I’m not trying to be overly rude or confrontational here. I’m asking because I want to know what’s going on in the minds of those who still support President Bush’s Iraq strategy. I’m interested in simple, honest answers. Assuming the answer is not “never”, there has to be a certain point where if things stay the same as they are now, we can safely say we’ve lost, right?
Give me a number here. How many years?
The next six months will be crucial.
It will happen the instant they figure out a way to lay all blame of the defeat on the Liberals.
Well, we won. Quick, early and fast. We defeated the Iraqi army, deposed Saddam and placed a “democratic” government in. So, we can’t lose as we already won.
Now of course, no matter what we do or what anyone does- terrorism will continue. No one can “win” against terrorism. No one ever has, and short of nuking them all until it’s a glassed over crater, no one ever will.
So, at a certain time (and I think that time is past) we have to stop the occupation and turn it over to the new Iraqi government.
I’d be satisified with a compromise- ask for volunteers. A small cadre of 100% volunteers can be left behind to train and stiffen the Iraqi forces.
A lot of conservatives - and others who initially supported the war - have already acknowledged that we have lost the war or at least that it was a mistake. Some will hold out till the bitter end, while others, like **DrDeth **will parse the words which is actually a reasonable thing to do.
As **DrDeth **suggests this war doesn’t fit into a nice, clean win-lose category. When the goals of a war are never made clear it’s hard to know if you achieved them. We *did *topple Saddam; we *did *establish a democratic government in Iraq; we did… uhm… well, that’s about it. Just those two. Still it sure doesn’t feel like a win, does it.
Exactly what I was going to say. Isn’t it clear that the true believers are never wrong?
I was always against the war in Iraq, but my view is that the US won the war. Quickly and easily. And this destabilized the country to an extent that the US could not control the resulting mess.
You say that like the U.S. military isn’t already comprised of volunteers.
By all accounts, the result of the invasion of Iraq has been a roaring success as far as the Kurdish region is concerned. According to CNN, there are only 60 American military people there. They love Americans and claim to be a better friend of America in the middle east than Israel. Reconstruction is booming and the people feel safe and happy. At least we can feel some comfort in that successful liberation.
To a large extent it cannot be a success because the reason we went in never existed.
The goal of this operation was not to liberate any one, or to instill democracy, or any such claptrap. It was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction conflated with an equally imaginary Sadaam tie to terrorism. We could not achieve a goal to eliminate threats that never really existed.
We have a new goal now: to limit the damaging effects of our having stupidly come in and having removed a petty dictactor without any plans for how to stabalize the vacuum that would naturally result. I guess another goal has been to give the terrorists Americans to kill without having to travel far to do it, and thereby give those at home more of an illusion of safety … but I don’t like that goal. The first we have an obligation to try to fulfill as best we can and the questions are how to do it, and much minimization of damage is even possible at this point.
But the Kurds had a pretty good set up before the US started the Iraqle. Is it better? Perhaps. But what about the rest of the maelstrom that Iraq has become?
Yes, the war was won. The US rode in and kicked ass seven different ways, toppled the government, sent Saddam into hiding, then found his ass. But everything was a cock up inre what was to come after. Which is how we find ourselves in the position we’re in today. Trying desperately to come up with something that will make it appear we didn’t make the average Iraqi worse off.
President Bush is unable to concede a lost cause (in this case, the cause of a stable, democratic, Islamic country in the middle east). This will not change between now and the end of his administration. Because the cause is, in fact, lost, what you have seen is a slowly morphing message from “eliminating WMD” to “establishing a democratic Iraq” to “fighting the war on terror.”
Now that the message has morphed to “fighting the war on terror” there will never be a Conservative concession that the “war” is lost.
If Mr. Bush and/or Conservatives were to stay in power indefinitely, the message would simply morph again that “the war on terror has moved to other, more pressing jurisdictions” and that would be the permission for exiting our troops from Iraq without ever conceding that “the war” is lost. This would occur when the entire infrastructure of the country is so broken down that it becomes essentially a bunch of fanatic tribes with little potential for extending a reach beyond its personal borders.
