Well, not really. But I'll say this for his contrarian take on disbanding Iraq's army -- I bet he's right that if Bremer had kept the army in place, I bet that would have led to a bloody fiasco in much the way that disbanding it led to, well, a bloody fiasco. The point is: Bloody fiasco either way. If Hitchens (or, for that matter, Paul Bremer) would just admit that the whole enterprise of the war was incredibly ill-advised then they'd be much better-positioned to question the judgment of the second-guessers on this particular point.
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Hitchens Is Making Sense
17 Sep 2007 02:51 pm
Comments (37)
Hitchens makes some good points, but like seemingly everyone else he ignores the third possible decision back then: Instead of putting the old Iraqi Army back in its old position, or disbanding it, we could have reconstituted it and paid the troops to sit out in the desert somewhere in the middle of nowhere while we trained a new army. This would have kept them off the streets.
Eventually, after the Iraqi government was elected, we could have let that government decide which troops from the old Iraqi Army it wanted to incorporate in the new one, and which it wanted to permanently bar.
Hitchens has too much skin in this game to pull out. He's gotta go down with the ship. He's gurgling already.
I agree with HH's assessment here.
The biggest mistake was disbanding the army without taking into consideration what a group of recently laid-off soldiers would do with their newly found free time. Especially given that they were no longer getting paychecks. That was a boneheaded move that anyone, even without a fancy degree, should have been able to see was a bad idea.
You're right that the decision to invade was the ur-mistake, but I disagree about the army.
As this prewar article put it, "The army is the only force that can ensure the integrity of the Iraqi state. Relatively speaking, it is not as tainted by corruption or a legacy of oppression as the other two power centers. Moreover, the masses find it easier to identify with the army, which they see as a victim of Saddam's grandiose dreams. The fact that many families lost sons in his futile wars increases rather than decreases popular identification with the army."
US military and diplomatic experts tended to share this view; the decision to disband the army was made by the ignorant ideologues of the administration, who always had final say over everything.
This was a genuinely bad decision, worse than the alternative.
"Instead of putting the old Iraqi Army back in its old position, or disbanding it, we could have reconstituted it and paid the troops to sit out in the desert somewhere in the middle of nowhere while we trained a new army."
Right, and when the Shiite government informed the army, "thanks, but no thanks; no more paychecks for you," I'm sure the old army would have happily handed in its weapons and cheerfully accepted its new Shiite masters.
A large, well-armed Iraqi military could act to curb US activity in Iraq. You can't be a hegemon without a total monopoly of force.
Not only that. Iraq is surrounded by hostile neighbors - how long could a defanged army-less Iraq possibly survive on its own? Disbanding the army ensured that whatever Iraqi elite took power would be dependent on the US to protect Iraqi sovereignty.
For that reason alone, I think the Iraqi government would be sincerely upset with a US departure since the Iraqi elite mostly prefer US hegemony to Iranian hegemony.
We should have gotten rid of the higher-level officers who were genuine Baathists and kept the majority of the forces intact instead of putting 100,000 trained, armed, pissed-off people on the street.
I've long had my doubts of the fashionable notion that the two fatal mistakes of the occupation were disbanding the Iraqi Army and over zealous de-Bathification. I don't come at it from Hitchens' perspective, though.
I think the pressure to take both of these actions was likely from internal Iraqi political forces--possibly as channeled through exile leaders such as Chalabi. The Shia were not going to sit and allow what they saw as institutions of Sunni dominance continue under the new regime. In all likelihood we would have had an earlier and more aggressive insurgency, only from the Shia instead of the Sunni if we had left the Iraqi Army intact and not pursued de-Bathification vigorously. The Shia community would have viewed us as profoundly illegitimate.
The point is, once we invaded and occupied Iraq we had a lot of options on how to proceed--every one of them bad. Our only reasonable course of action would have been not to invade in the first place.
Hitchens also trots out this tire old horse:
Almost all anti-war critiques proceed from the weird assumption that Iraq, if left alone, would have managed itself better under a combination of Saddam plus sanctions than if de-Baathified.
I suppose then any war of invasion and occupation is justifies if the US thinks it can do a better job of managing another nation than that nation's current government. Depending on how "managed itself" is defined, the assumption Hitchens attributes to all anti-war critiques might certainly be correct. And if we look to the future of an Iraq not occupied by American troops, we can wonder how well we can expect the new Iraq to fare in the important craft of self-management.
