According to this poll, 6 in 10 Americans want US troops to withdraw out of Iraq either immediately or within a year. I’m watching the situation and the whole Donkey/Elephant debate quite closely nowadays. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
UPDATE: Go Hillary… or Elephants! Maybe this post can help you.
SudaneseThinker
SudaneseThinker
{ 55 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to consider myself one of those six, however i still fail to see how my shortsighted and greedy government is going to pull out without allowing a full scale civil war. (As if that’s not what’s going on already) Everyone talks about staying the course and that nonsense but I’m not sure whether or not anyone within my government is manning the wheel. We are there as occupiers without an objective, other than we thought it would be easy and we’d be bathing in oil by now. Shame on us. Sorry world.
I want them out today. What we want and what is possible are not always the same. I wonder what the results would be if the question were phrased this way: Do you favor withdrawing American troops even if it means a full scale civil war, hundreds of thousands dead, loss of American credibility, Iranian victory, the splitting of Iraq along sectarian lines, and abandoning the Kurds?
AiS -
*sigh*
You don’t really believe the nonsense about bathing in oil, do you?
And when they’ll leave things will get better in Iraq?
I must admit that I was very optimistic about this war earlier on. After the government was dispatched of so quickly I assumed that it would not be that long till the Iraqi’s got tired of killing each other and we could leave. However, now I wonder if their appetite for killing one another will ever wane.
“And when they’ll leave things will get better in Iraq?”
But of course!
The only reason for war in any corner of the world is that the Americans didn’t retreat from there.
Maybe this will give you a different view on the point
Sorry about the double post -I didn’t know it will remove the youtube refrence-, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viUQczMAXSg&mode=related&search=
The Raccoon,
Did you want to provide any further commentary on what your nonsense comment was about? Oh wait let me guess…. the war was about terrorists and WMDs right? Or maybe just maybe it’s about the fact that the world’s second largest known energy reserves happen to be within Iraq. Heaven forbid the obvious answer is the right one.
Please enlighten me.
Aaron,
Perhaps it was due to strategic reasons. Perhaps it was an attempt to start disarming what became a large-scale risk area, and attempt to start a domino effect of pro-democratic sentiment.
You know, the same reasoning that got the US into Vietnam. I didn’t say it was sensible, or likely to work, just that the advisors and analists tend to remain the same, and they are the ones governments listen to.
Perhaps it was to have a friendly country which would allow US military bases.
To continue,
Perhaps it was because the intel was wrong. Saddam did his very best to create the impression of having new WoMD’s, it was in his interest to do so to keep Iran at bay. And perhaps it was because Al-Quaeda operatives lied about their ties to Saddam, as Saddam’s downfall was in the organization’s best interest. It gave them a perfect staging ground.
Perhaps it *was* about oil, only not in the shallow way you say. Having a global resource means having a global responsibility.
To continue,
The economies of all develop and developing countries depend on oil supply right now, and thus the lives of the people living in them. And Saddam proved that he was far from being a responsible man.
Or perhaps it was all of the above, and then some. Perhaps life isn’t shallow or simplistic.
Just perhaps.
Aaron says:
Shame on us. Sorry world.
LOL
it’s so cheap and pathetic, aaron .. shame on you indeed … a few years into the war and you still cannot come up with something more original
ha ha ha
R.K.
