Michael Yon says that we who oppose the Iraq War should stop drawing grand conclusions from the Haditha incident until we know all the facts:
In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”
Yon goes on to say that delays and coverups are bad, too. They “only make a bigger mess that is harder to clean up.” He seems to me to be a clear-headed guy trying to stay above partisan positions. If you read his post, which I recommend, please do so without preconceived ideas about Yon’s political agenda. I’m not sure I agree with his positions entirely, but they’re worthy of consideration.
But something else struck me about the post. He has witnessed, he said, some accidental killings of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers. One of the Iraqis was a child:
I was present on a day in Baquba when there was a controlled blast of some captured munitions, and somehow the guard towers had not been informed of the upcoming explosion. When the blast occurred, there were children playing near the perimeter, and they flushed and ran. A young guard fired on the children, killing one. He thought they had triggered the blast, something children had often done. I sat up in that same guard tower a day or so later. Soldiers will always talk during nighttime guard duty. The men in his platoon were very upset about the incident, as was the soldier himself. He made the wrong decision, but despite that he had not been warned about the explosion, and that Baquba was a dangerous place where we regularly were losing soldiers, he might never forgive himself.
Yon describes a trend among insurgents in Mosul to kill children who get too close to American soldiers. The enemy, he says, murders children on a daily basis. Yon is not making a “they do it, too” excuse, just creating context. Iraq is a very dangerous place. Mistakes will happen.
Yes, they will, which is a big reason why a military solution was the wrong tool for our political goals in the Middle East.
Back in April 2004, when the war was only a year old, Gen. John Abizaid, said “There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we’re facing here in Iraq today.” I’m going further, and saying that a purely U.S. military solution isn’t and never was appropriate to the problems we were or are facing in Iraq, or the Middle East, or from global terrorism. We who oppose the war for its brutality and injustice should not forget to make this point.
Let’s step back from the war for a minute and think about grand strategy, or America’s primary political goals in the Middle East. I realize that the Bush Administration’s explanations of those goals have wandered all over the map. I want also to make a clear distinction between goals and motivations — whatever dark impulses motivated Bush and Crew to become fixated on Iraq is another topic entirely.
The grand objective, as near as I can tell, is to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East. And, hey, that sounds like a plan. It even (dare I say it?) sounds like a liberal approach to dealing with Islamic terrorism.
Problems come into view as we get closer, however. This strategic approach was developed by that collection of overeducated twits known as the “neoconservatives.” While Bill Clinton was in the White House, the neocons huddled at Project for a New American Century, hatching bold ideas about “benevolent global hegemony,” meaning American domination of the planet, and securing America’s status as the World’s Only Superpower — now and forever. Think old-fashioned nativism gone way proactive. For more on PNAC’s plans, see Bernard Weiner’s PNAC Primer.
Even though most[*] of the neocons got their military education from watching John Wayne movies — or from the mint condition first edition set of Horatio Hornblower books they found in Father’s upstairs study one day when Nanny was distracted — they see themselves as a tough, hairy-chested bunch not given to the womanly pursuits of diplomacy. Why bother, when we’ve got the biggest, baddest motherbleeping military on the planet?
In the 1990s the neocons devised a plan to politically restructure the Middle East, beginning with Iraq. By means of “preemptive war,” the U.S. would remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Once this was accomplished, the Good Democracy Fairy would flit about the land, spreading the pixie dust of free market capitalism, and they would all live happily ever after. When the other Middle East nations saw how happy Iraq was, they’d want a visit from the Good Democracy Fairy, too. And if not, well, we have the biggest, baddest motherbleeping military on the planet. No problemo.
Well, OK, I made up the part about the fairy. But a search through PNAC’s own Clinton-era archives on Iraq reveals that the neocons were adamant that Saddam Hussein must be removed, by force of arms if necessary, and before U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan could carry out his own evil schemes in the region. But the PNACers were always a little hazy on the “what comes next” part.
The neocons wasted no time after the 9/11 attacks re-framing their Iraq plans as an antiterrorist measure. Late in 2001 PNAC executive director Gary Schmitt wrote, ominously, “If two or three years from now Saddam is still in power, the war on terrorism will have failed.” The reasoning behind this conclusion, however, was based on facts not in evidence, or even in reality. Saddam, Schmitt said, was behind the September 11 attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks; he possessed weapons of mass destruction up the yinyang, and he is determined to strike the United States.
As we’ve learned from the Downing Street Memos and elsewhere, the Bush Administration adopted this argument and had already made up its feeble collective mind to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein by March 2002. Thus, after a year of ritualized saber-rattling that served various political ends, we invaded.
The unpleasant side effects of the White House obsession with Iraq are many. Partly because of a loss of focus on Afghanistan, the bulk of al Qaeda slipped across the Afghanistan border and has morphed into something more dangerous and scattered throughout as many as 90 countries. Our activities in Iraq are costing the U.S. somewhere between $6 billion and nearly $10 billion a month, which I’m sure the government of Iran considers money well spent. The Pentagon’s counter-insurgency offensives in Iraq, which have resulted in the loss of thousands of civilians, are a major source of anti-American sentiment in the region. And Iraq appears to be growing less secure. “The American project in Iraq is unraveling,” says David Ignatius in today’s Washington Post.
Let’s see, what were those original political goals again? To counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East? Yeah, we’re doing a heck of a job.
I come from a family with a tradition of American military service going back to the Revolution. So although I was never in the military, I want to think well of our soldiers and Marines and give them lots of benefits of doubts. Many of you will disagree, I’m sure. But I think that if any good comes from our misbegotten Iraq adventure it will be from the hard work and dedication of our troops.
But regarding our principal political goals in the Middle East, a military solution was the wrong solution. Even against the terrorists who no doubt would like to strike the U.S. again, the military should be only part of the toolkit. There are times when a military solution is very appropriate — I certainly didn’t mind going after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it’s one thing to send troops after objectives like al Qaeda training camps, and another to send troops to spread American hegemony or to make the world safe for free markets.
Soldiers are not diplomats, or ambassadors, or policemen. And they’re also not robots who won’t make regrettable mistakes, or who never snap under stress.
Sometimes when I’ve badmouthed the war, some rightie will come along and sneer, What is it about bringing democracy to the Middle East you don’t like? And, y’know, I’m fine with bringing democracy to the Middle East. And if it could be done by means of a military solution, maybe that would be an argument for the Iraq War. But real-world examples of formerly totalitarian nations that were democratized successfully by means of a military intervention by another nation are darn hard to come by.
As I explained in more detail here, Japan after World War II is not a pure example. By a constitution adopted in 1889, Japan had established a democratically elected parliament long before World War II. Early in the 20th century Japan made serious strides toward democratizing itself before the military establishment seized power in the 1930s. People who understand Japan better than I do tell me the government of Japan after the war is not as different from the government of Japan before the war as most American imagine.
So can anyone think of another example of a nation “restructured” from totalitarianism to democracy by an invading force? I’m drawing a blank.
When we “discuss” the war we all tend to get drawn into issues like the number of civilians and soldiers killed or the evils of war profiteering by military contractors. But while our President continues to make surreal, meaningless speeches promising “victory,” we need to turn the argument away from whether a military victory can be achieved to whether our political objectives can be achieved.
Because we can always achieve military victory. I suspect we still are capable of rendering the entire nation of Iraq into a lifeless wasteland if we put our minds to it. But I doubt that would have the desired effect of enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East
_________________
[*] Please note that the word most is not a synonym of all, so those of you who attempt refute this post by naming the few PNAC members will real military backgrounds will be subject to merciless ridicule.
Even "bringing democracy" (sic)* is not sufficient legal grounds to plan and launch a war of aggression against a sovereign nation which poses no immediate and urgent threat to the attacking nation. Even if things had gone well in Iraq and it were not a swamp of violence, the attack itself and any fighting done as a result would have been, as they are, criminal acts. No outcome would have redeemed the initial and subsequent criminality represented by the aggression itself.
ReplyDelete*(The idea of "bringing democracy" is faulty at its root; democracy must and can only grow from within, and must be instituted by the people who wish it for themselves and who must bear responsibility for governing and living in the society of their own building.)
