And So It Begins . . .
Our Word For The Day Is "Ignominious." Say It With Me: "Ignominious."
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (57) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The insurgents in Iraq may now be able to plan their schedules accordingly:
Democrats, who won control of the U.S. Congress, said on Sunday they will push for a phased withdrawal of American troops from Iraq to begin in four to six months, but the White House cautioned against fixing timetables.
"First order of business is to change the direction of Iraq policy," said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is expected to be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress.
Democrats will press President George W. Bush's administration to tell the Iraqi government that U.S. presence was "not open-ended, and that, as a matter of fact, we need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months," Levin said on ABC's "This Week" program.
Bush has insisted that U.S. troops would not leave until Iraqis were able to take over security for their country, and has repeatedly rejected setting a timetable for withdrawal because, he says, that would only embolden the insurgents.
The White House said, however, that Bush is open to new ideas. Bush will meet on Monday with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that is expected to recommend alternative policies in its final report.
New ideas are fine and good, of course, and the White House should revisit its own views regarding partition and/or dramatic federalization. But once again, it bears repeating--though it appears to be falling on deaf ears--that the removal of American troops will only bring the peace of the grave in Iraq. There are no security forces capable of standing up to the insurgents the way American troops are. Removing the troops will only serve to allow the insurgents to rush into a power vacuum and if we announce the timetable for that removal, the insurgents will draw up their designs to turn Iraq into their new base of operations accordingly.
But none of this appears to matter for an incoming Congressional majority more intent on flexing its muscles than taking a hard and realistic look at the situation on the ground. Many a time, what is promised on the campaign trail turns out not to be good policy if implemented. But don't tell that to the incoming Congressional majority, which acts like it has base passions to appeal to instead of a country to assist in governing.
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And So It Begins . . . 57 Comments (0 topical, 57 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
show that Virginians favor withdrawal by 52-40%
in Missouri by 50%-44%.
And Rhode Island: Withdrawal 69%-26%, to cite only three of the tight races.
I think Bush is keeping quiet at this point in order to let the democrats dig their own political graves with their big mouthes. All along the dems said they don't believe in "cut and run", and that republicans were smearing them by saying that.
Now the democrats have gone on national TV and said just that, cut and run. They want to start withdrawing in 4 to 6 months even though they have no plan for Iraq. The democrats want surrender plain and simple.
Imagine the backlash against the democrats once we have won this war.
It reminds me of an incident early in the Afghanistan campaign, when it slowed down a little. Ted Kennedy ran on the floor of the Senate and began his speech: "Quagmire! Quagmire! Quagmire!" Now the democrats claim to support Afghanistan, because it is going well.
We have to keep on doing everything we can to support the troops and see that they come home victorious. That means letting your elected reps know how you feel but not how you voted. Repeating the message, getting groups of people to send the message over and over and over.
The men and women serving don't get to lie down and call it quits what made you think the rules were different over here ?
An exit strategy is “ignominious”? To paraphrase Bismarck, pray tell what in Iraq that is worth the bones of a health U.S. service member?
In foreign policy the hallmark of a conservative has been realism. The liberals tilt at windmills. Historically liberal have tried to tie trade and aid to advancements in some misguided venture.
Until the neocon’s siren song: let’s remake the world in our image. Take a step back from such grandiose dreams. In a small part of the world, specifically the US of A, that version has been rejected.
GWOT? Our troops are in the middle of a shooting war between two sects of Islam. Number 43 and his band of merry neocon’s blew it . We need to retrench and move on.
And had you bothered to read the post with any degree of care, you would know why. Instead, you just chose to throw around the word "neocon" in lieu of making an actual argument. Congratulations on that. You must be very impressed with your reasoning skills.
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." --Friedrich Nietzsche
My proposal is that we sign a basing agreement with Iraq, and agree to stay there for 20 years. That will give the liberals the timetable they want, and will let the terrorists know we aren't leaving any time soon.
is that if in those 20 years violence does not abate, it could cost us the 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections, especially since the a poll conducted by the State Department found that most Iraqis want us out soon:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR200609...
