Before becoming John McCain's vice presidential pick Alaska Governor Sarah Palin expressed the view that the Iraq war is not worth fighting for energy.
“I always looked at Senator McCain just as a Joe Blow public member, looking from the outside in,” she said. “He’s been buttin’ heads with Republicans for years, and that’s a healthy place to be.” Then again, on McCain’s signature issue—the prosecution of the war in Iraq—she did not sound so gung-ho. Her son is a soldier, and she said, “I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”
The fact that she's going to shortly have a son in Iraq means that she's got far more at stake in this war than McCain, Obama, and Biden. What makes it worth it to put her own son at considerable risk? If she makes it into office she'll bring a perspective that McCain needs to hear.
Lucky for Palin's son, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi leaders are trying to end street patrols by American soldiers in the summer of 2009 and to get US combat soldiers out of Iraq by the end of 2011. That, parenthetically, would remove the Iraq war as an issue in the 2012 US presidential elections.
"There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
"An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces," he said.
The Bush Administration is reluctant to sign up for a fixed timetable for withdrawal. The Iraqis need a timetable for internal consumption but the Iraqi leaders are reluctant to totally commit to a fixed withdrawal in case an insurgency pops up in the mean time and threatens to overthrow them.
Underlying Maliki's remarks is the political reality that he must sell the accord to a fractious political establishment and the Iraqi public, which to a large extent views the U.S. military presence as an occupation that should end as soon as possible.
"The agreement will be met with significant public discomfort," said an aide to Maliki. "So Iraqi officials will resort to using the dates mentioned in the agreement to sell it to the public, even though they might be intended to be used in a guidance way."
Bottom line: The Iraqi leaders want to remain in power and they will take whatever decision most seems like guaranteed to keep them in power.
BAGHDAD (AP) | Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that, two Iraqi officials said Thursday. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed upon.
How can we possibly ignore the demands of the democratically elected Jeffersonian freedom loving government of Iraq?
The press has reduced coverage of Iraq and think the public does not want to hear about it.
According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.
Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”
I write about Iraq a whole lot less than I used to because I feel like I've said almost anything worthwhile that I can think of to write about. If war supporters can't see by now that the war was a big mistake I seriously doubt that any additional argument can persuade them.
People do not want to hear about the war. Iraq is a bummer. Thousands of Americans dead. Probably at least tens of thousands of Americans have gotten brain damaged by concussions which have very long lasting effects. So it is not surprising to hear that journalists find Americans do not want to discuss it.
On “The Daily Show,” Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Mr. McCarthy said that when he is in the United States, bringing up Baghdad at a dinner party “is like a conversation killer.”
Next President Barack Obama will try to pull out US troops. But I expect a few arguments will be used against this move. First, some nuts will claim a withdraw will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. John McCain, incorrectly trying to apply lessons he thinks he learned in Vietnam, will continue to argue that withdrawal will make our enemies more powerful. McCain wants to show strength in Iraq. Whereas I think spending one or two trillion dollars on a waste and getting a lot of our soldiers damaged and killed makes us weaker.
Senator McCain obviously doesn't want you to see the Iraq war as a reason to vote against him. But he's not absolutely sure that the US can end the fight in Iraq in 5 years. By contrast, I'm certain 5 more years of fighting in Iraq is a waste.
McCain, in a speech delivered in Columbus, Ohio, set forth a sweeping, extraordinarily positive vision of what he said the world would look like in 2013, when he says he will have been in the White House for four years - so positive that Democrats immediately derided it as clearly unrealistic.
"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure," McCain said. "The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy" and "violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced."
The United States, McCain added, "maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role." During his primary battle, McCain frequently accused his rival Mitt Romney of setting a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, a charge the former Massachusetts governor denied.
McCain later insisted to reporters that his speech should not be interpreted as setting a date for withdrawal, and that he was simply projecting victory.
McCain is a loser unless some big surprise changes the balance of forces so heavily favoring Obama at this point. The economy by itself is enough to elect a Democrat as President in the 2008 election. The unpopular war in Iraq is just icing on the cake. Obama's biggest liability is his past writings on the overwhelming central importance of his black identity. But I think he's safe from that because McCain and the press aren't going to challenge him on it. You can read more realistic views of Obama if you want to. But he's headed for the Presidency of the United States of America.
I hope there are some upsides from Obama's election. Will he get us out of Iraq within 4 years? I hope so.
Ironically and depressingly, the defeat of antiwar Republicans together with the rest of the party, even though the party’s unpopularity is a result of support for the war, provides perverse justification for the GOP tying itself to the war even more closely. If opposition to the war from the beginning is not enough to shield you from the antiwar backlash, which the defeat of Leach, Hostettler and Chafee would indicate, there is litte incentive for most House members in switching positions later, suffering the inevitable credibility attacks and providing ammunition to Democratic challengers who will argue that antiwar voters might as well vote for them rather than back the Johnny Come Lately Republican. Plus, one of the peverse consequences of gerrymandering is that it ensures that the broad majority of the caucus would actually risk losing re-election by adopting what is the nationally more popular position.
I see an obvious conclusion here: For the sake of Republican electoral prospects in future elections the Republicans need the Democrats to end US participation in the Iraqi civil war. Republican electoral prospects will brighten once the US pulls out of Iraq. The Democrats might have enough motive to pull out US troops. By contrast, the Republicans seem less likely to admit US national interests are ill served by continuing to fight in Iraq. Some Republicans are even foolish enough to believe even now that the war is a good idea. The Republican presidential candidate seems an especially hopeless case. John McCain lacks both Nixon's genius and his cunning ruthlessness to maneuver to get us out of Iraq. We'll probably need Democrats to get us out of Iraq.
Larison sees the Grand Old Party stuck with winning only the most solidly Republican parts of the country.
For a lot of them, the greater political risk is to take the overwhelmingly popular position, because antiwar sentiment is concentrated in all those parts of the country that they don’t represent. What this means, though, is that over the long term the GOP will be limited to their safe districts and to extremely “red” states.
Where Larison says "over the long term" I would say "until the Democrats manage to pull the US out of Iraq". In other words, the Republicans will stay a highly marginalized party until the Democrats manage to cut our losses in Iraq. The Democrats can therefore act as the saviors of the Republicans if only the Democrats can win big enough to have the votes to implement a withdrawal over Republican objections.
Having said all this, the Iraq war is not the biggest problem facing Republican electoral prospects in 2008. A recession during an election year just about assures defeat of the incumbent party. Of course the Democrats now control the House and Senate. Will voters therefore apportion some of the blame for the recession on the Democrats?
Dennis Dale says ignore what Bush Administration says if you want to understand Iraq war.
