I’m not sure that making an open Iraqi civil war a mortal lock rather than merely highly probable can be considered a good thing.
As to the OP I have three thoughts:
Leave too soon and the Iraqi’s are likely screwed. (They may be screwed anyways, granted)
Staying the course (no added troops, no added funding, just keepin’ on keepin’ on) seems unlikely to ameloriate matters for anyone.
Staying in Iraq to validate previous casualties is the height of WWI era chateau general moronic pandering folly. (I acknowledge that this rationale has not been cited in this thread but I have seen it mentioned elsewhere)
Well, there’s no question that some Shi’ites are pissed at us for not giving them support after Gulf War I, and you’re right, there are a lot of Shi’ites who dislike us. But, I’m just saying that there’s a lower percentage of Shi’ites who dislike us than Sunni who dislike us, and that’s been the case since the invasion. (Our support for Israel pisses everybody off equally, whether they’re Shi’ite or Sunni).
We did not enter Iraq because of our love of the Iraqi people, but our hate and
fear of some of the Iraqi people. This motivation guarantees a bad result for
both countries.
What progress have we made in the last two years? Has the violence decreased?
Has unemployment fallen? Has the rate of US causalities declined? Have we
increased the reliability of basic services such as electricity in the country? None
of these measures seem to have gone in the right direction.
Why believe future success is likely based upon this record?
I opposed the war from day one. But to simply run away from the mess is irresponsible. Somehow the US and Britain have to see this through. If the Sunnis and Shiites are never going to trust each other, perhaps it’s time to rethink the Iraqi boundaries. Carve a Sunni Iraq, a Shiite Iraq, and Kurdistan out of the present borders. I think in the long term, this would stand a better chance of success than would trying to maintain the artificial borders created during colonialism.
I agree with the first half of this…as an aside I wish I had opposed the war from day one as well. Maybe if enough folks had opposed the war we wouldn’t be in this mess. My own libertarian tendencies were against ANY kind of foreign adventure…but I surprised them because I really thought it was the right thing to do at the time. I was just wrong and feel like a fool now.
Anyway, I don’t think we are at the point where Balkanizing Iraq is yet a necessary or viable option. I don’t understand why folks are so impatient that they can’t wait to see what kind of Iraqi government will eventually emerge from this mess. After all, IIRC, the real elections aren’t going to be held until the end of this year. The government in place atm is just a provisional government whose role is just to draft a constitution and to prepare the way. My own thoughts are to wait and see what happens, how this new government progresses, and then, if it looks like the new government is not going to be able to cope, is torn apart by infighting, is completely corrupt, etc…THEN we re-assess our options and perhaps ‘cut and run’. But it won’t really be ‘cut and run’ then…we will have made a good faith effort to make amends for the mess we made. Oh, we’ll still be to blame and rightfully so…but we won’t have pulled the rug out before the Iraqi’s even had the chance to bring something stable to their nation.
I think you have to demonstrate that it would do any good. I’m not sure that it would do anything but create more targets. If it would do no more than delay the carnage until the eventual pullout begins, then why do it? The other factor is that troop levels cannot be raised significantly with an all-volunteer army. The armed forces are already stretched much too thin. I wouldn’t call it off the table, but I wouldn’t accept it unless it was part of a plan that had a chance of working.
Remember the nationwide smallpox vaccination scare? Saddam was going kill all our children with the deadly virus, so we started vaccinating health care providers, and some of them got sick?
The nationwide program died with a whimper, but I wonder if Joe citizen can still get vaccinated for it?
As I said in my earlier post, Bush’s goal cannot be met with current troop levels. He said we would stay until the Iraqi’s were capable of providing their own security, but that is a goal even the US Army is incapable of, at current troop levels. It is not realistic to expect that Iraqi forces can achieve something we cannot.
For the record, I am against increasing troop levels; I think we should pull out now. My point is that Bush’s goals and his methods of achieving them are mutually exclusive. Unless we increase troop levels, the insurgency will persist, and Bush will never justify leaving.
Is the status quo acceptable to you? Do you believe Cheney and Rumsfeld in their rosy prediction for the demise of the insurgents?
Why? Afaik the Iraqi’s are progressing towards the next cycle of elections and towards a more perminent government. Seems that those are Bush’s goals, and that they ARE being met. Do you contend that they are being delayed by the current levels of insurgency and that only more troops will make them happen?
I agree that the US army alone can’t make this happen…its up to the Iraqi’s themselves to make it work or not. What the US Army is doing is providing a level of stability while the Iraqi’s get their ducks in order…and despite the continued attacks, they ARE providing a level of stability in which the Iraqi’s ARE moving forward getting their government spun up. What that government will eventually be is anyones guess.
For the time being and IMHO yes…the status quo is acceptable. Its all going to hinge on the Iraqi’s themselves, and on what kind of government emerges in the end, and how tied to the people there it is. If the new Iraqi government is acceptable to MOST of the IRaqi’s, then I think it will be self stabalizing and the insurgency will mostly die out.
