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.

    By next summer Iraq will have a legitimate elected government and a reasonably competent army capable of fighting the remaining insurgents. The withdrawal can begin then. We could see troop levels cut in half next summer (2006), with most remaining combat troops coming out the following summer (2007). An advisory effort would probably remain for some years after that.

    If that doesn’t happen, we have our own democratic process in this country where the will of the people is expressed. It’s called an election. If we are not substantially out of Iraq by 2007, the Presidential election of 2008 will be a clear referendum for Americans to speak on this issue.

    23 October 2005, 5:45 pm

62. Ed:

    Stan:

    You have repeatedly accused US forces of deliberately targeting the media. Today 3 suicide bombers hit the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. Clearly this was a terrorist attack by AQIZ or another insurgent-affiliated group to inflict mass casualties on western reporters. Will you condemn this attack on the news media as vociferously as you have condemned the others?

    24 October 2005, 7:13 pm

63. Stan:

    No.

    The Palestine Hotel is also a hostel for collaborators. As such it is a legitimate target.

    You don’t get it, Ed.

    There is no moral equivalency between a foreign occupying force and an armed struggle against it.

    The Iraqis have a right to target Brits, Americans, and Iraqi collaborators.

    American taxpayers are not paying for Iraqi resistance forces. We ARE paying for US troops to occupy Iraqi. My son is one of them; and if anything happens to him there, I will not blame the Iraqis. I will blame everyone who got us into this, from that creepy Judith Miller to that meat puppet in the oval office.

    24 October 2005, 7:54 pm

64. Ed:

    Yeah, I figured you’d find a way to rationalize a double standard. Predictable, but disappointing nonetheless.

    You don’t get it either, Stan.

    There is no moral equivalency between forces fighting to establish a democratic system, and insurgent terrorists deliberately targeting non-combatants in an effort to prevent democratic rule.

    ‘Armed struggle’, even if justified, does not excuse a resistance movement from the responsibility to act in a legal and moral manner. This attack was neither, as are many other insurgent attacks. They have deluded you into romanticising them as “freedom fighters”. You and others who excuse their murderous methods bear responsibility for their crimes.

    I’ve tried to leave your son out of this discussion, but you keep bringing him in. Fine. Your son is a volunteer, as am I. I can’t speak for your son, but I blame nobody but myself for my fate. I pray nothing happens to your boy, but if it does and you feel compelled to blame someone, start with yourself.

    24 October 2005, 9:10 pm

65. Stan:

    You won’t provoke me with that. The volunteer status of soldiers has NOTHING to do with whether or not the war is justified. You need a new playbook. You’re floundering.

    I’m not rationalizing a double standard. I am positing a double standard. No rationalization necessary. There is a qualitative difference in combatants who are occupying another people’s territory to impose a state that the occupying force approves of, and the residents of that nation who are fighting against a foreign aggressor.

    These two forces do not warrant a single standard, any more than someone who breaks into your house and attacks you should enjoy the same standard of behavior you do if you act violently to defend yourself.

    The asymmetric methods employed by the resistance(s) would not be necessary if (1) the US wasn’t there in the first place or (2) the US didn’t have such overwhelming force. The option to fighting with these asymmetric tactics is to surrender. But you know that.

    This debate isn’t on the agenda in anyone’s safe house in Ramadi, at any rate,, and the Iraqis have already decided — just as the Vietnamese did — that they aren’t giving up.

    Pity. We’re coming upon 2000 US dead any minute now.

    Richard Nixon and George W. Bush had one thing in common, aside from party affiliation. They didn’t read the stuff people sent to them. They relied on agenda-laden advisors.

    On June 13, 1971, Nixon discovered a story in the newspaper about one of those reports he didn’t read — a hefty collection of reports that were headlined in the New York Times as “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.” Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department employee then working a the Rand Corporation, had grown so restive over his knowledge of these reports and how they proved a pattern of systematic lying to the American public about the American invasion and occupation of Vietnam that he could no longer in good conscience remain silent. He had leaked what would become “The Pentagon Papers” to the press.

    Nixon — surely wishing now he were familiar with the content of said papers — slowly became aware that this leak would prove two significant things: the government lied about the war… a lot, and many experts believed by 1968 that the war itself was unwinnable. More than half of those casualties — over 58,000 US and almost 3 million SE Asians — occurred after 1968. After military and political experts told two administrations that the war would be lost.

    We are now about to pass the much smaller empirical milestone in Iraq of 2,000 American dead. This figure does not include Afghanistan, it does not include more than 15,000 wounded nor over 400 who have lost limbs, nor does it include uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqis (some estimates as high as 150,000, but you’ll say they were all killed by suicide bombers, because that’s in your playbook). There is nothing special about the number 2,000, except what was special about each of the numerical increments along the way. 2,000 times now, a military sedan with two or three uniformed service members has pulled up in front of some home in the United States or Puerto Rico to deliver news that tore the hearts out of people and shattered their lives.

    So this round number is just an opportunity to remind ourselves of what is going on… and what is not.

    The rate of terror attacks worldwide has tripled since September 11th, so the world is no safer. No one has “won the war but lost the peace” in Iraq — one of the most Orwellian phrases imaginable, repeated like a drunken mantra to sustain denial about the reality of Iraq. The war has never been won. All that was accomplished was a bloody occupation. According to every poll, the majority of Iraqis want the US occupation out, so the majority will is not being respected in this alleged attempt to build dcemocracy at gunpoint. The military is suffering such a profound retention and recruitment crisis that it has lowered standards and even resorted to recruting among hurricane suviviors at the Astrodome. The US taxpayer is footing a $6 billion a month bill for the war in Iraq; and future taxpayers will get the bill for over $8 trillion in national debt, 40% of which is debt now owned by foreign investors and central banks. So we aren’t just sacrificing schools and health care and housing, but the futures of our children… who will be approachable by more recruiters for more wars if something doesn’t change.

    2,000 is not just a number to reflect on, then go about our business. This is the equivalent of slapping one of those yellow ribbon magnets on a car that says “Support the Troops.” It’s easy, and it makes people feel better about their lack of action. It really is time to recognize a few things, and that’s why these little debates are valuable. because the justifications for the war break down so easily. They are jingoism, white supremacy, and pap.

    The US military occupation of Iraq is the single greatest catalyst for the violence there. Fewer than four percent of the fighters are foreign, and they are there because of the US presence. Over 75% of the daily attacks are directed at Americans, though more vulnerable civilians bear the brunt of these attacks. There are around 500 attacks per week in Iraq, and electoral gymnastics have not changed this one whit — in fact, these exclusive and US-managed affairs may actually make things much worse.

    It’s time to face these facts head-on, and to get out of Iraq now. Immediately. As quickly as the plans can be drawn up for redeployment. The Iraqis have coped with far more chaos from the occupation than they will without it, and, however painfully, they will find their way better when it is THEIR way, not what the Bush administration says is their way.

    And the argument that those who have died will have died in vain is sophistry of the cruelest kind. We do not say when children are killed by drunk drivers that they died in vain. We honor their memories by organizing to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to others. The way we support the troops — as human beings, not occupiers — and honor the memories of those who have already died, is to bring them all home, and do it now.

    24 October 2005, 9:49 pm

66. CL:

    Ed,
    I say you’re oversimplifying the resistance in Iraq. There are many different factions resisting occupation and other Iraqi groups operating in the country. All are motivated by different ideas. You appear to have a difficult time understanding the idea that people simply do not like being invaded and occupied by a foreign power – especially one with such a dubious record of involvement in Muslim Asia as the US. You frame the issue as one of being for or against democracy. The various resistance groups frame it quite differently. They see foreign armies occupying their country and that trumps just about any form-of-gov’t argument. Parts of them see either Sunni or Shia and/or the US as being resposible for their particular grievances, and are competing for power amid the occupation – the conflict is impossibly layered.

    “Legal and moral manner?” Do we really need to drag out various publicly known questionable activities by the US over the war?
    WMDs, Abu Ghraib, history of supporting SH, preventing fighting age males from leaving Fallujah before it was ‘pacified’, failure to apply Geneva conventions to PWs, public endorsement of torture, imprisoning thousands without charge in and out of Iraq…and claiming to be doing it for freedom -morality has SFA to do with anything here. This is a war of visceral hatred. You;ve either seen first hand, or heard of civilian deaths in Iraq. If an invading army killed any of my family and friends and destroyed my home and community either by accident or on purpose, I really don’t think there would be anything I’d rule out when it came to convincing that army (and it’s supporters) to leave. You don’t have to like what the resistance is doing, but consider where they are coming from.
    This is a dirty, optional war founded on half-truths and bald-faced lies. There is no moral ground here.

    24 October 2005, 10:16 pm

67. CL:

    http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/5555/Iraq_and_the_Laws_of_War

    Ed,
    See above link for an opinion on the legality of the Iraq war. No moral ground here, sir.

    24 October 2005, 10:34 pm

68. Ed:

    Forgive me if I’m not impressed by self declarations of victory.

    You have repeatedly dismissed the two successful elections with single-sentence brush offs. Not once have you seriously addressed it, even to discredit the event. I used to wonder why the left didn’t make a better case against the elections. But then I realized … you can’t. There’s nothing you can say to deny the power of a newly liberated people voting for self-determination. You can’t possibly refute it, so you do the only thing you can to minimize the effect on your arguments. You dodge it. Over and over.

    But you can’t keep hiding from the process, because the process moves on without you. There will be a national election in December. It will be just as successful as the last two were. Out of that election will come a form of government supported by a huge majority of Shia and Kurds, and possibly Sunnis as well. Then the insurgents and their apologists will be in the bizarre position of claiming that a government with broad support from 80% of the nation is composed of “collaborators”.

