I'm leery of leaving any US force behind. None of the core issues that could plunge Iraq into one - or more - civil wars has been resolved.
You still have the unresolved Kurd v. Arab issue that's guaranteed to explode by virtue of having the Kurdish constitution incorporated into the Iraqi constitution and the simmering dispute over Kirkuk. That's gonna blow.
Then you have the Shiite v. Sunni conflict that's on hold at the moment.
Then you have the nationalist (Sadr) Shia versus pro-Iran (Maliki) Shia challenge that's also on hold.
Then, perhaps best of all, there's al Sistani.
Not one of these obstacles has been cleared. At least two of them are on hold awaiting the withdrawal of American combat forces.
MoS, I think you're missing the essential point. The US has no intentions or desire to get out of Iraq. It's incredibly profitable to stay in, and that's all that matters.
So when the Iraqi people continue attacking the US troops who invaded their country and tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people, these troops will just stand there?
I'm pretty sure the US doesn't give a shit about these obstacles.
Hell, you got many people in Congress and the Senate who don't know the difference between Shiite and Sunni. McCain made numerous statements during his campaign that showed he was completely clueless.
More violence helps the US's goal of destablizing the entire area. That's one big reason (imo) they left huge stockpiles of weapons (hundreds of tons) unguarded in the early weeks of the invasion.
L-girl, redsock, you both could be right. Britain took over the place after defeating the Ottomans in WWI and spent a few generations riding that tiger before they finally pulled up stakes and left. Maybe the US has to undergo the same experience.
Good analogy, MoS. This is why Redsock and I both vigorously object when people say Iraq was a "disaster" or that the handling of it has been "inept" or "incompetent". If you think the US's goals were spreading democracy or fighting terrorism, sure. But if you see their goals - as we both do - as empire, profit, control of resources, they've been incredibly successful.
I don't see the US giving up on Empire until it completely implodes. But here's hoping.
All of these "issues" are a smokescreen. Sunni vs. shiite? When has an invading and occupying force ever helped resolve internal conflict? These "issues" are just excuses to keep the occupying forces in place, and ignore the right of every country to self-determination.
What would Americans say if another country invaded to "help" resolve conflict between, say, street gangs?
Kim, you misunderstand my point. These issues aren't a "smokescreen" for anything. They arise out of the ashes of WWI and the demise of the Ottoman empire. Iraq is a creature of the victorious Brits. They drew its boundaries and, in the process, defined the country's majority and minority ethnic imbalances.
It's the same problem that's plagued much of Africa - Euros dividing the continent up into political entities that suited their colonial purposes with no regard for tribal realities.
Iraq was created after the Brits and French had totally betrayed the Kurds who'd been promised the restoration of Kurdistan. Ataturk threatened the Euros, they folded, and the Kurds and their historical homeland was parcelled up among several countries, Turkey, Iraq and Iran among them.
This total disregard for tribal, ethnic and religious realities creates a situation demanding strongarm rule. That's why the Brits chose the Arab Sunni to rule Iraq. (Did you know that in 1920, then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill ordered his army to fire mustard gas shells into Kurdish villages where the locals had refused to pay their taxes? - true story).
Anyway, when American forces withdraw they'll expose a series of power vacuums inside Iraq that could result in two or more civil wars. It will also invite other regional players to become involved, notably Turkey and Iran.
Iraq's survival as a state is very doubtful. To understand its predicament you might read "The End of Iraq" by Peter Galbraith, son of John K. himself.
Galbraith, as a young foreign service officer, worked with the Kurds to create their own constitution, years before Saddam was toppled. When Bremer took over as proconsul he expected the Kurds to be complacent. He was wrong. They finally forced Baghdad to incorporate the Kurdish constitution into the Iraqi constitution which is sort of like pulling the pin on a grenade and then stuffing it into your pants pocket. It will not turn out well.
But to take Iraq in isolation is misleading. That really is not being able to see the forest for the trees. By conquering Iraq, America has ripped the scab off a wound it may not be able to heal.
