Looking for some Vita-spin (Iraq Related)
BigSpliff
3,266 Posts
Oh shit.... I've had a feeling for at least 3 years that we are heading for a 'power vacuum' in the M.E. and that, together with the collapsing borders, is helping to create an Islamic super state that could stretch from the Mediterranean to China. Israel might not want to let that happen. Then it's: Boom. Mutually Assured Destruction is still very much on the table. The Rapture Ready/PNAC Crowd must be creaming themselves right now.>>In his memo, the US ambassador said that two female embassy workers had been warned that they had to cover their hair, while men and even children had been stopped wearing shorts or jeans. One woman was told that she should not drive a car, while another was warned against using a mobile phone.Local employees had received death threats and their relatives had been kidnapped, while most had to conceal their jobs even from family members.The ambassador wrote that the local workers used code names for their mobile phone contacts in case they were abducted, and the embassy had started shredding documents showing their surnames.One Iraqi employee had begun asking what plans were being made to look after them when the United States withdrew, recalling the plight of South Vietnamese employees left behind by the Americans when Saigon fell in 1975.http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1801920,00.html
Comments
How many more years of carnage can we expect before the shots of everyone being coptered out of the "Green Zone"???
First off all, the asessment of the embassy memo is ofcourse true. This is not much different than my own observations of the perils of working with the Americans that Iraqis told me about in 2004 when I was in Baghdad and Tikrit. Your view that this will create an Islamic super state is a bit naive. The Islamist parties pressuring foreign service nationals in US embassy Baghdad are from Shiite militias. The Sunni-led insurgency, which also includes Islamo-fascists, has made Shiite religious symbols a primary target of their campaign of terror. So if anything, it is Dar al-Islam divided, with the Sunni kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia threatened by the rising Shiite pluralities in Iraq.
One reason for the concern of many Iraqis about an American betrayal is because there is some precedent for this. In 2004, when American marines launched the offensive on Fallujah, they abandoned positions in Baquba and Mosul and Haditha, leaving those cities to the mercies of the nihilists. But this suggests as does the memo (not authored by Khalilzad, but signed off by Khalilzad) that part of the problem is that America is failing to protect Iraqis from those who seek to sabotage an elected government.
Now I don't profess to know what goes on inside the skull of the anti-war crowd. But I found a recent essay from Robert Dreyfuss quite illuminating. He writes, "The time for talking to
Iraq's Baath, former military leaders, and Sunni resistance forces is here. And now that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, the nature of the Iraqi insurgency is partly clarified. It's a lot harder for supporters of the war to argue that extremist, head-severing Islamist extremists are its dominant face. In fact, of course, they never were."
This would be a final betrayal in a long line of betrayals for the left, if the left heeds his advice as apparently Tom Hayden and others have. They would be betraying successive elections, a constitution and the dismantling of one of the cruelest tyranies AMERICA supported during the cold war. Dreyfuss has long ago discredited himself. But I am curious if others will swallow this Koolaid.
From where you are standing calling anyone naive has got to be joke of the century. You are obviously on your own path to absolute truth. But really, plaese.
it seems like both sides seem to deny their own existence.
Both the left and the right are very much alive in the media, the blogosphere and elsewhere.
both sides seem to be pushing further and futher away from each other which, IMHO is part of the reason for a lot of this political mess.
A house divided...
There are "moralists" and "people who wants to make a difference and the world a better place" but there are not many political leftists. America does not even have a social democratic / labour party. From my point of view, if you support the democrats you are not left, you are a liberal. This is not intended to be derogatory.
Every single issue has been de-politicized for fear of alienating people.
Or such has been my experience working in solidarity organizations that are present in the United States. I hope I am wrong.
I'll bite.
I thought, and I think I have been proven right, that the complete disbanding of the entire Iraqi government and army because they were all Baathist was a mistake. Not allowing anyone who was in the army or government to join the new army and government was a mistake. The millions of Iraqis who had been part of the government were forced to the margins where they predictable (I and many others predicted it) formed an insurgency.