i think such decisions are taken after summing up different considerations and factors .. its more like calculating a vector .. i dimiss the idea of military bases as ridiculous bot others sound well enough for me …
the guy apparently was so clever that in the end he managed to trick everybody into believing that he still got WMD’s .. i can imagine what the iranians were thnking when they discovered that it was all total bluff .. LOL
the domino effect was probably high on the agenda as nation building appears to be very popular with the neocons .. paul brener is reported to have staffed his library with books about the US post war occupation of Germany and many of his decisions like de-baathization or ill fated decision to disband the Iraqi army are clearly copy pasted from the american experience in japan/germany …given the huge sums of money approved for reconstruction they were apparently very serious about building a model arab country in iraq and provoking a domino effect across the region …
oil was probably also a consideration .. not in a sense of taking over the iraqi oil fields but in a sense that a modernized iraqi oil industry may break the opec cartel and in general improve the stability of global oil supplies…
of course then the arabs started slaughtering each other on such a scale that it shocked even israelis … as a former leftist i remeber arguing with people that suicide attacks is an act of desperation .. when they started sending suicide bombers by dozens every week to bomb the poor shia in baghdad i was a kind of amazed … then i started reading about the region and to my surprise i discovered that from pakistan to algeria they send suicide bombers forward on the first occasion .. and of course beheadings and throat slitting is widely practiced everywhere … until then out of my ignorance i was sure that it has something to do with the israeli palestinian conflict …
but to put it short the arabs just plainly destroyed the whole experiment and proved to everybody that they are no japanese … not they are germans
Nobody, I agree on the vector, as I hope was apparent from the last chunk of my reply. As for the military bases, it would be useful for the US to have the means for quick deployment in a region that has a tendency to be volatile in a manner that tends to kill lots of Americans. Dunno how good an argument that is, but I think it was at least considered.
But the domino effect, that’s the big one. It could’ve worked, but it tends to suck when applied to non-monolithic nations.
To continue,
Iraq simply didn’t have enough of a national identity. Or rather, it had too many of them. Like many middle-eastern nations, it had more tribal and sectarian identity than national identity. Mind you, had anyone in the US thought of this and had Rumsfeld and his nominees not been total morons, then the situation today would have been much better.
i disagree … i think that whatever happens they did a good thing .. they broke the impasse … and my experience from the soviet union has convinced me that there can be no escaping from resolving ethnic and sectarian conflicts .. this stuff comes first and better to have it now than later … but i am pretty sure that most of this region will go the way of the soviet union .. this is our immediate future … not EU style common markets and other european stuff… ethnic and sectarian conflicts should run themselves out first …
the US itself does not understand that they did a good thing … they shattered the status quo and they plainly put the arabs in front of a very simple choice - they either get hold of their suicide bombers or they will suffer from them like all of us … since the war in iraq the arabs and the muslims world lost their ability to channel all this shit to outside … and now they either reform or they pay the full price …
you also underestimate rumsfeld and others … they are no morons .. and in fact the fact that iraq was not monolithic actually played a part here as they had to adapt to each other .. there was no chance that iraqis could create a monolithic sunni or shia theocratic state .. there was a guarantee here that they will have to stick to some kind of democracy …
finally the iraqi exhiles in the US and many west oriented arab intellectuals supported the war and they were actively arguing everywhere that iraqi communities are so well integrated that at least when it comes to the sunni shia stuff there was nothing to worry … i actually touched on this issue here - sunni shia
Heh. Eloquent and to the point as always, RK and Nobody. I am quite looking forward to you starting your own blog, RK - I believe it will be a massive hit
Nobody - I didn’t know you were a leftie. When were you cured?
i spent a year living on the territories with israeli beduins in 1994-1995 .. and i had a lot of interaction with palestinians at that time .. later because i lived in jerusalem i continued to be in touch with many arabs .. in fact my best friend is an arab from east jerusalem … so basically it was when i got to know them better that i became disillusioned … before the second intifada i already knew that oslo is doomed … not because of their particular viciousness though their culture is pretty vicious in my view … but because it’s a mentality and culture that .. i would not even call it backward … they are simply living in a sort of parallel reality …
and as i wrote in my reply to roman iraq made a huge impression on me …i think for many former israeli leftists it was not even the second intifada but iraq that served as an eye opener …because until iraq i was still thinking that it’s occupation or something that drives them so mad .. though of course after oslo it was plainly a very weak argument as they decided to flush the whole thing down the toilet when they were one step away from getting their state …
but of course when i saw iraq and when i started reading about the region i got the idea .. this shit is going on just everywhere .. all these beheadings and throat slitting and suicide bombers is just a regular response of this culture to absolutely any real or imagined threat from inside or outside … during the war in algeria 100,000 or 200,000 people died and there were whole villages that were put to death by throat slitting .. and it was plainly sunni sunni thing .. the media simply does not report this stuff so much so i did not know …
and i did notice that this shit happens ways more with the sunnis than with the shia …despite their ashoura festivals the shia appear to be much more reasonable and less bloodthirsty.. but the sunni insurgencies everywhere is .. you know .. god forbid …
Crazy Zoal, thank you for linking us to that YouTube clip on Pamela Hess, of UPI. That’s the first time I’ve heard of her, and I’m amazed how absolutely candid she is, for a journalist.