"I am afraid that even after the American people will elect those who promise to leave Iraq, the U.S. will not do so." - Hamas leader Abu Abdullah
There are no security forces capable of standing up to the insurgents the way American troops are.
You said it yourself. 350 billion dollars does not appear to have even brought us to the point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. So, we have a situation where either the American people were given unrealistic expectations about the difficulty of the war or the planning/execution of the war were so poor that the administration really had no idea that it was going to be this difficult. Either way, it is the Republicans' fault that the public has turned against the war.
The Republicans have been in charge of this thing from the start: they sold it to the American public, they planned it and they executed it. If you are unhappy with the execution of the war of the disillusionment of the American people, you have no one to blame but the President and the other national Republicans.
The people sent the Democrats to Washington to do something about Iraq. When you say that that "something" should be "what the Republicans want them to do" you are just saying "I hope the Democrats screw up Iraq as badly as we did so we have a chance of winning again in 2008". I'm hoping that they don't take your advice.
So is the argument that we if a war cost more than expected, either in money or lives, that we just give up in the middle of it?
if the going gets tough, quit?
hopeful.
Look at almost any war in history-neither side saw clear signs of victory right smack dab in the middle.
At some point you have to decide whether the costs are worth it, but in WWII we lost 1000 men in a single day, we lost almost 1000 men in a training excersize-I don't recall anyone wanting to call it quits. Maybe you think the stakes were higher, but I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't have turned it all over to Hitler and Japan in the middle, if the US had a media environment like the one we currently have.
the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, occurred right before the South broke.
Ms. Johnson, I question your staying power in this GWOT.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
No, that's not the point at all. The point is that right now, the political situation stands like this:
1) The situation in Iraq doesn't look very good. We've spent a lot of money, lost a lot of lives, the security situation still appears to be deteriorating.
2) The American public was not prepared to fight the long, drawn-out war which Iraq very much appears to be. They are becoming strongly disillusioned and questioning whether success is even possible.
If you accept that both of these are true (and feel free to argue, but I think it is clear that most people do accept them), then you either need to admit that:
1) The planning/execution of the war was horrible (ie, Bush could have prevented (1) from happening).
2) That Bush knew that the war would be difficult but sold an overly optimistic line to ensure support (ie, Bush could have prevented (2) from happening).
Either way you look at it, the lack of public support is the Republicans' fault. Bush has been trying to make the case for "stay the course" for quite a while now. The problem is that the correct time for telling people how difficult something is going to be is before you commit to it. If you wait until afterwards, they aren't ever going to trust you on it.
Even if I believe the first two assumptions, I don't necessarily need to accept either of the conclusions. You make it sound like a careful planner will be able to predict the exact course of future events. In think rather, in a complicated situation like this, a good planner would project a number of possibilities, one of which may have been for example a 5% probability that the war would take this course. The fact that history took the 5% path is merely the play of probability, not anyone's fault.
In any case, conclusions #1 and #2 would seem to matter only to historians. Whether or not the Bush administration did a good or bad job in the past is irrelevant to the future of the war. Surely no one would say that we should abandon the war simply because mistakes were made in earlier fighting? There were mistakes made all through world war II, but we didn't give up.
> Either way you look at it, the lack of public support is the Republicans' fault.
I do strongly agree with that, but for a different reason. Bush has never made a serious attempt to explain exactly what this latest phase of the war is about and how we can win it. Instead he stuck to a few slogans like "war on terror", "9/11", "stay the course".
I don't think Americans want to give up on Iraq. They simply want Bush to lead them again, the way he did shortly after 9/11, by explaining how we can win, and then leading us there.
Look, obviously, any venture can run into unforeseen problems, but are you seriously trying to argue that the situation we have in Iraq now was some crazy outlier possibility? As linked downthread, wargames in 1999 indicated that invading Iraq with 400,000 troops still might not work. We went in with half that number. It almost seems like Iraq "planning" involved taking the best-case scenario and assuming it would always happen.
If planning indicated that a difficult struggle in Iraq was a likely possibility, but Bush didn't make that very clear to the voters before he committed us to action there, you guys don't have anyone to blame but Bush for the fact that people are now unhappy with the Iraq war.
