Thats pretty close to what I actually advocate…a phased withdrawl with a gradual turning over of responsibilities over to the Iraqi’s (or maybe NATO, the EU, the Arab League or little green fairy-children) while the US goes into a more and more defensive posture. I’m sorry my above post was confusing…I meant it to be ANOTHER unpalatable scenerio in a host of them. Even the one I advocate is unpalatable to be honest…all roads seem bad, but they aren’t EQUALLY bad IMHO.
Should be a no-brainer, at least from the Iranian perspective (not sure about Syria). The two countries fought an incredibly brutal war for nearly a decade…and there are some VERY hard feelings still. Just because Iran is Shi’ite and the majority of Iraqi’s are, doesn’t mean they love OR trust each other…they most certainly don’t. Sure, the war was under a Sunni-Ba’athist regime…but some things transcend even religion.
There is a big difference between cooperating with Iran (from the Iraqi’s perspective) and being under their thumb…at least thats my own impression. Maybe Tam will wander in and give us his take. I’d be VERY surprised though if he said the Iraqi’s would be happier being dominated by Iran/Syria than they are under the US/Coalitions thumb. Certainly the Sunni would go nuts, and I’m unsure how the Kurds (also Shi’ite IIRC) would react either. Badly I should think, but there I’m off the map of my own understanding of the region.
Add in another contestant…the US/Brits. If you were a Sunni Arab in Iraq, who would be the least threatening? I’d bank on the US/Brits, bad as we obviously are. There is little chance we will go about attempting to wipe out the Sunni Arab population using genocidal methods. This hasn’t always been the case however when Arab (or ME) nations took things into their own hands.
BTW, assuming for a second I’m right and your average Sunni Arab would consider the US/Brits less of a threat, in light of whats happeing in Iraq…what would that mean in terms of escallating violence IF Syria/Iran held the whip hand in Iraq? Just as an academic point to speculate on…
I seem to recall he addressed the point in another thread at one time…but I’m in no shape to go hunting for it tonight. Maybe he’ll wander in here and address it again. Its always a pleasure when he comes into a thread IMHO…especially when he comes into my Total War threads and gives his thoughts.
I guess that goes to show how different people can have different perspectives. Seriously, though, if you ever think I’m pursuing something that is of only tangential interest to you, just say so and I’ll drop it.
It’s actually much worse than that, and you really only needed to read the first paragraph (emphasis added) to get the point:
The other quotes I gave, and this one, below, talk about how the sectarian violence wouldn’t so much be quelled in Iraq as it would spill over into those surrounding countries (empahsis added):
IOW, you have to look at what will happen outside Iraq’s borders as well as within.
I honestly wouldn’t know how to answer that question. I think it would depend a lot on what Assad to offer. For instance, is he offering Kirkuk and all its oil revenue? And how does he offer that without inciting retalitory action from an autonomous Kurdistan in the North? If he doesn’t offer oil revenue, then maybe I’ll take my chances with a unified Iraq.
We all know it was about oil-- at least as a subtext. You can’t take oil out of the equation and say what would things have been like if everything else were the same because nothing would have been the same.
**Tamerlene **talked about one side having overwhelming force over the other. Which side would have overwhelming force in that scenario? And, how on earth do we keep it so that only Iran and Syria are involved? Why wouldn’t Turkey and Saudi Arabia get involved, too?
There are a couple of real good reasons for local governments to cooperate in a pacification of Iraq. First and foremost, and encompassing the second, is stability. All ruling regimes recognize the crucial importance of stability. The Saudis positively adore stability. The Iranians may be very keen on violent political action in Palestine, but not so much next door. The mullahs may not mind so much, but it makes the bankers nervous.
Second is refugees. People are an avalanche out of Iraq, largely your professional class of people who have enough money to escape. The economies of the region are thin enough as it is, the workers and professionals of the welcoming companies have open arms and gritted teeth.
So, yes, if the rulers behave in a manner consistent with reason and self-interest…
(I have an e-mail from Lord Acton: “Fat chance”. Cosigned by Ms Tuchman…)
It’s not just a question of tangential interest to me; it’s also the degree of remoteness from the debate itself.
While I agree that the Tet comparison was done with, the discussion had fallen into the usual, “how bad is Iraq, and can we still do anything about it?” discussion.
The fanciful alternative I was engaging wasn’t Iraq’s war spilling into other countries, but other countries invading Iraq.
I think you’re reading more into Hiltermann’s quoted remarks than is actually there.
