April 05, 2004

• 1) Drop Ahmed Chalabi like a hot potato and attempt to cultivate the leadership of moderate Iraqi leaders who are either in Iraqi right now or are recent exiles and have some whiff of legitimacy/support from the Iraqi people. 2) Get some more Arabic speakers in there - especially in the army ranks. Attempt to build bridges with Iraqi people through joint community projects - schools, hospitals, etc. 3) Address issue of religious leaders filling power vacuum - my suggestion - a law that you cannot hold a presitious religious position (in any sect) and a presitious government position at the same time. 4) Put unemployed youths to work in an agressive infrastructure-rebuilding campaign. Just my barely-informed opinion.
• Seems any choice is a bad choice right now. Some situations will only have choices which have negative conseqences for someone or even everyone, it is incorrect to think that there will be some solution to the Iraq situation. It may well be that "stay the course" is the best option, (or one of the variations on "stay the course" anyway, its quite vague and I use it only to adopt the questioners example) it depends on the nature of alternate scenarios and their consequences and these will not all be imaginable in a thought exercise.
• i favor the political science approach. heh.
• The solution I'd like to see (but never will): Bush and Powell go to the United Nations on their knees and apologize profusely for lying to the general assembly and the security council. They also beg the UN to immediately take over all peacekeeping and nation-building operations within Iraq. The US (as part of UN) may help in a consultative fashion, but all ground troops should be blue-helmeted non-American peacekeeping forces.
• To rocket88's point, I would also add that we would donate whatever money we currently have budgeted to the Iraq effort to the UN effort.
• it is incorrect to think that there will be some solution to the Iraq situation Don't you think that's a little fatalistic, biffa? I mean, there are people on the ground in Iraq whose job it is to address this very issue - they have to try to answer the unanswerable questions. So many people critize the Bush Administration's mishandling of Iraq, but it takes someone with a bit more huevos to actually suggest an alternative.
• rocket88, the biggest problem with placing a sort of magical faith in the blue helmets is that the UN pulled out the first time their headquarters was bombed. I'd like to see the coalition broadened, but there's no concrete evidence this would make anything better or that the bombings would stop. There is a group of people in Iraq who want all foreigners out and they could give a rat's ass whether they're American or French. Personally I would actually recommend a 'more of the same' approach, but with extended deadlines for a handover of power. We're trying to do this thing too fast to make it fit into the U.S. election cycle. And, without turning into a full scale suckup to religious figures, I'd like to see more overtures made towards Sistani. I don't like religious nuts but he's the only one still sort of on our side. If we lose him, we're boned. I'd like to see him invited to the U.S., even to meet with Bush; make him feel important, stroke his ego and buy us more time before full scale elections. And, yeah, dump Chalabi. He's the Shah of Iran v. 2.0.
• I'd push back the date for handing over power back to the Iraqis (they're simply not ready). What short memories we all have - was Germany rebuilt in a year's time after WWII ended? No! I don't believe what we're seeing is going to last. Fanaticism is a brightly burning flame that will eventually die out. Give it time. "Stay the course" should be our objective.
• the_leviathan: You're kidding yourself if you think Americans aren't hated (and targeted) much more than French, Germans, Canadians, Australians, etc. America IS the great Satan, after all. And an internationally broader coalition, still under US supreme command, won't help much. Not to mention the fact that most countries wouldn't be part of a US-led coalition, but would gladly join one under the UN banner.
• One word: UN involvement. That's what everyone except the White House wants, including the Iraqis.
• rocket88, I don't deny the depth of anti-Americanism in some quarters but recent attacks on the forces of other countries (and the temporary headquarters of the UN) demonstrates that anything foreign or Western is considered a target.
• One word: UN involvement. Hee!
• If we don't do something soon, we'll be leaving like we did in 1975
• f8xmulder: You're quite right. Germany wasn't rebuilt in a year. Germany was rebuilt in thirty, if you start from the first attempts to rebuild Germany in 1918, and it got Hitler along the way. Of course, Germany is a wonderful comparison, because trying to rebuild a country with a shared set of cultural (including religious) assumptions and background as its occupiers is a useful model for rebuilding a society with few, if any common threads whatsoever, right? Sorry if that sounds a little harsh, but I'm getting tired of this particular mem that's doing the rounds. It's a nice, flip answer for those wanting to be unconcerned about what's going on. It's also utterly specious.
