It looks as if, as was widely expected in dovish quarters, Iraq's new de-Baathification law is proving unacceptable to Sunni Arabs, and Iraq's Sunni Vice President is saying he'll veto it. Meanwhile, if I've said it once I've said it a thousand times -- the states purpose of the surge was to lay the groundwork for political reconciliation, reconciliation looks further away than ever and the surge is about to run out of time. That's a failed policy.
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About That Reconciliation
01 Feb 2008 08:30 am
Comments (27)
I guess we better just wait around forever, then, FredW. No discussion of costs or likelihood of success necessary!
Now, now, Elvis. It won't take forever. John McCain thinks we can do it in only a hundred years.
Add to that al-Sadr is threatening to end his cease fire and there's trouble brewing with the Kurds.
Not to mention the bloody news from Baghdad...
Let's just call this what it is - occupation in search of a justification. What were the reasons again? WMD, Democracy/Whisky/Sexy (from MY's sainted colleague Mr. Sullivan), reconciliation, sorta/kinda reduced violence, etc. When someone offers you repeatedly shifting explanations for doing something, and when he persists in doing it after the emptiness of those reasons is exposed, you realize that doing it is its own justification. The administration is doing what it's doing because it wants to occupy an important country in the Middle East as a platform for influencing the other regional actors and imposing its will. Nothing else. As Bacevich noted a couple of weeks ago, the real goal of the surge was to blunt calls for an end to the occupation, and despite the failures of its stated objectives the surge has accomplished its real objective quite admirably. The occupation will go on.
The 40+ year Israeli Surge is continuing to bring peace, stability, and improvement to Gaza and the West Bank and definite security rewards for the Israelis, and it is certainly not time for anyone to consider them yielding to all the dead-enders.
With continued strong leadership, commitment to the same unquestionably (literally) correct strategic policies as have been demonstrated for 40+ years, the solution may take another 6 months, in which time it may be a moment to look back and then plan out another 6 - 12 - 18 - 24 - 32 - 36 - 42 - 48 - 54 - 60 month strategy.
Surge is about to run out of time? Sez who? We're never leaving, not drawing down and gonna keep writing checks to every imaginable defense supplier and contractor on the planet. War is hell and like moths we're drawn to the flames........
I agree with everyone that military success cannot be its own justification. We need a compelling reason to be there, and we never really had one.
That said, I think we on the left look churlish when we fail to give Petraeus & co. a bit of credit. Yeah, this whole war was an unforced error -- but we should still be pleased that it's less ugly than it once was. We don't have to wait for political reconciliation to say that "the surge has been a success." It has succeeded -- at partly cleaning up Bush's mistake.
Declare victory and get the hell out.
"...we should still be pleased that it's less ugly than it once was."
Posted by Ted | February 1, 2008 9:35 AM
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Walk the streets of any Iraqi city. Sewage, trash, dead bodies, wild animals, beggars, thieves and guns abound. Scant electricity and drinking water are the norm. Shuttered schools, destroyed buildings and infrastructure and meager availability of safe, quality goods in the stores are to be expected. It isn't ugly because we're not seeing it, just as we're prevented from seeing the dead soldiers arrive home in their coffins. No Ted, I'd say it's damned ugly. You just have to look a bit harder than maybe you are. Oh, the "less ugly" rationale for continuing is lame. We've created our own special version of hell in Iraq and we deserve every bit of discomfort it's wrought. Too bad a few million innocent Iraqis have to suffer for our sins.
One of our biggest problems in the Middle East, as elsewhere, is that too many people want simple, easy answers rather than reality.
It's not "all about reconciliation" any more than it was all about wmd's, all about oil, all about Israel, all about the credibility of the Security Council and by extension of the US, or all about human rights, unhindered trade in vital commodities, or enforcement of international norms concerning wars of aggression. It's also not "all about" terrorism, either state-sponsored or trans-national, and our responsibility to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have put their lives on the line to support our efforts to liberate their country and address all the above listed issues and more. It seems that for some it's enough to pick one issue, demonstrate that it's not neatly wrapped up with a ribbon, and put that forward as a rationale for immediate withdrawal.
Iraq is the keystone state in a region that has been, and will be for many decades, an area of vital national interest. It is MUCH more important than South Korea has been during the sixty years we've maintained a substantial presence there, and there is certainly no "reconciliation" yet between North and South Korea. People of good will can argue about what's the most effective way for us to safeguard those interests going forward, but only the blissfully ignorant can maintain that attempting to run away and hide is going to get the job done.
Lynch has more on the Sunni frustrations:
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2008/01/awakenings-agon.html
So, Powell, have you found Saddam's nukes yet?
Re Powell's comment "It seems that for some it's enough to pick one issue, demonstrate that it's not neatly wrapped up with a ribbon, and put that forward as a rationale for immediate withdrawal"
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Is that approach anything like picking a nuclear mushroom cloud and putting that forward as a rationale for immediate invasion?
