128 Comments

1. Josiah:

   I’m surprised Seth Forman didn’t claim his wife was buying uranium in Niger, or blame Ray Nagin or something. Neo-cons have been known to bullshit pretty extravagantly now and then. I’m sure you would have embarrassed him in a debate.

   14 October 2005, 3:22 pm

2. Ed:

   [quote]Won’t someone please debate me?[/quote]

   Ok, assuming that’s not a hypothetical question, I’ll discourse with you a bit. At least until I return to Iraq next month.

   I’ll start by pointing out that your blog contains no commentary on the upcoming constitutional referendum in Iraq. Why is that? Are staged VTCs more important?

   Since you have 2 days worth of notes, you can go first.

   14 October 2005, 8:28 pm

3. Stan:

   What are we to say about the referendum? Is this another milestone, another turning of the corner, more light at the end of the tunnel?

   Here are the notes for the 12-minute [severely curtailing all the reasons that COULD be given] opening remarks (with some of the citations):

   OPENING REMARKS – SUNY-SB DEBATE

   STAN GOFF

   There are three points that are central to my argument that the Untied States must immediately and unilaterally end the military occupation of Iraq.

   First, the actual reasons for the war are vastly different than the pretexts for the war, and those reasons have nothing to do with either democracy for others or security for the United States.

   Second, the American occupation is itself the central catalyst for most of the violence there.

   Third, the war in Iraq is dangerously destabilizing the situation in the region and exacerbating an economic crisis in the United States.

   The pretexts for the war in Iraq were not intelligence failures; they were fabrications.

   Emblematic of the Bush-Cheney administration’s duplicity is the investigation into White house violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s refusal to validate a forgery suggesting an Iraqi nuclear weapons plot resulted in Wilson’s wife, an undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, being feloniously exposed by the administration as an example to future whistleblowers.

   (Ahmed Amr, “Plame Games expose WMD intelligence failure scam,” Media Monitors Network, July 24, 2005)

   In this lurid little tale, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, may be facing an indictment, and …

   (David Ignatius, “Lessons of the Miller Affair,” Washington Post, October 5, 2005)

   … chief political advisor to Bush, Karl Rove, may also be facing perjury charges.

   These are the lengths to which this administration was willing to go to enforce what Seymour Hersh has called the “stove-piping” of intelligence. That is, funneling phony evidence of Iraqi WMD threats into the intelligence stream – a process in which Cheney advisor Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted felon in Jordan, was intimately involved.

   (Seymour Hersh, “The Stovepipe,” The New Yorker, October 27, 2003)

   Retired Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served on the pre-invasion Pentagon’s intelligence team, observed how the Pentagon’s Iraq war-planning unit manufactured intelligence:

   (quote)“It wasn’t intelligence; it was propaganda. They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together.”(close quote)

   (Robert Jason and Jason Vest, “The Lie Factory,” Mother Jones, Jan/Feb 2004)

   This process of having the Pentagon trump up its own phony intelligence was taken up by the administration after various CIA analysts refused to fabricate evidence even after serial visits and brow-beatings from Libby and Cheney.

   (Justin Raimondo, “It’s all about treason – A second take on Scooter-gate,” Antiwar.com, October 3, 2005)

   Having said that these were fabrications, however, the question remains – What then were the real objectives of the Bush administration for the occupation of Iraq.

   One need only review what key members of this administration have themselves said, and observe what this administration has actually done.

   As recently as 1998, the inner circle of the Bush-Cheney administration encouraged then-President Bill Clinton to occupy Iraq, in order to wrest control from Saddam Hussein over (quote) a significant portion of the world’s oil (close quote).

   (Linda McQuaig, “History will show US lusted after oil,” Toronto Star, December 26, 2004)

   This makes perfect strategic sense if one’s goal is to control the global oil spigot as a lever against competitors in Western Europe, China, Japan, and India. Originally conceived by Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after the 1973 oil embargo, this strategic notion has continually resurfaced in the writings of key administration officials and advisors.

   (Robert Dreyfuss, “The thirty-year itch,” Mother Jones, March/April 2003)

   So, as always, official declarations of reasons for war only correspond to the reality when it is convenient. Public statements by public officials, and this is in no way unique to the Bush-Cheney administration, are not expressed to inform the public, but to gain its acquiescence to an unstated agenda.

   The war has become much more problematic, however, than the collapse of the rationales for war. It has become a political and military disaster.

   One can determine who has the initiative in any conflict by who is forced to react to the battlefield decisions of the other. Initiative is the ability to flexibly dictate the locations and tempo of the conflict. THE INITIATIVE is the key index for conducting an in-progress review of the status of forces in war – as opposed to empirical indices, like body counts, which are usually manipulated anyway.

   And surprise is a key principle for a technologically and numerically weaker force to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.

   In Iraq, right now, using the index of the initiative, the United States is losing the war. The guerrilla forces in Iraq are dictating the time, locations, and tempo of the war, and the S forces are in a re-active, not pro-active posture. And that is a mere tactical assessment.

   (U.S. Army, Field Manual 100-5, 1994)

   The toll paid by civilians is largely a result of their proximity to those who collaborate with the occupation, and some of the so-called ethnic violence is almost certainly manufactured by covert operatives.

   (Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command, 2005)

   Given the terrible firepower from ground and air that can be mustered by the American forces, any armed resistance has little choice short of surrender but to employ asymmetric military tactics, the most essential of which is to “blind” the occupation to the resistance forces plans and activities.

   There is no more effective means of blinding the US occupation forces than to attack Iraqi collaborators. As a recent article on the Marine base in Hit pointed out, “American troops find themselves in a house of mirrors in which they don’t speak the language and can’t tell friend from foe.” Without Iraqi allies, US intelligence is crippled. Attacking collaborators – from the point of view of Iraqis opposing the occupation – is a tactical necessity. So the current civil war is a direct outcome of the occupation. There is no basis for rapprochement between warring parties until the American occupation ends.

   According to American intelligence estimates, the number of attacks in Iraq that are aimed solely at civilians are around 4%. The number of attacks that are aimed directly at Americans constitute 75%. Most of the remaining attacks are against collaborators.

   (Anthony Cordesman, “The Developing Iraqi Insurgency,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 22, 2004)

   But the outcomes of war are not ultimately tactical outcomes, but political outcomes. Politically, the United States has alienated most of the world, potentially destabilized a nuclear-armed Pakistan, consolidated its association with despots in Saudi Arabia and occupiers in Israel, and been forced to coordinate their activities with a puppet government in Iraq that, in the ultimate irony, may well become a rump state of Iran.

   The situation now in Iraq has not the slightest resemblance to any of the desired end-states with which the Bush-Cheney regime began. Key neo-con institutions themselves have become critical of the administration’s handling of the war – like the recent attacks emanating from the American Enterprise Institute, in which Lynne Cheney, the VP’s wife, is a senior fellow. They nurtured dreams of leap-frogging into Iran and Syria on their crusade and the Iraqis are not conforming to the script. General David Petraeus, who is in charge of training Iraqi forces, said recently that according to Rumfeld’s so-called metrics, everything looks good in Iraq, but that h wasn’t (quote) putting lipstick on any pigs. (close quote).

   (Guy Dinmore, “Conservatives and exiles desert war campaign,” Financial Times, October 11, 2005)

   Every dime spent continuing this occupation is good money thrown after bad. Every life lost to support this occupation is only magnifying a crime.

   Given that the pre-invasion pretexts were flawed either through “intelligence failure” or plain fabrication, and that the subsequent occupation has ground down into a military and political debacle, what can we then say about the notion that the United States military is now obliged to stay in Iraq for the sake of the Iraqis?

   This argument is based on some explicit claims and implicit assumptions. Explicitly, there are claims that Iraq will devolve into civil war and-or that al Qaeda and other outside forces will take over Iraq and use its wealth to wage international war.

   Implicitly, there are the twinned assumptions that the resistance is not largely and genuinely Iraqi and that even if it were, Iraqis themselves are not capable of self-governance without the tutelage of Americans.

   The arguments about preventing civil war and stopping jihadis fail to acknowledge the fact that there is a civil war now in Iraq, and that the primary catalyst for that civil war is the occupation itself and the presence of American troops is the single greatest attractor in Iraq for foreign jihadis.

   (Michael Gordon, “Catastrophic Success,” New York Times, October 20, 2004)

   The Iraqi resistance is not, however, foreign. More than 95% of the combatants opposing the occupation are Iraqi, and they are affiliated with at least 23 different groups – many of whom coordinate their efforts on a case-by-case basis.

   (“An Insider’s Look at the Iraqi Resistance,” Jihad Unspun, December 18, 2003)

   And the assumption that Iraqis are incapable of self-governance is not only a racist assumption based on stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims and ignorance about the true history of the region. This assumption ignores the fact that Iraqi civilization has for most of history been more advanced than Euro-American civilization. Even more importantly, this assumption ignores the fact that Iraqis are already organizing functional political structures in the interstices of the occupation.

   Dr. Michael Schwartz’ has published an excellent and very detailed January article in Asia Times about city-by-city self-governance structures that are appearing across Iraq in the vacuum created by the occupation. It is entitled “The taming of Sadr City,” which I cannot recommend strongly enough.

   The Iraqis can get by without American prisons and American troops kicking in their doors at night and without stressed out 19-year-old Spec-4s manning roadblocks where they shoot first and ask questions later.

   But if neither the illegality nor the immorality nor the arrogant islamophobic justifications for continuing the war are sufficient to convince people here in the United States of the merits of leaving now, perhaps plain self-interest will do.

   There are very good reasons why even the right-wing is now turning against this war, and why imperial luminaries like Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski issued one warning after another about going forward with it.

   The occupation is seriously degrading the capacity of the US armed forces and has created a retention and recruitment crisis that will take years to correct. Iraq was a bridge too far, and the US military is overstretched, and costing the American taxpayers $122,820 per minute. In the time it takes me to finish my opening remarks, we will have spent one and half million dollars, and yet a quarter of the population of the United States has no health insurance and we haven’t the capacity to prevent people dying in their attics three days after a hurricane passed through New Orleans.

