The front page of TPM (note: page content subject to frequent changes) says:
And the Easter Bunny will show up on Sunday.
But there’s no ‘winning’ to this war - there’s just the balancing of competing interest groups in Iraqi society, and we’ve still made no progress there. Al Qaeda in Iraq, that infamous chimera, will rise or fall depending on whether Sunni interests find its presence helpful or harmful. Shi’ites still don’t want to give Sunnis significant roles in the army, or even in the police forces of their own provinces. Other Shi’ites are still fighting each other in areas where Sunnis aren’t present in great numbers, particularly Basra. We’ve reduced internal violence to 2005 levels through the presence of unsustainable troop levels, and a de facto partition. There’s no exit plan - which seems to be fine with Bush; he seems to be good with a quite sizable long-term presence in Iraq. And any change in the U.S. position must await the next President.
And if there’s a good reason why are we spending $150B and 500 American lives a year, I’m certainly missing it.
Just pulling out of Iraq would stimulate the U.S. economy, just when we need it most (i.e., now). (The Iraqi economy, I expect, will remain unsalvageable until the Iraqis, on their own, have their own civil war, thresh out their differences that way, and settle down to some new accommodation.)
We’re still getting the same outrageous bullshit from Bush. We’re five years, half a trillion dollars and 4,000 American deaths in, and all we’ve managed to accomplish is to make Baghdad a Middle Eastern replica of Port-au-Prince, only with less electricity and more gunplay. The idea that the situation is suddenly going to heal itself is a madman’s fantasy. But until the Democrasts get the cojones to turn the spigot off, we’ll keep paying and paying and paying. Victory!
Well, he is correct on that one. The initial estimates made by Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, even Gen Shinseki’s higher estimate were exaggerated- exaggeratedly low- comically low.
Bush wasn’t talking about that. He was referring to the supersecret deal he’s worked out for us taxpayers:
“Buy four years of war, and the fifth year is free”
You’ll see the rebate with your 2009 tax return.
Other than Hakim’s party, the former SCIRI (which, despite having the deepest Iranian ties of the assorted Iraqi factions, is the group we’ve decided to back), that doesn’t leave a whole lot.
So, is the surge working? I’m hearing from several authorities that it is. Sometimes they say the proof is in reduced casualty rates for US troops, but I am sure I heard Administration officials say the purpose of the surge was to create an environment in which Iraqi politicians would make important progress like creating their own constitution, working out power sharing and oil revenue sharing, and other things. Just yesterday I saw a list of these things, NONE of which has happened. So, in what sense can the surge be working?
If the purpose of the surge is only to temporarily reduce the effectiveness of insurgent forces, and that for its own sake, it’s obvious a surge would “work”. If all 300,000,000 of us went over there, the insurgents would be tremendously disadvantaged.
So we’re, what, about 3990 US troop fatalities now? How many US contractors have died - those are American deaths that don’t appear in the 3990 (or whatever it is now).
What about Iraqi deaths? Have 300,000 Iraqis died? 500,000? Could it be a million, now? Where are reliable numbers even available? Even if you state that American lives are worth 100 times more than Iraqi lives, a statement outrageous enough that many would cringe at the idea, you still ought to be thinking that’s as big a problem as the much more advertised American troop death figure.
Napier, Iraq Body Count attempts to tally Iraqi civilian deaths from documented sources. They put the number of civilian deaths between 80,000 and 90,000 as of this writing.
Today Bush said: “For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be a place where al Qaeda rallied the Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs join with Americans to drive al Qaeda out. In Iraq, we’re witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated.”
By what stretch of the imagination could anyone really believe this is accurate? How is what is going on in Iraq an “uprising against Osama bin Laden,” large scale or otherwise? AQI is a tiny group of dimwits running around in the midst of terrible sectarian violence. Bush is as ignorant and/or mendacious about Iraq now as he was five years ago.
Apparently, nobody in Bush’s entourage ever considered just how much money we’ve pissed away on this mess. By now, we could have build several dozen synthetic gasoline plants with the money we’ve blown. The madness of this just makes me sick :smack:
Since their ‘documented sources’ include no Iraqi sources, but only foreign press, including few if any outlets in the Middle East, this number should be regarded as a firm lower bound under, and not an estimate of, the number of Iraqi civilian deaths.
Every single metric in that poll is showing a positive trend. Economic, security, political stability, reconciliation… Everything’s getting better.
As for Bush’s comment that Iraqis have joined Americans in the fight against Al Qaida, the poll shows that 80% of Iraqis support a long term alliance with the United States for the purpose of fighting al-Qaida and foreign jihadists.
Yeah, a trend from catastrophic to merely totally fucked up! At this rate of progress, we should have things going along swimmingly in time for my great-grandchildren to do a couple of tours! Most the metrics you speak so glowingly of are still heavily weighted towards the “turd infested fever swamp” paradigm, and you’re singing hosannas and hallelujahs!
The Iraqis seem more interested in killing each other than us. No other nation on the face of the planet has the ability to stop us. No one of any significant power in either political tribe wishes to see us leave. The American public seems to agree that we should leave but there is no mechanism for transforming their collective desires into public policy. Therefore, the answer is we don’t unless an equation changes whereby decision makers don’t see occupying Iraq as a good thing. This could happen (see: Vietnam, business leaders). But you and I will be spectators.
Forget Bush or Hillary or Obama or McCain. There’s a hugely complicated overlap of private industry, Congress, intellectuals, the military, and media holding this whole sheebang up. And although different factions in this web may differ on the particulars there is a broad consensus on the major points. The opinion of anyone not in the circle of power is completely irrelevant.
That article was downright stupid. Healthcare? Jobs? Renewable energy? Can I have a flying pink pony too? I don’t think this should surprise you very much BG given the posts I’ve seen from you in the past, but the decision makers don’t give a shit about “America” or “the people” unless it threatens their interests.
Yeah, the American people are really apathetic for not charging into traffic and being rolled into a collective road pizza to save the Iraqis/Vietnamese/Latin Americans/Black People. I wonder why they’re so unwilling to be turned into a pink mist instead of watching American Idol and assembling their IKEA furniture after eating their organic dinner.