany acted rationally in response to their own framework of strategic drivers (see Gotz Aly, ‘Hitler’s Beneficiaries’ for examples on the economic side). How likely is it that the US re-activated the Gulf War and held Iraq accountable for its breaches of the GW1 armistice without carefully considering the ways to wring the last drop of strategic advantage from the situation, especially in relation to Iran? That is just not how governments work.
So what? That legally the US might not consider itself at war is irrelevant as the US is hardly in the business of randomly setting off bombs in railway networks or deliberately aiming to expunge any particular religion (let alone all of them). Similarly, Spain does not consider itself at war. Not relevant. What matters is that islamists consider themselves to be at war with the US, Australia, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Thailand, India, China, Russia… and all the rest of us. And they demonstrably DO randomly set off bombs in our railway networks and deliberately aim to expunge all other religions. So, we have to respond. But yes, it’s a shadowy war, and the public will not see most of it.
Quite a good point on semantics: “expansionist islamic fascism” or “islamic conquest ideology’ are then perhaps better descriptors. ‘Totalitarian’ is insufficiently accurate.
You have mistakenly inverted my point in your final sentence. I do not allege that the US is engaged in “the Long War” against islamism at all – it is an historic fact that islam is engaged in “The Long War” against all other religions, civilisations and cultures. You yourself openly acknowledge this above: “it is a label that identifies the ambitions of a regime: that is to convert the world to Islam. “. And such conversion is done by endless wars of unprovoked aggression, according to the historical record of the last 1400 years.
I take it from this very limited engagement on a very small range of points within my strategic argument that you do not find it terribly divergent from your own views?
It is regrettable that Robert lacks the time to discuss this issue offline. I have just noted that he will not be able to contact me via my old email. Robert, should you want to discuss this matter, I will set up a blind account so that we may.
MarkL
Canberra
Good grief! They’re certainly taking their sweet time, aren’t they? I mean for the first eleven centuries the US wasn’t even around to hold them back!!!
1.
MarkL, you appear to share this view with some left-wing conspiracists who perceive the Bush administration to have been populated by evil geniuses.
On the other hand, my view on the matter, and the one that is more borne out by experience is that there was some very poor and flawed thinking on these matters inside the Bush administration. Rather than evil geniuses, the folks involved were naughty idiots.
2.
If you go back and look at the genesis of this thread, you’ll perceive that my point about the constitutionality of the war is the central issue because the declaration of war made thereby explains the legal reason for requiring Americans to spend blood and treasure on the venture. Any other motive or objective represents an illegal hidden agenda. A comparison of the aims of the US government and of various islamist groups is beside the point.
3.
No, not all of Islam, only some Islamists. The biggest mistake of the Bush administration has been to allow Islamists to persuade many more Muslims than was sensible to enlist in Islamist ventures. These numbers are still small, although troublesome. The Bush administration has been the author of many of its difficulties and of difficulties that the Bush administration has bequeathed to the world.
But that’s what naughty idiots are wont to do.
Evil naughty idiots…