The argument was anyone, no matter how low level or opportunistic, who was in the government or party was so evil that they must be unemployed for the rest of their lives.
Instead we could have built on the expertise of millions of Iraqis who were in the government and party and army, who were glad to see Saddam go.
We made a mistake. We made a big mistake. We made a really really big mistake. We gave insurgency the only hope for these millions of Iraqis. Even today they are not welcomed to quit the insurgency and join the government. It is well documented that people with no skills who were clerks and drivers before the invasion are now running whole branches of government and infrastructure. If you were a good hydro-engineer and wanted to work in Iraq you joined the Baathist party.
Perhaps it is time to quit digging and climb out of the hole.
Yes, let us talk to the Iraq's Baathist, Sunni and resistance forces.
I can hear you now "But they are all evil".
That may be true but no surrender can be negotiated without first talking. The Sunni's are already part of the new government. An agreement could be devised where by the worse war criminal would stand trial and others would receive amnesty.
What would the result be. Peace, Justice and a free and democratic Iraq. Doesn't sound that bad to me.
Of course Iraq would still have a major problem with Kurdish independence terrorists who have been active in Iran and Turkey and would turn their attention to any central government in Iraq.
You are right.
Sorry Vit but aren't the U.S. military and embassy already talking to the insurgency already? Some of the newly elected Sunni politicians to the Assembly are connected to the insurgency as well.
Overall, foreign fighters are only said to be 5% of the insurgency, the rest are homegrown Iraqis.
Zarqawi was at the head of most suicide bombings, usually using Saudis. He definitely was responsible for raising the Sunni-Shiite tensions to almost civil war levels that they are at now.
Besides the former Baathists there are also a lot of Sunni tribes that got turned against the Americans because of their heavy handed tactics.
I think overally, there are about 50 insurgenct groups.
And if you don't talk to the insurgents how else are you going to end the fighting? No one I've heard, including the military in Iraq right now, see a military solution.
And I have to go along with with has already been said, the Left, and I'm not talking liberals here, have basically no political say or power in this country, so they can write and talk about this shit all day and it won't mean anything basically accept to their own little group.
There is a difference between diplomats and military officers talking to the insurgency in order to divide it and get groups outside the government participating inside the government, and what Dreyfuss is proposing. He is saying that America's aims can succeed and that the anti-war movement in America should coordinate and show solidarity with the "resistance" in Iraq.
Permanent War?
Dealing with Realities in Iraq and Washington
By Robert Dreyfuss
One of the most unfortunate myths pervading American culture, the American
psyche, and the whole American weltanschauung -- and it's one for which we
might as well go ahead and blame movie director
Frank Capra -- is that in most
situations the good guys win. Morality triumphs. The greedy and
self-interested, the cruel and mean-spirited are defeated. Ultimately, or
so the myth goes, the bad guys win some of the battles, but in the end the
good guys win the wars.
Sadly, in the real world, good doesn't always win. Sometimes, good isn't
even there. When it comes to Iraq, the left, the liberals, the progressives
(for the sake of argument, the good guys) sometimes seem to have their
heads in the clouds. That's true in regard to the crucial question of
whether President Bush's stay-the-course strategy can succeed. The answer,
unfortunately, is: Yes, it can.
The Bush administration's strategy in Iraq today, as in the invasion of
2003, is: Use military force to destroy the political infrastructure of the
Iraqi state; shatter the old Iraqi armed forces; eliminate Iraq as a
determined foe of U.S. hegemony in the oil-rich Persian Gulf; build on the
wreckage of the old Iraq a new state beholden to the U.S.; create a new
political class willing to be subservient to our interests in the region;
and use that new Iraq as a base for further expansion.
To achieve all that, the President is determined to keep as much military
power as he can in Iraq for as long as it takes, while recruiting,
training, funding, and supervising a ruthless Iraqi police and security
force that will gradually allow the American military to reduce their
"footprint" in the country without entirely leaving. The endgame, as he and
his advisors imagine it, would result in a permanent U.S. military presence
in the country, including permanent bases and basing rights, and a
predominant position for U.S. business and oil interests.