    Hey Stan, call that a ‘playbook’ if you like. Break out all your rhetorical gimmicks. You’re a very persuasive writer. But events on the ground betray you.

    24 October 2005, 11:20 pm

69. m.c.:

    There is a lot of blame that can go around, especially in the MSM. The New York Times(Judith Miller & Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. specifically) is going to be looked on when the historians get around to writing the dry history texts like they did in the 1930′s when they know about the atrocities of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco but pulled punches because Wall St. saw them as a bulwark against Godless Communism and heck, they were putting people back to work and putting money in the pockets of the armament manufacturers.

    Talk about institutional racism. Poor Jayson Blair!

    24 October 2005, 11:47 pm

70. chris:

    nice statistic from Iraq Body Count and Juan Cole:
    “Iraq Body Count, Reuters says, estimates that 38 Iraqis die in violence every day. Over thirty-five years, that would amount to nearly 500,000 dead. In fact, it is estimated that the Baath party killed 300,000 Iraqis, so the current rate seems to be greater than the Baath rate. (The number of civilians killed by the Baath is probably in fact exaggerated. Only a few thousand bodies have been recovered from mass graves so far.)”

    25 October 2005, 12:00 am

71. Melissa:

    ED,
    It is not our business to decide what kind of government Iraq will have, or any other country.
    Should I come into your home and decide for you how to run your finances, family life, raise your children. I am sure I know better than you do how you should live. If you resist, I may have to kill a few of you, but the rest of your family will be better off. I know that because I am such a superior human being and I have the answers for you.

    25 October 2005, 3:44 am

72. Stan:

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ26Ak02.html
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ26Ak01.html
    http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050725fa_fact
    http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/012005.html
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4351680.stm
    http://www.aina.org/releases/20050131003708.htm
    http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1777161.php

    There are seven lines on progress and elections.

    This fixed referendum is setting the stage for Kurdish secession in the North (after a “decent” interval), setting the stage for a Turko-Kurd war, and for the SCIRI zones to establish themselves as a rump-state of Iran. Oil production will continue to be disrupted and the future of all Iraqis is being sealed as a pre-modern, thrid world nation — filled with highly educated and pissed off people who will be drawn from tacit support of the of resistance to ever more active support.

    It now takes a full day sometimes to organize a visit between the “president” and the PM, who are a mile apart, because one stays in the Green Zone and one is just outside it. Security problems. The US hasn’t even established control over Baghdad.

    This is a disaster, even from the pov of smart imperialists everywhere. But let’s just keep feeding bodies into this hallucination, eh.

    Sigh.

    Helluva job!

    25 October 2005, 9:16 am

73. m.c.:

    This is the same New York Times that let two of its star reporters, Jeff Gerth and James Risen(like Judy, both Pulitzer Prize winners?!)in 1999 smear, railroad and feed the flames of the Wen Ho Lee investigation:the Dreyfus Affair of the 20th Century. Columnist William Safire on the editorial pages piled on, and Lee spent 278 days in solitary confinement before a federal judge apologized. Perhaps somebody else know the particulars; has Lee sued the Times and is demanding to know the unsubstantiated source?

    25 October 2005, 5:34 pm

74. Linda Jansen:

    I’ve been wondering how the 100 edicts put in place by Paul Bremer affect any constitution that might be “approved.” Those edicts basically threw the country open to rape and pillage by the Western powers. Can the new constitutional government of Iraq rescind them now?

    27 October 2005, 9:14 pm

75. Ed:

    The CPA doesn’t exist anymore. It was dissolved. Bremer’s edicts are meaningless.

    Here’s an article from the anti-war Guardian UK that gives some insight into insurgent organization and motivations. The author spent some time with a Sunni insurgent leader, including the bizarre experience of watching him guard a polling site during the referendum.

    As I stated earlier, the individual cells are motivated by a wide variety of objectives, the expulsion of occupation troops chief among them. But these cells are organized, trained, and funded at the national level by two main groups: former Baathist military and intelligence officers, and Al Qaeda. Each has their own agenda, and the two networks are increasingly in competition. The article illustrates that tension.

    This article gives some good insight into the power struggle between Sunni and Shia. Al Qaeda has driven the Shia to the point of rage with a diabolical bombing campaign against innocent Shia civilians. It’s amazing that anyone could be so blind as to fail to recognize exactly what Al Qaeda is trying to accomplish.

    Were US troops to be removed too quickly, the low level conflict between Sunni and Shia would almost certainly escalate into open warfare, ethnic cleansing, and mass refugee movements. Those of you counseling an immediate withdrawal should not dismiss lightly this probable consequence of your proposal. Which is more important to you: seeing the US fail, or minimizing casualties among Iraqi civilians? If you think the war was unjust, then you are proposing an even more unjust remedy.

    Finally, the article also illustrates the possible role of the upcoming elections as a means to draw the Sunnis into the political process. That process can become the vehicle for all major ethnic groups to devise a durable solution for power sharing. This will be an Iraqi solution, created by Iraqis, and will allow us to back out of the conflict. Do you really prefer a violent breakup of Iraq to a negotiated political process, solely because that political process was sponsored by the US?

    28 October 2005, 10:27 pm

76. Ed:

    2000 is a heart-breaking number, especially to me. Every single one of those KIA was one of my own, a fellow serviceman. And it will grow. We will probably hit 3000 before it is over.

    But that’s not the only number worth considering. Here are some more important numbers:

    Percent of all Iraqi voters who risked their lives to vote: 63%
    Percent of Iraqi voters who approved the constitution: 79%

    Amir Taheri in Arab News says it much better than I can:

    http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=72440&d=29&m=10&y=2005

    The money quote:

    At every step the insurgents and their Arab terrorist allies did their utmost to interrupt the political process, and failed. It is now clear that the insurgency and the terrorism that accompanies it, deadly though they are, cannot translate their murderous deeds into any political gain. The process of democratization in Iraq has not been derailed. And, for those interested in the big picture, this is really what matters. The killers may continue planting bombs and sending suicide-killers to massacre innocent civilians for years to come — as their counterparts did in Egypt and Algeria for decades. But, despite noises made in their favor by some “useful idiots” in the West, they have no chance of nipping Iraqi democracy in the bud and restoring the Arab despotic model in Baghdad.

    28 October 2005, 10:45 pm

77. Stan:

    Nonsense. 63% voted. 63% didn’t risk their lives. In broad portions of the South and throughout Kurdistan, the risk was very low. The results are very questionable, and reflect half-a-loaf positioning vis-a-vis the occupation.

    The choice is American occupation or despotism?

    You really gotta stop… or hire Rove’s attorney.

    28 October 2005, 10:53 pm

78. Ed:

    Very low risk? Really? Show me a picture of a polling site NOT guarded by heavily armed men.

    Al Qaeda has the operational reach to hit any area in Iraq with suicide bombers. There have been numerous AQIZ bombings in “safe” areas of Kurdistan and the south. AQIZ clearly stated their intention to disrupt the election. Every single polling site in that country was a potential target, and every single voter assumed additional risk by voting.

    Snide comments about Rove’s attorney cannot conceal the fact that you have no credible response to the elections and political process.

    The main Sunni groups are already organizing themselves to compete in the election. Even the insurgents are getting the political bug.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1601208,00.html

    Back in the village, politics has become a hot issue. Everywhere – in the mosques after prayers, at weddings, in the main market and in private mujahideen circles – the talk is of politics. Abu Theeb says his move into politics has come at a price: he has had to shave off his beard so that he can visit Baghdad. For weeks he has been travelling, visiting houses, urging people to register to vote. “It’s a new jihad,” he says. “There is time for fighting and a time for politics.”

    29 October 2005, 10:38 am

79. Stan:

    Polling sites being guarded is NOT proof of generalized risk. There is no doubt that failure to guard any given place would increase risk, because guerrilla warfare obliges the technologically and numerically weaker force to seek vulnerabilities. But the same token, it obliges the kind of expenditure of resources and personnel required to guard everything that has strategic or tactical value — thereby stretching the ocucpation force. That is not the same as suggesting that (1) all voting implies equal risk, and therefore (2) the risk implied is an endorsement of the occupation and the “democracy” being imposed at gunpoint. Participation in the process is not a prima facie case for the occupation… not even close. It is the act of a population that does not see the end of the occupation and following various leadership that is positioning itself in the context of the occupation. It is a pragmatic practice that in no way encdorses the occupation; it recognizes the occupaiton as a rather Israeli-style “fact on the ground.” The polls of Iraqis on the occupaiton prove this beyond any doubt. The majority of Iraqis want the occupation ended. This chatter about elections is designed to throw people off that fact, and to avoid talking about what right the US had to go there, or to stay there…. or the real reasons for the occupation. That’s why I’ve never received a sufficient reply to my question about the US commitment to democracy instead of permanent bases (the Haiti questions).

    Sistani is suggesting that he may soon call for an American departure. I hope he does. Then this whole story will fall apart like a two-dollar shirt.

    29 October 2005, 12:16 pm

80. Ed:

    You’re setting up a strawman so you can knock it down. I never argued that voting is an endorsement of the occupation. I said voting is an endorsement of the democratic process. People voted because they wanted to.

    http://www.maderblog.com/static/images/iraq_election_7.jpg

    Likewise, I never said that everyone had “equal risk”. Another strawman. Obviously some places were more dangerous than others. But every polling site was at increased risk, and every voter accepted additional risk to their life by voting. You can’t deny that, so don’t look foolish by trying.

