Well, luc, most efforts at revolution, which is what Bush is now touting this war as with his insistence on giving democracy to the Iraqi people, end the way John Mace is saying it will (with a Musharraf, that is). There is a chance, if we let cooler folks like Sistani use the influence they have, that things will work out better than this. But in the end it’s not up to us, and it’s better for us to realize that and quietly and quickly exit, especially after the torture incidents at Abu Ghraib (an appalling series of incidents which there is a decent chance was not isolated, and which will make most future alleged “wars of liberation” impossible too. That, at least, will be a good thing.), which have destroyed what little credibility we had left. We are the problem, and we need to own up to that and create as much lemonade out of this lemon as we can. (Of course I’m advocating the opposite course to that of John and agreeing with you, and disagreeing with both the notion that civil war will inevitably follow our leaving or that we can do anything to prevent said war if that’s what’s in the cards anyway. It’s not our country, we’re the problem, and there’s really not much more to say after that. Except that we need to deal with what appears to be a major problem in our military posthaste. And then there’s this, for those who may be optimistic about it being an isolated incident, from today’s Times. It appears that our government has an informal policy of beating non-citizens up and will doubtlessly use the war on terror as justification: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/nyregion/03brooklyn.html)
Come on. Of course we cannot predict the future. But we can make educated inferences and look at what happened in similar situations. Power vacuums rarely result in anything but civil war, and Iraq is set up for a doozy. There is too much at stake here to just give up. There are no guarantees that we can put Iraq together, but we can get some sort of governmental structure in place with some element of (Iraqi) security forces to at least give them a fighting chance.
Iraq isn’t some isolated country that we can just abondon and not worry about the consequences of a civil war. If it were an island in the Pacific, maybe so.
Well, Iraq existed before Saddam, so it’s certainly not accurate to say it existed only because of Saddam. But it will be a miracle for a Democratic Iraq to stay in one piece. Hell, even the Czechs and Slovaks couldn’t pull that off. But even a transition to a 3-way partitioned Iraq is frought with danger for the Middle East. It would still take some serious work on our part (or some other occupation power) to ensure that transition was made in a half-way peaceful manner, no?
No, more like “Meet the New Boss. He’s still a Boss, but not anywhere near as bad as the Old Boss.” WIll that in and of iteslf be worth the loss of so many American lives? Not in my mind it won’t. But if it’ll keep the Middle East from blowing up into M.E. WWIII, then yes, it will be.
Oh, I too would love to believe that the new boss will be better than the old boss. But there’s no real historical precedent I’m aware of that allows such confidence. Saddam seemed like the typical military dictator, one of dozens in the world, did a little nasty stuff but you could do business with him, for quite a long time. He wasn’t too far out there for the US to support him against those nasty Iranian mullahs. Well, the “new boss” we’re, sigh, hoping will emerge is on about that level, isn’t he? No, the precedent is that any of them left too long in power will let it go to their heads.
Let’s all agree on the broader picture here, now: If the *best * we can hope for now is a situation like the one we were “fixing”, then this thing has already failed badly and totally and there is nothing the pro-war yahoos have left to say that anybody needs to listen to. It’s over, and all we can do right now is to put some credible new leadership in place - in Washington, London, and Canberra, that is. The leadership in Baghdad and the new capitals of Basra and Mosul will take care of themselves no matter what we can still do.
Alas this presumes the UN still can/will back our play…
We could have had their help last year, but we have fucked things up so badly that there is no guarantee they will even come into the country in large numbers
Not to mention the un vote in afghanistan just went into the toilet on account of “security shortcomings”
And, of course, you have 'sama freelancing with hits on un personnel.
Dumb george has danced all of our asses way out on a real thin limb…
We will, no doubt, bear a fearful burden from history for this whole fuckup, and of course there will be civil war if we leave.
But there will be civil war if we stay.
The kurds, certainly, are not opening their borders again, and they are enthusiastally “clleansing” arabs from Kirkuk as we post.
The turks will probably invade post exit kurdistan, the new principality of greater baghdad will come to someequilibirim with the shiite south, maybe at that point Brahimi can pull a rabbit out.
The thing is, it is guaranteed that we CANT fix it, because we are the local tar baby.
No iraqi can have anyting to do with us, or he is lower than dogshit.
Ditto, the UN, and every one else.
We are lepers.
And Bush still doesn’t get it. They think they can bargain with the UN, but when the security council sits down for resolution time, who will back us against Brahimi?
Meanwhile, back in Kabul, Karzai is not even “mayor” of the whole city anymore.
The taliban is stoning folks to death under his nose.
But “it was a famous victory”
Cutting and running may be too good for us.
This exit could make the guy dangling from the choper outta saigon look like cary grant in a tuxedo for suav-ayhttp://news.myway.com/top/article/id/402328|top|05-09-2004::10:26|reuters.html
A pan-Iraqi group has been formed to oppose the occupation of Iraq and has immediately called for a meeting with UN envoy al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi in a direct challenge to the country’s US-appointed leadership.
am I the only guy who didn’t know that
Lakhdar Brahimi is
really
al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi?
no disrespect, and he is algerian, so why not, only I had no idea…
Finally a cite that “proves” that there won’t be civil war when the occupation leaves.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
It’s true that I can find competing cites about inter-iraqi strife or “bad” examples from similar situations in other countries. Point is that there are plenty of “good” tendencies to balance them out.
BTW I object to the formulation “Cut and Run”. May I suggest “Do the Right Thing”. Get out before you get kicked out.
And self indulgent folly looks to me like GW’s perpetual modus operandi.
It is interesting to me that a FOX news military pundit says this (When Greer writes of “an enemy every bit as dangerous as Nazi German” the rest of the article shows that he is speaking of what he describes as “miltant Islaam.”):
While the co-director of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center on Terrorism wrote:
In line with GW’s record in business over the years, the Iraq adventure was a pipe dream based on faulty assumptions and promoted and sold on deceptive and inflated claims.
It seems to me that our whole effort now should be to get some semblance of an Iraq government running on 30 June and the git whether the gittin’ is good or bad. Bad can’t last forever and at least we will still have some Army with some equipment left.
I don’t believe it makes a damned bit of difference what government we leave there, the Iraqi’s will probably not accept it so I wouldn’t sweat the small stuff.