Actually, it was closer to 400,000 let go.
In 1945 Germany, approximately 2 million Germans remained in uniform, working in labour battalions under Allied command through the first summer of occupation. That number was steadily reduced until all non-war criminal detainee status was nullified two years later. Seemed to work.
I agree with both Rob Mac & croatoan: we shouldn't ignore the internal pressures coming from Shia & Kurds to dissolve the Iraqi army (& for de-Baathification), which is why, as Croatoan says, the best move would have been to remove those Iraqi army officers responsible for war crimes and keep the rest of the forces intact. I think the same approach would have made sense with de-Baathification; hold a process that would try those Iraqi officials responsible for the worst crimes but otherwise try to keep the rest of the government intact. But all this would have required a level of creativity that's difficult to achieve in any wartime situation, let alone in an environment as incompetent as the Bush Administration.
I do think Hitchens has a valid point about antiwar hypocrisy (I say this as an antiwar liberal myself), in that we should surely blasting Bush if he had kept the Iraqi army inact.
Of all the 'would haves' in this thread Matthew's is the best: it would have been better to not invade.
Moreover, the masses find it easier to identify with the army, which they see as a victim of Saddam's grandiose dreams. The fact that many families lost sons in his futile wars increases rather than decreases popular identification with the army."
US military and diplomatic experts tended to share this view; the decision to disband the army was made by the ignorant ideologues of the administration, who always had final say over everything.
This was a genuinely bad decision, worse than the alternative.
Posted by Elvis Elvisberg
Good post.
The military was the center of Iraqi national pride. It was abused by Ba'athist leaders under Saddam, but it was seen as absolutely necessary not just by Sunnis, but by other Iraqi sects to some degree because Iraq was surrounded by powers that would love to come in and meddle. Shiite Arabs had no problem fighting Shiite Persians in the Iran-Iraq War and a little discussed fact of the Kuwait invasion was that it was extremely popular with the Shia, who wanted a nice chunk of additional rich terrtory 700 miles away from where Iraq's Sunnis lived.
When Germans, Americans, Brits, invaded and occupied countries in the past, they mostly had the brains to keep local troops and police intact. They kept the municipal leadership structure in place.
At the end of WWII, the situation was this: Americans kept Nazi and Jap militarist leadership in place under their command to carry out occupation tasks. The Gestapo and Kempetai (German and Jap state police variants of the Muquabarat) plus local police stations continued to function under occupier command and provided critical intelligence - "besides you guys, who and where are the other bad guys?". The militaries were assembled with officers and NCOs under US direction and paid for mustering, put to work on post-war rebuilding, and slowly de-mustered out as jobs were found. And as de-Nazification and de-Shinto Militarization slowly proceeded.
We did not put hundreds of thousands of jobless, unpaid, SS and Japanese Special Landing Forces with easy access to weapons - out on the street. We did not destroy the police structure. We did not wipe out civil government needed to make a modern state function.
What the two "Bremer Decisions" did was create a massive power vacuum and hundreds of thousands of angry Sunnis with no jobs, no pay, and with nothing to lose. And as part of that, we disbanded the secret police, a move every bit as consequential as the disbanding of the military and civil structure....without the Muquabarat, we were blind to most intelligence of what was happening in Iraq starting in the Fall of 2003.
And Bush-Sharansky sunny optimism about the noble purple-fingered freedom-lovers creating an instant democracy was to fix all that.
Not only didn't they, but when we found the Shiite Parties about as dysfunctional as Saddam, they had the veneer of the legitimacy of being elected and the clueless cretin in the White House was painted in a corner...
"Stay the course" then became operative.
What a fiasco.
I would give some limited agreement with Hitchens' piece on two grounds. First, the disbanding of the Army, widely regarded as a terrible blunder only a complete idiot could perform, is not a point that cannot be debated, even in retrospect. Second, there are indeed journalists and people who, assuming we had worked with former Ba'athists, would have taken the opportunity to slam Bush anyway.
That said, I do think we should have left the Iraqi Army in place. Would this have angered Shi'ia and Kurds? Yes, it probably would, but (as Peter H said) those grievances could be addressed by trying officers who were responsible for war crimes, and by gradually assimilating Shi'ia and Kurds into the institution.