Marshaling the Bad News
Many progressives scoff at such a scenario. They argue, with
persuasiveness, that the American project in Iraq is doomed. To prove their
point, they cite (what else?) the bad news. And there certainly is a lot of
it.
First of all, the Sunni-led insurgency, metastasizing continually, is a
hydra-headed army of armies representing former Baathist military,
security, and intelligence officers, assorted nationalists and Islamists,
tribal and clan leaders, and city and neighborhood militias. It has shown
remarkable resilience. The elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is not
likely to put much of a dent in the Sunni resistance and may only
strengthen it.
Second, Iraq's Shiites are restive, at best, and bitterly divided among
themselves. The two most powerful blocs, with the two most important
militias -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq with its
Badr Brigade and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- are to varying degrees
unhappy with the American presence. The up-and-coming Fadhila bloc, one of
whose leaders was just arrested in Najaf (allegedly for planning IED
attacks against U.S. forces), is brooding. Throughout Iraq's mostly Shiite
southern regions, Shiite parties and armies are battling among themselves
for the control of important cities, including Basra, and of Iraq's
Southern Oil Company, which produces the vast bulk of Iraqi oil and has
provided a valuable stream of corrupt cash for Shiite party leaders. Some
of them -- possibly all of them -- are turning to various factions in Iran
for support.
Third, the Kurds, ensconced in the Alamo-like Kurdish region in the north,
are happily waxing pro-American even as they quietly prepare for a
unilateral grab of the key oil city of Kirkuk, of Iraq's Northern Oil
Company, and of other territory contiguous to the Kurdish region -- thus
threatening to set in motion an almost unavoidable clash with Iraq's Arabs,
both Sunni and Shiite, and possibly nearby states as well.
Fourth, the American project to create an Iraqi army and police force is
going badly. So far, at least, the main army and police units have been
reconstituted from the Badr Brigade and Kurdish pesh merga militiamen, none
of whom are loyal to the concept of a unitary, nonsectarian Iraq, nor have
they been unable to grasp basic notions of human rights. The Shiites, in
particular, are engaged in a bloody campaign of death-squad killings and
kidnappings, along with targeted assassinations aimed at Baathists. It will
be difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to use war-hardened,
embittered, and power-hungry Shiite and Kurdish forces to keep peace in
Sunni areas, including western Baghdad.
Fifth, of course, the economic reconstruction of Iraq is, shall we say, not
going swimmingly.
Not surprisingly, many politicians and generals and most progressives have
adopted a worst-case outlook. With bad news mounting, they argue that the
American project in Iraq is lost. In truth, I've made the same argument, at
various points over the past three years. Last November, in an article
entitled
Getting
Out of Iraq for Rolling Stone, I wrote: "George Bush is just about the only
person in Washington these days who doesn't know that the United States has
lost the war in Iraq." I quoted former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who
told a congressional hearing organized by House progressives that the
United States had better get out of Iraq before the resistance overruns the
Green Zone. "We need an exit strategy that we choose -- or it will
certainly be chosen for us," said the grievously wounded Vietnam veteran.
"I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends."
Last week, writing for the
Nation, Nicholas von Hoffman echoed this theme, suggesting that it's too
late to worry about exit strategies:
"We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated
British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French
seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape
across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks,
yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the
defeated and wounded army to safety... [In Iraq,] there is no seaport troops
could get to, so the only way out of Iraq would be that same desert highway
to Kuwait where fifteen years ago the American Air Force destroyed Saddam
Hussein's army."
What Staying the Course Means
Let me now admit to having second thoughts on this matter. I no longer am
convinced that the U.S. adventure in Iraq is lost. There is no guarantee
that the Bush administration cannot succeed in its goals there. The only
certain thing is that success -- what the president calls "victory in Iraq"
-- will come at the expense of thousands more American deaths, tens of
thousands more Iraqi deaths, and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.