By chance, CONSORTIUM NEWS has this recent excellent article on the Law of Nuremburg, and it discusses why not just the Marines alleged to have killed innocent Iraqis, but all parties to the planning and waging of this war of aggression--as with ANY war of aggression--are as guilty of war crimes--under Nuremburg's standard--as are any in the combat theater who commit atrocities. The atrocities flow directly from the launching of the war.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/
060506a.html
The reason that the ‘War on Terror’ was chosen by Cheney and his pals to describe our actions post 9/11 was to further their agenda of control, domestic and international. Once this was the accepted method of dealing with the ‘jihadist’ terrorists (or anyone else so designated by the administration) the ‘Commander in Chief’ was free to use ‘extraordinary’ powers. The fact is that Bin Laden and his compatriots are international criminals and should be pursued as such. For the Bush administration this method would not serve their overarching interests here at home and in the world at large. The ongoing open ended wars in the Middle East do. But unfortunately, the use of military force has generally proven to be ineffective in fighting the jihadists, or other insurgents, because they are not a military enemy. In Iraq and Afghanistan, much like the Soviets before us, our overwhelming military supremacy means nothing. The enemy we are fighting is part of the local population and when we hit them we hit the locals as well, thereby steadily eroding popular support for our goals. If we had treated Afghanistan under the Taliban as a rogue state to be dealt with by the UN and occupied by a diverse international force including Asian troops, we would be in much better shape than we are at present. The historical resonance of British troops occupying their country again is obvious to the Afghan people. Absent a state like Afghanistan under the Taliban, the problem of terrorism is rooted in small groups plotting in secret. We need to address these types of enemies in a micro enforcement method, as an international policing problem, rather that in a macro, i.e.. military method. Indonesia which has been subject to large scale terrorist attacks, and has a large population that might be inclined to support an insurgency, has done well with the police model. The benefits, both political, fear as motivator, and economic, hardware and munitions, oil, etc., have come together to make this military adventurism irresistible to our present leaders in Washington and London. The motivating reasons for our ‘War on Terror’ are domestically political & economic and internationally economic and strategic, and until those facts are addressed discussions of tactics are basically moot. At the beginning of our ‘liberation’ of Iraq anyone who reads history pragmatically, without an ideological axe to grind, saw the debacle we were getting ourselves into.
ReplyDeleteGood post, but one quibble: when you say this:
ReplyDelete"I want to think well of our soldiers and Marines and give them lots of benefits of doubts. Many of you will disagree, I’m sure."
...you're recycling Republican spin that libruls hate the troops. That's not constructive, for a variety of reasons.
The need for care in the use of military force was underlined by Justice Jackson during WWII:
ReplyDelete"Of course, the existence of a military power resting on force, so vagrant, so centralized, so necessarily heedless of the individual, is an inherent threat to liberty. ... If the people ever let command of the war power fall into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands, the courts wield no power equal to its restraint. The chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country, in the future as in the past, must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the moral judgments of history."
Liberals honor the military, but our system rightfully is suspicious of its power. Consider the Third Amendment, promotion of the militia, and the overall fear of standing armies.
The "prince of peace" in many people's minds suggests the honorable path of pacifism, but put that totally aside. The military is by design bloody, no matter how honorable we make it. "War it is hell."
As Jackson said as well:
"The very essence of the military job is to marshal physical force, to remove every obstacle to its effectiveness, to give it every strategic advantage. Defense measures will not, and often should not, be held within the limits that bind civil authority in peace."
Men are not angels, so we need some devilish action, including use of force. But, demanding care before it is used is fully appropriate. Conservatives thought so in Bosnia in the 1990s, didn't they?
If the bloodthirsy ("at least we aren't dying ... oh ... not as much as them") among us fail to understand this or consistently apply the doctrine, well what else is new?
I believe this is a must read on this subject. The Real Meaning of Haditha from Tom Engelhardt.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Barbara - I was hoping it was merely an accident of phrasing, rather than preemptive snark, and I'm glad not to have been wrong :-)
ReplyDeleteLook, when there's a problem with tainting the jury pool, maybe we should ask folks to STFU (not that such has ever stopped motor-mouths and the hang-'em-high posses), but this would be courts martial in any case (or a trial in the Hague ... [ha-ha-ha, good one there, Arne]). If we actually want to get serious about that problem, maybe we'll do what the Brits do and ban pre-trial coverage.
ReplyDeleteUntil then, read what you can, decide what you want, and say what you will.
Cheers,
I was just going to say that I don't see anything wrong with Horatio Hornblower, but I think it's because the actor they picked to play him in the A&E series is seriously cute.
ReplyDeleteNo substantive commentary, I'm afraid.
Did you actually mention them anywhere in here?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the Bush Administration is trying to do. They make no sense to me. The point is that the political objectives we seem to have in Iraq were never objectives that could reasonably be obtained by a military solution. So whatever our intentions were or are, we are falling short.
Lovely, now how are you proposing that come about?
Why don't you ask the Bush Administration? It's their policy. I'm just saying that the basic objective seems reasonable.
Actually doing it (successfully) would not be easy, but I believe it is do-able. I believe the solution would consist of a multitude of approaches -- long and careful diplomacy, economic diplomacy and/or sanctions, better intelligence, international cooperation, other kinds of outreach, and maybe very precise and limited use of military as needed. The details would take long and careful thought, and strategies would probably need to be revised over time, as needed. The problems we are talking about are not going to be solved by a silver bullet, which seems to be what you are looking for.
Actually we are. The election turnouts under the threat of violence are all we need to see as proof.
Dream on, son.
That's what I thought, no other ideas.
If we agree on the basic Bush objective -- to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East -- then the solution is to work toward this in a multitude of ways, as I said above.
You forgot to mention the bombing of Iraq by Clinton during this time. Because of WMD's. Killing civilians.
Yes, and that may have been counterproductive. But Clinton didn't get us stuck in Iraq and spending $6 to $10 billion dollars a month to help the government of Iran annex Iraq and establish the Islamic Republic of Greater Mesopotamia.
what is the problem with being the world's only superpower?
Nothing until we abused it. But thanks to the Bush Administration, our days of being the world's only superpower are numbered, I'm afraid.
What about the consequences of doing nothing?
I don't know. Did somebody advocate doing nothing?
I'd be interested to hear how the world is going to improve while much of it is under dictatorship?
Why don't you ask someone who advocates allowing the world to remain under dictatorship?
Your problem is that you only know one kind of solution, which is brute force. Some kinds of problems can't be solved that way. As we're seeing, our military solution to the Iraq problem is making the situation worse.
We can put years of SMART effort into the Middle East and make the situation better, but it may never be exactly as we would like it. This is life.
I think it's because the actor they picked to play him in the A&E series is seriously cute.
ReplyDeleteCute, and Welsh. Even better. :-)
"I'd be interested to hear how the world is going to improve while much of it is under dictatorship?"
ReplyDeleteWell, let's start by *NOT* putting the US under dictatorship. That would certainly be a step backwards!
Heard of the "unitary executive" business, the "signing statements" being used to ignore laws (including the anti-torture law), the warrantless wiretapping, the arbitrary arrests and lengthy imprisonments without trial (at Guantanamo Bay, plus Jose Padilla and others), the gag orders on government scientists, the secret "administrative warrants" and gag orders in the PATRIOT Act, the "Free Speech Zones", the attacks on the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with the President on anything, the abuse of the "state secrets" privilege, the refusal to inform Congress of the government's actions, the threatened prosecutions of the press for reporting government misconduct, etc.?
We need to lead by example. Instead, Bush and his Republicans are systematically removing our freedoms at home while claiming to spread them abroad. As is well documented at this blog.
shooter242:
ReplyDeleteExcuse me. We are not the force currently causing Iraq pain. We are in fact the people trying to improve the Iraqi standard of living while others are trying to destroy it.
But by pretty much every account, for most Iraqis, we were the ones that managed to muck it up due to our invasion (based on false pretenses and disingenuousness, if not avariceand hubris). True, it is the insurgents that are causing most of the deaths, but it was the U.S. -- by invasion, deposition, and just piss-poor planning -- that managed to unleash the dogs of war. And there we are. Don't think you can shrug off responsibility for your actions (or your cluelessness) that easy....
Cheers,
shooter242:
ReplyDelete[Barbara]: While Bill Clinton was in the White House, the neocons huddled at Project for a New American Century, hatching bold ideas about “benevolent global hegemony,” ....
