Maliki can’t control the ministers he’s got now, so he’s going to pick some new ones while simultaneously balancing all the factions in parliament. That’ll never work.
At this point I think it’s even money on whether the government will hold up long enough to hang Saddam, and once the government is gone, Iraq is truly screwed. So is the US, unless we decide ‘staying the course’ involves pacifying the country for new elections for a new government that will actually produce the shining city on the hill we so desire. Nope, we’re totally screwed too.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I’ve done a couple of Ask the Guy in Baghdad threads. Here is the most recent
There is a surprising amount of commerce, including imported goods, which is really odd, but it is certainly worse than it was 3 years ago. Iraqis like to say that each day is worse than the day before, my buddies and I watched Office Space here on DVD so we morphed that into our rallying cry from movie “Any day you see me is the worst day of my life.” It truly is horrific here, people die not just from bombs and guns, but becuase they are diabetic and can’t get insulin, or their house caught fire and the fire department never came, just a long decent into hell really.
Thanks for the link. I missed those back then. And please allow me to add my thanks for all your work, and I hope that it pays dividends down the road.
This last part is what drives me nuts about the situation. The media and the administration are too freaking focused on terrorism and not enough on restoring normalcy, which we need to do so we can stop breeding more terrorists.
But to continue the hijack, madmonk28, are there any agencies, government or NGO, trying to do what I suggested above - taking a census of households about what personal losses they have had and what they need so that those in charge have an idea of what the people need? What criteria do you see for aid projects? Any?
Last year, I thought that a Vietnam-style withdrawal may have been a good solution, but not now. We have done too much damage to leave now - leaving the Iraqi and aid groups such as yours to hang in the wind, at the best.
I do not envy Robert Gates right now, but I hope he succeeds in getting the resources to truly accomplish the mission.
We tried to conduct a needs assesment of communities that involved a very low key approach asking community leaders to answer some questions about their neighborhoods. In one neighborhood, masked gunmen showed up at the guy’s house after getting wind of the project, accused him of being an American spy and slaughtered him and his entire family.
The Lancet had an article estimating the additional number of Iraqi deaths from the war and came up with roughly 680k. They used clusters to do the work.
In general they needs are actually pretty obvious, schools, hospitals, electricity, sewers but in order to acheive any of those you need security which is in pretty short supply. I think the mistakes early on with the invasion are now probably unfixable.
Almost, but not quite. If I’ve counted correctly, it was 3 years, 35 weeks, and 6 days from Pearl Harbor to the Japanese surrender, and as of today it’s only 3 years, 34 weeks, and 1 day since we attacked Iraq on March 19, 2003. So the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend is the big day.
Maybe I missed it but I haven´t seen anyone suggesting the first necessary step in an attempt to fix that monumental display of stupidity and malice.
Ask for forgiveness, intensely, sincerely, to the iraqi people. Aknowledge all that went wrong and what were the motives and causes to this debacle. In few words come clear on just what the heck was the US really thinking about when it decided to start this war. And if to make it look sincere heads should roll, well, start sharpening that axe ASAP; Iraqis don´t trust the US, the mayority of the world doesn´t, if the US is going to keep going with the excuse that “we meant good but shit happens” then nobody will.
Then let the money pouring begin, maybe it´s too late but it has to be tried; start large infrastructure, education, industrial and technological proyects, give jobs to the iraqi people not some US or foreign corporation; give them something to do, money to spend and where to spend it. In short give them back a normal life.
Also the US should step down from it´s pedantic, boasting and bullying pedestal and start knocking on other countries doors again apologizing and asking for help, and not the usual demand of “do as I say or else…” that has been going for several years already. Give countries an incentive in return for their help and no punishment if they refuse; Iraq is a meat grinder built by the US incompetence so you should be humble to ask other countries to throw people into it.
I´m affraid it may be too late now, perhaps if step two was implemented soon after the invasion we wouldn´t be seen the situation as it is now; but it would certainly have helped.
No it doesn’t. Full Metal Jacket is a Hollywood movie, from one of Hollywood’s most famous studios, Warner Bros. Studio.
The fact that its director Stanley Kubrick (an American-born Jew) lived in England for most of his life doesn’t mean that none of his films count as “Hollywood films”.
I had a similar though last night. We need to go back to our ‘allies’ and the UN - tell them straight up, we fucked up hardcore and we need their help, and we will go forward as a coalition, and not our way or the highway. Preferably with Colin Powell in the hot seat, so he can attempt to redeem his reputation as a statesman, which this nation appears to have a shortage of at the moment.
I cannot see that happening with any credibility unless the current POTUS and his cronies are impeached and brought to the Hague to answer for their crimes. I definitely do not see that happening, though by every measure of justice I believe it should be done.