And another thing: What about the alternatives? There are none really. When you begin a nation-building exercise with a few hundred thousand less troops than sound doctrine and command sense demands, then that does indeed create - to Borrow a phrase from bush - a "vacuum".
As to what fills that vacuum, there are only two possibilities
1. local militias
2. a semi-tainted National Military
So people who, like Hitchens, supported the war must make a decision between 1 and 2.
Hitchens nails it:
"Take a moment to imagine what would have been written in the liberal press had the old military class been preserved and utilized to "stabilize" Iraq. I can write the headlines for you: "Baathist War Criminal Gets Second Career as American Employee"; "Once-Wanted Man, Brigadier Kamal Now Shares Jokes With 82nd Airborne"; "Kurds and Shiites Say: What Regime Change?"; "From Basra to Kirkuk, America Brings Saddamism Without Saddam." And, if you like, I can add the names of the reporters who would have written the stories."
Many war critic's minds have been warped by Bush-hate.
Chris Ford:
"The militaries were assembled with officers and NCOs under US direction and paid for mustering, put to work on post-war rebuilding, and slowly de-mustered out as jobs were found. And as de-Nazification and de-Shinto Militarization slowly proceeded."
Actually the lack of de-Nazification is a shameful episode in America's history. I'm surprised Chris Ford isn't aware of this, but then perhaps if his only aim is to tar Bush, it's inconvenient historical fact. But then, the Cold War was on, and the Commies were the baddies now.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm
Washington D.C., February 4, 2005 - Today the National Security Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary history of the U.S government's relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals. The use of Gehlen's group, according to the CIA history, Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49, was a "double edged sword" that "boosted the Warsaw Pact's propaganda efforts" and "suffered devastating penetrations by the KGB."
And I have yet to read a response to Hitchens's point here.
"However, I think it stands to the credit of the United States that it did not insult the population by grabbing and using the existing reins of repression, just as it stands to our credit that we adopted de-Baathification, or, in other words, the policy of demolishing the rule of a corrupt and fascistic party. People say that the poor management of this issue led to an insurgency from quarters that would have hated a change of regime from whichever source it had come. Better that than a revolt against us from the people who detested the whole Saddamist system to begin with—the majority, lest we forget."
War critics just spin it as hard as they can and it's just not convinicing.
the lack of de-Nazification is a shameful episode in America's history.
Not at all. In retrospect our refusal to "go medieval" on Germany and seek wholesale vengeance against every Nazi party member was probably one of the wiser things we ever did. It is a sad fact that most of the people best positioned to run the German state effectively had been Nazi party members. I'm well aware of the far leftist critiques that claimed the Bundesrepublik simply Naziism in democratic clothing, but oddly enough the Bundesrepublik turned out to be much more tolerant of human rights and a greater force for good in the world than the GDR, where Nazis were more thoroughly purged (and sent to labor camps or shot).
Of course, it was a huge mistake to disband the Iraqi army. Hitchens and Chalabi represent the opinion of, oh, I'd say 0.01 percent of the Iraqi population as far as what should have happened in Iraq - that is approximately the amount of votes Chalabi accrued in the Iraqi election of 2005.
However, one mistake comes out of the other. The Iraqi army needed to be processed, just as - as Bruce points out - the German army was. To do that properly, you would have to have about twice the soldiers than were thrown into Iraq in 2003. The numbers that Shinseki threw around - unlike those thrown about by Rumsfeld - did not come out of his asshole. Keeping the army going and the police structure intact was, of course, the only way to keep Iraq from spiraling out of control.
Hitchens has an almost perfect record of idiocy on Iraq, but I can see why you like this position, Matt. You have this odd idea that the Iraq occupation was like the curse of the House of Usher - all outcomes would have been the same. I think this is some weird kind of backlash from having supported the invasion in the first place. It isn't true. The people who pay the price for that kind of policy belief are the Iraqis. Other policies really could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Your war support was more than a bad call - it was delusional. But you have learned a lot from it. The most important thing to learn, however, is that you can't predict outcomes, but you can make predictions about structures. The easy prediction about the ridiculous and criminally negligent way that the U.S. went into Iraq is that it would fail for structural reasons. Those reasons are symbolized by people like Chalabi and Bremer and Rumsfeld. Chalabi, whose idea was that the U.S. should occupy a country and scare off its middle and professional class through de-Ba'athification (so that he and his mafia associates could seize power); Bremer, who added hundreds of thousands of unsecured and unlocated armed men to the pool of unemployed that was already over 50 percent, in one stroke destroying Iraq's security and giving the insurgents an armed, motivated force; and Rumsfeld, who wanted to experiment on cheap little wars - Iraq being the first in what he hoped would be a string of them. All of them should be tried and jailed. In a sane country, they would be.
