A confederal, rather than federal, type of nation may be looming, as I predicted in early '03
CNews reports that the Iraqi parliament has passed legislation that would allow the country to be paritioned along sectarian lines in 18 months.Evidence continued to mount in the 44th month of U.S. involvement that Iraqi centres of power - politicians and the government, the police and military - were unable or unwilling to rein in violence in parts of the country where Sunni and Shiite Muslim or Kurdish populations rub up against one another. ...
The Shiite Majority in parliament, over complaints of dirty tricks from rival Sunni and even some Shiite legislators, adopted a measure that would allow the effective partition of the country after an 18-month waiting period, something widely opposed in polls of Iraqis.
"The starting point is to recognize that Iraq is not going to be a democratic, unified country that serves as a model for the region. The violence and the Sunni-Shiite division have already ruled that out," Dennis Ross, a Mideast peace negotiator and policy maker for former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, wrote in an Op-ed column for the Washington Post on Sunday.
A partition would leave Iraq with a weak central government and largely independent states run by Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south and Sunnis in the centre and west, giving impetus for still more violence and still further population upheaval.
Iraqis so-called national unity government announced that next Saturday's much-anticipated national reconciliation conference was indefinitely postponed for unspecified "emergency reasons." ...
Ross said the best solution was, in fact, the formation of a federal state, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds running areas where they are majorities. ...
Sunnis, a minority sect in Iraq that ran the country until the ouster of Saddam, are violently opposed, fearing it would leave them with no revenue from Iraq's oil riches. Natural resources are largely absent from their lands in central and western Iraq.
We can't say we were't warned.
Saudi Arabia said yesterday that it feared a US-led war on Baghdad would set out a turmoil in the volatile region and transform Iraq into another Afghanistan with rival ethnic and religious factions fighting for power.
"If things fall apart, who will come back and bring it all back together?" Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal asked while addressing a news conference.
"All the factions inside Iraq will present their visions for a new government like they did in Afghanistan. These are the consequences of a conflict, and if that happens, it will result in the division of Iraq," he said.
My long-time readers know that I always held invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam's regime was justified, and that I have consistently denounced the shortsighted management by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for trying to do it on the cheap. See, for example, Rumsfeld v. the Army, from June 2003. That the US should have sent in many tens of thousands more troops to establish post-combat control of the country is so blindingly obvious now that I'll spend no more time discussing it. The question is, what about Iraqi democracy? In my Feb. 03 post I discussed it thus.
Not all of even the most rabid Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein are friends of America or wish for American-style democracy. The organizing principle inside Iraq has always been the tribe. Political idealism as we know it has no history there. In fact, citizenship as we know it has no history there. The boundaries of Iraq were drawn up by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In the West, citizenship is by definition territorial; it was the shared territorial identity among different people, unified by language and religion, that gave rise to the modern nation state. This territorial loyalty did not arise from nationhood, it was a precondition of nationhood. But the tribes of Iraq have never thought of themselves as common citizens of the entire territory bounded by the British-drawn lines on the map. Tribal territorial loyalties are far more limited than that. Hence, whatever loyalty Iraqis have for "Iraq" as a nation has been imposed from above, not grown from below.
It does not help that the Iraqi people have never known a government that was staffed from the top down with public servants; what they have known is imperial rule and dictatorship. So any democratic-type government that might be instituted is handicapped at the outset: the people will not invest their full trust and confidence in it right away because all their governments have proven to be untrustworthy and oppressive. And the people elected to the actual offices will not take them understanding what it means to be a democratically elected office holder.
So will there be Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq? I don't think so. Maybe the best we can hope for is a confederation of tribal regions, united only in their desire to share in oil profits. I don't see a successful federal system being emplaced there. The boundary lines of "Iraq" on the map will be merely the limits of centripetal expansion of tribal regions. They will define the limits outside of which tribal frictions and conflicts may not spill. But inside the external boundary of Iraq there is real danger of violence as competing claims are settled. And American troops will be caught in the middle.
Then I closed with this prediction:
My bottom line analysis: Something close enough to democracy as we understand it is a reality now in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. I think that the various factions among Iraqi exile groups and populations will try to set up a federal-type Iraqi government under the aegis of the American occupiers, but the attempt will ultimately fail.
I am not happy to be shown apparently correct.
Donald you are right on top of this. I would add that we should call a spade a spade- loose confederation may as well be defined as broken nation and civil war. At best we will see a Lebanon like situation circa the 90s- a central government with no mandate and various armed tribes answerable only to themselves and perhaps their foriegn overlords (Iranian in this case).
I've about run out of fury at this administration for the way its run the occupation. Even the generals must but gritting their teeth at the idea that rushing our minimal level of troops from one hotspot to another in a whackimole like attempt to keep order is assinine. Who would have thought that moving troops out of Baghdad to Anbar would result in Baghdad flairing up, and then vice-versa.
There is just zero creativity being shown in policy- particularly any innovation that might add risk to US forces. Death squads have stumbled on a stroke of malevolent genius (by their standards)- dress up like cops and IA troops and nobody will trust either.
All we would need to do is assign a small number US military advisors (especially officers) to every IA unit in Baghdad so people would know who to trust- we've heard it straight from Iraqis that this is the only time they know they are safe. This would also help them learn more quickly. But of course this would be potentially dangerous so its discounted if its ever been seriously considered. So now the central government and the IA we staked so much on is hopelessly undermined and feared instead of respected, which makes infiltration and swapping sides all the easier. A viscious cycle.
We've let Iraqis sweat through another summer without electricity, have still failed to seal the borders, have allowed the IA to become compromised and feared instead of looked to, and then we have the gall to be surprised our casualties are back on the upswing. If there ever was a 'Western Front' of occupation this is it, with Don Rumsfeld playing the part of General Haig. How long can you bash your head against the same wall in the same way and not even try to look for a different solution? Ughhh.
Well, I think I got you beat by a long shot, Donald.
I predicted Bush would be a terrible president and his adminstration would be a disaster for America when he chose Dick Cheney as his running mate in 1999.
Like you, I'm sorry that my prediction has been proven correct by time.
Even a partitioned Iraq is a large improvement over any circumstance that might have resulted from not invading, and is preferable to the white flag option of the left of the Democratic party. But for the invasion, the Hussein dynasty would retain control of Iraq, and, with the sanctions having been abandoned after losing all effectiveness against the ruling regime, would have the resources to resume nuclear weapons acquisition and development. The fate of the Kurds would be very much in doubt (until Saddam acquired a nuke -- then all doubt, along with the Kurds, would have been removed under cover of a nuclear umbrella), and the Iranians would have Saddam's own ambition to provide cover for their own pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The glass is half-full, not half-empty. It would have been entirely empty without the invasion. It might have been more full had Democrats functioned as a responsible, loyal opposition party, instead of putting partisan politics above national interest (with a few notable exceptions). But expect that the partition of Iraq into three self-governing states to strengthen the head-in-the-sand wing of the Democrat party, not the few grown-ups who are left. The only thing the Dems will learn from this is that "it was Bush's fault."