The whole eastern Middle East-South Asia region is in play. The U.S., Russia, China, India, Iran are engaging in the Great Game on a scale never before seen. It's a genuine mess of economic, political and military rivalries triggered by the decline of one hegemon and the ascendancy of two, possibly three others.
So to consider these problems in terms of "excuses" totally misses the point of what's really going on in Iraq and its region.
We're judging Iraq today in the context of the relative calm of the past 18-months. Within a year, two at the outside, that calm will probably be a fond memory.
You could be right, Redsock, but I've never seen anything remotely approaching that level of intelligence from any of the Bushies who launched this misadventure.
Based on what I've seen of these people, they weren't capable of deliberation much less plotting such grand schemes.
We have touched in this point in other discussions.
I would call the Cheny Gang some of the most competent people in the world. But to do that, you have to forget what they SAY their reasons are for doing things and look at what they likely actually want to do.
They cannot plan for everything, of course, but most of what has happened in the Middle East since 2001 has been by design.
Of course they could have planned an exit strategy, of course they could give the troops body armor, of course they could have caught OBL, of course they could have helped New Orleans, of course they could have stopped 9/11 -- BUT THEY HAD NO INTENTION OF DOING ANY OF THOSE THINGS.
Just think about all they wanted to do for 8 years and what they got done -- it is mindboggling. And they encountered almost no resistance.
Their reign of terror has been bad for democracy and human rights and all that sort of stuff. But for them and their business partners/associates, it has been a windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars.
I wish I could be 5% as successful as them in what I want to do.
If Laura does not mind, I want to quote a post by Jack Riddler (who has done some great work re 9/11 research) at DU. In February 2006, he started a thread called "The Awesome Competence of the Bush Regime":
Those who call the Bush mob "incompetent" make a fatal error. On some unconscious level, they seem to think that these criminals somehow share any of the goals of decent human beings, and have therefore "failed" to produce good results. But that, of course is the idea that motivates the Bush crime family: to produce evil results that happen to enrich their own class.
The situation in Iraq for example is not the result of "incompetence." It is all according to plan, which was to destroy that nation.
Over and over we see the awesome competence of the Bush regime in accomplishing their radical plans - at every stage very much thanks to the enablers who run the Democratic Party, and who have smoothed the way for the Bush mob in each of their following accomplishments:
Stealing Election 2000.
Trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, intentionally plunging the country into deficit.
9/11. Exactly as desired.
Stealing a sum specified as "2.3 trillion dollars" from Pentagon assets.
Repealing the Bill of Rights in the USA PATRIOT Act.
Getting dozens of other countries to pass their own PATRIOT acts.
Invading Afghanistan. Exactly as planned, years in advance.
Funnelling trillions more legally into the Pentagon.
Establishing a Homeland Gestapo.
Instituting Rule by Fear, color-coded no less.
Railroading the idiot Congress into approving the war in Iraq.
Accepting the assassination of Wellstone by whatever lower-level operative delivered it.
Stealing Election 2002.
Establishing "Total Information Awareness" and getting away with it, even after departure of Poindexter.
Invading Iraq. Killing untold thousands.
Getting the Iraqis into a civil war, with the intent of making sure that country never recovers.
Covering up 9/11.
Using 9/11 as an election device and excuse for everything.
Stealing Election 2004.
Using Katrina as the opportunity to empty out New Orleans and test out long-standing "civil disturbance" doctrines.
Pushing through two right-wing Supreme Court appointments without a filibuster.
Rewiring Americans overnight to believe Iran is now the enemy.
Wow! What a list! A veritable juggernaut of competence.
The Bush mob (almost) always get what they want, and the Democratic "leadership" (almost) always helps them when it counts. Yes, they had to take a loss on the first attempt to steal the entire Social Security fund, but there are many opportunities yet to come.
Yes, it's all at a time of awesome crisis to US-based capitalism, so much of it looks jerry-rigged but so what? It's not like the Bush mob invented the crisis of capitalism. So far, they're getting away with a particular plan to thrive in that crisis, by plundering everything, whether nailed down or not.