"However, I think it stands to the credit of the United States that it did not insult the population by grabbing and using the existing reins of repression, just as it stands to our credit that we adopted de-Baathification, or, in other words, the policy of demolishing the rule of a corrupt and fascistic party. People say that the poor management of this issue led to an insurgency from quarters that would have hated a change of regime from whichever source it had come. Better that than a revolt against us from the people who detested the whole Saddamist system to begin with—the majority, lest we forget."
Peter:
I was not under the impression that our job was to confront every SINGLE point Hitchens made in this article, just as I was not under the impression that it was your job to troll the internet defending every thing the man says. (and, having read all and admired most of his writing, I can safely say he doesn’t need your held)
My disagreement in Hitchens point here lies more in practice than in principle. In principle, I agree that to overthrow a brutally oppressive regime, only to leave the basic instruments of oppression in place, is not something the United States should be doing as its modus operandi. I would agree further that such an action would – again, in principle – constitute an “insult to the population”.
What Hitchens does not address here, or indeed in most of his writing about Iraq, is the critical fact that WHAT IS PRACTICAL is not always WHAT IS IDEAL. Yes – I would like to see a complete end to all traces of Ba’athist tyranny or any other kind. But would I accomplish this noble feat at the expense of – say – allowing an entire country to dissolve into tribal, sectarian chaos? I don’t think I would, but would you? Would you exchange the stable Tyranny of Saddam for the chaotic tyrannies of Sadr and the Badr Brigade? Or – to put it more pointedly – would you be more insulted by one Ba’athist crook remaining in power, and escaping his due justice, than you would be some militia goons coming to your house with power drills and assault rifles?
And lets be real. Those people who hated Saddam –the majority, of course – are not the shining examples of morality. If you don’t believe me than look at the most popular figure in Iraq – Sadr. What Sadr detests about the “Saddamist system” is not its methods: its violence,its political repression, its sectarian favoritism. Not at all. What Sadr detested about it, as he has made abundantly clear by his behavior, was simply its leadership. This distinction matters.
Peter K., our ambassador is in the Presidential Palace and our prisoners are in Abu Ghraib. As far as infrastructure is concerned, the "existing reins of repression" are still very much in evidence.
As for the argument that only the people who liked Saddam opposed the U.S. early on, both Sadr and Sistani come to mind.
As usual, Hitchens starts from the presumption that whatever position he's adopted makes him some sort of committed and brave warrior for freedom, and then tries to come up with a retrospective justification for that belief.
Thus, getting rid of the Iraqi army must have been a good idea because, quote: "If there was one thing about U.S. foreign policy that used to make one shudder, it was the habit of ruling by proxy through military regimes." How exactly that opinion is relevant to anything that has happened in Iraq is left a bit unclear- those who recommended retaining some of the Iraqi army were not necessarily calling for a repressive military regime under the control of said army (although, depending how things go, even that might have ended up being preferable to the eventual outcome). It seems that in Hitchens' confused mind, disbanding the Iraqi army, and then clumsily and unsuccessfully trying to create our own Iraqi army in the middle of a civil war, somehow makes up for US support for Pinochet.
And, he argues, the simple fact that we decided to "demolish a corrupt and fascistic party" is something that war supporters should pride themselves on - nonwithstanding, apparently, the actual consequences of that decision. A little humanitarian disaster or ethnic cleansing is tolerable, so long as Hitchens can boast about his role in smashing the fascists.
Probably the dumbest part of the column, though, is where Hitchens attacks the Iraqi military for "eating up the common national treasury to conceal unemployment." Because it's so much better to have the actual unemployment out in the open! With lots of guns and explosives!
I have trouble understanding how he still finds outlets for his self-indulgent tirades.
@Chris Ford: Spot on with your assessment...'though your use of 'Jap' and 'Islamoid' has become a bit wearisome. You're better than that.
