Oh, I get it! How very droll! The unpatriotic, freedom-hating party doesn’t take office until January, after conning the American public with treacherous lies about The Leader. (You know, its just this kind of eltist, condescending and insulting attitude that is why you guys never win any elections…)
in re * ** Squink*:
Wouldn’t that be a classic irony?! The two states most hostile to America in the ME offer us a face-saving Get Out Of Hell Free card! Two bits says GeeDub is too fucking stupid to accept.
Couric on CBS was flummoxed by the development tonight, and claimed the administration was as well. The NYTimes pundit says nothing’ll come of it because the US isn’t involved. I expect Bush’ll choke on negotiating with Axis of evil states, no matter how much of his personal bacon could be saved by it; to say nothing of Iraqi lives, US lives, dollars etc. etc.
I hear that Assad took a ba’ath on his in Iraqi investments and now just wants his money back.
Warrant pending.
I hear you don’t need a warrant these days.
I’m not sure anyone is suggesting “indiscriminate” tactics, I’m not. I am saying that some who apparently know (Zacharia) are suggesting that the Iraqi government is keeping us from using legitimate means to go after bad guys.
I would say that if the enemy is hiding amongst innocent women and children, some of them are going to suffer big time. That cannot be our first concern during wartime.
Yes, you’re right. Making enemies in the Middle East has worked so well already; why not give people more reason to hate America?
And if we pack up and leave tomorrow they are all going to be our friends, right?
No. Interesting that the only options you see are a) Leave and b) Act more brutally.
Anyway, this war is just as, if not more, a propaganda war as much as a normal war. What happens in one arena will affect the other. If the tactics you use are deliberatly brutal in nature, you’ll lose the propaganda war, and drive people to take up arms against you You don’t think that there are people ready and willing to use any kind of American immorality and dishonourable conduct as a recruiting tool?
Think of it this way - if the terrorists on 9/11 had assassinated the leading military commander nearest the area, instead of deliberately taking the brutal tactic of reality; would U.S. public reaction be the same as it was?
The question is not whether everyone in the Middle East will love the US any time soon, the question is, how can we best reduce the bloodletting in Iraq, and, by extension, the threat to US troops stationed there. You have proposed, in very vague terms, that the US "go after " insurgents, although they are in fact “going after” insurgents as aggressively as possible within US rules of engagement. You apparently are promoting tactical changes that you hint but refuse to say straight out would be consideraly more brutal than current US tactics, and that apparently would go against the wishes of the current Iraqi government. I simply fail to see what particular long-teerm benefit you think this would bring, although I can see quite a number of negatives.
Not our first concern, no, or we could never have defeated the Germans. But shouldn’t it be a concern? This is not, after all, a war for our national survival; we can afford to consider moral factors that might have to be pushed to the back in a more desperate situation.
Especially if you don’t want to create more insurgents by your brutality. Surely people should have grasped the fact that there is not a finite number of ‘bad guys’ by now? We continually create them by our actions.
Then there’s the whole racist belief you can cow a nation into submission. It would not work in the UK, it would not work in the USA , it did not work in Vietnam and it won’t work in Iraq.
It especially won’t work in societies with exaggerated notions of honour and respect. And double that for ones fuelled by Islam.
The thing is, to define “our enemy” as those who attack US forces or the Iraqi government just isn’t very useful. Because we already shoot back at people who attack our troops, we already try to protect Iraqi government personnel. The problem is that “our enemy” doesn’t wear a sign during those times they aren’t attacking US troops or Iraqi government workers or members of other ethic/religious groups.
And so saying “we should fight our enemies” is pretty useless as a policy presciption. What we need is a way to identify those enemies, and that means getting accurate intelligence from the local population. And the local population isn’t going to give us accurate intelligence unless large numbers of them want to see “our enemies” killed.
So it all comes down to winning hearts and minds, all that liberal hippy crap that made us lose in Vietnam. Except there’s no other way to win except by winning hearts and minds, so if winning hearts and minds won’t work then we should just give up.
