So someone was banned for wishing harm to American troops, but nary a word is said about wishing harm on Iraqis? Shouldn’t wishing harm on anyone be abhorrent?
Afaik, Alde wasn’t banned…just spanked by the mods. And if memory serves he didn’t just wish ill on the American troops but said something to the effect that he’d like to go there and bag his limit himself.
I know that some folks can’t see the difference between ‘wishing’ ill on American troops and ‘wishing ill’ on Iraq INSURGENTS but I think there is a bit of a difference there. Perhaps its simply my own national bias shinning through but the US troops are there at the orders of our government. If any blame for this adventure is directed, it should be directed at the GOVERNMENT…not the troops.
Contrast that to the Iraq Insurgents…many of who are old Saddam loyalists making trouble and attempting to either bring back the good old days of rape and slaughter and the iron fisted rule of Saddam at his best, or simply to twart the US in its plans to actually allow the Iraqi people a say, however small, in their government.
In addition to this happy bunch we have foriegn terrorists there to bag their limit of Americans and maybe cut off some civilian heads…all in the name of their religion. This merry band wants again to twart the Americans and Iraqi’s who want to at least attempt to rebuild, or to install another Taliban or Iran clone in Iraq.
Along with those two groups, who, IMHO make up the majority of at least what brains this resistance has, you probably have some truely disaffected Iraqi spear carriers…getting shafted by both sides. Angry and hurt by the American’s, manipulated in that anger by the insurgents. The worse thing that could happen to them and their nation (IMHO) is for them to succeed in breaking America’s will and having us tuck tail and bolt leaving them holding the bag of shit with the fire cracker inside.
-XT
I don’t care Redfury you’ve done more than enough to show me you hate anything which has been even touched by the Administration or Republicans or Americans, I tend to have the polar opposite of your view, where does it say I have to be lynched because of that? I support the Iraqi interim government, and I support its attacks against the terrorists who try to uproot it, I support our US allies, and I support my governments efforts in Iraq, and I support the elections, and empowerment of millions of Iraqis now liberated from dictatorship and organised terror.
I didn’t have to be eloquent in my reply, because thats what they’re doing.
Laughable, the French resistance at least wanted to return France to democratic principles and government, whereas the insurgents don’t. And I don’t think the US are comparable to Nazis in their ethnic cleansing and genocidal warfare.
Well lets have look see, you say French resistance yes? They had a former government which was democratic and in someareas pacifist, which was then invaded because it declared war on an extremely aggressive and military power which was adjacent to them. To try and somewhat have a similarity of this situation for Iraq again I find hard to believe.
Even though we’re trying and succeeding, I admit at a heavy price to implement democracy, we’re helping them achieve what they’ve been denied for years, and I believe it was the only way they could of been liberated, the situation had deteriotated that badly it took an outside force to implement change.
I don’t sympathise with the insurgents, merely because the tactics they employ against their own show their disregard for the entire populace at large, and the fact that large amounts of resistance attacks are done by Sunni militants, who I might add account for only 20% of the population, in which its the last desperate acts of a former empowered minority lashing out because it got its comeuppance.
I predict it will be somewhat like the situation we have in Ulster, a Kurdish Shia alliance which keeps in check the Sunni militants who launch sectarian attacks. It’ll go on for many years, until the last violent vestiges are removed from their power base and the moderate Sunnis are brought in with welcome arms by the other two groups for a share in power, as they’ll find out it will be the only way to stop the terrorism against them.
I think that is a gross misunderstanding of who the insurgents are and what their goals are. “The insurgents” is a poor term, since it includes diverse and independent groups of people.
You do have your ex-Army insurgents, but I won’t buy for a second that they are fighting for a return to Saddam’s regime, I believe their goals are more to get America out of Iraq. These are the people who fled when Saddam was being taken down.
Then you have your outside elements, mostly terrorists and trouble-makers from neighboring countries just trying to harm the US efforts.
But then you have the groups of Iraqis who don’t want America there, don’t want an American-imposed government, or alternatively, want a theocratic government, or want to just make their own government outside of American influence.
It is the latter group that most people speak of when defending “the insurgents.” I can’t say that, if I were Iraqi, I wouldn’t be fighting alongside them, so I guess I am sympathetic to their cause, to a degree.