    Participation in the process is the act of a population that wants the occupation to end peacefully, and sees the elections as a path to that end. Why can’t you see that the elections lead directly to your goal of getting us out of Iraq? It seems you’d rather see the US fail than accomplish some good in the world.

    Your question about US commitment to democracy is answered by the elections you ignore. The US military sacrificed sweat and blood to make those elections happen, demonstrating our commitment to democracy. Your chatter about oil, WMD, Rove, and Haiti is designed to throw people off that fact, and to avoid talking about the consequences of the immediate withdrawal that you espouse.

    29 October 2005, 1:17 pm

81. CL:

    Ed,
    You said “Participation..act of a population that wants the occupation to end peacefully.” I agree. But the election is just one means that Iraqi’s are using to voice their displeasure at the occupation. They are voting because it is in their interest to vote, not necessarily because they view it at the ‘only’ path to freedom from occupation and self determination. The US is not trusted in Iraq, and elections are but one tool in the Iraqi box. Violence is the other and is used to drive home the opinion of the Iraqi people that their politicians will not voice. If the country were peaceful, the Bush admin would think they were invited to stay.
    The US military has sacrificed to provide elections, not the people pulling their strings. If elections lead to peace, then permanent bases in Iraq will be less costly in lives and materiel to maintain. Therefore to the neocons and their ilk, democracy makes sense only if it plays ball with their grand designs. IF the US gov’t had thought it easier to negotiate bases and oil privatisation with Hussein, I bet they would have.
    You believe very strongly in the immediate legitimacy of your mission of ‘liberation and democracy’ in Iraq, but I think your devotion blinds you to the broader context in which your mission takes place.
    Already Iraq is factionalised into armed camps based on religio-ethnic lines. Violence and strife are rampant, and the conflict is spilling in the direction of Iran and Syria. If either of these two nations reaches the conclusion that their security is direly compromised by events in Iraq, there will be a regional war and Iraqi democracy will mean nothing.
    The stop-think chant of “democracy” is depthless and myopic.

    29 October 2005, 4:07 pm

82. Consumer:

    Ed, we’ve talked about this before. The elections in Iraq happened as they did DESPITE the agenda of US leaders.

    Remember all that CPA bullshit about caucuses? Remember that the US had to be dragged kicking and screaming into an election based on conventional democratic principles? Remember that Sistani, his finger on the trigger of a popular uprising, forced the US to swallow his distateful demand for direct elections? This is all well-documented. Consider this Washington Post coverage of a demonstration in Dec. of 2003:

    “Local leaders described the passionate but peaceful demonstration in this predominantly Shiite Muslim city as a preview of what U.S. occupiers will face if they follow through with a plan to select a provisional Iraqi government through regional caucuses instead of general elections.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57791-2003Dec11?language=printer

    The US leadership had its back to the wall on this issue and thus pulled a judo reversal, feverishly clapping itself on the back for the large voter turnout, which was ironically large precisely because things didn’t go the way the US leadership had hoped. In other words, it can be reasonably argued that the legitimacy of the elections for most voters was in the fact that locals, not the occupiers, had called the shots.

    This was the point made a while back with regard to microcosm and macrocosm. At the microcosm level, many US military personnel like yourself did in fact sacrifice “sweat and blood to make those elections happen”, as you state.

    Nonetheless, the fact of the matter remains, the US is no more committed to the true principles of democracy than it is to, say, improving relations with Cuba or allowing Haitians to elect their own leaders.

    In this regard, references to Haiti do not constitute distractionary “chatter”. Rather, as in a court of law, they shed light on a broader pattern of behavior. Ultimately, looking at what happened in Haiti offers a glimpse into the history of a repeat offender.

    30 October 2005, 12:01 am

83. Steve:

    Stan, Stan….

    “The little boy in me wants to believe this is because I am formidable. But the graying realist knows better. This has nothing to do with me.”

    In this case Stan, I think you should listen to the little boy – give yourself a pat on the back as well. Absolutely pro-war does not want to have the apple cart fussed with by anyone, but some are more effective than others when it comes to being ‘the rational voice’ in a room full of after-thoughts.

    Really who would care if some grade-school dropout from Canada wanted to debate the evacuation of troops from Iraq. My views may be anti-war, and I may even be articulate enough to not come off as a complete fool, but what would be my point of departure. It is not enough to see that people are being hurt and worse every single day; and it is not necessary. Or violence is completely necessary, and it is the debates and discourse which are not necessary; we all must make a choice.

    In anti-war debates however, you are very dangerous. Your experience is such that you could sit on either end of the table, (setting aside your personal beliefs) and make a very respectful showing – no fooling. You know how war works from the inside, you understand first hand, the hidden costs to our children, as you have paid that price yourself. Having paid the price – in good faith, you can balance that price against the return on investment; a human life. Your knowledge base can not be replaced with a four year degree.

    My teenagers know everything, by their early twenties they will be the strongest, smartest people around. Just ask them, I once was too. However, as people grow older, they become, perhaps more cautious, more willing to let the exstreme thrills go by. It is therefore completely expected that an anti-war debate at a college against any recruiter is going to get the axe if the brass hear about it.

    Think Stan, even if the recruiter can ‘win’ the debate, someone like you, not me, would have been able to offer at least a viable ‘counter-point’, call it the voice of reason. How can recruitment win the minimum requirement; either support or unvoiced descension. A debate in a college, by definition excludes from the table all the illiterate and uneducated dross of the masses; the mutes. Therefore if you get to debate at this level, in theory you are worth listening too, the voices, even if you do not ‘carry the day’.

    You would give a legitimate voice to the anti-war movement; is the recruiter stationed in the same locale? He might have to be re-deployed as a result of the debate, whereas you Stan, can just go home and work to do better next time. But for Defense, and the recruiter there can be no real debate. Any NCO you can talk to is currently at war. While no bullets fly, a public battle of ‘opinionated spun facts’ with you, is unsound strategy; too much to loose, hardly any ground won, in the best of victories.

    Both the making you work for an engagement that would never take place, (time wasted?), and the cancelation of that engagement, have provided the recruiters with the best marginally tactical victory, they may have hoped for. Beside, if they had studied their opponent, they’d know, you are a firecracker; I wouldn’t want to be the one to set you off. I can only take so much justified tongue lashing before I have to publically concede a point. How would that have looked at Stoneybrook?

    If the debate had taken place you would have gained equal time with his intendant market. Not a great strategy, unless you happen to have ‘killer’ arguements. They do get a few points for making you work; but, not many, as I expect you not to waste that work, and this line of commentary has provided excellent vent. However, from a tactical perspective this cancelation has both fruit and thorns that go beyond the event, waiting for notice.

    As I stated above, I am dross, particularly in such debates. Not because I have no opinion, rather because my opinion has no weight. In other articles you have said, it bothers you, when people claim to understand; as if I were to say, I know what it is like in Haiti. Like dross, I would skim the surface, and never combine with anything pure below. Your reality must soon come to include the fact the your voice does matter; particularily in this debate. It is your knowledge base that we mutes pray to tap.

    In other articles you have mentioned the hughly important need to involve the body individual of the military into the discourse; I agree. You might have been the machine, but you’re not now, and you, as do I, want your son, and my son, to remain human. Even if I don’t know war, I know that. Another venue of the body individual of the military is the intendant market, those college students included.

    Just because the debate was cancelled and you didn’t go, doesn’t mean the recruiter didn’t show up, all unanounced with something to say and a few papers to pass around – just a thought, no proof or implied implication. A meeting was arranged; did everyone get notice of the cancelation; or just the left?

    Stan, I have several cats; they can be all cuddles and purring as they want, they are top-level carnavoirs. It is up to us to remember that. America, and the rest of the world are at war. No one at Stoneybrook heard what you had to say, those people exposed to recruiters in and around the neighbourhood will not hear what you have to say. Now if you are just another graying realist with nothing to say, and no weight, then there is nothing you can say or do that would expose these young people to a viable counter-point.

    How about going back to them and saying, ‘I don’t like to have my time wasted, so how about giving me a one hour lecture in the same time-frame, in the same room’? Just because the recruiter can’t make the show doesn’t mean you should also fail to go. He will be there later, or another day. Count on it. Lost opportunity, if it is not used to learn something other than the fact that recruiters and the brass that be, perfer one sided debates. It is so much easier than trying to counter someone who knows the truth of being a soldier.

    31 October 2005, 1:45 pm

84. Ed:

    CL: You talk as if violence is the tool of choice of the majority of the population. Clearly it is not. Violence is the choice of a small minority, 20% at best, that does not want to give up the privilege they had before. The constitution was endorsed by 80% of voters. That speaks for itself.

    You may dismiss democracy as a mindless chant, but those elections were no slogan. They were a real event, on the ground. They are reality, made that way by the efforts and the flesh and blood of Iraqi people and American soldiers.

    Consumer: Yes we did talk about it, and your selective version of history is no more persuasive now. The US always supported a democratic process consisting of a series of elections and a written constitution. There was initial disagreement with Sistani over the form and timing of the first election, with the US favoring a system of regional caucuses and a later timeline. In the end, we compromised with Sistani. That compromise in no way invalidates the end result, which the US committed itself to fully.

    The regional caucuses proposed by the US may have been better in some ways. Such a system would have resulted in better representation for the Sunnis in the transitional government, and more of a voice in the writing of the constitution. Whether this would have led to a greater degree of legitimacy, who knows? But the bottom line is this: the US negotiated with prominent civic leaders, compromised when necessary, and developed a process with wide popular support. Then we committed the necessary resources and effort to implement it successfully. You argue that we somehow don’t get “credit” for that effort because we accepted a compromise from our intial plan? That’s laughable.