Competent at what they do, which is what they've always done: pillage and plunder.
And those who call them "incompetent" sadly serve to excuse and enable their crimes.
It's well known here that I agree with Redsock on the competence vs incompetence front.
To me people who look at the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft (remember him?)/Gonzalez gang as incompetent are wearing strange blinders indeed. Just because they had a bumbling idiot for a front man doesn't mean a thing. That's just part of their evil genius.
I say that without a trace of sarcasm or humour. They have been brilliant, learning all the right lessons from past US mistakes.
Calling the Cheney junta incompetent because Iraq does not have a peaceful democracy is like saying Hitler or Stalin or Pinochet was incompetent because they killed so many people.
To call either Hitler or Stalin competent is to stand reality on its head. For example, Hitler's ill-conceived scheme to conquer the Soviet Union was blindingly stupid. Stalin was far too paranoid to be considered competent. He murdered the bulk of his capable general staff in the years prior to the war and refused to accept his own intelligence services' warnings of the looming German invasion. Please don't confuse brutality for competence.
To suggest Bush/Cheney formulated a devious plot to do all the dastardly things you attribute to them is pretty far out there. For you see there's one thing that Americans have never been able to achieve and that's secrecy.
The far-reaching plot you contend demonstrates their competence would have involved hundreds of people in a pryamid all leading back to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush at the very top. Not only would there be a human train of evidence but an indelible documentary evidence train also.
How would anyone begin to cover that up? Unless, of course, you claim that Obama is in on it too; that this is some sort of perverse, bipartisan freemasonry.
No, sorry but I'm sticking with sheer incompetence.
My analogy to Hiter and Stalin was that they achieved quite a lot of their goals. The people they killed were not accidental deaths. They set out to kill them, and kill them they did. I wasn't implying that they were infallible, or that all their plans were perfectly executed.
For you see there's one thing that Americans have never been able to achieve and that's secrecy.
You are quite underinformed about US history. Read the book "Overthrow", by Stephen Kinzer, for example. Do you think those plots were all known at the time?
There has been an enormous amount of secrecy in the making of the US Empire. None of it has been transparent.
We're talking about a "plot". We're talking about verifiable facts.
Which of the points on Redsock's list do you dispute?
One of the big problems with the focus on incompetence and coincidence is that it leaves the systems that created the empire untouched by criticism. If it's just the fault of some bungling ne'er-do-wells, then all we need is to change leaders and we'll be fine. But the corporatism and imperialism continues unabated, no matter who is at the helm.
OK, I asked Allan not to pile on, so I shouldn't either. Bye now.
22 comments:
I'm leery of leaving any US force behind. None of the core issues that could plunge Iraq into one - or more - civil wars has been resolved.
You still have the unresolved Kurd v. Arab issue that's guaranteed to explode by virtue of having the Kurdish constitution incorporated into the Iraqi constitution and the simmering dispute over Kirkuk. That's gonna blow.
Then you have the Shiite v. Sunni conflict that's on hold at the moment.
Then you have the nationalist (Sadr) Shia versus pro-Iran (Maliki) Shia challenge that's also on hold.
Then, perhaps best of all, there's al Sistani.
Not one of these obstacles has been cleared. At least two of them are on hold awaiting the withdrawal of American combat forces.
America can't get halfway out of Iraq.
MoS, I think you're missing the essential point. The US has no intentions or desire to get out of Iraq. It's incredibly profitable to stay in, and that's all that matters.
Obama says "combat" will end in 2010.
So when the Iraqi people continue attacking the US troops who invaded their country and tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people, these troops will just stand there?
Not one of these obstacles has been cleared.
I'm pretty sure the US doesn't give a shit about these obstacles.
Hell, you got many people in Congress and the Senate who don't know the difference between Shiite and Sunni. McCain made numerous statements during his campaign that showed he was completely clueless.
More violence helps the US's goal of destablizing the entire area. That's one big reason (imo) they left huge stockpiles of weapons (hundreds of tons) unguarded in the early weeks of the invasion.