   Iraq’s oil production capacity is half what it was before 1991, in a period when we are facing record fuel prices that will almost certainly bring back the bad old days of simultaneous economic stagnation and monetary inflation – or stagflation. To fund the war, we are also borrowing money from the rest of the world to the tune of almost $2 trillion dollars, and it is our children and grandchildren who will be saddled with the consequences of this.

   In summary, the majority of Iraqis have stated that they want the US out.

   Continuing the occupation will further inflame anti-American sentiment among almost a billion human beings, and thereby increase the probability of asymmetric attacks against the Untied States, its citizens, and its allies.

   Continuing the occupation will further degrade the armed forces of the United States.

   Continuing the occupation will put additional pressure on a teetering domestic economy, deepen the national debt and defer its burden to future generations.

   This war was based on lies, and it is a war of plunder. This is a war designed to effect the post-Cold War re-disposition of an imperial military in order to ensure future American primacy in the world system by establishing military control over the world’s most concentrated oil patch.

   This war is a political, economic, and military disaster. It has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and wounding hundreds of thousands. And it has taken yet another generation of young Americans – including not-yet-Americans who are being cajoled into military service with offers of citizenship – and sent them to face the physical dangers, the psychological wreckage, the environmental hazards, and the terrible moral dilemmas of an occupying force.

   There is no wisdom in staying the course on a train headed for a fallen bridge. For the Iraqis, for Americans, and for future generations, the American people need to bring the American armed forces home now.

   END OPENING REMARKS

   14 October 2005, 10:05 pm

4. Jim W:

   I would like to add that I don’t think that there is only one reason why the powers that be do what they do. I don’t think you should limit the analysis. If you want to prioritize or rank the objectives, I understand and agree with that. Some people have put it in terms of “grabbing” the oil in the sense of making profit for the oil companies et al. Perhaps something of that nature is taking place (refer to the website Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch). What about CPA orders, especially 39 which allows foreign businesses, namely banks to keep 100% of their earnings in Iraq.
   So we have control of the spigot, maybe that’s number one. But we also have projection of power into that part of the world. The zionists seem to have wanted this war as well and seem to have the representation strategically to influence policy. And the desire to profit from the American taxpayer as well as the Iraqi economy, and also the shaping of ideological control by creating another democratic facade to mask neoliberal globalization.
   The world economic situation seems to be on a steady downhill slide compounded by resource limitations and ecological threats and as you just let us know, there can be no debate on anything important except for managed contrivances by those who own. By the way, the top 1 percent now own 48 percent of the wealth in this banana-like republic.

   15 October 2005, 2:29 am

5. Stan:

   Referendum:

   Iraq on the Eve of the Referendum

   By PATRICK COCKBURN
   in Baghdad

   The streets of Baghdad were eerily empty as police and soldiers tightened their grip in the final hours before people vote on the new constitution.

   Iraqis are deeply divided. “The new constitution cuts my country up into pieces,” said Atiqa Jawad Wadi, a middle-aged secondary school teacher. “My family and I will vote ‘no’.” Alwan Jassim al-Aswad, an elderly man sitting in a coffee shop near by, was going to vote in favour of the constitution because the Shia religious hierarchy backed it. “It will help us build a new government for the Shia,” he said.

   Insurgents launched two attacks on offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party in Baghdad and Fallujah after the Sunni party reversed its position and called for a “yes” vote. Its leaders changed their mind after a last-minute compromise brokered by the US that will allow parliament to amend the constitution next year.

   There were scattered bursts of gunfire in Baghdad yesterday but these often came from frightened police and soldiers shooting in the air to stop vehicles suspected of being suicide bombers approaching them. No traffic at all will be allowed on the streets today and voters will have to go to the polling stations on foot. The ministry of the interior has given journalists and…

   full at http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick10152005.html

   15 October 2005, 12:02 pm

6. charlie:

   Ed, I’m glad to see you back. You and I had quite an exchange last February on the legitimacy of the war. I didn’t cut much ice with you, then, (of course, you didn’t with me, either) but so much has happened since then that I’m really curious to see what a thoughtful supporter of the war has to say at this point. You gave an indication with your remark on the proposed constitution. There has been such a lot of reportage and commentary on what a disastrous political slog that has been and will be from many points on the political spectrum, that your remarks will also be quite interesting. And, we’ll be hearing the news from Iraq now that the polls have closed. The other factor is that you don’t need the acquiesence of your CO to participate, so let the debate carry on! Charlie (the 10th SF Grp vet)

   15 October 2005, 1:58 pm

7. Ed:

   We can discuss at length the reasons, motivation, rationale, and justification for the war. We can argue about the political process that led to it, the conduct of US troops and insurgents, and the performance of various leaders and groups. It would all be a waste of time. Oh sure, it would give us both a chance to unlimber our partisan rhetoric. However, it has nothing to do with the choice we are debating: whether to withdraw immediately from Iraq or continue our current policy.

   There is only one rational decision process: look at the possible choices, analyze each to predict likely outcomes, and pick the one which offers a more likely path to success. Anything external to that thought process detracts from our attempt to solve the issue.

   First, we need to define our goals, and define who “we” are. The US is the primary action agent in this conflict, and the only entity that can ultimately decide to stay or withdraw. Therefore “we” is logically the American nation as a whole. Others may have different perspectives, and while they are no less important, they are obviously not determinative of US action.

   When setting goals, all nations pursue self-interest. It’s what nations exist for. However, there is a component of morality to foreign policy which cannot be ignored. I believe that in the long run, moral behavior is in a nation’s self-interest. Therefore our goals should be a fusion of self-interest and morality.

   With that in mind, I propose the following goals for US policy in Iraq:

   1) Establish a stable democratic government.
   2) Stop or minimize violence against the Iraqi people.

   As a means to achieve these goals, there are essentially two possible strategies on the table. First, continue our current policy of occupation until our goals are achieved. Second, reverse that policy by immediate withdrawal. There are several variants of each strategy which we can consider as we analyze them.

   Obviously, I am an adherent of the first strategy, to continue our policy of occupation until our goals are achieved. I will now restate as clearly as possible what I believe that strategy to be, so there are no misunderstandings between us.

   The US, the UN, and key Iraqi leaders have devised a political process to produce a broadly representative democratic government. That process has specific events on a fixed timeline. The first step was to elect an interim parliamentary body. That representative body had one task: to devise a system of government and a constitution which reflected a broad consensus among the Iraqi people for how to govern themselves. The next step was a referendum by the Iraqi people to approve the constitution. That, as we all know, took place today. Finally, if the constitution is approved, there will be another election in December to select a permanent government. This will be a legitimate, sovereign government elected by a democratic vote of the Iraqi people.

   The role of the US military must provide internal security for this process until the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army are capable of doing it themselves. The Iraqi Police are largely capable of policing. The Iraqi Army is halfway through a progressive buildup process that began in early 2004. They have formed roughly 100 battalions, many of which are quite capable up to company level. They lack the planning, C2, and sustainment capability to operate above battalion level without US help and advisors.

   By next year, there will be a government in place that was elected by a majority of Iraqis. The Iraqi Army will be capable of independent battalion and brigade operations, and will be under Iraqi governmental control. At that point, the US military can begin a phased withdrawal and hand internal security over to the IA. The occupation should end over a period of a year or so, with a limited advisory effort remaining to help the Iraqis build long-term institutions. The military assistance program can be transitioned to an international effort, much like the ISAF in Afghanistan is being handed over to NATO as we speak.

   What are the odds of this effort succeeding? From a political perspective, we’ll know more in the next few days as the results of the constitutional referendum are released. Already, the process has scored a huge victory by persuading the Sunnis to participate in the referendum, regardless of their vote. Opposition by ballot is far preferable to opposition by gun barrel. One thing is certain: the huge turnout of both elections in the face of violent insurgent threats proves that the Iraqi people strongly desire to participate in a democratic process to elect their government.

   As an aside, I find it absurd that you would glibly dismiss the constitution and referendum with rehashed slogans from the 60’s. The constitution has clearly become the central focal point in the political struggle between the Sunnis and Shia/Kurds over a balance of governing power in post-Saddam Iraq.

   It’s clear that this political process has widespread support from both Shia and Kurds. Together those groups comprise roughly 80% of the population of Iraq. To dismiss a government freely elected by 80% of the nation as “collaborators and puppets” is idiotic. To suggest that a government is not legitimate because it lacks support from 20% of the population would mean there is probably no legitimate government anywhere in the world. If the constitution gains partial support and participation from the Sunnis, it has every chance to become a unifying document that provides a peaceful avenue to resolve the conflict.

   From a military perspective, it’s been a tough slog but the worst is behind us. Your analysis of Initiative is at best that of a spectator from afar. Certainly the insurgents have tactical advantages, as all native guerillas do when operating against foreign occupiers, and they exploit these advantages fully. But the US military has maintained focus on the operational campaign, and has gradually reduced the area where the insurgents can operate openly to a few towns in the western desert where tribal affiliation is strongest.

   Most importantly, the main strategic effort to build a capable Iraqi Army is progressing well. A year ago, most IA units could not be counted on to stand and fight, and some were actively disloyal. Now they are aggressively taking the fight to the insurgents. Morale is high and there is no shortage of volunteers, mostly a reflection of growing anger at the Al Qaeda bombing campaign against civilians. The Iraqi Police commando battalions have been a notable success as well. Performance problems with the IA and IP used to be caused by lack of motivation. Now they are caused by lack of training and equipment, and that can be rectified.

   Now let’s look at the alternative: unilateral withdrawal. I’d analyze and consider your proposed alternative process, but I can’t. You have steadfastly refused to provide one in previous discussions. So I challenge you now again:

   Analyze the likely path to peace, stability, and self-governance that results from a US withdrawal.

   It is not enough to simply state that we’re the source of all evil and everything will get better when we leave. Analysis means specifics: illumination through disaggregation, according to Aristotle. You need to describe how things will get better. Who will form a government? What process will they use? Who will provide security while they do it? Most critically, how will the Sunni and Shia resolve their competing visions for the future of Iraq and the division of power and wealth? How will the process be impacted by other external actors (Al Qaeda, Iran, the Sunni states)?

   Until you answer those questions, you have not proposed a viable alternative strategy. I’m sure you’ve got one, and I look forward to discussing it further with you.