Col. Sensing,
I thank you for taking note of the obvious.
One thing we can agree on is that the conduct of the occupation has been atrocious.
Knowing what you know now - full psychic foresight, knowing that THIS was the outcome:
No WMD's
500 billion and counting
Near breaking of the Army
Atrocious post-occupation
300k to 600K Iraqis dead
Near civil war - about to be incipient civil war.
Would you STILL have invaded, back in early 2003, as FormerDem would have?
I had a small chuckle at your comment that the Sunni's are "violently opposed" to partition. They also seem to be violently opposed to power sharing, occupation, and Kurdish autonomy... at least in any place where there is oil under the sand.
Maybe we'll accept partition. That would actually be a fairly reasonable solution.
Or maybe it's just a trial balloon for those responsible for this insurgency: be careful what you wish for, we might just give it to you...
Partition was, in the end, the best option for the former Yugoslavia. Ditto India and Pakistan. Iraq may be another case, and if so, then we tried and it was worthy to try but I don't see it as a loss. Biden has been floating this idea for a while, and while his timing was terrible (the day after a successful Iraqi election is really stupid), the idea itself makes a good Plan B. Federation has worked quite well elsewhere, and is evolving as a pretty widespread political model.
If the Sunnis are annoyed that this would leave them with no oil revenues, well, perhaps they should have considered that before provoking the current level of violence with their revanchist death squad tactics. My sympathy level is approximately zero, as it was for the Serbs.
As for violence, yes there will be some, but the standard historical result is a transfer of ethnic populations back and forth, followed by stability and a lot more peace and quiet all around. The Kurds are already demonstrating how this works in Iraq itself. Yugoslavia is a lot quieter these days, too. Etc.
My only precondition would be the execution of Saddam Hussein. Which looks set to happen anyway.
The US can then negotiate arangements with the Kurds for basing in the north (they'll want that very much), with the Sunnis for out of town bases along key north/south and western desert routes as a quasi insurance policy against the Shi'ites to their north and east (plus, Iraq has no combat air force and will continue to need the USAF as a guarantor against neighboring states), and with the Shi'ites to the south as an insurance policy against the Sunnis to their north, west, and southwest - and for many as a bulwark against Iran to the east (many see Iran, correctly, as a mere upstart pretender to the spiritual leadership of Shi'ite Islam). Sistani, no friend of Iran's to put it mildly, will be helpful in this endeavor.
As a bonus, an Iraqi partition would seriously increase the ethnic instability within Iran, which has far more than just 3 ethnic groups to contend with.
Consider the plusses this still leaves us with:
Not perfect, but will I take it as a win? Absolutely.
I've blogged Saudi Arabia's view of a partioned Iraq at Crossroads Arabia.
In brief, they don't like the idea very much, primarily because they fear it would give Iran even more freedom to create mischief than it's already exercising.
Rather than simply a sectarian difference, Saudi-Iranian friction has a strong geo-political basis due to the relative ease with which Iran can put a real crimp in the ability of the Gulf States to export their sole money-maker, petroleum.
For Joe Katzman's analysis,
I sincerely hope that no one - from now, or in the future - listens to ANYTHING in this type of analysis of world conditions.
This particular line of analysis is a danger - a danger to the world, and more particularly, an out and out danger to U.S. interests.
Let's start with -
a. The supposed benefits you advertised above would never - NEVER have been the guiding reasons given to attack pre-emptively another country. So the war wouldn't have been sold without the subterfuge it was sold with.
b. The list of "benefits" you sell is both biased and debatable. And your point of view won't even admit the debatability - thus exposing just how dishonest your analysis is.
"Saddam and sons a 0% worry and a 100% object lesson"
Yeah? An "object" lesson that if you don't give over your sovereignty by letting a foreign power dictate who runs your government, that foreign power will come in, overthow you, and leave chaos and civil war?
An "object lesson" that if you want to avoid possible U.S. invasion, MAKE SURE to get a nuke as fast as possible?
Remember, the inspectors WERE in, and reporting that there were no WMD's, right up until the day of the invasion. It was Bush who kept ignoring them. And if you look at the recent Abramoff emails, it seems that it was decided by at least early 2002 that the U.S. was going into Iraq, WMD's or no.
"AQ Khan network unearthed when Libya saw Saddam's fate and turned him in"
As has been documented elsewhere - Libya had been trying for YEARS to get back into the good graces of the Western Powers. To "know" that the invasion is responsible - that's flatly false.
An honest evaluation would look at the fact that Libya has been trending pro-Western for several years. And it is a POSSIBILITY that the invasion offered Libya the rationale it needed to turn over the Khan information. But it is also a possibility that Libya saw this as the opportunity that COULDN'T be refused, in terms of granting access to Western markets again.
By "assuming the close" in your analysis, you do your readers a disservice, and expose the dishonesty in the analysis.
"Iraq's WMD ambitions a 0% worry"
Right. THAT worry is now multiplies by three - Kurds, Shiites, AND the various Sunni strongmen will vie for nuclear weapons! Not to mention, as I said above, the race for other countries to get NUKES ASAP, simply to guarantee that the U.S. won't invade.
Because the "object lesson" of the invasion is the U.S. will invade, no matter how much you cooperate.
"Replacement of a threat with a loosely federated set of weaker states that can't threaten neighbours like Kuwait et. al. in future"
Actually a replacement of a CONTAINED threat in Saddam, with the possibility of an escalating civil war, that may draw in many other powers into it's wake, threatening the stability of the entire region.
"Lifting of the sanctions that the Left used to complain about as inhumane (but now lionizes), and any suffering they caused"
Well, that's true. Although "the left" in that analysis should be defined. It wasn't Clinton, or the liberal policy establishment, after all. Again, an example where the analysis presented doesn't define its terms, instead offer unthinking red meat like "the left", rather than an objective presentation of the facts. This is More dishonest analysis.
"Potential for areas outside Sunni Triangle to develop, as Kurdistan is and the south will now that Saddam et. al. do not divert most of their resources and revenues."
Well LOTS of potentials. A potential for the South to develop. Interestingly, quite the potential for the South to develop IN TANDEM with Iran, and begin to vote together in a bloc, with their oil.
Also POTENTIAL for lots of civil war, thus destroying a lot of the "resources and revenues".
Lastly - you again lump in Kurdistan with the "resources". Why is that? Saddam had been prevented from touching the Kurd areas of Iraq since the 1st Gulf War. So what resources are you talking about??
Dishonest analysis number 3.
"Kurds finally done right by and get to run their own show within the protection of a larger entity and USA."