Ind eed, this war would have to be sustained not only by this
administration, but by the next one and probably the one after that as
well. For over three years, the United States has supported a massive
military presence on the ground in Iraq, while taking steady casualties. It
may be no less capable of doing so for the next two-and-a-half years, until
the end of Bush's second term -- and during the next administration's
reign, too, whether the president is named John McCain or Hillary Clinton.
At least theoretically, a force of more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers could
wage a brutal war of attrition against the resistance in Iraq for years to
come. Last week, in a leak to the New York Times, the White House announced
its intention to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years to
come. Last week, too, the son of the president of Iraq (a Kurd) revealed
that representatives of the Kurdish region
are
in negotiations with the United States to create a permanent U.S. military
presence in Iraq's north.
Meanwhile, President Bush and his Rasputin,
Karl Rove,
took the occasion of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to reiterate their
unalterable
commitment to victory in Iraq, whatever the cost. There is no reason not to
take Bush at his word. And there is no reason not to believe that Rove will
orchestrate a withering offensive against Democrats who question the
president's goal of victory.
The frightening thing about last week's House and Senate debates over Iraq
was that the mainstream opposition to the Bush administration -- ranging
from moderate Democrats to realist, if pro-military, moderate Republicans
-- never challenges the goal of victory in Iraq. Yes, a hardy band of
antiwar members of Congress (including Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Lynn
Woolsey and Barbara Lee of California, and others, joined by John Murtha of
Pennsylvania) support the unconditional withdrawal of American troops. But
the bulk of the Democrats, including the 42 Democrats who last week voted
in favor of the bloodthirsty Republican war resolution, don't question the
importance of victory in Iraq. They just question the Bush administration's
tactics.
There are only two ways to thwart Bush's war. The first is for the Iraqi
resistance to defeat the U.S. occupation. The second is for domestic public
opinion to coalesce around a demand for unilateral withdrawal. So far,
neither the Iraqi resistance, nor the antiwar movement have the upper hand;
and sadly, so far they are loathe to make common cause with each other.
Where the Vietnamese resistance had a state, North Vietnam, and the support
of the other superpower, the Soviet Union, as well as Mao's China, the
resistance in Iraq is nothing but a grassroots insurgency. It neither
controls a state, nor has the support of any state. (Contrary to the
idiotic assertions of the neoconservatives and the Bush administration,
Iran is not assisting the Sunni Iraqi resistance, and that fractured,
fractious movement is getting only the most minuscule support from its
Sunni Arab neighbors.)
Needless to say, there is no love lost between Iraq's Baathists and the
kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The resistance in Iraq would benefit
mightily if elements of the Shiite bloc hived off to join the insurgency;
if, say, Muqtada Sadr's ragtag forces abandoned the government to join the
resistance, as they toyed with doing during the destruction of Fallujah in
2004. That's unlikely, though.
So who believes that the Iraqi resistance can fight on indefinitely against
the combined might of the U.S. armed forces and American-supported Shiite
and Kurdish armies as well as militias, especially with ongoing American
divide-and-conquer efforts that involve blandishments offered to the less
militant wings of the insurgency? Still, it's not impossible that the
resistance can hold on long enough to effect at least a stalemate. But
their ability to do so might depend, in part, on the ability of the
American antiwar movement to undermine the administration's commitment to
staying the course in Iraq.
Was Iraq a "Mistake"?
Until now, truly antiwar Democrats have represented a minority force within
the party. In opposition, they have largely been eclipsed by moderate
Democrats and realist Republicans, both seemingly content to argue that the
war in Iraq was merely a "mistake" and an inefficiently prosecuted
"failure" without confronting the war itself. In fact, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,
the House Democratic minority leader who (half-heartedly) supports Rep.
Murtha's get-out-now position, used both of those words over and over
during last week's debate. Both words are deadly -- and probably wrong as
well.
