An interesting blurb regarding Iraq’s monarchist movement suggests a desire to end the conflict. According to Sharif Ali, this change in position was the result of Iraq’s last election.
Will the current government change their tune and work with former Ba’athist insurgents and will outside influences accept the deal?
So who has to “come out in the open to talk”? What’s to talk about? Why don’t they just quietly lay down their arms? They’ll be safe enough. I don’t think the govermnent is vigorous enough, right now, to spend time hunting down everybody who was once connected to the insurgency but is no longer actively inovled.
Looks like kicking their ass is proving our point. No one can think they can win through sheer force alone anymore.
So the insurgents are, for the most part, former Baathists? Really? I’d been wondering about stuff like that, but had a hard time trusting sources of information, so many agendas, so many distortions. You, apparently, have no such issues.
But soft! Isnt this guy Al Zarqawi the numero one-o insurgent? Did Saddam and his Baathists try thier best to kill the guy? Seems I remember some murmur about that. At any rate, no reason so far as I know to presume anything but ill feelings amongst them.
Unless, of course, Al Zarqawi is leader of the Al Queda insurgency, and that’s slightly different from the Baathist insurgency. There’s only two, right?
Or are there more?
I think part of it is the desire to re-join (or join I guess) the political process. I also doubt that at this time the Iraqi’s will have the energy to hunt down everyone connected to the insurgency…however, at some future point they may. So, if you were an insurgent who wanted to join the political process, and or to ensure that at some future point you wouldn’t have to pay for any ‘crimes’ you may (or may not) have committed, you’d probably want such assurances as well…no?
-XT
Well if you want a more somber outlook on the possibilities for peace read this Boston Globe Article - Fractured Iraq sees a Sunni call to arms
It appears to me the schisms are so numerous and venemous that it’s all anyone in that country can do to figure out who’s their enemy, who’s their arch-enemy and who’s just their enemy’s enemy.
A choice quote:
If they’re members of the government and army of the country we invaded they aren’t really insurgents now are they? They’re members of the government and army of the country we invaded.
I thought the article was self-explanatory. It was specifically about Sunni Ba’athists. Demographically they represent a political party. To this end they are affected by large-scale political events (such as the last election).
Al Zarqawi represents Al Queda, which is a religious ideology that is against democratic governments. Al Queda is an outside force opposed to the political process entirely. Baathist Sunnis are an inside force representing a former Socialist style of government. There is no political connection.
I’m not sure what your point is. The subject of discussion are Iraqi Sunnis.
Actually, his point is that they do not represent a political party.
Which as far as I can tell is the case.
For example:
"Reaching out to the fractious Sunnis has not been easy.
There are dozens of Sunni political parties and groups, espousing a wide array of positions. Iraqi Sunnis have not traditionally rallied around any single figure like the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose political coalition won a vast majority of Shiite votes in the January elections.
Many Sunnis resist organizing themselves along sectarian lines. Where Shiites and Kurds, who were brutally suppressed by Mr. Hussein’s secular government, fell back on their communal loyalties, the Sunnis never had to, and are only now starting to see themselves as a distinct minority."
link for those w/ bugmenot
for those w/o
If you would like, now would be the time to provide evidence that Sunni, Arab Iraqis demographically represent a political party.
To be clear, Arab, Sunni Iraqis who are part of the main (as opposed to some of the others) monarchist movement were mentioned.
Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be represntative of Arab, Sunni Iraqis as a group, nor does it even seem to be represntative of monarchist, Sunni, Arab Iraqis as a whole.
Make the case that this feller speaks for Arab, Sunni Iraqis as political party.
Perhaps headlines and soundbites simplify a bit too much, yes?
There didn’t used to be a political connection. But our boy Bush, he’s a uniter. These two groups have finally reached a point where the hazards and detriments of working together now seem to be worth the hassles - Now tha the Baathists don’t have their positions of power etc to lose.
Who says they can’t be both? The French Resistance were insurgents.