This was already happening. See above.
"Iraq's Shi'ites go from oppressed minority to control of own destiny causing heartburn in both Iran and Saudi Arabia
Aggravates difficulties of rulers in Iran"
Well, the Shi'ites in Iran have done a good job of aiding the Shi'ites in South Iraq. Again, we could be looking at a block similar to the USA/Canada coalition, with South Iraq as the supportive little brother of Iran.
To claim - bald-facedly, that you KNOW this creates difficulties for Iran - is again dishonest analysis.
"Further object lesson beyond Saddam to enemy states, many of whom have instabilities that make them ripe for a deliberate "destroy and partition" strategy."
What object lesson? Nothing Saddam would have done would have satisfied Bush and cohorts. That decision was made.
Not to mention the lesson "Do what the U.S. says or be destroyed and partitioned" isn't EXACTLY the best way to create a relationship with your neighbors.
"Will I take it as a win? Absolutely.
I will emphasize again. This is madness, cloaked as objective analysis.
There isn't an HONEST line in the above comment. Not one.
Assumptions, ignoring the history as it is, omitting facts that reflect badly on the outcomes that are wanted by this policy.
This is EXACTLY the type of outcomes-based ideologically informed analysis that MUST be ignored, refuted, and summarily dismissed, for the health of the United States.
Because the analysis is based on what the analyzer WANTS, from an ideological position. Not from what the FACTS are.
Facts that disagree with what the analyzer wants are:
Ignored
Dismissed
Dishonestly refuted.
The above is a STORY - NOT an objective analysis
In one sense - who knows? Some of the "benefits" above MIGHT happen. Some of the story might be true. It would require - an OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS to attempt to weight the probabilities of various potentials.
But wouldn't you feel more confident of the weighing of the probabilities, by an analyzer that actually lists the FACTS effectively?? That recounts the HISTORY of what has already happened effectively??
From a lack of honest analysis - who here expects an honest appraisal of the probabilities for the future?
No one who has any modicum of intelligence should expect that.
Joe,
History is full of object lessons, but has anyone ever learnt them?
There indeed would be many pluses, but will they outweigh the minuses? Only time and ,(emphasis added) better management of the partition, will tell.
You mentioned India and Pakistan, but you forgot to mention Kashmir. What if there is another Kashmir hidden in Iraq which will come out with partition? Iraqi Sunnis, obviously, will not be happy with the lands they'd get.
Iraq if seen by itself may be better off after this, but when seen from the purview of the region, it will cause massive destabilisation, which may subside when the whole region comes out with a different political geography. Will that essentially lead to peace?
For example, if Iran gets broken up, will Pakistan, with its Baluchistan, remain as it is today? If not, won't they try to prevent it by helping Iran with their Nuclear tech, so they themselves can be saved? The threat to the neighbouring countries' itself will cause their leadership to become brutal internally, not to mention wide spread anti-Americanism.
my 2 c
I don't see how this outcome can be painted as good, the best that could be expected under the circumstances, or even minimally acceptable.
The more independent the northern, Kurdish region is the more irresistible the Turks, Iranians, and Syrians will find intervention.
The more independent the southern, Shi'ite region is the more opportunity for Iranian mischief and the greater the motivation for the Saudis to intervene, if only to head off disruption in their own northeastern Shi'ite area.
The western Sunni Arab are is left as a largely Bedouin territory without resources. What is their motivation to the violent mischief they've been engaging in since the fall of Saddam?
Roughly 20% of the total population of the present Iraq is in Baghdad which has large Kurdish, Shi'ite Arab, Sunni Arab, Turkomen and other populations. How is it to be divided?
I agree with Mark Buehner's observation above. This outcome is Lebanon writ large. A disaster for everyon.
I would consider the emergence of a Kurdish state worth all of the blood and sweat.
They're good people, and may turn out to be, along with Israel, one of our best allies in the region.
We might've lost a rook and a knight, but we queened a pawn. Strategy is not all addition and subtraction.
While I know all the arguments about the problem with a Kurdish state that Turkey will have; nonetheless, if the Kurds do end up with their own state in Northern Iraq, I look forward to hearing Democrats explain why the redemption of a promise made by Woodrow Wilson is a bad thing.
#10 from Dave Schuler: "This outcome is Lebanon writ large. A disaster for everyon."
Not for us, if we're out of there.
These people are not our friends. They approve of attacks on our troops, even though that is in contradiction to their own interests. (The Americans, if unmolested, would have given or cheaply built for them anything they could have wanted.) They approve of genocidal Muslim terrorists, that is Hezbollah, fighting Israel.
Contrary to our wishes, money spent on them has been wasted.
We are no more morally responsible for the possible partition of Iraq than the British were for the partition of India. And I do not see that the possible partition or Iraq must harm us any more than the partition of India handicaps the United Kingdom today.
The United States will be blamed on the editorial page of practically every paper in the country and around the world. The Republican Party will be blamed for the deaths of Americans and Iraqis in Iraq for a generation.
The partition of India was convenient for the British. One million dead, and that was a partition among provinces and princely states with a long history of self-government (under direct or indirect British control). People are still dying from partition in India and it is a significant source of jihadism.
The partition of Yugoslavia merely disbanded a federation. I don't foresee a partition of Iraq, along ethnic and religious borders that were never before formalized, that would not involve the numbers of dead that would leave a viable Sunni state. Particluarly given that the partition line would run through Baghdad.
Partition has just as many bloody problems as any other plan- probably more.
1.The Kurds arent leaving without their share (at least) of the oil. They've virtually taken Kirkuk and the Sunnis dont like that much- its the top oil producing region in Iraq and produces half of Iraqs exported oil. But most of the pipelines flow West to Syria and the Med, so without Sunni goodwill it does the Kurds little good. Kirkuk itself is a mixed community. Strife point #1.
2.The Shiia hold the oil reserves in the South and considering the blood feuds they are off settling these days they dont seem likely to share. Whether they become an Iranian satellite may decide whether they participate in a war against the Kurds to grab the rest, because the Iranians have a beef with the Kurds as well (not to mention the Turks).
3.Baghdad. How do you divide up a multiethnic city that contains 20% of the population? Almost certainly with machine guns and RPGs.
4.The region- Turkey threatened to invade Iraq during the shooting war if Kurds took Kirkuk. They are already ranging across the border- there is a strong chance flat our war will break out if Kurdistan becomes independant. The Sunnis in surrounding nations arent going to sit still for the Iraqi Sunnis getting ethnically cleansed out of Baghdad and Kirkuk. Arab nations are the masters of proxy war, look for some major weapons and cash flowing into Anbar. Iran is a wild card- who knows what they will do?
