I agree completely. If the violence escalates we can come back in. But I think if we came back in at the request of the Iraqi government. Don’t know if that is practical, but it would be better than us deciding it for ourselves
What? Do you really think they’re NOT perceived that way now?
Why not put the onus on the insurgency? Because it’s giving power to the insurgency. For the third time, when your enemy gets to determine the parameters of the engagement, you’re fucked. I think that’s from Sun Tzu.
Should “make” read “isolate”? If so, I definitely agree with this. I just don’t think your proposal is a good way to do it.
A good way to do it: stop killing civilians. That would be a good way to do it.
Daniel
Exactly. I think you made the point better than I did.
An absence of goodwill on the part of people who already hate us, and want us dead, would thus be sufficient to to pin us down in the Iraq quagmire forever. If you want to allow the terrorists to control our actions, why not just surrender?
To some degree. But as many have pointed out on these boards, they do enjoy quite a bit of support. Lessening that is a good thing.
You make a good point, but I’m not proposing taking everything else off the table. It will either work or not, right? If it works and they stopped blowing people up, that would be a welcome surprise, wouldn’t it? If it doesn’t work and their killiing continues (likely), we put the terrorists more in the crosshairs of Muslim hate, replacing ourselves.
Yes, isolate. I’d be surprised if the proposal solved things, but I don’t see a downside. Worst case: they keep doing what they’ve been doing.
Could you clarify, please? You do realize that with this plan I don’t intend to abandon whatever sensible withdrawal plan we come up with. If my proposal doesn’t work, we simply default to it. If it works and the terrorists stop blowing peolpe up, so much the better, right?
Once more, I agree that lessening their support would be good. I just don’t think your proposal would do it.
Reasons it wouldn’t:
- Because the killings would continue, troop levels wouldn’t lessen. If the Iraqi street is angry at us for occupation, then their main source of anger wouldn’t go away.
- Many Iraqis would see that it was a hollow promise, inasmsuch as we knew it wouldn’t work: they would see it as fundamentally dishonest, as if we’re playing games with them and thinking they’re idiots, and it would make them even angrier with us.
- As I mentioned before, even in the unlikely event that the insurgents stop attacks, you’re still likely to have reprisal attacks from Iraqi police against former enemies. Remember the tortured victims of last week? If we don’t consider those to be terrorist attacks, then the victims are going to be extremely angry with us. And if we do consider those to be terrorist attacks, then many people are going to think that we’re grasping at straws for reasons to stay.
If it worked it’d be a welcome surprise. If someone hands me the keys to a new Porsche, that’d be a welcome surprise, too; but I’m not going to structure my global policy around welcome surprises. If it doesn’t work, I think it’s not likely to do much of anything to turn opinion against the terrorists.
No. Worst case, it looks like yet another empty gesture from the US, it provides the terrorists with a way to manipulate US policy, and when we end up backing away from it, we look like idiots.
I put forward my proposal again: we stop killing civilians. In fact, I’ll add a new proposal on top of it: Bush withdraws his promise to veto any ban on torture. That new proposal just might possibly have some tiny effect on convincing Iraqis that we’re not monstrous, ya think?
Daniel
Not at all. From a PR perspective it would be rightfully seen as a play by the US to maintain high troop levels indefinitely. Again, what you are failing to see (but what a lot of folks who actually live in the region are quite clear on) is that there is NOT a single insurgency going on there. Instead you have a lot of factions who are fighting for various reasons in the same country at the same time. Some of them want the US/UK gone. Some of them want their power back…or want power for the first time. Some are afraid that since they held the whip hand so long that the whip is about to decend on them…and so are trying to pre-empt any thing like that by going on the offensive early. Some are fighting a holy war. Some are there strictly to fight the US in the easiest place they can. Some are there just because they love to kill and this is a good place to do so. Some of the ‘attacks’ are just criminal activities plain and simple.
They all have different goals, they have different methods and they have different agendas. Sometimes they cooperate with each other…sometimes they end up fighting each other. Were you to attempt to institute your plan some groups would go along, others would ignore it completely…and some would actually step up their attacks. And then when you piously said something to the effect that we gave the Iraqi’s a chance but now we will have to stay, just about everyone will see right through this plan to what was desired…i.e. a perminent high level of US troops in Iraq. That won’t be great PR.