In any case, conclusions #1 and #2 would seem to matter only to historians. Whether or not the Bush administration did a good or bad job in the past is irrelevant to the future of the war.
Sorry, but that argument drives me bonkers. Saying that "X" only matter to historians is a total copout, because we still have to decide what to do about "X" right now. If Bush sucks at running a war, we need to decide what to do about the fact that Bush is, in fact, currently running a war and is going to be, if he has his way, for the next two years.
I don't think Americans want to give up on Iraq. They simply want Bush to lead them again.
Well, I'll agree with the first statement. But no way on the second. The public has clearly given up on Bush. I think that if you gave voters a choice between withdrawal, continued occupation under new leadership and continued occupation under Bush, they would have gone with the second option. Unfortunately, that's not how our system works. The only choices the voters had were continue with Bush or get out. And it appears as though the voters chose "get out".
> Look, obviously, any venture can run into unforeseen problems, but are you seriously trying to argue that the situation we have in Iraq now was some crazy outlier possibility?
No. The Iraqi civil war started long before we got there. Saddam Hussein's government was an Sunni tyranny over Shiites and Kurds, with Saddam slaughtering tens of thousands of them, and with those other groups rebelling. The UN resolutions authorizing the no fly zone to protect Kurds and condemming Saddam's gas attacks on Shiites are recognition of this.
What was lower probability was that the two groups would keep shooting at each other after some time passed, and a government was formed. One of the main reasons for it is because the defeatism of the US democrats encouraged some Sunni groups to think they could run the clock out.
The reality is that we have a fool proof way to win the war. It is not in the long term interest of the Iraqis to be at civil war. They are klling each other by tens of thousands. They absolutely cannot keep this up. All we need to do is hang tough, lower our casualties, and wait for them to crumble. Time is on our side, not theirs. If both shiites and sunnis are dying by the tens of thousands, and we can reduce our casualties near zero, then we can win simply by waiting. I believe our troops would be willing to stay in hardened, air conditioned bases in Iraq for several years, as long as they safe and aren't taking casualties, and I believe that the citizens of the US will support that. Victory is within our grasp, and the democrats are asking us to throw it away simply for their political gains.
I put this in a separate note because some people in both parties are guilty of it. There is a perfectionism is america that treats a war like a sporting event, instead of a battle for survival.
So as soon as something goes wrong, there is a call to give up. Like if Iraqis start fighting each other, that is a blemish on our war, it proves it wasn't perfect, so the conclusion is that we must give up and walk away. In other words, these people (not me) say that the blemish in the war proves that we "lost" and therefore there is no reason to "keep playing", but we should just walk away.
Compare that with world war II. We didn't have that option. Even after the biggest mistakes, we couldn't just give up because that would still leave Hitler there, working to conquer us (and develop atomic weapons). Many mistakes were made from many in the chain of command, from the president down, but that is what happens when fighting a war.
The whole country, democrats and republicans alike, agreed on an authorization of force resolution which was passed by congress and signed into law by the president.
http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf
This contains our goals for Iraq. There is nothing in the document about preventing Iraqi civil wars or nation building. So there is no reason for liberals to say that the war has failed because Iraqis are fighting (just as they fought before we liberated Iraq).
The language defining the exact scope of the war is quoted below:
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Count me among those who say "get out now." We had one referendum on Iraq in 2004, and other one last week. Two years ago, the verdict was "Stay there and try to make it work." The verdict now is "get out."
It makes no sense to quibble over timetables. Once it's obvious that public support for this effort has been withdrawn, the only sane thing to do is get our people out of there as rapidly as possible. Let's not drag this out for appearance's sake; people will be getting shot while that goes on. If we're leaving, let's leave.
I do not want to hear about various "partitioning" schemes. It's not our call. It's the Iraqis' country, they can partition it (or not) as they please.
The Sunnis had an opportunity for participation in a unity government with a share of the oil money. Instead they chose to shoot and bomb their way to a never-ending "insurgency."