Right, and when the Shiite government informed the army, "thanks, but no thanks; no more paychecks for you,"
Then the US could have used some of its container loads of greenbacks to pay them. One of the structural underpinnings of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was high unemployment, leaving a lot of young men with fuck-all to do but get into trouble.
War critics just spin it as hard as they can and it's just not convinicing.
Ah, Peter K, the man for whom Hitch is the fixed point in the ever-turning world, which means his task as Little Sir Echo has led to some amusing self-contradictions. Why don't you two just fuck already and get it over with?
By the way - disbanding the army isn't viewed as a mistake just because it's fashionable to do so.
It's viewed as such because, at least as far as I can tell, everyone who knows much about the subject of post-conflict state building agrees that it was a mistake. I'm not an expert on that subject by any means, but I've done some research on it in the past - and I was shocked when I first heard about the disbanding, because it ran so deeply counter to everything I'd ever read.
Are there any genuine experts or authorities who argue that completely disbanding the army was a good idea? It's possible that there are, and I just haven't come across any yet.
It's true that reforming the Iraqi military and reconciling it to a post-Saddam society with a newly empowered Shia majority might have been a bit tricky. Tricky situations are generally preferable to certain catastrophes.
N wins the prize of the best Hitchens takedown of the day!
We did not destroy the police structure.
As I commented at Douthat's, we did NOT destroy the police structure in Iraq. In fact, we specifically recalled the national police to help with the chaos immediately after the invasion:
The invasion of Iraq brought about a relatively swift toppling of the Ba’athist regime. Yet, many problems ensued once major hostilities had ended. Initially most striking was the general lawlessness that erupted in Baghdad after the invasion of the city. Some of this violence damaged the police infrastructure, later contributing to impede the rebuilding of the civilian forces. Also, at the time lawlessness had erupted, most Iraqi police and military had simply gone home (Jones et al. 2005; Moss and Rohde 2006; Perito 2005). Although U.S. officials had been informed about the likely breakdown of law and order in post-war situations, military command did not count on continued unrest after the cessation of major combat operations (Borger 2003; PBS 2003b). The U.S. military appealed to Iraqi police to return to work, and although they were not allowed to carry weapons, many Iraqi police soon reported back to their stations. On April 14, 2003, joint patrols of Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers were first spotted in the streets of the Iraqi capital. But the initial police presence produced considerable outrage among Iraqi citizens, as many of them were thought to be leftovers from the Ba’athist regime. That there was some truth to this perception was most clearly shown in May 2003 when Zuhair al-Naimi, a Ba’athist loyalist and interior ministry official under Saddam Hussein, was appointed as the new police chief in Baghdad. Al-Naimi was forced to resign within a week because he refused to implement the new police procedures suggested by the United States (Rai 2003). Besides formally reporting to work after the invasion, most returning Iraqi police officials would rarely leave their offices. A careful vetting process would have to be conducted to train new officers and weed out those who were corrupt loyalists of Saddam Hussein (PBS 2003a). Police training is far from trivial as police in a non-democratic society, such as Ba’athist Iraq, are simply not accustomed to routine police activities, such as arrest, criminal investigation, and patrol (PBS 2003b). Besides training in technical matters of effective police technique, the new Iraqi police also had to be familiarized with the procedures of democratic policing (Swiss Foundation for World Affairs 2005).
And what is the result of NOT disbanding the Iraqi National Police? We end up with a situation in which the police are so bad that Gen. Jones recommended disbanding them NOW and starting over from scratch.
Given that, it is clear the Bremer's decision was correct. Failing to disband the Iraqi Army would have been much worse - as we can see with how bad the non-disbanded Iraqi Police ended up.