• As for my own answers? I don't have them. The best I can see is something akin to the Yugoslavian divorce, but you'll note that in a smaller country it is still, ten years down the track, more than a touch messy. Plus Yugoslavia was in an area where the boundaries of the new nations were likely to be respected (more or less). Moreover, it would ignite other problems in the area. A free Kurdistan will cause more agitation amongst Turkish and Iranian Kurds; while many in the US admin would be delighted in troubles for the latter nation, it's unlikely they'd be happy about problems for the former. Heck, the breakup of Yugoslavia is already causing problems in Greece. Regardless, the UN aren't going to be the answer. The sensible answer would have been "don't invade". The British Empire solution would probably be "put the Kurds in charge and let them do the leg work of repression."
• I was at one of the marches a few weeks ago, at the one year anniversary of the war. It really upset me that so much of the march was about 'bringing our soldiers home now'. I don't understand how people can say that. I was not for the war, I never bought the WMD garbage, I still wish we hadn't gone, but the fact is that we did and I think we have a responsibility to try and work it out. I think that we should hand the entire situation over to the UN. I don't really trust us to act in the best interest of the Iraqis and Kurds and having an international voice and authority would certainly be better than the colonizing presence that people over there seem to feel.
• rodgered, if Germany took so long to rebuild, and that with shared values and cultural ideals, how much longer with Iraq take? I'm not saying it's a perfect comparison, but to dismiss it out of hand is hasty.
• I'm not inclined to trust the UN to act in the best interests of the Iraqis. They sure as hell didn't act in their interest with the oil for food program. There's also the fact that we invaded Iraq; we damn well better do the cleanup. Face facts: the only people who can ultimately decide this issue are the Iraqis. We can give them the tools and the beginnings of civil society but neither Marines nor blue helmets can change anything if the country at large decides to slip back into the dark ages.
• Leviathan Sorry but we approached Sistani and were rebuked--He's suspicious of our ulterior motives for being in Iraq.
• Don't you think that's a little fatalistic, biffa? I mean, there are people on the ground in Iraq whose job it is to address this very issue - they have to try to answer the unanswerable questions. So many people critize the Bush Administration's mishandling of Iraq, but it takes someone with a bit more huevos to actually suggest an alternative. I didn't say there wasn't a solution, I suggested one possibility was that there wasn't. It is also possible that there are a range of different possible solutions. A further possibility is that there are but that a workable one won't be found. The fact that there are people on the ground is neither here nor there. Think of it like this if you prefer. Here's a haystack, can you find the needle? The more resources you put in, the more chance you have of finding the needle, maybe there are multiple needles, alas if there's no needle to start with you're never going to find it. (Obviously how we define 'solution' in the Iraq case will have consdierable bearing on the outcomes of policy there.)
• I'd push back the date for handing over power back to the Iraqis (they're simply not ready). What short memories we all have - was Germany rebuilt in a year's time after WWII ended? No! I don't believe what we're seeing is going to last. Fanaticism is a brightly burning flame that will eventually die out. Give it time. "Stay the course" should be our objective. I wholeheartedly agree. I would also exert massive pressure on other nations to pitch in, and for the ones who are already pitching in, I would put more pressure on them to increase their involvement. I would clamp down on Islamist elements, to the point where if you're inciting people, you get a free one-way ticket to jail. This includes so-called "clerics". Thankfully, the military is now doing this. And lastly (perhaps most important), I would make it abundantly clear to bordering nations that they need to play their position -- which means if militants/terrorists are coming into Iraq through the borders of, say, Iran or Turkey, there will be serious, unprecedented consequences. After all, insurgent groups are getting their money, supplies and a good deal of manpower from sources outside the country who have a vested interest in promoting chaos in Iraq. That's unacceptable.
• Laser beams. Whatever the solution is, it'll involve laser beams. Laaaaaay. Zuuuuhr.
• my best bet to start things in the right direction involves voting in november, and encouraging other americans to do the same. if we elect a leader by popular vote, he/she will likely do what is best for america. oh, wait - dreaming again. sorry.
• I think getting the population to actually read and understand what the Quran is saying, rather than depend others telling them what's written inside, might help. If more Muslims became literate in the writings of their holy book, they will become more liberal and less extremist. It's not exactly a panacea, but I think this is a crucial step to take.