Presumably they understand what will happen to them once we leave and the "partitioning" is implemented at gunpoint by the Shia and the Kurds. May they enjoy their Great Victory. If bombing and shooting is what the Sunni wanted, I'm sure they will get plenty of it once we're out of the way. If most of them are killed and what's left of them end up as refugees in Syria, that will be Too Bad™.
The American people got tired of waiting for those jerks to wake up. They had three years to grab democracy and make a society out of it. They wouldn't do it. To Hell with them.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
Referendums do not rule the day. In fact, I don't recall there being an official referendum among the American people on November 7, as to whether or not we were to "cut and run" from Iraq.
Our representatives, both Democrat and Republican, in the coming months,will decide to stay in Iraq until the Iraqi Government is capable of providing security for all its people - including the Sunnis.
Pollingreport.com doesn't have polls that differentiate between "set a timetable" or "get out troops as soon as possible" and "get out now". In my opinion, those are very different answers. One poll has a column for people that volunteered "get out now" when presented with the yes/no question on a timetable. Only 1-2% volunteered that answer.
I'd be interested to know if any major polls have tried to determine what percentage of the public actually wants us to get out immediately. I imagine it is a sizable amount (maybe 20%?) but I seriously doubt it is enough that it would be a serious consideration from a political perspective.
People will say any old thing on a poll, because they don't have to think. My point is that, in the interests of not getting any of our soldiers killed for cosmetic reasons, let us lump together the "get out now" people, the "get out next month" people, the "get out by the end of next year" people, the "phased withdrawal" people, the "redeploy to Never-Never Land" people, and all the other people who are muttering various forms of "Yeah, let's give up" and count them ALL as votes for "get out now."
Anything else amounts to telling the troops that some of them must die so that the folks at home can assuage their feelings of guilt about giving up.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
Oh, I agree with you. My point is that, despite the fact that the American public is not happy with the war, they aren't so unhappy that an immediate 100% withdrawal, with the resultant chaos in Iraq, is politically feasible at this point. It would be political suicide for either party to strongly push for it.
Maybe if both parties jumped on the bandwagon at the exact same time, it could happen. But being the first one to advocate retreat is a game of political chicken, and it is going to take a lot longer (and way more public disapproval of the war) before one of the parties blinks.
It sucks that our system works this way, but there you go...
"I have not yet begun to fight!"
Captain John Paul Jones said this during the famous battle between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis on 23 September 1779. It seems that some of Jones's men cried for surrender, but not John Paul Jones! Captain Richard Pearson of Serapis asked Jones if he had surrendered. Jones uttered the immortal words: "I have not yet begun to fight!"
DETAIL:
Bonhomme Richard, Pallas, and Alliance engaged the British warships. The 44 gun Serapis engaged the smaller 42 gun Bonhomme Richard. The 32 gun Alliance counter-engaged Serapis. Serapis twice raked Bonhomme Richard with broadsides which cut her mainmast and holed her below the waterline, taking individual hits in return.
With Bonhomme Richard burning and sinking, it is believed her ensign was shot away. The British commander asked if she had struck her colors. Jones said, “I have not yet begun to fight.” He then rammed Serapis and tied up to her, his marksmen in the rigging clearing her decks so a boarding party was able to cross and effect her capture. Meanwhile the 22 gun Countess of Scarborough engaged the 32 gun Pallas and was eventually captured, both ships taking extensive damage.
-----------------------------------------
"Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!"
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870). Aboard Hartford, Farragut entered Mobile Bay, Alabama, 5 August 1864, in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden ships following. When the lead monitor Tecumseh was demolished by a mine, the wooden ship Brooklyn stopped, and the line drifted in confusion toward Fort Morgan. As disaster seemed imminent, Farragut gave the orders embodied by these famous words. He swung his own ship clear and headed across the mines, which failed to explode. The fleet followed and anchored above the forts, which, now isolated, surrendered one by one.
----------------------------------------
Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our nation. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. He knows that he will have to break us or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all the West may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if Western civilization lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was America's finest hour."