She is truly exceptional, - a far cry from the loathsome Christiane Amanpour, and her type of yellow journalism, which we see over and over again at CNN, AP, BBC, AFP, Reuters, and Al-Jazeera. In fact, this is not the first time that I’ve noticed that UPI seems to have more trustworthy journalistic standards, though I don’t know enough about the people running UPI to make any generalizations.
This is the kind of journalism that I value: journalists who don’t just shoot some clips of street scenes, appearing on tape giving their interpretation of the political significance of what had recently happened, before retiring to the journalists’ hotel bar to trade gossip with politically like-minded journalists.
Pamela Hess, though clearly moved by emotion, still manages to keep to the facts, citing only what she saw and heard. She does offer her own opinion at the end, but she steers clear of the popular yellow-journalistic sport of Bush-bashing. She assigns no blame for past decisions, but rather sticks to her role as a journalist to report to us what things are like in the present. That is what all journalists should be doing.
Christiane Amanpour should get on her knees if she should ever meet Pamela Hess, and take some lessons from her.
Nobody,
I agree that breaking the stalemate was a positive thing, as the region has been living in a fairly closed loop until recently. But I think Rumsfeld and Co. failed to adapt. Their goal was to keep post-war Iraq secure to allow rebuilding the country, but as we saw keeping just the capitol city secure was impossible with the given tactics, troop deployment etc.
Iraq could have had a much lower civilian death-toll had Baghdad been safe. Rumsfeld may have done his best, but it simply wasn’t enough.
Nobody,
I wasn’t aware that I had to come up with something original, I was expressing my thoughts on the matter, nor was I looking for your approval.
Aaron
aaron .. take it easy man … you sure dont need my approval ..
still you have to know that some people find it bizarre to the point of being funny that there are some americans out there who are traveling across the world painfully thinking: sorry world!! we destroyed you !!
LOL
Nobody,
It was more of a general apology for Iraq to the world, I’m not sure we’ve totally cocked up the world.
Yet….
=P
Aaron
you are ok , aaron .. dont worry …
the dictator was overthrown ? yes
the congress approved dozens of billions of reconstruction ? yes
all iraqi exhiles including parties with scary names like the supreme council for islamic revolution were allowed back ? yes
3,000 american soldiers paid with their lives to let these people have elections and stop sectarian bloodshed ? yes
it’s just as they say - you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink
there are some other people who should take responsibility and say sorry
Well, that didn’t take long, did it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/washington/15clinton.html?ex=1331611200&en=5fb23776ba644bc2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
I’ve been saying for quite awhile now that US troops will not be completely withdrawn, that there will be quite a number of US bases in Iraq for years to come. Hillary Clinton’s statement is simply a reflection of what both Democrat and Republican national security authorities agree is a fact.
She’s prepping her constituencies, so she doesn’t have to renege on some promise of complete withdrawal, if she gets elected. Obama would be wise to follow suit.
YESSS!!
“Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.”
Translation:
“We are going to let the fuckers off each other and then keep watch on the winner in case he does something stupid like joining Al-Qaeda. And if he does, a few thousand heavily armed US troops can put an end to that”
How’re my Politician language skills, eh?
This would be a very short-term solution, though. I am sure she’s hoping that she can offset loss of control by striking a deal with Iran and Syria… but she apparently fails to realize that she’s dealing with utterly deranged homicidal madmen there.
