Hey Sam: if you’re going to post elsewhere about how well things are going in Iraq, care to actually defend that POV here?
People aren’t going to like this but the only realistic solution that I can see to an end to this is to dismantle the country into its three main constituents and let the population migrate to its particular “homeland”.
It IS ethnic cleansing.it IS unfair and unjust but I just cant see any other solution.
I dont believe that the police will ever be trained up as a fair,honest and impartial force.
And I dont believe that the religious and ethnic groups will stop murdering each other until they are physically seperated.
And I dont believe that any sort of a military victory is possible.
I didn’t say things are going well. I said they are improving. And they are. Are you seriously suggesting that conditions today are worse than they were before the surge?
No. But I am saying, if you’d care to read my response to you above, that in many ways, things are no better.
And ‘no better’ = ‘are NOT improving,’ just to hammer home the obvious.
Also, ‘continues to improve’ - your actual language - implies not just improvement, but that things were already improving, and now they’re improving some more. You can’t continue something until after it’s started.
So there you go again, Sam, making things sound better in Iraq in some other thread than you’re willing to defend in the Iraq thread.
I ran through all those metrics in Q.9 of the questionnaire. The only one where continued improvement could be noted was with local schools.
The problem is, 2/3 of Iraqis want Iraq to continue to be a unified, centralized nation (see Q.13 of the survey we’ve been talking about.) Unless that 2/3 is overwhelmingly Shi’ites who want their turn to boss the Sunnis and Kurds around (which is possible, I’ll admit, the poll didn’t break down the responses by race/sect, which it should have), we’re well past the point where we can say we know better. They know the consequences better than we do; they’ve already lived those consequences.
Two years ago, I argued for partition because absent partition, I fully expected we’d see the sort of violence of 2006 and the first half of 2007, but maybe they couldn’t see it coming. Now it’s already happened, and if they don’t want partition, I don’t feel there’s any remaining case for imposing one on them.
It isn’t so much not possible, as not meaningful. This is a civil war (being fought by dirty means, rather than by massed armies), and unless we’re taking sides in it, ‘victory’ is a meaningless term for us.
I saw a reporter on the TV yesterday ,who just returned from Iraq. He says they get 1 hour of electricity every day. Every day. Man thats progress.
There were demonstrations across the country due to the 5th anniversary of our quick little neocon war. How much coverage did it get in your area?
Iraq Global Policy Org Poll Aug 2007 (warning: PDF)
Interesting findings amongst many:
– highlights mine. Conclusions yours to make.
I would seriously suggest conditions today are worse than they were before the invasion. And all but certain to remain so for years to come.
And in Iraq it’s even worse!
Sam would surely say that (a) that was before The Surge had had a chance to work, and (b) The Surge has improved things in Iraq; before that, the way the U.S. was doing things was fucked up, but now our approach is unfucked.
One problem with that is, the war’s supporters (including Sam, IIRC) have been through a number of iterations of “until X months ago, American policy in Iraq was fucked up, but now we’ve figured things out and are doing it right, and this time things are really truly getting better.”
A second problem is that there’s no indication whatsoever that even the improvements that Sam cites between August and February are a step towards extricating the U.S. from the loop in Iraq.
The whole point of The Surge - or so we were told; apparently we were lied to, again (I’m shocked; I bet you are too) - was that the temporary security improvements we’d provide would create a window of opportunity for political reconciliation, which would be the basis for improvements in Iraq that would outlast The Surge.
Now, of course, we’re being told that The Surge is a success because it’s created temporary security improvements, but we can’t withdraw many troops because then the violence would start right back up again.
A third problem is that it certainly looks like the benefits of The Surge are starting to weaken. The Sunni Awakening councils whose alliance with us has been the key element in reducing Iraqi violence are quitting, going on strike, or are about to do so, because the Shi’ite-dominated police and military are turning down their applications to enlist. (The failure of reconciliation is putting Iraq back in the hot seat.) In Fallujah, order is being maintained by a Saddam-style strongman, with our acquiescence. And the Green Zone was being shelled for most of the day yesterday.
A fourth problem is that the Bush (and undoubtedly the McCain) Iraq strategy is unmoored from any connection to the larger issues of our relationship with the Islamic world and our plan for quelling Islamic terrorism. (Not to mention unmoored from any constraints on money, the needs for our troops in Afghanistan and possibly elsewhere, the wearing-out of our volunteer army through successive deployments with too little rest and retraining time in between, and all the rest of that.) Our occupation of Iraq inspires the jihadists; it’s an own goal in the War on Terror. It gives them a great testing lab to try out new techniques of asymmetrical warfare; again, it’s an own goal in the War on Terror.
In a feeble attempt to answer the OP:
Where do we stand? Occupying a broken nation. The nation has a busted infrastructure (that we broke). The nation no longer has an “evil” dictator, which has allowed Balkan style tribalism to re-emerge. Some areas are doing pretty well compared to their lives under Saddam - the Kurds, for example. Other groups lives suck - the Sunnis who used to run the show. The Shi’ites have it both good and bad. Overall, Iraq post-Saddam sucks - but Iraq under Saddam (post the Kuwait invasion) sucked as well, but for very different reasons. The suckage is certainly worse for the average Iraqi on the street, I believe. However, some would argue the “to die a (potential) freeman” is better than “live under a dictator” point.
How do we leave? Probably in bits and pieces and it will be ugly when we do. If we started a massive de-mobilization in January after swearing in Obama (for example), we would need to at least TRY to leave someone in charge with the resources to pretend to handle it. I would expect Kurdistan to come into existence pretty fast. Whether or not it would be part of some sort of an Iraqi Republic, or its own nation, is an interesting question for those still writing thesis papers in school.
Anyone notice how, just like the war was supposed to be over in a few months, so was the Surge. And how it keeps going, and going and going?
I wonder how much of the improvement in Iraqi violence comes from the fact that the ethnic cleansing has already been done. They’ve eliminated the Sunni/Shia mixed neighborhoods, so there is less opportunity for one to attack the other. It is no surprise that Sadr and some of the other militias have a ceasefire while we’re there. The success of the Surge isn’t measured on the casualty rate while we’re sitting on them, but what happens when we get up. If it was so successful, we wouldn’t have to stay.
I think Sam’s support of the surge is to so exhaust US forces to allow the fierce Canadian Army to come down and take over. Not that I object to that - we’d get some decent universal health coverage at last.
Easy. Do what we always do. Declare victory and pull out.
Fortunately, we got the first part out of the way five years ago, so we’re ahead of the game! 
The Canadian constitution, AFAIK, has no prohibition on the quartering of troops on civilians, and I am not sharing a house with somebody who eats poutine and puts maple syrup on baked beans!
Besides, their beer sucks!
[riot breaks out]
You pack up the tent, Brent.
Ship off the tank, Frank.
Get kicked in the tush, Bush …
One problem with that argument is that they are, if anything, less free, and likely to remain so. Women are much worse off in terms of freedom, as are gays, as are mixed Sunni/Shia couples. And, of course, they have to submit to abuse, imprisonment, abuse or murder at the hands of our troops - and I would include Blackwater thugs under the heading of “our troops”. We are the only reason they are there.
Two part program Bush’s war on PBS. Interviews with the CIA planners . The neocons etc. Devastating.
How Rumsfeld got Condi out of the loop. How he got Powell marginalized. How Chalabi got in even though many knew he was a crook, UGH
Whoops! Looks like things are heating up again!
Just when you thought the war was getting boring! Those whacky Iraqis, eh? 
No one could have foreseen that the Surge’s benefits might be temporary.