You forgot to mention the bombing of Iraq by Clinton during this time. Because of WMD's....
Clinton didn't turn it into a total anarchic debacle (or blow a half a trillion and 2470 U.S. soldiers' lives and counting in doing so....)
But you would have a point ... if I approved of what Clinton did. I won't speak for others here, but I didn't.
Cheers,
shooter242:
ReplyDeleteActually we are. The election turnouts under the threat of violence are all we need to see as proof.
What was your idea again?
If "elections" were the mark of a great country, by now, Iraq's a veritable Elysium (of people with no more appendages to dye purple). So booked your vacation there yet?
Cheers,
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteBarbara:
ReplyDeleteApart from the occasional snarking, another nice post.
Yes, they will, which is a big reason why a military solution was the wrong tool for our political goals in the Middle East.
The Islamic fascists and Baathists were butchering civilians for decades before we went on the military offensive to remove them from power in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Back in April 2004, when the war was only a year old, Gen. John Abizaid, said “There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we’re facing here in Iraq today.” I’m going further, and saying that a purely U.S. military solution isn’t and never was appropriate to the problems we were or are facing in Iraq, or the Middle East, or from global terrorism.
No one is suggesting a purely military solution as your next post acknowledges.
Let’s step back from the war for a minute and think about grand strategy, or America’s primary political goals in the Middle East....The grand objective, as near as I can tell, is to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East. And, hey, that sounds like a plan. It even (dare I say it?) sounds like a liberal approach to dealing with Islamic terrorism.
Very good. You are the first one here to admit that this was the political objective in the military liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And you are also right on the money that this is a classical liberal (not a modern leftist isolationist) objective.
In the 1990s the neocons devised a plan to politically restructure the Middle East, beginning with Iraq. By means of “preemptive war,” the U.S. would remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Once this was accomplished, the Good Democracy Fairy would flit about the land, spreading the pixie dust of free market capitalism, and they would all live happily ever after. When the other Middle East nations saw how happy Iraq was, they’d want a visit from the Good Democracy Fairy, too. And if not, well, we have the biggest, baddest motherbleeping military on the planet. No problemo.
Snarky, but essentially correct. However, the neo-conservative idea of fighting totalitarianism by spreading democracy predates the 90s. The neo-cons were responsible to a large extent in forming the Reagan Doctrine, which diplomatically, economically and militarily supported rebel and dissident groups in the Soviet occupied and client states to replace communism with democracy.
But the PNACers were always a little hazy on the “what comes next” part.
That is correct. Once we forced the collapse of the Soviet Empire in the late 80s, the US never had to engage in nation building in the face of a terrorist campaign. The neo cons had hoped that Iraq would pick itself up after the military liberation and carry on like Eastern Europe. Didn't work out that way.
The unpleasant side effects of the White House obsession with Iraq are many. Partly because of a loss of focus on Afghanistan, the bulk of al Qaeda slipped across the Afghanistan border and has morphed into something more dangerous and scattered throughout as many as 90 countries.
Now you are wandering off into fantasy land.
1) We took down Afghanistan with a couple battalions of Special Forces and the Northern Alliance militia. The regular troops we later deployed into Iraq were at their bases during the Afghan Op.
2) Very few al Qaeda got away. Afghanistan was a catastrophe for al Qaeda. The local Afghans loathed the foreign Arab al Qaeda and turned them in by the hundreds to our forces. These are the Arabs the left whine were turned in for bounties and shipped to Gitmo. Only some of the leadership like bin Laden with money to pay bribes managed to escape.
3) Most of the leadership did not escape for long. We have captured or killed all of the original senior leadership except for bin Laden and Zawahiri. Zarqawi was a low level leader of an Al Qaeda allied group during Afghanistan and has now become the most senior field commander by default.
4) Since our military intervention bringing the war against al Qaeda to the Middle East, there has no been a single successful attack against US interests from the Middle East to anywhere else in the world. The attacks against England and Spain were all local cells. al Qaeda does not appear to be able to execute international attacks anymore.
5) Recently translated Iraqi intelligence and Saddam Feyedeen documents confirm that Iraq was actively working with al Qaeda for years before we intervened. Of particular note, one Saddam Feyedeen document reports that Zarqawi and al Qaeda were recruiting Iraqi Sunni to fight our troops in Afghanistan back in 2002.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=prewardocs
6) Iraq was one of the countries where al Qaeda found shelter after their rout from Afghanistan. The Masters of Choas by Linda Robinson has a chapter about Operation Viking Hammer, in which the SF and the Kurd Peshmerga fought and overran an al Qaeda camp in Iraq with an estimated 1500 fighters, many of whom had fled from Afghanistan. When the SF took the camp, they found a travel documents and a chemical weapon lab with chemical protective suits, arabic chemical weapon books and atropine nerve gas antidote.
And Iraq appears to be growing less secure. “The American project in Iraq is unraveling,” says David Ignatius in today’s Washington Post...Let’s see, what were those original political goals again? To counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East? Yeah, we’re doing a heck of a job.
This is patent nonsense. Iraq has a democratic unity government with all sides having a slice of the pie, an army over ten times as large as the Baathist and al al Qaeda militias, an economy which is growing faster than any other in the region and roughly 60% of the country is living in near peace. The terrorist will keep killing for the near future, but there is no chance at all that the terrorists will be able to depose the democratic government which our military liberation allowed to be elected.
Brookings maintains a compendium of Iraq statistics called the Iraq Index. Take a gander at the improvements.
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf
I come from a family with a tradition of American military service going back to the Revolution. So although I was never in the military, I want to think well of our soldiers and Marines and give them lots of benefits of doubts. Many of you will disagree, I’m sure. But I think that if any good comes from our misbegotten Iraq adventure it will be from the hard work and dedication of our troops.
Ah, that explains your very reasonable take on Michael Yon's piece on Haditha. Yon is an unsung hero who has spent months embedded with various units going on foot patrols with them to report the real story on the ground - unlike the press which spends its time in the Green Zone for the most part.
But regarding our principal political goals in the Middle East, a military solution was the wrong solution.
As soon as you can show me a realistic alternative to military intervention which would have removed the Taliban and Baathists mass murdering dictatorships, I might accept that premise.
Even against the terrorists who no doubt would like to strike the U.S. again, the military should be only part of the toolkit. There are times when a military solution is very appropriate — I certainly didn’t mind going after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it’s one thing to send troops after objectives like al Qaeda training camps, and another to send troops to spread American hegemony or to make the world safe for free markets.
Free market democracies do not attack other free market democracies. The ultimate solution to Islamic fascism is the same as it was when we confronted the other totalitarianisms of the 20th Century - remove the totalitarian government through diplomatic, economic and, in the end, usually military power. Once democracy is established, peace has always followed.
Sometimes when I’ve badmouthed the war, some rightie will come along and sneer, What is it about bringing democracy to the Middle East you don’t like? And, y’know, I’m fine with bringing democracy to the Middle East. And if it could be done by means of a military solution, maybe that would be an argument for the Iraq War. But real-world examples of formerly totalitarian nations that were democratized successfully by means of a military intervention by another nation are darn hard to come by.
Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Empire and Nicaragua to name a few.
As I explained in more detail here, Japan after World War II is not a pure example. By a constitution adopted in 1889, Japan had established a democratically elected parliament long before World War II.
The Japaese Diet was a figurehead under the fascist military government. There was no chance that democracy was going to flower in Japan if the fascists had won.
"People For the American Way believes that a healthy democracy is an informed democracy. We set up WikiThePresidency.org to establish a single place for the public to acquire and share information about Executive Branch wrongdoings."
ReplyDeleteDavid Byron:
ReplyDelete[Arne Langsetmo]: True, it is the insurgents that are causing most of the deaths
That's a disgusting, jingoistic and racist comment. How many of the 500,000 Iraqis killed so far do you calculate were not due to the US invasion?
Ummm, did you read what I said, David? I think you'll find you're better appreciated if you don't do this knee-jerk "you're a racist" type of thing at the drop of a hat; I'm about as far from a racist as anyone you'll find here (and I even sumpathise with some of your arguments ... until you start to go overboard on us).