The war in Iraq was not a "mistake." It was a deliberately calculated
exercise of U.S. power with a specific end in mind -- namely, control of
Iraq and the Persian Gulf region. It was illegal and remains so. It was a
war crime and remains so. Its perpetrators were war criminals and remain
so. Its goals were unworthy and remain so.
Few Democrats, and almost no Republicans, have been willing to challenge
Bush's war on these terms, however. Neither have most of the Bush
administration's so-called mistakes truly been errors: the brutal
dismantling of the Baath party and the dissolution of the Iraqi armed
forces, widely castigated now as "mistakes" by many Bush critics, were
meant. They were thought out. They were planned with purpose. They, too,
were deliberate actions aiming at U.S. hegemony in Iraq.
Nor is the war simply, or even largely, a "failure." As cruel and brutish
as it is, it is grinding its way toward its goal. Victory for the United
States in Iraq, as evidenced by the recitation of bad news I cited earlier,
is by no means certain. But it is far too early to call it a failure
either. To do so at this stage is Capra-esque. It assumes that bad guys
don't win. But sometimes they do. And on Iraq, the jury remains out.
The danger of emphasizing the supposed "mistakes" and "failures" of the
Bush administration's Iraq policy is that it plays into a notion held by an
increasingly large component of centrists in both parties -- that, although
the war itself was a "mistake," the only rational option for the United
States now is to win it anyway. There are countless variations on this
theme emanating from both Democratic and Republican centrists.
You hear it in the argument that, although the war was wrong, we now have a
moral obligation to stay and prevent civil war. You hear it in the argument
that the United States must be strong against the threat of global
"Islamofascism," and that by leaving Iraq we will hand Al Qaeda and its
allies a victory. There are other variations of the same, but all of those
who make such arguments (while criticizing Bush for his alleged
incompetence and mismanagement) end up arguing that the United States has
no choice other than to stay.
In my discussions with them in recent weeks, several have brought up Colin
Powell's absurd argument about the Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you
own it. Well, yes, we broke Iraq, but we don't own it. (In fact, the
Pottery Barn itself has no such rule. If you mistakenly break a piece of
pottery in one of its stores, you aren't actually liable.) We have
absolutely no moral imperative to stay in I raq. We have a moral imperative
to leave -- and to apologize.
Just as the antiwar movement in the United States can strengthen the
resistance in Iraq, the Iraqi resistance can aid the antiwar movement. The
cold reality of the war in Iraq is that, had it not been for the Iraqi
resistance, there would be no U.S. antiwar movement. Had Iraq's Sunnis
collapsed in disarray and meekly ceded power to the Shiite-Kurdish
coalition empowered by the U.S. invasion, President Bush's illegal war in
Iraq might have succeeded far more effortlessly. But here's the truth of
the matter: Led by Iraq's Baath party and by Iraqi military officers and
their tribal and clan allies, a thriving insurgency did develop within
months of the March 2003 invasion. Some of the resistance is, of course,
still made up of Iraqis passionately loyal to the person of Saddam Hussein.
But studies of the insurgency show that most of its fighters are loyal to
the Baath party, whose origins were among left-leaning Arab nationalists,
or they are loyal to a more specific version of Iraqi nationalism, or they
simply oppose the foreign occupation of their country.
Back to Capra Country
The antiwar movement in the United States developed not out of intellectual
and moral opposition to the war itself, although that is at its core. It
grew because mainstream Americans became increasingly disturbed by the
prolonged war that followed the 2003 invasion. Many Americans grew outraged
over U.S. casualties. But the fact that a prolonged insurgency followed the
invasion and that U.S. casualties mounted is the result of the Iraqi
people's unwillingness to submit to an American diktat.
Viewed from that standpoint, it's at least worth asking: Who are the good
guys and who are the bad guys in Iraq? Are the good guys the U.S. troops
fighting to impose American hegemony in the Gulf? Are the good guys the
American forces who have installed a murderous Shiite theocracy in Baghdad?