Since Mr. Bush is going to be out of office in less than two years, and things will be worse for Iraqis (not simply the same as now, no matter how hard we try), there is a reasonable chance the leadership will be Democratic. It’s likely the Democratic leaders will change the tenor and probably the specifics, of the US involvement in Iraq. At that point it will be safe for conservatives to declare that the war in Iraq is lost, and that the Democrats lost it.
As an aside, I realize this post appears to be fairly political. I take no personal stance here; by personality I am an observer more than a participant in the political process. I’m jes’ reporting the facts here and not making an editorial of what we should do. I myself am waiting for the Comet or the CO2-induced inferno which will render all such issues moot.
Forgot the “give me a number.” Should conservatives stay in Executive power–and should we not take away the current Presidential permissions to run a war solo–they’ll pull out in three years. They will declare the Iraq war a victory on terror, leave the Iraqi’s to fend for themselves to establish their own governance, and take the troops out to redeploy them where the War on Terror is more pressing. Mr Bush won’t do it, so that’s two years; a new Conservative President will need a year to pull it off.
I do not think this scenario is likely b/c I think the Conservatives have lost the Presidency. Certainly the next President will not have a Conservative perspective of the Iraq war.
Only due to US armed force. (the “No fly zone”). Being bombed with nerve gas was hardly a “good set up”.
Perhaps you need to clarify why you think we’ve “lost” first. I’m not taking sides here (yet), but I think it’s only fair that you set out your argument before you demand that anyone else concede your conclusion.
re: The Kurds. Yeah, they had it pretty good in the pre-war days of the no fly zone, but I think they’re pretty happy that the US came in and got rid of Saddam-- especially since that no-fly zone wasn’t guaranteed to last forever. And things are generally better in that part of the country than before the war. (That’s not a defense of the war, as I am and always have been anti-war, but that doesn’t alter the fact that things are looking up for the Kurds.)
Right. Which is why I said, “before the US started the Iraqle.” Y’know, that same part of my post that you quoted?
And while there was no guarantee that the no-fly zone would last indefinitely, I doubt that any politician would have advocated lifting it and scooting the hell outta there. And no matter how much things are looking up now, the US will very definitely pull out, and that leaves a whole lot of fat and happy Kurds facing a whole lot of pissed-as-hell Turks, who are in no mood whatsoever to let them have the country that they so desperately want. Personally, I think they should be allowed Kurdistan, but there will be a whole 'nother front on the cock up that the US started before all is said and done.
I doubt Turkey would like to extend it’s military arm over another 7 million or so Kurdish people, when it’s having a hard time as it is controlling around 20 million of their compatriots in the south east of their own country. It’d be the stirring up of a hornets nest, and would more than likely contribute to massive internal upheaval.
So no, short of cross border raids and attacks, Turkey won’t touch Iraqi Kurdistan with a ten foot bargepole.
So even if we didn’t invade, no fly zones couldn’t of existed forever, Kurds really don’t want to be part of Iraq, and the situation was bound to come to a head regardless of whether we invaded or not.
Perhaps you haven’t been following the news, but the situation in Iraq is quite crappy. Do I seriously need to elaborate here?
I’ve been saying for months that the people governing Iraq need to be told privately that they have a finite amount of time to get it together and that the money well will run dry after that point and they will be on their own.
The Iraqis have all had a chance to have things like the Kurds do…better infrastructure, a better economy and the rule of law. But too many of them can’t get past religious sectarian rabble-rousing.
I have reached the point where my opinion is “Fine…you idiots keep on killing each other. We gave you a chance and you were too stupid to take it.”
Pull the troops out and take them to the borders. See if the Iraqis can pull their own fat out of the fire. We tried.
If the Kurds continue to behave like terrorists in Turkey, the Turks might start thinking about an Armenian solution. Like the one they never used on the Armenians.