Right now, most of the violent deaths are being caused by partisans/insurgents/religous-whacks/honour-killings/whatever. A sad fact, but nonetheless true. We've unleashed a civil war. As I said, we're responsible for that; it didn't have to happen, and the United States caused it if they didn't coose it outright.
I don't know (because, in part, because under the chaos there it's hard to really get any figures at all, much less reliable ones) whether there's more civilaians dying of poor health/nutrition/starvation/bad water, etc., whatever ... than there were before under the santions which we also played a big part in setting up.
Now please grow up, and stop alienating even those that might agree on you on some things. While the Iraqis have their unbidden cross to bear, you are your own worst enemy.
Cheers,
What government are we fighting to unseat, Bart? You have illustrated the fundamental problem with this whole approach with your own words. If the "Islamic fascists" had set up a government with a military machine in a particular country and had the military capability to alter others' lifestyles, then of course we could go in guns blazing and save the day. But they are a pack of misfits with no capability to achieve anything resembling what you say they are striving to achieve. That's why we are stuck driving around waiting for bombs to explode or isolated misfits with guns to take potshots at our troops. That's not winning a war. It's putting yourself into a military quagmire in which you can't win and can't lose. We've been down that road before.
ReplyDeleteThe Major sez:
ReplyDeleteYou people are scary. When the terrorists win then youll allb e happy. Why dont you go back to russia where you can live in the golag and be happy.
Hey! Who let you out of the cage? Go back to ThinkProgress.org ... we have our own trolls here, and you'll have to take a number and take your place on the waiting list like all polite people....
(*pssst* *sotto voce* You don't need to do that "ranting RW foamer" act here; we have enough people that are ridiculous enough without putting on such an act...)
Cheers,
HWSNBN is just shilling RW propaganda:
ReplyDeleteThe Islamic fascists and Baathists were butchering civilians for decades before we went on the military offensive to remove them from power in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ummm, nope. The Taliban were not very nice people, and they were one fo the few countries in the world that supported the death penalty (like the U.S.), but they were hardly "butchering civilians". True, they gave Osama sanctuary, but even he wasn't killing Afghanis (though he chose to kill civilicans elsewhere).
As for Saddam, his major efforts at mass extermination were while we were rooting for him.
Then there's Rios-Montt, Pinochet, and Somoza, all our buddies....
So cut the crap about our "distaste" for others "butchering civilains"....
Cheers,
HWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteThe neo cons had hoped that Iraq would pick itself up after the military liberation and carry on like Eastern Europe. Didn't work out that way.
Well, they're eedjits. Hell, I'm smarter than them on that count. But they're still working in the maladministration (and it seems that every day one of them goes out the revolving door under a cloud of shame, they bring in another of the folks that have been screwing the pooch for decades (Reich and Negroponte come to mind off the top of my head; how many felons do you really need in your maladministration anyways?).
And this is why the maladministration is making Harding look like a piker and is going for the world record (reflected in polls to, nowadays) as the "worst presidency ever".
Yet HWSNBN still shills for these boneheads despite the manifest disasters (or to use their words, "catastrophic successes"; their explanation as to why Iraq was so f**ked up -- you see, they "succeeded" too well...) of this passel'o'rogues.
At some point, you have to wonder if he's getting paid for thisl it makes no sense otherwise.....
Cheers,
Another excellent post.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Japan, it's amazing that Americans know so little of history of other countries.
On the other hand, it isn't that amazing.
--raj
HWSNBN whistles past the graveyard:
ReplyDelete2) Very few al Qaeda got away. Afghanistan was a catastrophe for al Qaeda....
Ahhhh, yes, that's they kept releasing tapes from al Qaeda and raising the threat level to orange every time they needed a distraction...
... The local Afghans loathed the foreign Arab al Qaeda and turned them in by the hundreds to our forces....
Quite lucrative too, from the reports I've heard. The more, the merrier; captitation is a wonderful thing in foregn affairs ... maybe almost as much fun as decapitation (ans sometimes with the same result). Which is why they released a whole passel of folks from Gitmo (after years there), saying mayne not everyone they rounded up was in fact what they were claimed tobe by the folks waling off with CIA money....
... These are the Arabs the left whine were turned in for bounties and shipped to Gitmo....
Yep. But let's find out, shall we? Let's have some hearings with evidence that ain't "tippity, toppidy state secret, you can't seeeeee it, nya, nya, nya" and see how well we did, OK?
... Only some of the leadership like bin Laden with money to pay bribes managed to escape.
Oh, I dunno, Bart. The Number 3 guy keeps getting away again and again. Because we've caught that sucker some five or six times now, and he still keeps getting "captured" at opportune political times.....
3) Most of the leadership did not escape for long. We have captured or killed all of the original senior leadership except for bin Laden and Zawahiri. Zarqawi was a low level leader of an Al Qaeda allied group during Afghanistan and has now become the most senior field commander by default.
Well, congratulations, Commander Codpiece! You've managed to do precisely what the cricits said you would do: Recruit more people into al Qaeda!
*sheesh* I have to wonder: Does Bart believe all this crap himself, or is he just a completely dishonest SOB. I vote for the latter.
Cheers,
HWSNBN sez:
ReplyDelete5) Recently translated Iraqi intelligence and Saddam Feyedeen documents confirm that Iraq was actively working with al Qaeda for years before we intervened.
This is WhirledNutzDaily/Freeperville bullcrap.
One big hint to this is that the maladministration has made no such claim. Believe me, if they were able to honestly maintain such, they'd do so in a nanosecond. But they know that, unlike the RW blogs and talk shows, if they were to publicly maintain this, they'd get their ass handed to them ... so just let the little sol'jahs like Bart (and the Murdoch/Scaife RW Wurlitzer) pump this crap out for the willing coprophagic dogs amongst the RW foamer battalions, and at least they can keep their base's spirits up....
Pathetic, in a nauseating sort of way.
Cheers,
HWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteFree market democracies do not attack other free market democracies.
Glad that HWSNBN made that clear. all others are fair game, in his ethos, I guess; armed invasion if you're not "our kind".
Of course, "free market" and "democracy" are in the eyes of the beholder ... so if our little kleptocracy installed by a partisan and lawless court isn't seen as the exemplar of such, who are we to complain when the bombs starty raining in, eh? What's good for the goose is good for the gander....
Cheers,
you don't have a clue - maha. Your refusal and/or inability to deal with the core issues behind this illegal war makes your posts the ASCII version of flatulance.
ReplyDeleteI will never understand why those that want change refuse to acknowledge the financial corruption and money trail -- have we been so demonized by the right and MSM that we cannot talk about the only issue we have that is objective and verifiable? These issues adversely affect 95+ percent of Americans!
Counting money and accounting for how it is spent is not hard -- it can be "spun" to hide the truth, but only to those that can not or will not understand accounting gimmicks. It really isn’t hard people, just follow the money trail.
We will talk about "rights" and "values" and who is “moral” all day, but when we start talking about serious financial mismanagement and fraud -- many of these same people say, "SHUT-UP!"
Usually, it’s a variance of "the public doesn't care" or "I don't do numbers" or “its just too complex.” This is so ignorant – we have all been managing our personal finances, often starting when we were kids.
Then we get back on our high horse and start proclaiming that everyone else should see our version of "right" or "wrong." Does anyone really believe that money doesn’t matter?
Call Bush stupid for appointing Bolton, insult his supporters, talk about their "morals" (or more accurately, lack there of).
In the end, they are laughing all the way to the bank -- YES, LAUGHING AT YOU AND ME AND MOST OF THEIR SUPPORTERS TOO!
Real change will come when we discuss the economic issues that underlie everything this administration has done since stealing the 2000 election. OF COURSE BUSH (or more accurately the real powers behind this administration, not chimpy) APPOINTS IRRESPONSIBLE CHOICES TO IMPORTANT OFFICIAL U.S. POSTS!
The obviousness of the theft and fraud is far to great to work with anyone else! THEY NEED AN “INSIDER!”
This country saw real changes in the past century when people were willing to talk about important issues in their economic context. Without this, none of the labor laws, "great society" programs, “progressive taxes”, etc. would exist.
If I am just making more noise for the echo-chamber and talking about abstract platitudes instead of the fundamental, verifiable, and objective facts (yes, we ALL can count money) of the financial mismanagement/fraud of this administration, I am part of the problem too.