Partition is an extremely dangerous path to go down for all these reasons. I especially have this creeping fear that we will stand by and watch as the Kurds get slaughtered from 3 sides. They may be the regions last, best hope for an example of what a modern, prosperous Middle Eastern society can look like. Plus we owe them plenty for the number of times we've left them hanging on the hook. We cant abandon the Kurds again, no matter what else happens.
(I'm speaking facetiously to make a point)
Well heck, why don't we just pull back to the Kurdish region, then use the Kurds as a proxy to take the corridor right down the right side of the country to the Gulf? Sure the Iranians and Shiites would be mad, but it'd be good to have a stand-up fight finally. We could give the Iranians something to die for immediately, instead of all of this sneaking around. Of course perhaps we couldn't hold the line, but there's no doubt in my mind we couldn't deny it from the other parties. It would be like using honey to catch flies.
RE: #14... True no matter what. Which = so what, who cares.
RE: #16: The pipelines also flow to Turkey, and can export from that direction. Kurdish-Sunni cooperation would be helpful, but isn't necessary. Of course, this will be an important lever for the Turks to ensure good behaviour by the Kurds, and that's fine. Best that the Turks see themselves as having a strong option without requiring the USA and without using troops. And they, themselves, need the transit cash from the pipelines quite badly. They also do not wish a military confrontation with the Americans. There are plenty of incentives to positive behaviour here, and given Turkey's economic straits and relatively democratic system there are also plenty of economic levers to punish bad behaviour.
All of this is true with or without partition and a federalist structure, and all of this is an issue with or without it.
RE: the Shi'a having any interest or possibility of grabbing Kurdish oil, uh, look at a map. And exactly who will they ally with for this - the Sunnis? Not gonna happen. They'll be quite focused on doing for their areas what the Kurds have done in theirs, i.e. lock them down and keep Sunni outsiders out.
RE: Baghdad. Baghdad would be the locus of most of the partition-related violence. Possible futures range from "Lebanon in the city" to "Sunnis accelerate their departure" to "Shi'ites leave" to
"the neutral meeting ground for everyone." That's up to the Iraqi government to fix or not.
This is, again, true no matter what. The question is, therefore, what would the effect be on other areas in the Sunni triangle.
What doomed any honest project of bringing liberty and justice to Iraq, to the extent such a project existed, was institutional logic. The means chosen, namely the US military and US government, were too large and unwieldly. They were also essentially unaccountable to both the intended beneficiaries and those from whom the money was stolen to pay for the conflict.
The decision-makers were never particularly well-informed about the nature of the conflict they were waging, which is to be expected since they were selected for their expertise in bureacratic and political weaseling, not commitment to reality. Similarly, creative risk-taking and high ethical standards were selected against -- it is unreasonable to expect individuals with such capabilites to have penetrated that many layers of bureaucracy with their souls intact.
We should note that the Iraq expedition has been a tremendous success from the standpoint of the Machine. The military-industrial complex has grown tremendously, and mind-alteringly large amounts of money have been diverted to feed it, with no end in sight. Those who expected otherwise from this exercise simply didn't understand how very large organizations operate. Blaming the indviduals "in charge" of the Machine for its failure is useless, suggesting that things would have turned out better if only "our guy" was in charge is worse than useless.
We should find a different set of tools.
I am not happy to be shown apparently correct.
Why not?
Being accused of dishonesty by the aptly-named hypocrisyrules is a fine compliment indeed.
If you're a hostile power with a WMD program, yes. To foreign despots with such plans, that's a bad thing. To Americans who aren't Democrats, that's considered a good thing.
Your formulation is incomplete. It should read:
There, that looks about right.
HR: You say "the left," but it doesn't include liberals.
JK: Which is why I didn't say "the liberal-left" or some such thing. Though with the Kos Klux Klan so prominent in the party these days, the differences do blur somewhat. I still use the old labels for clarity, though; glad you noticed, and a pity you didn't understand them.
Yes, those impoverished Sunnis in the middle of Iraq will immediately begin and complete a nuclear weapons program, financed by...uh... and unopposed by... well, everybody. Meanwhile, the Kurds will develop The Bomb themselves with no concerns about Turkish reactions.
With THAT demonstration of your geopolitical understanding, is it any wonder at all that I fail to take you seriously?
RE: other countries racing to get nukes ASAP, there are 2 responses. Response #1 is welcome to the world since about 1990 or so, hope your cryogenic sleep didn't cause too much of a hangover.
Response #2 is to point out the blatant dishonesty and idiocy of a policy that will not take any serious action against states who have WMD programs, because... well, then states might start WMD programs.
Which leads to the usual lefty routine of thumb twiddling while threats gather, followed by fakery once it reaches crisis and then resigned "live with it" responses once states get WMDs. It never occurs to folks like hypocrisyrules, of course, that allowing states to successfully achieve WMD programs might also be an advertisement and spur to... that's right, more WMD programs.
Such programs have lots of uses beyond deterring the USA, and will be pursued by aggressive despots as long as the penalties for doing so are outweighed by the gains. Since HR et. al. don't support serious enough penalties, their policies condemn us all to significant WMD proliferation globally, inclduing unstable/crazy regimes to whom deterrence means little. Which means they condemn us all to WMD use in acts of terror or war, while they preach "peace".
To be upbraided on grounds of "honesty" by someone who follows this line of "reasoning" and argument is humorous in the extreme.
Well, let's continue a little while longer before I depart. As usual, it's a classic leftist case of projection - accuse others of your most egregious sins. Responding to #8:
So let's subject HR's own analysis to these tests, and talk about a few things.
Oh yes, there's some undebatable analysis for us all, with no ideological taint or ignorance of facts or history.
First, glad you agree and accept that having Saddam no longer diverting their resource revenues for his own use is aplus for these areas.
Next, your "analysis." There are forces in Southern Iraq closely associated with Iran - Moqtada al-Sadr, whom a truly competent American campaign would have killed in 2003, being among the most important. There are also many forces that consider themselves the superior theological entity in Shi'ite Islam, and reject the very foundation of Iran's Islamic Republic. They are in fact religiously superior to Iran's leaders within the Shi'ite tradition, and would set an alarming and powerful example to Iran's religious Shi'ites if they are given control of their own affairs along any path different from Iran's theocratic model.
This would fracture an important block of the mullah's remaining power base, while a federated model next door also increases demands from Iran's many minorities for similar autonomy. Something the ruling mulahs cannot afford to give.
Of course, acknowledging these things is not what hypocrisy... WANTS, ideologically, since it might result in a positive outcome to a policy he disagreed with. You can see the approach he follows in response.
See my points above.
Most people can understand that this equals large headaches for the leaders of Iran, at a probability level of nearly 1.0. They may resolve them, or not, but the difficulties are as certain as anything is in politics. In contrast, the outcome you describe above, however, requires many things to come together correctly for Iran to be able to contemplate it. While you blather on about... oh yes, stating plusses and minuses without calculating probabilities.