In understanding the madness of our entanglement in Iraq I find it helps to reject out of hand everything the administration says and ignore the distorted center of polite opinion maintained by the corporate press, while continually reminding yourself that the point of the occupation is the occupation. For all of the shifting goals and serial failure, what we have, still, is less a war seeking resoultion than a committed government enterprise experiencing cost overruns.
The administration has shown admirable resourcefulness in utilizing its very failures to obscure and further, even now, its intentions. But no matter how much our might has degraded our sense of national responsibility, I suspect that to operate on the premise that regardless of everything we must remain in Iraq to prevent the consequences of our invading Iraq, while refusing to impeach those responsible for this deadly chain of causality, indeed, while so much as an apology to the people of Iraq is absolutely out of the question, a notion for marginal cranks, must come with its own unanticipated consequences.
Dennis goes on to discuss the importance of oil in US calculations on Iraq. The US insists on Shia submission to the Maliki Baghdad government to a far greater extent than it tries to enforce Sunni submission. The reason? Lots of oil in the Shia south. On the one hand I think that the value of Iraq's oil to US interests is exaggerated by many critics of US policy. On the other hand, I sometimes think our leaders share this distorted view.
Still, Dennis makes good points. Bush really does not want to admit making a mistake. Also, a disruption in oil flow of a million barrels per day would cause a large increase in world oil prices. So maybe US policy makers are trying to prevent that. Maybe US policy makers are afraid of the transition phase should the US basically withdraw from Iraq and let the Iraqi factions work out (probably violently) who gets to rule Iraq and get its oil revenue.
So, why are we against Mookie and for Maliki? Possible answers include:
- Mookie wants us to leave Iraq, which makes him anti-American. But the majority of Americans wants America to leave Iraq, so I guess that just means the American people are anti-American, too. It's simple logic.
- The Badr Boys are more middle class, while Sadr's guys are more slummy.
- More Badr Boys than Sadr Slumsters speak English, so that's why we're on their side: we can understand what they're telling us, while Sadr keeps rambling on in that moon man gibberish that people in Iraq seem to speak.
- Badr is weaker than Sadr, so we support them because they need us more, and thus tolerate us more. And, the whole point of our being in Iraq has become our being in Iraq -- we can never leave until we prove that we don't have to leave, because that would show weakness; but we can only prove that we don't have to leave by not leaving. So we are going to be there, roughly, forever. It's simple logic, but Mookie doesn't seem to get it.
Do our policy makers want to prop up Maliki's government because it is (partly) the product of a democratic process? How important is that to them? The US has played Machiavellian intrigue to change Prime Ministers in Baghdad. So it is not like the Iraqi people freely chose the current government. The attempt to achieve democratic legitimacy for US involvement in Iraq is pretty weak.
My guess is the primary reason we are still in Iraq is in order to avoid admitting it was a mistake to invade in the first place. The secondary reason is that our withdrawal might cause a large disruption of oil flow and the ensuing even higher oil prices would cause a world economic recession.
My question: When will the US populace loose patience with our continued burning of wealth and people in the Iraq war?
My second question: Shouldn't we prepare for that potential oil flow disruption upon our withdrawal? Maybe we could lessen the size of the disruption by shifting our support toward that Iraqi Shia patriotic Moqtada al Sadr.
Ashley Alexandra Dupré has been fingered by the press as "Kristen", the hooker (or high priced courtesan) that former New York Governor Eliot "Huggy Bear" Spitzer was getting squeezed by. Why am mentioning this? I'm putting the US soldiers killed and maimed in Iraq close to what people really care about so they'll notice real facts about Iraq.
Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.
The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.
"Kristen" has a nice rack. But we are throwing away trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq in a pointless war. You can check out what she looks like. But really, do you want US forces to stay in Iraq 100 years?
The Iraqi government is now functioning?
Eliot Spitzer is a loser because he had to pay for sex from a prostitute rather than getting it legally for free from an intern. Americans are losers because they can't pay enough attention to demand a US withdrawal from Iraq. While we've been pouring money down the Iraq rat hole the price of oil has skyrocketed to over $110 per barrel. We could have taken that over a trillion dollars wasted on Iraq and funded better insulation, energy research, hybrid vehicles, and other measures that would have saved us money on oil. Trillions of dollars wasted are a lot more than $4300 spent to have "Kristen" provide her services in a DC hotel room. We should be more upset about the trillions of dollars than a few thousand.
George W. Bush wants to keep lots of troops in Iraq in case John McCain wins election as President of the United States so that McCain will be in a position to continue fighting. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is halting the troop reduction in Iraq at near 130,000 troops remaining.
Meeting with top commanders here, Mr. Gates said that after the departure this summer of the five extra combat brigades sent last year in “the surge” to pacify the Baghdad area, the American command should assess whether further troop reductions would hurt security.
In practical terms, his assertion makes it likely that American troop levels in Iraq will not drop much below 130,000 this year — and certainly not to the 100,000 level advocated by some military officials and analysts worried about the protracted strain on the Army from long deployments in the nearly five-year-old Iraq war.
A McCain-Obama contest will probably feature a big disagreement over Iraq. Will Obama highlight a willingness to withdraw? Will McCain harp on his willingness to keep fighting and force Obama to respond? Which one will see a bigger advantage to be had from drawing attention to their enthusiasm or lack of enthusiasm over the Iraq war? How explicitly will they paint their pro or anti war position?
Also, will the insurgency rebound as US troop levels decrease? How bad will the war look to the American public in the fall of 2008?
A helpful reminder: The 9/11 attackers were trained in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government contained (and still does to a lesser extent) supporters of the Taliban and fans of Al Qaeda. If the United States government was not fighting a war in Iraq then the US would have plenty of troops for Afghanistan. That much is already obvious. But the US Defense Secretary admits that winning European support and troops for Afghanistan is made harder by the US military effort in Iraq.
MUNICH — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that many Europeans were confused about NATO’s security mission in Afghanistan, and that they did not support the alliance effort because they opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq.
“I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused,” Mr. Gates said as he flew here to deliver an address at an international security conference.
“I think that they combine the two,” he added. “Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not understand the very different — for them — the very different kind of threat.”
So the war in Iraq undermines the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda along the Afghanistan-Iraq border.
Why does this matter? The frontier area between Afghanistan and Pakistan is still a terrorist training ground and Western Muslims are streaming into Pakistan for Jihad training.
"Al Qaeda has had difficulty in raising funds and sustaining itself," perhaps due to disaffection among Saudi Arabian contributors, said Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at a House hearing Thursday.
The bad news is that a new influx of Western recruits – including American citizens – are being trained in Al Qaeda camps in Pakistan. These recruits would be able to more easily enter and move about the US than foreign operatives.
"Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US: the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack on the homeland," wrote Mr. McConnell in prepared Congressional testimony.
