Progress in Iraq...and What To Do About It - Joe Klein
Wow... Joe Klein is admitting that progress is being made in Iraq, even if he does attribute the success of the peace in Basra and Sadr City to... IRAN
What do you think?
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Progress in Iraq...and What To Do About It - Joe Klein
Wow... Joe Klein is admitting that progress is being made in Iraq, even if he does attribute the success of the peace in Basra and Sadr City to... IRAN
What do you think?
Progress in Iraq? Heresy I tell you!:rolleyes:
pssh. the Iraq war is SO last year. all the cool kids are talking about the war with Iran.
I think we should be ashamed of our leaders and at our ambition to NOT WIN in Iraq. If we had Osama as our President the war would have been over long ago.
So sad that we even focus our efforts and attention on war. What are we Romans?
Progress regardless of the reason is progress, which is better than what we've been having.Quote:
Originally Posted by hoglahoo
However I still fail to see how we'll prevent the violence that will happen when we leave.
Progress in Iraq is a joke...Iraqi's do not want us there = no progress no matter what you try.
The "war" is long over. Time to get the military home.
I have to agree. I have conflicting feelings... part of me wants them to come home, but part of me wants to make sure it's stable enough that the people over there get to keep their freedom. At the same time, if they're not willing to embrace their own freedom and defend it, especially after we leave, maybe they do not deserve to have it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickelking
I personally know some families who are here right now from that area, and they are very thankful that the US came to help. I think we did a good thing, but I think it's time to give back what we liberated. Our presence over there is a source for much of the violence anyways, as our soldiers are huge targets while they are basically just on patrol missions.
I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's ridiculous that credit is being given to a nation which still shoots (or stones to death) its women for "transgressions" which wouldn't warrant a nod in the rest of the world-for causing "peace".
Some people hate their own country so much they cannot conceive that it is doing something right. They wish to give the enemy credit for anything magnanimous that is done, they believe every enemy is a "freedom fighter" even though many of the "freedom fighters" aren't even from the country they are fighting in (lot of blue-eyed, white "insurgents" have been captured) and in this particular case, I think there is a certain amount of racism displayed by many against the Iraqis.
Perhaps "racism" isn't the right word, but many seem to want to see Iraqis as unable to fend for themselves, as somehow unable to fight or hold their own. Nice we can judge them from our armchairs. Many of the bad guys being captured now-are being captured by Iraqi special forces as much as any of ours.
I think it says something about the mindset of the people there and the quality of the Iraqis joining up (yes they are on OUR side...there are some who are not, but these are the minority. Even L.A. has a bad side of town).
How many recruits do we think OUR countries would have-willing to go sign up KNOWING it means likely combat-when busloads of recruits have been found shot in the head on the way to sign up....?
I think the surge and the support for their fledgling government is a good move, and to back out now before they are ready would just mean we did the dirty work only to hand over the success to another country which is not even remotely an ally. Not to mention, it would send a message to Iraqis that "Just kidding....again, we don't believe in you". Much as we did after the first gulf war, when we let Saddam's helicopters mow people down after we promised up until the last we would support their rebellion.
It is hard to regain trust after a huge betrayal.
Perhaps others would disagree but as one of the guys who's been there and will be back again,
Success is the only option.
The people who say we are losing almost always either 1)haven't been there and are making assumptions based on the media outlets of their choice or 2) have a vested political interest in it, e.g. it rolls into the "hate Republicans/hate Bush/hate Americans/etc etc doctrine.
We aren't even remotely suffering, and talk of quitting makes me wonder about the mettle our people are made of.
SO much for Rosie the Riveter, I guess.
sorry for the rant folks.
John P.
You bastard! Why did you have to leave San Diego before I got the chance to meet you anyways?Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnP
Way to go Don Quixote! I would be proud to count you among my friends!
well, i think we shouldn't project the western mentality on the guys from the middle east. iraq is one of the most secular and most developed countries in the region (and so is Iran in terms of their population, despite the governing regime). nevertheless as JohnP said, just as there is a bad side of LA there are many facets of the iraqi society.
when i hear talk about people deserving freedom it usually makes me cringe. the last thing that goes into political decisions is what people want or deserve. that may sound cynical, but i don't think it's too far from the truth - singling out the iraqi's as deserving freedom implies that say the saudis are not as deserving.
i have many friends from the middle east - some religious some not and as always things are not black and white.
if american politicians are actually interested in the good of the iraqi people they will find a way to transfer the power to them. from what i've seen so far, their interest is something else - 'winning the war', 'liberating the iraqis', 'defeating the enemy', or whatever else it always revolves around US, not Iraq. yes many perhaps most Iraqi's like US, but as the polls show they want to have back their country which they govern by themselves. i think the self-centered us policies in iraq have been detrimental to the progress, but that's just what it is. if course the internal fights for power among various iraqi factions are equally destabilizing, not to speak about the policies of the iraqi's neighbors, iran included.
so all this is to say that none of us has much idea of what is really going on, but long-term occupation in the model of the post ww2 ones doesn't look like a viable solution.