• Listening to BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning there was an interesting report on the different approaches the British and US forces are taking. The gist of it was that in Basra the British troops are keeping a very low profile and letting the Iraqi police keep the peace, while the US troops are much more high profile, causing much more resentment and incurring higher casualties. One very promising sign for the future is that according to Tony Blair's envoy to Iraq, Ann Clwyd, in local elections in Iraq recently the secular parties have easily beaten the islamist parties. You can listen to Today here the segment I heard was at 8.10.
• Please, caution, not this again. How many times do we need to review the way elections work in this country? Note the first line: The President of the Untied States is elected by the Electoral College and not directly by the population. Can we put this tired canard to rest?
• f8x- the college is for the most part bound to vote the way that the region they represent votes (i believe in some areas they have to, in others they are free not to but generally follow the popular vote trend). by putting the electoral college between the popular vote and the presidency, the founding fathers aimed to have a way to correct for the ignorance of the populace. in effect, by making it (mostly) mandatory (either by law or by tradition) to vote the way the pop. vote went, we effectively have a system in which one person's vote has a higher mathematical percentage chance to influence the presidency. this has been proven statistically, and has been shown in real life. (remember florida? if only total vote #'s counted, we would have a democratic prez right now. because vote x region vote was cast in sets the electoral college vote, florida was a big, fat hairy deal for everyone. those people on those few counties decided the race, end of story unless you believe in some conspiracy theory or other, and so on.) so, yes, there's an intermediary - but mostly the popular vote decides the election, taking geographic area into account by breaking the US into electoral districts. anyway, my "oh, wait, dreaming again" comment was mostly aimed at the asswipes who don't bother to vote in the first place, rather than at the process. the political parties don't give a damn about non-voters, they listen to the ones that do vote - who often tend to be hard party-line voters, people with an axe to grind, and swing voters who base their entire decision on one or more hotbed issues like abortion or gay marriage. party-line people are kinda ignored, 'cause their vote is a given. the swing voters generally decide the election, which is why 90% of the campaigns spend so much time harping on about one issue in particular, effectively polarizing us all into pro- and anti- camps who hate each other and can't enter any intelligent discourse on any subject. the non-voters out there screw the rest of us. some of them come out of the woodwork when their particular hotbed issue is touched upon; they throw their weight behind a ploarizing issue and make sure we have to deal with it ad nauseum forever. in short, for the love of all that's anything, vote. vote, vote, vote. i don't care if you wanna vote for an ex-con gay disabled puerto-rican hermaphrodite KKK member whos sole platform is turning the US into a constitional monarchy, at least you let your voice be heard. it's insane that we routinely let 25% or less of our population decide who our leaders are; it's no wonder that our leadership represents the extremes rather than the sensible middle road the average american seems to believe in. plus if you don't vote, you immediately give up your right to bitch and complain about anything our government does. i like complaining about the government. thus i shall continue to voice my opinion with my vote.
• "ploarizing" = "polarizing" damn two-fingered typing...
• Fanaticism is a brightly burning flame that will eventually die out. In the broad region of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, fanaticism is a flame which has been burning brightly for two thousand, maybe three thousand years now. I have less hope than you, I fear. "Stay the course" Yes. To add another voice of someone who was implacably opposed to the war but doesn't subscribe to the "bring them all home now" school of thought - the withdrawl of all international troops from the country would simply hasten the disaster, not prevent it. However, it is vital that no ulterior motives for the occupation can be suggested - it's all very well for Scott McLellan to convince the White House Press Corps that this is for the good of all humanity, but they're not the ones killing innocents because of they think there's a war being conducted against Islam. That's why the UN must be given control now - not because they're more efficient, not because they're less corrupt, but simply because it's harder to convince young Muslim men that, say, Pakistani soldiers are waging a war on their faith. Oh, and it would also be a limited form of apology and contrition for all the lying and stuff, which would be a nice start.