The Iraq war is hobbling our ability to fight the war against the targets that matter: Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Jihadist Muslims living in the West. The Jihadists aren't just helped by policies put in place by George W. Bush and the neocons. The support of useful fools in the West help to strengthen Islam in the West as well.
John McCain deludes himself that he's taking the moral high ground.
A Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, is campaigning on his record as a longtime foe of earmarks. In wartime, he said, “it is especially egregious to squander money on special-interest pet projects.”
But isn't the Iraq war a special interest pet project? How exactly is it in the general public interest?
Seems to me we could withdraw from Iraq, cut one really big line item in the current US budget, and reduce the future outlays that will otherwise come from long term care of soldiers who haven't been injured yet.
Scott Rasmussen reports most Americans want US troops out of Iraq in a year.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters say they want U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by the end of 2008. However, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 40% want Congress to cut off funding if the President won’t go along with the plan. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed to Congress using the purse strings in this manner while 10% are not sure.
Lawrence Wright says a majority of Iraqis want American troops out too.
As early as August of 2003, five months after the invasion, a Zogby poll found that two-thirds of Iraqis wanted the U.S. and British forces to leave the country within a year, and more than half said that the Iraqis should be left alone to set up their own government. Two years later, as Iraqis were about to vote in their first democratic election, two-thirds wanted the Coalition troops out either immediately or as soon as the new government was established. (The model that Iraqis most admired was that of the United Arab Emirates, a loose federation of seven tribal states, each overseen by a prince, and ruled by a president who is, essentially, a king.) In 2006, when the Iraqi government was in place, a poll by the University of Maryland found that seventy-one per cent of Iraqis wanted their government to ask the Americans to leave within a year; an even higher number doubted that the U.S. would comply with the request.
A poll released last month (by ABC News, the BBC, and the Japanese broadcaster NHK), half a year after the surge in American forces, found that nearly half of Iraqis favored an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, while thirty-four per cent of Iraqis, most of them Kurds, said that the U.S. should remain “until security is restored.” Among Shiites, forty-four per cent favored immediate withdrawal, and among Sunnis the figure reached seventy-two per cent—substantial increases in both cases. More Iraqis than ever—fifty-seven per cent—say that violence against American forces is acceptable, diminishing the prospect of order being restored as long as the occupation continues.
But Iraqi leaders agree with American leaders on a continued US troop presence.
Iraq has announced that it would seek one more year of a UN mandate for the American-led coalition. It would then forge an agreement with Washington for a permanent US presence in the oil-rich nation.
Another democracy that does not carry out the will of the people. George W. Bush sure gets what he wants, doesn't he?
Scott Rasmussen has the numbers. Public attitudes continue to shift toward ending US involvement in the war in Iraq.
For the second straight week, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 64% of Americans would like to see U.S. troops brought home from Iraq within a year. Prior to this week’s results, support for bringing the troops home had increased in three consecutive weeks.
Twenty-eight percent (28%) who want the troops brought home immediately. That’s unchanged from a week ago but up from 20% five weeks ago.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of women want troops out of Iraq within a year. Fifty-five percent (55%) of men share that view.
Looking at the other end of the spectrum, 31% now want troops to remain in Iraq until the mission is complete. That’s down three points from a week ago and the lowest level measured since Rasmussen Reports began tracking this question in August.
The Republican decline in support is most notable.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Republicans believe the troops should remain until the mission is complete. That latter figure is down from 63% a week ago and 71% two weeks before that.
Once the Republican support crumbles expect Congress to force Bush to start pulling out troops. How soon will Republican support drop below 50%?
The war does not further US interests. We are not made more secure by US troops fighting in Iraq. We should just leave.
The surge is an act of desperation by political types who are in denial of reality. He is stating the obvious.
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight."
Sanchez also bluntly criticized the current troop increase in Iraq, describing it as "a desperate attempt by the administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war."
He thinks our political leaders are incompetent. Too true. We are incompetently ruled.
So if Bush was an officer he would be court-martialed.
“There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetence in strategic leadership among our national leaders,” Sanchez said. “They have unquestionably been derelict in the performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders would be immediately relieved or court-martialed.”
...
“Any sequential solutions would lead to a prolonged conflict and increased resistance,” Sanchez said about these messages to Washington. “By neglect and incompetence at the National Security Council level, that is the path our political leaders chose and now America and more precisely the American military finds itself in an intractable situation.”
Yes, the situation in Iraq and in Washington DC really is that bad. I wish more people put a lot of effort into understanding Iraq so that more could see through the lies told by the Bush Administration and its allies and defenders.
But officers such Sanchez bear part of the blame. His command in Iraq ended June 2004. But he didn't leave the Army until 2006 and didn't speak out until now, more than 3 years after he left Iraq. Well, thousands of American soldiers had to die and tens of thousand had to come back with pieces permanently missing and broken before he'd tell the public what they needed to hear.
Here is the full Sanchez speech, albeit in ALL CAPS.
Update: Unfortunately, Sanchez appears to focus on criticizing while not offering an alternative substantially different from what the Bush Administration is doing.
He said deployment cycles aren’t working with current troop levels, that it will take decades to fix the “military’s full-spectrum readiness,” and that if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq, it would lead to “chaos that would lead to instability in the Middle East.” And, he said the Powell Doctrine — which requires a clear exit strategy as part of a war plan — was violated.
Here is my exit strategy: Leave. Does Sanchez have an exit strategy? His exit strategy appears to be to win first before leaving.
Sanchez blames reporters for bad strategic decisions made by generals and politicians.
He said some poor strategic decisions in Iraq had become “defeats because of the media,” and that some reporters feed from a “pigs’ trough.”
Poor strategic decisions are more important in their effects than what reporters say about them.
This is not making America and American ideas more popular in Iraq.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 -- Two women were killed in central Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraqi police said, when private security company guards opened fire on their car after it approached a convoy the guards were protecting.
Iraqi Interior Ministry officials told The Washington Post that the security contractor was Dubai-based Unity Resources Group. The firm, founded by an Australian, is registered in Singapore and is run by several Australian nationals.
We can't win over the people in Iraq to see things the way we see things. We are in a very foreign land in a very foreign region of the world.
Meanwhile the Turks are thinking about chasing Kurdish separatists into Iraq.
ISTANBUL, Oct. 9 — Turkey took a step toward a military operation in Iraq on Tuesday, as its top political and military leaders issued a statement allowing troops to cross the Iraq border to eliminate separatist Kurdish rebel camps in the northern region.
The Kurds want their own country. Who can blame them for that?
The Kurdish separatists are killing Turkish soldiers.
Mr. Erdogan is under pressure from Turkey's powerful armed forces and the opposition to take action against rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) after they shot dead 13 soldiers on Sunday near the Iraqi border.