Are the good guys the Marines who murdered children and babies in Haditha
in cold blood? Are the good guys the U.S. officers who brought us Abu
Ghraib, or the generals who signed off on their methods, or the
administration that set them on such a path in the first place? Who was it,
after all, who pulverized the institutions of the Iraqi state and society?
So if the U.S. "cavalry" aren't the good guys, who then can we cast in that
role? If Frank Capra went to Iraq, how would he divide the place neatly
into good guys and bad guys and assemble his feel-good morality play?
Certainly, most Americans still believe that the Americans are the good
guys, even if 62%
(according to
one recent poll) no longer believe that the war in Iraq was "worth
fighting." But my argument here is: Capra could make a plausible argument
that, in the hell that Iraq has become in 2006, with resistance fighters
killing U.S. soldiers and vice versa, there's at least as much good on
their side as on ours, if not more.
That raises, once again, the question of a dialogue with the Iraqi
insurgents. For the past year, off and on, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has
conducted secret talks with the resistance and has openly made a
distinction between Zarqawi-style jihadists and former Baathists and
military men. Since the creation of the new, allegedly permanent government
under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraqi government officials once again
have raised the idea of talking to the resistance.
An
aide to Maliki even suggested an amnesty for armed fighters who have killed
U.S. troops. That's a good idea, and it's been raised more than once since
2003. In this case, though, an ignorant Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada
Democrat and Senate minority leader, expressed outrage at the idea of an
amnesty. According to the Washington Post, which first reported the amnesty
idea, the Maliki aide who suggested it
was
fired.
Personally I'm suspicious of Khalilzad's dialogue offers. By dangling the
idea, Khalilzad is more than likely using a divide-and-conquer tactic,
enticing some insurgent leaders to join the new Iraqi regime. How else to
interpret the offer at a moment when President Bush is insisting on an
unconditional U.S. victory in Iraq? People knowledgeable about the
resistance know that the only basis for serious talks with the insurgents
is the offer of an American withdrawal from Iraq in exchange for an accord.
Still, whether one thinks the resistance fighters are good guys, or bad
guys that we need to talk to, the left, the antiwar movement, and
progressives don't have to wait for Zal Khalilzad. The time for talking to
Iraq's Baath, former military leaders, and Sunni resistance forces is here.
And now that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, the nature of the Iraqi
insurgency is partly clarified. It's a lot harder for supporters of the war
to argue that extremist, head-severing Islamist extremists are its dominant
face. In fact, of course, they never were.
Some of the antiwar movement's more perceptive leaders have already started
the dialogue. Tom Hayden, the former California state senator and activist,
has been talking to the Iraqi resistance in London, Amman, and elsewhere.
Some members of Congress, such as Rep. Jim McDermott, have traveled to
Amman, Jordan to do the same thing. The Bush administration might not be
ready to do it openly -- yet. But wars end either with the utter defeat of
one side or the other, or with a negotiated settlement. I'll take that
settlement.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of
Devil's
Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers
national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American
Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to
TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, and other sites, and writes the blog,
The Dreyfuss Report.
Do you know what words mean? I blame the Shiite theocratic parties for the campaign of kidnapping and intimidation. Listen, take a deep breath and please attempt write a coherent sentence responding to anything I wrote. It's not that hard. I know you can do it.
I know you know I can do it. That's what pisses you off.
Why don't you draw a picture? It could be a timeline of events of the last 5 years with your contemporary analysis superimposed. Then there could be third schema below it featuring your revisionist analysis. It could look something like this
Actually, I amuse myself responding to your barely intelligible non-sequitors, as a break from daily writing. But I admire your ability to say so many nonsensical things with such bravado and sneer. Such impulsive foolishness is a gift that should be shared.
I guess I would have made a great Commander-in-Chief.
Ah well. You'll keep.
You read this stuff? This is meaningless drivel best I can tell.
I had a subscription to the Nation for a year, and read it. I hated it. Lefties arguing whether we should support a foriegn policy that concentrated on ending poverty through agricultural development or or by promoting living wages. As if they had some say in foriegn policy at all. Lefties arguing with lefties over hypathetical issues they have no say in is stupid.