    To All: This business about Haiti is getting ridiculous. Pardon me for calling the bullshit flag. If you were truly interested in looking at patterns of behavior and historical lessons, you would be looking at Afghanistan. The recent US efforts in Afghanistan are the closest parallel to Iraq in almost every way … an invasion of a muslim nation followed by imposition of a democratic process and transition to multinational security assistance, all while under attack by Al Qaeda. Yet Afghanistan has been mentioned exactly once, while Haiti has been mentioned dozens of times. You all can stop blowing smoke up my ass on this one.

    Stan: if you’re still monitoring the debate, a question: How many members does IVAW have?

    31 October 2005, 9:21 pm

85. CL:

    Ed,
    You are reading things that aren’t there. If I thought most of the Iraqi population were violently opposed to occupation I would have said so. You’ve set up a straw man and knocked it down.
    As for the 80% election turnout? Think of a starving man coming across a rotten piece of meat. It may not be the choicest cut, and may make him sick, but he’ll eat it nonetheless. Iraqis voted out of desperation. The occupation, resistance and sectarian conflict in Iraq have created an atmosphere of limited options. Voting is one of the few chances, however dubious, that Iraqis have to control their own future right now. 80% turn out is great but it does not mean that the occupation is accomplishing its goals.
    The constitution was not ratified by two Sunni provinces and there is sketchiness about a third. If the Sunni minority thinks they are getting screwed, there will be no end to the civil war/resistance now in effect. If the Shia factions or Kurds see the political process moving away from their designs, then the civil war/will get bigger. The Sunnis did not endorse the election because they felt it did not represent their interests. This election was not a free vote.
    The Iraqi government is as legitmate as it is effective.
    When I was about 17, I was on a British army base in northern England talking to a hardarse infantry NCO who’d seen action in NI, Bosnia, and other places, and was getting out. I asked him why. He said it was full of too many “yes men.” “Not my army anymore , mate.” were his words. Watching Iraq disintegrate amid its “turning points”, and soldiers/politicians continually spout freedemorhetoric I now understand what he meant.

    31 October 2005, 11:43 pm

86. Consumer:

    “We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation”.

    Bush said that about Lebanon, Ed.

    2 November 2005, 12:44 am

87. Ed:

    Cherry-picking quotes is a particularly unpersuasive form of rhetoric. Taking people’s words out of context means nothing. But if you want to play the game, it appears that the President of Iran disagrees with you:

    “The only logical solution … is to hold free elections with the participation of Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories, and a recognition of the nation’s legitimacy.”

    By the way, please provide a citation for the Bush quote. Not a secondary source who just repeats it, but a primary source that provides the date, circumstances, and text of the speech or statement in which he made it.

    3 November 2005, 9:01 pm

88. Consumer:

    Ed, Bush did say that but as I can only locate secondary sources, your point is fair. I retract that quote as I can’t cite it accurately.

    However, citing such a (properly supported) quote doesn’t constitute cherry-picking. The Bush stance was that elections in Lebanon should not be influenced by a foreign power.

    Take this radio address on March 5, 2005, where Bush said the following regarding U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559: “This resolution demands that Lebanon’s sovereignty be respected, that all foreign forces be withdrawn, and that free and fair elections be conducted without foreign influence.”

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050305.html

    Clearly, this is not taking his words out of context.

    5 November 2005, 9:05 pm

89. Ed:

    Agreed. But your new quote does not directly contradict US efforts in Iraq like the old one did. Lebanon and Iraq are two distinctly different situations. I’ve got some appreciation for that, having been to both Beirut and Baghdad in the last year.

    Besides, I’m not arguing that Bush is a rhetorical genius, or that US foreign policy is consistent. In this debate, I argue that withdrawing from Iraq right now, before the elections process is complete, would be the wrong thing to do.

    5 November 2005, 10:40 pm

90. Consumer:

    By the way, what the President of Iran said about the Palestinian issue is, in this case, totally and completely irrelevant. I originally brought up the Bush quote to illustrate the double standard evident in US foreign policy, specifically, in this case, with regard to the Iraq issue.

    This is the double standard that dictates US saber-rattling for Iranian nukes and nods of approval for Israeli nukes. And it’s the same double standard that demands Syria exert no influence in Lebanon while the US does as it pleases in Iraq.

    If you like, retort with the usual GI Joe/we’re-the-good guys nonsense about what “we” have to do re: democracy in the ME, ad nauseum; but I hope you’ll also acknowledge that there is a bit of hypocrisy evident here.

    Given that hypocrisy, not to mention a bevy of blunders and a prodigious list of crimes, the US is in no position to tell people how to heat tinned soup, much less how to run their country. It needs to be US out of Iraq NOW.

    6 November 2005, 8:10 am

91. Ed:

    The world is full of double standards and hypocrisy. There’s plenty on all sides to go around. Cite one single state that ever existed that didn’t apply double standards. So what?

    Your comments may be emotionally satisfying to you, but are not determinative of the right thing to do in Iraq. The right thing to do in Iraq should be determined solely by what is in the best interests of the Iraqis.

    6 November 2005, 3:12 pm

92. Consumer:

    I wrote that last post before having seen your last post. Anyway, your point basically boils down to as follows: Leaving before the elections are over would be a mistake because the Iraqis can’t do them without us.

    There are way too many points of contention here so I’ll narrow them down.

    You seem like a very thoughtful and intelligent person. Nonetheless, and here I quote you: “It seems you’d rather see the US fail than accomplish some good in the world.” This opinion is passively extremely racist because it implies that (1) we can do better than they in their country; and (2) we have a right, even a duty, to do better than they in their country (read: Manifest Destiny).

    It’s also a very naive stance, as expressed here: “Why can’t you see that the elections lead directly to your goal of getting us out of Iraq?” This assumes that the US has or ever had the intention of completely withdrawing from Iraq. Do you think we’re leaving after all this?! Think about it from a Cheney-like corporate mindset: you don’t make (the taxpayer make) such a huge investment without getting some kind of return.

    I think most people who post on this site would agree that if elections, truly democratic elections untainted by US string-pulling and proxies, if such elections were to occur then that would be a great thing.

    But in order for truly democratic elections to occur, the US has to be yanked from the equation.

    That being the case, out NOW is the only sane, logical, and decent thing to do.

    6 November 2005, 8:51 pm

93. Ed:

    Stop with the frigging “racist” accusations! What is with everyone on this blog? You’re becoming a Monty Python skit version of yourselves.

    My position is not racist in any way. It is predicated on one sole fact: we have a fully functional military while the Iraqis do not yet. It is impossible to secure the country enough to hold an election and build a government without a competent military force. Therefore, until they get their army and government stood up, we need to stay there. It really is that simple.

    As for our intentions of getting out, staying through the elections in no way ensures we get to stay later. I have every confidence that an elected Iraqi government, once stable and self sustaining, will ask us to leave. And when that happens, we should go.

    Yanking the US from the equation will prevent elections of any kind from occurring. You’ve got a bit of a “chicken and the egg” problem here.

    Pulling out now would be a catastrophe. Many more Iraqis would die in a surge of sectarian violence, the elections process would stop, and the power-sharing process now being settled mostly by ballots and negotiation would be solved entirely by force. That may be many things, but it is neither sane nor decent.

    7 November 2005, 2:04 am

94. Stan:

    “I have every confidence that an elected Iraqi government, once stable and self sustaining, will ask us to leave. And when that happens, we should go.”

    How soon can we re-quote you on this? Cheney said decades.

    You’re last para , by the way, is a pure prognosticaion as well as generalization. You cannot support this, and you have not replied to the analysis of the emergence of localized political forces I linked earlier.

    http://feralscholar.org/blog/?p=178

    Also this recent piece by Michael Schwartz:

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK04Ak03.html

    Ed, you continue to try to protray the fighting as inter-Iraqi, but the goal of the vast majority of fighters is against the occupation.

    What do you say to the fact that polls now show huge majorities of Iraqis themselves want the US out? Do you know – or that moron in the Oval Office – know better than they what they need?

    The goal of the occupation is permanent bases in Iraq. That has always been the goal, and it remains absolutely unchanged. All the rest is contingency and bloody window-dressing.

    http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040323-enduring-bases.htm

    http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/23755/

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH06Ak02.html

    http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm

    http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/withdrawalindex.htm

    7 November 2005, 8:57 am

95. Ed:

    How soon can we re-quote you on this? Cheney said decades.

    The next US Presidential election is in 36 months. Primaries will begin just over 2 years from now. If we’re not out, or well on our way, then make it a campaign issue. Use the democratic system; that’s what it’s there for. In any event, 38 months from now Cheney will be fishing in Wyoming and what he said won’t mean squat.

    I did respond to your linked “analysis” of the emergence of localized political forces, but I’ll do it again. Quite honestly, your conclusions are incoherent and reflect a dangerous lack of understanding of Iraqi society. Shwartz’s “city states” don’t exist. Cities are frequently divided among several tribes who wage sometimes violent struggles for control. True Iraqi loyalty is a layered hierarchy, with family and clan at the bottom, then tribe and tribal alliance, then ethno-religious group and political affiliation, then nation at the top. Lower levels always trump the higher levels; an Iraqi would never betray his tribe for politics. To simplify that complex and shifting human landscape into “city states” that will magically coalesce into a political order “if only the US leaves” is wishful thinking of the first order.

    What do you say to the fact that polls now show huge majorities of Iraqis themselves want the US out?

    Stop being disingenuous. You know damn well those polls don’t say a thing about WHEN the Iraqis want the US out. Everyone agrees we should leave eventually, including us. The issue is when. Don’t claim the Iraqis agree with you on that question when they don’t.

