How to win an election and absolve oneself of responsibility of hunreds of thousands of deaths:
Invade a perceived enemy.
When your election is won on the back ofthe associated patriotic loyalty, hold elections in the occupied state.
Leave when that ‘government’ asks you to, such that any subsequent civil war is their own fault.
elucidator’s initial response is spot on: don’t waver now, my friend. The occupying force must prevent a civil war even if it requires $80Bn per year for decades. To leave while there is even a possibility of a civil war is irresponsibility of the highest order.
If a civil war happens in Iraq in the next ten years, it will be the fault of the invaders. Saddam’s reign was brutal, but stable, and simply did not kill any more than a tiny fraction of the number of deaths in the last three years. A civil war would dwarf even the massacres immediately after Gulf War I.
Its both. No troops or stable “police” means an open civil war. Foreign occupiers gives insurgents fuel too. Seems contradictory but its not. Like an itch… US troops are an “irritant”.
Even if you beleive that Iraq is becoming more stable... its doing so at a very slow pace (if at all.. it think its getting worse). So to stay for the long haul only gives insurgents more reasons to fight the US. "Winning" might take more than a decade and thousands of casualties... a very phyric victory and just a maybe.
Setting a credible withdrawl date means the Iraqis will start targeting each other more… so that would be good for US troops… but not Iraqis. Still making a credible exit also means that insurgents lose the “occupier” reason to fight. It might also force Iraqis to work out some of their own solutions.
Like I've said before... I think the situation does parallel "vietnam policies". Especially regarding politics in the US... not Iraq. How much of the "Finish the Mission" is about US pride ? How much is it looking at it from a military perspective and not a political one ?
The problem is that it will give a “hit list” for insurgents. They will know the metrics and where to spoil the US party. Also what happens if you have great results in one area… and terribly in another ? Quantifying things makes for manipulation by both sides… and an empty declaration of “Mission Accomplished”.
I would be in favor of a systematic withdrawal, starting in a couple of months, of a few thousand troops per month. It would still takes years to fully disengage.
There’s only so much one nation can do for another nation. Ultimately, the people of Iraw, if they really want a peaceful and free country, must provide it themselves.
If you tell a man down on his luck you will provide him assistance for as long as he needs it, he will still need it for as long as you will provide it. Openend commitments of these sorts do not produce the desired result.
But they had a peaceful country, which was no less free than the countries which most of Earth’s population live in! How come carbombs, assassinations and beheadings were not features of Saddam’s ‘elections’? What changed to make Iraq such a non-peaceful country?
Whereas, if you kill his children on a false pretext and then vanish in the night, it’s all his own fault?
I take it you thought I was supportive of the US invasion. I was not at the beginning and I am not now. I wanted to limit my response to the question of what we(the US) should do now relative to force level. There are many threads for us to express our mutual opposition to invasion, this isn’t the best one.
A withdrawal like I propose may result in increasing casualties and things could possibly get a lot worse. But worse than what – staying?
What I most fear is we will stay in mass, until there is a window of opportunity to totally withdraw quickly. The Bush folks will grap this as “mission accomplished” for short term political cover and within about six months Iraq will totally collapse, and we will have to return, full warfare 20 times worse than the present mess, which is really saying something, given how badly things are now.
There are no good solutions. An immediate withdrawal would result in bloodshed and likely retribution against any Iraqi that cooperated with the American occupation. Announcing a future withdrawal would very likely do the same thing, except at a later date. Continuing the occupation indefinitely only fans the flames of resistance and further weakens worldwide opinion of the US. No matter which way the US goes or stays, the resistance will continue and innocent Iraqis will continue to die by the thousands. Since there seem to be no good solutions, I would pick the best of bad solutions- cut the losses and make an immediate withdrawal.
Obviously, the elections will happen. There will be an elected government that will be unable to control its own nation. The minute the US withdraws, if ever, that government will be overthrown. I don’t see how staying longer honors the Iraqi dead, except to make more of them.
How nice to see that decades after Chappaquidic, the right still likes to bring up Ted’s driving record. Ted may have been responsible for the death of one person. Apparently this one death is of far more consequence than the hundreds of thousands killed in Bush’s misadventure.