HWSNBN exhibits "Republican Flat-line Syndrome":
ReplyDelete[Barbara]: But real-world examples of formerly totalitarian nations that were democratized successfully by means of a military intervention by another nation are darn hard to come by.
[HWSNBN]: Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Empire and Nicaragua to name a few.
Oh, so the U.S. was guilty of international crimes against Nicaragua, eh? Glad that at least one Republican admits it.
As for the "Soviet Empire", maybe HWSNBN is a totally clueless berk and thinks that Reagan was describing fact when he said "bombing begins in five minutes".....
As for the others, I think that Barbara's handled them (and HWSNBN hasn't done anything to dispute her arguments other than spout ridiculous fantasy).
But seriously, folks: You'd think that in a discussion of whether there's other choices other than armed invasion to install "democracies" [if you can keep them ... see if HWSNBN gets the allusion], maybe the example of the Soviet Union (Note to HWSNBN: not "Empire") might give a rational person pause to think that maybe sometimes there are other things that do the trick outside of bombing and military invasion. Which leads to my next disquisition as to what page of the DSM-IV we need to turn to for HWSNBN here....
Cheers,
DavidByron:
ReplyDelete[Arne]: Right now, most of the violent deaths are being caused by partisans/insurgents/religous-whacks/honour-killings/whatever. A sad fact, but nonetheless true.
To me you sound like a Nazi claiming that if there really were any Jews killed in WW2 they probably killed each other.
Right now, you sound like you need to take your lithium and chill (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way; just a helpful way). Please, please, PLEASE, David: I've been pretty easy on you up to now (and I do actually sympathize with some of your points).
You really need to take a deep breath. You antagonize me, and you've lost one of the few potential allies you have here. If that's your intent and purpose, you can just FOAD, OK? At that point, to qoute a person with a whole lot more perceptivity than you, "you are dead to me". IS THAT CLEAR???
Cheers,
You forgot to mention the bombing of Iraq by Clinton during this time. Because of WMD's. Killing civilians.
ReplyDeleteYes, and that may have been counterproductive.
Counterproductive?
So when Clinton commits murder, it's merely "counterproductive"?
David Byron, why oh why are you here attacking America all the time?
However, when you talk about war itself (including America's participation in its wars), I think you are right on the money and have a better emotional understanding of the horrors and atrocities of war than most.
At one time in this country a person who thought killing others was immoral could get a deferment as a conscientious objector.
I suppose nowadays a "conscientious objector" would be called a traitor or a coward.
Shooter...I'd be interested to hear how the world is going to improve while much of it is under dictatorship?
ReplyDeleteClearly a person incapable of understanding that the fictional Col. Nathan Jessup in the play "A Few Good Men" was not a good man, and while we found Saddam Hussein
"grotesque" and clearly a bad man as well, he was that "rough man on the wall with a gun" in that part of the world. Now we are that "rough man on the wall with a gun" and we aren't even native to that part of the world. Read your Orwell. You do not comprehend or understand him at all.
RE: Bart.
ReplyDeleteArmando just banned TallDave at Crossed Swords for a related Republican disorder. Inability to distinguish the difference between the truth and actual facts and opinion or baseless assertions.
At some point you have to acknowledge you are dealing with people incapable of honest, if partisan, debate.
DavidByron said...
ReplyDelete"What's the deal with so-called liberals and Afghanistan? It's like Afghanistan is the muslims you all feel free to hate. Like they are they guys who deserve to be murdered by the American war machine. Phew! A chance to unload on some brown people and make yourselves look suitably "patriotic"? Oops sorry about that Iraq, but at least we gave Afghanistan what it deserved."
It has nothing to do with what you are saying. The facts are that Afghanistan was harboring Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for over three thousand deaths in New York, and refused to turn him over to us. That being said the mission should have been limited to going in and either capturing or killing Osama followed by immediate withdrawal from the country.
Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Empire and Nicaragua to name a few.
ReplyDeleteGermany, Italy, and Japan had had republican governments in the recent past. Japan's was a bit tenuous, but it existed, nonetheless.
And exactly which outside force invaded the Soviet Empire to democratize it? They seem to have done that themselves. Even so, one might question how democratic Russia is at the moment.
Essentially, you just revise facts to fit your ideology, don't you?
Bart,
ReplyDeleteWhen you view all your tools as hammers, everything looks like a nail.
(Hate it when I see someone use an adjustable wrench to bang a screw into something, but it seems to be a great analogy to the way wingnuts think.)
I will never understand why those that want change refuse to acknowledge the financial corruption and money trail
ReplyDeleteGo back and read the part about making a clear distinction between "goals" and "motivations."
To elaborate just a tad, I am not saying that the Bushies' stated, official objectives, past or present, were the real motivation for invading Iraq. It's just what they claim they are trying to accomplish. Maybe some of them actually believe in the objectives, or maybe none of them do.
But those of us pushing for the nation to extract itself from the mess in Iraq should not forget to address these goals and the alleged connection between Iraq and the War on Terra, if only because Kool-Aiders like our friend Bart still believe the goals and think that's why we are in Iraq. Liberals open themselves to the charge that we don't care about fighting terrorism if we ignore the official objectives when we make arguments for getting out of Iraq.
And, as someone who was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, I assure you I am concerned about terrorism.
I think that the grand objective -- to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East -- is a perfectly reasonable grand objective. I'm suggestig the debate should not turn just on whether we stay or leave Iraq, but how to best use our nation's resources to accomplish the grand objective.
In other words, leaving Iraq is not necessarily abandoning the objective. We need to make that clear.
The political power establishment, which includes the pundits and other bobbleheads, often just look at how the war impacts American politics. Sometimes they seem to think that "success" or "failure" in Iraq is something utterly divorced from the accomplishment of anything in particular in Iraq. The only measure of success is whether the public supports the war or not.
Conventional wisdom seems to be that the public would have been just fine with the Iraq War had it been wrapped up more quickly, but that since Americans have no patience with long wars it's losing popular support just because it's dragging on. And, of course, the Bushies turn that around and say falling support for the war is the fault of We, the People. If we believe hard enough and clap our hands, the Good Democracy Fairy will pevail. Someday.
Further, some of the liberal hawks still seem to think we liberals should support military solutions to everything just so we don't look like wusses who are soft on terrorism. That is, IMO, way stupid. It's buying into the rightie blockhead idea that military solutions are the only solutions.
We should not support military solutions for the sake of looking tough. We should support solutions, period, that might actually be effective in accomplishing the grand objective.
Bart said:
ReplyDelete"Very good. You are the first one here to admit that this was the political objective in the military liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq."
Of course you conviently omit the fact that if Bush and the Neo-CONS had stated this objective rather than the "Iraq is an immediate threat that we cannot wait to take care of because the next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud" that their chances of getting approval to go to war in Iraq would have been virtually NIL.
To me you sound like a Nazi claiming that if there really were any Jews killed in WW2 they probably killed each other.
ReplyDeleteI've read in several sources that right now the Shiite militias are slaughtering more people than any other faction or force in Iraq. Some of these Shiite militias actually operate out of the "unity government" Bart is so proud of.
If it makes you feel better, you can argue that the U.S. is responsible for the Shiite militias, since removing Saddam Hussein from power and the subsequent chaos allowed them to happen. Also, the U.S. officially ignored the militias for a long time because, you know, the Shiites were people we had "liberated" from the Baathists. They were supposed to be the "good" Iraqis. By the time the Bush Administration bleepheads running the circus figured out how dangerous the Shiite militias actually were, it was too late to do much about them.
Also, Iran is arming and training a lot of these militias, which is making the whole Iraqi mess even more interesting.
When you view all your tools as hammers, everything looks like a nail.
ReplyDeleteAn oldie but goodie. :-)
This is why the US must bring the war to al Qaeda's home countries in the Middle East. Whenever the al Qaeda leadership leaves its cave to fight, they will eventually die.
ReplyDeleteAbu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed in Air Raid
Jun 8, 7:27 AM (ET)
By PATRICK QUINN
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi and seven aides were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of
Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.
Al-Qaida in Iraq confirmed al-Zarqawi's death and vowed to continue its "holy war," according to a statement posted on a Web site.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060608/D8I40JL00.html
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteBarbara O'B. said...