   Regards,
   Ed

   15 October 2005, 1:58 pm

8. Stan:

   ED: “I propose the following goals for US policy in Iraq:

   1) Establish a stable democratic government.
   2) Stop or minimize violence against the Iraqi people.”

   STAN: I propose the following goals for Canadian policy in the US:

   1) Establish a system of universal health care.
   2) Stop dispoportinate felony sentencing of African Americans.

   Is the US the only truly sovereign nation in the brave new world?

   ***

   “There is only one rational decision process: look at the possible choices, analyze each to predict likely outcomes, and pick the one which offers a more likely path to success. Anything external to that thought process detracts from our attempt to solve the issue.”

   So you are going to define the ONE AND ONLY rational decision process. How schematic and arrogant of you. But if you are being this reductive, and pretending that there is an “objective” solution to the question, then how do you remove subjectivity from the definition of “success”?

   Ed, “we” are not deciding this, because if WE were, the majority position in the US nowis to get out. This is sophistry. So is the notion of attaching the ability to predict outcomes to the decision making process. If the ability to predict outcomes were the measure of credibility, and that credibility were the basis of who gets to decide the next move… heck, I’m on the record from before this war. I said in 2002 that the WMD thing was bullshit. I said it on TV. I said in April, May, & June 2003 that things would get a lot worse, and in June that the US was losing the war. Now there are a couple of wayys to measure the latter claim, but I’ll put the initative against body conts any day, and on that one, I’m right. I told a Congresional delegation (it’s in the record) in July 2003 that this would lead to a retention and recruitment crisis in the military, and I was right. I said that DoD was in the process of overthrowing the DO at the Agency, and I was right. I also said that the ıush adminsitration would eventually be exposed as both mediocre and corrupt, and, well…

   So, if the ability to predict outcomes (which I think is a criterion for making this decision is worthy of ridicule — because I oppose the war in the naive belief that the US doesn’t have the right or ability to tell other people how to live) is the basis for making the decison, I should be in charge instead of the rat-faced boy from Crawford.

   I’m also not accepting that Aristotle has provided us the keys to all wisdom.

   NOTE - I’m out of town again soon for about a week, so others will, I’m sure, carry on. I’ll try to jump on to moderate in comments at least once a day.

   15 October 2005, 2:54 pm

9. CL:

   Stan,
   I’ve been reading your blog for sometime now but this is my first posting. You are quite the polymath!

   Ed,
   I have just a few comments to make about the Iraqi Army. First, you make a point about the ability to rectify the equipment shortage of the IA being possible. Yeah, I’ll agree it is possible, but is it likely to happen? I haven’t seen much in the way of orders for large numbers of combat and support vehicles and equipment like Warriors, LAVs, Bradley (not 60s era Swiss M113s) and helicopters. Why was a procurment programme for the IA not put in place from the getgo? Do you think the Bush administration has any real intention of properly equiping (ie to a NATO type standard) the Iraqi army? If you have evidence of this in the positive, please share.

   Second, an Iraqi army built on counter-insurgency/resistance operations and doctrine, is an army that is meant for internal policing not national defence. Instead of an IA being used against Kurds and Shia under Hussein, this risks a largely Shia IA being used against Sunni under a Shia dominated gov’t. How is this an improvement over Hussein?

   15 October 2005, 3:40 pm

10. Stan:

    Oh, and while we are on the subject of leaving behind democracies, I’m headed back to Haiti next month. Perhaps Ed can prevail on his Commander-in-Chief to put back the elected president of Haiti that he ordered kidnapped and exiled in February 29, 2004.

    Every time I hear about the US commitment to democracy, I can’t help but wonder about this. Instead of trumping up a phony election in Haiti, why doesn’t the Bush administration return power to those who were elected by overwhelming majorities by the Haitian people.

    Until that happens, I’m not hearing any crap about the US commitment to democracy. And that’s not ancient history. Aristide is in South Africa now, and could be returned without a fight tomorrow.

    What say you on this, Ed?

    15 October 2005, 3:42 pm

11. Ed:

    I say that you’re arguing a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t have jackshit to do with whether to withdraw from Iraq.

    It’s a simple question, Stan: What happens after the US pulls out of Iraq, and how does it happen?

    15 October 2005, 4:05 pm

12. Stan:

    Here’s what I can predict. My son will not go back, nor will any other soldiers, and they will not be killed and maimed and subjected to post-traumatic stress. Children of troops will become reacquainted with their parents. The US government can quit spending a billion and a half a week and driving the nation further and further into foreign-owned debt covered with a printing press. The popularity of the US will go up around the world, and the probability that US property, citizens, and allies will be attacked will fall. Hundreds of innocent Iraqis will stop being rounded up every month and imprisoned without recourse to lawyers or trials, and hundreds more will not be killed and wounded by stuff that we paid for with our taxes. Innocent people will not be hosed down with machinegun fire in front of their children at roadblocks because a trigger-happy 20-year-old had a bad day and hollered “halt” in English. Stop Loss will end, the recruiting standards can be brought back up, and no one will feel obliged to try and recruit flood victims in the Astrodome. Families in the US will not attand any more funerals for KIAs. All Iraqis now targeted as collaborators will no longer be collaborators. The network of city-states around Iraq that have develpped in the interstices of the occupation will begin to seek each other out to reformulate a genuinely Iraqi reconstruction. The Iranians will pressure their allies in Iraq to find an accord with the Sunnis and nationalists in order to bring stability to the region so everyone can do what they want to do anyway, which is sell oil and use the proceeds for their own development. The Israeli government will fume and fuss helplessly. Aging, deluded macho-men with POW-MIA stickers in their windshields will spend the rest of their lives whining about the loss of American manhood and drink themselves to death while shouting at their TV sets. I will debate you online about something else, and I willshift my activism to full-time support for the self-determination of oppressed nationalities at home and the fight against patriarchy. And I won’t go to Washington DC for at least a year.

    But again, why are we limiting the debate according to your rules? You want to continue having Americans debate about what Iraqis will do in the future, and you don’t want to discuss the motives for our own government doing what it’s doing. I reiterate… it is difficult to believe the US has any principled commitment to democracy, when it overthrows democratically elected governments elsewhere. The US is unqualified both poitically and morally to determine what a “stable democracy” looks like when this administration tried to destabilize both Venezuela and Haiti.

    15 October 2005, 6:02 pm

13. Ed:

    Charlie, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just now saw your comments. Glad to see you too. My long “opening statement” lays out my views on the current state of affairs in Iraq. I don’t claim to be 100% certain of anything, but those are my beliefs to the best of my ability to understand the situation. I’ll enjoy discussing with you.

    CL, ref your first question, no I don’t. What Iraq needs right now is an Army capable of providing internal security against insurgents and terrorists (note the distinction made). That doesn’t require a military equipped to NATO standards. Capability requires more than equipment; it requires doctrine, training, leadership, logistics, and a large support infrastructure. That is a 10 year project. No need to buy Warriors, Brads, and tanks in quantity without the institutions to employ them.

    Having said that, there is an Iraqi Armored Brigade, and it will eventually be a division. My reaction when I first heard about it was “what the hell do they need that for?” It’s basically a symbol of sovereignty. But like the South Koreans, and in the past the Japanese and Germans, the ultimate guarrantor of Iraqi safety from overt invasion by her neighbors is the US for the time being.

    Your second point is well taken. I’d respond that it’s different in two ways. First, under Hussein 20% of the people controlled 80%; now 80% will control 20%. Admittedly, there is no inherent moral difference between the two. But secondly, under Hussein the government lacked any accountability to the people, was unconstrained by law, ignored human rights, and operated in a closed society. Even a shia-dominated Army will be wielded by elected leaders, bound by a constitution that respects human rights, and monitored by a free press. Surely you see the difference there?

    15 October 2005, 8:55 pm

14. Hubris Sonic:

    damn. its like manna from heaven.

    I am going to Barcelona to debate a “terrorism” expert on withdrawal. and since I am unable to restort to physical violence ;( Do you mind if i steal… borrow some of your research Mr Goff? In the finest tradition of the 7th gp. of course.

    The final smackdown is brillant.

    16 October 2005, 4:05 am

15. Hubris Sonic:

    also, I came across this in my research http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=627

    its unbelievable what crap the ssi publishes these days.

    16 October 2005, 4:17 am

16. ceabaird:

    Go Stan, GO!!!

    “Aging, deluded macho-men with POW-MIA stickers in their windshields will spend the rest of their lives whining about the loss of American manhood and drink themselves to death while shouting at their TV sets.”

    Thanks for making me spit curry all over my laptop. I recently had a “debate” with a guy about the Iraq thingy, and his only reply was all about “we broke it, we gotta fix it”. In my own (limited) way, I outlined the reasons why the US military, being the gas can in the fire pit, was:

    1) not helping things,
    2) making things worse,

    and,
    3) has to leave.

    I went into some detail from an 19K/11B perspective, and the response was, “blah, blah, elections, blah, blah, democracy, blah, blah, we broke it, blah, we gotta fixit, blah, blah, we leave=anarchy, blah, shia vs. sunni violence, blah, blah”

    Nice to see that the talking points are getting across…

    16 October 2005, 8:04 am

17. Hubris Sonic:

    Actually I would reccomend reading that piece I linked to. Its has more canards than a duck farm, and more straw men then iowa, but it has some great nugget quotes about the state of things in Iraq…

    16 October 2005, 9:01 am

18. Stan:

    Ed, do you have any opinion on the overthrow of the elected government of Haiti by the United States? Was that okay? This is relevant to the Iraq discussion.

    16 October 2005, 12:32 pm

19. CL:

    Ed,
    You are right about adequate training, doctrine, etc. But I think you’ll agree though that it is much safer for the troops to ride around fighting the resistance in an APC than a Toyota. The US military apparently needs them, why not the Iraqi? The British had armoured vehicles in NI, why not the Iraqi?
    Equipment and training equal capability level. An army is a weapons system. If one part is sub-par the whole systems effectiveness suffers. I believe if the US was serious about building an independent IA, we’d see a much more concerted effort. Because I am not seeing this effort, I think any trained Iraqi forces are a nod for PR purposes at home, and to relieve the pressure on US forces. They are a dependent proxy to the occupation, and will likely become nothing more then that unless the occupation ends. If the IA is Shia dominated, then they become a sectarian army - see link below.