    The goal of the occupation is permanent bases in Iraq.

    You haven’t substantiated that, and can’t. Have you been to any of those “permanent bases”? I have … every single one. Ain’t nothing permanent about them.

    The US as a nation will decide what US goals are in Iraq, and the American people will not support indefinite occupation. The democratic process that you disdain (while you reap the benefits) is the ultimate constraint on our presence there. Forced permanent occupation is simply not possible. Another strawman on your part.

    7 November 2005, 11:52 pm

96. Consumer:

    With regard to administration changes, it’s clear that US policy towards the Middle East is consistent regardless of who’s in the White House. Clinton ordered bombing of targets inside Iraqi territory way after the Gulf War. Mr. Goff mentioned that earlier with his reference to Democrats pushing for troop escalation.

    And the US public may not support indefinite occupation, but they won’t riot in the streets due to a few bases either, will they? Since the mainstream media is doing a stand-up job in pimping its ass to its corporate sponsors, we can expect to hear about those bases in detail right about never.

    8 November 2005, 1:35 am

97. CL:

    Ed,
    If the Iraqis can hold ‘free’ elections, then it follows they should be able to hold a referendum on occupation. The UK MoD held a secret one (leaked the other week), and the results weren’t all that favourable for the ‘coalition.’ Suppose they were to have one, administered by Iraqis and supervised by impartial international officials from non-belligerant nations to ensure fairness. I’d be interested to see how those results mirrored the MoD commissioned poll. Do you think the Bush administration would allow it? Why hasn’t this been done?
    The Iraqi people are forcibly limited in their avenues of political expression. There are more democratic ways they can decide their future. I suppose we’ll see what happens post – December.

    8 November 2005, 2:28 am

98. Ed:

    Impartial officials from non-belligerant nations (the UN) did supervise the elections to ensure fairness.

    There have been several polls by Gallup, Zogby, and other private organizations. The Bush administration allowed them. The only threat they faced was from the insurgents. Why is that?

    CL: “The Iraqi people are forcibly limited in their avenues of political expression.”

    Compared to what? Under Saddam?

    Anyone truly concerned about the Iraqi people’s avenues of political expression would be overjoyed that Saddam is out of power. That some on the left would prefer his continued dictatorship is a clear indication of their true priorities.

    8 November 2005, 9:36 pm

99. Stan:

    The choice is not between the US occupation of Iraq and Saddam. How can we “prefer” that? Perhaps the Iraqis prefer this:

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

    8 November 2005, 10:21 pm

100. CL:

     Ed,
     By “forcibly limited” I mean that there are more ways to politically engage the Iraqis than what are currently ‘allowed’ on the table. Gallup, Zogby, or secret MoD polls are not the same thing as an official and binding Iraqi gov’t sponsored referendum on the status of foreign forces.

     8 November 2005, 11:36 pm

101. Ed:

     Textbook propaganda piece. Lots of emotion, manipulative editing, very little thinking. I especially like the part where the Narrator pretends to “interview” the interviewees. Notice the video always cuts away to other footage when the british guy poses a question. So we have no idea what questions the interviewees are actually answering.

     Stan, you know full well that White Phosphorous shells are not classified as Chemical Weapons, and their use is not banned by treaty or law.

     You opposed the fall of Saddam, therefore you preferred it to the current situation. I doubt you would argue that. The point is this: if “freedom of political expression in Iraq” is a major criteria to you, then don’t argue things are worse now because clearly they are not. The Iraqi people have far more freedom of policial expression now than at any time in the last 30 years.

     8 November 2005, 11:56 pm

102. Stan:

     Ed, I did not oppose the fall of Saddam. I opposed the US invasion of Iraq. You need toorder a good textbook on basic logic, against which you commit one offense after another.

     Iraqis are not preoccupied with freedom of expression now, but with getting foreign troops out of their country, getting the infrastructure fixed, and rebuilding their lives.

     How many civilians were killed by the US in Fallujah, Ed?

     9 November 2005, 7:41 am

103. Ed:

     Stan,

     Bullshit.

     When you advocate a policy position, you implicitly endorse all the forseeable consequences, both good and bad. You can’t claim the good outcomes and disavow the bad ones.

     Those of us who support the war bear responsibility for the bad outcomes, to include the US casualties, and the Iraqi civilian casualties inflicted by the coalition. I don’t like it, but I accept it as an outcome of the position I support.

     It works both ways. Those of you who opposed the war implicitly endorsed the bad outcomes of your policy. Leaving Saddam in power was acceptable and preferrable to you, unless you proposed an alternate means of deposing him.

     Likewise, those of you who support the insurgency bear responsibility for their methods, to include car bombings of civilian crowds and the widespread use of suicide car bombs. That action, clearly in violation of all laws of war, makes all civilian vehicles targets and causes the accidental shootings of civilians that Massey describes. You implicitly endorse that and bear responsibility for it, just as surely as I do for Fallujah.

     Be honest and courageous enough to accept the downside of your positions.

     9 November 2005, 9:13 pm

104. Stan:

     Perhaps, since you believe itis okay for the US to be the ultimate worldwide arbiter of who gets to run a government and who doesn’t, we should apply across the board the alleged reasons for the invasion (1) prior to launching — WMD and violations of the UN Charter, and (2) after the invasion started — to depose an undemocratic government.

     Target 1: Israel (has nukes, steals land and water from indigenous population like George Armstrong Custer, practices war-like racial apartheid)
     Target 2: Saudi Arabia (absolute monarchy that beheads subjects for violations of sharia law, source of the majority of Wahabbist terrorists – including 9-11)
     Target 3: Pakistan (nukes, military dictatorship)
     Target 4: China (nukes, bureaucratic government backed by strong political control through police and army)

     Oh, wait. These are our allies and trading partners.

     We disagree, Ed. I do not think the US has the right to decide how the rest of the world runs. I’ll go further, to get at the core of our disagreement. US power in the world is the most destructive force in that world… and the military is merely the last-ditch guarantor. Not destructive because it is US power, but because of the specific character of that power and how it is exercised.,, through dollar hegemony, militarism, and so-called structural adjustment programs — which is nothing more than loan-sharking on a grand scale.

     The United States, as a global political entity, is a gangster state — this latter character more explcit with the ascension through a stolen election of a unilateralist faction. But more than that, it is the political expression of the dominant transnational class in a world system that is objectively impoverishing more people all the time, subjecting them to expropriation through dispossession, generating and sustaining war, and leading us to the brink of full-blown ecocide. A small global minority benefits from this system, while a huge global majority suffers. Consiously or unconsciously, we take sides in the struggle between this minority and majority. We are just on different sides, because I think the value of a child in Bolivia or Iraq or Indonesia or Uganda is equal to the value of a child in the US. You support US power, and in order to sustain that support, you have adopted all the defenses against cognitive dissonance that go with it. (One method for this is to constantly try and narrow every debate to a scale where the contextual issues are no longer in view.) I oppose US global power, and I will continue to work actively to undermine it… for the sake of my own children and their children.

     http://www.irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows12/irows12.htm
     http://www.net4dem.org/mayglobal/Papers/RobinsonHarris7_16.pdf
     http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DD11Dj01.html

     10 November 2005, 8:56 am

105. Ed:

     Stan,

     your last post clears up a great deal. Your position doesn’t have jackshit to do with Iraq. It’s about your ideology and your world view. Iraq is just a little square peg for you to hammer into a little round hole.

     Thanks for repeatedly telling me what I think. I appreciate the concern, but I’ll keep my own counsel on my beliefs.

     I accept that you are a sincere person and that you adopt your beliefs out of genuine concern for the welfare of others. You can’t do the same for me, because your political thought processes are that of an extremist ideologue. Like all extremists on both sides, you can’t grasp the concept that someone might be well-intentioned and well-informed and still disagree with you. Therefore, anyone who refuses to buy into your ideology must be dismissed as stupid, evil, or misled.

     You are a persuasive writer and a compelling person. But ultimately, you refuse to apply any discipline or rigor to your thinking. You allow yourself to grab any little tidbit or factoid that will bolster your position, without regard to whether it truly is probitive. As a result, your writing is rhetorically powerful but ultimately devoid of serious value.

     You would be so much more effective if you would learn to discipline yourself and narrow the scope of your analysis to that which really matters. But you are a wild-eyed ideologue and you can’t do that. Fine, keep preaching to the choir. But don’t deceive yourself that you are actually undermining anything except your own ability to appeal to a wider audience.

     11 November 2005, 11:35 pm

106. Hugh:

     ED, you brought up a pet peeve of mine. It’s not fair to call someone an ideologue. Everyone has an ideology, it is dishonest to pretend otherwise.

     And isn’t it kind of circular to say that someone’s position on any give topic (Iraq for example) is dismissable because it’s informed by their world-view or ideology. Aren’t all of our views informed by our views?

     And calling someone an extremist is ridiculous as well. Extreme according to who?

     12 November 2005, 1:49 am

107. CL:

     Ed,
     I’m not American, and did spend three years travelling the world before and after 9/11 and Iraq. I’ve met and talked politics to hundreds of ‘average’ people representing many nationalities in more than a dozen countries, and can count on one hand the number of people who would disagree with Stan’s position on US power. In fact, the only character I can immediately recall was a cab driver in New Zealand. I only remember him because his opinion was so opposite the norm. We all must be “extremist ideologues” by your rationale.

     12 November 2005, 12:14 pm

108. Ed:

     LOL CL, do you recall that famous quote by a professor at Columbia University:

     “I don’t know how Bush got elected … I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”

     12 November 2005, 2:57 pm

109. CL:

     Ed,
     Yes, I’ve heard the quote, or something like it and see what you’re saying. That isn’t my point. My point is that US power, in my experience, is perceived by much of world to be as much as Stan’s description says it is. But I suspect you know that.