Iraq's government said that a recent security accord with Turkey was the best way for dealing with PKK attacks.
Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said parliament would need to authorize any large-scale military operation -- a scenario most analysts say remains unlikely -- but he said such permission was not required for limited, "hot pursuit" raids.
Will the Turks gradually edge up what they do in Iraq and start with smaller hot pursuit incursions?
Besides, is honor truly at stake in Iraq? Honor is not the same thing as pride. Our pro-war stalwarts have confused the two, which is understandable. As British writer Dorothy Sayers observed: "The devilish strategy of pride is that it attacks us, not in our weakest points, but in our strongest. It is pre-eminently the sin of the noble mind."
Why? Because the noble soul accepts the moral duty to sacrifice oneself for a higher goal. Isn't that what surge advocates are doing? In their minds, likely yes. The trick comes in discerning whether the noble aspiration is motivated by pride or humility. Pride says that the ego can accomplish anything it wants to and that limitation is no barrier for the human will. Humility accepts finitude as part of the human condition and is unafraid to accept reality and the limits it places on what we can do.
Pride involves lying – first to oneself and to others. Humility requires truth.
I think it acceptable (and even good) to feel pride at one's accomplishments. As compared to Dreher's usage of the term "pride" that idea of a feeling of accomplishment seems a more consistent usage with at least some of the dictionary definitions of "pride". I also do not think an accurate feeling of pride over past accomplishments tells us we can accomplish anything we desire to do. Pride over past accomplishments needn't lead to hubris. So I take issue with how Dreher labelled the categories in this typology. However, you can pride yourself about something you can't actually do and then refuse to admit you can't because you don't want to lose status as you admit your lesser ability and that you made a mistake. That seems to be where Bush and his supporters are at this point.
Bush and company have overestimated the efficacy of the US military. They've also overestimated the appeal of Western and, in particular, American values. They are promoting a form of liberal universalism. But, no, these values do not hold universal appeal.
Bush and his supporters won't admit the truth on Iraq (that those American soldiers are dying for no good reason) because, first and foremost, they do not want to admit they made a huge mistake. Second, and probably less important in most of their minds, they don't want to admit that liberalism (whether the pure left variety or the hawkish neocon variety or other) does not have universal appeal. They've got too much invested their wrong decisions and so we have to lose about 100 soldiers a month and have lots more come back permanently damaged in mind and body.
Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, raised at least $20 million over the summer, more than $19 million of which could be spent on the primary — showing that he continued to be a formidable fund-raiser. It was unclear whether he still led in fund-raising, as he did this spring, because Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not release her tally. (Her aides had said that they expected to raise a similar amount.) John Edwards raised $7 million, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico raised $5.2 million.
By comparison, Mitt Romney, who has been one of the strongest Republican fund-raisers this election, raised only about half of what Mr. Obama raised this summer, according to a senior adviser who was granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s finances. The adviser said that Mr. Romney brought in about $10 million from donors, and that he used more than $6 million of his own money for his campaign.
President Hillary will start the troop withdrawal in 2009 if Congress doesn't force the issue in 2008. The lady that George W. Bush and various Republican front runners are working to elect as President wants to start pulling US troops out of Iraq.
"I've reached the conclusion that the best way to support our troops is begin bringing them home," the New York senator and former first lady told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"I don't believe we should continue to vote for funding that has an open-ended commitment, that has no pressure on the Iraqi government to make the tough political decisions they have to make, or which really gives any urgency to the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts."
HANOVER, N.H., Sept. 26 — The three leading Democratic presidential candidates refused on Wednesday night to promise that they would withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of their first term, saying in a televised debate here that they could not predict the future challenges in Iraq.
People don't like failure. Some support the Iraq war because they don't want to admit failure. Democratic party candidates don't want to get painted as quitters and as advocates of failure. They don't come across as macho enough and so they are sensitive to the need to seem tough. Then there are the Republicans who want to save face and not admit just how badly their preferred policy decision really has failed. They don't want t admit to their very real failure. So we are in this sorry state in Iraq where about 100 American guys have to die there every month so that lots of people can posture as tough back home.
Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and other Republican candidates for President have a dwindling chance of getting elected the longer the Iraq debacle drags on. George W. Bush is effectively working for the election of Democrats at this point. The Republican Party (and a bunch of stupid people who fancy themselves conservative pundits who are war boosters) has reached intellectual and moral bankruptcy over Iraq.
Most Americans don't want to waste huge sums of money on Iraq.
Most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush's $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a sizable majority support an expansion of a children's health insurance bill he has promised to veto, putting Bush and many congressional Republicans on the wrong side of public opinion on upcoming foreign and domestic policy battles.
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows deep dissatisfaction with the president and with Congress. Bush's approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his career low in Post-ABC polls. And just 29 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, its lowest approval rating in this poll since November 1995, when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. It also represents a 14-point drop since Democrats took control in January.
The Iraqis are losing support for the US troop presence as well.
Since the last BBC/ABC News poll in February, the number of Iraqis who think that US-led coalition forces should leave immediately has risen sharply, from 35 to 47%, although that does mean that a small majority - 53% - still says the forces should stay until security has improved.
But 85% of Iraqis say they have little or no confidence in US and UK forces.
If we pull out of Iraq then the Shias won't want to fight in the Sunni zone or the Kurdish zone. The Sunnis won't want to fight in the Shia zone or the Kurdish zone. The Kurds won't want to fight in the Shia zone or the Sunni zone. So Iraq will de facto partition. It might be possible to negotiate a confederation between the zones. Or maybe not. But the fighting will go way down either way.
I'm hearing Paul Simon sing "There must be fifty ways to leave your lover". Greg Cochran says we can get out of Iraq with everything important really fast and shouldn't leave a smaller core of troops behind.
First, we should aim to get our troops out safely, with their weapons intact. Weapons are important—we win more because of superior equipment than superior training or talent. That equipment is expensive, takes a long time to replace with our existing procurement system, and we might actually need it if we found ourselves in a war of necessity.
Second, we should forget about accomplishing anything else. If we couldn’t create a compliant Iraq with 150,000 troops, we won’t manage it with 50,000 or 20,000. Many of our presidential candidates—you can recognize them by the humps on their backs—are talking about retaining smaller numbers of troops in Iraq, hoping to achieve some political end or at least disguise defeat, but that pig won’t fly. Our forces are tremendously powerful (compared to the insurgents) and never lose battles, but leaving small residual forces in a fundamentally hostile country—a solid majority of non-Kurdish Iraqis now find attacks on coalition forces acceptable—is asking for trouble. The British tried that in Basra, and they took rocket and mortar fire every day while achieving nothing.