ReplyDeleteBart: Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Empire and Nicaragua to name a few.
Germany, Italy, and Japan had had republican governments in the recent past. Japan's was a bit tenuous, but it existed, nonetheless.
All of the countries I mentioned as well as Iraq had some form of tenuous democracy in the past which did not last.
The fact is that totalitarian governments had taken over in each of these countries and there was next to no chance any of those fascist or communist regimes would go away on their own in the foreseeable future.
Likewise, there was no chance either the Taliban or the Baathists were going away on their own in the foreseeable future.
And exactly which outside force invaded the Soviet Empire to democratize it?
This is what I posted:
The neo-cons were responsible to a large extent in forming the Reagan Doctrine, which diplomatically, economically and militarily supported rebel and dissident groups in the Soviet occupied and client states to replace communism with democracy.
The Soviet Empire was militarily overextended after its expansion into several new countries during the 70s. Because the Soviets had a large nuclear conventional arsenal, the US pressured them militarily by supporting rebel groups in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and 2-3 other countries while at the same time training and supplying friendly governments under siege by communist guerilla movements the Soviets were committed to support.
At the same time, we were cutting off the Soviet Empire's ability to gain hard cash to pay for their military adventures by trading the Saudis weapons to increase their flow of oil and thereby crashing the price the Soviets could charge for their oil exports. We then moved to cripple Soviet output by inserting comuter viruses into their production software, which reportedly caused a catastrophic fire at a major refinery in Siberia. When the Soviets attempted to make up for the shortfally by shipping natural gas to Europe, we managed to block that deal.
They seem to have done that themselves. Even so, one might question how democratic Russia is at the moment.
Compared to the ghastly communist police state which proceeded, the current limited democracy is heaven on Earth.
Barbara O'B. said...
ReplyDeleteBart: Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Empire and Nicaragua to name a few.
Germany, Italy, and Japan had had republican governments in the recent past. Japan's was a bit tenuous, but it existed, nonetheless.
All of the countries I mentioned as well as Iraq had some form of tenuous democracy in the past which did not last.
The fact is that totalitarian governments had taken over in each of these countries and there was next to no chance any of those fascist or communist regimes would go away on their own in the foreseeable future.
Likewise, there was no chance either the Taliban or the Baathists were going away on their own in the foreseeable future.
And exactly which outside force invaded the Soviet Empire to democratize it?
This is what I posted:
The neo-cons were responsible to a large extent in forming the Reagan Doctrine, which diplomatically, economically and militarily supported rebel and dissident groups in the Soviet occupied and client states to replace communism with democracy.
The Soviet Empire was militarily overextended after its expansion into several new countries during the 70s. Because the Soviets had a large nuclear conventional arsenal, the US militarily pressured them asymmetrically by supporting rebel groups in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and 2-3 other countries while at the same time training and supplying friendly governments under siege by communist guerilla movements the Soviets were committed to support.
At the same time, we were cutting off the Soviet Empire's ability to gain hard cash to pay for their military adventures by trading the Saudis weapons to increase their flow of oil and thereby crashing the price the Soviets could charge for their oil exports. We then moved to cripple Soviet output by inserting comuter viruses into their production software, which reportedly caused a catastrophic fire at a major refinery in Siberia. When the Soviets attempted to make up for the shortfall by shipping natural gas to Europe, we managed to block that deal.
They seem to have done that themselves. Even so, one might question how democratic Russia is at the moment.
Compared to the ghastly communist police state which proceeded, the current limited democracy is heaven on Earth.
This is why the US must bring the war to al Qaeda's home countries in the Middle East. Whenever the al Qaeda leadership leaves its cave to fight, they will eventually die.
ReplyDeleteBart, thou fool, you are stuck in pre-9/11 thinking. Al Qaeda and related jihadist organizations are not tied down to "home countries in the Middle East." It can be anywhere in the globe. The terrorist attacks in London and Madrid were carried out by cells in Europe.
So when we're done with the Middle East, are we gonna invade Europe? There's no end to this.
The Right wants to fight an old-fashioned, John Wayne, land-the-troops-on-the-beach type war, but the enemy we're fighting is not the the old-fashioned type enemy. We're shooting wasps with a shotgun.
It's fine that Zarqawi is, apparently, dead. The shame is that the Bush Administration could have taken him out even before the Iraq invasion, but refused to do so. See also:
http://www.slate.com/id/2100549/
And given the nature of the jihad, soon we'll learn that someone has taken his place.
In short, whoop-dee-doo.
That's the "hope and wish" strategy. You made a great noise about how democracy hasn't been developed by force. How's your plan worked out so far? Has any dictator been nuanced into giving up his throne?
ReplyDeleteWar can topple dictators, but war can't create democratic governments. Ultimately only the people within a nation can create a democratic government. If they are inclined to do so, they will; if not, they won't. Other nations can help, but if the people of that nation aren't pulling together toward the goal, it ain't gonna happen, and no other nation can make it happen.
And we've seen time and time again in history that when one dictator goes down, often another takes his place.
In fact, in days long past, like the 1980s, large parts of the globe turned away from dictatorship and toward democracy, and this trend was partly the result of U.S. foreign policy. If you want to credit Ronald Reagan go ahead, but it was the cumulative result of much post-World War II foreign policy before Reagan as well. The Soviet Union comes to mind, but it was not limited to the Soviet Union. I could probably come up with more examples, but I'm short on time today.
Your problem is that you are looking for a quick fix, a magic bullet, something that you can put on a bumper sticker. You want a solution that can be applied today for a good result tomorrow. The world doesn't work that way.
The dangerous fallacy of much rightie thought is that war is the only answer to foreign policy problems. The victory of freedom in the Cold War should have been a clue that it isn't.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteBarbara O'B. said...
ReplyDeleteBart: This is why the US must bring the war to al Qaeda's home countries in the Middle East. Whenever the al Qaeda leadership leaves its cave to fight, they will eventually die.
Bart, thou fool, you are stuck in pre-9/11 thinking.
Hardly. Pre 9/11 thinking declined the use of military forces on the ground to engage and kill the enemy. The enemy was then free to enjoy several safe sanctuaries in the Middle East and around the world from which they travelled to commit 9/11.
Al Qaeda and related jihadist organizations are not tied down to "home countries in the Middle East."
Al Qaeda is primarily a Sunni Arab movement based in the Middle East. While it has allied itself with similar Islamic fascist movements around the world, the primary movers and shakers are in the Middle East.
The terrorist attacks in London and Madrid were carried out by cells in Europe.
That is correct and I made this point myself. Now that we have taken the war into the Middle East and taken away the sanctuaries the enemy had in the region from which to project terror attacks around the world, al Qaeda has been reduced to small and generally inept home grown cells without any particular training which have been rolled up fairly easily once the home countries paid attention.
So when we're done with the Middle East, are we gonna invade Europe? There's no end to this.
There is no reason to invade any country which is fighting al Qaeada or allowing us to help fight it within their borders. The goal is to deny the enemy sanctuary anywhere in the world.
The Right wants to fight an old-fashioned, John Wayne, land-the-troops-on-the-beach type war, but the enemy we're fighting is not the the old-fashioned type enemy. We're shooting wasps with a shotgun.
No, we are making precision attacks like the kind which decapitated the Taliban and now al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership.
It's fine that Zarqawi is, apparently, dead. The shame is that the Bush Administration could have taken him out even before the Iraq invasion, but refused to do so.
You cannot take out the enemy by remote bombing unless you have boots on the ground identifying the targets and then guiding in the smart weapons.
If we simply plastered the al Qaeda base with bombs like we had done in the past, most of the enemy would have survived and then dispersed to other bases. That would have been exceedingly stupid since we knew where the enemy were and we were coming in anyway because there was zero chance that Saddam would meet his obligations.
barbara said,
ReplyDeleteI think that the grand objective -- to counter Islamic terrorism by enabling a more secure, prosperous, democratic, and pro-western Middle East -- is a perfectly reasonable grand objective.
That's a little bit like saying to the British Empire around their peak years (mid 1800's or so) that to counter Irish Catholic Republicanism Britain should enable a more secure, prosperous, democratic and pro-U.K. Ireland as a perfectly reasonable objective.