Do I believe Chaney/Rumsfelds rosy predictions? No…but then, I don’t believe the gloom and doom on the other side either. I think the actual situation lies somewhere in between those points. And I think it all hinges on the Iraqi’s themselves and on their government…and that we need to give them time to at least TRY and bring something stable about there.
From what I have seen, in the Al Anbar province, we are capable of clearing out an area, but lack the troops to hold it, so it is shortly reoccupied by insurgents. We are being rope-a-doped, and the insurgents are playing a war of attrition, one that we cannot maintain over the long run. If we do not employ a level of force great enough to destroy the insurgents, we should be there at all. How quickly we forget the truth of the Powell doctrine:
By no stretch of the imagination could US troop levels be considered “overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy”.
I don’t know what other proof you require, but it is clear to me that the status quo is unacceptable.
Without question, to meet Bush’s goal, the draft must be reinstated. But he lacks the political will to do what is necessary to meet his own goals. Therefore, we should withdraw.
I agree with Xtisme on this. The problem is that while the multiple Iraq’s may have made sense in 1920, today there aren’t the logical clean cut borders to allow this. Both voluntary and involuntary internal migration throughout the years have blurred and intermixed things so you would end up with three states with substantial minorities, no doubt feeling oppressed and with a friendly government just over the line. I also think that the minor minorities(?) - Turkmen, Chaldassyrians, etc - are better off as a small minority in a multicultural state with appropriate protections than as a negligible minority in monocultural (?) successor states.
Those are not the goals that will determine when we bring the troops home. A democratic government won’t last so long as hundreds of Iraqis are being blown to bits in the streets every month.
You have a much lower standard of stability than I do, I guess.
This sounds like the same kind of Pollyannaism that assured America the war would be brief, painless and self-funded.
And you know this how? YOu accuse me of ‘Pollyannaism’, but your guesses are no better than mine…just more negative. Negativity does not equal better…it just equals different perspective.
First off, how do you KNOW that ‘hundreds of Iraqis are being blown to bits in the streets every month’ will continue indefinitely (of course your example itself is hyperbole, but lets skip that for now)? How do you KNOW that a new Iraqi government, chosen by the majority of the people in Iraq won’t be able to stabalize the situation? How do you know there won’t BE a stable Iraqi government? Since we are all talking out our ass here anyway as none of us has a magic time machine and all. And, if the US troops can at least give the Iraqi’s a CHANCE for stability by staying there until after the elections and things shake out, shouldn’t we do that? As opposed to cutting and running now…and not even giving them that slim chance?
Not at all…I just think I’m more realistic than you are. The situation is what it is…bad. Nothing the US is likely to do at this point will make it better from a military perspective. However, the US military can certainly make things a hell of a lot worse…and one way to do that is to cut and run IMHO. Only the Iraqi people can make it better, and the only way thats going to happen is IF the new Iraqi government is supported by the majority of the people AND is strong and stable enough to defend itself. Maintaining the status quo is the BEST we can do right now…until the new Iraqi government is fully in place and has at least a chance to stabalize things. Not maintaining the status quo (i.e. cut and run) would be orders of magnitude worse than the current situation for the Iraqi people.
Well, YMMV of course. From my perspective it sounds more like the only viable solution at this point. It at least gives the Iraqi’s a chance, slim though it may be…whereas cutting and running gives them no chance at all except for a bloody and protracted civil war.
I think this is an exaggeration. We’ve seen continual slippage in the timelines for restoring sovereignty to Iraq. There’s supposed be a referendum on a new constitution in mid-October, but the Iraqis have been unable even to put the committee together to draft a constitution. No one can decide on the ethnic composition of the committee. Now, if they can’t even decide that, how are they possibly going to be able to write a constitution that satisfies everyone?
The point is that we don’t have the luxury of time here. Confidence in the new Iraqi government is not high, and erodes with every day of dithering. I think the situation is unsalvageable now, and just wait till people start fighting in earnest over Kirkuk.
I notice that your cite doesn’t go back before March 2005 (before that it mixes the numbers together as police/military…and it doesn’t go back before 2005 at all from what I can tell). Looking at June, which seems to be a peak month so far, the civilian deaths are indeed over 100…as are March, April and May. 4 months is not exactly enough to identify a trend IMHO. However, I withdraw my call of hyperbole on the ‘hundreds’ of Iraqi dead per month as you might have meant Iraq civilian, military and police casualties combined…and you might have meant ‘months’ to simply be 4 (or 6) months.
No…because if we pull out now the death toll is likely to sky rocket for the Iraqi’s.
No, to expend thousands of lives to ensure that 10’s or even 100’s of thousands don’t die in the ensueing blood bath…seems less than foolish to me. Seems a worthy cause, especially considering that we created the fucking mess in the first place. Keep em there.