That's the problem with all partial withdrawal schemes: They basically reduce US troop numbers down to a level where our leaders can't even pretend they can still produce a positive outcome. With 160,000 troops Bush and supporters can produce so much action in some spots and so many events and changes in local trends in Iraq that they can pretend to be accomplishing something. Bush can't admit that the war is pointless. So he's got to keep as many troops there as he can manage in order to avoid admitting that he created a huge blunder and wasted many lives and much treasure in a pointless exercise.
As for the pointlessness of the war: This is where we are stuck. We need more national figures to admit the obvious. We don't have anything we can realistically hope to gain by remaining in Iraq. We aren't improving our national security by staying. If we really want to improve our national security we have real (and fairly easy) ways to improve that would be easier to afford if we weren't spending about $150 to $160 billion a year in Iraq.
Greg says it isn't worth the lives of American men to pull out the less valuable stuff.
The longer we stay, the more men we lose. How can anyone believe that piles of junk are worth anyone’s life? We could spend extra time in Iraq in order to ship home toxic waste, but we can do without that kind of cosmic irony. Better to gift-wrap those drums and let the Iraqis steal them. I say it again: bring out men, weapons, ammo, vital spares—leave the pews.
A fast withdrawal will cost fewer American lives than die there each month.
But we can be sure that the opposition will be insignificant and our casualties few, since the insurgents we face in Iraq would be extremely weak in a conventional fight. Remember that we lost fewer than 150 men during the invasion, when we faced 23 divisions, organized troops armed with (according to U.S. estimates) almost 2,000 main battle tanks, 3,500 armored personnel carriers, and 2,000 artillery pieces. The insurgents today have no tanks, no APCs, no heavy artillery, and yet we’re supposed to worry about the havoc they would wreak during any withdrawal. We’ve been seeing about 100 men a month killed in action in 2007, we’d lose fewer in a rapid withdrawal than we would by staying one more month.
The tanks can drive themselves excepting the ones that have broke down. The latter can be carried out on tank carriers or temporarily repaired just for one trip to Kuwait. The bulk of the vehicles can be driven out as well. We can stop sending as much supplies in as we prepare for the big withdrawal and start using regular supply run return trips to pull out some stuff while planning the massive movement of US soldiers and contractors down to Kuwait.
Read the full article.
Six sergeants and a specialist in the US Army's 82nd Airborne have a highly recommended op/ed in the New York Times arguing that the conditions in Iraq are deteriorating and the US can do little about it.
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
This is a highly insightful article by people who demonstrate an amazing nuance in their understanding of what they've witnessed first hand while in danger for an extended period of time.
The Iraqi Army and police are not our allies.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
The recent chorus in Washington DC about how well things are going in Iraq is working is "misleading rhetoric". Gotta agree on that score. No, the surge is not working. No, Iraq isn't going to turn the corner under our occupation.
The Shia goal of consolidation of their power puts them in conflict with the American goal of reconciliation with no group coming out as losers.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
There's no way to reconcile this conflict of interests. What can we do? Stop trying to protect Sunnis from Shia depredations? We aren't going to exercise the level of brutality needed to put down insurgencies of this sort. In my view US interests are not at stake in Iraq. Al Qaeda isn't going to take over. The neighbors won't all invade if we withdraw. Iraq's oil reserves are depleted just like Saudi Arabia's. For energy security we need to look at developing non-oil energy sources. We really can leave. If we need to improve our security then the money we'll save by leaving can be spent on measures that will make us safer. Keeping over one hundred thousand troops in Iraq battling all the factions there does not make us safer.
They say there have to be losers in Iraq. But who gets shafted? My answer: The Sunnis have to get shafted. Maybe the Kurds get shafted too. Probably some Shia factions get shafted by other Shia factions. The Christians and Turkomen and other groups are big losers. Either that or every group gets its own country from a big partitioning. But too many factions in Iraq oppose partition and some of those factions will get shafted instead.
Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution wrote a very different op/ed in the New York Times entitled "A War We Just Might Win" arguing a very Panglossian view based on their recent trip to Iraq.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
Anthony H. Cordesman, who is a strong supporter of continued US military operations in Iraq went on the same Iraq trip as O'Hanlon and Pollack but came back with a much less optimistic analysis of the situation.
The attached trip report does, however, show there is still a tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq, and for timing reductions in US forces and aid to Iraqi progress rather than arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks. It recognizes that strategic patience is a high risk strategy, but it also describes positive trends in the fighting, and hints of future political progress.
These trends are uncertain, and must be considered in the context of a long list of serious political, military, and economic risks that are described in detail. The report also discusses major delays and problems in the original surge strategy. The new US approach to counterinsurgency warfare is making a difference, but it still seems likely from a visit to the scene that the original strategy President Bush announced in January would have failed if it had not been for the Sunni tribal awakening.
He's doubtful that we'll be successful there. Yet we thinks the cost of giving up is too high. I think if he didn't see such high costs for giving up he'd be even more pessimistic in his appraisal of conditions in Iraq.
Anthony Cordesman presented his views at a briefing which you can watch as a video (I happened to catch it on C-SPAN). Here are excerpts of his briefing on his report.
I should stress I did not see any dramatic change in our position in Iraq during this trip. Many of the points, the problems that exist there, are problems which have existed really since late 2004, if not earlier. I didn’t see a dramatic shift in the ability of Iraqis to reach the kind of compromise that is almost the foundation of moving forward, although there were some elements of progress. And I use the word “tenuous” in talking about my trip and strategic patience simply because the risks are so high and they are higher than even – or lower than even, I should say. We really have problems even in defining success.
...
One of the most critical problems is the prime minister’s office. And since I did not speak to the prime minister, I want to be careful about using the term “office.” But throughout the visit, time and again people said that the prime minister’s office had been involved in the support of Shi’ite ethnic cleansing, that in had intervened in detainment or military operations against Shi’ite militias, that it had refused to act in moving forward in areas where the prime minister had direct authority in bringing Sunnis and Sunni tribal elements into the government and into the security structure.
...
It is clear that in some ways our intervention in Iraq has allowed the Sadr militia and shi’ite extremist groups to operate in terms of sectarian cleansing with more freedom than they had in the past. This is an ongoing problem, and it is a very serious one. It is also clear that we face a growing threat from the more hostile elements of those Shi’ite militias, and that they have had stronger Iranian backing and new forms of Iranian arms.
Cordesman does not see partition as a solution.
It is also clear that while there are still some American politicians talking about partition as if this was soft and manageable. It is brutal, it is repressive, it kills people, it injures them, it drives them out of their homes, and it drives them out of the country. To talk about this as if it was something that is gentle or non-violent is simply dishonest, it has not happened, and it cannot happen in the future.