Re Don Williams
Mr. Williams should state the obvious. Robert Powell is a sockpuppet for Hiam Saban.
Robert Powell, South Korea was a country that was invaded, and received our (and the UN's) aid. We never sought to invade and occupy South Korea like we did Iraq. We're liberating Iraq like the Soviets did Afghanistan.
There is simply no comparison between the two.
Re Powell's "an area of vital national interest"
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What "vital interest" are we talking about here?
Oh, yes:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080201/earns_exxon_mobil.html?.v=16
Correction: When I referred to a " a nuclear mushroom cloud "
I should have said "a VIRTUAL nuclear mushroom cloud" -- i.e., a mere mental idea, versus something with physical reality.
Like 4000 dead US soldiers.
From day one, the Iraq war has not only been a disaster - it has also symbolized a certain breakdown of the connection between politics and the American party system. By now, it is obvious that a politics that strongly made the case for immdieate withdrawal from Iraq could draw on a large minority of the electorate - at least as many as McCain draws on for the crazy one hundred years view - and yet there is no Democrat out there who is even close. The Dems in Congress are watching a recession emerging, have seen that Bush is going to use the occassion to reward the rich and businesses and skinflint the poor and the working class - and they also know they just voted for almost 200 billion dollars in the GWOT - and yet none of them are willing to connect one thing to the other. The question is, why?
I think the answer is that the Dem consultant class and the party elite share most of Bush's views about Iraq. They think it is the 'center' of foreign policy in the Middle East. They think the American position should be defined by opposition to Iran. They think that the problem in opposing the occupation of Iraq is that it might lead to questioning American foreign policy in ways they don't like, and that they can't control.
It disappoints me that outliers like Dodd, who have nothing to lose, aren't stirring this pot in spite of the D.C. consensus. There is nothing Americans hate more than spending money on foreigners. Well, there is one thing they hate more - spending money on foreigners during a recession. This is an issue that is easier to demagogue on than, say, standin' up against the hordes immigrating across our border. So here we are, with a politics by sound bite culture, and this obvious sound bite position is being left vacant. Hmmm. Tells us a lot about what the elites think. Although 'think' is an odd word to use for the processes that pulse through the slug mind of the warmongering set.
In spite of which, I am optimistic that as housing prices fall and the unemployment statistics tick inevitably up to 6 percent, the pressure to stop spending money on Iraq will be hard to repress. And if the money stops, the surge not only stops, but it is hard to envision how a lesser group - 50,000 American soldiers - are supposed to stay in a country in which they will be acutely vulnerable to attack stripped of the military technology money, so far, has bought.
A few facts for the factless:
--in practical and legal terms, we went to war with Iraq in 1991 with full legal bells and whistles. Those who can't differentiate between official US policy and chance remarks on the Sunday talk shows, and who imagine that the whole thing was ginned up by a clique of deviants in the Bush Administration, should read up. The relevant UN, UK Parliamentary, and US Congressional Resolutions, and the reports of various blue-ribbon commissions like Duelfer, Hutton, and Robb/Silverman would be a good start. It might help to review public statements during the 2004 election by all the Democrats who supported regime change on the basis of their own reading of the intelligence.
--"the war" ended with the fall of Baghdad and the capture of Saddam Hussein. We are currently there at the express request of the freely-elected and legitimate government of Iraq, under a unanimously approved UN Mandate, to offer support in stabilizing the country. It is in our own, Iraq's, and the greater civilized world's vital interest that we persevere in doing so.
--it is absurd for Democrats who refuse to "reconcile" with members of their own party on the issue of Iraq to demand an immediate Kumbaya moment between Iraqis who have been victims of the complete destruction of civil society, and in some areas of genocide, at the hands of the totalitarian system we removed. It is also absurd to insist that our current predicament in Iraq is a disaster on the scale of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.
The Bush Administration is responsible for grievous errors in Iraq that have made a reasonable settlement more difficult and expensive to achieve, but we have a responsibility to insist that we get one. Given that "the enemy" amounts to at most a few thousand lunatics with no natural base of support, no remotely practical program, and no realistic chance of achieving power, the task at this point is to patiently work through the process of developing a working agreement among the major groups for governance.
We can do this. An Iraq in any of several possible configurations that's reasonably stable, reasonably pro-Western, at peace with its neighbors, not beavering away on wmd's, and pumping oil, would represent a major victory for Iraqis, the US, and the civilized world.
Here comes Robert Powell with his revisionist bullshit again. He was discredited a hundred time on this blog by just about everybody - and here he comes again.
Same bullshit. No change.
Well, there's been little change in the readership, Powell. We all still know you're totally full of shit.
1) There was NO - repeat NO - legal justification for the invasion. This is the conclusion of every major group of international law experts - including the British - who have reviewed the issue.
2) "Given that "the enemy" amounts to at most a few thousand lunatics with no natural base of support," You fucking moron! The "enemy" amounts to eighty percent of the fucking population - including the four million displaced, but presumably not including the one million dead - but definitely including their relatives - and the actual insurgency is anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 depending on whose switching sides or standing down for their own reasons at any given point in time.