Can't we just accept the fact that PNAC objectives, or any other updated disguise of "Manifest Destiny" for that matter, are all not just impossible, but historically ignorant to boot and really should be totally ignored - full stop?
This is why killing Zarqawi and decapitating al Qaeda in Iraq was so critical
ReplyDeleteFearing Zarqawi's fist
"We hope to get rid of al-Qaida, which is a huge burden on the city," said one Sunni sheik, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Unfortunately, Zarqawi's fist is stronger than the Americans'."
He was referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, an umbrella group for many of the foreign and local resistance fighters in Iraq. Local Sunni leaders often insist that the most violent insurgent attacks are by foreign fighters, not Iraqi Sunnis.
In Ramadi, "Zarqawi is the one who is in control," the sheik said. "He kills anyone who goes in and out of the U.S. base. We have stopped meetings with the Americans, because, frankly speaking, we have lost confidence in the U.S. side, as they can't protect us."
Another sheik, Bashir Abdul Qadir al-Kubaisi of the Kubaisat tribe in Ramadi, expressed similar views. "Today, there is no tribal sheik or a citizen who dares to go to the city hall or the U.S. base, because Zarqawi issued a statement ordering his men to kill anyone seen leaving the base or city hall," he said.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/world/story/3D015DB25F005C908625717E001359BF?
This is enormous, but our press will bury it.
I don't see any reason to bag on Horatio Hornblower.
ReplyDeleteHave you read CS Forester's Hornblower books recently? Because they are just... fucking awesome! Seriously, the Hornblower books are so good, so addictive, so compelling that I've never taken more than a day and a half to finish one.
Granted, the Hornblower books aren't quite up to the literary standards of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, but what is?
I opposed the war in Iraq. I oppose the idea of an American empire. I don't think we need to strive for global hegemony. In fact, I'm an old fashioned paleo-conservative isolationist, but I LOVE CS Forester and I can think of few things in this world more pleasureable than spending some time with Horatio Hornblower and Lieutenant Bush.
The Zarqawi termination is overshadowing the news that Iraq just filled its three national security government jobs with a Shia, Sunni and Kurd agreeable to all sides.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060800152_pf.html
This takes away another excuse for starting a civil war.
Good news day.
"This is enormous, but our press will bury it."
ReplyDeleteGive me a break. The death of Zarqawi was the lead story on the Yahoo home page and it will be huge news everywhere else.
gogiggs:
ReplyDeleteI was wrong and glad of it. The press is actually headlining this. Good for them.
The TV is showing a photo of Zarqawi's body and Iraqis literally dancing in the streets.
barbara o'b:
ReplyDelete[re HWSNBN]: Essentially, you just revise facts to fit your ideology, don't you?
I vote for "make up". This last example ("the Soviet Empire") should make that apparent.
Discourse with the troll is pointless when he has such a "tool" in his rhetorical armamentarium, and we've (rightfully) abjured such. Actual rational discourse with the troll under such circumstances is, obviously, impossible.
While leaves the only really appropriate response, if any, to be ridicule and derision ... applied liberally. ;-)
Cheers,
barbara o'b:
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel better, you can argue that the U.S. is responsible for the Shiite militias, since removing Saddam Hussein from power and the subsequent chaos allowed them to happen.
And here I'd even tend to agree with DB that the U.S. is at least indirectly responsible (even if not morally culpable in the sense of wanting this result). As Powell pointed out, "you broke it, you bought it". It is we who unleashed the Shi'ite militias (and the others, as well as al Qaeda). You could make a case that the U.S. is morally culpable, seeing as this was a perfectly forseeable (and arguable even a probable) consequence of the invasion. To modify the "Underpants Gnome" script: Not "2). ???", but rather "2). All hell breaks loose".
Cheers,
That's a little bit like saying to the British Empire around their peak years (mid 1800's or so) that to counter Irish Catholic Republicanism Britain should enable a more secure, prosperous, democratic and pro-U.K. Ireland as a perfectly reasonable objective.
ReplyDeleteIt might have been had they done it. Instead they sat and watched a million Irish starve in the Famine without bothering to lift a finger. And laws regarding Catholics were hideously bigoted. Thus, Irish republicanism. More liberal policies on the part of the British might well have achieved a different outcome.
Can't we just accept the fact that PNAC objectives, or any other updated disguise of "Manifest Destiny" for that matter, are all not just impossible, but historically ignorant to boot and really should be totally ignored - full stop?
I don't like knee-jerk reactions in any direction. I don't see anything wrong with the grand objective as I worded it. It isn't an imperialist objective as worded, although it could become so if imperialists tried to carry it out. It's pretty much the same grand objective of a lot of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and even earlier. This is not to say that in the past it was always carried through smartly, or that it wasn't corrupted by financial interests, or that the U.S. also didn't prop up rightwing dictators to counter the spread of communism.
The devil is in the details, and which pockets the appropriations are disappearing into. Always.
If we decide the objective is wrong, we really ought to think up another one to suggest in its place. You are welcome to give it a shot. However, if we sit around waiting for someone to think up a policy that's incorruptible we gonna be sittin' for a while.
Bart said...
ReplyDelete"This is why the US must bring the war to al Qaeda's home countries in the Middle East. Whenever the al Qaeda leadership leaves its cave to fight, they will eventually die.
Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed in Air Raid"
We weren't hunting Al Zarqawi until after we invaded Iraq Bart. In fact we didn't even know of his existence until that time.
BTW where is Osama bin Laden Bart? The man actually responsible for over three thousand deaths on 9/11 Oh yeah, that's right, he got away. Prolly cause we had to go to Iraq to hunt Al Zarqawi that we didn't know existed.
shooter242:
ReplyDeleteConsider that the political objectives were secondary or less to the desire to secure Iraq and any WMD's.
Typo. Let me fix that:
"Consider that the political objectives were secondary or less to audacious lies and outright hallucinations."
There. That's better. Not sure your "argument" paints the maladministration in any better light, though.
Cheers,
Iraqis literally dancing in the streets.
ReplyDeleteThat's grand. And if, say, a month from now there has been any measurable difference in what's happening in Iraq as a result, I'll eat my sneakers.
Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed in Air Raid
ReplyDeleteIF reports are correct. This would be a good thing.
Before the RW gets all giddy about this, though, I'd point out that the maladministration had a chance to strike at Zarqawi before the Iraq war, but passed on it, preferring instead to push for war against Saddam. Just another in a long string of bad decisions, in part due to the political machinations of the PNAC type people (you know, the "fu*king stoopidest guy[s] on the face of the planet") who wanted to "get their war on".
Cheers,
There is far to much money to be made to proclaim that the pro war right is in its "last throes".
ReplyDeleteYou have successfully avoided all the important issues - congratulations, moron.
oops! Wrong thread!
ReplyDeleteBTW, has Bush trotted out and declared we've turned a corner yet? I've been too busy to watch the news.
ReplyDeleteHWSNBN:
ReplyDeleteThe neo-cons were responsible to a large extent in forming the Reagan Doctrine, which diplomatically, economically and militarily supported rebel and dissident groups in the Soviet occupied and client states to replace communism with democracy.
And thus Afghanistan (hell, that one worked like a charm, eh?), Chechnya, Uzbekistan, etc.
But this is post hoc ergo promper hoc (not to mention pretty much the complete opposite of using military force to invade a country and install your own "democracy" at gun-point, which is what the maladministration attempted to do in Iraq).
Then there's the little lie here about what the PNAC (and progenitor RW) folks were arguing for; "Dr. Strangelove" Kahn and Wohlstetter were hardly "containment" doves. The PNAC people don't do "nuance".
Cheers,
barbara o'b:
ReplyDeleteIn fact, in days long past, like the 1980s, large parts of the globe turned away from dictatorship and toward democracy, and this trend was partly the result of U.S. foreign policy....
Not quite. The U.S. actively suppressed democracy when it suited their purpose of "fighting commies" and/or "protecting" U.S. business interests. Read Stephen Kinzer's "All The Shah's Men" for one such example of our wonderful policy in this respect (and just one more great example of how the "unintended consequences" ... such as Iraq ... are the gifts that keep on giving and giving and giving).
Cheers,
HWSNBN makes a typo:
ReplyDeleteAl Qaeda is primarily a Sunni Arab movement based in the Middle East. While it has allied itself with similar Islamic fascist movements around the world, the primary movers and shakers are in the Middle East.