How very... honest of you.
Of course, the Democrats' prescription for retreat and defeat would help that positive Iranian outcome become much more likely, by setting up American withdrawal and creating a vaccum. Is that by accident or deliberate intent?
It was happening under a Sword of Damocles, under a program that involved very significant costs to the USA and regular acts of war by Saddam that violated the 1991 ceasefire. Michael Totten has documented here the massive surge of investment in Kurdish regions since the invasion, which is a logical result of having the major risk factor (i.e. Saddam) removed from the equation.
I'll add that most people, especially including most Kurds, can understand the difference between a perilous existence with no recognized status and dependent on indefinite expenditure by a foreign power, and a recognized political status within a loose federal state, backed by one's own oil revenues and an organized defense forces that belong both to you and to the Iraqi state as well as the USA.
So no, that was NOT "already happening." Perhaps asking for some honesty from your quarter would be too much?
As a famous man once said: "There you go again". Just like Ronald Reagan just happened to be around for the Soviet Union's demise and had no real role in it, as so many leftists and liberals now claim. With about the same BS quotient in both cases. If this was already happening, why didn't it happen until after the invasion, given the potential value of such revelations post-9/11? And why did Qadaffi say what he did about the causal relationship? How about some honesty from YOU for a (very big) change - NOTHING will ever prove that relationship to your satisfaction. I believe the evidence for it is pretty good. I also believe that knowing about AQ Khan and dealing with it is much better than the "safe, contained" environment pre-war, which manifestly included the undetected AQ Khan network in the equation, along with a bought and corrupt UN (so what else is new).
You never will accept that, because your only war involves Republicans. So we agree to disagree.
Ah yes. CONTAINED while AQ Khan's netowrk remains unknown and undetected. CONTAINED while the UN (and esp. France/Russia) is openly bought via "oil for food" corruption on a monumental scale. CONTAINED while resolution after useless resolution is ignored, and cooperation a la South Africa, Brazil, and other states who disarmed verifiably is not forthcoming. CONTAINED while bought agents in France and Russia direct their national policies to abolition of sanctions, while Saddam waits for exactly that moment to resume his programs (as documented by the Duelfer Report). CONTAINED while Saddam finances and works with al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam, and provides shelter to people involved in the 1993 WTC bombing, as well as financing other known terrorist organizations. CONTAINED, of course, as long as you ignore entirely Saddam's history of almost insanely-rash gambles. CONTAINED while all of this happens in a country where we now know that even Saddam's control over what was going on, and therefore the provenance of anything actually produced, was a lot less than ironclad - a doubly perilous surprise as we did not understand it until we faced him again in war, and what can be lied about in production can be lied about in distribution just as easily.
In other words, CONTAINED while no certainty of anything except the breakdown of containment, all in an environment in which it is very clear that depending on quality intelligence to protect us is an utter fool's game because it was not there (or more accurately, was no better than Saddam's own).
All amidst the "stability" of a region whose forces made 9/11 inevitable, in a world where the technology curve barriers to WMDs are falling. THAT is your prescription for US foreign policy.
The "honesty" you speak of might um, involve acknowleding a few of these points. We'll never hear that from you, of course.
Ah, because Saddam, Ahmedinejad, Kim Jong-Il... they're just neighbours, and the way to deal with them is to be friends. At which point, their systems or stated ambitions will all dissolve, because isn't everyone just like me writ large? There aren't any real enemies out there... except Republicans, of course.
I'll leave this as the summation of hypocrisyrules' overall mindset. Res Ipsa Loquitur, and what is says is:
What. An. Idiot.
Hypocrisy -- given that:
Bin Laden argued successfully that the US was a "paper tiger" that could be attacked with impunity and would run away whenever bloodied (he cited Beirut and the Gulf War and Somalia), AND
Pakistan teeters on the knife edge of Al Qaeda control of their nuclear arsenal
WHY NOT GET RID OF SADDAM?
Particularly since the cost is extremely low (hardly any US casualties compared to say, Korea or Vietnam and on the par with the Spanish American War), it kicked one of the baddest guys in the neighborhood, and hardly ANY of the disasters predicted by the clueless anti-war crowd came true.
NO: millions of refugees overwhelming Turkey and Saudi and Jordan. NO: oil fields afire. NO: 50,000 US casualties in "Baghdad as Stalingrad" etc. Nearly EVERY disaster predicted by the anti-war crowd did not come true. Even Anti-War.com had to say the Lancet latest estimate was so much hot air and vastly inflated.
Best reason of all to get rid of Saddam?
We are not at the mercy of whatever that unstable mad-man does, the US has actual influence (through the Kurds and Shias) on the ground in Iraq. I know that Leftists LOVE Hereditary Dictators for Life (Kim Jong Il, Chavez, Saddam, and of course Castro, ruling for nearly 50 years). Gaining leverage over the ME by removing Saddam is a bargain, even at the lives lost. Particularly since the ultimate cost is millions of US dead in nuked cities and hundreds of millions dead in the ME as response.
Repeat: the US has influence and is not reduced to vain hopes that Saddam will play nice. There is ZERO possibility he will rebuild his nuke program, and kicking over Saddam shows we can and will use force when pressed.
Or, we can treat the world like "It's A Small World" in Disneyland and hold hands singing kumbayah. While Al Qaeda slits stewardesses throats and slams planes into skyscrapers.
Given that Muslims are inevitably and irrevocably the enemy of the US (either Islam will destroy the modern world or the modern world led by the US will destroy Islam, traditional societies cannot exist in the interconnected global village) ... stirring up a fight among Muslims over the artificial construct of "Iraq" (there was never a country merely a dictatorship) is a good thing. The more the Iranians, Saudis, Syrians, Turks all kill each other over the spoils of Iraq the less they'll kill us. An ugly reality but nevertheless true.
I’ve been reading lately along the lines that Iraq and Afghanistan are very low cost methods to drain the Jihadists from other possible venues like the US. It seems we’ve let a couple of terrorists go just to have them later killed in Iraq – or was it Afghanistan? The idea is that the real Jihadists are streaming to the Afghan/Iraq area to cause havoc in the name of Allah against the infidel occupiers - and are dying by the score.
Think about it for a minute: US casualties are low. Slowly but surely the Iraqi army grows in size and expertise and will take over more of the risky front line stuff. There’s a probably going to come a point, if US troops are allowed to stay long enough, when US casualties will shrink to almost nothing. And when the real conflagration comes as the WOT inevitably heats up we’ll have a battle hardened(but not battered) experienced corps of first line military leaders to put in the field. It seems ideal, really. Sort of a super-realistic training camp/rehearsal area where a trainee occasionally dies or is wounded. We might even want to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan past military necessity(sharp intake of breath, gnashing of teeth and pissing in panties from the anti-war crowd), just to continue to lure a goodly amount of would-be Jihadists into the Iraq/Afghan theater.