Shove this crap.
We most certainly did invade and occupy Korea, and still have over 20,000 combat troops in the South over a half century later, in confronting a murderous and aggressive totalitarianism that defied a Chapter VII Security Council Resolution. But in the case of Iraq there were over a dozen Resolutions, and in Korea only one; the best and most current stats indicate that the war in Iraq has killed about 150,000, most of them by our enemies, including about 4,000 GI's while the war in Korea killed about two million people, including about 40,000 GI's. In that sense there is indeed no comparison.
The legal justification for the invasion of Iraq was agreed by the appropriate legal authorities in most of the world's most important democracies. Lord Goldsmith's easily available finding published on the front page of The Guardian in March 2003 is perhaps the most accessible, though far from the only, documentation.
No one here has "discredited" any of the facts I've presented. Checking the dictionary, I find that the definition of "discredit" is not "baseless assertions and insults from a pathetic loser monopolizing the computer at the work-release program halfway house."
Don't believe a word Robert Powell says.
Powell, you're a fucking joke. Everybody knows goddamn well that Lord Goldsmith originally intended to tell Blair the invasion was illegal, until pressured by Blair.
Read it here in THIS Guardian article, moron:
Lord Goldsmith's legal advice and the Iraq war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1471664,00.html
"Did Lord Goldsmith change his mind?
Previous disclosures suggest he did. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, resigned in March 2003 because she did not believe war with Iraq was legal. Her letter setting out why said Lord Goldsmith 'gave us to understand' he agreed with Foreign Office lawyers that the war was illegal without a new UN resolution but changed his advice twice just before the war to bring it in line with 'what is now the official line'."
Try this one, nutball:
Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1158859,00.html
Money quotes:
"Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal."
"The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal."
"Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign."
"Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war."
"Senior Whitehall sources involved in putting together critical legal advice on the war told The Observer that Goldsmith was originally 'sitting on the fence' and that his initial advice was 'prevaricating'. This was 'tightened' up only days before the conflict began after concerns were raised by Sir Michael Boyce, the then Chief of Defence Staff, who told senior ministers of his worries. It is believed that Boyce demanded an unequivocal statement that the invasion of Iraq was lawful. It is understood that it was only after seeing Goldsmith's final legal advice, given days before the outbreak of war, that Boyce gave his approval."
Not to mention that virtually every other group of international legal experts almost unanimously declared the war illegal.
"the best and most current stats indicate that the war in Iraq has killed about 150,000, most of them by our enemies,"
You're not just a moron, you're a complete moron. The "best and most current stats" demonstrate one million dead. The Lancet study - still the best study based on the fact that it was not conducted by the Iraqi government and has not been credibly debunked by anybody - indicated a minimum of 300,000 killed by the US military - as of 2006, before the worst violence occurred.
You're the only pathetic loser here. Haven't seen you around much lately? Did you wander off to some other blog - and get kicked out of there for being such an idiot with your revisionist assertions that nobody believes?
In years of reading and discussion of the issues involved, I've encountered only two sorts of people who believe the invasion of Iraq was "illegal".
First are those blinded by ignorance and partisanship who haven't read the relevant documents, and rely on random out-of-context clips from the media and the statements of unnamed, unaccountable "experts", like The Amazing Hack. It may come as a surprise, but Goldsmith's actual ruling for Parliament has more legal authority than speculative media gossip or bits from a purloined memo described by Goldsmith, who wrote it, as "generalized discussion of all possible potential objections." Please note that British troops participated, presumably because their leaders were satisfied on the legality issue.
And I haven't been anywhere, Hack. You just don't read any more carefully than you think. The "Lancet study" has been throughly and publicly debunked by peer review almost since it appeared, while the latest from the UN World Health Organization actually uses proper methodology and isn't politically biased as the Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet was on the authority of its authors. Google again, dingbat.
The second group is those who, presumably like Mr. Larsson, sincerely believe that unaccountable diplomats and foreign leaders at the UN have more legal authority to decide on a democratic nation's use of force than the duly authorized and/or elected officials like those of the US and UK government of the sort who actually wrote the UN Charter. Such folks are often also utterly helpless when it comes to documentation to support their religiously-held political bias, and Mr. Larsson has, typically, offered none.
It's interesting that not a single one of the many posters who desperately wish to believe the Standard Media Line here have provided a single fact to refute my assertions. Frustration at this inability explains the childish hostility.
Ohh, he forgot his capital letters. We really got to him.
Williams, Hack, & Larsson
Why does Powell push your buttons? I would like to hear your views on how the US should leave Iraq?
Steve Duncan
Kudos to your second post!
Comments closed February 15, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
And if the US pulls out right away the reconciliation will never happen. One side will defeat the other. I don't think we can call that "Reconciliation". Unless you call the lid stuffed back on like it was under Saddam, "Reconciliation". I don't. I call it a dictatorship by terror.
Posted by FredW | February 1, 2008 8:46 AM