• flashboy: the innocents aren't dying by occupation forces - they're by and large being killed by their own countrymen, or infiltrators from surrounding nations. This, as a rule, hasn't changed from before we invaded (remember the plastic shredders, the execution chambers, the mass graves?) - it's just a different manner (car bombs and assassinations instead of double taps and beheadings) and happening in fewer numbers. Oh, and it would also be a limited form of apology and contrition for all the lying and stuff, which would be a nice start. I've yet to hear/see any proof that the President lied about anything. I'm sure that grates, but there is (yet) no evidence to suggest that the President was acting in any manner other than good faith. Yes, there was an agenda. Yes, there were contingency plans, even foresight plans. Yes, there were calculated risks that have (so far) turned out to be bad investments of thought. Yes, there were mistakes made. But wilful deception? I don't think so. I'll take an explanation for the mistakes - in fact, as a conservative who greatly supported and still supports the war effort, I demand to know where and how the Administration flubbed up, and how it plans to fix things. But I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND THE EVIDENCE THAT WOULD LEAD ME TO BELIEVE BUSH LIED. Neither has anyone else. It's a lot of media conjecture, inflamed by aggrandizement and partisan grandstanding, fueled by people's ignorance and penchant for believing the first thing they hear. I, for one, don't buy it.
• oh and caution: sorry for the mis-read. Thanks for correcting my initial assumption about your post. Makes much more sense now, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. Vote slackers suck the lifeblood of this country and force unpopular/unqualified candidates into positions where they should never be allowed.
• remember the plastic shredders Yep
• Thanks for the link, dng. Wasn't aware of the spuriousness of that particular story. However, articles like this make my blood run.
• This is also a must-read, though it's horrible. Plastic shredders or not, it seems pretty clear that Iraqis civilians have been dying a long time before we arrived.
• f8xmulder: You dismiss it pretty easily when a supposed fact you quote (human shredding machine) is proved to be disingenuous, and then 2 minutes after you acknowledge its supriousness go on to link a document that comes from exactly the same source (ie the British Government) as that supposed fact. Plastic shredders or not, it seems pretty clear that the British Government have been making stuff up for a long time.
• biffa, am I to respond to anything that comes from British government sources as a lie, now? Because of one piece of propaganda that may have been manufactured (I say may because it's not clear in the article where the plastic shredder idea originated - was it fabricated, or just one of those statements that gets passed around until it becomes fact?), you seem pretty anxious to toss the rocks. You also quaintly ignore the other sources listed in that report, which also include Amnesty Int'l, Human Rights Watch, etc. etc. Talk about disingenuous.
• flashboy: the innocents aren't dying by occupation forces - they're by and large being killed by their own countrymen Fools rush in to take up another's baton, but ... f8x, I think you've misunderstood flashboy's point. In his comment "they're not the ones killing innocents because of they think there's a war being conducted against Islam", he is not saying that occupying forces are killing innocents - he's saying that Iraqis are "killing innocents" because they believe a war is being conducted "on their faith". Look at the last sentence of his first para. Secondly, his point about lying didn't mention Bush. Let me put forward (a) Tony Blair; and (b) Donald Rumsfeld for your consideration. With respect to yourself and flash - I see the conversation has passed on from this point in any case ... I even wonder why I'm writing this, perhaps I should go have a lie down instead?
• No, thanks kid - extreme work overload prevented me from returning to clarify before now, but you have it right. Indeed, not only was I not referring to Iraqi casualties from coalition fire, but I wasn't even referring specifically to Iraq. I was talking about wider Islamic culture, and how vital it is that we do not in any way reinforce the perception that the West is conducting any form of war on Islam. The vast majority of Muslims believe that this was a war of occupation fought for ulterior motives, and that can only fuel militancy and terrorism, can it not? So how can it possibly be a good idea to reinforce those beliefs? And yes, my comments about lying were not directly about Bush, nor even specifically about Blair - rather, they were about the sum total of the rationale for war put forward by both administrations. In the case of both leaders, it's going to be hard to pin them down to demonstrable lie - because it's hard to pin them down to any specific factual statement. They've both been trained, as have virtually all political leaders, to speak in nothing but broad rehtorical flourishes. But still - The Niger Yellowcake in the SOTU address was an untruth. The repeated links made between Iraq and al-Qaida were dishonest in the extreme. The sites that Powell told the UN were WMD factories were not. The repeated statement that "we know [such-and-such]" was a wilful exaggeration of an intelligence operation that had been twisted and interfered with so that it no longer provided analysis of facts, but was instead set up specifically to search for justifications for a pre-determined policy. That's just stuff off the top of my head. I find it stretches credulity beyond breaking point to believe that these were all honest mistakes. There was wilful, deliberate, premeditated dishonesty and misinformation involved. Which might not be the actual dictionary definition of "lying", but I feel it's a reasonable shorthand.
• Yo.
• Bo.
• Eno.
• Thanks, dng. It was the chili. *burp*