    If you look at the construction of the Iraqi constitution, government, and population you will see the Sunni are underrepresented by both the constitution and government. Free, open and democratic government or not, they don’t have an equal voice to the Kurds or Shia. This is a government that would have the power to seek retribution on the Sunni regions. A Shia IA spending most of its energy fighting a Sunni resistance, becomes severely biased to against the Sunni, and will not act fairly. If the following link is remotely truthful, you can see where things are heading: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/12885151.htm

    Iraq is country with no history of democratic institutions and a deep and well founded distrust/fear of their government. Simply having a constitution and elections will not change this.

    16 October 2005, 12:53 pm

20. Ed:

    Stan:

    No, I don’t have an opinion about Haiti. I don’t consider it relevant to the Iraq discussion, except in a very peripheral manner. There are dozens of topics far more directly relevant, yet you try to steer every discussion back to your pet rock.

    The original premise of this debate was “The US should withdraw from Iraq now.” Now it’s your blog. You can debate Haiti, Venezuela, Vietnam, Canada, New Orleans, Judith Miller, marxism, health care, minority arrest rates and anything else you like. This ain’t my full time job and I have limited time to invest. I intend to stick to Iraq.

    You’ve said next to nothing about yesterday’s constitutional referendum. If you oppose the current electoral process in Iraq, fine. Present your reasoning and let’s discuss. Propose an alternative process. But 10 million people considered that referendum important enough to risk their lives by voting. Have the intellectual guts to address it head on.

    Your predictions were mostly an appeal to emotion. But you did present the kernel of an argument based on “city states” reaching out and Iran taking a positive role. Ok, that’s enough to merit a serious response. I’m spending time with the family today, but I’ll work up some analysis tonight and post later.

    I’ll close with a comment on tone. Neither of us is a wilting violet. I will continue to forcefully advocate my point of view, as you will too. As the debate gets vigorous, rest assured that my personal admiration for you remains unshaken.

    Ed

    16 October 2005, 2:00 pm

21. Josiah:

    This is not a tactical question, but a political one. As expected, the Sunnis who did vote rejected, the constitution, but we will be spoonfed the lie that, because the constitution passed, Iraqis support it. Actually, even if a majority rather than a slim margin of Sunnis had braved the polling stations, the opposition would have been higher, and the SCIRI and the U.S. knew it, hence the wave of “protective” U.S. raids and attacks all over the Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces (all Sunni) this weekend. See, during the reign of Saddam, the educated and managerial classes of Iraq were largely Sunni, and the U.S. wants to shut those people out because they will form the labor unions, the Arab-nationalist elements, the modernizing forces, etc. of a post-Saddam Iraq. They won’t sit back and let the U.S. loot their oil like Sistani and the other Shiite clerics in the SCIRI will. They are part of the majority sect of Islam (80% of Muslims globally), and have many Arab nationalist leaders among them. Bush is trying to demonize Sunnis in every speech of late for this reason. The U.S. figures a Shiite theocracy will be as manageable as the Wahabi theocracy in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has undermined Sunni participation at every step of the way, first through “de-Ba’athification” (even though the CIA installed the Baath party in 1963, and 1.5 million Iraqis were part of the Ba’ath party), and then through their propping up of Sistani’s Shiite coalition, which had to be disciplined by the U.N. after they tried to make the 3-province veto only passable with a 2/3rds majority of registered voters, which they knew would lock out Sunnis, whose region is the most unstable, and who are scared to leave their houses, let alone vote. Just two days ago, the Shiite-dominated parliament convened to read the constitutional “amendments” in Baghdad, but did not actually vote on them. The “amendments” were portrayed as major concessions by the Western press, but they were really crumbs. This looks like another case of the west propping up a religious/ethnic faction at the expense of other factions to maintain its control, and sparking more sectarian violence. This is the same power strategy, by the way, that every British and U.S. administration from 1917 to 1991 used in backing the Sunni minority. The point is, Iraq needs a constitution that does not tyrannize its minorities. Unless there is real power-sharing, there will be full-scale civil war. (Sorry, that was a bit overlong, but I had to weigh in.)

    16 October 2005, 2:29 pm

22. Stan:

    The debate question was whether the US should leave Iraq now. My answer is the affirmative.

    The basis of my position is that the US is neither morally nor politically qualified to determine the future of Iraq in any way, shape, or form. While my original post (desinged to fit in a 12-minute opening argument) noted three bases for this position, there are many more and more complex reasons that I personally believe this. But I will re-sate the orginal three:

    First, the actual reasons for the war are vastly different than the pretexts for the war, and those reasons have nothing to do with either democracy for others or security for the United States.

    Second, the American occupation is itself the central catalyst for most of the violence there.

    Third, the war in Iraq is dangerously destabilizing the situation in the region and exacerbating an economic crisis in the United States.

    At issue in the debate question itself is a decision that can only be taken by the US government, therefore the motives of the current government and what we can infer about the intent of the US government from the actions of this administration are critical to my first premise.

    You brought up the question about “stable democratic” regimes. In the context of a debate about whether the US which now militarily occupies Iraq and has interfered with every step of every process along the way to this bullshit referendum (participation is based on people wanting half a loaf better than none and having no idea what the future holds) should leave Iraq, your reference to democracy suggest either that the US government which runs the occupation is the vehicle for said hypothetical democracy, or it is irrelevant to the debate. So we have both agreed, albeit indirectly, that the aquestion of US motives and intent are on the table.

    Haiti is relevant precisely because the self-same foreign policy team that is overseeing the military occupaiton of Iraq (with one Uncle Tom replaced by one Auntie Tom) oversaw the destabilization and overthrow of a democratically elected government in Haiti at the exact same time that they were conducting the occupation of Iraq.

    My first premise stated that the US occupation of Iraq is not motivated by any concern for democracy. My unstated premise is that the occupation of Iraq is part of a post-Cold War redisposition of US military forces into SW Asia for the purpose of controlling theinternational oil spigot. The stated premise is supported by the Haiti situation precisely because it shows that this administration has not the slightest interest in democracy, but only in establishing governments that they can control.

    You want to shift away from these premises into a safe-zone, where the motives and initentions of the US government are not under critical review. So you ask what will happen after the US leaves… a question for which there can be no definitive answer, only semi-educated guesses… in order to reduce the debate to unforseeable outcomes, instead of the question of what policy decision to make — which is under someone’s control, ie, the Bush administration.

    Since the US government, and not the Iraqis, is the institution that is theoretically accountable to those of us who are US citizens (if we want to be reductionist), then how the observers of this debate understand the war is intimately related to what they believe the reasons for the war are. Whether observers decide to oppose the continued occupation or support it is heavily dependent on whether they believe this government — which claims it is accountable to the people (Ha!) — is being forthright about the reasons they have invaded a sovereign nation and militarily occupied it at tremendous cost in blood and money.

    So Haiti is hardly a “pet rock” (an arrogant and possibly racist allusion that is deeply offensive, and I hope you’ll refrain from that henceforth.) It goes to the heart of whether the administration can be trusted on its supposed commitment to “stable democracy,” and if not, then we again have to ask the question… what is the occupation for?

    This is evaded, because most proponents of the war know damn well that most Americans are not willing to slaughter others and hold thousands of funerals at home to corner the world’s oil.

    (Ed, do you believe that the invasion of Iraq is in any way related to oil?)

    [Catching a plane in a bit.]

    16 October 2005, 3:46 pm

23. rsklnkv:

    Ed,
    “You can debate Haiti, Venezuela, Vietnam, Canada, New Orleans, Judith Miller, marxism, health care, minority arrest rates and anything else you like. This ain’t my full time job and I have limited time to invest. I intend to stick to Iraq.”
    I guess my question is why you think these issues are not directly relating to the mess in Iraq? Don’t you think that the foundations (”…Haiti, Venezuela, Vietnam, Canada, New Orleans, Judith Miller, marxism, health care, minority arrest rates and anything else…”) of our interactions with the rest of the world have everything to do with Iraq? These are really not apples and oranges when you think in a more broad context. To those of us who think the current infrostructure fails miserably in many ways, all these issues link inexorably together to form a very strong web of deception and abuse of power.
    Let me draw a little strand of that web :
    Poor People–>Prison Industrial Complex–>Profit for Corporations
    –>Investments in the War in Iraq.
    Ignoring these foundations doesn’t make them go away. Now, my knowledge is admitedly limited when it comes to military history, but I would think that all the misdeeds we’ve witnessed perpetrated by the Military Indutrial Complex (though not solely) have definitively led us to this exact point in the Middle East. I’m certainly not saying “look over here, not at Iraq”. I am saying that these issues can be and are successfully used as reasons to oppose the occupation or at the very least, can contribute to anti-occupation theories.
    I’m not trying to steer you in the direction of talking about these things, but I don’t think we can dismiss them as unrelated without taking a very narrow view of ‘what’s going on’.

    16 October 2005, 4:05 pm

24. Ed:

    Stan:

    You’ll hear nothing more from me on Haiti.

    Sugggesting I am racist is deeply offensive, and I hope you’ll refrain from that henceforth.

    I’ll respond to the rest of your post later tonight.

    Ed

    16 October 2005, 4:38 pm

25. Ed:

    CL:
    
    “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
    – Robert Hanlon

    You make some good points. The building of the IA has been staggeringly inept at times, especially in the initial phases. But most of it has been bureaucratic ineptitude, mixed with unwillingness of lower level commanders to commit themselves fully to the effort. For a long time there was a preference for the short-term gratification of unilateral ops over the long term effort required to build capable IA forces.

    However, I can say with 100% certainty that CENTCOM’s #1 priority for the last year has been the building of the IA, and that virtually everyone in the military views a capable IA as our ticket out of Iraq. Creating 117 battalions in 18 months is nothing to sneeze at, and it took a huge infusion of people and money to make that happen.

    The question of armored vehicles vs. trucks is not as simple as you think. There’s a pretty good case that light pickups were the smart choice to equip the force with at the time. The goal was to get the IA in the fight quickly. You can buy 10 Toyota Hiluxes for the price of one uparmored HMMWV, and 200 for the price of one Bradley. There are tens of thousands of Hiluxes on fleet lots, available for immediate sale. ANY armored vehicle will involve a significant delay while production is ramped up, or used vehicles are refitted. So you kit the battalions out with pickup trucks initially, and then go back and retrofit with armored vehicles later.