Clue train to Anthony Cordesman: But the partition is happening anyway. I repeat: The partition is happening anyway. You even say so. We can't stop it. We might as well help the Shias and Sunnis move away from each other under our protection so that they don't get killed or injured. We might as well help Sunnis and Shias basically swap homes and to help them build homes where they flee to.
The battles in the south are between Shia factions.
The south is effectively under the control of struggling Shi’ite factions. It is quite clear that the British have been defeated, that they are essentially marginalized in an enclave. We are watching struggles between Shi’ite factions, many of which are a little more than criminal gangs. We are not even able to have our PRTs operate in some of the problems involved, and we simply will never have the military forces to intervene both in Baghdad, the northern and central areas like Diyala and the south. Whatever happens, there has been a kind of partition already.
The struggle for Baghdad is still going on street by street, area by area. There is still sectarian cleansing in the south, there are still battles in Diyala, in Ninawa, in the north-central areas.
He admits that we do not have enough soldiers to fight in the south. The battles between Shia factions and the ethnic cleansing in many areas are beyond our ability to stop.
I am amazed that we are over 4 years into the Iraq debacle and yet George W. Bush and other war supporters can still orchestrate rah rah episodes in the press about how things in Iraq are starting to turn around in our favor. Some of our top military officers tell lies about how long it would take to pull out of Iraq. Lunatics write op/eds arguing that we are making progress in Iraq. Our leadership and public intellectuals are pretty lame.
The British forces in southern Iraq have totally lost control of Basra. They will fight their way out of Iraq in about a month.
What US generals see, however, is a close ally preparing to "cut and run", leaving behind a city in the grip of a power struggle between Shia militias that could determine the fate of the Iraqi government and the country as a whole. With signs of the surge yielding tentative progress in Baghdad, but at the cost of many American lives, there could scarcely be a worse time for a parting of the ways. Yet the US military has no doubt, despite what Gordon Brown claims, that the pullout is being driven by "the political situation at home in the UK".
A senior US officer familiar with Gen Petraeus's thinking said: "The short version is that the Brits have lost Basra, if indeed they ever had it. Britain is in a difficult spot because of the lack of political support at home, but for a long time - more than a year - they have not been engaged in Basra and have tried to avoid casualties.
"They did not have enough troops there even before they started cutting back. The situation is beyond their control.
"Quite frankly what they're doing right now is not any value-added. They're just sitting there. They're not involved. The situation there gets worse by the day. Americans are disappointed because, in their minds, this thing is still winnable. They don't intend to cut and run."
The Brits will be out of Basra Palace in a couple of weeks.
Two generals told The Independent on Sunday last week that the military advice given to the Prime Minister was, "We've done what we can in the south [of Iraq]". Commanders want to hand over Basra Palace – where 500 British troops are subjected to up to 60 rocket and mortar strikes a day, and resupply convoys have been described as "nightly suicide missions" – by the end of August. The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to "reposture" the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.
Some of the articles claim the US will have to send more forces to southern Iraq to protect the supply convoys coming up from Kuwait.
Civil war may escalate between Shia factions in southern Iraq. I figure the winning faction will either some day control all of Arab Iraq or at least will control the Shia Arab section of Iraq.
One US official said that recent US military intelligence reports sent to the White House had concluded that Britain had "lost" Basra, and that Pentagon war games were predicting a virtual civil war in the South once British troops left.
Which faction is going to win? Will that faction then take on other Shia factions in Baghdad in order to win control of the "central" government?
Some British officers think predictions of a civil war after withdrawal are exaggerated.
But in his outburst last autumn the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, came close to implying that further British sacrifices in Iraq were pointless. He said the British presence was "exacerbating" the security situation and that the troops should leave "soon". Commanders argue that the majority of attacks in Basra are on British forces – between 85 and 90 per cent, they estimate – and point out that when Iraqi forces have taken over other British bases in Basra city, such as the Shatt al-Arab hotel, violence has fallen. "We are a major part of the problem," said one officer. "Without us the murder rate would be lower than in Washington DC."
Since the British presence is already so minimal do the Brits really restrain the factions at this point?
The British retreat will cost 10 to 15 British deaths.
A MILITARY adviser to President George W Bush has warned that British forces will have to fight their way out of Iraq in an “ugly and embarrassing” retreat.
Stephen Biddle, who also advises the US commander in Iraq, said Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias in the south would try to create the impression they were forcing a retreat. “They want to make it clear they have forced the British out. That means they’ll use car bombs, ambushes, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] . . . and there will be a number of British casualties.”
The comments coincide with British military estimates that withdrawal could cost the lives of 10 to 15 soldiers.
The withdrawal from their base to the airport is expected to go well. But from the airport to out of the country is going to be a gun battle.
The Brits will learn what Saigon was like for the Americans.
WHEN the British went into Iraq they were believed to have more expertise in counter-insurgency than their US allies still learning the lessons of humiliation in Vietnam.
But now they are facing their own “Saigon moment” with plans for a withdrawal predicted by some on the British side to be ignominious and by a US military adviser to be ugly and embarrassing.
Not only that, but the British are expected to rely on US troops for cover to protect their convoys.
The Brits never had enough troops. But then neither did the United States. The number of Iraqi youths willing to take up arms against the United States or against any government supported by the United States is so large that the US could only suppress the violence in Iraq with a draft to expand the US Army by a factor of 3 or 4.
We have no strategic interests at stake in Iraq. Al Qaeda isn't going to take over when we leave. The Kurds and Shia Arabs will see to that. Even the Sunni Arabs only wanted Al Qaeda to help them beat the Americans and Shias. We can leave and save huge amounts of money and many lives.
Senate support for Bush's Iraq war is crumbling. With Senate Republican support for the Iraqi war in decline the Bush White House no longer has time to wait for the final results of the US troop surge.
White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.
The troop surge has not been accompanied by big political reforms by Iraq's governing factions. The Iraqi people haven't decided to rise up en masse and join freedom fighting brigades. The bulk of the fighting for the sorta government is done by American soldiers.
Domenici became the fourth senior Republican in 10 days to significantly criticize the current Iraq strategy, following Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and John Warner (R-Va.).
...
Even more significant are the Republicans who had previously signed on as co-sponsors to the bill Domenici endorsed today. Its authors are Sens. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Other co-sponsors include other Senate veterans who are especially close to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Bush White House, as well as a pair of endangered incumbents.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled a visit to Latin America amid mounting criticism of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Partition anyone?
With President Bush's war strategy clouded by limited results and mounting casualties, two scholars are proposing a partition plan that would divide Iraq into three main regions.
The authors, Edward P. Joseph of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, are hoping to draw the attention of Bush administration policymakers.
...