How about this: institute a draft with no exemptions. Then let congress and their rich friends decide whether staying in Iraq makes sense if it is their kids that are at risk.
Y’know, I’ve always believed that unless someone is actively keeping them down, most people are capable of taking care of themselves. I’ve also always believed that if someone is actively keeping someone else down, the right thing to do was to try to make them stop. Once upon a time, that made me a Liberal. Duckster, I had already read the article; what I fail to see is where the confusion lies. He’s already given you the answer to the question in your OP. If you think he’s lying, say so and what you think he really intends.
Read that first sentance again: empowered to vote for themselves, they’re not going to vote for the anti-westerners?
Shouldn’t this start a thought along the lines of “gee, I guess the vast majority of people there are not full of hate toward America, and in fact want us to stay there long enough for them to get on their own?” In other words, pretty much exactly what existing policy already is?
Oh, wait, let me guess: the election will be a sham due to poor turnout in Ba’athist neighborhoods. :rolleyes:
I’m an expert in the sense that I “learned how to read.” I read about the leaflets threatening death to anybody who voted. I read about the murdered poll workers, about the candidates who remain anonymous, about the bombed polling places. That’s all Zarqawi? Bullshit. The terrorists know that successful elections will be a severe blow to them and that a successful democracy will mean an end to them.
You are maybe the least qualified person on these boards to demand a citation. Have you ever provided a cite for anything?
You know, Kennedys used to say things like “(W)e shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” To Ted, though, it’s enough that the nations of the middle east are “independent,” without regard to whether they are “independent” under genocidal despots who invade their neighbors and fund terrorists.
How very nice for you. Have you any other accomplishments you’d like to share with the group?
Yeah, I stink, Manny. So, can we take this to mean that pointing out my many failings is equivalent, in your estimation, with providing substantiation for your claims? That will certainly simplify things.
Yeah, Teddy sucks too. And you can prove that, but why bother?
Once upon a time, the US had the opportunity to do it right. People at the top levels of the Army chain of command were thinking about 250,000 troops being brought in to smooth the transition from Saddam’s reign to a new government.
Unfortunately, they’ve been penny-wise, pound-foolish, and didn’t bring enough troops to provide the initial security, which has let to the current spiral into despair.
I think that we should do what we should have done a long time ago, and vastly increase the number of troops in country, and vastly increase the flow of dollars. Create the jobs, provide security. Fight the uphill battle to stability, dig ourselves out of the hole we’ve made. It would be painful, and expensive, initially, but in the long run is the only real chance.
Of course, because by going in with too weak of a force, we’ve allowed the insurgents and terrorists to weaken us further, to the point where I doubt that it would be even possible to increase troop strength materially.
manhattan:To Ted, though, it’s enough that the nations of the middle east are “independent,” without regard to whether they are “independent” under genocidal despots who invade their neighbors and fund terrorists.
Well, Reagan and Bush I seemed to get along just fine with Saddam Hussein when he was a genocidal despot invading his neighbors and funding terrorists—until he turned against an oil-supplying ally in Kuwait, that is.
The current President Bush seems to get along just fine with other despots who happen to be friends of his family or supporters of his policies: in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Colombia, for example.
I am mystified as to how people can go on trying to spin this war as an altruistic effort to liberate and democratize the Iraqis. Surely, if that had really been our goal, we wouldn’t have pulled so many boneheaded maneuvers like going in with forces too small to prevent looting and weapons theft, like torturing prisoners, like purging the armed forces and dismantling infrastructure, like bringing in small armies of foreign civilian workers while Iraqi unemployment rates climbed to 70%, like significantly increasing anti-American resentment among Iraqis?
Surely, if we had really gone in to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, we would have had some clue how to accomplish it more effectively? Are you seriously telling me that when it comes to creating freedom and democracy in the Middle East, this is the best America knows how to do?
