Wondering…is there a drug test for Job Most Dangerous To The Entire Planet?
-Joe
Of course. The catch seems to be that if your piss is clean, you don’t get the job.
Bingo. As I’ve said before, the US saying it’s not going to leave till the job is done is like a surgeon saying he’s not going to take the twisting scalpel out till the patient stops bleeding. There will never be peace in Iraq till the US leaves. The Indians were still fighting against the British hundreds of years after first being occupied.
is that the “Short bus” type of special?
Has Bush said we weren’t leaving until there was “peace” in Iraq? And what makes you think there will be"peace" there once we leave? I think the key is to make sure the ISF was strong enough to defend the country by itself. That’s going painfully slowly for all sorts of reasons, but I don’t think us being there is one of them. I also have to wonder what equipment the ISF would use if we left. Don’t we have virtually all the high tech gear and all the air support vehicles? It might be an impossible dream that the ISF will ever be capable of defending that country, but we’re not wating for peace to break out before we leave.
Based on? Not that I necessarily disagree, but my default setting is “out ASAP” unless someone can show my that our presence has a substantial benefit, not merely neutral. Trouble is, all info is burdened with agenda, I have no idea who to believe. Which, of course, brings me back to the default setting.
-bolding mine
Not as if the above point needed reinforcement, but:
Iran ‘boosted by war on terror’
'suppose this what that Martin Hyde character means when he says: “things are going well.”
Given that all the evidence is that the longer we stay, the worse it gets, even “neutral” is a fantasy.
The “trusty natives” we’ve set up in comfortable offices in the barricaded Green Zone, bereft of local support and local legitimacy of any significance anywhere else, do not have the ability to “take over”, as should be quite apparent by now since every step they’ve taken has been backward. They don’t even have the motivation to do so, to risk their lives of (relative) comfort and security. Support and legitimacy, granted by the people in the only way a democracy can work, goes to religious and militia leaders of various sects and ethnicities.
There is nothing left that anyone can do but to help the breakup, minimizing further deaths. But our efforts are in the opposite direction, and by saying he’s leaving the next administration to clean up after him, Bush himself admits it isn’t going to happen in 2.5 more years either.
We’re making things worse, not better. Let’s drop the fantasies, at long last; they’re just getting more people killed every day. Draw the lines of partition on the map and help police the internal emigrations across them; that’s all we can still do to help those folks.
You’re defining “out” as the only option because you can’t prove that our presence there is a benefit except by leaving and seeeing what happens.
Iam? Oh. Well, then. Thank you for sharing that.
Nothing. There won’t be peace there for a very very long time. Iraq has been thoroughly, thoroughly fucked. That’s what invasion by foreign nations and breakdown of civil order almost always causes. Look around the world. Study some modern history, particularly that of post colonial nations.
If the US leaves tomorrow, I expect Iraq will have to endure at least 5-10 years of civil war and/or strife and disobedience before it reaches stability. Quite possibly longer.
But the wound won’t even begin to heal till the knife comes out.
That strikes me as nonsensical. Our presence there right now is correlated with things going to shit. “Leaving and seeing what happens” won’t prove that our presence was a benefit unless it is shown that things begin going to shit with greater speed and intensity. Problem is, there’s really no way to show that.
See, as matters stand, things are going to shit now faster and more intensely than they were six months ago. Six months from now, I expect that a continuing snowball effect will show that speed and intensity to have increased yet again. There may be some sort of “terminal velocity”, so to speak, but there’s no empirical way of describing it, much less predicting, or even pinpointing through observation, the point at which it is reached (kind of like how I don’t expect us to ever reach a consensus on the exact time the civil war in Iraq start[s]/[ed]). The only way that “leaving and seeing what happens” will possibly show anything is if things stop going to shit once we do (or at least slow down). And that will tend to show that our presence has not been beneficial.
Please note that any assertions I have made in the above paragraphs are my opinions. My opinions are informed by what I have observed during the past 3+ years. I will not attempt to bolster my pessimism with cites, but anyone who wishes to persuade me that my pessimism is unjustified is welcome to try.
Maybe not so long. The rough outlines of division are already in place, the Kurds are independent in everything but name. The Shia dominate in terms of population, they have the resources of Iran to call upon, they already have armed militia of their own as well as a predominant presence in the armed forces of Greenzonia.
Nasty, brutish and short, the Sunni will think they’ve been fucked by a buffalo stampede.
We pessimists love surprises, generally.
Not to worry. It does because it is.
Then again, if you want to read some amazing nonsense, just look up almost anything Weirdave has written about Iraq.
Trippy stuff.
I’m not talking about the general situation, I’m talking specifically about our presence vis-a-vis the strength and capability of the ISF.
That strength and capacity is not necessarily a good thing. Suppose the efforts of Greenzonia turn to being an excercise in the oppression/supression of the Sunni? Duly elected by the Shia majority, correctly installed according to traditions going back weeks…suppose this government becomes a tool of the Shia majority?
Do you expect our troops to protect the Sunni? Given that the army might be under legal orders from their sovereign government? Can you offer me any substantial assurance that this scenario is implausible?
If you think I’m advocating for Bush, you’re mistaken. I was simply correcting what I thought was a mistaken impression by **Princhester **that Bush is saying we’ll stay until there is peace in the region. Bush’s plan, in as much as there is one, is to stay until the ISF can hold the country together. I guess that’s really a goal, not a plan. And as I said initially, that may very well be an unachievable goal. But, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that our being there is helping the ISF become stronger and more capable. As you say, that might not be a good thing. We don’t really have any good options-- just a bunch of bad ones.
I certianly don’t have the answer to what’s going on over there, but my best recommendation (as you and I have discussed before) is to set a date and let the Iraqis know that we’re outta there by that date. Whether the date is Jan '07 or Jul '07 or Jan '08… I’ll leave that up to the military guys to decide.
Well, shit. I forget to login and what do I see? John “Distinction without a difference” Mace tells us his own hilarious view on things. John “Nitpick One Point In A Dozen” Mace tells all you fools what he really meant in case the last year and a half of garbage he’s spewed meant most regular readers couldn’t have gotten from their John Mace I’m Not Defending Bush, But…™(C)(R) software*.
-Joe
*Brought to you by www.hisshitusedtobeworthreading.com