[Winston Churchill paraphrase to fit today's war]
Those are certainly inspiring stories, but I completely fail to see what individual acts of military bravery have to do with policy decisions as to the length of the war. Nobody is questioning the bravery of our soldiers or their willingness to fight and die to protect our country.
I think the point is that there are only two possible outcomes in Iraq:
1) A successful completion of the mission. Iraq is a stable, westernized democracy and US ally in the middle-east.
2) Anything else. Probably involves a civil war in Iraq, chaos, lots of bloodshed. Maybe a strongman takes over. Maybe the government actually manages to kill off all the insurgents/terrorists.
Unless we are willing to stay in Iraq until we complete (1), we are only putting off (2). The American voters have indicated that they are not happy with staying in Iraq to complete (1). The longer we stay, the more soldiers die in vain because (2) is still coming. Thus, we should leave immediately to prevent the death of those soldiers.
Apologies to RAH if I've butchered his idea, but that's how I see it.
Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our nation. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. He knows that he will have to break us or lose the war.
Come on! He is talking about a military/political machine that conquered almost all of Europe. Today, we are dealing with a threat that has conquered... nothing. OBL's "caliphate" is a pipe dream. The Muslims hate each other almost as much as they hate us. Israel, a country with a small percentage of the resources we have, has existed smack in the middle of "whole fury and might of the enemy" for 40 years and they are still around. Every time they go up against some other country in the Middle East, Israel obliterates them. Equating the danger from the Islamists with the danger from the Nazis is almost laughable.
In case you haven't heard, the Cut And Run Party just won majorities in both houses of Congress. It was no secret that they were the Cut And Run Party. Cutting and Running is all they have talked about for months.
We need to stop pretending that the American people did not just vote to Cut And Run. They did. I think that was a very short-sighted decision that we will come to rue. I am very disappointed in that decision. But I cannot bring myself to advocate ignoring an obvious decision by the electorate to pull out and take whatever lumps come our way from doing that.
This is not agricultural policy we are talking about here. It's a war in which we have soldiers fighting and dying. If there is no public support for a war, then we should not ask soldiers to fight in it.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I don't think the electorate overwhelmingly endorses cut and run. When certain libertarians can make themselves believe that a Democratic Congress + a "compassionate conservative" President = divided government = smaller government, it's reasonable to postulate that people who want a rapid and obvious victory, or at least improvement, in Iraq can make themselves believe that "Tough. Smart." isn't just blowing smoke.
Regardless, to recapture these votes, the Administration needs to be able to explain what things aren't working in Iraq right now, and why, and what's being done to fix them, and what we can expect from that. So far, it's begun by booting Rumsfeld for a member of Jim Baker's circle. Rhetoric notwithstanding, this does not exactly indicate a thirst for a compelling and final victory. If the Administration is going to continue circling while looking for an exit strategy that looks, from certain angles, like victory, we might as well come out for cut-and-run and try to deal with the consequences responsibly., because another two years of holding pattern is going to render our views on the GWOT completely irrelevant when voters decide that anything is better than the status quo. (This will be incorrect, of course, but the position will have currency nonetheless.)
> It was no secret that they were the Cut And Run Party.
No. The democrats totally denied it, saying that republicans were smearing them and being mean spirited by saying "cut and run". That's when the democrats dragged out Murtha to try and prove that they were serious about the war too. Elect us and we'll tell you the secret plan to win the war, was the Democrats message.
No need to take my word for it. The liberal New York Times just said the same thing. It also said that retreating without the plan the democrats promised would be "placing American soldiers who remain behind in even greater danger".
So I think we need to start asking "How many troops died because the DemocratsLied?" This should definitely come up in any hearings, including investigation of the cover up and conspiracy. What did the democratic leaders know, and when did they know it?
One thing this shows for sure is that the Democrats have a mandate for nothing, including no mandate for withdrawal. The democrats had no ideas, no platform except that they were like the republicans, but were not the republicans. They wouldn't have majorities without newly converted republicans like James Webb.
Here is the New York Times article:
(free registration may be required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/opinion/12sun1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The Democrats will not be able to savor their victory for long. Americans are waiting to hear if they have any good ideas for how to get out of Iraq without creating even wider chaos and terrorism...