Under the plan, Iraqis would divide the country into three main regions. Each would assume primary responsibility for its own security and governance, as Iraqi Kurds already have in Kurdistan.
"Creating such a structure could prove to be difficult and risky," the report said. "However, when measured against the alternatives - continuing to police an ethnic-sectarian war, or withdrawing and allowing the conflict to escalate - the risks of soft partition appear more acceptable."
They recommend something I've long argued for: Move the ethnic and religious groups away from each other.
In Baghdad, rather than keeping vulnerable minorities in tense parts of the capital, Joseph said, "It might make sense to move them voluntarily to places where they would be safer."
Partition might have a chance at this point. Kurdistan is already semi-independent. But will the Shias and Sunnis allow themselves to get pulled apart? Will the Shia leaders accept the loss of some control over the Sunni area? (not that they have much control now) Will non-Iraqi Sunni fighters keep blowing up Shia targets in order to keep the war going?
The appeal of partition at this point is that it is a card not yet played. It is not simple retreat. The Bush Administration does not want to retreat. They might suddenly grasp partition even though doing so goes against the mythological belief that we all really can get along.
US Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) joins the ranks of those who want to withdraw US troops from Iraq.
"We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."
The White House had hoped that Republican lawmakers would stand back until a mid-September administration report on military and political progress in Iraq resulting from the president's troop-increase plan, which has boosted U.S. forces by tens of thousands. But Domenici said the signal to Bush should be clear: GOP patience is running out much more quickly.
While he's not calling for an immediate withdrawal Domenici wants most US combat troops out of Iraq within 9 months.
Yesterday, Domenici embraced a new legislative proposal to reshape U.S. policy around the 79 recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. In December, the bipartisan panel called for withdrawing most U.S. combat troops by March 31, 2008, although a limited number would remain in place for training and counterterrorism operations and other specific missions.
Once the US troops leave the Iraqis can finally fight their civil war to completion. Or we could try to partition the country into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish zones and see if we can prevent them fighting across borders. Would the Sunnis accept a deal where they get to govern their own Sunni majority country? Would the Shias let them leave?
In theory the surge of US forces was done to give the Iraqis more time to work out political compromises between factions and to thereby greatly reduce inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic violence between rival factions. But democracy in Iraq isn't working in any way resembling what you'll learn from an American civics text book. Alissa Rubin of the New York Times outlines the extent to which even the elected representatives and cabinet members in Iraq refuse to govern or compromise.
At least 12 ministers from the 38-member cabinet are no longer attending cabinet meetings. There has been little progress on benchmark legislation, including oil revenue-sharing and a law to set a date for provincial elections.
Seventy-four members of Parliament are boycotting the 275-member body, which, when combined with the members who rarely attend anyway, means that Parliament often lacks a quorum and cannot do any official business.
More important than sheer numbers, however, is that even though one Sunni Arab party is considering compromise, the larger main bloc, Tawafiq, is still refusing to participate.
The Sunnis are not willing to accept minority status. They know their own choices are to dominate or to submit to dominance by the Shias. They don't want to accept the latter because they know just how shabbily they'll get treated and they do not trust the Shias.
Richard Oppel reports that A Sunni faction is outraged that one of its cabinet members stands accused trying to get another politician killed. (these audacious Shias never would have gotten away with accusing Sunnis of bumping them off in the old glory days of Saddam)
In the latest blow to Iraq's disastrously ineffective government, six ministers from the country's Sunni political bloc said they would boycott cabinet meetings to protest the handling of allegations that one of the six, Culture Minister Asad al-Hashimi, had ordered another politician killed.
Hashimi is accused of masterminding the assassination attempt, against Mithal al-Alusi, once a top aide to the Shiite politician Ahmad Chalabi and now a member of Parliament. Alusi survived the attack, but his two sons were killed. A government spokesman has defended the inquiry as impartial, but Sunnis accuse the government of trying to discredit their leaders.
Six other cabinet members, Shiites loyal to Sadr, are already boycotting the cabinet. Members of Sadr's bloc are boycotting Parliament as well. However, Parliament's acting speaker, Khalid al-Attiya, said Friday that the lawmakers have told him they expect to return to the chamber next week after a three-week absence.
Even if all the cabinet members start attending cabinet meetings they won't work together for some shared concept of the common good. They think in tribal and religious faction terms.
An arrest warrant against Culture Minister Asad al-Hashimi is just one of the reasons why the biggest Sunni bloc is boycotting the Iraqi parliament.
The main Sunni bloc with 44 members is boycotting parliament over an unrelated issue. That would make it difficult to give legitimacy to the oil bill even if it passed.
Without their presence, Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said it was not possible to debate the measure.
The revenue-sharing bill has not been passed by the Cabinet.
Further complicating the negotiations are other political disputes. Al-Maliki's main Sunni coalition partner, the Iraqi Accordance Front, was not present when the Cabinet approved the draft because it is boycotting meetings in a row over an arrest warrant issued against the Sunni culture minister.
American soldiers are fighting in order to give the Iraqi government time to function. But the Iraqi government "functions" by doing boycotts and carrying out hits between rival factions. So American soldiers are fighting to give the Iraqi cabinet more time to kill each other.
Soldier's in the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division think we should stop wasting time and lives and money in Iraq. (same article here and here)
BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”
But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
Only the newest enlistees still believe in the war.
The American warriors want to leave Iraq.
"In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war," said Sgt. 1st Class David Moore, a self-described "conservative Texas Republican" and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. "Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me."
We should leave. We should let the Iraqis fight it out among themselves.
The Sunni Arabs are pushing the Kurds out of Mosul. (same article here and here)
While the American military is trying to tamp down the vicious fighting between rival Arab sects in Baghdad, conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying here, adding another dimension to Iraq’s civil war. Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.
Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, with a population of 1.8 million, straddles the Tigris River on a grassy, windswept plain in the country’s north. It was recently estimated to be about a quarter Kurdish, but Sunni Arabs have already driven out at least 70,000 Kurds and virtually erased the Kurdish presence from the city’s western half, said Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of surrounding Nineveh Province and a Kurd.
The Kurds are pushing the Shia and Sunni Arabs out of the Kurdish zone and the Kurds are trying to build Kurdish majorities along border regions so that in plebiscites on whether to make border areas part of Kurdistan the majorities will vote for Kurdistan.
Remember those neoconservatives (really just liberals hawkish on foreign policy - especially regarding the Middle East) who were preaching that democracy is the cure for what ails the world? Never mind that democracy is more a result than a cause of what makes societies the way they are. The idealistic and unconservative neocons wanted us to believe that democracy always makes countries better. But democracy is a major contributing factor to the ethnic cleansing of Mosul and the civil war in Iraq.
