According to the latest tome by Woodward the Iraq mess is worse than anyone thought, and Henry Kissinger is now advising Bush that “victory is the only meaningful exit strategy”.
Assuming Bush is taking this advice seriously, as seems to be the case, what counts as victory is Iraq in this point. Beating the insurgency? Being allowed to leave with our underwear?
How do you fix a cluster fuck this entangled?
Like Alexander, you just need a really big sword…
Other than that, I got nothing. No idea how to untangle the mess we are in.
-XT
None. The only recourse we have at this point is brute force, and that can’t get us a victory we’d consider victory. We no longer have the ability to persuade the Iraqis to do what we want ( if we ever did ), nor can we get anyone else to help; we’ve blown all our political and moral capital. And no, money won’t work either; if you try to bribe people who hate you, they’ll just take the money and do whatever they want.
How is this war a rat-hole? What war are you comparing this too and what time frame isn’t being met?
Cost of Iraq war nearly 2 billion dollars a week
What politicans (even democrats) thought a year ago
How’s that plan look now that it’s Nov 2006?
Astro, Thanks for the dictionary cite. If you want to discuss it let me know otherwise this is destined for the PIT.
No
I’m beginning to believe the Bush administration is planning to simply wait it out. When the insurgency and sectarian violence wanes, which it most certainly will considering there must approach a threshhold at some point when the number of people still alive who are willing to be “suiciders” begins to drop and the number of potential suicidees diminishes with every kill, the administration can then just claim victory.
Whether or not this is the current administration’s strategy, I don’t think there’s any evidence it will work, for two reasons: firstly, because many (most?) of those attacking coalition troops and Iraqi civillians are NOT “suiciders”- in fact, based purely on a personal impression garnered from reading the news, I would say that suicide attacks now seem less common than “execution”-style killings, which can be performed over and over again. The civil war is not being fought cheifly with suicide bombers, but with men who are increasingly, scarily, looking like trained professional soldiers, becoming more and more adept at killing people, both American and Iraqi. It also appears to be switching more from a direct insurgency against the US to small-scale acts of ethnic cleansing attempting to drive Sunni/Shia off Shia/Sunni “territory”, but that’s by the by.
Secondly, it seems that the longer the US and others stay in Iraq, the more potential “suiciders” they create- not intentionally, surely, but as a result of their occupation and the steady stream of innocent Iraqis killed by (mostly) accident. For every person who blows themself up in a crowded marketplace, there is another- or perhaps two or three- who becomes willing to do so when their family is killed by American bombs, or at a checkpoint, or, for that matter, by a local militia dressed as police. There weren’t, AFAIK, any suicide bombers in Iraq prior to the invasion- please someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Unless, of course, you meant that the Bush administration plans to wait until the demographics of Iraq will no longer support the kind of bloodshed going on at the moment. And that’s just cold.
Well, if we got the hell out of Baghdodge, the Shia would wipe out the Al Queda toot sweet. Victory!
That threshold may be surprisingly high. Iraq has a population of about 20 million. About half are under the age of 20. That means that every year about 250,000 young men enter the pool of possible suicide bombing recruits. I think there are currently about 10 suicide attacks per week or about 500 per year. The number of suicide attacks could increase ten-fold without making a significant demographic dent.
I can’t even begin to answer the question. Can you first define “victory” for me? Here’s my problem: I’m told the “mission” was “accomplished”, hostilities “ended”, and now it appears we’re having some trouble winning the “peace”. I’ve got this thing called a “dictionary”, and what I read inside it isn’t squaring all that well with reality as it is. Maybe I just need a new one.
Here’s Bush’s definition. Any similarity to reality is strictly coincidental.
As we say around here, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
On a totally unrelated subject (I don’t think the OP is answerable), I’ve started saying this in the on-line game I play (WoW) when my side does something really stupid. 
-XT
Well, that’s at least helpful in setting some benchmark for discussion. Let’s check out my dictionary, and see what it says about “progress”, “milestone”, “lead”, “defeat”, “security”, “peace”, “unite”, “stable”, “secure”, “integrate”, and we’ll finish up with “partner”.
:dubious:
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:mad:
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I’m going bowling.
Yes, this is what I mean. What else has Bush got at this point? He’s already said we’re not leaving. He’s commited. There’s nothing we can do IMO to actually “win” this war, so my feeling is the only choice he’s given himself is to wait it out. Cold? yes. . .like every other compassionate conservative and amazingly well-planned decision Bush has made.
I didn’t say it was logical. I said that’s what I’m beginning to believe Bush has up his sleeve. The guy must be desperate. How else can you explain pulling Henry ‘Vietnam’ Kissinger out of the moth balls?
OK, I guess, for those who can’t deal with Civ III…
The Bushiviks have no other acceptable option. You got basicly: defeat, rout, humiliating defeat, and hang on grimly hoping that, by some miracle, it just happens! Shia and Sunni gather together to sing Kumbayallah, Starbucks begin to open up all over Baghdad, the Kurds offer an additional 10% of their oil revenue just to be nice…stuff like that.
I don’t understand the assumption that if we stay, eventually we will “win,” any more than I understand the assumption that if we leave we will “lose.”
Here’ some stuff from the strategy document linked above, under the fanciful heading “Failure Is Not An Option:”
Where is the proof of this statement? Also, if Iraq is not now a safe haven for terrorists, what the hell are they doing there?
We’ve given them no reason to trust us, anyway. Our record in supporting democracy and human rights in the region is spotty, to put it kindly.
We’ve not been able to put a noticeable dent in the existing tribal and sectarian chaos; if anything, by aiding and abetting Shiite death squads, we’ve fanned the flames.