Based on** madmonk28’s ** comments, though, Iraq becoming Somalia appears to be the mostly likely outcome, with another strongman rising out of the rubble if we are lucky, but more likely an 'Islamic Union/Taliban-'like party coming to power.
I can just as easily see a China/Russia-backed Iran sending troops to ‘protect’ Shi’ites, Turkey moving to crush Kurdistan, and Syria taking the east, just because no else wants it. Who ends up with Bagdhad is anyones guess.
But we need another Marshall Plan more than another Operation Overlord, if we intend to do this right. I fear the Democrats are going to push for a phased withdrawal and let nature takes its course.
GD is not my venue normally, but I had to point out how idiotic this statement is. We (the US) did not end occupation of Germany until 1955 (scroll down to the end of the section about the zones), and occupation of Japan didn’t end until 1952, furthermore, the US had to maintain an active presence in both countries throughout the Cold War for fear of communist aggression, and still has forces stationed there to this day. In case you forgot, the second world war ended in 1945, so even the shorter of the two formal occupations didn’t end until seven years had passed.
Furthermore, no straight-across comparison can ever reasonably be made between WW2 Germany and Japan to modern-day Iraq. We’re talking about two very modernized, developed, forward thinking people noted historically for martial discipline and organizational tendencies, it doesn’t take much imagination to see that any occupation after a crushing defeat would be smooth sailing under such circumstances. Not so for Iraq, an under-developed region where brutal internecine religious conflict has been kept at bay purely through force of arms for a long time now, as I’ve come to understand things.
I think the situation might be salvageable, and I really don’t have any opinion as to what the US should do (I simply don’t know what the right answer is), but it always bothers me to see these comparisons, because they just don’t work. IMO, Any occupation of Iraq in an effort to establish a stable, morally-acceptable regime is going to be a long, drawn-out, and very difficult process.
Yeah, but the actual fighting ended almost entirely when the war was officially over. We didn’t have German or Japanese insurgencies and militias knocking each other off by the dozens every week during the post-war occupation.
What we have in Iraq now is not a **post-**war occupation; it’s a continuing war that indeed is lasting longer than the US involvement in WWII.
Well, I sure wish that our leaders had acknowledged this more openly back in 2003. Back then, we heard a lot of sunshine-and-kittens talk about how “a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region,” and how Iraq “has the potential to transform the thinking of people around the world about the potential for democracy, even in Arab countries where people have been disparaging of their potential,” and how expressing skepticism about Iraqis’ readiness for democracy was succumbing to “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations”.
Again, it’s kind of a pity that the pre-war estimates of the time, difficulty and cost of the enterprise were so unduly optimistic.
People who talk about winning in Iraq need to be interrupted immediately, every single time and required to define some clear criteria defining “win”. Win what? How would we know if we had won? What would be different between winning, and loosing?
We lost this war two weeks before we sent the first covert troops into Iraq. We lost this war when the question “Who gave us the right to impose a government on anyone?” remained unspoken by the cowards we call the Congress of the United States. We lost this war when we elected ourselves target to the terrorists of the world. You loose to terrorists by being terrorized, which we have demonstrated by killing lots of people in a frenzy of military jingoism. And, we have stocked the world with anti-American terrorism for yet another generation.
We can continue to loose this war for as long as we choose, since our credit is good enough to allow us to continue long after we entirely bankrupt our government. Only our grandchildren will realize how thoroughly we have lost it.
To the rest of the world, especially our allies: Please tell us to go home and mind our own business. We are not nation builders. We are nation destroyers.
I absolutely agree. I have yet to hear an explanation of what the US is trying to achieve and how it will know if it is succeeding. I started a thread a while back asking supporters of the war to explain what “win” means and got very few answers and none of them were the same answers.
While we don’t have any idea what a win is supposed to look like, we sure are getting and idea of what a loss looks like.
When the oil is privatized and secure for the international oil companies… Monk are you familiar with the Embassy we are building? It is supposed to be phenominal.Wars are about money after all.
I know where it is being built, I had been in that area 3 years ago, but haven’t been around there lately. I hear it is the largest US embassy and it takes up several acres. It’s in the Green Zone, but I only get there about once every couple of months and then I head straight to Burger King.
Problem is ,if they are considering leaving ,how does the embassy fit into the logic? Last I read it is on schedule . Another billion gone. Why would they build it to abandon it. I suspect we arent’ going anywhere without our oil.
Even if some troops withdraw, they are not leaving the area around the green zone, it is a fortress. They won’t abandon it, they’ll be holed up in it with several thousand troops.