Vitamin,
Turning this into a Left-Right thing is pretty unfair. The Right has shown itself to be overwhelmingly amenable to (1) betraying those that we are supposed to be helping and (2) cozying up to muderderous leaders when it suits them.
That said, I do not support a dialogue with Islamofascists.
In your opinion, what is the proper course of action? Prolonged occupation? Baathist reintegration? Phased withdrawal?
I was not trying to make this a right/left thing. I was posing an Iraq related question to the group, after conceding the basic point of the US embassy memo. I don't agree about the "right" betraying the people we are supposed to be helping, however clearly that is the case for the old CPA and to a lesser extent the US embassy in Baghdad. At times, not from a perversion of mission but simply because there were too few troops, Marines had to abandon cities where many locals were helping the Americans and leave them to die at the hands of the head severers.
Insofar as I am on the "right" (I prefer to think myself a paleo-liberal), I have probably interviewed Mithal al Alusia more than any western journalist, and wrote a series of pieces last August and September about the Islamist failings of the constitution. Also for what it's worth, I basically broke the story on permanent bases in January 2005.
But back to the best course of action. The options for now suck dong (another point I have conceded in these back and forths). But I think for now, we must do everything we can to make the war one between an elected, pluralist government adhering to a flawed constitution that can be ammended against a nostalgic terrorizing band of saboteurs. That is the only conflict worth fighting for, as opposed to a three or five part ethnic civil war. At the same time, America must use its influence and at times arms to rein in the worst of the ethnic militias we failed to dismantle and even brought into the police and security services. When the Times wrote last fall about how the American military uncovered and closed the basement torture prisons operated by Iraq's Shiite controlled interior ministry, this was a good thing. And this role of curbing the excesses of ethnic factions will help us.
I think America and those Iraqis committed to a democratic and pluralist future must play for weeks, months and hopefully years of enough calm to begin the rebuilding of a country devastated by Saddam Hussein. This means identifying those elements, such as the new coalition of terrorists that subsumed al Qaeda in Iraq and killing them off. We often hear about how insurgencies are not easily defeated. And in the long run that is true. But insurgencies can be stilled. And in this case, since the external power is not fighting for conquest, but rather successive elections and the rule of law, we have a chance to prove our eminently more moral case in the fighting.
But there are no guarantees. I am encouraged that Dan (as I would imagine many others) are so offended by the garbage from Dreyfuss. He is, by the way, kind of a big deal on the left!
Yeah, I didn't like the Dreyfuss piece either - deeply flawed and shamelessly leading.
But...it's unquestionably a war of conquest and to pretend otherwise is a disingenuous exercise in semantics. Stating that the mission has always been about democratising Iraq is hard to swallow - I think everyone remembers the main justification for going to war being along the lines of protecting the security of the region against a rogue military state. The coalition long ago squandered any scrap of moral high ground that it might have had and I don't think a military escalation to force through a flawed constitution and hastily assembled model for goverment will help them retrieve that.
The idea that a democratically elected pluralist government is the golden panacea to Iraq's problems is also naive. In a pluralistic democracy there's no more guarantee that people's opinions are listened to than they are in a dictator state, only that they are expressed. Democracy and freedom are great banners to fight under - noble, unassailably moral and not a little emotive - but what do they actually mean for Iraqis in practice? How are those shining principles manifested in a country with such an impossibly fragmented political, religious and ethnic landscape? You only have to look at any number of former colonies in Africa, for example, to understand the social and political tensions and that exist in the aftermath of an external/colonial power withdrawing. History will repeat itself.
The point at which French fries were briefly and hilariously rebranded as freedom fries, pretty much represents how casually that word is thrown around by the Right as a meaningless rallying call. And now I notice that 'democracy' has become interchangeable with 'freedom'. Sometimes all a country needs is good leadership - autocratic or democratic. Not a fashionable view but like you I also worked as a foreign correspondent and travelled to many 'unenlightened' countries where democracy had no foothold but peace and prosperity largely reigned.