Iraq - Which Way Out?

Great Debates
1

I am moved to this thread by the following article in the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42905-2003Jun27.html

“U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders.”

[snip]

"“They give us a general,” said Bahith Sattar, a biology teacher and tribal leader in Samarra who was a candidate for mayor until that election was canceled last week. “What does that tell you, eh? First of all, an Iraqi general? They lost the last three wars! They’re not even good generals. And they know nothing about running a city.”

As any of you who are even dimly aware, I was entirely opposed to our invasion of Iraq, for reasons that need not concern us here. Having belly-flopped into this quagmire from the high platform, how the hell do we get out!

I cannot contenance simply packing up our troops and heading for the exit, as appealing as that may be in terms of young American lives not squandered. We simply can’t do that, we simply cannot turn the Iraqi people over to the tender mercy of Lord Chaos.

I keep up with the news, and sometimes cannot be sure: that American soldier being reported killed, is that yesterday’s news or todays? We seem to have splendid capacities when it comes to wrecking shit, but no clue as to how to build. And we simply must.

Should we go, hat in hand, to the UN and entreat their assistance, as they have some experience in this sort of thing? To the Arab League? Or must we steel ourselves to seeing our people picked off one at a time, while they swelter in a shithole for a purpose they most likely do not comprehend? How can they, when we don’t? Is five years of this acceptable? Preventable?

Keep in mind, I am not seeking to restir the shit soup as to our invasion. That is another debate entirely, and a lost one at that. There we are. Up to our nuts in the tar pit and sinking slowly but inevitably into the role of a loathed and oppressive colonial power. Which cannot be any sane persons vision of America.

So which way out?

2

There is no way out and the USA does not want to find it anyway. You start from the false premise that the USA wants to stabilise Iraq and then get out which I do not accept. The USA intends to keep military bases in Iraq and intends to control Iraqi oil and Iraqi politics for a long time to come. It is not looking for a way out but for a way to stay. We shall just have to wait and see what the price is. It may be higher than some thought.

3

Yes and yes.

4

Well, first of all, a soldier once told me something that I thought was very true.

"The U.S. Army – and the armies of most other countries – are there for the accomplishment of TWO objectives: Killing People and Breaking Things.

Expecting an army to do much of anything else, and do it well, is probably a mistake."

This isn’t always true, of course – the Seabees, during WWII, are said to have accomplished miracles when it came to building and repairing things – but I think there’s a point there. We train our soldiers to kill people and blow stuff up, and that’s what their primary objectives ARE, when we send them out there.

…and now we’ve put them in charge of rebuilding a country full of armed people who hate them.

This strikes me as a bad idea. I mean, we wanted Saddam out. The US military went in there and did exactly that. Now, instead of coming home, battles won, covered in glory… we mean to make them stay in a country that’s remarkably crappy by our standards, as far as weather, entertainment, and most other things go…

…and we’re supposed to be helping them assemble a democratic government. A system which has no tradition there, nor infrastructure, and which is actually opposed by a substantial number of their citizens, perhaps even a majority.

Whose idea WAS this?

History has shown us that taking out the ruling elite of a country happens. Happens all the time. Wipe out the government, and chaos reigns. That’s the easy part.

REPLACING it with something, now… THAT’S hard. The most common solution is when some hardass shows up with troops loyal to him and begins laying down the law, and shooting anyone he doesn’t like. Any OTHER solution is frankly a lot more work, and much more time consuming.

Didn’t anyone in the Bush administration think of any of this before we went charging in there?

5

There was never any planning for an Iraqi controlled government. It was all lip service. When came to put up or shut up we shut up. The Bush admin has no plans at all for leaving. They need a staging ground for the new wars in the region that they have in the works.

Let’s hope that the price in lives that Bush believes is to much to pay is very low.

But I have my doubts.

6

I hope to hell you’re wrong, Reeder.

The idea of giving up an established military staging area in Saudi Arabia – a stable, well-policed country where the government supports us and was willing to support our presence…

…in favor of a different, brand-new, untested military staging area in Iraq – an unstable, unpoliced country where there IS no government and the people’s attitude ranges from “please leave,” to “AH KIH YEW! AH KIH YEW AWW!”…

…does NOT strike me as a wise plan. No matter HOW frickin’ much oil there is there.

7

I’m starting to wonder. I sketched a war plan on a cocktail napkin that was better than the one Rumsfeld actually used. The reconstruction appears to have been completely unplanned, save Halliburton getting the lion’s share of the money.

Before the war I really wanted to see Saddam gone, but I feared the Bush and his cronies weren’t the right guys for the job, especially the aftermath. Never second guess your first instinct. Job one: Saddam’s not gone. :smack:

How can we expect Iraqis to reconstruct their nation or form a new government when the old government is running around with bombs, rifles, and RPGs killing everyone who does?

8

I haven’t seen evidence that the UN would be any better at nation building than the US is. Don’t know much about the Arab League, but judging from the status of gov’ts in those countries, they seem like very poor candidates for the task at hand.

I believe we need to recognize that fact that we simply cannot control what happens in Iraq long term. At some point we need to get out. We should put a strict timetable on the extrication process and get as much of a functional democracy working as we can. I’m not stuck on whether that timetable is 6 months or 2 years, but we need to set up clear milestones and make certain that we making progress toward those milestones.

  • Get the infrastructure back in at least nominal shape. We’re going to have to pay for it, but that’s the consequence of destroying it in the first place.

  • Announce a timetable for elections and hold them. And if we get a heap of Shiite clerics elected to the legislature, well that’s the way it’s going to be.