     How do you interpret the role of US power in the world? If your interpretation differs from Stan’s, please qualify.

     12 November 2005, 4:02 pm

110. astras:

     By reading Ed’s comments you can learn a lot about him. He seemingly does not have a very high self-esteem. what normal person would refer to himself as an asskisser?
     Since none of his arguements make a lot of sense and his stubbornness in refusing to acknowledge even the slightest sing of wrongdoing on part of the us-army, even in the face of overhelming evidence, suggests that his views are psychologically motivated. he seems to have put on a uniform in order to give his miserable existance some meaning. wouldn’t be the first. when somebody now attacks what the glorious army is doing he is just as well attacking mr. ed’s ego. thus his constant tantrums, annoying lectures about ‘army conduct’, etc, etc. frankly, i think ed is a nutcase.

     of course it’s ok to delete this post, in case it is too offensive.

     12 November 2005, 4:26 pm

111. howard:

     I would like to hear Ed’s explanation of why an anti-imperialist stance doesn’t have “jackshit to do with Iraq.”

     12 November 2005, 8:40 pm

112. Ed:

     LOL, my mistake. Stan took a few shots at me in this and other forums, and I responded.

     The debate isn’t about me. It isn’t about Stan. It isn’t about Haiti, socialism, racism, classes, Israel, imperialism, Custer and the Indians, or any of the other peripheral crap and pet political theories some of you keep trying to make it about.

     It’s about Iraq and America, and what is the right thing to do for the people of Iraq and the people of America. All the rest is just rhetoric, an attempt to make your weak arguments stronger.

     I’ll talk about Iraq all day, but I’m not going to get sucked into endless Marxist dialectic bullshit about every topic under the sun. That will be a one way debate.

     12 November 2005, 9:47 pm

113. Stan:

     No, of course not, because the issue of Iraq and the US is hermetically sealed — like a new condom. It has no context. It is completely self-referential, as long as the terms of reference are yours alone.

     And your acceptance of the US imperative to civilize the rest of the world is not a pet political theory.

     Tsk tsk.

     While I won’t psychologize you, and I discourage others from the same at the risk of developing galloping ad hominism, I will say that your arguments are about as efficacious as McNamara’s… er, Rumsfeld’s doctrine in Iraq.

     12 November 2005, 11:01 pm

114. Ed:

     OK, so it’s time for your self-declared victory, eh? Seems to be a habit. http://www.counterpunch.org/goff11102004.html

     13 November 2005, 12:23 am

115. howard:

     Let us go to an earlier statement of Ed’s [in reply to Stan's talking points for his cancelled debate]: “The US is doing the wrong thing in Iraq, because the US always does the wrong thing.”

     I would just say that the US is doing the wrong thing in Iraq, period. One does not have to argue from historical induction about what is going on now, one simply needs to read the news.

     That said, the debate is about what the US should do from this point on — stay or leave.

     Now, let me use Ed’s very useful technique of encapsulating the entire argument — here’s my version of that encapsulated argument:

     –The US has a history of meddling disastrously in other countries’ affairs (the latest examples of this being Iraq itself, and Haiti), either through direct military intervention or by other means.
     –Therefore, it is most probable that continued US involvement in Iraq will bring on more disaster.

     Ed’s counterargument as gleaned from these postings would in summary be:
     –The US has done a fine job so far in Iraq, and naturally supports democracy, human rights, and in general the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals in the international arena.
     –Therefore, it is most probable that continued US involvement in Iraq will bring more improvement.

     Now, I have just put some words into Ed’s mouth — I would be interested to hear if that is in fact a fair statement of his premise and conclusion.

     So, since I can’t get an instant response from Ed at the moment, I will run a little more with the ball of assuming what Ed’s premises are:

     It seems to me that Ed wants to take the premise of innate US good intentions and behavior in international affairs as settled and beyond dispute. That is presumably one of the reasons he doesn’t see the need to talk about anything but Iraq.

     But the history of US interventionism DOES matter to an Iraq debate, because it is the best indicator of what is most likely to happen if we stay.

     Neocon ideology notwithstanding, the Iraq invasion and occupation do not represent a break with our past history or with our behavior toward other countries — rather, the invasion and occupation are a continuation and extension of that history.

     So, to understand how things will turn out in Iraq if we stay there, part of our job must be to take into account the US track record in similar situations.

     Haiti is especially apropos to that understanding, because
     1) Haiti is the most recent example (besides Iraq itself) of direct and obvious US intervention in another country, and it happened under the current US administration.
     2) Haiti shows what the current administration’s true feelings are about democratically elected governments in other countries, when it can easily get its own way.
     3) We can therefore use Haiti and other examples to infer how sincere the administration’s statements of support for democracy are in Iraq, and whether a support for democracy really plays any important part in the administration’s insistence on staying the course.

     I know this thread has gotten lengthy, so I have no idea whether Ed will have time to read this (if he’s shipping out soon, I imagine he has other more pressing things to take care of anyway). I do want to say that I appreciate his presence on this blog, and I hope to continue to see some more dialogue with him in the future.

     13 November 2005, 1:03 am

116. howard:

     oh, by the way, regarding that part about it not being about “Custer and the Indians”:

     I heard one of those NeoCon think tank guys on the radio the other day talking about how our military really needed to get more lean and proactive and, well, basically ready to go anywhere anytime fast. Ok, it wasn’t Ed and I don’t know what Ed would have said in his place, but this guy’s words were (this is almost verbatim): “the last time we had an army that was organized to do that, they were dressed in blue coats with yellow bandannas around their necks”

     13 November 2005, 1:17 am

117. Ed:

     Howard,

     I appreciate your reasonableness and civility. You have brought the discussion back from the pissing match it had become.

     I don’t think you have accurately portrayed my counterargument, so let me try to encapsulate it:

     1. Historical US behavior in international affairs has been neither universally good nor universally bad, but varies by situation.
     2. We are not prisoners of our past behavior. US citizens are ultimately in control of our government’s actions abroad in the future.
     3. The best indicators of what will happen in Iraq are our ongoing actions, the political process we have implemented, and the reactions of Iraqis to that process.

     I’ve said a great deal about the elections, the constitution, and the growing Iraqi political process, so I won’t rehash here. I believe the ongoing political process is the most reliable predictor of what will finally happen in Iraq. Nobody has adequately refuted that process, and Stan has notably avoided genuine analysis of it.

     History is easy to misuse for your own purposes. It’s a standard rhetorical device on this blog to selectively choose examples from the past that support your cause, without looking at examples that undermine you. For instance, several people have said an occupied country cannot become a democracy. Yet Germany and Japan both became robust and healthy democracies under US occupation, so clearly it is possible.

     Haiti is not the most recent example of direct US intervention in another country. Afghanistan is. By virtually any criteria, Afghanistan is a closer match to the situation in Iraq than Haiti ever was. Yet only one person in this debate has briefly mentioned Afghanistan.

     I’m the only person making counterarguments against aboout 10 people on Stan’s side. (Please don’t suggest that is a measure of who is right.) I have a fulltime job and don’t have infinite time to spend posting to this forum and researching every little thing that people want to bring up. I’ve said about a dozen times that you can bring up whatever you want, but I’m going to stick to Iraq. In my view, most of those peripheral issues are only diversions to avoid detailed consideration of what is actually happening in Iraq.

     13 November 2005, 11:20 am

118. Stan:

     “Afghanistan is estimated to produce 87% of the world’s supply of opium (4,519 tons this season, down 2% from 2004), with nearly half of the country’s US$4.5 billion economy coming from opium cultivation and trafficking. Moreover, by early 2003, it had become evident that US troops had forged alliances with many reigning Afghan warlords, who ostensibly provided support to American troops in their battle against the various anti-US elements conveniently lumped together as the Taliban.”

     http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GJ27Ag02.html

     13 November 2005, 8:53 pm

119. Ed:

     Ah, fun with quotes and links:

     “Taliban fighters have failed to sabotage Afghanistan’s first legislative elections in decades, with millions of voters turning out for a ballot President Hamid Karzai called a defining moment for the nation.

     There was no major violence against voters on Sunday, despite more than two dozen harassing attacks by the fighters across the troubled south and east in which 14 people died.”

     http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2235BBA4-3155-46BD-808E-4101623F21CC.htm

     “In the 249-seat national assembly, 68 seats are reserved for women, and election officials said there appeared to have been a high turnout of women in some conservative areas where their participation had been in doubt.

     ‘I am so happy, so happy,’ said Khatereh Mushafiq, 18, her black veil decorated with white flowers pulled back from her beaming face as she went to vote at a girl’s school in Kandahar.

     ‘We are also now taking part in the government and in society. People must take part, people must have a say.’”

     http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DA217754-0301-4AF2-BCF3-5815B7598D9B.htm

     Pictures are worth a thousand words: http://www.jemb.org/eng/photo2005.html

     14 November 2005, 12:10 am

120. howard:

     I would like to participate a little more in this discussion, but I’m afraid I am usually limited to the weekends by various obligations that I have. I will check this thread again in 4 or 5 days to see what’s shaking. Ed, after asking you for and receiving an articulation of your basic argument, I hope you’ll understand that I am not putting you off by such a delay and I hope you’ll understand, as we must understand of you [as "the only person making counterarguments against aboout 10 people on Stan’s side"] that failure to reply quickly is not necessarily concession of any points. B4 I have to run off for the week, let me briefly just run through the points of Ed’s last post — and hopefully I can rejoin the discussion later:

     –I appreciate Ed’s succinct layout of his position: I didn’t expect that I could accurately portray his counterargument; my attempt at doing so was meant to request an articulation of it, and what Ed has given was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see.