What doomed any honest project of bringing liberty and justice to Iraq, to the extent such a project existed, was institutional logic. The means chosen, namely the US military and US government, were too large and unwieldy.
The reader is left to wonder just how the commentor would have managed the aftermath of Saddam’s toppling. Send in the Boy Scouts? Send in Jimmy Carter? Long on scathing pronouncement, short on alternate methods – but such sloganeering without substance no longer surprises. Notice also the assumption that the US is morally obligated to bring “liberty and justice to Iraq.” My goodness, doesn’t it ever occur to the anti-Bush crowd that “liberty and justice” in Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves?
They were also essentially unaccountable to both the intended beneficiaries and those from whom the money was stolen to pay for the conflict.
I guess “intended beneficiaries” is referring to the Iraqis. I’m puzzled by “those from whom the money was stolen.” Taxpayers? Naw, couldn’t be. Taxes aren’t stolen and the military is funded by Congress. And all elected officials are obviously “accountable.” Salvation Army Xmas collection buckets? No, its too early. Haliburton? Could be. They do seem to hate Haliburton with a vengeance. Oh, well. So much of what the anti-war crowd offers is insubstantial implication – they can’t seem to just come out and haul off and directly SAY something. Insinuation is the name of their somewhat confusing game.
The decision-makers were never particularly well-informed about the nature of the conflict they were waging, which is to be expected since they were selected for their expertise in bureaucratic and political weaseling, not commitment to reality. Similarly, creative risk-taking and high ethical standards were selected against -- it is unreasonable to expect individuals with such capabilities to have penetrated that many layers of bureaucracy with their souls intact.
I gather from this that the commentor has a negative opinion of Bush’s conduct of the war. The anti-Bush crowd LOVES to moralize about the administration. Winning the WOT has scant sustenance for them compared to those delicious ethical issues – but which here remain unnamed. There’s the real meat for the anti-war crowd. THEY ARE ALL DEVILS YOU KNOW!!! LOWEST OF THE LOW!!! ESPECIALLY ROVE!!! There now, didn’t that feel better than all that convoluted, overheated, awkwardly phrased rhetoric?
We should note that the Iraq expedition has been a tremendous success from the standpoint of the Machine. The military-industrial complex has grown tremendously, and mind-alteringly large amounts of money have been diverted to feed it, with no end in sight. Those who expected otherwise from this exercise simply didn't understand how very large organizations operate. Blaming the individuals "in charge" of the Machine for its failure is useless, suggesting that things would have turned out better if only "our guy" was in charge is worse than useless. We should find a different set of tools.
First the Machine is a “tremendous success,” then later on the Machine is craftily revealed to be a “failure.” Sigh. Coherency, where is thy sting? The commentor entices the reader with mention of finding “a different set of tools,” but just exactly what kind of tool set HE would look for is blissfully left for posterity to figure out. And that’s probably best for all concerned, come to think about it.
grackle (24) is a wise person.
And the ironic thing is, all of this, and Saddam too, and still they will be screaming from the roof tops that George Bush's war was a failure.
The best way to get the little terrorist fishies swimming in the pond of the world is to use a honey-trap. I've always thought that if we knew where OBL was, he could serve somewhat the same purpose. Iraq was a great success -- the people got to vote and get a good start. Now, just like us, they've decided they don't want to live with each other. So it sounds like they are right on course. Seems to me the strategic goal for the U.S. is to keep some kind of attractive nuisance over there to keep drawing out the young suicidal idiots. I'm not suggesting raves at the rock, but I'm sure we can think of something. As our casualty rate goes down and the terrorists go up, the numbers work. But wait! There's more. Terrorist training, cultural intelligence -- we're going to need those later.
Having said that, I can't get over the queasy feeling that DoD was never sold into this war on terror and fighting insurgencies. They want big money systems, not this. If I am correct, and the WOT is the real threat we think it is, this posture is going to hurt any Congress and any administration going forward. Blame Bush and Rummy all you want for not having enough troops to make Iraq one nation, but it was the machine that won here, and the machine will continue on long after they (and we) are gone. Maybe somebody can come up with a $50 Mil invisible stealth blimp with freaking lasers that can shoot terrorists hiding in caves while the operators drink coffee and surf the web. Anything but more manpower, it seems.
Grackle: spot on. OIF is subject to standards imposed by those who didn't expect a war.
Katzman: you state that you have no sympathy for, by implication, "Sunnis." Please, furnish press reports or other evidence indicating that all five million or so Sunni Iraqis are mobilized in defiance of Baghdad. Are they like the Borg Collective, or something?
Honey trap seems to be turning into a hive- simply because we failed to apply the poison with enough deliberate strength.
The truth is we cant judge whether Iraq was a success or a blunder until all the returns are in. One thing is, in my opinion, undeniable: for an administration that has (correctly) maintained that Iraq is a must win, it sure hasnt acted like it when it comes to assigning resources or following up on projects.
I'll tell you what, the guy who gets my vote isnt going to be the one who says he will either 'win' Iraq or leave it. It will be the person who says they will fix Iraq, and do whatever is necessary to do so. There are highway projects in certain districts that have gotten more federal oversite than the reconstruction of Iraq.
The return of the flypaper strategy! We are fighting them over there so we aren't fighting them in the streets of New York.
One barely knows where to start. First, we are probably creating more terrorists than we are killing, so net we come out behind. Also, the London and Madrid bombings, by small terrorist cells, show, as if it weren't obvious, that Islamic terrorists can fight in Iraq and plan anti-Western terror one-offs at the same time.
Belgravia Dispatch wrote at some length about the folly of flypaper a year ago—before he gave up on the Iraq War and the Administration.
I suppose that Pearl Harbor and Operation Barbarossa were moments of moral clarity that got all the enemies of the Axis yoked together, but militarily it didn't work out real well.
Incidentally, our "low" casualty rate in Iraq is not so far off from the Soviet combat casualty rate in Afghanistan. (The Soviets, unlike us, also lost many men to illness caused by poor sanitation.)
The reader is left to wonder just how the commentor would have managed the aftermath of Saddam�s toppling. Send in the Boy Scouts? Send in Jimmy Carter? Long on scathing pronouncement, short on alternate methods � but such sloganeering without substance no longer surprises.
I suspect that civil war and the resulting mayhem in the aftermath of Saddam may have been unavoidable. Clealy Jimmy Carter, the boy scouts, or the UN would not have done any good. What might have been avoided was the collossal expenditure of (stolen) tax revenues.
Notice also the assumption that the US is morally obligated to bring �liberty and justice to Iraq.� My goodness, doesn�t it ever occur to the anti-Bush crowd that �liberty and justice� in Iraq is the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves?