    There’s also a case that trucks are the most appropriate vehicle for an indigenous counterinsurgency force too. The whole point of COIN forces is to interact closely with the populace. Can’t do that in a tank, as we have proven. Pickups are light, fast, quiet, agile, highly mobile, and reliable. They don’t offer any built-in protection, so you have to use speed and mobility to protect yourself. Plenty of US troops drove around in unarmored vehicles, sometimes by choice, until it became a hotbutton political issue.

    Bottom line, I agree with you that the building and equipping of the IA has been inept, but I do not agree that it is indicative of deceptive intent. This is an interesting sub-topic but somewhat tangential. I wonder if Stan would give us a new thread to continue it in depth?

    The Sunni are currently underrepresented in government by choice. They boycotted the election in January, thinking they could force a better deal through violence. They realized their mistake and turned out in big numbers yesterday. They will vote big in December too.

    They will have representation in the new parliament in numbers proportional to their share of the population as a whole. That is neither under- nor over-represented. It is fair, and the only way to do it. This gets to the fundamental problem the Sunnis have: they can’t accept that they are now a minority. See my response to Josiah for more on constitutional protections for minorities.

    Having a constitution and elections may not change things, but it is a necessary precondition. Democracy and trust of government will not happen without a constitution and elections.

    16 October 2005, 5:43 pm

26. Stan:

    So you can refer to Haiti as a “pet rock,” then refuse to discuss it any further? What does “pet rock” mean when it is used to describe a proud nation of 8 million human beings?

    Democracy and trust of government is not the issue for the Bush administration. I have proven this with the example you refuse to discuss. Controlability and permanent US military presence is the goal.

    You are not debating. You are hiding in the same boilerplate we heard at that ridiculous scripted teleconference.

    You can start whatever thread you want, but a discussion about the relative merits of pickup trucks and Hummers is not the debate you offered to have.

    Off to the airport.

    16 October 2005, 6:09 pm

27. Ed:

    Josiah:

    I disagree with most of your supporting arguments. However, your main point is dead on, and worth repeating:

    The point is, Iraq needs a constitution that does not tyrannize its minorities. Unless there is real power-sharing, there will be full-scale civil war.

    So which specific tenets of the constitution “tyrannize” the Sunnis, in your view?

    From my view, you’ve got it backwards. The constitution does protect minorities, almost to a fault. It was written by Shiites and Kurds who have been brutalized by Saddam and his Sunni minority, and they were determined to protect themselves against any Baathist resurgence. Because they were so poorly treated by central power in the past, they insisted upon strong provisions for autonomous regions.

    The major complaint the Sunnis have is that power is too decentralized. But this devolution of power applies to the Sunni regions as well as the Kurdish and Shia regions, so that hardly “tyrannizes” the Sunnis. Likewise, oil wealth will be divided per capita, so the Sunnis get their fair share there.

    The Sunnis do have a point in opposing the breakup of the country. They paint this as patriotism, which is bogus. Their opposition is based on self interest, not that there’s anything wrong with that. If the country breaks up, they get stuck with big patch of desert and no oil. Kinda like the Israelis. But their choice now is between a decentralized union under a constitution and a sharing of resources, or complete breakup and NO resources if we pull out immediately.

    Beyond that, it’s tough to muster up sympathy for the Sunnis. They had problems voting because of an insurgency that they started and sustain. I’ve been to Tikrit and seen the fantastic wealth pumped into the Sunni areas during the Saddam kleptocracy, and I’ve seen the poverty of the Shia areas. I’m inclined to view much of the lingering opposition as Baathists wanting to retain the option to take back over the country after we leave. Maybe I’m wrong. Nonetheless, the Sunnis deserve fairness and equal protection under the law … but nothing more.

    But I’m ranting now. How would you propose restructuring the government to protect the Sunnis from everyone, while still protecting everyone from the Sunnis?

    16 October 2005, 6:35 pm

28. peggy:

    Ed,

    I agree with those who suggest you look at both historical and current geopolitical contexts before creating a scenario for the perfection of Iraq.

    The thing is, even if the current occupiers magnificently rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq, assist in the creation of a brilliant constitution, make the country a proud democracy, and build and train the indigenous military to the hilt, the immediate future of the country as a peaceful democratic place is in no way assured. In fact, I would say the opposite is the case.

    Consider the British colonial effort in South Asia. They were present there for 150 years. They greatly improved the infrastructure and educational systems, and profoundly transformed the civilizations of that area. Countless British administrators, military men, missionaries and others spent their whole lifetimes in South Asia, many working for what they really believed was the good of the people. They did not *only* plunder and pillage, as the US has been doing, and still aims to do in Iraq.*

    But after the British left, chaos and warfare quickly set in, all over the place.

    Americans are putting much less effort into the development of Iraq than the British put into the development of their colonies. In a way, it is just as well. Because, no matter how much sincere effort you put into the transformation of a country, you cannot control its future. You cannot even control your own country’s future, no matter how hard you try. The best you can do is address those immediate problems that are in your power to address.

    Many have argued that the most severe and immediate problem that Iraq faces now is precisely the US military presence. It is hard to imagine how, if the US withdraws right now, life for the Iraqi people will get any worse.

    From what I have read, Iraqi Sunnis are strongly opposed to the currently-being-considered constitution. Even if the constitution is legitimated by a referendum, those who opposed it are not going to sit back and let it be. The whole country is militarized. A western-trained army cannot cope with local guerrilla warfare. The US itself cannot cope with it.

    Eventually, the region will find its own equilibrium. We can contribute to a happier equilibrium by cessation of our own military adventures there and everywhere else.

    *And isn’t it true that ultimately what Bush and Co want is control of Middle East oil? This is oil that happens to be beneath the ground of countries that belong to other people. The whole idea of “bringing democracy to Iraq” is a transparent sham. You can’t have democracy unless you have self-rule. Even more of a sham is the idea of protecting Iraqi people against violence. Our own military folk are the worst perpetrators of violence against Iraqis. Therefore, we must withdraw our own military folk.

    16 October 2005, 7:36 pm

29. Ed:

    Stan:

    I didn’t want to discuss Haiti further because I can’t say what I think without personalizing the debate and offending you. I’m trying to be respectful. But since you are pressing me on it, I’ll come out with it. You’re a retired NCO, you can handle blunt talk.

    Haiti is relevant to nothing except your personal experiences. You force it into an unrelated debate because you are obsessed with it. We both know you have some pretty heavy emotional baggage tied up in the place. I don’t know what happened to you there, but the bitterness is not far below the surface. One of these days I’ll buy your book.

    That’s what I mean by “pet rock”, Stan. It’s not a knock on 8 million people; it’s a knock on you and your thought processes. You know a lot about the place, so you make it the centerpiece of arguments that it has nothing to do with. That is easier than actually learning about Iraq, I suppose.

    I suggest you moderate this post out. It’s meant for nobody but you to read. E-mail me at HaywoodE@hotmail.com if you want to respond. Now let’s get back to Iraq.

    I still think you’re a great guy.

    Ed

    16 October 2005, 8:01 pm

30. Hubris Sonic:

    I would have to agree with Stan on Ed’s ridiculous reply about armored trucks etc.

    pathetic. i hope this isnt what passes for officer material these days.

    17 October 2005, 8:43 am

31. Hubris Sonic:

    Creating 117 battalions in 18 months is nothing to sneeze at, and it took a huge infusion of people and money to make that happen.

    it took?, so there are 117 battalions ready? thats odd, I seem to remember DICK meyer or casey saying there was 1.

    perhaps i am wrong.

    17 October 2005, 8:48 am

32. Ed:

    rsklnkv:

    Your argument is valid, to a point. But the problem is this: like Kevin Bacon, everything can be linked to everything else. When you’re deliberately trying to build a web to support your argument, anything can be manipulated to support your preexisting thesis.

    Without self-imposed constraints of relevance, broad thinking is nothing more than an excuse for sloppy thinking. It allows you to focus on peripheral issues at the expense of more vital ones. Everyone introduces their own pet issue into the fray, regardless of probity. Thus do we continue to spend time talking about Haiti, while the electoral process in Iraq is virtually ignored. There is a finite amount of time to be devoted to any single issue, and that time should not be wasted in unlimited excursions in pursuit of marginally relevant points.

    You may not be saying “look over here, not at Iraq” … but others are, even if they are not self-aware enough to recognize it in themselves.

    I’m not saying you shouldn’t make arguments about other issues. Go ahead, it’s Stan’s forum and I’m certainly a minority viewpoint of one compared to the rest of you. Just don’t expect me to rebut or respond. Like I said, I’ve got limited time to waste on the internet, and I intend to spend it on the original premise of this debate: whether to withdraw from Iraq.

    17 October 2005, 8:36 pm

33. Ed:

    Stan:

    The basis of your position is a tautology. You are in effect arguing “The US is doing the wrong thing in Iraq, because the US always does the wrong thing.” This is classic circular logic to avoid making an actual case based on what’s going on in Iraq.

    STAN: First, the actual reasons for the war are vastly different than the pretexts for the war, and those reasons have nothing to do with either democracy for others or security for the United States.

    Your first premise may be an article of faith to you and your fellow travellers, but it is far from factual. There were 3 reasons for the invasion: 1) To get rid of WMD that everyone believed were there, so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of Al Qaeda; 2) Get rid of a dangerous dictator who threatened the source of most of the world’s oil; and 3) implant a democracy in the heart of the middle east, in hopes it would provide the seeds of revival in the muslim people and thus eliminate the most fertile ground for terrorism.

    The first reason turned out to be wrong. The second and third were and are valid. You will no doubt dismiss these reasons, but the plain fact is that our established democratic political process took us to war as a nation, with national consensus, based on those reasons. If you’re looking for a real hidden agenda by the Neocons, look no further than reason #3. I say that as a proud Neocon.

    STAN: Second, the American occupation is itself the central catalyst for most of the violence there.