<tangent>You have to love a state religion. :mad:</tangent>Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnP
Iraq was under Saddam and still is secularQuote:
Originally Posted by sicboater
sicboater was referring to IranQuote:
Originally Posted by peas_and_corn
I basically agree with you, I just happen to be a bit more optimistic about the subject than some. There is a huge amount of success that is not being acknowledged very publicly. I think this is tragic because I also believe it is often this way for political reasons, e.g. the U.S. Media complex so hates the current President and to a lesser extent the Republican party, or even the armed forces in general, that they are loathe to report good news resulting from the actions of the former. Giving the Iraqis credit for the progress they have already made would also not fall in line with this prevailing mindset.Quote:
Originally Posted by gugi
My POV on the subject is that Iraq is almost ready to stand on its own, and the sooner we finish our work there successfully and hand them back a country that isn't in pieces, the better.
The Iraqis are stepping up to the plate, and no, the majority of them are not bomb-wearing zealots out to kill Americans. They are in many cases fighting alongside Americans for a common goal. This is good. As Iraqi Army, Police, and various Iraqi SF and CounterTerror units are stepping in more and more, we (Americans and other Coalition troops) have less and less to do. Good news doesn't sell, so the cameras go only to the bad news (IED's etc) and dwell on them for years-
Were I a gambling man, considering the media love here for certain political candidates, the news will remain bad from Iraq until the new President takes over, then the "news" will suddenly report all the good that has, in fact, been occurring all along.
I also think Gen. Petraeus is a genius. Unfortunately men like him and other true leaders seldom lean to politics, so we get the crop we've seen for the past few elections. Hard to believe they are the best the nation has to offer, but perhaps the way things are currently set up (only multimillionaires who look good on TV with perfect smiles and Patrician pedigrees need apply...Andrew Jackson wouldn't have a chance these days...) it is a curse we are unfortunately going to have to live under.
Regardless, Iraq is doing much better, I think, than many people seem to realize, and I suspect the good news will be held back and then proclaimed under the next President, at least if the one the Media likes most makes it.
If the Soviet Union was run by the Communist Party, the U.S. is run by the Media complex and what it says people should believe.
It is no different wrt Iraq. The Iraqis are not savages, and are doing quite well at their progress IMHO. The extra muscle from the "surge" just helps send the message to the rabble-rousers, murderers, and thugs, that the best route for them is to play nice.
Hopefully they will, soon enough, and Iraq will be a place people WANT to visit, for the first time in decades.
Again, apologies for rambling on.
John P.
Thing is right now so much of what we're doing is keeping peace between the shiites ant the sunni, a large pert of the patreaus plan is to seal off a neighborhood once it's been decided to be one sect. We may be able to achieve stability while we're there, but once we leave... On top of that a long term presence in a muslim country as opposed to korea or germany would undercut the true spirit of the people and what they stand for. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
There are many problems with the current peace, and they will boil over sometime soon. One way the United States has achieved stability was essentially by arming Sunni militia, and letting them patrol the streets. This is a sound idea only in the short term, but not in any long term way. Baghdad has had a large drop is violence, but one key factos ir the de-facto genocide that has and is creating ethnic cantons, rather than the diverse and blended Baghdad that it was not many years ago. Majority Shiite and Sunni towns are peaceful for very much the same reason.
One aspect of interest to me is the current discussions between the United States and the Iraqi government over the terms of the continuing presence in Iraq. The United States government wants to maintain the immunity the troops have to prosecution for committing a crime. Much has been written comparing the British mandate to the US presence, and this is certainly a very good comparison, as the terms that the American troops (both military and private contractors) serve under are incredibly similar to those that the British troops did.
The United States essentially needs to give some sort of comprimise in these negotiations. There needs to be some sign that Iraq is, in some sense of the word, 'sovereign'. One of the conditions of sovereignty is 'the monopoly on the legitimate use of force'- a quite crutial one, quite frankly. If the United States defines what makes violence legitimate, if the United States takes part in anti-terrorist operations without the involvement of the Iraqi government, then Iraq is not a sovereign state. For Iraq to not be sovereign after 5 years, then the idea of progress, even on a political front, sounds pretty hollow.
Yes, the goal is almost complete. We have killed off many of the resistors and have poisoned the others with depleted uranium. Pretty soon we will be able to rightfully steal the resources from the people in the name of freedom.
It makes you wonder why any Iraqi's at all are fighting and dying next to US soldiers in defense of their own nation against those resistorsQuote:
Originally Posted by DSailing
Agreed on this. It reminds me of so much of what happened in eastern Europe after WWII. In Yugoslavia, for example, Tito basically laid a heavy hand on a whole bunch of sectarian strife and kept a lid on it for 50 years. Exit Tito, and sooner or later, what happens? Same in the various SSRs, like in Chechnya; same all over.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickelking
So what happens when the US leaves? Can you say Kosovo?
