Okay, fine, so we hand it over to the UN for peacekeeping. Why do I get the feeling that the US will be doing all the peacekeeping in the name of the UN and still be getting shot at?
Ahahahahahahahaha.
The UN would be insane to step in right now. They ain’t gonna.
Any so-called “Puppet government” would have to be in the Green Zone, along with our troops and so forth, because the Iraqi people ain’t gonna stand for it. Hell, even this so-called provisional government is squawking right now because of what we’re doing in Fallujah. How long they gonna hold still when it becomes clear we ain’t leavin’ when we said we were?
They’re gonna quit… partly out of principle, and partly to save their necks. And then, we can install puppets (and then safely Baby Doc them someplace nice and tropical after we get the hell out, rather than leave them to be murdered by their own people). Sure, we’d do that for the people who did us a favor. You can trust our government, right?
I hate to say it, but I’m starting to enjoy this war. Finally, a place where all the Bush Spin in the world, all the lies, all the crap, all the misdirection, ISN’T GOING TO MAKE THE PROBLEM GO AWAY. Even if Major Hostilities ARE over, according to the Flight Suited One. And it’s only costing a few American lives a day, plus a few foreigners, but it’s not like THEY count, right?
All hail Bush. All hail Ashcroft.
MMI: The problem is that we don’t want to feed the perception that a few dead Americans will make the US cave. That path led to 9/11.
I’m not sure that’s true, although I agree that on principle, we don’t want the US to be perceived as cowardly (too late?). Seems to me that terrorist attacks don’t depend much on whether the world perceives the attackee as cowardly or resolute. If terrorists want to attack you for whatever reason, they’ll try to do so; that’s what terrorists do. Look at Israel: Sharon’s government has hardly been capitulating to terror, but that doesn’t seem to have discouraged the terrorists much. Look at Colombia.
No, IMO the best policy approach to dealing with terror is to do the right thing (consistently) and then stand your ground, not get into tangled psychohyopotheticals about what “message” we may be sending to terrorists.
Unfortunately, in the case of Iraq, I think the right thing to do was not to invade them in the first place, and invading them without a clear and effective strategy for post-war control and rebuilding was absolute madness. At present, I’m not sure there is a right thing to do any more, and I don’t know how to tell what’s the least wrong thing.
Yep. You’re correct. It’s the US that has the money, the military strength and so on to get the job done. What the US lacks under Bush is any kind of credibility or moral authority.
What leads you to say this?
He always has and probably always will.
That’s a new meaning of the word ‘downside’ that I hadn’t previously encountered.
The UN doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to actually have a presence in Iraq, and who can blame them after their HQ there got blown up last year?
Besides, things are changing very rapidly there right now. It would take the UN a few months to get organized to move back into Iraq, and by then, we might be the only party that sees a need for them.
What’s the Attorney General have to do with Iraq?
I don’t see why the U.S. is complaining that there is not new foreign backup. We started this war telling our allies that there was an urgent need to remove Saddam, his hidden stashes of WMD. Now that the United States can’t find the WMD we’re calling for the U.N. to take our mess? It looked good for the cameras for a while, we kicked ass at first, caught Saddam in a hole and occupied a whole nation. We started this and we want other nations to take up the front line because “coalition forces killed” looks better than the headline “Americans killed”? How would you feel as a coalition combatant fighting the war of the United States when most Americans couldn’t point out your nation on a map?
I’m not saying that its a good thing that people are dying, hopefully this will be resolved, though I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I was naive enough to think that the June 30 deadline for the handover of power to the Iraqi people meant that democratic elections would be held. I bet Iraq wont be having any elections until after Kerry takes office and the longer the delay the more anti american the likely ruler.
So what is actualy going to happen in the ‘handover of power’ on 30 June?
No way all the troops will be leaving Iraq by June 30. My guess, based on past practice by this administration, is that there’ll be a retroactive spin on what was said; the White House will say something like: “We pledged to withdraw all troops by June 30 if the Iraqi people had signed a constitution and acheived a stable government. This did not happen, so our troops must remain for peacekeeping purposes until there is a stable Iraqi government to turn over these duties to, as we said all along.” People who were paying attention will see another promise broken. People who want to believe will have an excuse to continue believing.
Nothing is going to happen. Note that it is not ‘power’ that is being handed over, it is ‘sovereignty’. What that means is anyones guess, but it doesn’t mean anything that has ever previously been defined as sovereignty anywhere in the world ever.
The ‘sovereign’ government in ‘power’ after the 30th June won’t have any control over any armed forces, Iraqi or otherwise and won’t have any power to overturn any of the laws that the occupying forces have illegally enacted since the occupation began.