    Your second premise is partially true and mostly wrong. It’s clear that a significant portion of those joining the Sunni resistance are fed by anger over the US presence. However, the underlying motive of the leaders of the resistance is to reassert Sunni domination over the rest of the country, either under a restoration Baathist regime or under a Wahabbi Caliphate in the case of AQIZ.

    Moreover, increasingly the US presence acts as a buffer to prevent unrestrained violent competition for power between the major ethic groups. Until a peaceful mechanism can be built for sharing power and resources, all 3 sides will try to get their share or more using force. The only successful mechanism ever developed for peacefully sharing power and resources is a democratic government. That’s what the US and allies are building. Until it’s built, removing the military force that prevents unrestrained power struggles is an invitation to greater chaos.

    You also totally ignore the influence and actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Their publicly stated goal is a Sunni Caliphate in Iraq, and their publicly stated position is that Shiites are apostates who are worse than infidels. They have been waging a savage bombing campaign against the Shia population that accounts for the large majority of civilian casualties over the last year. Their clear intention is to incite an ethnic war. US and a growing number of IA troops are the only thing stopping them, that and Sistani’s restraint.

    In a previous article I read your premise about the “city state” model providing a means to spontaneous reconciliation. That model exists nowhere except in the mind of the author of that article, and it shows a gross lack of understanding of Iraqi society and where loyalties reside. Iraqis feel zero loyalty to a city or state. In the Shia areas they are loyal to whatever cleric their sect adheres to, primarily Sistani or Sadr. In the Kurdish areas, they are loyal to the idea of Kurdistan, and to one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the PUK or KDP. In the Sunni areas, they are loyal mainly to their tribe. This was the case even under Saddam. There’s a reason so many of the top wanted members of the former regime were named al-Tikriti. But most tribes don’t coincide with or unilaterally control a city or town, and many towns are divided among 3 or 4 tribes. Those tribes define themselves mainly in opposition to the others, and are often in various states of low level competition against each other. To think that they will spontaneously reach out to each other in a spirit of brotherhood is clueless. They will continue violently robbing each other until they are given a peaceful means to rob each other and coerced into using it.

    STAN: Third, the war in Iraq is dangerously destabilizing the situation in the region and exacerbating an economic crisis in the United States.

    Your third premise is not factual either. The first half is subjective. Since you claim that prediction is impossible, I’m curious how you know the situation will get more unstable. For that is the result of “destabilizing”, isn’t it? In my opinion, and the opinions of many others, a successful democratic government in Iraq that shares power peacefully among the 3 major ethnic groups would be a major stabilizing influence in the region.

    The second half of your third premise is contradicted by all economic data. We are in the 4th year of an economic expansion that is expected to continue at least through next year. Inflation and interest rates are low, unemployment is low, and home ownership rates are at all time highs. Our budget is being strained by the war and by the rebuilding of Katrina, but this is hardly the crisis you paint it to be.

    You asked if I think the war is at all related to oil. Of course it is. See reason #2. But the motivation was to prevent Saddam from threatening the world’s major source of oil, not to try and corner it ourselves. Nobody could corner the world oil supply, and to suggest it’s possible shows total ignorance of economics. Iraq has somewhere around 11% of the world’s oil. How does seizing 11% of something corner the market? More importantly, if all we wanted was the oil, the easiest and most commercially appealing solution would have been to drop the sanctions and let oil companies buy it from Saddam at the market price.

    17 October 2005, 10:49 pm

34. Tom:

    Hello Stan,

    We should thank Ed for the useful suggestion of purchasing Toyota trucks. I read an article where an Afghan police official complained that his primary hindrance in prosecuting his “war on drugs”(keeping heroin out of people’s lives is a very serious goal and should not be confused with our domestic witch-hunt)was an aging Corolla with little offroad capacity. He would love a new truck. But here we go again taking Ed into another irrelevant world tour of US government duplicity.

    PEACE!

    Tom

    18 October 2005, 6:59 am

35. Vostok:

    If there is anything remotely resembling true democracy in Iraq then why can’t there be a referendum on whether the foreign troops stay or go?

    I’m old enough to remember all the government/military BS during the Vietnam debacle and this is definitely a rerun of it. Bush the Elder made it clear that the first Iraq War of 1991 was meant to end the “Vietnam Syndrome”. Meaning it was once again open season for war profiteering by his sponsors. Rather ironic that Vietnam Syndrome is now being replaced by Iraq Syndrome by his boy’s blundering allegiance to those same war profiteers. Hopefully this fiasco will put an end to empire building by this government for at least another 30 years.

    18 October 2005, 7:08 am

36. Ed:

    Welcome hecklers! Ths forum takes on a familiar pattern.

    While you are mustering the strength to shout me down, here are some concepts to ponder …

    Group Polarization

    If people are engaged in deliberation with like-minded others, they end up more confident, more homogenous and more extreme in their beliefs.

    And False Consensus Effect

    The false consensus effect refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. People readily guess their own opinions, beliefs and predilections as being more prevalent in the general public than they really are. The bias is commonly present in a group setting where one thinks the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. Since the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.

    18 October 2005, 7:00 pm

37. Josiah:

    Ed:

    “So which specific tenets of the constitution “tyrannize” the Sunnis, in your view?“

    I can think of two off the top of my head:

    1)Federalism. The draft constitution allows for two or more provinces to form a “region”, and Iraq’s demographic realities make a Shiite super-region inevitable. These “regions” control oil funds. Southern Shiite provinces have oil, and central Sunni provinces do not. Article 110 guarantees “equitable” distribution of “current” oil and gas fields, but not untapped wells, so the result is that Sunnis get 5-10% of the country’s petroleum, or 25-50% of their fair share. Claiming that the Sunni “kleptocracy”–a feature of the clan society or Saddam’s regime? please specify–prevented oil wealth from reaching Sunni areas under Saddam. How is this an argument for increasing their deprivation? You seem to be saying, “They can’t handle oil wealth, so let’s allow the Shiites and Kurds to screw them over.” Not too democratic of you.

    2)The Sunnis have a majority in four provinces, but only a 2/3rds majority in two. Accordingly, the 2/3rds rule seems clearly designed to lock them out. What is needed is something like an electoral college system. The electoral college in the U.S. gives states with small populations protection against domination by states with large populations. Ironically, in the U.S. the minorities are concentrated in the largest states, so the electoral college ends up privileging white, Christian America even more. But in Iraq the situation is precisely the opposite, and an electoral college would be appropriate.
    “How would you propose restructuring the government to protect the Sunnis from everyone, while still protecting everyone from the Sunnis?”
    Again, what is needed is a union with graduated minority representation that makes economic—I didn’t say cultural, religious or governmental—domination by a single ethnic group possible. Look, many of the Sunni moderates were involved in Saddam-era corruption, but Sunnis are the majority religion of Islam, and their marginalization is politically foolish and a boon to Al-Qaeda. If the constitution were made more attractive to them, the insurgents could be contained peacefully by the Iraqi army after the U.S. withdraws. Let’s get real here: The insurgents are like the FLN in Algeria or the MPLA in Angola. They are hard-liners with inexcusably violent methods who derive their support from the greater violence of the occupation army. After all, what has killed more Iraqis: insurgents’ bombs or coalition airstrikes? Answer: the latter, by a landslide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html). Those numbers are a year old, and the insurgents have killed less than a tenth that number since 2003. In fact, the disparity may be even wider now. So: who’s more opposed to democracy in Iraq? The misguided martyrs for self-determination who blow themselves up, or the imperialists responsible for bombing thousands upon thousands of civilians to maintain America’s 25% share of global petroleum consumption? By the way, KBR (a Haliburton subsidiary, just got a 225-million dollar no-bid contract to repair a single complex in Quarmat Ali. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/02/MNG9PF0E5L1.DTL). And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and if you honestly think the SCIRI (or any other Iraqi party or individual, for that matter) controls that cash-cow, well…I have some invisible WMDs I’d like to sell you.

    18 October 2005, 7:17 pm

38. Josiah:

    Edit:
    “Again, what is needed is a union with graduated minority representation that makes economic—I didn’t say cultural, religious or governmental—domination by a single ethnic group impossible.”

    18 October 2005, 7:20 pm

39. CL:

    Ed,
    Thanks for your responses. I am not particularly interested in a detailed discussion on the merits or lack thereof of one vehicle over another so I will end my side of the discussion with this: I really don’t think you’d find US troops tolerating a Toyota as their battle taxi so why should the Iraqis? Light fast and agile they may be, but it so is an insurgent or resistance fighter with an AK47 or a garage door opener. At least an armoured vehicle will stop bullets and shrapnel. If I was Iraqi soldier I’d be mad as hell at the disproportionate amount of casualties my troops were suffering due to lack of armour. I’d start to question the motives of my US masters.

    On oil. “The American way of life is not negotiable” sayeth Bush. Peak Oil will hit between now and 2025 if you believe the US Dept. of Energy’s Hirsch report or this winter if you believe the UK based Energy Institute. Or any number of qualified sources. From now on Oil gets more expenive as world production dwindles. Regardless of whether Iraq becomes a democracy, the world will still need it’s oil and the US more than anyone else. It’s just bringing democracy has a much better ring to it than the idea of putting a US footprint in the ME before another power does, or the ME manipulates oil supply to gain concesions from the west in when oil gets really short. Do you really think an administration stocked with engineering firms, oil barons, is interested in whether or not democracy flourishes in the ME without access to the oil? Saddam would be more then willing to sell oil to anyone if this was about economics. You didn’t need to invade to do this.

    On Iraq’s internal issues: I think something that isn’t mention ed here is the fact the modern Iraq is a construction of imperialism. The borders do not naturally define the ethnic compostion of the region. There is an argument Hussein played the role of a Tito in brutally keeping three difficult ethno-religous populations in order. Resistance by one group or another was brutally crushed by Husseins forces. Now all bets are off and the country is factionalised.
    The problem with removing the central authority in a place like this, is that you have no idea how things will turn out. Look at the Balkans after Tito. All bets are off when you start a war.

    You mention leaders of the Sunni resistance? Who are they? I’ve seen no indications that the resistance has any kind of centralised C2 structure. If it did, it would be a vulnerability. How do you account for the Shia resistance? The Brits have dropped the ball in the South and can’t even trust the cops they trained. Powerful militias control the streets. I say let them. At least they can’t be seen as collaborators and know the ground they walk on.