     –As for the three points Ed lists as his encapsulated position (pardon telegraphic style in summarizing his already summarized points):
     1) US sometimes good, sometimes bad: in as much as this fits in with the idea of several modern thinkers that “nation-states do not have morality, they only have interests” — I agree. However, I believe that being aware of WHICH good or bad consequences arise from WHICH US actions in the world DOES help us think about what a proposed action is likely to bring about.
     2) Not prisoners of past, US citizens ultimate arbiters of US action: Agreed that we are not prisoners of history, but we live with and in the consequences of our history. For instance, from your point of view, US is interested in implanting a democracy in the middle east. That idea came from somewhere and means something — it did not come out of thin air about four years ago (GWB’s statement in the 2000 campaign that he was not going to do nation building during his presidency notwithstanding). And that is just one aspect. Also, given our electoral and media system, it is highly unlikely that the US electorate will ever get a chance to vote for any “serious” (that is, acceptable enough to the press to be taken seriously) anti-war candidate in 2008.
     3. The best indicators of what will happen in Iraq are our ongoing actions, the political process we have implemented, and the reactions of Iraqis to that process. It is arguable that there are many other factors that will serve equally as well or even better as “indicators of what will happen in Iraq.” This statement seems to assume that the only actor besides “the Iraqis” is the US military, and that “the Iraqis” are a monolithic group [though I'm sure you would have nuanced this if you'd had more time to do so]. There are a number of very somber analyses by some very qualified people stating, for example, how the US has screwed up the democratic process in Iraq and virtually walked into a trap set up by Iranian surrogates that is bound to rend the country in a civil war.

     Ed’s general points about the use of history are well taken, but let us bear in mind:
     –Germany and Japan were basically countries that had conventional democratic traditions that had veered badly off course and been hijacked by militarist-imperialist elites. When we occupied those countries, it was a matter of getting pre-existing institutions back on track. Also, both of those countries’ war leadership surrendered publicly and formally to the United States, thus ending ALL hostilities (There was maybe one single act of deadly violence in Germany a month or so after surrender, but that was it).

     –I think it would be fine to delve more into the example of Afghanistan as a good parallel to what we are doing in Iraq (I see Stan has already begun). A little quibble here: technically, Haiti is a more recent example than Afghanistan, as our most recent intervention in Haiti began in early 2004, over two years after the invasion of Afghanistan. Also, though Haiti is arguably not as much of a parallel to Iraq as Afghanistan, one reason why it is valuable is because it is a “pure case” if you will, where the US was able to accomplish its aims with just a small contingent of Marines in a few hours & no worries about guerilla or other resistance — it didn’t need to worry about democracy and the will of the people, and so it didn’t. So one might reasonably assume that, if there weren’t all these pesky other factors in play in Iraq and Afghanistan, that might be the way we would proceed there, and we could have dispensed with the talk of democracy etc. etc. as just so much window dressing.

     So for now, the above is a sketch of my thoughts for what a more detailed reply might look like to Ed’s points. I’ll check back around the weekend & see if this thread is still alive.

     14 November 2005, 1:50 am

121. Stan:

     Yes, in Afghanistan women have been liberated from the burka in Kabul and freed to be raped by the Northern Alliance elswhere. Ah, progress! Bush is a feminist, after all. (Rape is no big deal, because it is committed inside US detention facilities.)

     68 women in a parliament that governs Kabul… a glorified city council, with the rest of the women throughout the country left to the tender mercies of the US’s new buddies — the opium warlords. And how about that heroin economy! Another rollicking success.

     BTW, the Taliban offered bin Laden to the US in 2000, and the US declined. they didn’t want OBL. http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11012004.html They wanted their little war, and their big bases.

     Stoking Afghanistan’s resistance
     By Syed Saleem Shahzad

     KARACHI – The onset of winter and the heavy snows that go with it have traditionally brought Afghanistan’s civil wars to a halt over the past 25 years.

     But in the last two years, the Taliban-led resistance has bucked the trend. Two years ago, the winter was marked by the country’s first-ever suicide attacks, which took place against US bases. And last year they continued with sporadic guerrilla activities throughout the long, cold months.

     This winter, the Taliban had planned to draw warlords further into their struggle, luring them with promises of protection for their drug-growing and smuggling activities. The overall aim is to spread as much chaos as possible across the country.

     Now their cause has received a significant boost from an unexpected quarter following reports that US soldiers desecrated the bodies of Taliban fighters by burning them.

     Islam traditionally forbids the cremation or embalming of corpses. Further, as a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, “We strongly condemn any disrespect to human bodies regardless of whether they are those of enemies or friends.”

     An Australian television report from a journalist who had been embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, including video footage, purportedly shows US soldiers standing by the burning corpses of two suspected Taliban fighters with their bodies laid out, facing Mecca.

     The footage was filmed outside the southern village of Gonbaz near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. It included a propaganda message taunting Taliban fighters to retrieve their dead and fight.

     In the complex tribal structure of Afghanistan, where Afghan traditions (Pakhtoon wali) compliment Islam, such an incident can be blown to exceptional proportions.

     This happened in the 1980s, during the Soviet occupation, when Soviet authorities launched anti-traditionalist policies, such as discouraging the role of Muslim clerics in mosques and encouraging women to take a lead role in society.

     The result was the wrath of the Afghan rural masses from north to south and among Tajiks and Pashtuns, Shi’ites and Sunnis. The reaction was far greater, and more damaging, than the intended objective, and the mujahideen resistance gained further popular support.

     Both the Afghan and US governments have expressed strong revulsion over the footage, and have launched inquiries.

     However, the incident gives the resistance a perfect propaganda tool for rabble-raising and widening its support to create the utmost political instability.

     The Taliban have achieved some success on this count recently.

     Two years ago, Asia Times Online wrote about the formation of the Jaishul Muslim (See Tribes, traditions and two tragedies, September 12, 2003).

     The Jaishul Muslim was created to split the Taliban by turning some against their leader, Mullah Omar. The main purpose was to create an organization that could control those warlords and tribes siding with Mullah Omar by bringing them into the Jaishul Muslim’s fold, especially in southern and southeastern Afghanistan.

     Last year the Jaishul Muslim joined with the Taliban, but soon the Taliban found them to be unreliable and contact was broken off.

     Now Asia Times Online contacts in Afghanistan say that recently some powerful commanders who were with Jaishul Muslim have agreed to join Taliban. These commanders have each been assigned to particular regions to carry out operations against US-led forces.

     Similar deals have been struck with other commanders in places such as Kunar, Ghazni, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

     From the resistance point of view these developments have come at a perfect time as the Pakistan Army is tied up with relief operations in the Kashmir region following the massive earthquake there last week.

     This means that the resistance can use Pakistani territory on the rugged border area with Afghanistan with impunity.

     It could be a long, cold and bloody winter.

     Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

     (Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)

     More? Okay…

     http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46535&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
     http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1819/Special_Report_Nation_Building_Blues

     Wanna talk about Haiti now?

     Comparisons — beyond the US lust to redispose its post-Cold War imperial forces through Central and SW Asia — between Afghanistan and Iraq are not strong correlatives… yet. Unless you want to discuss your SecDef’s weird new ‘metrics’ doctrines.

     14 November 2005, 8:10 pm

122. Ed:

     LOL Stan, did you read the GNN article you posted, or did you just skim it for facts you agreed with? That article supports my argument far more than yours. Let’s take a look:
     http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1819/Special_Report_Nation_Building_Blues

     Nonetheless, the factions are gradually weakening through a combination of incentives and coercion. The electoral process has provided further impetus, as some factional leaders trade bullets for ballots. Nearly 63,000 soldiers had turned in their weapons by the end of the disarmament campaign for official militias in July 2005, while over 9,000 tanks, personnel carriers, and other heavy weapons have been secured.

     With the completion of the parliamentary and provincial council elections, the process laid out in the Bonn Agreement ended. It was hoped that Bonn would permit the emergence, by steps, of government broadly representative of all Afghan people. This has gradually been borne out, if imperfectly. There is, however, a long way to go before the underlying objective of Bonn – to “promote national reconciliation, lasting peace, stability, and respect for human rights in the country” – is achieved.

     Significant hurdles remain before Afghanistan can be considered a success, whether the measure is the stabilization of the country and elimination of terrorism, or the achievement of justice and democracy endorsed in the Bonn Agreement. Either of these goals on their own are tall orders. Realizing both will require lasting involvement by the diverse international actors working in partnership with the Afghan government. The outcome will affect not only the long-term security and well-being of Afghans, but the international community as a whole.

     Four years ago in Nov 2001, Afghanistan was a failed state, a total basket case, described by one writer like this:

     Afghanistan is backward, it’s tribalistic. It’s coherent as a nation only because they’ve got a boundary around it that says this is a political geographic definition but within that geographic definition there is nothing that resembles a nation.

     In four years since then, the US and coalition partners have: driven the Taliban out of power and pacified a large swath of the country; successfully implemented an international process to conduct elections establishing a legitimate elected government; opened the country to international aid and begun the process of rebuilding; helped 2 million refugees to return to Kabul while avoiding the major humanitarian disaster predicted for them; turned most of the country over to Afghan police and international security assistance forces, pulling out of major population areas; and begun reducing US combat troops and turning military operations in the border area over to the ANA … all while under attack by the Taliban from sanctuaries in Pakistan.