Where does one begin. The army was not represen-tative of all Iraqis it was a sinecure of the Dulaimi, Jibbur, and Ubeidi tribes; and the most militant of them, weeded out by a generation of
intra-Baathist purges. Their position was not unlike the Prussian Junker officer corps in
post WW1 Germany and the Arditti in Italy, that made up the corp of the fascist blackguards. It is also strikingly similar to the pattern in pre-civil war Yugoslavia, where the Serbs appropriated the Yugoslav army's storehouses; leaving the Bosnians and Croatians to find support from their respective allies in the Middle East and the predominantly South American Croatian diaspora. Which in itself, is a product of a lenient attitude to Ustache militants from the last war. The Serbs did not rely on the religious motivation like the Sunnis although the
Orthodox tie won them support with the Russians and to the Greeks. But their sense of resentment
going back to the battle of Kosovo Polje; burned
so deeply that it formed the undertow for the
1987 Yugoslav Academy of Arts & Sciences which recommended ethnic cleansing as a policy. As Misha Glenny pointed out in his op eds in the NYRB and LTS; all through out the early 90s. With
this background, we could see how reconciliation
without Serbian irredentism in a major
is to that war, not to post WW2 events that are
the relevant comparisons. Hitchens comes to this
view because of the Kurd issue; particularly the
Anfal campaign and the betrayal by the Ford Administration under Kissinger and his understudy
Scowcroft; which frames his attitude toward them.
Re: The army was not represen-tative of all Iraqis it was a sinecure of the Dulaimi, Jibbur, and Ubeidi tribes
Are you talking about the army or just the officer classd? The latter no doubt was a plum for the favored. But the rank and file were conscripts, taken from the whole people.
The few defenders of Bremer's position, and deadenders like Chris Hitchens, make up some pretty amusing arguments to defend the indefensible. I especially like the one that goes: we couldn't trust the army. Thus, the best thing to do was to tell all those heavily armed guys to go home. Because we all know, although we couldn't trust them, surely with our minimal force on the ground, they would just eat peanuts while we fired their relatives and hired Chalabi's mafia clan. Boy were we suprised when they didn't!
Such genius! Who would ever have thought of a plan like that! It took the collective brain power of the Pentagon pumphouse gang for which Hitchens used to be such a great propagandist - his value has gone down, over time, with his record of spectacularly bad calls - to come up with something as ridiculous as that.
Luckily, though, being thoroughly lobotomized, the same war supporters turn around and praise the Anbar solution today, which consists of - funding various old Ba'athists. Although it is a touchy subject that the media doesn't like to talk about, it is clear: among our new Sunni allies, there is one name that is revered - Saddam Hussein. They are very open about this, just as they are openly in solidarity with their brothers who died defending Fallujah from the Americans in 2004.
Luckily for the record of 100 percent fuckedupness that categorizes everything the Bush administration touches, the time to actually weed out and create a new force, or to bribe the loyalties of a commanding corps to a new Iraqi government, are long gone. So not only do they fuck up in 2003, they fuck up in 2007 by applying the policy they should have applied in 2003. You can't beat the deadenders for pure and unadulterated stupidity.
Frazzle -
People that object to the term "Jap" being used to describe then-enemies usually say it is wrong to call the Japanese "Japs". But they have no objection to calling all the German/Austrian/Romanian enemy "Nazis" though only a few were (Nazi Party membership was 2% of the populations)
It's a term of convenience, it is what all US soldiers called them: Japs and Nazis. I don't see the racial perjorative like "gooks" signify.
The fact remains that there are zero complaints about using the term "Nazi" to fill in for the noble Teutonic and some Slavic folks fighting on the other side in WWII. Somehow that is not un-PC, while some hard Lefties claim that using "Jap" to describe Nipponese is a major breech in PC etiquette.
As for "radical Islamoid", I confess Islamoid is my pet phrase, but it is based on Takfiri, which is the insult most moderate Muslims use to describe radical Islamists that threaten death to any Muslim that opposes them.
Takfiri is described as "of Islam, but to true to Islam's teachings. Inferior subclass of heretical thought but respected in some ways." Like humanoid describes something with human characteristics, but is not true human.
Takfiri would be a good insult, but the Muslims really dislike infidels presuming to call one of their own Takfiri. Kinda like black people hate it when they see white Lefties condemning a black they too sorta think is "acting like a Tom", but hate presumptuous whites getting in on the act more than the "Tom-acting guy".
"The noble Teutonic and some Slavic folks fighting on the other side in WWII."
Where was this nobility? In blindly following Hitler's orders? In violating the laws of war by conducting a war of annihilation against civilians on the Eastern Front -- stealing provisions from elderly peasants, condemning them to death by starvation and exposure, and gleefully assisting in a "Rassenkampf" against Jews and other groups? Some nobility. To think that these noble Teutons were surprised that Hitler would abandon a whole army group to get annihilated outside of Stalingrad, and neither the sycophant Paulus or the great von Manstein would stand up to him.
