Good, bad or indifferent? Is Bush doing the right things in the right way to get Iraq back on it’s feet?
As a side note who is killing the soliders? Al Queda operatives, ex-Bathists or random cells of resistant Iraqis?
I forget who said it: Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. I think phase 1 (getting them by the balls) is not complete yet and it is not time to go into subsequent phases yet. Too early to say.
I’ve been very disapointed by the news coverage. All I see is a series of random events. I’d like to see how we’re doing against our plan to get Iraq self sufficient, both in the private and public sector. Let’s put down the key milestones and measure success against those milestones. I’m even willing to be flexible on the timetable. But I want to see progress. I haven’t seen a good thorugh analysis yet.
I’d be very surprised if there are any A-Q operatives in Iraq. Most likely the last two, although they may be one and the same. It does appear that S.H. is still alive.
Things are going badly and getting worse. Bush should either pull out ASAP (inconceivable given the loss of face it would entail) or pour in enough troops to support a hostile occupation (also inconceivable since the ensuing brutal repression would give lie to the whole idea of “liberation”).
So instead we’ll muddle along with soldiers dying a few at a time until the American public wakes up to the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into … .
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Definitely not Al Queda. From the stories I’ve read there seems to be a loosely organized Baathist underground, plus a whole lot of small local groups who are just pissed off in general.
It takes very little resistance to keep up the guerrilla war against the occupation forces and yet, the results will be disproportionately in favor of the Iraqis. The US forces may kill more Iraqis but this will increase the hate towards Americans. the more Iraqis Americans kill the more they will be hated. They will be on edge, they will kill innocent civilians and children and the hate will increase and the resistance will multiply. There is no way out now.
Well coverage and discussion is disappointing, although if you track the events as I do, you can see a clear degradation. Read security reports every day, lots of incidents, and increasing. Not all fatalities.
Like shit.
Nothing in place yet for enabling foreign investment, no money allocated (penny ante $3bill so far) and the recent announcement by Bremer in re the Budget relies on what strikes me as pie in the sky estimates for oil revenues to fund the Iraqi ministries.
Read my past thread, almost no movement.
Don’t be.
In addition do not forget people settling percieved blood feuds with Americans. “Accidental” shootings still need revenge in Iraqi society, if not paid off.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
That wasn’t really what I was getting at. Our getting the private and public sectors up and running (and transfered to Iraqi adminstration) are more or less seperate from the attacks against US forces there. The press seem to be reporting almost exclusively on the attacks and not on the progress or lack thereof regarding the rebuilding.
A few examples of the milestones might be something like this:
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Percent of utilities up and running (water, power, sewage).
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Percent of hospitals back up and running.
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Food distribtution/production.
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Status of elections.
How about a monthly scorecard of these (or some other) milestones? Let’s see how we’re doing wrt to the big picture and not get bogged down solely in the details of random skirmishes. Yeah, we need to kow about the attacks, but that is only part of the story.
Collounsbury said:
It sounds like the British have learned this lesson. After they accidentally killed those two Iraqis a couple of weeks ago, they went to the local authority figures and arranged a meeting with the families and paid them blood money.
Apparently, the scandal that came out of it is that the British paid too much (they got fleeced), and some locals are worried that they’re inflating the blood money market or something.
At least that’s better than revenge killings.
Recall, they’ve been through this experience in living memory. I presume that the British General Staff, unlike our own, has made some careful study of how they managed Iraqi affaires in the run up to independence.
Bah, there’s always going to be the Khawaja price and the local price. Even I have to fight to get proper pricing!
I mean that seriously actually.
Exactly. We need to have CA officers with cash to compensate the folks who get injured and/or killed (their relatives of course) in any incident.
Blood money, yes, but traditional form of saying sorry and meaning it. Not dong so makes US forces look both callous AND cheap. That wins no hearts, no minds and feeds into the problem. Does it set some bad precedents? Yes it does, but frankly one can worry about that later, because right now this occupation is going downhill and getting into a nasty circle that might be impossible to break if not now.
I know, however the reality is that the security situation has continued to degrade in a manner that makes the developmental benchmarks hard to measure and achieve.
However, I do agree, I am disappointed there is so little interest in either the media or even here in these items.
Open a thread on Iraq Reconstruction, see how much interest there is, versus the now hashed to death NBC weapons, or soldiers deaths.
I disagree, as noted, they are truly seperate.
Note, for example, in my reporting on my contacts with the CPA-Iraq that Raphael reported to me in a private conversation that he, in May this was, was coming under fire every time he went for a site visit. This is CPA-I guys going round in armored vehicles. As I recall some questioned whether I was being accurate. I believe the evolution of the situation verifies my veracity.
Now imagine trying to do business. I can report directly from my contacts - I would like to go personally but Embassy won’t grant permission yet - that any and all businessmen in situ are hiring expensive armed guards, simply to do ordinary business.