And so are the Iraqi people. The only way an insurgency can be carried out is if the civilians in the middle are sympathetic to the insurgent’s cause, or even actively helping them. If the residents in Fallujah were pro-American anti-Insurgency, they would have helped route out the various cells. You simply have a very hard time operating like that in hostile territory. Instead, [the civilians] felt more loyalty to the insurgents than the Americans who were attacking them daily and were blocking food supplies into the city and such. They certainly didn’t run out and cooperate with the Americans coming in during the invasion, and the rest of the country is much the same. THAT is why we are failing.
Problem is, we don’t know squat. We don’t know, can’t find out independently because all sources are tainted. On the one hand, I have a government who’s lied to me more times than I can remember. Even if I thought they knew the truth, I couldn’t count on them to tell me! So what’s left? Al Jazeera?
One possible salient: the history of insurgency and guerilla war strongly implies that a native group has every advantage in terms of cooperation and assistance from the locals. But, of course. Thunderingly obvious, right?
But if the insurgents are made up largely of “foreign fighters”, these would not have that inherent disposition in their favor, Iraqis would not be willing to tolerate the disruption that insurgency brings. To put it bluntly, those foreigners would have been ratted out toot sweet. Achmed won’t drop the dime on his cousin, but some guy from Jordan?
Don’t recall hearing a whole lot about Iraqis rushing to provide us with operational intelligence. Or to collaborate, to put it less politely. That might mean little in itself, if it were not for the Bushivik tendency to crow over even the smallest victory. If the “Iraqi people” were actively handing over insurgents, you damn sure betcha they would have mentioned it. Hooo, boy, would they have mentioned it.
Which means they aren’t. Most likely.
Big ass caveat: this involves wartime, when blood is spilled, it releases an invisible toxin into the air, poisons the minds. Issues a sane person wouldn’t think worthy of People’s Court are suddenly reason enough to kill someone over. So my scenario is reasonable, but that don’t make it true, simply because the situation is so entirely un-reasonable. Once enough blood is spilled, it no longer matters what the fight was about when it started.
Oh, I never said they wanted Saddam back…I said they wanted another Saddam (on his good day) type dictatorship back…with them with the whip hand of course. Certainly their goal is to force America to give up…thats the first step to doing anything at this point in Iraq. They know they can’t defeat us militarily…however, as has been shown before, America’s will CAN be broken…and thats what they are playing too.
Oh, I have no doubt that there are many Iraqi’s who are less than thrilled with the US being there. But I seriously doubt most of them are involved in the insurgency. After all, how do you figure that the current insurgency is helping the Iraqi people? Destroying the infrastructure? Taking away any chance at all for a say in the government for the first time? I think this group, the truely dissatisfied Iraqi’s who are simply lashing out at America for what its done to their families or their nation perhaps make up a minority of the factionalized entity we think of as the ‘insurgency’. I saw a really good article on this earlier today, talking about the regionalized insurgent groups who are only loosely coordinated or even in contact with each other.
If I have the time I’ll try and find that article later…was pretty insightful.
-XT
Who would you say is gaining ground at the moment? Us?
How many of them are helping us against the insurgency?
You’re trying to reason from your own perspective, as an American in a multicultural nonreligious democracy. The Iraqis think like Iraqis of whatever stripe, with their own views and cultural background and criteria, with the addition that their own homes are being occupied by a force that doesn’t have a great record of giving a damn about them. Sure, they hear all these high-sounding words, but they see the pictures from Abu Ghraib, they walk home through streets of rubble that once were their houses, and they have no power or water. If you were one of them, wouldn’t you have getting rid of the occupiers as a pretty damn high priority?
Gee, people from so many regions of Iraq, in all walks of life, sharing only an intense desire to make us get the fuck out by whatever means necessary. Go figure.
Honestly? Serious question? I’d say its a stalemate right now. The insurgents are trying to break the US’s will to remain. They can pick and choose their battles, ambush US troops or go after Iraqi civilians. Right now I think their main focus is to disrupt the elections any way they can.
Long term its going to be up to the Iraqi people…and how close this election is to actually giving the Iraqi’s a feeling that they have a stake in their government. I really don’t know the answer to that…or even the answer to the US’s resolve to stay there in the long term. Myself I’m still of the opinion that ‘we broke it, its our moral duty to remain as long as we can to try and fix it’. I realize this isn’t the most popular stand on this board…but its how I feel about it.