     And the best you can do is to claim that all this work is imperfect and incomplete? That there are still “problems” because we haven’t solved all social and economic ills and removed all the bad people yet? If that’s the best you got, I see why you want to talk about Haiti instead.

     We’ve done exactly what we said we would do in Afghanistan, and exactly what we should have done. We won’t fix that place overnight, and it’s up to the Afghans to work out their own societal issues. But we’ve created an environment for them to do so, and we’ve handed the country back to them.

     We should do the same thing in Iraq: hold elections, respect the results, help the resulting government establish security, and gradually draw down our presence as they become capable of standing on their own. In short, give the country back to them and help them establish a democratic system that suits their society. Just like Afghanistan.

     (Bonus contest for readers: identify the writer of that description of Afghanistan in 2001. Here’s a hint: http://narconews.com/goffmccormick1.html )

     By the way Stan, I see why you avoid prognostication, having produced gems like these:

     This [Afghanistan] is going to be far more problematic than Vietnam from a military standpoint.

     Now I don’t know where that number came from or why it was that arbitrary and specific but at $50 a barrel U.S. power dissolves. Our stock market crashes.

     Here’s a tip from the dude with the sandwich-board signs on the street corner: when you predict the end of the world, never give a date. It gets real embarrassing when it doesn’t happen.

     So am I falling apart like a 2 dollar shirt yet?

     (Bonus contest for readers: Google the phrase “Stan Goff 2 dollar shirt” … see if you can beat 45,200 hits.)

     Yeah ok, I admit now I’m just having fun now.

     15 November 2005, 1:09 am

123. Ed:

     That first quote didn’t appear the way I wanted it to. There is a break between the first and second paragraphs … they are two separate excerpts from different parts of the article. Don’t want to be misleading.

     15 November 2005, 10:21 am

124. CL:

     http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article327097.ece

     http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/11/15/aghanistant-nato-blasts-051115.html

     Two more pieces related to Afghanistan.

     Several things are at play here. First, lessons learnt by the various resistance/insurgent groups in Iraq can be transferred to Afghanistan and used against NATO/US forces there. This can add a new dimension to the conflict which could lead to increased destabilisation.

     Second, Afghanistan is a long term ‘project’. At some point enough Afghans may decide that the continued presence of foreign forces looks like malicious occupation and problems will develop. Conversely, Afghans could become institutionalised to and reliant on foreigners for their security, and the economic benefits (employment, businesses) that large numbers of foreign troops bring, and will informally resist any withdrawl notions by creating minor incidents that hint at potential instability.

     Anything could happen and elections are no indicator of success or failure. Lotsa places have elections that are followed by coups, or violent resistance.

     15 November 2005, 12:47 pm

125. Consumer:

     Whatevers, Ed.

     You’re desperately attempting to bathe the Iraq/Afghanistan catastrophes in a holy-US-do-gooder glow, this despite the facts, not to mention your contradictory assertions (see above, e.g., “The world is full of double standards and hypocrisy… So what?” This in response to my comments on US hypocrisy.)

     Brass tacks:

     You find absolutely no fault with the US breaking international law.

     You are incapable of seeing the connection between the current economic system and the destruction it wreaks.

     You are wedded, unconditionally, to the racist fantasy that only the US can fix what it broke.

     At the end of the day, your arguments are morally bankrupt and utterly cynical.

     They are, frankly, the unoriginal regurgitations of those who specialize in spin and bullshit. Those who spit, polish and boy do they sell.

     You paid 2 dollars for that shirt? Looks like you got taken to the cleaners. We all did.

     15 November 2005, 2:30 pm

126. Consumer:

     Afghanistan? It’s liberation US style! Heroin and car bombs!

     But hey! At least we got rid of those ferkin Taliban! Or did we…?

     http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article327097.ece

     15 November 2005, 2:56 pm

127. Ed:

     CL,

     I agree completely with you that Afghanistan is a long term project. And I fully concede that success is not at hand yet. But is there anyone here who will even attempt to argue that Afghanistan is not better off as a whole than it was 4 years ago? Sure, things could still go wrong, but isn’t that always the case with everything?

     The survival of the Taliban insurgency is no surprise to anyone with an education in guerilla warfare. As long as they have a sanctuary in the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan, they can never be fully stamped out. They will retain the ability to project violence across the border for many years. But that in no way invalidates our success in breaking their hold on a large majority of Afghans’ lives.

     The point of bringing up Afghanistan is simple, if you have been following the debate closely. I espoused the following strategy for Iraq: hold elections, transition power to a democratically elected Iraqi government, then gradually withdraw US troops and replace them with Iraqi troops and international assistance. Others critized my strategy by saying that the US cannot be trusted to complete this process, and cite Haiti and other places as examples. I cite Afghanistan as a counter-example, where the US has largely carried out a stated policy very similar to what I propose for Iraq.

     Howard, I disagree with your assertion about an anti-war candidate in 2008 being impossible. US public opinion change is slow, but it does change, and media coverage generally follows public sentiment and interest. If we continue to see unsatisfactory military progress in Iraq and the current rate of casualties continues, it’s virtually certain that the Democratic nominee for President in 2008 will run on a platform of “Get the F&*k Out of Iraq Now!” You already see Democrats moving hard in that direction, though not hard enough and fast enough for the extreme left. Democracy isn’t perfect, but it works.

     15 November 2005, 9:25 pm

128. Robert D. Reed. Jr.:

     “But is there anyone here who will even attempt to argue that Afghanistan is not better off as a whole than it was 4 years ago? Sure, things could still go wrong, but isn’t that always the case with everything?”

     As far as I can tell, very little has happened in Afghanistan that can be taken to be an improvement of a permanent nature. How long would Hamid Karzai last without the protection of a security cordon of American troops?

     I can’t bring myself to regard a political house of cards like Afghanistan as a “success.”

     There isn’t much to say about the Taliban at this point, except that they’re Afghanis, and Americans aren’t. I bring this fact up to make the point that they may not be in power, but they’re still there, and unlike the Americans who rotate in and out, they aren’t going anywhere unless they’re exterminated. Likewise for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s band, currently the principal anti-Karzai and anti-American armed opposition group.

     Based on what I’ve been able to glean, there’s about as much chance of the U.S.A. achieving a military victory in Afghanistan as there was for the British 100-odd years ago. The primary practical function of the American active operations at this point seems to be to serve as an ongoing gladiator school in small-unit unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency for American Special Forces and other elite combat units, against a backdrop of a nation-state that exists mostly on paper, not as a functioning reality. The place is mostly under warlord control, and the fact that most of the warlords aren’t engaged in hostilities against U.S. forces shouldn’t be misread as evidence of anything approaching national stability.

     As for Al Qaeda, that multinational brigade originally comprised mostly of Arabs, they’ve scattered to the four winds and no longer exist as a military force. But that was never their main strength anyway, which points up the futility of treating terror operations as armies to be defeated on battlefields and attempts to cordon off foreign territories and forcibly coerce the populace into friendlies.

     These days, the hostiles that Americans are engaging in Afghanistan are native Afghanis. They do indeed have sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, and for several intractable reasons those sanctuaries are destined to remain. These reasons go beyond the serious political impediments extant in the region. That’s some of the most inhospitable, rugged, mountainous territory in the world. The Afghani-Pakistani Pashtuns (to whom that “national border” is superfluous) have always been some of the toughest irregular tactics fighters in the world. And “locals only” is no joke there. So barring a campaign of extermination, the hostiles will remain. They live there, and we don’t. Somewhere in the medical records of the American military, there are probably altitude sickness figures that underscore that point.

     “The point of bringing up Afghanistan is simple, if you have been following the debate closely. I espoused the following strategy for Iraq: hold elections, transition power to a democratically elected Iraqi government, then gradually withdraw US troops and replace them with Iraqi troops and international assistance.”

     I have a point too, as far as bringing up Afghanistan in regard to Iraq.

     The Iraqis live there, and we don’t.

     The plan that you’ve summarized so succinctly remains a plan, not an actualized reality. And it doesn’t tell the complete story of the long-term plan of the Bush administration for the “new Iraq.” To mention just one telling indication, the “new Iraq” planned by the architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom is intended to contain multiple U.S. military bases, including one that’s intended to be constructed at a cost of more than a billion U.S. dollars- although if past experience is any guide, the eventual price tag of completion of any such project will more likely be in the neighborhood of 3 to 10 times that amount. And that’s just for one base, there are at least four more under construction.

     ( I’m not factoring in the human costs of “externalities” like self-inflicted gunshot wounds- or what have you- suffered by disillusioned career military officers who find mendacious and criminal realities colliding with their idealistic principles. )

     Tom Englehardt has an interesting article on this subject that utilizes a practical comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq: http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=6188

     A few facts and figures in this one- dispute them, if you’re able http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2005/03/enduring_bases_iraq.html

     And consider this recent announcement, in the UK Mirror, January 3, 2006: http://tinyurl.com/96785

     Having read those articles, I defy anyone to tell me with a straight face that the Bush administration has no plans for what amounts to, for all practical purposes, a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. A heavy U.S. presence.

     Myself, I worry about the food and water supply of the U.S. deployments in places like Iraq. I’ve been worried about that right from the jump, in fact. Asymettrical warfare can get really ugly, and for logistical reasons which by all rights should be obvious, it’s much, much easier to use chemical, biological, or radiological weapons when the target is an occupying force than when it’s a population thousands of miles away.

     But, since I seriously doubt that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Danlad Rumsfeld, or the rest of the architects of the Iraq invasion plan to relocate their Battle Stations to the Green Zone, I’m dubious as to whether they share my concerns. Presumably, as one of them once said in regard to a related situation, they have other priorities.

     24 January 2006, 3:25 am

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