I hold no such assumption, nor am I "anti-Bush" in the sense that I believe a Democratic administration could do any better. I think the Democrats would mess things up just as bad, or worse.
The people here at WoC do, for the most part, care about liberty and justice in Iraq and elsewhere and want to see the oppressed liberated. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
I guess �intended beneficiaries� is referring to the Iraqis. I�m puzzled by �those from whom the money was stolen.� Taxpayers? Naw, couldn�t be. Taxes aren�t stolen and the military is funded by Congress.
Today's thought experiment: Imagine that President Bush came to you and told you that because you're such a nice guy, YOU rather than the IRS would get to choose how much of your money to give the government. Would you give LESS money to the State, MORE money, or exactly the SAME amount?
Your tax dollars are taken from you by force. If you refused to pay eventually men with guns would come and kidnap you. If you resisted them you would be killed. This is why there can be No Treason
And all elected officials are obviously �accountable.�
Voting accountability is VERY WEAK, especially compared to market accountablilty. See voting for beer.
I gather from this that the commentor has a negative opinion of Bush�s conduct of the war. The anti-Bush crowd LOVES to moralize about the administration.
You misunderstand my point: yes, many people in the upper echelon are scum, but the reason they are scum has to do with the process by which they are selected, not the individual personalities. Had John Kerry been elected, we would have different scum in charge, but they would still be scum. I have no patience with the wretched commies/socialists in the Democratic party and would never vote for any of them. I further agree that spending lots of time beating up on a particular scumbag (like Rove) is a waste of time and doesn't address the real issues.
First the Machine is a �tremendous success,� then later on the Machine is craftily revealed to be a �failure.� Sigh. Coherency, where is thy sting?
The Machine is a "success" from the perspective of its own growth, and a "failure" from the perspective of its ability to advance liberty.
The commentor entices the reader with mention of finding �a different set of tools,� but just exactly what kind of tool set HE would look for is blissfully left for posterity to figure out.
I was in a hurry, sorry. A google search for me in conjunction with this blog will turn up some of my (admittedly limited) solutions.
I believe it was Douglas Adams who said anyone capable of getting himself elected president should under no circumstance be allowed to have the job.
TJ -
I just wanted to say that I thought some of the responses to your criticism were unmerited. In particular, the accusation that you weren't consistent in describing the war as a failure, on the one hand, but an incredible success for the military industrial complex on the other. I don't think that criticism was very honest: I think Grackle was intentionally missunderstanding your point in order score rhetorical points.
I get it. And I find it very depressing.
I suspect that civil war and the resulting mayhem in the aftermath of Saddam may have been unavoidable. Clearly Jimmy Carter, the boy scouts, or the UN would not have done any good. What might have been avoided was the colossal expenditure of (stolen) tax revenues.
I agree that the aftermath we see now in Iraq was probably unavoidable; some such internal forces as are currently observed trying to run their courses were bound to be unleashed in a post-Saddam Iraq. I speak here about the sectarian violence by Iraqis, which has religion as the primary motive(that’s why it’s called “sectarian” violence instead of ‘non-sectarian’ violence) but that morphs in and out of Iraq’s political sphere according to the vagaries of the moment – not about the foreign Jihadists streaming into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill the infidels. These last are an artificiality pumped into Iraq by some Jihadist states and from the ignorant, restless populations from such disparate sites as Egypt, Jordan and Algiers. I welcome them – killing them in Iraq and Afghanistan is more cost effective than having to deal with them in the homeland. The young men and women in our Armed Forces are simply better able to confront them in Iraq than perhaps in some grade school in the States, as occurred at the school in Beslan or in some airliner at 30,000 feet. But of course these admittedly unpalatable facts do not lessen my pleasure one whit that Saddam has been pole-axed. They certainly provide me with no compelling reason for the US to cut and run from Iraq before the country is strong enough to defend itself.
I hold no such assumption[about US moral obligations in Iraq], nor am I "anti-Bush" in the sense that I believe a Democratic administration could do any better. I think the Democrats would mess things up just as bad, or worse. The people here at WoC do, for the most part, care about liberty and justice in Iraq and elsewhere and want to see the oppressed liberated. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
The commentor claims he is not anti-Bush. However, I see another logical disconnect. The commentor admits that Saddam’s aftermath in Iraq “may have been inevitable.” Then he again refers to the aftermath, but in a completely different vein: “… mess things up just as bad, or worse.” If something was probably “inevitable” then it logically follows that no administration should be held accountable when it occurs. Blaming either Bush or the hypothetical Democrats should not pertain.
Today's thought experiment: Imagine that President Bush came to you and told you that because you're such a nice guy, YOU rather than the IRS would get to choose how much of your money to give the government. Would you give LESS money to the State, MORE money, or exactly the SAME amount?
I’ve got my own thought experiment: Imagine no police or military for protection, imagine no electricity and therefore no internet, blogs, TV, DVDs or radio. Imagine no regulatory agencies to keep a semblance of safety in consumer products. Imagine having to haul water for drinking and bathing from a well that would have to be dug by hand. Imagine no government. All these little luxuries depend on taxes, either directly or indirectly.
Your tax dollars are taken from you by force. If you refused to pay eventually men with guns would come and kidnap you. If you resisted them you would be killed.
No tax can ever be voluntary, not with human nature as it is. And if I menace the cops, who would be trying to do their difficult, dangerous job, I would fully expect to be injured or killed, depending on MY level of resistance. And I would characterize this as an arrest, not a kidnap.
Voting accountability is VERY WEAK, especially compared to market accountability.
Indeed, the political process in the US is not near as efficient as market polling. Our political campaigns are wasteful and frequently nasty. But it’s better than any other system I can think of. I would not condemn it on the basis that it’s less neat and tied down than the average consumer poll. Not that it couldn’t stand improvement, it must be said. I liked some aspects of the McCain campaign reform bill. No doubt the evolution that has been occurring for over two hundred years now will continue to evolve(The European readers are chuckling to themselves … and he thinks THAT’S a long time …).
I have no patience with the wretched commies/socialists in the Democratic party and would never vote for any of them. I further agree that spending lots of time beating up on a particular scumbag (like Rove) is a waste of time and doesn't address the real issues.
So the commentor has equal disdain for both sides … yet he took only ONE side to task in the original comment. If that was not what was intended then I can only urge the commentor to work on his rhetorical skills. We observe behavior … we draw conclusions … and we move on. By our words shall we be known.
The Machine is a "success" from the perspective of its own growth, and a "failure" from the perspective of its ability to advance liberty.
Here we go again with the ‘liberty to Iraq’ meme. My goodness, isn’t liberty in Iraq really up to the Iraqis? Should we be blaming some mythical “Machine” for civil liberty failures by the Iraqis? Hell, man – if they want to be free bad enough, they will be – if they don’t, they won’t. No “Machine” is ever going to give them their liberty, only time will do that, IF they are willing to strive for it.