However, that’s that
I do agree more transparency on the following would be super:
But I am afraid that the reason there is no transparency at present is because, well, the results are not good so far. Not good at all.
I attribute that to lack of resources. As I expressed back in early June, I liked and was impressed with the CPA economic team. However, they suffered from two weaknesses: (a) not enough regional background (b) not enough support. They’re trying to depend on private resources to help get things kick started, but frankly, even risk capital like what I am working on for Iraq is not going to go into such a situation.
The Bush Administration needs to come to Congress and authorize a shit load of spending for Iraq, show some serious financial weight behind the reconstruction and stop hoping somehow private capital will magically flow in to fill the gaps. It ain’t going to fucking happen the way they are trying to get things done now, and if they wait for it, they are fucked.
What people like december, for example, should have been doing instead of trying to pretend all was going well in Iraq, was calling their Republican Reps and demanding pressure be put on the Administration to pony up the $$ and do this right, cause American prestige is seriously on the line now, and fucking this up is going to be a huge fucking blow.
I absolutely agree, and I would love to see more domestic pressure on this, instead of just the soldier attacks. I would love it because where I sit or stand, the present state of Iraq is not encouraging and I am seriously concerned for this cheap ass, hide the cost approach the Adminstration seems to be taking.
Regarding the situation, I finally got my hands on the UN sec report after a couple weeks of not being able to, here’s this past week:
I don’t think the objective of civilian flights by this July or August is going to be met, also see below. Direct impact on rebuilding efforts.
Nota bene, serious.
Disturbing here is that armed gangs hitting UN and related compounds is a new development to the best of my knowledge, and implies a degradation of the situation, as well increased problems in getting the economy jump started through rebuilding efforts.
Now, I do believe this has not made it into the Western media quite as yet.
These are not helpful developments. It appears that the airport will remain closed to civilian air traffic(*) and only the dangerous highways will be open for visiting Baghdad.
(*: Would you risk a $550 million plane for an area with SAM attacks? Especially as there is no insurance coverage for Iraq. None, nada, zero, and the Bush Admin still has not gotten a plan for USG backed insurance off the ground. Apparently no one thought of this before the war…)
Wait a minute. What’s wrong with compensating people whose relatives you have killed by mistake? Because I, sure as hell, cannot see anything wrong with it. In fact, it seems to me like it is the right thing to do.
“If you have them by the balls etc. …”
Who here really understands that to comport with human nature? Seems to me the effect is, over the long term, just the opposite. Yes, there will be some collaborators, some enthusiastic ones even, with any occupation, but they’re not necessarily representative of the occupied population overall. Don’t believe everything the flatterers tell you.
The quote is from the well-known Christian scholar and statesman, Charles Colson. It refers to the previous triumph of American statesmanship, Viet Nam.
Any chance anyone has come up with a workable, and acceptable means of employing the 250,000 odd Iraqi Army personnel who were stood down with nothing to move on to? Surely someone is smart enough to realise that they are trained men with a sense of discipline and heirarchy? Could they not be sideways evolved into a guardia force of some sort? At least they’d be on a payroll instead of being unemployed and bitter.
The way I have heard it is that the first thing the US did was dissolve the army and other security forces and send them home. They, in turn started demonstrating and some demonstrations got ugly and then turned violent and US soldiers ended firing and killing people. So the USA said, ok, we will create new police forces and hire you for that. BUT, the guerrillas have fired and killed some of those local police deeming them collaborators with the enemy. The worst part of all this is that it really gives the impression that the USA had not thought about these things beforehand and is just muddling along, improvising and committing one blunder after another. The Keystone Cops come to mind.
OK, so they have been planning the take over of Iraq since 1998, at least.
We can forget about the bogus reasons for this take-over, like WMD or Liberation, because there are absolutely no plans being enacted that would suggest that these were the goals.
So what was it they wanted? Do they have what they wanted?
I am still dying to hear what the real reasons for this invasion were.
Isn’t that, “well-know Christian scholar and convicted Watergate felon, Charles Colson”?
I’m starting to wonder if this ‘guerrilla’ campaign wasn’t part of Saddam’s strategy all along? Could it be that Baghdad fell easily because no one was home? Are we looking at tens of thousands of Baathists who faded into the woodwork before Baghdad fell and are actually executing their war plan? Are we going to find well-prepared caches of weapons, underground hideouts, sophisticated communications strategies, etc? Is this the real Iraq war?
'Cause it’s starting to sound a little too coordinated for a collection of ad-hoc stragglers and disaffected individuals.
Why aren’t the Brits giving us some administrative pointers on how to establish and maintain good relations with the Iraqis? Have they forgotten all the lessons of how to properly administer a colony? I come on that’s what they did for a few centuries, is all that historical administrative know know down the tubes?
Sigh PIMF - “I mean come on that’s what they did for a few centuries, is all that historical administrative know how down the tubes?”