Well, they are signing up for almost certain death in the Guards, the regular army and the Police…despite having rather large targets on their backs. Whether they actually feel some sense of nationalism towards the concept of ‘Iraq’, or they feel that signing up gives them some control and a stake in ‘their’ government, or whether its just desparation on the part of young men for a job…I don’t know. But certainly the numbers of Iraqi’s ‘helping’ us against the insurgency is growing. On the other hand, the numbers of Insurgents is also growing…at least according to the article I mentioned earlier. They showed a progression of estimates from 4-5k all the way up to 40+k for the insurgency. If its 40+k we and the Iraqi’s have serious problems.
Well, thats always a problem…we all bring our own perceptions and filters to any discussion like this. And I’m no expert on the ME in general or Iraq in particular.
From what I’ve been told by people who are there most of the Iraqi’s actually don’t think that much about Abu Ghraib…certainly they don’t dwell or fixate on it like we do. Now, thats only anacedotal of course…and not exactly a representative sample by any means. But logically if you look at the things done under Saddam it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to really think that much about such things…safer that way.
As to whether or not I’d want to get rid of the occupiers, of course I would. If someone occupied the US I’d certainly want them gone. I hope I’d be intellegent enough, or at least dispassionate enough, to realize that in a comparable situation to what Iraq is today, that the best way to do that is to go along peacefully and get the government back…that the long term approach is the best approach which will entail the least amount of bloodshed. Go along with the occupiers, hold elections. Even if the elections are 80% fraud and lipservice to the occupiers, its a first step. Eventually the occupiers, if they are like US, will lose interest and go away if they think things are safe. We have examples of Americans doing just that in fact…today Japan and Germany, former enemies of the US, pretty much do as they please without our input at all into their political process.
No…thats not what the article was saying. I wish I could find it again quickly…I’m strapped for time tonight unfortunately. Basically what they were saying is that each region in Iraq has its own…cell I guess you’d say…of insurgents. For instance most of the Sunni triangle has several cells of…you guessed it, Sunni’s. And thats also where the majority of the old Saddam loyalists are concentrated. It varies widely by region, and even within some of the larger cities.
But each cell is an independant group (mostly…some are associated, but the norm seems to be that they opperate independantly) with no real ties to any of the other cells. They have no global goals and little coordination…though there is speculation that at a high level there is some communications between groups. Most of these cells or groups have no real goals (according to the article I read anyway) except to try and break the will of the Americans and have them leave. There is no ‘movement’ no great leader…nothing in fact to tie it to the Vietnam model at all (which was the original OP).
Its natural for Iraqi’s to resent the US occupation. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. The fact that our administration didn’t understand this basic concept is certainly a huge black mark against them. However, what the majority of the insurgents are fighting for is simply to shake up the game and be spoilers in the political process. Getting rid of the US is certainly a goal of theirs…in fact probably the only goal they share. After that…well, its going to really be chaos with different factions fighting each other and whatever Iraqi government still exists for widely varying goals…or no goals at all.
I can’t really see the Ba’athists hooking up with the foreign fighters who want a new fundamental Islamic state, or the Iraqi Shi’ite population of any stripe…their goals and outlook is just too different, and their religious beliefs are also different. I can’t see the Kurds hooking up with anyone…and the majority Shi’ite population will fight for control, but may probably fragment along fundamentalist/moderate lines, or perhaps along elected Iraqi Government/Fundamentalist Islamic proponents.
Whatever it is, its going to be incredibly ugly if what I’ve been reading lately is any indication.
-XT
As to comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam I can see two.
In both cases we engaged a military force to either support (Vietnam) or establish (Iraq) a government in a country whose history, customs and ethos we didn’t understand very well. Doesn’t anyone here claim that our leaders understand Iraqi society well enough to mess with their internal governmental affairs?
In both cases we claim that only the residents of the country itself can really establish that government, provide security and get the country up and running. But not just yet because they aren’t quite ready. Does anyone here claim that after the elections later this month there will be a stable, functioning Iraqi government that will be able to take over and run the country and that will be accepted as their own by Iraqis?
Although the Iraq and Vietnam cases are different in most respects I think they are alike in those two fundamentals. And it seems to me that those two items will be our downfall in Iraq. GW et al went into the Iraq invasion with a whole bunch of unexamined presumptions about Iraq, all of which have turned out to be questionable, if not disastrously wrong.
Would it be possible to make the second sentence of the second paragraph start off, “Does anyone here claim that our leaders … yadda, yadda, yadda.”?
Put me down for the bet (I wouldn’t say “claim”) that the elections will go surprisingly well and that it will result in an equally stable and better functioning government than they have now. I’m not gonna bet whether or not they will be postponed - that might yet happen. I will even bet that the insurgency will become less once (1) the Iraqis take over and (2) they reach a deal about the occupiers leaving.