I was in a hurry, sorry. A Google search for me in conjunction with this blog will turn up some of my (admittedly limited) solutions.
I’m also sorry but I’m not going to take the hour or two it might take to track down the commentor’s views. Either they get summed up in a comment or they get deferred. I’m busy, too.
I assume the Bush administration committed mistakes in the Iraq war but that is very easy to assume given that EVERY war has mistakes. In the first two years of WW2 there were mistakes galore by the Americans. All wars if they last awhile will entertain mistakes by both sides.
One of Bush’s biggest mistakes was to put most of his cash on the ‘liberate Iraq’ horse. This created a nasty and largely impossible set of assumptions having to do with US responsibilities and moral obligations that anti-Bush elements have thoroughly and eagerly internalized and that with the help of the MSM have been institutionalized into the public’s consciousness. And so for many it has now become the ‘responsibility’ of the Bush administration to bring ‘liberty’ to Iraq. You might as well expect to carry lightning in your pocket.
In hindsight Bush should have kept the goals simple: Topple and/or kill Saddam, lure a bunch of terrorists to the slaughter while we’re there, help them form a government until they are able to defend themselves and then adios amigos – call us if you have a question.
One last thing: I’m a retired bureaucrat and in that role I have helped more people than I could count. If you want to do a large thing for a large group of people about the only practical way to do it is form a bureaucracy. I have no real love of bureaucracies as such and believe all bureaucracies should be subject to review, reformation and even abolition if their time is past. But don’t knock bureaucracies too hard because they sometimes save lives and they are almost always in the business of helping people.
Incidentally, our "low" casualty rate in Iraq is not so far off from the Soviet combat casualty rate in Afghanistan. (The Soviets, unlike us, also lost many men to illness caused by poor sanitation.)
A few thoughts on Rumsfelt, Bush, casualties and number of troops: You read and hear it constantly: They should have put in massive amounts of troops in the beginning. That was their big mistake – not enough troops.
Current DoD heads have no other choice than to subscribe to the ‘small, versatile and mobile’ concept. It’s a reality that Congress and public opinion have been forcing on them since the Vietnam War era.
Congress has been handing a diminished purse(adjusted for inflation, etc.) for human resources to the military since that time. Here’s how it works: The really big money is set aside for contracts fon things like armament, development and research, construction, material and services providing. These types of funded activity mean jobs in the ward – funding soldiers, not so much. Keep in mind that a politician loves jobs more than Dracula loves blood. Jobs insure re-election. Barring dirty tricks, bad luck or simple stupidity you can be an absolute asshole yet still be re-elected over and over if you bring home the bacon, known currently as “earmarking.”
So our military manpower has been shrinking while it has also been required to assume more and more of the ‘load.’ This has been maintained, albeit somewhat shakily at times, partly by the techno goodies that have been put into the hands of our young killers. Body armor, night goggles, updated weapons, computerized battle HQs, etc., all have helped make the US soldier more effective. God help us if we lose our technological advantage.
But all that is simply a symptom, not the root cause. Due mainly to the steady propagandizing since Vietnam by the MSM, universities and wherever that certain of the elite and intelligentsia gather(think Turner and Soros, think Chomsky), accompanying the military changes has been the evolution of public consciousness toward a mindset that will not tolerate WW2 levels of American casualties. These are standards that have changed drastically since the Roosevelt era. The Left has always been better at propaganda than the Right – when many folks think ‘propaganda’ they simultaneously and automatically think ‘Communist.’ Propaganda skill seems to have been handed down from Communist to Leftist to Liberal.
The casualty meme attacks the Western heart in places that don’t exist in Islam. Take for instance the grade schools in Palestine, which are both pathetic and chilling in their glorifying of death and hate in equal proportions. The children have no hope of escape from this baleful matrix primarily because of their religion, which in much of Islam keeps an absolute stranglehold on ALL aspects of existence, including the political sphere. Such a early and total inculcation of violence into the flawed human soul makes for a hardened, Spartan society, one which will offer up floods of casualties to the gods of war without blinking twice. None of this is so for the West.
So what is a good way to limit casualties for sure? Ah, now THAT would be THIS carefully unstated by the DoD but logically unassailable equation: less soldiers = less casualties. The only way to prolong a war in the face of modern-day US public hypersensitive squeamishness about casualties is a balancing act to deploy just enough troops for the needs of war yet enough to get the job done. Rummy is a past master at this sort of thing. It’s amusing to observe the Left trying to catch Rummy – just when they think they have him in a headlock, he disappears. Picture the Coyote trying to grasp the Roadrunner: Oops, where’d he go! Then we hear the beep, beep – and the semi runs them over.
A draft doesn’t fit anywhere in these equations and I don’t think a draft would be instituted unless something huge happened on American soil. The anti-war set must drool at the thought of a Republican administration being so foolish as to put in a draft without dire necessity. They try to use it as a taunt during some debates: Why don’t you start a draft, huh? We need more soldiers(read casualties) in the field, man. The proper reply is: As soon as Hell freezes over, you dolt. The ONLY reason the US is still there and can continue the fight has been the limitation of casualties to a number acceptable to the public.
Using a three-pronged strategy the Left works hard to edge that figure down and promote the mistaken perception of high rates of casualties(read the quote at the top again – is it just me or does it exhibit a morbid delight at the prospect of more death?) while simultaneously scheming to get more targets into the arena.
So the Defense Secretary has devised creative means to cope with the fact of less soldiers and heightened public sensitivity, including the strategy of ‘small but better,’ out of necessity. If all you have is a lemon then make lemonade and learn to praise sour things.
Joe,
I could spend an hour here debunking your latest. But then again, it is your blog, so the vitriol that you so deserve for your casual disregard of both american and iraqi deaths to "teach an object lesson" for tyrants in the Middle East who are contemplating WMD - by invading a country without WMD - I won't get into. (Oh, but believe me, I could.)
But needless to say, your grasp of history is flawed, your amorality is on full display, and your desperation to deny truth is amazing.
Luckily, your one-note song of victorious neocon nutjobbery - the same note regardless of the facts on the ground - is being justly ignored, even among those sympathetic to your views.
I raise a glass to your future, of being a voice in the wilderness, and deservedly so.
Ah, now THAT would be THIS carefully unstated by the DoD but logically unassailable equation: less soldiers = less casualties.
Not only assailable, but probably crap. Supposing we could have poofed out of the air another 300K troops, with experience in reconstruction and civil affairs, our loss rate in the long run would probably be much less than it is now.
The problem is not with the American people's willingness to tolerate casualties. The problem is with the American people's willingness to tolerate unending incompetence, overconfidence, cronyism, lies, and bungling, even when wrapped up in a flag.
#36
Couldn't agree more.