Second question: but UN Security Council Resolutions 1483 and 1511 designated the Coalition Provisional Authority as the occupation authority (during the time it existed) and asked all member states to contribute to the stabilization of Iraq. Why the double standard when it comes to the occupation?
This is exactly the kind of thinking that brought about the insurgency in Iraq.
Military power may be the power of last resort, but that does not mean that it is the only source of power in the world. Egpyt and other Arab countries contributed several divisions’ worth of troops to Desert Shield. You may not care about it, but the fact that the Arab world – with the exception of Jordan, and perhaps Syria, IRRC – were actively united against Saddam Hussein was extremely important. If we had gone to war in 2003 with such a coaltion, it would likely have much much harder for insurgents to gain international support. At the very least, our relations with Arab countries would not have been ruined by the war.
So, what do you think of Hail Ants grandstanding Ryan?
It seems to be a reasonablely well established stance from the threads i have read over that past couple of years, and for that reason cant really be labled extreme.
I support the Iraqi government against the insurgents, I don’t see any romantizised appeal for the ‘resistance’ or any of its associates, they’re criminal butchers who offer no alternative to the Iraqi people, and thats it.
Well I won’t speak to the alternatives they may offer but it should be noted that the commander of the US led coalition ground forces has stated that about two thirds of recent attacks have been on military targets. (I am kind of reposting this quote, but it really is more properly discussed in this thread.)
My opinion? By the standards of the international community, the occupation still is not legitimate. The Security Council was merely putting its imprimatur on a fait accompli, making the best of a bad situation. The Coalition forces had invaded, conquered and occupied Iraq; they were going to rule it regardless of whether the UN gave them a bit of added authority or not.
Also: The resolutions to which you refer deal only with the CPA’s governing authority while it existed – which it does no longer, but the occupation continues, despite the existence of a nominally sovereign interim government.
And what point are you making? That they primarily target the coalition rather than the government, so in effect are not against the Iraqis governing themselves? Frankly if that is the insinuation you’re making then its wrong, they’re aganst anyone who tries to show alternatives to gaining power other than that of the barrel of a gun.
To say that the existence of a provisional government (with veyr minimal power and few specifics and how to enforce it) made the American fighters superior ot the Sunnis is not entirely fair, is it? If a group of Sunnis gathered to form a provisional government for the Sunni region, they would be arrested and killed, so we can hardly fault them for not doing so. There’s no evidence to back up the claim that the insurgents are oposed to any civil government. They’re opposed to any civil government not run by themselves, which is why I’ve always said that our best bet is to split the country.
As for my claim about the Shi’ites, if they reach power, it’s based on:
1.) Knowing what other governments in the Middle East, under Shi’ite control, have done.
2.) Observing that many powerful Shi’ite clerics have said that they want Islamic Law to be the official law of the land.
3.) Knowing the long, unpleasant history of relationships between Shi’ites and Sunnis, particularly in Iraq.
Of course my predictions are “speculation”. All predictions are. But casting aside modesty for a minute, I think I know more about the religious beliefs and practices of the vairous branches of Islam, and the history of the Arab world, than most people on this board do.
From a standpoint of international law how is the American occupation of Iraq different from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? In both cases there were insurgents who were seeking to drive out the foreign power that was occupying their country and to oppose the formation of what they saw as a collborationist regime. Neither insurgency was united, neither insurgency claimed to be seeking to establish a plural democracy, and both sought help from foreign powers.
Who says I’m talking about 9/11? I never supported the invasion, I knew it was B.S evidence, but I’m absolutely against the notion that if we leave things get immediately better, and that the insurgents should be pitied, they deserve our scorn more than anything else.
Oh please, your notions are completely out of date. Are you trying to compare the Iraqis ‘resistance’ to the American one? How insulting can one get!
Here’s a take on the situation from the latest installment of James Howard Kunstler’s online column, “Clusterfuck Nation.” He does not deal with questions of international “legitimacy” as defined in this thread, only with necessity and expediency from the POV of the United States, but it’s still interesting. http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary12.htm:
Note the sentence I bolded under “1. What’s our purpose being in Iraq?” Refreshingly honest. PNAC policy papers might discuss this situation in terms of the need for a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, but so far as I recall, the Bush Admin never mentioned that in its public statements, before the invasion or after.
BG: You seem intent on ignoring the more controvercial thesis in your OP: that the insurgency in Iraq is legitimate. I made a series of arguments against that claim in post #10 that you haven’t answered. Should I assume you concede my points?
It is unified with respect to those efforts which define it as an insurgency. That is, all the insurgent factions have two common enemies: The Coalition nations and their occupying forces; and the Coalition-installed interim government. Of course, if they ever succeed in getting rid of both of those, they’ll start fighting each other. But that would be merely yet another internal civil war – something the international community generally tolerates.