  • When elections are held and the gov’t is functioning, get the hell out of there. We can’t micromanage the new gov’t so only US friendly legislators are elected. I’ve said all along that I think the best we can reasonably hope for, in the long term, is that Iraq becomes no worse than Pakistan. A country with a strongman in power, but one who is not a megalomaniac. I see no reason to believe that democracy is going to be stable in Iraq. Let’s just hope that when it goes, it doesn’t leave a vacuum filled by S.H., version 2.0.

9

My, what a dismal bunch we are!

sailor, I quibble only with your wording, you say “The USA intends” this and that, as if the USA were a discrete entity. I very much doubt that if Fearless Misleader had gone before the People and explicity said “This is naked imperialism. We’re going to take it and keep it, and we don’t give a shit what anybody thinks.” he would have prevailed. But again, thats only a quibble.

Minty may be on the right track, pretty sensible for a Texas boy. But how? GeeDubya would have to swallow a chunk of pride bigger than his custom made boots, and I think he’d sooner nail his pecker to a tree and set the tree on fire. The only thing that might move him to do so was a disaster so utterly apparent that no other option is possible. By that time, we’ve already suffered the consequences we seek to avoid.

Besides, one cannot fault the UN or the Arab League for wallowing in schadenfruede. I would hope that they would be counseled by the higher angels of thier will, but see no reason why that should be so. What selfish motivation can we offer?

Beagle still got that napkin? What were you drinking? Could you afford to send a case of it to…oh. I forgot. Never mind.

10

There is no way out until someone determines what has happened to SH and family, and there is a functioning interim Iraqi government in place. I’m not arguing that things aren’t a mess…not just a mess, an inspired-type mess, the kind that took years and lots of outside help to be created…and I’m sorry, but useless “containment” policies, sanctions and bombing shit only when Saddam tries to escape his cage doesn’t appear to be the better management policy. We have an obligation to do exactly what we said we would do going in - set up the foundations of a democratic government - and then we have an obligation to leave, and leave that government alone. I have just as much (if not more) faith in the Iraqi people as I have in our own to do this in that country and run with it.

“oh but the strife, the religious differences, the ethnic tensions…” yeah they exist here too, we just have additional methods of settling differences or promoting ongoing regional squabbles without using explosives. Political races. NFL teams. Things like that. I do not think the door-to-door disarmament of the Iraqi population was a wise idea. “Then only the outlaws will have guns.” No kidding, that’s what people are afraid of. It’s hard to tell the difference between the religious-motivated killings, the organized pockets of resistance and the garden-variety thugs…but don’t tell me the average workaday people aren’t there, still suffering the effects of these different groups and these different governments and hoping for little more than a job, food and water, and a somewhat stable life. They need a strong Iraqi police force, now.

11

I think the US will have troops in Iraq for decades. We had troops in Japan and Germany for over 50 years after WWII.

12

Why not? A policy of containment kept Saddam impotent for more than a decade. It is now clear that, even at the onset of the Second Gulf War, the Iraqi dictator either did not possess weapons of mass destruction or was sufficiently swayed from their use by our existing deterrent. If the Iraqi leadership was unwilling to use WMD to save itself from foreign invasion, it seems patently unlikely that it would have been itching to use them in any sort of first-strike against the United States, which would have been vastly more suicidal than their use in national defense.

In contrast, a policy of “regime change” has in my view done little to lessen the threat from Saddam (which was already low enough as to be almost negligible), but seems to have infinitely increased the threat posed by Islamist extremists within Iraq, and exposed coalition forces to new threats from all across the broad spectrum of the Iraqi population.

I don’t see any easy way out of Iraq. John Mace’s solution, while hardly perfect, would be the ideal one for me. The trick, of course, would first be to stabilize the security situation enough to let elections and a stable transition take place. I’m hopeful that this will eventually be accomplished, but it seems to be far from a sure thing.

If and when it is accomplished, of course, I think we’re going to have to contend with the very real possibility that Iraq will become an Islamic state (and that parts of Iraq might splinter off in response to this). If this does in fact occur, rather than resist the inevitable by installing an artificial, secular dictatorship, I think we’d do well to pursue any sort of friendship with an Islamist Baghdad that we can get. I don’t think anyone wants an Islamic state, but if one arises we’d do well to encourage moderation in the new government and thus encourage other Islamists throughout the world to seek less violent, more democratic ways to advance their agenda.

13

What a mess!
Soldiers are being killed DAILY
Bad as that seems, I fear that the worse part is the reaction.
Soldiers are so jittery that they’ll crack down harshly on civilians.
They’ll also shoot ANYTHING that moves.

30 mins ago:

Grunt: “Sargeant, there’s a guy on a roof. Sometimes he moves. What shall we do?”
Sarge: “SHOOT TO KILL!”

14

Sorry about the kid, but what the fuck was an 11-year old doing on the roof, to start with?

15

Maybe it’s one of those flat-roofed houses, where the roof is a terrace. Those are pretty common in the Middle-East.

16

And maybe there are invisible pink unicorns, too.

17

I dunno. Playing?

18

No way out. The US wont redraw, but it’s not about oil or “controlling Iraq”, if it was it’s secondary. Look at the map. Iraq goes from Turkey in the north to the sea in the south. To the east is Iran, to the west is Israel (friend), Syria (smart enemy) and Saudi-Arabia (could turn out like Iran). I predict we will see a new Iraqi governement, halfway friendly to the US, which will grant America the right to keep permanent military bases in the country, as sailor said.

19

With the power and AC out, many of Baghdad’s citizens have taken to sleeping on the roof, which makes sense when it’s 110°F out.

20

Blame the victim. That works well. Is there a law about not being allowed on their roof?