Well, it just seems as though the whole enterprise was never really taken seriously. Just go in, knock out the dictator, and the grateful natives will start setting up Coke bottling plants and forming Chambers of Commerce. How could they have misjudged the difficulty and complexity of the situation so badly? If you genuinely cared about encouraging the spread of democracy, wouldn’t you spend more time and effort figuring out what the fundamental problems were, and what strategies would actually be effective?
I really don’t get it. I was against the war from the start, but more because I believed it was unjustified than because I believed our leaders would really screw the country up very drastically. I was worried about that as a possibility, and an additional reason not to go to war when you don’t absolutely have to, but I didn’t seriously imagine we would actually commit half of the boneheaded blunders that we’ve made. Even now, I’m still waiting for the point of turning the corner, when things clearly start to settle down and move into reconciliation and rebuilding.
I still can’t believe that there will be a full-blown civil war, but I’m getting more nervous as so many other things I didn’t really believe possible have happened. I hope that things will improve after the turmoil of the elections. How could we have screwed this up so badly?
Can I have a cite for the idea that the invasion and occupation have resulted in “hundreds of thousands” of casualties please? Even Iraq body count – which counts all the dead whether they were Iraqis or non-Iraqis, and regardless of whether they were killed by Americans and their allies or by anyone else – says there have been a maximum of 17,785 casualties.
Anyway, this sort of reasoning sounds suspiciously like commending Mussolini for the trains running on time. You can’t commend Saddam for keeping Iraq stable, condemn the US for failing to do so, and not acknowledge that Saddam kept Iraq stable by savagely torturing and murdering dissenters, minorities, and others that might have destablized his society (See also here and here and here and here – note the last cite by Human Rights Watch, which says that Hussein should be held to account for the approximately 290,000 people that “disappeared” during his reign, many of whom are feared to have been victims of Hussein’s war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity).
Are you suggesting that peace through totalitarian brutality is preferable to the tumult of a fledgling democracy? Would it be preferable if the US kept the peace through widespread torture and murder? Is the source of your concern that the US hasn’t killed enough Iraqis?
There was killing that attended Saddam’s elections. It’s just that Saddam was the one having people killed.
So, Age, we shouldn’t get our danders in an uproar because there have been maybe-kinda-somewhat-sorta “only” 17,000+ folks killed in Iraq?
Thanks for the perspective. By that same cockamamie Bush-apologista logic, the 3,000 killed in the 9/11 attacks should have been shrugged off as no big deal, yes? Or should we conclude that you think iraqi lives are somehow worth less than American ones?
There is a message by Reeder that many participants in the Iraq debates do not seem to be getting.
Just for a minute, imagine the following US Foreign Policy behind invading Iraq:
WE WENT THERE TO STAY THERE PERMANENTLY. PERIOD.
I do not understand the people who are looking for “an exit strategy”. There never supposed to be an “exit strategy”, because the intention, from the beginning, was to stay there permanently – no matter what. Within such a context, you do not need an “Exit Strategy” because there is not going to be an exit, whether Iraq becomes another Germany or Japan in 20 years, or it remains a 3rd world country like Saudi Arabia – an ever-lasting battleground for “insurgents”
Those who decided to invade Iraq, they had determined that it was in our best interest to do so for the long term, no matter how many US troops or Iraqis were going to be killed – civil war or not. We are going to be there, no matter what government is elected by Iraqis.
Whatever government is elected (even an Islamic Republic) will “somehow” reach the conclusion that “it is in the best interest of Iraq for Americans to stay”. As soon as there is an emerging leader in Iraq that will genuinely stand for Americans to leave, he/she will be assassinated by some “terrorist”. US will NEVER leave, under any circumstances – because that was the plan from the beginning. US is NOT trying to save face, nor find a way to withdraw the troops. At best, we may reduce the number of troops from the current 150,000 to about 50,000 in 20 years. But, we’ll always be there, permanently, as long as there is oil.
Now. If you begin to understand the above, you’ll see why most of the posts and comments regarding “the solution to the Iraq problem”, including Ted Kennedy’s comments, are irrelevant. Rather than looking for a solution to the current mess in Iraq, I suggest you look at it from the broader perspective of the overall US Foreign Policy and plans, including the original intent to invade Iraq at the first place.