See above. Their “stated goals,” the only ones they share in common, are to drive out the occupation troops and destroy the puppet government – both aims which are perfectly legitimate by standards of the international community. It makes no difference whether they are Communists, Islamic radicals, Arab nationalists, or – as happens to be the case – an uneasy alliance of several different factions with otherwise irreconcileable aims.
By standards of the international community, “disrupting any and all civil order” is a perfectly legtimate tactic if it helps bring about the insurgency’s goals.
But our goals were not legitimate; while our tactics have been mild and gentle, if not by American standards then definitely by the standards of the Middle East.
I repeat Kunstler’s assessment of why we’re there:
By the contemporary standards of the international community, none of those are things an independent sovereign state has a right to do, however urgently it needs to, if doing so involves interference with another state’s sovereignty.
I was against the war in Iraq from the start (no one asked me though), but I’d like to ask the people who believe the insurgency is legitimate a question that has been bugging me -
If the insurgency is legitimate
And the US presence is not
And insurgents are clearly doing very well (just check yahoo any time of day)
What are we complaining about? Isn’t everything going as well as we could have hoped for? Would we rather the rebels were crushed and the pseudo-democratic puppet was able to do its job? If anyone knows an answer that doesn’t make an anti-war liberal look like an evil psycopath lemme know.
OK. Let’s define the insurgents as any group fighting to get the US out and to overthrow the provisional government, regardless of any other goals they might have.
By this reasoning, any and every insurgency throughout the world is ‘legitimate". The Iraq insurgents’ goal is to overthrow the legitimate government of Iraq-- ie, the provisional government, which is recognized by the UN as the legitimate government of Iraq. Is a neo-Nazi group in Idaho working to overthrow the US government"legitimate" If not, why is it different from the Iraqi insurgency? If it is legitimate, then that term has no meaning in this context since it adds no information to the term “insurgency”-- they’re ALL legitimate.
How do the actions of the insurgents remain legitimate when the UNSC not only condemns them, but authorizes the use of force to stop them?
I don’t see the relavence of the quote. The international community, as a whole, had no allegience to the Hussein regime. If an internal uprsing had errupted to overthrow Hussein, the UN would NEVER have authorized military action by other countries to keep Hussein in power.
Exactly! By those international standards which have been more or less acknowledged since WWII, every insurgency is legitimate regardless of its politics or goals. Nor even its tactics, provided those tactics stop well short of genocide. Otherwise, there are, as yet, no internationally recognized criteria for drawing distinctions between them.
Yes, in the sense that no other country would have any business interfering – on either side – if such interference would be to the detriment of American national sovereignty.
I have been discussing this question in terms of the international consensus that has prevailed, with some notable case-specific exceptions (e.g., Korea), ever since WWII. It may be that a new international consensus is now in the process of emerging and these UNSC resolutions are the first glimmerings of that; or it may be that, as with the resolution authorizing UN intervention in Korea, this is merely a case-specific exception that will have no lasting effect on the understood rules of acceptable conduct in international relations.
The international community has no allegiance to any national regime. Every country’s existing government is equally dispensable. Just don’t cross the all-important national borders.
My point exactly. And there are no internationally accepted criteria by which the international community might make a values-based choice as between Hussein’s regime or whatever might replace it. Because – as I said above – there is much broader international agreement on the principle of respecting national boundaries than there is on what is a “just” or “unjust” political system.
Well then, by this logic I’d say that any nation states actions are also legitimate. Great!! So, the US’s invasion of Iraq was perfectly legitimate, and the insurgents fighting it out are also legitimate. Wonderful…everything is neat and legal.
Why? If insurgents, reguardless of goals and tactics are legitimate, why wouldn’t other nation states be legitimate to interfere in American or any other national sovereignty?? Whats the difference? Insurgents have MORE legitimacy than nation states??
International consensus has prevailed since WWII? Funny…I haven’t noticed. Seems to me that US/Iraqi style invasions are more the norm than UN sponsored actions. The ONLY exception you can think of is Korea?? Hell, off the top of my head I can’t think of when this International Consensus thing has prevailed with reguards to the UN. There were plenty of invasions and mini-wars since WWII…which ones were UN sanctioned?
The core here though is that if insurgents are alway legitimate reguardless of their goals or tactics I fail to see why nation states are different. Using your own logic, if insurgents are always legitimate, then nation states actions should be the same.
-XT
Where are you finding these international standards? The UN has often authorized peacekeeping missions. I have to assume that you would agree that, in all those instances, the insurgencies lost their legitimacy. No?
You lost me. Glimmerings? How much **more **explicit does the UN have to be than condemning the insurgency and authorizing member states to fight against it?
You keep talking about this “international concensus”, as if it were something other than the UN. If so, what exactly does it consist of, and how do we know what it is other than you saying so?