    Bring your kids home before you lose another soul in this fools errand.

    19 October 2005, 12:03 am

40. Ed:

    Josiah:

    Federalism is generally considered to protect minorities, not tyrannize them. Both the Kurds and the Shiites insisted on Federalism for precisely that reason: to protect themselves from the Sunnis. It may not be exactly the best solution, but it is the solution vehemently preferred by 80% of the population of Iraq. We have to respect the will of the people on that issue.

    I agree with you that Federalism must result in equitable distribution of oil wealth. The constitution distributes income from existing oil fields on a per capita basis; hard to argue with that. The clause about “new oil fields” is somewhat disturbing. However, I haven’t seen any reputable estimates about what percentage of oil that might constitute. Where did you get your numbers? It’s also worth noting that the US was the party that persuaded the Shiites and Kurds to accept equitable distribution of existing oil revenues.

    To answer your sidebar question, the kleptocracy was clearly a feature of Saddam’s regime, not the Sunnis as a whole. Saddam poured oil wealth into the Sunni tribes that formed his power base, especially the al-Tikriti tribes. You should see the palaces in Tikrit. However, I agree that the Sunnis as an ethnic group should not be punished for what Saddam did.

    The “2/3 majority vote in 3 provinces” rule was not designed with the Sunnis in mind. The Kurds insisted on it to protect themselves, by giving them a mechanism to opt out of any constitution they didn’t like. The Kurds control a large majority in 3 provinces. This fact is well documented in media coverage of the negotiation process last spring. At the time, the Sunnis and Shia objected to this provision, not because it was too hard to reject the constitution, but because it was too easy. Funny how it turned out.

    The electoral college does not protect small states. If anything, it decrements their value. The candidates all focus on the big prizes, like CA and NY. Not too much campaigning in SD and ND after the primaries. Perhaps you are thinking of the Senate.

    None the less, your idea of an electoral college for Iraq is a good one. But an electoral college-like function is inherent in a parliamentary system, which Iraq has. The proportionally elected representatives in Parliament select the Prime Minister, which is clearly the real seat of power in a Parliamentary system.

    Your end state is dead on: the constitution must establish a fair balance of power and equitable distribution if resources. That has a far better chance of happening if two criteria are met:
    1) The Sunnis participate fully in the political process instead of trying to leverage the insurgency.
    2) US and coalition forces remain on the ground as a restraint against all parties trying to gain ground through force.

    19 October 2005, 9:23 pm

41. Ed:

    CL:

    I agree that the vehicle discussion is not relevant to the debate question. I addressed it because you asked it. But I can’t let your ending comment go without pointing something out: plenty of US troops have ridden into battle in Afghanistan and Iraq in pickup trucks, and some still do. Some of our most elite SOF use pickup trucks as a vehicle of choice.

    You are correct about Iraq being a product of imperialism. So what does that mean? Do you propose to abandon the boundaries drawn in 1920 in favor of more accurate borders? There is no easy way to do an ethnic partition without the mass migrations and ethnic cleansing that will result. Iraq may be an artificial construct but we are stuck with it and must make it work, and a federal democracy is the only viable solution to keep the factions in a union. Or do you believe a dictatorship is justified to hold such a country together?

    The leadership of the insurgency is divided into 2 groups, the former Baathists and the Wahabbis (such as AQIZ). They cooperate to some degree, although much less now that their divergent goals have become clear. Insurgencies are by nature decentralized, but there is plenty of evidence of central funding and direction of the Baathist remnants. The vast majority of the mid-level tactical leaders of the insurgency are former high-ranking officers in the Republican Guard and the Iraqi Intel Services.

    The Shia insurgency doesn’t really exist anymore. Sadr is a local potentate who cares mainly about retaining his power base. As long as that’s not threatened, he’s quiet. As soon as we stopped trying to replace him or arrest him, he stopped fighting us. He talks a good game but in reality he cooperates with the current Iraqi government quite readily. There has been very little violence from his Mahdi militia since the MA uprising of 2004.

    Leaving just to minimize US casualties, without regard to the Iraqi casualties caused by the increased chaos when we depart, is a coward’s solution.

    19 October 2005, 11:00 pm

42. Ziggy:

    Good for you Ed, you give it to them.

    You give them arguments, you are called arrogant and racist.

    Here’s a bit about Haiti. Very large armed gangs were running around being violent calling for the ouster of Aristide. I am a bit too young to be sure, but didn’t a similar thing happen more recently? So the US decides it’s no good to have armed gangs running around Haiti killing stuff. The US gets in trouble for not intervening into these kinds of things, so I think getting Aristide out of country before he could be strung up by some mob is the prefered choice.

    If you believe Aristide to be just some poor soul oused by US Imperialism, please read some words from Haiti’s current interim government.

    “As soon as the interim government took office, the political parties as a whole and numerous civil society organizations demanded the dismissal of overzealous or corrupted high-ranking officials under the dictatorship of Jean Bertrand Aristide or who allegedly have been involved in killings or embezzlements of public money.”

    “In the majority of cases, the poverty-stricken population living in the slums is the prime victim of the violent acts perpetrated by those who proclaim to be Aristide’s supporters. They openly claim responsibility for such acts over radio broadcasts …”

    There are plenty more.

    http://www.haiti.org/general_information/communiqu%E9%20de%20presse102204_en.htm

    I guess the CIA must be behind it, because we are all big racists who control the world. If you want to blame someone for Haiti, blame France.

    Here’s a link to the CIA Factbook info too. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere according to the evil CIA.
    http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ha.html

    20 October 2005, 12:26 am

43. Stan:

    The Embassy and the CIA, whose claims you publish, were part of the coup, Ziggy.

    Here are a couple of links, that describe the coup process. There is a template for this process that has been refined with earlier coups against Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, among others.

    http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=76
    http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=77

    The Aristide government was elected with huge margins in a perfectly legitimate election that was widely observed. That would make it a democratic process, no? Nonetheless, the US was centrally involved - with Roger Noriega as its architect - in the overthrow of that government because Aristide commanded to much popular influence, and had not proven trustwothy to carry out the US diktat.

    This makes the US uniaquely UN-qualified to make claims about democratizing Iraq and calls their STATED motive of midwifing a democracy in Iraq into question. The foreign policy objectives of the US have in no case been tracable in practice to a commitment to democracy, but to imposing governments that obey the US in critical policies — like the laundry list of demands for “market economy,” privatization, et al.

    For Ed, how can the military force that has created the majority of Iraqi casualties be seen as the force that can prevent Iraqi casualties? It is the distorting presence of the US occupaiton itself that has created the catalyst for most of the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict. Read: http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=178 where I spelled this out.

    You cannot lay simplistic claims out that the “insurgency” is divded between two groups that are defined solely by ideology/ethnicity. You know as well as I do that geography and kinship and a host of other factors are as signficant, and that opposition to the occupation is more than merely internal power politics. Ed, people object to having foreign military occupiers cluttering up their streets, pointing guns at them, kicking their doors in, bombing them, and putting them in prison on general round-ups.

    The Mehdi may not be fighting Americans now, but they have carved out no-go zones against the US in Baghdad, which tomy mind means thay are at a minimum a latent insurgency.

    Let those buffoons in DC start dropping bombs on Iran, like many of them want so badly to do, and watch how quickly the US is confronted with a Shia insurgency. The British in the South must be receiving hundreds of attacks from vampire rabbits or something, because they are surronded by Shias, and something is attacking them.

    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article320343.ece

    The Brit SAS, by the way, were recently caught redhanded posing as Arabs and attempting to plant terror bombs, so I am very skeptical about much of the Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=55&p=15926&s2=20

    Suggest anyone who wants a running account for the last two-plus years check the archive of news stories at http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/what/news.html

    You can click “previous” and the archive runs backward to June 2003.

    20 October 2005, 8:46 am

44. CL:

    Ed,
    No, I am not suggesting redrawing the borders. What I am sugguesting is that countries with externally imposed borders that do not represent the ethnic and cultural composition of the inhabitants can be prone to instability. Any type of liberal ideal of secular freedom and democracy under these circumstance needs to develop organically. Imposing a governance regime through invasion and occupation, reminds people too much of their past to be considered valid. The Iraqi street will decide the fate of Iraq, what ever the Iraqi gov’t thinks.

    A foreign power, chiefly one that has a history of self-interested meddling in other countries affairs (backed by a former colonial power) that sees a military solution to nearly everything is not the tool to bring ‘democracy’ Iraq.

    Maybe there was a chance way back in 2003 before the US privatised/globalised the economy, fired the army and civil service because of their Ba’ath membership, and allowed the physical infrastructure of Iraq to crumble, there could have been a chance at doing things right by allowing the Iraqi’s to determine their nation’s fate on their terms.
    But you can’t go back in time.

    I agree Sadr is a “local potentate mainly interested in securing his power base”. Of course he is, he is political actor who relies on popular support to be effective. You could say the same about any leader. Not all power that he wields comes in the form of guns and bombs. When he decides it is not in his base’s interest to cooperate with the Iraqi gov’t, there will be problems.

    Where you see cowardice in withdrawing, I see pragmatism. Few in the entire world will see a US withdrawl as an act of cowardice. Withdrawing will allow the Iraqi people to be architects of their own fate. If the US does not withdraw, they will be fighting an insurgency for years with many many more aggregate casualties amoung the Iraqis and Americans with more risk of terrorist attacks on US and allied nations. If the US does withdraw, there may be a long or short civil war with a lot of aggregate casualties OR their maybe a period of unrest followed by some kind of peace.
    Strong social capital exists among the various tribal, clan, religious and other affiliations throughout the country that could be used as a basis for a peace and rebuilding. Iraq has it’s share of well educated people who are quite capable of solving problems.

    Things are getting worse in Iraq, regardless of the political process. In my view, removing the key and original beligerant will likely do more good then harm in the long run - both for local & global peace and security.