He might be offering, “you won’t be killed by Shi’a fanatics.” That’s getting to be a better deal all the time.
Well, sure - but this is more specific than, “we don’t care about similar chaos in the Congo because there’s no oil there.” This is, “it’s important to us that the Iranians not control the oil, even though they’ve been more than willing to sell their oil to us.”
Just try to get the Saudis in; good luck. Does KSA have an army capable of occupying potentially hostile ground? Think they’d be willing to risk the stability of their own regime in order to bite off a chunk of Iraq? (If their army proves to be ineffective, it’s practically an engraved invitation to any groups plotting rebellion in KSA.)
And Turkey’s main interest is in preventing unrest in Turkish Kurdistan. They’re already prepared to engage if necessary in Iraqi Kurdistan, but Arab Iraq is a good ways away for them, with no payoff for going there. (“An Iranian-Syrian partition of Arab Iraq” were my words that you were responding to.)
See below. But feel free to say you’re not interested in my discussion if you like.
Wow. You and I really do have a different perspective! That’s all this thread seems to be about, starting from the OP (almost word-for-word):
Emphasis added.
How do you read it? I read it literally, nothing more. But you seem to be implying it’s an either/or situation. He’s saying it will be both– surrounding countries getting invloved in Iraq, and sectarian violence spilling over into those countries. If you recall, that was exactly the same fears we had in Yugoslavia, which is probably the best parallel we have in recent history.
What does he offer the Shi’a in that part of Iraq? If all he does is get the Shi’a to leave, then the Sunnis don’t have to worry about being killed by Shi’a fanatics, and they’ll want oil revenues-- not just from Kirkuk, buf from the South as well.
Yes, it is. I’m not sure what the issue is here and whether you and I actually disagree about anything surrounding it.
Well, it’s got a lot more people and a lot more money that Syria does. According to Wikipedia, KSA has about 200k troops and Syria has 300k. But Syria can’t keep it’s eye off it’s border with Israel, so I don’t think theres much of a disparity. As for risking instability, they may not have a choice-- instability might be exported to them. Once again I quote from that WaPo story:
“Arab Iraq” and “Kurdish Iraq” not only abut each other, they overlap considerably. And one of the ways surrounding countries get involved is when local rebels take refuge across the border. Kurdish rebels, striking into “Arab Iraq” would find plenty of sympathy in the Kurdish areas of Turkey. That’s the kind of thing that routinely happens in these types of situations. Syria chases the rebels into Turkey, saying their only defending their interests in “Arab Iraq”, and the next thing you know Turkey is involved. Or, Kurdish rebels set up command and cotrol infrastructure in Turkey, and Syria makes strikes against them.
Funny, I only brought up Tet at all because of what you said in post 36:
But now, my bringing it up is an example of how different my perspective is from yours??
Put your analyst on danger money, baby.
OK, let’s look at it:
That’s the full quote that you quoted earlier. So, where’s he talking about these things? There’s nothing there that says the “various groups” he refers to are internal, external, or whatever. Ditto those fighting over Iraq’s dead body.
"Dear Iraqi Arab Sunnis: Feel free to form an army and fight the Kurds and Shi’ites. Go for it.
Yours truly,
Bashir Assad"
OK, let’s go back. You said:
I responded:
Since our strategic interests there are all about oil. But if we don’t care who has the oil, as long as we can buy it, then what’s our problem, strategically, with Iran controlling SE Iraq?
I dunno if we disagree on something or not. But that’s the point I was making: that if we count who has control of the oil to be more important than our alleged humanitarian mission, then it’s been “all about oil” in a very specific sense of making sure people we like control the oil, and people we dislike don’t, and not just in the general sense of ‘we wouldn’t give a flying fuck about the Middle East if they had no oil.’
But I can’t remember when the last time is that the Saudi army has been tested in combat. It’s been awhile for the Syrian army too - but they were involved in several wars a generation or so ago. It’s been a good deal longer for the Saudis, unless I’ve missed something significant. Does anyone really think the Saudi princes want to risk finding out their army isn’t any good, by putting it into a situation where they’d likely gain very little? The downside risk is that they might find themselves with a Potemkin army between them and rebellion - and that’s a pretty steep downside.
The House of Saud would be risking control of its oil wealth on an untried army. I sure wouldn’t do it if I were in their sandals. Maybe that’s why they’re contracting to build a wall.
Syria and Turkey already have an extensive border, and if they’ve ever fought one another, it’s been generations since then. They’ve got a track record of being able to work out whatever problems arise from their common border.