The Democrats will also need to look forward — and quickly. So far they have shared slogans, but no real policy. During the campaign, their most common call was for a “phased redeployment” — a euphemism for withdrawal — of American troops starting before the end of this year.
Unless America’s exit plans are coupled with a more serious effort to build up Iraq’s security forces and mediate its sectarian divisions, a phased withdrawal will only hasten Iraq’s descent into civil war — while placing American soldiers who remain behind in even greater danger...
Voters gave the Democrats the floor — and are now waiting to hear what they have to say.
The reservation I have is whether this will leave Iraq a failed state with Islamists prepared to fill the void. The question I have is how to avoid that scenario.
Nonetheless, you are right that we don't need to expend needless blood and treasure if the net effect is simply to prolong the agony. And at this point, it has started to appear the soon-to-be Democratic Congress will micromanage the war with an eye towards withdrawal and the White House will go along with the program. If this is the case, withdrawal needs to begin sooner rather than later with avoidance of a failed, Islamist-dominated state as the only brake on the speed.
The Bush administration is not going to cave to cut & run. The top US general for Iraq told the Iraqi prime minister today (Monday) that President Bush is committed to success in Iraq.
> Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, met Monday with the Iraqi prime minister to "reaffirm President Bush's commitment" to success in Iraq, the government said.
_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
and "even then chaos might ensue".
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WAR_GAMES?SITE=1010WINS&SECT...
Good things never come cheap
life is never easy
Liberals always argue the negative. Point out one or two bad things that result from a course of action, then smile triumpantly as if that proves it was the wrong choice. But in real life nothing is perfect, and every course of action has some negative effects.
Many bad things are gone in Iraq like Saddam's rape rooms. The Shiites and Kurds are now free from the Sunni oppression.
I just ran across an interesting take on things at NRO
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTJmZGEyZWZkYjMwNzMwOWVhZGIyOTc...
Dr. Tawfik Hamid was a terrorist trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri. Hamid is infuriated by the Western reponse to this challenge: "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
and should be obvious to anyone who has paid any attention during the last 3 1/2 years. The Iraqis see themselves as Shites, Sunnis and Kurds first and Iraqis second. They are much more interested with killing their enemies than in creating a democracy. Their security forces are infested with miltia members, and will never be able to do the job.
Remember Bush's response when he was told that Sunnis were slaughtering the Shites - "I thought that all the Iraqi's were Muslims?" And you wonder why things in Iraq are going badly?
Come up with a linky-poo or be called a liar.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
Some people, most notably Senator Joe Biden, have been talking about "partitioning" Iraq into a Shiite south, a Sunni center, and a Kurdish north.
Whether or not this eventually happens, the United States shouldn't be discussing it. The Iraqi Constitution allows three provinces (out of 18) to form an autonomous "region" within a united Iraq, or even to secede from Iraq, but that must be THEIR decision, not ours.
People talking about partitioning have forgotten their history lessons. Most of the problems we have now in the Middle East trace their origins in the British and French "partitioning" the old Ottoman Empire, carving it up and drawing artificial boundaries without the consent of the people living there. If we do that again, we will make enemies of all sides, and the parts will be weaker than a united Iraq, ripe for plucking by Iran or Syria.
Even if the Iraqis themselves decide to "partition" or secede, the provincial boundaries into which Iraq is divided were drawn by Saddam. We know that Saddam chased the Kurds out of Kirkuk and brought in Arabs, so that Arabs could control the oil fields. How many other forced relocations did Saddam carry out during the years before the 1990-91 Gulf War, or between the 1991 war and the 2003 war?
Some of Saddam's "provinces" have very mixed populations--in the event of a "partition" would people of a "minority" religion or tribe move to another province to escape persecution, or would they stand and fight? There has been intermarriage between Sunnis and Shiites--how many men in mixed provinces will shoot their brother-in-law?