It is not that they are homicidal madmen, Raccoon, but rather that they are homicidal madmen whose very survival depends on the failure of the Iraqi democracy.
My guess is that Hillary, if elected, will focus on buying the cooperation of Syria rather than Iran. This would mean giving them silent agreement to take over Lebanon again, and forgetting about the Hariri tribunal.
And thus history will repeat itself, showing yet again how miserable the results of realpolitik can be. Ho hum.
My guess is that Hillary, if elected, will focus on buying the cooperation of Syria rather than Iran. This would mean giving them silent agreement to take over Lebanon again, and forgetting about the Hariri tribunal.
yes… Syria of course is the horse to bet on … frankly i am not sure how many years this country has left to live through … but i am quite sure that when the grace period expires there would be nothing left ..
if the US is serious about leaving iraq they should better on the way home to knock down this alawite regime and leave it to the arabs to pick up the peaces .. we and the lebanese and probably everybody around would be greatly relieved … the kurds would take their part and the alawites if they got enough brain and guts would take latakia … and the sunnis as always would end with some kind of a civil war shit
enough of this nation building
RK
you are wrong by the way about rumsfeld and baghdad .. there is nothing the US can do and even another 100,000 soldiers won’t help … they mounted this latest security operation in baghdad and so what ? the sunnis just switched to attacking shia elsewhere .. they are not even interested in attacking the US forces so much as they are plainly after the shia .. they spent the whole last week chasing after shia pilgrims outside baghdad slaughtering hundreds .. there were probably a dozen of suicide attackers who struck at shia targets last week but not even one dispatched against the US or government forces …
it’s the same shit with syria .. syria has no interest theoretically to be supporting such an insane insurgency and whatever these insurgents think about the shia they plainly think much worse about the alawites.. its absolutely clear that syria will be a next station for these people .. the only thing that you can be sure when you are dealing with arabs is that there is no sense and logic in what they are doing … the best way to understand these people is by mastering one thousand and night arabian nights stories … then it becomes more comprehensible..
and very few people could predict that the arabs would come and so massively destroy one of their own countries by supplying the sunni insurgents with billions of dollars and thousands of suicide volunteers… and of course now after they plunged them into a sunni shia civil war, these monkeys are busy replicating this sunni shia shit all across the region …
the US just gavethem a chance and a great chance it was indeed … but you cannot save one billion strong civilization bent on self destruction with 100,000 soldiers…
maybe if iraq would have been an island the US would have had a chance to build their model arab country … but they plainly can do nothing when they got all this arab world all around .. the most ridiculous thing is that the arabs destroyed iraq by their own hands but as always the yankees ended with this ’shame on us , sorry world’ … LOL
Tsk, tsk, Nobody. The strategic failure was in trying to make all of Iraq secure at the same time. It would have been sensible to Capture, Hold, Build. Make a secure zone (Baghdad), keep it secure, and build it up. Then, slowly expand the zone.
Instead, it was overconfidense after beating Saddam that ruled the day.
And man, half of the people trashing Iraq aren’t even Arabs, but rather Persians. Thank the nice bloodthisty midget.
35.
And man, half of the people trashing Iraq aren’t even Arabs, but rather Persians. Thank the nice bloodthisty midget.
oups .. what a hell of difference !!!
LOL
but you are wrong actually… shia are mostly into execution style killings .. they are more like a human face of iraq … suicide bombers are almost all arabs …
Tsk, tsk, Nobody. The strategic failure was in trying to make all of Iraq secure at the same time. It would have been sensible to Capture, Hold, Build. Make a secure zone (Baghdad), keep it secure, and build it up. Then, slowly expand the zone.
you understand of course that while you hold and build your secure zone, these people would lay total waste to the rest of the country .. and the thing is that they have a nationwide power grid .. you can do nothing against people who blow power towers and oil pipelines across the desert… no economic reconstruction is possible under these conditions ..
the real miscalculation was the lack of understanding that in the present day conditions suicide bombers and economic sabotage are impossible to defeat unless you have a cooperation of 99.999 % of the population .. times have changed .. nation building of post war japan/germany style is a thing of the past … unless the arabs get serious about it themselves nobody can help them ..