I will amend what I said earlier, that in the current situation the occupiers shouldn’t pull out right now - they should pull out quickly in a deal with the new government.
That’s setting the bar pretty low (part in bold). In any case, let’s hope so.
GW seems to have gone from “elections shall take place as originally scheduled” to elections “ought to do so.” It’s going to be tough. In order to vote people have to collect at known places. Rule one when under fire, Don’t Bunch Up.
But I guess we will see.
Tacticly speaking, a clusterfuck would fall under the category of “bunching up”?
As has been covered by other posters and myself (in this or another thread, I forget which), complicity makes them part of it.
If the Iraqi people didn’t support the insurgency, it wouldn’t exist. Well, it may, but only in small pockets, and not in major towns. Entire medium-large cities sit idly and don’t tell the US squat about insurgent activity. That is a pretty clear sign of support.
One factor that I feel obligated to adding in is that it is possible that their complicity is at gunpoint. But I doubt that, from all the reports I’ve heard. The insurgents have killed a lot of Iraqi police officers, but I haven’t seen a report about them killing civilians who didn’t meet their demands.
That would be nice, thanks.
According to various weblogs (unreviewed sources with no oversight are not usually considered especially valid, but in this case I think they are accurate), there is already rampant fraud going on in the election cards (being stolen, sold, etc etc). Even if (best case scenario, and what we all hope for) the elections go off without a hitch and an Iraqi government takes off, it may have questionable legitimacy about the voting process.
A lot depends on the strategic paradigm (I just love saying stuff like that…) and whether it has devolved from “Dominate and shape the ME from military positions in a stable, friendly Iraq” to “Get the Hell out before the American people march on the White House with torches and pitchforks!”
In other words, having brewed the coffee with raw sewer water, can they smell it yet?
It seems pretty clear to me - and it seems clear to the USG too if you read their list of 5 conditions for postponing the elections - that most of the insurgents are disaffected Sunnis. There’s no reason for the Shias to be blowing things up since they’ll get what they want - power - from a fairly held election. The Kurds will get their autonomy recognized. Only the Sunnis have a lot to lose.
Also, if you look at those 5 conditions, it’s pretty obvious why the insurgency has taken on such an ugly character - it’s a low-level civil war, really, and just like in Vietnam, we’ve put ourselves smack in the middle of it. At least we’re on the side of two-thirds of the people, ethnically speaking.
I don’t know whether the elections will stabilize the place, obviously, but I think not holding them would be pretty awful. The idea is to get a government backed by Sistani, to my mind. Once you have that that will take a lot of the legitimacy away from the insurgents, and grant a lot of legitimacy to the new government. I don’t see how that could be anything but good.
Quite simply, we need to suck it up and realize that we need to engage in a not-terribly well-hidden policy of divide and conquer, if we intend to stay and make Iraq a protectorate of the empire. If we don’t, we need a fig leaf that gives us an excuse to get out (my strong preference).
The elections are crucial to either strategy. Not holding them would just blow all of this out of the water.
Given the Bush Admin’s record so far, it looks like I just convinced myself they’ll postpone the elections. They haven’t done anything right yet, and I suppose there’s no reason to start now.
Its hard to tell. What is the Bushiviks “exit strategy”? Are they still dreaming of military bases in a friendly, allied Iraq? Or “Get the Hell out of BagDodge Right Fucking Now!” See signs of both.
Which means they haven’t come up with one yet, which means there’s no clear goal they’re working towards, which means they’ll just throw their hands up and postpone the elections and the insurgency will continue to get worse and Allawi will - wotta coincidence, this - stay in power.
Yeesh, I hope I’m wrong about all that.
Oh, they’ve probably got at least one. Thats the prob. An election, however weak, can be spun both ways.
Spin one: the election is an overwhelming landslide of a mandate, showing the total support of the Iraqi People (whoever the hell they are…) for the New Boss and their beloved American protectors, or…
OK, got your election, we declare your army fit and ready, goodbye, good luck, and good riddance. Slightly modified declare victory, hand out a bunch of medals and dash for the helicopters. Followed by a huge Welcome Home Returning Heroes Victory Gala and Support Our President Rally. And if it all falls apart two days later, well, hell, we gave them a democracy, they fucked it up!
Don’t think they could sell that? Maybe not. Don’t think they’d try? Bet me.