The Sunnis in central Iraq need to realize, once and for all, that they will not rule Iraq alone. The best they can expect is a voice in parliament proportional to their numbers, and a share in Iraq's oil revenues. If they partition themselves off, they will cut themselves off from oil revenues and port access through Basra--a suicidal strategy. We need to convince them that they will be stronger, richer, and better protected in a united Iraq than in a partitioned state.
The bad news: Conservatism is hard to sell. The good news is that it works.
- We need to convince them that they will be stronger, richer, and better protected in a united Iraq than in a partitioned state.
We tried for three years to convince them of that. They refused to be convinced. Time's up.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
How could we expect to win the war on terror if we automatically give up in three years? Any terrorist / guerrilla group could win simply by running the clock out.
There are so many other choices that I don't understand why people don't see. Fight fire with fire. Instead of having conventional troops taking fire and casualties, we pit our counter-insurgent / special forces against the guerrillas. We also use the highly successful techniques from Afghanistan of using native fighters.
The problem right now is that Bush is letting the mission being defined a little too broadly, which is letting too many US soldiers be killed. If the Iraqis want to fight each other for awhile, US citizens won't mind, as long as our troops aren't being killed too. The way the mission is definied now, some Iraqi groups have the incentive to try and run the clock out to get us to leave.
There is absolutely no reason to cut and run when so many things haven't been tried, and when so many bad things would come from it. It would be an absolute disaster for America to pull back after only three years of fighting. No Islamic country is that soft and weak. We would have no deterrance left.
The American people have voted to give up on the War on Terror.
And it's possible, it's really actually possible, that the difference was a bunch of pro-War on Terror Republicans who were pouting over Republican use of 1% of the federal budget (pork).
Scary, huh?
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
- How could we expect to win the war on terror if we automatically give up in three years? Any terrorist / guerrilla group could win simply by running the clock out.
Yes, I know. We made that argument many times.
I see in the paper today that "The two top Senate Democrats on foreign policy yesterday said they will introduce a resolution in January calling for troops to start being withdrawn from Iraq by this Summer." And that's the Senate. Just wait until we hear from Pelosi and Murtha in the House.
Are you surprised? I'm not. Do you think any voter in the United States is surprised to learn that the first thing the Democrats plan to do is withdraw from Iraq?
C'mon, this is what people voted for. We may not like it. We may think it's the most stupid, short-sighted thing we've ever seen. We had our chance to present those arguments, and we lost. This is the part where the government follows the course set in the election, instead of what we think is best. The Other Guys™ had to grin and bear it since Gore was a chad. Now it's our turn.
I've seen this movie. It ends with millions dead in some far off land that people here no longer care about, in massacres that our media will see to it we never hear about. The only difference is that this time, the trouble will follow us home. But right now, too few care about that. All they care about is running away.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
OK, it won't be introduced as the "2007 Omnibus Cut-and-Run Military Bill", they'll call it the "2007 Iraqi Responsibility and Phased Withdrawal Bill".
Results are the same. Iraq is now Vietnam. I can hardly wait for Senator Kerry to hold hearings on how our troops were ordered to cut the ears off of Iraqi citizens.
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?
maybe they will call it a "cut and run" bill after all.
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Bipartisanship = give + take. Republicans give. Democrats take.
because any of this would be blamed on Bush anyway right?
I've seen this movie. It ends with millions dead in some far off land that people here no longer care about, in massacres that our media will see to it we never hear about. The only difference is that this time, the trouble will follow us home.
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Bipartisanship = give + take. Republicans give. Democrats take.
Why on earth has the commander-in-chief let the Democrats control the Iraq debate for the past two years? Bush's so-called strategy has been to let the Democrats say whatever they want, and never respond. He will never tell the public, even the parents of the soliders & marines at risk, what we are fighting for and how we will win. Instead we just hear "Stay the course. Global war on terror. 9/11.".
This editorial from a Republican magazine say it better than I ever could:
But it is also the case that the loss of seats was in great measure due to a lack of confidence that Bush had a strategy for victory in Iraq, not a belief that he wasn't exiting fast enough. If the president makes clear that he is serious about victory, and has a strategy for attaining it, he will have the support he needs in order to do what is necessary to turn things around in Iraq.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/935lhp...