Raccoon, I’m predicting that she’ll further shift her position towards the right.
drima
people just told me that i went totally overboard with my comments
ha ha ha
i am sorry .. you know i respect you … though i bet you like quietly watching internal israeli debates
sorry
LOL
Drima -
Interesting. Why, d’you reckon?
Nobody,
I did not mean to put the entire force in Baghdad, but rather to focus on it. As this wasn’t done, it became the base of several militias.
And having reread the post I previously replied to, now that I’m not posting when half-asleep, I must say that it *was* overboard, man.
the idea that baghdad comes first was tried and failed during the first two-three years and actually one of the main cticicisms of that time against the US military planners was that they failed to see that it’s impossible to passify baghdad without crashing the sunni insurgents logistic centers in anbar and other provinces …the sunni insurgents are not based in baghdad but use it as a stage for attacks … the US indeed tried to do it and if i remember it right some of the cities like tal afar they captured for two or three times …
much of the violence in baghdad actually started with the arrival of shia refugees ethnic cleansed from anbar and elsewhere … and the main event that switched the sectarian war into a full gear did not happen in baghdad but in samarra when the insurgents blew up al askari mosque…
the main problem is that the mahdi army but the sunni insurgents .. the mahdi army pulled out of the streets during the latest operation to avoid clashes with the US and government but they made it clear that if the operation fails to bring results they will be back … and the sunni insurgents simply sent their suicide bombers elsewhere outside baghdad … they are not interested in the US so much …
just two days ago the US had to urgently move a unit to diyala province as it appears that the insurgents there started experimenting with a new technqiue of setting fire to dozens of homes in one go …
the whole thing with baghdad reminds me of all kinds of measures proposed to fortify israeli buses during the peak of the palestinian suicide attacks (mind you they bombed twice the bus i used to go work half an hour before i was about to leave for work) …of course then the palestinians quickly demonstrated that they can bomb malls and cafes as well …
And having reread the post I previously replied to, now that I’m not posting when half-asleep, I must say that it *was* overboard, man.
dont worry .. take it easy .. nobody needs my approval as aaron would say .. and even if somebody feels like he needs it, you all have it already .. i am giving my approval to everybody… including myself
the main problem is that the mahdi army but the sunni insurgents .. = the main problem is not the mahdi army but the sunni insurgents ..
Heh, it wasn’t me who would have felt insulted by that post I was referring to, man. Just the people you were generalizing about.
And you have a point, about the Sunni militias. And unfortunately you can’t stop them without making the borders airtight, a complete impossibility in a country of that size.
The Mahdi Army is hardly improving matters though. They don’t defend, they massacre. They’re making a shitty situation a whole lot worse.
i just think its long overdue to call the things by their names … rumsfeld or bush are no morons and if they are morons then i have no words in my dictionary for other people who are much more responsible for what happened in iraq .. and these people are the arab nation and the world of islam …
iraq was not destroyed by the US but by the arabs and muslims themselves … and even a few years into this unending slaughter i don’t see that they are doing something to restrain their sheikhs or suicide bombers …
rumsfeld may be a moron in a sense that he did not recognize how mad these people are and that he would need much more forces to save these people from themselves … but the whole argument like the US is guilty of failing to stop these people from killing each other is quite demental .. in particular when this argument is brought forward by the arabs/muslims themselves .. it’s like - hey.. you failed to get hold of our insanity .. shame on you .. sorry world… LOL
Heh, I agree that the blame lies with the very people who go around blowing up crowds, and saying that blowing up crows is a holy right. Add to this the fact that most Arab nations are artificial states held together by an iron fist, and we get a reality where the extremists at best get ignored or directed to another country so as to not cause trouble for the regime.