Ummm, IC he misspelled "Saudi Arabia" there.
But FWIW, Dubya's managed to spread the "good will" around, kind of like blowing up a bottle of anthrax to destroy it.....
Cheers,
HWSNBN is floridly psychotic:
ReplyDelete[Barbara O'B]: It's fine that Zarqawi is, apparently, dead. The shame is that the Bush Administration could have taken him out even before the Iraq invasion, but refused to do so.
You cannot take out the enemy by remote bombing unless you have boots on the ground identifying the targets and then guiding in the smart weapons.
... sez HWSNBN, after an airstrike (apparently) killed Zarqawi.
If we simply plastered the al Qaeda base with bombs like we had done in the past, most of the enemy would have survived and then dispersed to other bases.
... sez HWSNBN, arguing against the ultimate effectiveness of the very policy he's celebrating.
But I'd note that some success is better than none at all, and the latter's what we had WRT Zarqawi (at the cost of many lives) for over three years.
HWSNBN will defend the maladministration to his dying breath, no matter how badly they screwed the pooch. Too bad he won't go and defend the poor troops that are still hunkered down in bases over in the Elysian fields of Iraq. They could use a good "point man" ... or a "staked goat", as the case may be.
Cheers,
David Byron:
ReplyDelete[Arne]: and I do actually sympathize with some of your points
I am wondering what points those could possibly be. To recap: your country has exterminated about 2 million Iraqis (including before the war back to the first war) in a country of about (now) 25 million....
What ever gave you the idea I approved of that?
... I would think that anyone who genuinely sympathised with some of my points would realise that it was probably not the most stellar idea in the whole world to start saying the Iraqi victims of American genocide were __mostly__ just killed by each other.
Note the use of the word "violent", and the present tense. Nowadays, it's true that a good part of the violence is inflicted by Iraqis on other Iraqis. Now, as I stated above, I hold the U.S. responsible for f*cking things up there royally and allowing such a situation to devolve (not to limit any other culpability WRT bombing infrastructure, sanctions, lack of medicine, etc.). But the people pulling the trigger on the folks abducted from buses are largely Iraqi; what we have is a nascent civil war ... of our own manufacture, but nonetheless a civil war.
This is a form of holocaust denial, wouldn't you say?
Ummm, no. Please don't presume to think for me. And I'd say you'd be best advised not to slander me in such a way.
Cheers,
David Byron:
ReplyDeleteYou do me no favours by allowing me to carry on without checks and balances as it were.
Wasn't sure there were and "checks and balances". You seem to attack even those that mildly criticise you. It doesn't seem to be worth it to explain how we agree and how we differ, because from past evidence, you'd just jump on me for the points of difference. I don't think you and I can ever reach a consensus on all ideas noble and grand, and any attempt in that direction is, the way I see it, simply fruitless and unpleasant.
Cheers,
It occurs to me that all the people who signed the PNAC document should be tried like the German leaders at Nuremberg:
ReplyDeleteCount 1: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War. Yep, everyone who signed.
Count 2: Crimes Against the Peace. Yep, everyone who signed.
Count 3: War Crimes. No. But Cheney and Rumsfeld could be charged with this.
Count 4: Crimes Against Humanity. No. Not yet anyway.
David Byron:
ReplyDelete[Arne]: You could make a case that the U.S. is morally culpable, seeing as this was a perfectly forseeable (and arguable even a probable) consequence of the invasion.
And how could you make any case the other way Arne?
There is the old saying that one shouldn't presume malice when stoopidity is sufficient. And the maladministration has shown stoopidity in spades (as have their enablers and sycophants as is demonstrated repeatedly here and elsewhere). Absent any other evidence, here stoopidity (or to be frank, total cluelessnes) may be sufficient (particularly in the face of repeated warnings by lots of sane people that such was almost assuredly going to happen). You have people like even Tommy Franks referring to Douglas Feith as the "f*cking stoopidest guy on the face of the planet", and Feith was the one behind a lot of the ... ummm, "planning".
But I will grant that the PNAC crowd has shown enough dishonesty and malice so far such that this almost assuredly plays a part in the calculations.
Cheers,
shooter242:
ReplyDeleteYou can pooh-pooh the election turnouts if you like, but that sure looks like the people are pulling together toward the goal. If we leave, they are doomed to be mullahed. Is that preferable to you?
Huh? Hate to say it, but if they're "doomed to be mullahed" if we leave, then they're "doomed to be mullahed" when we leave, absent some great change in political and social sentiment there (shich would likely take decades). I'd point out that Iran is a nominal democracy, yet a theocratic one. We let Iraq be a "democracy", we will likely find the same thing. Only problem there is that in Iraq, we'd have two or three competing factions as to which theocracy gets to head the gummint ... and long-standing animosities that will be hard to bury. Things aren't all that hopeful.
Cheers,
mltHey, davidbyron, I'm curious. What exactly is it that you have stuck up your butt? Other than that you hate the Bushies and their crimes, and want to see them hang. I do too, but I don't follow your angry nitpicking about numbers of Iraqi dead that no one reports because THE DATA DO NOT EXIST.
ReplyDeleteCan you summarize?
And now how about some sources with credibility? How about some sources that caclulate how many are killed overall and how many killed by each source. Got any of those?
ReplyDeleteNobody has that kind of data, but for more on the Shiite militias, see "Iranian-backed militia groups take control of much of southern Iraq" by Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder, and "THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; In Shadows, Armed Groups Propel Iraq Toward Chaos" by Dexter Filkins, New York Times, May 24, 2006.
From the Lasseter article:
Among U.S. officials’ missteps:
_White House and Pentagon officials ignored a stream of warnings from American intelligence agencies about the mounting danger posed by two Shiite militias, the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army. The Badr Organization is the armed wing of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the most powerful Shiite political faction in the country; the Mahdi Army is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
_A group of high-ranking Iraqis appointed in 2004 to persuade militia leaders to disband their groups received no funding and was allowed to wither away.
_U.S. diplomats in Baghdad were slow to recognize that the majority Shiite population’s ascent to political power would expand rather than diminish militia activity. Many believed that the groups’ members would retire or would be integrated into the security forces without significant problems.
_Acting against the Shiite militias would have undercut the administration’s arguments that foreign terrorists and holdovers from Saddam Hussein’s regime were the problem in Iraq. It also would have raised doubts about the administration’s reliance on training largely Shiite security forces to replace U.S. troops in Iraq.
The American military’s inability to curb the Sunni insurgency, in part because U.S. troops are spread thin in Iraq, also played a role. As the insurgency continued to kill Shiite civilians, Shiites came to see the militias as their only reliable means of protection.
In the weeks since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra, the militias and their allies in the Interior Ministry are thought to have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis, who’ve been shot, hanged or tortured.
David Byron is so, so correct.
ReplyDeleteThis invasion is so, so terrible.
Keep speaking out David. You have a lot of support.
Like the alchemists of the Middle Ages who believed that possessing the philosopher's stone would allow them to transumute base metals into gold, I've noticed some of the more fanatical war supporters are convinced that there exists some unnamed series of documents lurking in the former Iraqi intelligence ministry that will transform a profound military debacle into a legitimate WWII-style endeavor.
ReplyDeleteTo hear them tell it, one fine day US officials will unearth this sacred dossier (akin to the "Yagyu Letters" in the "Lone Wolf and Cub" samurai movies) that will answer all of the war's burning questions.
Blueprints will be located for the underground tunnel that allowed Saddam's substantial nuclear assets to be spirited away
to Syria; A series of communiques will reveal French logistical support for the insurgency; E-mails from OBL's aol account will disclose the 9/11 link between Iraq and Al Qaeda; etc.etc.etc.
And here's the best part: you can NEVER prove a negative so there will ALWAYS be war supporters...
Davidbyron, Barbara and Arne are different people. Why don't you clarify what it is that you are railing about/for/against?
ReplyDeleteI personally would guess that more Iraqis are now dead from US attacks than from Iraqi attacks. But give it time, and that will stop being true, between the car/suicide bombings and the death squads.
What we know is that the US kills civilians and so do the insurgents and the Shiite militias. And we know that were it not for the invasion, none of these people would be dying at all except in occasional Saddamite suppressions.
What's your point?