Iraq: When Good News Is Bad News

21 Responses to “Iraq: When Good News Is Bad News”

1. Dave on November 10th, 2007 9:32 pm

   Ummm…..

   What?

   So, all those opposed to Bush’s foreign policies are just marked by blind hatred for him? That’s ludicrous.

   The guy saying “we Iraqis” is a bit odd too. Every Iraqi I know, including my Shia Iraqi friends, has told me they’re against Bush’s policies there. Some are not in favor of immediate withdrawal, but none have just sounded like a Bush radio ad like this guy and his (seemingly all American neocon Christian and Jewish) commentators.

2. Drima on November 11th, 2007 12:03 am

   I don’t doubt what you said because I too have Iraqi friends who have the same position.

   I wasn’t for the invasion and I think the war was executed horribly but you can’t keep opposing something that already happened and I don’t believe immediate withdrawal will make things better.

   There are finally signs of things improving. There are also those who will never see that, precisely because of being blinded by hatred for Bush. I know such people. You’ll be amazed at the things the say.

   The point is, things are now messy. There is no easy way out of this. Immediate withdrawal certainly shouldn’t be an option.

   At the end of the day, the true freedom fighters are those optimists living through the horrors and fighting for a better Iraq.

3. Andrew Brehm on November 11th, 2007 12:55 am

   I know many people who will only agree even to discuss Iraq once everybody agrees that George Bush is the master of evil.

   They KNOW that he CANNOT do good. It’s impossible.

4. Roman Kalik on November 11th, 2007 8:32 am

   IraqPundit has a point here. Whenever there’s good news on Iraq, every anti-Bush site in sight immediately tries to twist it into some kind of Bush media conspiracy, or something to that effect.

   Frankly, I’m tired of reading that sort of BS. No, not everyone who disagrees with the policies of the United States under George W. Bush is led by blind hatred, *I* disagree with the way the war went and how the subsequent occupation and rebuilding of Iraq was mismanaged and in my opinion, rushed to some kind of Instant Democracy in an attempt to cash in on the media support.

   But what I see these days goes beyond anything I can understand. For many, Bush is Evil. Thus, anything done by Bush must end in Evil unless Bush goes away. That’s the entirety of the argument. This is the same argument used to blame the US for the internal Sunni Vs. Shia wars in Iraq, the same argument for pushing to withdraw US troops ASAP while living in the delusion that once the US goes away, everything becomes honky-dory (because, after all, it’s the US that secretly manages that internal war to secretly grab the oil, right? Yeah, sure, and I have a bridge to sell you), and the same argument for trying to twist every single success in Iraq that involves the US in any way (like in the Anbar province) into some kind of Evil Warlord Hiring for Yet More Oil.

   You know, after reading in DailyKos an article that was gloating (and I do mean gloating) about the fact that Al-Quaeda was blowing up the Anbar tribal leaders that kicked them out, I frankly don’t listen that much to what self-proclaimed liberals have to say about Iraq anymore.

   Because the Left in the US is still stuck in the pre-war mentality. the Left in the US still thinks that if it gets the troops out today, it would be as if the war never happened. That is, of course, merely the opinion of the mainstream Left politicians.

   The rest of the Left seems to be obsessed with so-called US Imperialism that is the Root of All Conflict. Yeah, right. Iraq will be peaceful should the US leave, or rather… it will simply be removed from the public’s attention, thus making all the crap there comfortably ignorable.

5. Drima on November 11th, 2007 9:38 am

   I’m getting tired of DailyKos too. There’s too much non-objective garbage there. I prefer ThinkProgress.org, at least they provide smart points and present their arguments well.

   My opinions tend to vary in falling from center left to center right. On the execution and methods used in this war (outsourcing of torture, Gitmo, “enhanced interrogation” etc.), I agree with the left. On withdrawal and the wide-spread passionate hate for Bush blinding many about Iraq’s realities, I disagree.

   “Whenever there’s good news on Iraq, every anti-Bush site in sight immediately tries to twist it into some kind of Bush media conspiracy, or something to that effect.”

   And that’s precisely the point of this post. There are signs of improvement. Even Iraqis I’ve talked to are telling me things are starting to get better regardless of whether they hate Bush or not.

6. Roman Kalik on November 11th, 2007 11:42 am

   With trained fanatics, torture is completely useless anyway. At best, you’ll get what you expect to hear. At worst, you’ll get what they want you to hear. Thus giving terrorists this huge PR opening in the first place was a huge mistake, not to mention that you thus end up making the regional “anti-terrorist” dictators feel like the anti-Communist dictators of old, as in above reproach.

   I understand the political necessity of having a defined enemy, thus ending up ignoring or even supporting other kinds of scum to fight that enemy, but… Well… The Truman Doctrine was a defined foreign policy. The War on Terror thing looks more like a stumble in the dark, really. The United States really needs a long-term policy here.

   As for Gitmo… Gitmo is largely overblown media hype, man. Gitmo, in particular, is a good example of crap reporting, like the Koran-flushing that only happened in the mind of a newspaper reporter, to name one example.

   But in general, I’m not in favor of “enhanced methods” of interrogation, unless you can prove that it was the only way to stop something really bad from happening in the very near future. Like tomorrow. To give you an example, Drima, Shin Bet (Israeli internal security agency) can use such “enhanced methods” if given a direct order from the Prime Minister’ who may give such an order if shown a clear and present danger of a large-scale terrorist attack happening in the near future, and proof that Shin Bet has captured a person directly connected to the events but who is otherwise unwilling to talk. The Prime Minister later has to prove to the Supreme Court that his action was justified. I simply don’t see that kind of accountability in what the US *may* want to use (I sometimes read about Cheney wanting to redefine the legal scope of torture), or the expedient requirement, so I don’t see it as a justifiable means of general information-gathering for future use.