How (and why) did we ever get into this?
j
Many good points have been made above. My own perspective is that we are fighting for things that we don not truly want or need.
I do not think that the war in Iraq will ever be won. Firstly, we are not fully committed as a country to victory. Those that have been to Southwest Asia have made sacrifices, myself included. The rest of the United States have been only marginally inconvenienced. Wars are not won without sacrifice.
A second and related issue is the small number of troops in Iraq relative to the population of the United States. The Rumsfeld Doctrine of small numbers of troops in large operations is a proven failure.
Third, the idea that American democracy can be imposed on non-American cultures is misguided and doomed to failure. The motivation behind the Bush admininstration's neocolonialism is unclear to me. It is possible that Mr. Bush truly believes that rest of the world should be more like America. On the other hand, commodities like oil, ambitions for world hegemony, or religious beliefs are all conceivable reasons for Mr. Bush to continue to make war in the Middle East. Many Muslims believe that the American presence is simply the crusades revisited.
My own opinion is that the Arab/Muslim social and cultural infrastructure is incompatible with democratic political systems. America should bail out of the Middle East and let the natives fight it out amongst themselves. Energy independence is our best defence. Oil indepedence will set our economy back on the right track and disenfranchise the OPEC oligarchy. Southwest Asia will return to its status as an uninteresting pile of sand.
AdamAnt
Well... About 8 years ago you had the general elections...Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
Thanks Bruno - I was going going to say that the Congress, the President, and the US citizenship agreed to it by a majority.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Actually, it was the Supreme Court, 5-4.Quote:
Originally Posted by hoglahoo
j
The people wanted it, the President wanted it, and the Congress wanted itQuote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
The Supreme Court doesn't send soldiers to war
The Supreme Court overturned Florida law to give us a president who would make his case for war with cooked information. The saddest part was watching Colin Powell, whom I've always admired, dishonor himself in the process.Quote:
Originally Posted by hoglahoo
It's pretty debatable whether "the People" wanted it. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets marching against the idea in the days leading up to the invasion, if you'll remember. Polls were pretty mixed.
Congress, being composed of politicians (i.e., moral cowards), was scared into it. It simply wasn't PC to oppose the war. I lived in Minnesota at the time, and all three of my representatives to Congress voted against it, so I don't particularly feel responsible for this mess.
All in all, not a red-letter day in U.S. history.
Ah, so that's how the Supreme Court sent the US to war. Incredible!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
No they weren't. Here is a sample of some Gallup polls from '03 http://gallup.com/search/default.asp...ate&i=&t=&p=34Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
Wikipedia may not have any facts straight, but it does sum up the people's opinion quite well: "The American public’s opinion of the invasion of Iraq has changed significantly since the years preceding the incursion. For various reasons, mostly related to the unexpected consequences of the invasion, the U.S. public’s perspective on its government’s choice to initiate an offensive is increasingly negative. A USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated that 75% of Americans felt the U.S. did not make a mistake in sending troops to Iraq in March 2003. However, according to the same poll retaken in April 2007, 58% of the participants stated that the initial attack was a mistake. In May, 2007, the New York Times and CBS News released similar results of a poll in which 61% of participants believed the U.S. "should have stayed out" of Iraq."
Regardless of the Congress' immorality or cowardice, you have to admit that they did indeed send the US on its way to war. I'm curious though which politicians specifically were actually scared into opposing the war. I want names!Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
Time will tell :shrug:Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
Should be pretty simple to find a rollcall of that vote. Then go back and do some research on the full-court press the Bushistas put on any congressman/woman who dared to oppose the measure. It was pretty PC.Quote:
Originally Posted by hoglahoo
And Congress did not "send the US on its way to war." It merely gave the president the power to go to war in the event it was necessary. Big difference, though I'm not defending Congress, the pack of weenies.
Yes, I'm sure it will. That's what scares me.Quote:
Originally Posted by hoglahoo
j
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nord Jim
And amazingly enough the same power was given to him again with Iran earlier this year.
It would be a lot less expensive and save some American lives if we just supply all violent opposing factions with arms and supplies. The opposing factions will eliminate each other far more efficiently than we ever could. Of course, once one faction eliminates another, they will move on to another group that they do not like. So I suppose this solution isn't a very good one.
Remaining there simply gives the factions a common enemy to rally against. So I suppose this solution isn't a very good one, either. The best solution is to simply leave. The mass weapons of destruction didn't exist. Excuse over. War over. Leave...
Maybe provide some medical assistance to any side that needs it during the mutual slaughter to come. Maybe not. Personally, I'd rather see my tax dollars spent inside the U.S.A.