Already embittered at the toppling of the Sunni Arab government of Saddam Hussein, insurgents here have been further enraged by their current political disenfranchisement, a result of their boycotting the 2005 elections. The main Kurdish coalition now holds 31 of 41 seats on the provincial council and all the top executive positions, even though Kurds make up only 35 percent of the province. Most Kurds are of the Sunni sect, but they have little in common with the Arabs.
Iraq is turning into a bunch of ethnically pure zones. Segregation with a vengeance. No wonder American soldiers in the 82nd Airborne fail to see the point of more American soldiers coming home in boxes or alive with pieces missing.
The Turkish army has deployed additional tanks and troops to the border area this week for "spring manoeuvres". But the military moves, although apparently limited so far, have been accompanied by a rising crescendo of public and political demands for action to curb PKK attacks. The government of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is under pressure, following a suicide bombing, blamed on the PKK, which killed six people in an Ankara shopping mall last week. Officials said the bombing marked an escalation in the separatists' campaign. Mr Erdogan's comment, after the Ankara blast, that he saw "eye to eye" with the army over future military action has raised expectations that an operation is imminent.
The Kurds in Turkey do not want to be ruled by Turks just as the Kurds in Iraq do not want to be ruled by Arabs. The Iraqi Kurds are well on their way toward independence from the rest of Iraq and they have de facto independence already. If the civil war leads to a partitioning between the Sunni Arab and Shia Arab areas that will brighten the prospects for an independent Kurdistan. But the Turks do not want to see an independent Kurdistan in Iraq since such a country would embolden Turkish Kurds to seek independence as well.
The United States has massively screwed up in Iraq. The mistakes we've made in Iraq are huge and growing. Time to cut our losses.
Thanks to Lawrence Auster for a couple of the links.
The theory was that the Iraqi government would use the troop surge period to implement political reforms that would increase Sunni support while pressuring the Shia militias. The reality is that the Iraqi government isn't changing much.
WASHINGTON - When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a surprise stop in Baghdad Thursday, a day after the horrendous car bombings in the city, his message was clear: The US commitment to Iraq is not open-ended – and the Iraqi government had better get busy on its side of the "to do" list.
The nearly three-month-old increase in US troops in Baghdad is still not complete. But US officials are starting to show impatience that a plan designed to give the Iraqi government breathing space for making decisions aimed at addressing sectarian strife is not having much of the desired response.
Indeed, the US "surge" has not been matched by an equal uptick in political action. On key issues like revenue distribution, militias, reconciliation, and constitutional reform, progress appears to be made at an "all the time in the world" pace – even though Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki committed to security steps and political decisions in conversations with President Bush this past January.
The killings in Iraq might even be on a new upswing.
As Wednesday's bombings demonstrated, generalized security is still elusive. Some reports suggest that, overall, killings in Iraq are inching back up to last year's highs.
If we spent even a tenth of the Iraq war money on security efforts closer to home we could do far more to decrease our risk of a terrorist attack. If we spent another tenth on energy research we could eventually stop the flow of world money to Muslim oil states. The Iraq war is a bad idea. It does not increase US security. Plus, it pulls money away from other things we could spend money on to increase security and prosperity.
The debate on Iraq will be over before the results of the troop surge become clear.
"The time scale to succeed is years," said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, while "the time scale for tolerance here is 12 months for Democrats and 18 months for Republicans."
But suppose the troop surge shows that we can reduce violence in Baghdad while it surges in other parts of Iraq? The US military isn't even big enough to maintain the surge level of troops in Baghdad, let alone surging even higher to repeat the same process in the rest of Iraq.
But even if the surge reduces the violence around Baghdad that could mean that the insurgents have decided to hide their weapons and hold off from some of their attacks until the US troops eventually return to the pre-surge levels.
Petraeus himself has repeatedly said it is too early to tell whether the new strategy is showing sustained progress. He and others say they will be able to assess by this fall whether they are succeeding or failing. If so, the current debate over a possible 2008 withdrawal could prove beside the point.
Actually, the surge could prove besides the point. The decisions in Washington DC could make the results of the surge irrelevant.
An official in Iraq warned that executing the new approach will take time -- perhaps more than Washington is willing to give. "Early signs are very encouraging -- huge drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, return of thousands of refugee families," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so that he could be candid. "But there is no way we can defeat this insurgency by summer. I believe we can begin to turn the tide by then, and have an idea if we are doing it. To defeat it completely is a five-to-10-year project, minimum -- and rushing it along to meet a D.C. timeline is rushing to failure."
I would like to hear why this official thinks we should spend 5 to 10 years and an awful lot of blood and money to defeat the assorted insurgencies (note the plural) in Iraq. Is that what we are supposed to learn from the surge? Whether or not we could defeat the insurgency if we maintained 150,000 troops in Iraq for 10 years?
Ricks relays assorted reports on how the clamp-down in Baghdad is shifting the violence elsewhere. Also, the turning of Sunni tribes in Anbar Province against the foreign jihadists is driving those jihadists to other parts of Iraq. This demonstrates that -the US does not have enough soldiers to do a surge big enough to show that we can get a handle on the situation. In spite of Bush's repeated proclamations to the contrary he's gotten us into a conflict that we could only win with a force two or three times larger and with many more casualties.
We need to keep in mind the bottom line. Is the bottom line to get the factions in Iraq to stop fighting each other? That seems an unlikely turn of events because none of the factions wants to submit to rule by any other faction.
Also, officers say, major questions remain about the sustainability of any positive momentum. Military operations can buy time but cannot solve the basic problem in Iraq: the growing threat of a civil war. The U.S. government keeps pushing for reconciliation, but there are few signs of movement toward that goal. "Nothing is going to work until the parties are ready to compromise, and I don't see any indicators yet that they are," said A. Heather Coyne, who has worked in Iraq both as a military reservist and as a civilian. "Until then, any effect of the surge will be temporary."
To put it another way: The Iraqis do not do equality. They do dominance and submission. Equality is foreign to their vocabulary and not in their mental model of the world.
Writing in the Living Intentionally blog, a US soldier working in intelligence in Iraq eloquently states how much Iraqis do not care about freedom for others.
What I object to is what the Iraq war has become, and the fact that great Americans are dying on a daily basis for people who do not appreciate or understand what we are doing. Make no mistake, many people from this culture know the words to use when talking with Westerners....words like freedom, democracy and human rights. When the Westerner leaves the room these words cease to have meaning. They do not speak this way with each other. They mutually recognize that using these words is part of the expected hussle. There is a Westernized elite who own the concepts and desire to live within the framework, but they have no power here, and their desire is to get a US visa as quickly as they can and move to Detroit.There is nothing in this culture that gives it a framework to understand the notion of consensual government for the common good, outside one's self, kinship or tribal structure. This truth works itself