It wouldn’t work even for a single month though. Someone willing to strap on explosives isn’t likely to be reasonable and decide that they really don’t want to walk into that market full of civilians today. A foreigner who is just there to kill American’s really doesn’t care one way or the other about Iraq…s/he is there to kill American’s. A gang of thugs, heavily equiped with some of Saddams toys who wants to hit another gang of thugs for territory, loot, etc, really isn’t plugged into a higher purpose. Yet all these things would set back your timer…and all these things will continue to happen periodically for a long time to come.
Why should he? Why should AQ? Whats in it for them if we leave Iraq…but if Iraq isn’t a Taliban type statelet under their thumb? Lets say that they DO leave Iraq in peace for the 15 months it would take for us to pull out. Then lets say that somehow they also convince the various insurgent bands, militias, criminals, the religious fanatics and the simply mad to stop killing as well. And they basically just hang out for 15 months. Who is likely to benifit the most from such a cease fire? The Iraqi military, thats who. They will then get over a year of solid training, be allowed to catch their breath, cycle recruits through their system (set up by the US) instead of having them wacked in busses or outside barracks and such.
How is that a good thing for AQ, Zarqawi, the Sunni secular or religious insurgents…or even the criminals? None of that is to their benifit so why should they institute what would be a nearly impossible to control cease fire?
-XT
If we were to offer to withdraw all troops after one month of no violence, and the insurgents continued to attack during that month, it would be pretty strong evidence that ivylass’s fear of the insurgents “waiting us out” is not a rational concern.
If the bad guys could not hold their fire for one month, why would it matter to the insurgents if we set a withdrawal date of December 31, 2006?
We want the same thing - we want our people home safe and we want them treated decently. We want the new government in Iraq to start taking ownership. We want some honest answers from our government for a change.
Another factor that I don’t think has been mentioned is that this plan would essentially be saying that the insurgents drove out the American troops by a combination of their original attacks and the ceasefire. This would not only grant the Iraqi insurgents stature they don’t deserve, it would also encourage other groups to use terrorist attacks to influence American policy.
I’m not so sure. If we announce we are willing to leave and will leave, under that one condition, and that condition is not met, I cxan see the anger shifting to the insurgency.
I see these two as really one, and I think you make an excellent point. The risk of what you describe happening may be enough to kil my proposal. I could see almost a month going by and then there is some killing that may or may not be defined as a terrorist act. And then we’d be stuck having to accept it as a non-terrorist act or not doing so an not sending any troops home. I could see that pissiing off a lot of people and discrediting the U.S. irreparably.
Why ? The insurgents exist because of us; we are even responsible for them being so well armed. I think we will always be blamed, even if we leave someday.
No matter what we do, we will be blamed. We will be the bad guys. So, in that case it doesn’t cost much to do the right thing anyway. We do need to take a long hard look at ourselves anyway. We pissed away a lot of the good will we once had around the world, and we need to ask WHY.
Did our withdrawal from Vietnam give the Viet Cong a stature that they didn’t deserve?
Look, there’s no military victory possible here. General Myers said it at least a year ago, General Casey is saying it today, and nobody seems to be disputing it. Only the Iraqis are going to be able to determine their fate, and the sooner we remove ourselves as a political irritant, the better.
It is a pretty stupid foreign policy that places greater value on a fear of what our enemies may do or think over what is best for our country.
Not that I’m disagreeing but, Cite?
"Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers … insisted last week: “We can’t win with the military alone.” Victory will require efforts on “the political and the economic fronts as well”, he added. "Link.
"A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years. … Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed similar sentiments, calling the military’s efforts “the Pillsbury Doughboy idea” - pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere. "Link.
I can provide more, but that gives you the idea.
Zarqawi has been disowned and renounced by his family “until doomsday”. Their official published statement leaves no doubt that whatever protection he may have had, is now gone. It is now a question of who gets him first - the U.S. forces, Jordanian forces and police, or his own relatives. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
In a country that currently suffers around 80-100 attacks each DAY, to expect Iraq to go an entire month without attacks before withdrawing any American troops will pretty much ensure that our troops never come home.
Hopefully it won’t be too long before they catch the bastard, try him and execute him. Good riddence to a piece of human scum.
As others have said, I think sucess in this war is implicit on civilized people outing the monsters in thier midsts, refusing to help them and bringing them to justice. That’s what this war(WoT) was supposed to be about.
Unfortunatly, I think our actions have made that more difficult.