Training

What Harold Meyerson said:

One of the mysteries of the current discussion of how best to get out of Iraq is that so many otherwise clear-eyed critics of administration policy say we should withdraw our combat troops but leave units behind to train Iraqi forces. As rational policy, it's vastly preferable to leaving combat forces there as well, but it leaves unanswered the question of which Iraqi forces, exactly, we should train. Those of the current Shiite-dominated Nouri al-Maliki government, which has employed Shiite forces to terrorize Sunni areas? What exactly would we train these forces to do? Be more tolerant of the Sunnis? Would that we could, and would that we could train Sunnis to be more tolerant of the Shiites, but these are matters not subject to training.

I think there's a kind of remarkable derangement among the sort of people -- in both parties -- who imagine themselves running the country's foreign policy that makes it impossible for them to ever just admit that situations arise where the United States can't be involved in a useful way. It's vanity, maybe, or just timidity -- perhaps a desire to distance oneself from the damn dirty hippies -- but while this is merely an annoying trait in a opposition party, it's going to be potentially deadly if the Democrats actually find themselves in the White House.

Comments

every once in a while, we're reminded of just how young matthew is.

yes, sport, that kind of remarkable derangement has existed for a very long time. if you're writing a book about foreign policy, maybe you better sharpen up your thinking about american exceptionalism and the role it plays in american foreign policy.

Posted by howard | May 30, 2007 10:40 AM

"...Those of the current Shiite-dominated Nouri al-Maliki government, which has employed Shiite forces to terrorize Sunni areas?"

I thought I'd been following along pretty closely, but I somehow missed this. What exactly is he referring to? I had the naive assumption that Iraqi soldiers who engaged in Sunni-Shiite violence did so in their spare time, rather than as part of the job.

Posted by James Gary | May 30, 2007 11:27 AM

Does it really matter all that much when they do their cleansing? I personally don't think so.

Posted by tequila | May 30, 2007 11:33 AM

I had the naive assumption that Iraqi soldiers who engaged in Sunni-Shiite violence did so in their spare time, rather than as part of the job.

"Naive" doesn't even start to cover it, James.

Posted by SqueakyRat | May 30, 2007 11:34 AM

James, try Googling "Bayan Jabr."

Posted by BruceR | May 30, 2007 11:34 AM

What Howard wrote; and an emphasis on our wish to colonize Iraq and the insanity of that wish.

Posted by Jennifer | May 30, 2007 11:36 AM

Not combat forces but "trainers". For most of the early years of the Vietnam war we didn't have combat forces either, just "advisors".

Posted by snoey | May 30, 2007 11:46 AM

There were 10 Americans killed yesterday, in this horrible surgy month of killing and wounding, but amoral insane foreign policy specialists would keep us in Iraq forever.

Posted by Jennifer | May 30, 2007 11:50 AM

This is all part of the process of coming to terms with the size of the disaster. It is of a piece with "I don't think we should withdraw now, but should do it in six months" and "We should only keep troops there to fight terrorists."

As much as they now realize the decision to go to war was monumentaly ghastly and stupid, Americans are not yet ready to admit that we have well and truly lost this venture. Thus, things like this. There will be more.

Dipsop

Posted by James Montgomery | May 30, 2007 11:53 AM

If Lincoln had just better trained southern troops we could have avoided the entire Civil War.

Posted by Max | May 30, 2007 12:03 PM

Vanity is the right word for it. But it's the collective vanity of the American public, carefully stroked by political leaders for more than a century. American politicians try to distance themselves from the damn dirty hippies, because frat boy poseurs with socks stuffed down the pants of their flight suits have a history of winning elections. We all love to blame the politicians, but the primary blame lies with the voters.

Nationalism is a powerful force in politics, and the myth of American exceptionalism isn't going to fade away any time soon.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 30, 2007 12:04 PM

Dozens of uniformed armed men march to a government building and take 5 British prisoners and march away. Who are we training, and how and for what and why?

Posted by Jennifer | May 30, 2007 12:05 PM

Jennifer - the kidnapping of the British civilians is reminiscent of the 'kidnapping' of the British sailors. Now, as I remember, the warmongers were at at a boil about that. They were a rabies bacillus away from bombing Teheran, at least figuratively. The strain of the warrior mood was so hard on John Derbyshire that, reportedly, he had a hernia. Interestingly, in this case however - with the surge working so well and all - I suppose they will just have to pretend it didn't happen. Thus, the difference in point size and placement of the headlines about the sailors in the Washington Post and those about the British contractors.

Posted by roger | May 30, 2007 12:58 PM

1) Why does no one in the Democratic Party -- not one Senator -- stand up and challenge our intervention in countries on the other side of the world?

Why does no one point out that this is NOT in the interests of the American people --only in the interests of special interest groups like Big Oil and the Israel Lobby?

2)Why does no one point out that it is the height of tyranny ,not dictatorship , for one country to think that it can micromanage the affairs of countries on the other side of the world? To think that it can prescribe not only the form of government but can also write the constitution of a foreign country, use covert funding and CIA to install the leaders of a foreign country, and dictate that foreign country's culture?

That is the act of a malign hegemon ruling a global empire , not the act of a democratic republic.

3) During WWII we were prepared to turn western Europe into a pile of radioactive ashes in order to defeat such a threat. During the Cold War, we were prepared to turn the Soviet Union into a pile of radioactive ashes to avoid becoming enslaved by such a threat.

Why do we think that the other major nations of the world are not making similar preparations to deal with what the US government is becoming?

Posted by Don Williams | May 30, 2007 2:09 PM

OK, Roger and Don.

Posted by Jennifer | May 30, 2007 2:37 PM