But the US took the iron fist off Iraq, so like the adoptive father of a heavily abused kid it took upon itself a responsibility of sorts.
after all the arabs always complained about the western real politik and why the US is always making friends with their dictators … when the US imposed sanctions on saddam the complaints were why the US is starving the poor iraqi children to death ….
finally they got the administration that threw its fate with the democratic process and gave the maximum support the arabs will ever see to everybody from m14 to polisario … and it moved into iraq, kicked out the dictator and let the arabs choose whoever they like …
the arabs/muslims responded to this with their usual paranoiah, were actively cheering on the US failure in iraq and welcomed the democrats victory …
i still read many arab blogs absolutely extatic about the US fiasco in iraq .. still longing to see the story repeating itself in afghanistan .. happy to see bush and neocons humiliated and cheering on the democrats … but they are plainly unaware of what’s coming next …
whatever the democrats do now, whether the US withdraws from iraq or lebanon is sold out to syria the arabs have only themselves to blame for the consequences .. and the consequences will be … and they will be very very serious for them … they blew up a tremendous opportunity and they did not even notice this … now the time to pay the bill is coming for them and for the iranians…
as they say: за что боролис - на то и напоролис
Too bloody true…
by the way today they blew up three trucks loaded with chlorine canisters in anbar poisoning some 300 people …these people are plainly unfazed by the Surge in Baghdad … they just moved their operations elsewhere …
they still don’t know to make proper chlorine bombs and most of their chlorine is destroyed by the heat of explosions … of course when they finally master the art of producing chemical weapons it will be disaster…
Eventually a twisted genius like The Engineer and his military grade explosives and incindiary devices will be found. Then it will be truly hellish.
NB:”by the way today they blew up three trucks loaded with chlorine canisters in anbar poisoning some 300 people ”
More significant than the chlorine, methinks, was the target. They just blew up a crowd of random civilians in Fallujah. It seems to me a somewhat desperate measure by AQ in Iraq to shore up by sheer intimidation its ebbing support, in what used to be its hard-core constituency. The Sunnies are apparently recognizing, probably too late, that their support for the insurgency has been nothing short of suicidal. But right now the ball is in the court of the shiia of the Mehdi army, who apparently see no reason not to finish the ethnic cleansing they started in East Baghdad.
This is why, sadly, I expect the surge to ultimately fail. Not because the Americans can’t beat the sunni insurgency (it has been strategically beaten for at least two years, and now it is losing tactically as well); but rather, because there is little the Americans can do to prevent the expulsion of the sunnis and the coming to power of the messianic shiia factions.
More significant than the chlorine, methinks, was the target. They just blew up a crowd of random civilians in Fallujah. It seems to me a somewhat desperate measure by AQ in Iraq to shore up by sheer intimidation its ebbing support, in what used to be its hard-core constituency.
they usually blew up crowds of random civilians … i dont know if villages were sunni or mixed ones…
the significance of chlorine is that they are apparently developing taste for wmd … though probably in this sense the battle is lost for us anyway .. i expect most of them to learn to make crude chemical weapons within a decade … unless of course the arabs/muslims get hold of their people
i dont know what’s really happening there with the mahdi army … the standard version is that the rest of the shia factions pressed them to get out of the streets because they got enough of sadr themselves .. but there were rumours … the new york times reported it … that before the start of the operation sadr discovered that two of his commanders not only were involved in killing sunnis but that they filmed the whole thing and he saw the movies … and before he departed to iran, that either him or some of his top aides even passed to the government a list of leaders of their runaway factions and their locations so that they will be dealt with ..
Nobody, I find that rumor to be extremely unlikely, as Sadr himself is one bloodthirsty bastard. Unless, of course, he wants to go fully into politics and leave the mass-murders swept under a rug…
the story is weird to say the least … though sadr does not make an impression of a monster so much as that of an idiot … the MA is reportedly a huge and sprawling movement , self organized at the local level .. sadr is more into making fiery speeches calling for a joint sunni shia alliance against two satans, one big and one small… what his people are doing at the local level, by all reports, has nothing to do with his speeches but still, they adore his way of expressing himself
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