Seriously. It’s apparently all going to hell in hand basket. What the hell do we do at this point? What are the historical precedences for this type of situation that inform what our best strategy would be?
GOP Senator Say Iraq Is Near Chaos
It’s uncharted only in the sense that the administration’s lackeys are only now letting on just exactly how bad and how much of a failure the policy has been for a long, long time.
Here’s a brilliant strategy for Iraq that a few of us came up with years ago: Don’t invade! See how that would work. You don’t invade, then all the problems of an invasion, they don’t occur.
Repeat it to your friends, ‘don’t invade’. Otherwise, you wear the consequences. The extended and complete demonstration before the watching world of American weakness and failure and cowardice is the least of them.
I should amend that to include all the countries that supported the invasion, including one of which I am a resident citizen.
I think we may actually be heading back into some charted waters, as far as future policy goes: A return to non-interventionism. Let’s face it: Nation-building post-WWII has been an unmitigated failure in the hands of American forces. Maybe it’s not impossible, but it seems clear that the United States simply can’t do it, and we’re likely the only nation left that could even try for the forseable future. I think once the reality-impervious are out of office (and perhaps a little before), we’ll have little choice but finally acknowledge what the facts are telling us, and accept war without honor in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will continue without us in utter turmoil for a few years, before settling down into hard-line Islamist regimes. Not only are we powerless to do anything about it, our enemies now know how truly weak we are, not in will, but in irrefutable fact. We cannot win occupations. Maybe no one can. Without total war, there is no changing the Islamic world through force. So the choice will be: Uneasy but peaceful coexistance until the next major terrorist attack, after which I don’t know what will happen, or total war on the scale of a world war that must leave one side utterly devastated, like Germany and Japan were after WWII.
I believe that the historical precedent is that during the Vietnam War, we ran with our tail between our legs. Of course, we only did that about seven years after it became painfully clear that the war would accomplish nothing. However, the strategy was generally effective. Violent conflict in Vietnam stopped shortly thereafter, the world at large mostly forgot America’s role in the war, and clueless warmongers even managed to salvage their egos by repeatedly insisting that we were winning up to the point when those cowardly liberals decided to ‘cut and run’. If we pull out of Iraq right now, the results would be similar, I’d imagine.
You must be confused: the current president has a well-founded aversion to “nation-building”. (You might go so far as to say “he has never been ‘nation-building’”.)
Please tell me that’s a whoosh.
It is. I thought the reference to the recent claim to “never have been ‘stay the course’” would tip you off.
I think Lindsay Graham amply demonstrated, in the matter of the torture bill, that he is perfectly willing to say that the Bush administration is doing something wrong. Nevertheless, when it comes down to it, he’ll pull out his rubber stamp anyway. I have no more respect for anything he might say, and no more interest in trying to figure out the political calculations behind his statements.
We’re in extremely uncharted territory, beyond even the Vietnam analogy.
In Vietnam, at least, the worst-case outcome was that the totalitarian Communist government of North Vietnam would take over the South as well.
In Iraq, the worst-case outcome is the Hobbesian war of all against all. And they seem to be most of the way there already.
We’re powerless to stop the bloodbath. Baghdad’s apparently continued its descent into hell despite Operation Together Forward, or whatever it was we called it. We’ve got no more troops to send over, and nobody else is going to put their armies into the meat grinder.
The only idea I can think of that might have a remotely decent chance of stopping the bloodbath is letting Syria annex Sunni Iraq and Iran annex Shi’ite Iraq for the next 25-30 years, with us retaining overflight rights to be able to guarantee Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy.
That’s pretty extreme, but things really are falling to pieces over there. And we owe it to the Iraqi people to leave no option unconsidered that might end the violence.
Much as I look forward to the Democrats winning congress I’m only hopeful and not exubrent. There are still two weeks to go and who actually gets out an votes is more importan than polls. I clearly remember that the Dewey was a lock to beat Truman and the Democrats were dispirited. President Dewey’s administration was a short one.
Many apologies. The Irony-O-Meter clearly needs some recalibration.
Only 4 months ago Lindsey Graham was singing a different tune:
But I must say that I agree with that last sentiment of his – though he might find that it comes back to bite him in a very painful way.
Iraq was a creation of the treaty of versailles, and like all of the “nations” made up as the result of WWI, it is disintegrating. Just as we saw in Jugoslavia, a strong dictator can hold these artificial “nations” together…for a while. We may as well bow to the inevitable, and allow iraq to break up. Did we try to hold Jugoslavia togeher? What was the result? :smack:
On rereading the OP I think I must have been answering a different thread than this one in my post above.
It would seem that realityl might have been forced on the Oval Office. It was reported late last week that the Iraq government would be given a set of benchmarks and a schedule to meet them. The administration spent all weekend denying it and this morningGeneral Casey and Ambassador Kahlilzad made the announcement. You have to believe that this was agreed to at the session between GW and his military chiefs last week. It’s hard to believe that the demand for specified progress by a specified date didn’t come from Stay The Course GW. Ambassadors and Generals don’t make public announcements of policies that the boss doesn’t approve. Maybe having the military leaders talk directly to the president without the stifling filter of the Secretary of Defense is useful.
The thing is, it might be a little too late. The Iraqi government has been allowed to dawdle along depending upon the US to keep its members safe, comfortable and well recompensed while the rest of the country is in chaos. It’s a little hard to believe that they can get their act together in 18 months.
Before we embarked on this adventured, I said the best result result that I could envision 5-10 years out (from 2003) was some sort of quasi-benign strongman taking over-- someone maybe like Musharrif in Pakistan. I’m still “staying the course” on that prediction.
Pretty much says it all…and much better than I could have. The US is singularly unsuited to things like Iraq, mainly because of the attention span of our populace and our own democratic process. The only time our citizens are going to get behind a war is if its either a total war (a la WWII), or its over with fast (a la GW I)…no fuss, no muss. Anything else is going to cause a split among our citizens (or several nasty splits), and basically tie our hands.
And in the case of Iraq, assuming it COULD be won, it would take literally decades and costs gods know what in treasure and blood to do it. There is no way in hell the US (or probably ANY democratic country) could or would put up with that, short of total war where the nation itself is directly threatened.
I hope you are right Loopy, and that we are sailing back into our pre-WWII non-interventionist (well, mostly :)) stance. We’ll see…
-XT
That’s…interesting. Were you responding to my post?
Yes, i think Iraq is a lot like Jugoslavia. It has no historic legitimacy, and cannot be held together by external force. The latest from Iraq: the educated middle class (doctors, lawyers,teachers0 are abandoning Iraq. These are the Western-oriented, educated people who would be the backbone of the nation. if they see no hope, how can we?
Mark my words, Iraq will be like Afghanistan in 5 years time.
I can’t remember to what extent you participated in the pre-war debates, but I’m wondering if you raised this issue back then. I sure did.
That’s hardly the latest news, but it’s a good point.
I’m not sure how you mean that - I’m more concerned that in 5 years or less, Afghanistan will be like Iraq is now.