I see people repeating this dogmatically here on the Dope. They keep talking about it like it’s just obviously true, something that everybody knows.
Well I don’t know it to be true.
So is it? Is it true? Is Iraq still on the brink of Civil War?
The guests Colbert had on didn’t seem to be that pessimistic about it. The two soldiers he interviewed, General Odierno, the guy from the Iraqi Leadership whose name I forget, all seemed pretty upbeat and optimistic about Iraq’s future.
So where does this dogma that Iraq is a total failure and on the brink of civil war come from? Is there a factual basis for this at all? Or are the people saying this still stuck in 2005?
I have several iraqi neighbors. They are depressed because Iraq has been fundamentally changed. The sects that are fighting now, intermarried and lived next to each other with relatively little trouble when Saddam was in charge. Over half the college students in those times were women who were free not to wear veils or Hajibs.
These people are here now and will probably not go back. They are professionals and fled when the educated were being shot. They wonder what they could go back to. The government is different. opportunities are not defined. Millions of people are in other middle east countries. Many of them will return. What will they face? There is unlikely to be peace for many years.
Rebuilding a nation takes many years. That is to be expected. Whether or not Iraq continues to have domestic problems for the next 15 years does nothing to answer the OP. Yes, there is still strife, but is it on the verge of civil war?
Can you give us some links to specific, recent posts? I’ve not been posting much lately, so I haven’t kept up with what “dogma” exists these days on this MB.
I don’t think Iraq is (or was) a TOTAL failure…it was a partial failure. As for it being on the brink of civil war…well, it’s been on the brink of civil war for years now. I’d have to say that it’s less ‘on the brink’ today than, say, 2 or 3 years ago. There are degrees of badness, after all.
Defined how? If we do it as a probability curve, I’d have to say that it’s less probable today than it has been in the past. This doesn’t mean, however, that it would be unlikely, or not possible.
It depends on what metrics they are using to base their optimism on. On the military front, at least wrt US involvement, it seems that things are still bad but not as bad as they have been. There has been an uptick in violence lately, but it’s no where near what it has been in the past. So…by that metric, sure, there is some measure of optimism possible there. On the political front there I’m not aware of any real reason for more optimism than there has been in the past. There are a lot of really basic problems politically in Iraq that still haven’t been and may never be resolved.
It comes from looking at different things with regard to what ‘failure’ or ‘success’ means. Depending on what metrics you are using to make those judgments (and how you view our involvement in Iraq in the first place) is going to change your viewpoint on this question.
From a military perspective I would say that Iraq has been a partial success. Politically I think it’s been a partial or near total failure. From a strategic perspective I think it’s been a failure for the US, both from the perspective of our future military capabilities wrt deployment and from the perspective of power projection and diplomacy world wide.
Well the problem here is your definition of ‘uptick’. One has to achieve a valley of violence. If 100 people are being killed a day, and then the next day it’s 95 and the next it’s 90 and so on for 15 days until you hit the all time low of 5. If you have a day where 10 people are killed that’s an ‘uptick’ in violence. What is the severity of this ‘uptick’? At what point does it go from being, ‘on the brink of civil war’, to just another day in an urban environment where there are ethnic rivalries? You know like say, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa or California where you have ethnic violence fought in low level war every day?
I disagree with your failure arguments. If Iraq succeeds as a real democracy in the Middle-East then America will be far more secure there than ever before. Our Diplomatic prestige will come back up in the world, and meanwhile we have assembly lines building bullets and cruise missiles right now.
(from the 4th worst last year to 5th worst in 2008, I guess that is progress.)
The biggest reason why one can not talk about success? I have to agree that it is mainly because there are fractionated elites, security issues, refugees, and external intervention from a foreign power.
On that last item, paradoxically, we (the USA) can only begin to talk about succeeding in Iraq when we leave.
Walls are separating the neighborhoods. The Shia ans Sunni don’t mix. that is not a way to build peace and trust. No one can be sure. If the walls come down. would it be better or worse? Are there plans to take them down? The neighborhoods were once mixed. This will be something new.
Again, it all depends on what timeline and metrics you use to measure it. I didn’t really define what I meant, so I’m unsure why you have a problem with my non-definition. If you are measuring against the levels of violence from years ago, then certainly there is less today than there was then. When measured against, say, pre-invasion levels, however, I believe that there is more today than before the US invasion (though this is probably dependent on when one measures it, what one measures for exactly, and over what time period).
Well, that’s a pretty big ‘if’. At this point, there is no real guarantee that Iraq will survive as a viable country, or if it will disintegrate into chaos and civil war. Right now (and for the past several years), politically the invasion has been a failure, as Iraq has not come together as a politically unified nation…let alone a true democracy. IF, somewhere down the pike, Iraq does come together in such a way, then you are free to bring up this thread and I’ll revise my assertion from ‘a partial or near total failure’ to ‘partial to fully successful’. Personally, I won’t be holding my breath, but YMMV.
It probably will…the world can only seemingly hate us for so long before back sliding into simple dislike. Eventually our Euro buddies will be our Euro buddies again, and all will be…well, not goodness and light, but at least back to the status quo ante. After all, we have survived several similar events where we weren’t exactly well loved by The World™…and, heck, even the Brits were able to re-package themselves as kinder, and gentler (while still having stiff upper lips and hearts of oak, etc etc).
But we will recover DESPITE Iraq…I seriously doubt it will be because we are eventually vindicated in our invasion.
I know people who visited and travelled and lived in Iraq about 15 years ago and their opinion is that the Iraq war has been a disater for the country. What westerner can say he can freely and safely travel in Iraq today?
We have a poster here who was doing volunteer work in Iraq. What is his opinion?
The notion that we just need (six more months) six more years now, is just stalling for time. America tried this one time before with the Sha. How did that work out?
New? It does have a precedent IMO, I predicted a long time ago that one likely way Iraq is going to end was like Cyprus did, with nations of the word acting like if Cyprus is a whole nation; however, Cyprus was partitioned in practice into four main parts since the 1970’s.
Many of the walls (both literal and figurative) that separate the ethnic groups are still there. The only good news is that even with that the economies of the separated parts came out ok, but the recent global recession and the efforts of getting Turkey into the European Union can make the situation violent again. After 40 years attempts are still being made to solve the issue.
Why ? The Iraqis have every reason to hate our guts; a democratic Iraq would be our implacable enemy. And probably a more dangerous enemy than a non-democratic Iraq as well.
America wanted Iraq to be a client state, a puppet whose oil we controlled and that we could use as a military base. A hostile Iraq, or an independent one, democratic or otherwise is a failure. We’ve already failed.
America blew one of the most beautiful cities in the world to shit. We set up partitions. we killed many, many thousands of people. We set it up so thousands more were terrorist bombed. they have not had reliable water, electricity, gas or any damn thing else. There are huge orphanages because so many parents have been killed.
I guess they can forget about brothers, husbands, wives, children and family members who are dead and just get along with commerce. They will learn to forgive and to love us. You could in their place ,couldn’t you.
The Japanese and the Germans did. But I am not considering love of America or the lack thereof as relevant criteria. I mean it’d be nice if they loved us, but better if they could stand on their own two feet and be dealt with reasonably.
I think American attitude will depend entirely on whether or not they get it together. If they get it together they’ll probably be resentful, begrudging but willing to do business. If they can’t get it together, they’ll blame us forever.
If you are measuring against the levels of violence from years ago, then certainly there is less today than there was then. When measured against, say, pre-invasion levels, however, I believe that there is more today than before the US invasion (though this is probably dependent on when one measures it, what one measures for exactly, and over what time period).