Insurgents, guerillas, partisans, phalangists, militiamen, irregulars… every war has a different name for the same thing. It’s a waste of time to try and parse the differences.
Apparently you don’t cleave to Rush Limbaugh’s ‘rectification of names’ the same way I do lest I fall victiom to the insidiousness of newspeak. Newspeak is designed to prevent the possibility of thoughtcrime.
Or, as Confucius says, “Words mean things.”
Btw, Mr. Wolfowitz agrees with me:
WOLFOWITZ: By the way, it’s not insurgency. An insurgency implies something that rose up afterwards. This is the same enemy that butchered Iraqis for 35 years, that fought us up until the fall of Baghdad and continues to fight afterwards.
The difference between preventive war and pre-emptive war is a wide one that’s been well blurred by recent attempts. Iraq was preventive, not pre-emptive. Now pre-emption has become newspeak for preventive.
If Iraq had been an imminent threat to the US then the war was not an agressive war. It is part of a long sanctioned tradition of "preemption “Upon detecting evidence that an opponent is about to attack, one beats the opponent to the punch and attacks first to blunt the impending strike.”
As we all know, “For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.”
The case can be made that the need to “adapt the concept of imminent threat” as laid out in the National Security Strategy Chapter V*, led to the actual adaptation the “concept of imminent threat,” in the national security strategy of the USA to include the threat presented by “rogue states and terrorists” and thus a change in what qualifies as preemption.
If Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US then the war was an example of a “preventive war”. Preventive war is based on the concept that war is inevitable and that it is better to fight now while the costs are low rather than later when the costs are high. It is a deliberate decision to begin a war."
Weren’t they upset with the French gov that colluded with the Germans?
the ironing in this post is delicious.
I noticed this as well. I wasn’t sure of how to phrase the sentiment.
Perhaps I am too hasty in detecting an agenda. In this instance “Looky! The prescience and visionary boldness of The Leader is bearing fruit! After only a mere two years, Iraq’s Sunni insurgency is coming to an end as they put aside thier weapons to gather flowers for the long-anticipated bouquet throwing!”
This, of course, would bugger several questions, not the least of which is the extent of Sunni representation in the “insurgency”.
We have been told from the earliest days that the major component of said insurgency is comprised of Baathist “dead-enders” who seem determined to return Saddam to power, as futile an enterprise as can be imagined. Naturally, one is amazed at the capacity of some people to cling to a discredited and unworthy leader. (Saddam, I mean, if there’s any confusion…).
One can only hope, since it appears that the onerous and hugely expensive task of actually rebuilding Iraq must wait until the bloody and hugely expensive task of suppressing the insurrection has been accomplished. A child with a leg blown off cannot begin being fitted for a prosthesis until he has actually stopped bleeding.
So, what then are we to debate? Whether or not this is actually occuring? Who knows? The utter absence of reliable sources renders this impossible.
How many of the insurgents are secular Baathist deadenders, and how many are disaffected Sunnis resentful of thier loss of position? How many are Sunni followers of Al Queda, which is mostly identified with Shia extremism? How many are not Sunni at all, not even Iraqi? And last but surely not least: How many are not really identifiable by any of these, but are simply people exhibiting the common reaction of invaded peoples as regards thier invader: visceral hatred.
If all the Sunni participants in the insurrection should immediatly lay down thier weapons and gather together for pro-American demonstrations, hoisting aloft placards and banners expressing thier undying and unanimous love for The Leader…would the insurgency be at an end? 90%? 50%
Perhaps if friend McGiver can clarify a few of these points, we can progress to a definable debate.
That was my point :rolleyes:
Your second sentence contradicted your first, Ryan. What, precisely, was your point? Was it that kicking ass works? Or was it that kicking ass* doesn’t* work?
Again, lots of words, few of them related to the article. It’s not that I don’t enjoy your manifest ability to alter paint-drying into a olympic political event. I just don’t know how to respond.