Chris Ford is prepping us for exterminationism, the logical next step after demonizing and dehumanizing an enemy. America lacks the manpower to conquer the Mideast by conventional means, but it has sufficient nuclear weapons to kill everyone there who might contest our extraction of their oil.
Chris Ford speaks for those who believe that America should kill anyone who stands in our way. I think he would have been right at home fighting with the noble Teutonic volk.
Obvioudly, Hitchins cannot be saying that the Army was disbanded beacuse of the potentially bad looking headlines by the evil liberals.
So, then, what is he trying to say?
HH - Nice of you to put yourself in the enemy's mind and speculate on what the evil Americans are up to, HH.
Shall I remind you that a conventional military with no rules is quite capable of killing all civilians it faces? Guerilla warfare is only effective if you don't control civilian population living locations and movements, asuming you let them live.
We have plenty of manpower, just limits on their use. No need for nukes.
The future may show:
1. The Muslims realize they must change their religion so they can coexist with Asia and the West without conflict or terrorism.
2. The Muslims refuse and with coexistence impossible, existiential choices are made to force Muslims living outside the Ummah back into it for effective quarantine with Asia and the West controlling, but not stealing vital resources.
3. The Muslims refuse to change their bloody imperative to Jihad and conquest, but have again reached a place where they think a couple of nukes or tons of anthrax make them invincible. And go on full Jihad and terror from within - and all the nice rules the West and Asia agreed to to more humanely govern conventional war are agreed to be scrapped for more realistic ways to fight Islamic terrorist style assymmetric war.
4. Various Euros refuse to fight back, convinced Muslim conscience will safeguard their rights. When demography wins, they are put in Dhimmitude and assimilated. It would be good to see a few countries that want events to continue under multiculti experience the second-class citizenship that non-Muslims exist under in the expanding or contracting Ummah.
5. No need to use nukes on Muslims unless they try using them 1st or give them to unlawful enemy Muslim combatants (terrorists). Then, obviously, the threat must be ended...
Presumably, the previous comment is satire.
"Right, and when the Shiite government informed the army, "thanks, but no thanks; no more paychecks for you,"
Then the US could have used some of its container loads of greenbacks to pay them. One of the structural underpinnings of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was high unemployment, leaving a lot of young men with fuck-all to do but get into trouble.
War critics just spin it as hard as they can and it's just not convinicing.
Ah, Peter K, the man for whom Hitch is the fixed point in the ever-turning world, which means his task as Little Sir Echo has led to some amusing self-contradictions. Why don't you two just fuck already and get it over with?"
So much ad hominem and so many F-bombs, must have touched a nerve.
I just happen to agree with Hitchens on this, what's wrong with that? Some war critics have new criticism of the Bush administration, that they are "arming both sides" of the civil war, now that they are making alliances with Sunnis. Actually events forced the Sunnis and Americans to make alliances, neither side really wanted to.
If they had kept the Sunni-biased Iraqi army in place, Iran would have come in more forcefully on the majority Shia side and the Arab Shia of Iraq would have turned more to Iran for help.
Ambassador Crocker admitted the only real hope is that Iran will overplay its hand and piss off the Iraqi Shia, who are nationalistic, more than some people think.
Al Qaeda in Iraq overplayed its hand, but that wasn't entirely surprising.
Comments closed October 01, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I don't understand why the real reason for disbanding the Iraqi army is not evident to all. The US occupation authorities wanted complete freedom of action. A large, well-armed Iraqi military could act to curb US activity in Iraq. You can't be a hegemon without a total monopoly of force.
It amazes me that supposedly sober observers of Iraq manage to close their eyes to a dozen massive permanent bases and a colossal imperial "embassy" when trying to figure out if we ever intend to leave Iraq. We have no intention of leaving Iraq. Our departure will be forced by blood and dollars, and if it comes, it will be entirely involuntary.
To this day, five years after the invasion, there is no "status of forces" agreement in place in Iraq. This means that the US military has complete freedom of action, and even US mercenaries have no reason to heed the Iraqi government. The Iraqis have no power to stop the occupation troops from doing whatever they please. They are effectively slaves to the US military, which imprisons and kills them at will.
Posted by HH | September 17, 2007 3:11 PM