Also, if Kurdish rebels set up infrastructure in Turkey, the Turkish military is going to be eager to take them out; all Syria has to do is tell them where to find them. It’s much more likely that if Syria has a problem with Kurds, they’ll make common cause with Turkey in dealing with them.
Anyway, that’s all I’m gonna say about it. This has gone well beyond by level of interest in the hypothetical of what would happen if Iran and Syria tried to partition Arab Iraq.
If that’s the case, I won’t bother responding point-by-point to your last post. I’ll just say that, contrary to what **elucidator **tried to imply, I am not saying that we know as a fact that the conflict in Iraq will spill over into surrounding countries, but just that it is a distinct possibilty. A possibility that isn’t something I just made up, but something experts in the field and the regional powers themselves are discussing. So, if we do surrender Iraq to an occupying force from one or more of its neighbors, we shouldn’t assume that things will be better either inside Iraq or outside Iraq. If we want to get out because we don’t want to sacrifice more US lives, fine. Let’s just admit that and not pretend that it will necessarily be better overall for Iraq. That is all.
The people who led us into the “cakewalk” weren’t experts-- they were idealogues. Read the article and see for yourself. Or, just listen to a good news show like the PBS News Hour-- they are always interviewing independent experts, and you’ll hear that theme quite often.
Idealogues? That’s not what we were told at the time. Whose theme is it we’re hearing on the PBS news hour this time? The article you cite is from the Washington Post, one of the biggest cheerleaders for the WMD story and the invasion back in 2003. Nothing has happened since that time to augment the credibility of their so called analyses.
Yeah, because everyone talking about Iraq, whether in 2002 or 2006, is equivalent. And opinion pieces in the WaPo are equivalent to researched news articles. :rolleyes: If you want to offer cites that the actual people I’ve quoted ever said that Iraq would be a cakewalk, I’d love to see it.
In fact, the guy who made the famous “cakewalk” comment was Ken Adleman, a former Defense Dept official. And he was talking solely about taking down Saddam Hussein, which actually was a cakewalk. He never addressed how we were going to win the peace, probably because that’s not what military types are used to thinking about.
It’s easy to find plenty of voices that were loudly proclaiming the same types of issues before the war. Here’s one from, of all places, The Nixon Center:
And the guy who wrote that dire article was worried we might need 70k troops in Iraq for a protracted period of time! We wish!!
Most of the members in Congress, as well as the American people, largely igored such warnings, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. But predicting this outcome was not rocket science, and those who ignored those predictions were idealogues.
The Post, like the Times, didn’t limit its warmongering to the editorial pages back then, and your rolleyes fails to convince me that they have mended their ways. It is very much to the advantage of the ‘stay the coursers’ and ‘pony seekers’ to have material such as that story published in supposedly reputable journals.
Now there may very well be a case to be made that our swift withdrawal from Iraq might promote some sort of regional Armageddon. If so, I’d like to hear that from a source that wasn’t involved in fooling the whole country into supporting a poorly conceived invasion.
IOW, you can’t cite that anyone in the article I quoted was ever a stay-the-courser.
If you want to make an actual argument or offer other cites, I’m all ears. If all you want to do is trash the Washington Post because you don’t like the articles they published before the war, then I’m just not intersted.
I don’t really care whether you’re interested or not. The Post’s pre-war cheerleading remains a factor in interpreting what’s published there for anyone who chooses not to get fooled again. There are such people who read the boards, and many of them may not be aware of the paper’s failings.
Too many Iraqis have chosen sectarian loyalty over national loyalty. The Sunnis and Shiites are being funded and manipulated by other countries with ulterior motives. Until a large enough number of the Iraqis choose to behave in the manner of citizens of western democracies, a western style democracy is not possible. It may never be possible. And I completely agree with the Balkan analogy. So what is the solution?
Remove the United States as the public face of attempted peacekeeping and societal underwriting and replace it with the United Nations. It worked in the former Yugoslavia and it will work here if enough countries are willing to put their money where their mouth is in the name of middle eastern stability.
Some may choose not to participate because they believe a situation that hurts the United States is in their national or philisophical best interest…but I think it’s the only solution.
The United States has spent many lives and billions of dollars offering the Iraqis a chance at a functioning peaceful society and they have spurned it through religious fanaticism, indifference and self-interest. It’s time to take our face off the billboard.
Evil One: That was a nice little moral lecture for the Iraqis, and I’m sure they appreciate it… but, seriously dude, the UN already pulled out at least 2 years ago. How do we get them to go back in? Why would they go back in?