7. The Raccoon on November 11th, 2007 1:50 pm

   We’ve been over torture before… turture is absolutely useless given modern-day information extraction techniques. It’s not only immoral - it doesn’t deliver the goods and is much more problematic that other methods; methods that are both cheaper and not as morally repulsive.

   The amount of disinformation about this war is staggering. Seriously.

8. nobody on November 11th, 2007 2:29 pm

   We’ve been over torture before… turture is absolutely useless given modern-day information extraction techniques. It’s not only immoral - it doesn’t deliver the goods and is much more problematic that other methods; methods that are both cheaper and not as morally repulsive.

   i bet if it were possible the shin beit would have switched to these advanced and humane methods of obtaining information long ago … the fact that it does not happen makes me think that these techniques are not that effective after all …

   i also doubt that torture is that ineffective against trained fanatics … i watched a round table on bbc on torture a few weeks ago and they mentioned that several jihadist plots in britain were cracked recently by employing ‘enhanced methods of interrogation” … in that particular program an anti torture campaigner was asked several times to comment on those cases in which attacks were prevented only after the suspects were subjected to torture …

9. Drima on November 11th, 2007 3:14 pm

   Raccoon: “The amount of disinformation about this war is staggering. Seriously.”

   Heh? Dude, ever heard Rumsfeld’s remarks justifying the use of torture? Why is he making them and taking so much heat if torture isn’t effective?

   Like Nobody, even I have come across material saying that some plots in the UK were uncovered thanks to “enhanced interrogation”. Pakistani intelligence participated in some of the investigations and used torture.

10. nobody on November 11th, 2007 4:07 pm

    i think it’s a very academic debate … humane or not humane, torture is here to stay and to be used more .. the chief of mi5 recently said that they can no longer follow all jihadist plots in britain .. they got 2000 people to watch and probably the same number who are still uknown to them … never mind that at that program they mentioned one plot whose organizers intended to use some chemical stuff … under such circumstances they will have to use torture to speed the things up and if the current radicalization of european muslims continues at the same rate, the british will have to rely much more on torture than before ….

11. ratedrsuperstar on November 12th, 2007 12:27 am

    Drima:
    My question is how do you think this effects recruitment for jihadis? If so many Sunnis are indeed turning against al qaeda in Iraq, do you think that would discourage the flow of wanna be jihadis into that country? Or do you think those blinded by their hatred of the ‘kufar’ will simply believe that the media’s portrayal of the sunni tribes is just propaganda and that the sunnis still support the ‘jihad?

12. Drima on November 12th, 2007 2:30 am

    It’s a well known fact that most of the al-Qaeda fighers in Iraq are non-Iraqis. Most are Saudis (about 70% if I remember correctly).

    A lot of the recruitment efforts aren’t run freely. There is a a line of command and leadership that make these kinds of decisions.

    Whether the flow will be discouraged or not, I’m not sure but it partly depends on what the leadership in Iraq does. I’m sure since the leadership is on the inside, they can easily tell that Sunnis turning against al-Qaeda is not mere propaganda.

    They won’t give up. It’s not in their mindset to. We can expect changes in strategy though.

13. Roman Kalik on November 12th, 2007 2:17 pm

    Drima, I just read the BBC article that you linked to. Loved it, every word, including the justified concerns for the future. It’s been a while since I read a BBC article on a middle-eastern subject that truly deserved to be called reporting. It was well-researched, presented the reality in the field as well as possible future scenarios and general concerns that were very much on-topic.

    If the BBC can be carefully optimistic for a change… Maybe we can expect some good to follow.

14. kinzi on November 12th, 2007 2:18 pm

    Thanks for posting this, Drima. I posted about it with the link, as when BBC says it, I pay more attention than when CNN does.

15. Drima on November 12th, 2007 2:32 pm

    Yes, the BBC article was pretty good. I mean hey, if the BBC can be optimistic and it can report on the improvements in Iraq, then there has GOT to be hope.

16. ratedrsuperstar on November 12th, 2007 10:53 pm

    drima:
    are you implying that perhaps Iraq may soon see a ‘kinder/gentler’ jihadi lol

17. Drima on November 12th, 2007 11:18 pm

    At the conference I attended in DC recently, the expert panelists in the workshop on Evolving Terrorist Tactics mentioned that al-Qaeda has in fact “softened” some of its tactics.

    When was the last time you saw a video of jihadis beheading an American uploaded on the internet? It’s been a long while since the last one. Apparently al-Qaeda’s leadership realized those tactics backfired and lost them a lot of Muslim support. Their crazy shit in Iraq is now costing them a lot of support too.

    We can expect new strategies.

18. Nobody on November 12th, 2007 11:32 pm

    al kaida’s leadership apparently knew it from the beginning … there is that famous letter written by al zawahiri to zarkawi and intercepted by the americans in which al kaida number two is pleading zarkawi to stop mass bombing shia civilians … so the leadership has probably realized that these tactics backfire long ago … but on the ground they got hard headed fanatics even more extreme than bin laden and zawahiri themselves … a nice thing about leading such extremist movements is that you get people that under no one’s control …

19. Roman Kalik on November 13th, 2007 7:10 am

    Found two more articles that might be of interest, Drima:

    One and two.

20. Drima on November 13th, 2007 7:36 am

    Nobody, that’s precisely what the panelists talked about. About that… you can now watch videos of sessions that were held during the conference. Here’s the one I’m talk about.

    Roman, thanks will check them out.

21. Roman Kalik on November 13th, 2007 9:08 am

    Heh, thanks for making the links a bit more readable.

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