    20 October 2005, 11:46 am

45. emma:

    “I guess the CIA must be behind it, because we are all big racists who control the world.”
    Finally, someone gets it!
    ____
    As to the whole ‘coward’ thing Ed pulls out of his war-chest: I find the entire war on Iraq to be cowardly. You fight for the rich minority. You help maintain the current heirarchies and class systems around the world and ultimately use schoolyard insults to solidify your arguments.
    Your groupthink insinuations are particularly interesting considering the ammount of garbage spewed out by this administration. Not feeling a bit brainwashed yourself, huh? It might be laughable if not for all the young men and women who really believe they are the ‘Good Guys’.
    Sorry, chaps. You give some great intellectuallism, but the reality is that this war is is based on lies, power grabs, and keeping the money in the right hands. How very Saturday morning GI Joe cartoon of you (I made that one up!), to believe that in this day and age you are doing the right thing by invading another country. Bringing democracy to Iraq. Fighting for freedom. Okay. Sure.

    20 October 2005, 12:44 pm

46. m.c.:

    Two quick points for defenders of the current Iraq War policy:

    1)Retired Lt. General William Odom, NSA director during Reagan, and Army Asst. Chief of Staff for Intelligence calls Iraq “the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the United States.”

    2)Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s COS at the State Dept., 31 year military veteran and former director of the Marine Corps War College just gave a scathing speech at the New America Foundation. Both video and transcript are available on their website. Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post today covers it in “Former Insider Lashes Out.” Wilkerson also highly recommends George Packer’s book “The Assassins’ Gate, America in Iraq”. Packer writes for the New Yorker.

    20 October 2005, 9:01 pm

47. Ed:

    Some very ignorant things are being said about civilian casualties. Some of you apply absolutely zero skepticism to anything you read that reinforces your own opinions.

    Here’s a challenge. Go to the very anti-war Iraq Body Count website and look at the incident database of iraqi civilians killed this month so far (as of 18 Oct). Now add up which incidents you think were clearly a result of insurgent action, which were clearly a result of coalition action, and which can’t be determined from the data given.

    Here’s what I got:
    There have been a total of 50 incidents so far in October, resulting in 215 Iraqi civilian fatalities.
    Of those, there were a total of 12 suicide attacks, resulting in 112 civilian deaths. Clearly these were insurgent attacks.
    There were 20 direct attacks on coalition, ISF, or IP targets, resulting in 40 Iraqi civilians killed. Clearly these were insurgent attacks.

    Hmmm … something funny here. Looks like a minimum of 152 out of the 215 civilian deaths this month so far were caused directly by insurgent or terrorist attack.

    Anyone want to do a tally for September? August? Go ahead, I dare you.

    Stan, you want to try and argue that the SAS is doing suicide bombings now? That would deplete the squadron strength pretty quickly, eh?

    (and nobody from the SAS was caught red-handed planting terrorist bombs. All you got is a wild accusation by one single person. Not even his own party backed him up on it. The left is no stranger to propaganda).

    20 October 2005, 11:28 pm

48. CL:

    Ed,
    Did you miss the part on the IBC website where it noted, “Casualty figures are derived solely from a comprehensive survey of online media reports.”?
    The civilian deaths, therefore, that don’t make into media reports are not counted. Nor, does the US military make it a habit to report civilians killed in it’s actions. There also is a tendency for the US to label Iraqi deaths from it’s actions as “terrorist”. These numbers are then countered by local groups and individuals.
    I’ve also read numerous accounts by soldiers who’ve killed people from moving vehicles for fear of suicide bombers and not stopped to investigate. Not all of these are logged. The nature of ununiformed guerrilla war eliminates the ability to tell friend from foe therefore all civilians can be considered enemy and killed on suspicion.
    The coalition reports dozens and dozens of daily contacts, few of these make it into the press. If civilians are killed during these, it is either not known, or not reported.
    So, with all this in mind, you can see that IBC paints a narrow picture of the possible scope of civilian deaths. It is a baseline guide and relies on the media for it’s figures. If something is not mentioned in the media, IBC can’t factor it.

    21 October 2005, 12:06 pm

49. m.c.:

    FYI: Frontline(PBS) has done two good recent specials: The Torture Question & Private Warriors.

    21 October 2005, 1:56 pm

50. Ed:

    CL:

    For every possible scenario you can paint in which civilians killed by the coalition are not reported, I can paint a similar scenario in which civilians killed by the resistance are not reported. Surely you see the folly in basing arguments on undocumented, unreported, unquantified events? From there it is only a short leap to UFOs and Bigfoot. When you don’t hold yourself to some sort of standard of evidence, it’s far to easy to believe what you want, whether justified or not.

    Sites such as Iraq Body Count and Icasualties may not be perfect, but they are the most comprehensive accumulation of raw data available. Media reports may not be complete, but they are the best source of information.

    It’s fashionable on all sides to denigrate the media, and indeed some of the talking heads on national TV are buffoons. However, there are lots of young reporters out there risking their lives to gather facts. There are reporters from many different outlets, with many different perspectives and leanings. The sum total is a pretty good picture of truth for those inclined to look hard enough.

    21 October 2005, 7:07 pm

51. Phil Carsten:

    A few questions for Ed.
    How many Iraqi civilians were killed per month, by insurgents, before we toppled Saddam’s regime? I don’t recall hearing of any suicide bombers or I.E.D.s in Iraq before we invaded.
    Do you really think we have stabilized the region?

    21 October 2005, 8:10 pm

52. Ed:

    Stan,

    I shouldn’t criticise your position on Haiti without having read your book. From which outlet would you recommend that I buy “Hideous Dream”?

    Ed

    21 October 2005, 8:45 pm

53. Stan:

    Hit and run post, sorry.

    Ed, no one said the Brit operatives were “suicide” bombers. They were planting bombs.

    On Haiti, the links I included earlier on Venezuela and Haiti are better explications of my “position” on Haiti than the book, which is just a memoir. But it is available through the publisher at http://www.softskull.com

    I do hope people cqn be convinced to review the piece by Michael Schwartz that is linked. It is detailed and well-documented, and it at least attempts to grasp the complexity of the situation there.

    In any and all cases, however, the US must leave Iraq, and the sooner the better. There is not a single reason to believe that the American presence is doing anything except making things worse. And the only way the US can “broker” any accord between Iraqi elements is through the reality of the distortion the US itself creates there… which means the US will have to violently supress any faction not allied with the US - regardless of the impact on Iraqis generally or the increasing anti-American feeling around the world. Realpolitik is always sitting at the end of the road, even when it is a cul-de-sac.

    Don’t forget that the Penatgon Papers that Ellsberg leaked showed that the many in the US ruling circles knew the US going to lose the war as early as 1967 (?), but the politics of withdrawal drew the invasion and occupation of Vietnam by the US out in the period AFTER 1967 to produce the terrible casualties tolled up before reunification. 58,000 US dead, almost 3 million SE-Asians.

    We should never forget this. But apparently many already have.

    22 October 2005, 12:05 pm

54. Ed:

    Phil:

    How many Iraqis were killed by Saddam’s regime before you toppled it? Do you recall hearing of any terms such as “Anfal” before we invaded?

    Cheap rhetoric can always be tossed in both directions.

    Stan:

    of course the Brits were not suicide bombers. That’s the point. You suggest that most Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence is perpetrated by western sources, and cite one person’s wild accusation as evidence.

    My rebuttal is simple: in any given month in 2005, at least half of Iraqi civilian casualties were inflicted by suicide bombers. Those attacks are clearly not from western sources. AQIZ publicly claims responsibility for most of these attacks, so it seems pretty certain they perpetrated them.

    The memoir aspect of your book is exactly why I’ll read it.

    Stan: There is not a single reason to believe that the American presence is doing anything except making things worse.

    No single reason except an interim government supported by 80% of the population, a constitution ratified in a free vote, and an upcoming election for a permanent sovereign government.

    Iraq ain’t Vietnam, no matter how hard you wish it were.

    I believe we should start a phased withdrawal next summer, once it is clear that the government elected in December is stable. There is no reason to think that that we will not be successful in Iraq, as long as we don’t pull the carpet out from under democracy right as it stands up.

    22 October 2005, 2:09 pm

55. CL:

    Ed,
    IBC et al, provide a good baseline, I agree. My criticism of them was not meant to denigrate the media’s reporting, but to instead expose it’s limitations. These limitations prevent a real accounting of numbers of civilian deaths in Iraq - Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns”.
    It is because of the limitations of relying on reported deaths, that cluster sample surveys like the Lancet study are used to estimate casualties. We’re a long way from UFO country.

    22 October 2005, 2:13 pm

56. Ed:

    CL, you may not denigrate the media, but others do. Check the Categories listing on this blog, last entry, “Chickenshit media”.

    22 October 2005, 4:11 pm

57. CL:

    Ed,
    I’ve commented on why I disagree with your thinking on civilian casualties. The media, to an extent is limited in it’s ability to operate on the ground due to the security situation in Iraq. Your last comment has absolutely nothing to do with this.

    22 October 2005, 5:07 pm

58. Ed:

    CL, you’re not the only person I’m debating.

    22 October 2005, 7:26 pm

59. Phil Carsten:

    More Cheap rhetoric.
    The United States of America attacked and occupied Iraq for these reasons. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/
    We now know that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is in custody. No mushroom clouds over the United States of America. Mission accomplished! Lets pack up and move out.
    Bring our kids home now.
    They did a great job.
    Honor them.
    Bring them home and give them jobs here.
    And the best medical care.

    22 October 2005, 8:40 pm

60. CL:

    http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-22T214904Z_01_SCH278249_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BRITAIN.xml

    More news.

    22 October 2005, 9:52 pm

61. Ed:

    I’m not surprised, CL. I’m opposed to having US troops there too.

    The question is not whether to withdraw, but when and under what circumstances. Stan argues in favor of an “immediate” withdrawal. Presumably “immediate” means something like “beginning tomorrow and proceeding as fast as we can un-ass the place, but not later than Christmas.”

    I think such a withdrawal would be catastrophic for our interests, and for the many good Iraqis who have risen to the challenge of building a new government. We have worked very hard with the UN to design and implement a democratic process for establishing an elected government. The culmination of that process is in December, with nationwide elections. It would be incredibly stupid to quit only months before the endstate is reached.

    Moreover, Stan and others willfully ignore the external and internal forces pulling the county apart, and the dampening effect that our troops exert on those forces. The presence of US troops is the main obstacle to civil war at the moment. In the absence of a legitimate government to provide a non-violent means of resolving conflict over resources and power, all parties will resort to violence.