Well, once again, the question comes down to “Just how stupid and/or crazy is this guy?” Somewhere in the range of this stupid/crazy, but not so stupid/crazy as to start a conflict with Iran?
I am so reassured.
And how might President McCain (…shudder…) respond?
Over at Hullaballoo (VERY lefty site! Tighty Righty advised to divert ALL power to shields…) they did some research…
April 22, 2004
(Actual cite is http://www.cfr.org/publication/6973/, lest I be accused of advancing a lefty site, perish the thought!)
Maybe Bush really does care about the long term sovereignty of Iraq, not just about immediate short term political gain. The government there has come a long way, stability wise. But we don’t want to withdraw until we are 100% certain they have a handle on things, which might happen if a time table dictated things.
Keep in mind, also, that a time table might keep us there longer than we need too.
If he refuses to leave when asked, he’s making it clear that Iraq’s sovereignty is just a lie.
And staying there despite their request to leave is certainly going to undercut what stability they have.
Personally, I suspect that al Maliki is pinning his hopes of staying alive on being “the guy who got rid of the Americans”. As for Bush; I’m one of the people who thinks that he has zero intention of ever leaving ( and less than zero concern for the Iraqis ). This is and always was a war of conquest.
Independence movement gaining ground – not just Maliki anymore:
Iraq insists on U.S. withdrawal timetable: official
– more at source.
Guess Bush was for democracy in Iraq before he was against it.
Well, if McCain wins the election, he just might accept the Iraqi request to withdraw, so that he can “declare victory”.
I don’t think he’s in the pockets of Big Oil as much as Bush might be, nor do I think he is as fixated on the War on Terror as Bush is. (I think the 9/11 attacks was an epiphany moment for GW.)
Obama has already said he’d like to leave, so I assume he would accept such a decision from the Iraqi government.
I seriously doubt that any timetable they come up with (assuming the do come up with one) will include a start date before Jan 20th, 2009. But good for them if they do ask us to get out. That will make things easier for either Obama or McCain. I wonder if they’ll want us to take all our toys with us, though. Somehow I doubt that. And that’s the leverage we’ll have, which is no small thing.
I’d laugh, but I’m old enough to remember the leader a month in Saigon. The only good news is that I doubt we have enough clout with the Iraqi army to pull it off.
In other news, John McCain recommended that Maliki visit Baghdad, specifically markets, to understand the true situation on the ground.
Well, maybe not so much. A lot of our armor has been grinding its gears with sand. The fancy electronics, they likely don’t understand and cannnot fix (“Achmed! What does the infidel machine mean ‘Press Any Key’?”). We’re gonna have to replace some/most/all of it anyway. Not that much leverage there.
Well, they’re not going to ask the mechanics to leave!
From what I’ve read, the ISF is starting to look pretty good, but they’ve got no logistical capabilities. They need our hi-tech weapons, armored vehicles, planes and helicopters. We have lost of leverage.
I’m a Freudian Dyslexic.
‘We’ll leave when the Iraqis are ready to stand on their own’ was always a stall. There’s no way we’re going to let some podunk Muslim backwater tell us what to do even if it’s a podunk Muslim backwater of our own devising.
There’s no such thing. 80 years into the American democracy we still were flirting with self-destruction. Either we want Iraqi self-determination (and accept that there are risks involved no matter what we do) or we don’t.
Or we don’t really give a damn either way and just use Iraq as some as an ever-spinning stone to grind our personal axes.
McCain’s response to Maliki?
I think you’re all making too much out of this. Iraq has an election coming up. Politicians are positioning themselves for that election. So far, the comments have been sort of off-the-record, coming from someone under Malaki so he can deny if necessary.
They are also in the middle of a status of forces negotiation, and this could be part of a negotiating strategy.
Also not clear is what is meant by ‘a timetable for U.S. withdrawal’, because the Iraqis have also said that they want a long-term commitment from the U.S. to help them secure their borders and fight al-Qaida, and that requires some forces. The public also supports this - while there is widespread support for an end to the Multinational Force occupation, there is also widespread support for a more limited U.S. military engagement with Iraq.
All that said, if the level of rhetoric from Baghdad increases and it becomes clear that the official policy of Iraq is that they want a timetable for withdrawal, then the U.S. had better negotiate a timetable. Whether that means a timetable for withdrawal down to X thousand troops, or complete military disengagement remains to be seen.
However, isn’t it nice that we’re actually at a point where there’s a stable government in Iraq that is strong enough to legitimately start talking about U.S. withdrawal? It would appear that Bush and McCain were right about the surge, and Obama was completely wrong. Wrong not just in oppposing it, but wrong in the stated reasons why he opposed it (he claimed that an increased military presence would feed the insurgency and make the violence worse).
Another interesting fact: last week was the first week since the war started that there were no American soldiers killed in Iraq. And last month Afghanistan surpassed Iraq for the number of American casualties. It really has been a remarkable turnaround. It seems like only yesterday that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were saying that the war was already lost and there was nothing to do but cut and run and let a civil war run its course and let Iraqis fight al-Qaida by themselves.
The first quote of my OP is from Maliki’s office. In the time intervening, that stance has been underlined, not retracted.
No doubt. So?
They would be quite pleased to have financial support continue. Especially given the strict constraints so typical of our involvement, i.e., dropping buttloads of Benjamins from cargo planes.
Cite?
Negotiate? Its their country. Does one negotiate sovereignty? One is sovereign or one is not, there is no “soveriegnty lite”.
And in a mere matter of years, at such a minor cost. Peachy. The war may very well have been won, but who says it was won by us?
It would appear that the logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc has yet to be eradicated. You may be right, but you cannot prove it.
No comment is needed. No comment is possible.
Simply because the war winds down does not mean that it has been “won”. What, exactly, do you think we have won?
And, please, pretty please, stop…*please * stop!..pretending that AlQ is, or ever was, a significant factor in Iraq, or that the defeat of AlQ means shit to a tree. The Shia majority in Iraq despises AlQ in ways we cannot even fathom, if we leave, AlQ will be wiped out before the last American bootprint disappears in the pitiless sand.
Oh my God. Sam Stone is still using “cut and run” to describe the Democratic position. That is so 2006, dude.
I’m not a trained diplomat and stand to be corrected by some passing genius from Bush’s State Department or the Pentagon but it strikes this lay-person that when trying to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement in a country full of people not exactly renowned for their easy going, turn a blind eye attitude to family slights it might be a good idea, oh I don’t know, to maybe not kill the PM’s freakin’ cousin!
Going into Iraq was one of the biggest mistakes this country has ever made. But shit happens in war (which is why you don’t go to war unless you absolutely have to), and Bush is not directly responsible for every tactical mistake that occurs there.
He is certainly responsible if his army is carrying out covert operations in areas handed back to the government without consultation or co-ordination. If he hasn’t made that damn, up-front clear then yes, it is his fault. And if he has made that clear and he was disobeyed then I expect to see a Texas-size barbacue of butts being served up.