And forget this fantasy of handing over responsibility to the Iraqi government after X months and telling them it’s up to them. That’s just a pathetic pretense. You know it, I know it, the American people know it, the day we pull out is the day the current Iraqi government collapses. OK, maybe it will take a week. But pretending that all we need to do is get tough with the Iraqi government and they’ll finally get their act together is unworthy of us. If we’re going to pull out of Iraq we should at least acknowledge what we’re doing, which is abandoning Iraq to the various warlords. The current government will be finished. Maybe eventually one warlord will win and create a new Iraqi government and we can acknowledge that government as the legitimate government of Iraq. And heck, probably that warlord get rid of the foreign fighters once he takes power, even if he’s working with Al Qaida in Iraq today.
Just have a BIG ceremony in Baghdad-award medals to the Iraqi generals, have a pass in review parade, deliver florid speeches (have Cheney deliver a good long one). Then have the trucks waiting…and screw! :smack:
Ah, if only it were that simple. The paradox is that the only way we can win the hearts and minds at this point is by getting out.
So, by starting to withdraw we send the best signal we can to the Iraqis who don’t want their country do descend into chaos or to get ripped into separate pieces. As for one of the warlards emerging… well, that was my predicted “best case scenario” from before we invaded, so that doesn’t bother me too much. Let’s just hope we can facilitate the “warlord” most aligned with the best interests of the Iraqi people as a whole, and maybe even ours, too. Democracy can come later. I don’t believe that democracy can be established without order and a functioning economy-- neither of which Iraq has right now.
Of course you can cow a nation into submission. There are countless examples in human history. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, nor that it’s worth the trouble.
Amusingly, this was pretty much our de facto post-war strategy in 2003-2004 once it became clear that many Iraqis would be throwing bombs at our feet instead of rose petals.
That’s the big problem we had – a myopic focus on fighting insurgents using heavy handed tactics instead of building infrastructure, the economy, agriculture, sewers, and all that other junk that goes along with running a civilized country of 20 million. And we’ve been great at killing them; hell, we’ve killed thousands upon thousands of 'em! Sorta like in Vietnam…doesn’t matter if for every one of our boys that dies we get 40 or 50 of them. It’s just irrelevent if most of the population looks at you and becomes filled with anger for what you’ve done to their families and country.
Yes, we were just minding our own business when Iraq suddenly leaped in out of no where.
If we’re lucky this war will have a chilling effect on America’s major extra-curricular activities for a good 10-15 years (until our blood lust swings back, natch).
Don’t get me wrong, I believe the conquest of Iraq was an irrational decision strategically, but a competent post invasion plan would’ve made a huge difference. It wouldn’t be all rainbows and lollipops…but you could probably walk around the streets without fearing for your life.
Pretty much. I think it would be hypothetically possible to save Iraq from the brink but it would require a marshalling of resources, determination, and patience this country hasn’t seen in its entire history.
And we know that’s not going to happen…so we’re left to ponder over the various tragedies that will befall this former nation (indeed, one that was secular and rather liberal compared to its neighbors, especially where women are concerned).
Personally, I’m predicting that in five years or whenever we pull out there will be a de facto partition (which, as someone pointed out in another thread, is already happening due to mass internal migration). I don’t know much about each area’s military abilities but it seems to me that no one region could possibly invade or absorb another, so things will reach an equilibrium eventually – even if a ‘winner’ does emerge I would think they’d be unable to control all of Iraq for the same reasons we can’t.
But any way you slice it, the winner of this Iraqi war is…Iran.
Name one example from the last century where a colonial power has succeeded in cowing an occupied territory by force? India, Kenya, Occupied Europe under the Nazi’s? Algeria? Iran? Palestine? Any analagous situation to Iraq? Tibet, just possibly but they still aren’t happy little chinese and I’m guessing wholesale emigration from the USA to Iraq isn’t on the cards.
And no - Germany and Japan don’t count. They were defeated in a war and the population accepted occupation. They did not rebel and need cowing. Even soviet europe managed to free themselves. Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rebelled.
The belief that if you kill enough of the uppity brown skins they’ll lighten up a bit is absurd. At the absolute best you’ll get sullen, seething resentment waiting the chance to break out.
You can’t keep a lid on a pressure cooker forever. At some point you have to release your hold and then it blows up in your face. As in Yugoslavia. As in Iraq as soon as Saddam’s jackboot was removed.
Apart from the fact no electorate will let a government get away with such brutality forever, no matter how ignorant and belligerent.
…the “enemy”, as defined back in 2005 by the “Strategy for Victory:”
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/20051130military-text.pdf
(warning PDF)