L-girl, redsock, you both could be right. Britain took over the place after defeating the Ottomans in WWI and spent a few generations riding that tiger before they finally pulled up stakes and left. Maybe the US has to undergo the same experience.
Good analogy, MoS. This is why Redsock and I both vigorously object when people say Iraq was a "disaster" or that the handling of it has been "inept" or "incompetent". If you think the US's goals were spreading democracy or fighting terrorism, sure. But if you see their goals - as we both do - as empire, profit, control of resources, they've been incredibly successful.
I don't see the US giving up on Empire until it completely implodes. But here's hoping.
Looking at Obama's speech, he said this:
"Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."
But then he said:
"I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011."
That still leaves wiggle room -- it all depends on what your definition of "troop" is.
All of these "issues" are a smokescreen. Sunni vs. shiite? When has an invading and occupying force ever helped resolve internal conflict? These "issues" are just excuses to keep the occupying forces in place, and ignore the right of every country to self-determination.
What would Americans say if another country invaded to "help" resolve conflict between, say, street gangs?
Well said, Kim. Nice to see you here again. :)
Kim, you misunderstand my point. These issues aren't a "smokescreen" for anything. They arise out of the ashes of WWI and the demise of the Ottoman empire. Iraq is a creature of the victorious Brits. They drew its boundaries and, in the process, defined the country's majority and minority ethnic imbalances.
It's the same problem that's plagued much of Africa - Euros dividing the continent up into political entities that suited their colonial purposes with no regard for tribal realities.
Iraq was created after the Brits and French had totally betrayed the Kurds who'd been promised the restoration of Kurdistan. Ataturk threatened the Euros, they folded, and the Kurds and their historical homeland was parcelled up among several countries, Turkey, Iraq and Iran among them.
This total disregard for tribal, ethnic and religious realities creates a situation demanding strongarm rule. That's why the Brits chose the Arab Sunni to rule Iraq. (Did you know that in 1920, then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill ordered his army to fire mustard gas shells into Kurdish villages where the locals had refused to pay their taxes? - true story).
Anyway, when American forces withdraw they'll expose a series of power vacuums inside Iraq that could result in two or more civil wars. It will also invite other regional players to become involved, notably Turkey and Iran.
Iraq's survival as a state is very doubtful. To understand its predicament you might read "The End of Iraq" by Peter Galbraith, son of John K. himself.
Galbraith, as a young foreign service officer, worked with the Kurds to create their own constitution, years before Saddam was toppled. When Bremer took over as proconsul he expected the Kurds to be complacent. He was wrong. They finally forced Baghdad to incorporate the Kurdish constitution into the Iraqi constitution which is sort of like pulling the pin on a grenade and then stuffing it into your pants pocket. It will not turn out well.
But to take Iraq in isolation is misleading. That really is not being able to see the forest for the trees. By conquering Iraq, America has ripped the scab off a wound it may not be able to heal.
The whole eastern Middle East-South Asia region is in play. The U.S., Russia, China, India, Iran are engaging in the Great Game on a scale never before seen. It's a genuine mess of economic, political and military rivalries triggered by the decline of one hegemon and the ascendancy of two, possibly three others.
So to consider these problems in terms of "excuses" totally misses the point of what's really going on in Iraq and its region.
We're judging Iraq today in the context of the relative calm of the past 18-months. Within a year, two at the outside, that calm will probably be a fond memory.
By conquering Iraq, America has ripped the scab off a wound it may not be able to heal.
America does not want the wound to heal -- ripping the scab off was one of the purposes/goals of the invasion.
You could be right, Redsock, but I've never seen anything remotely approaching that level of intelligence from any of the Bushies who launched this misadventure.
Based on what I've seen of these people, they weren't capable of deliberation much less plotting such grand schemes.
We have touched in this point in other discussions.
I would call the Cheny Gang some of the most competent people in the world. But to do that, you have to forget what they SAY their reasons are for doing things and look at what they likely actually want to do.
They cannot plan for everything, of course, but most of what has happened in the Middle East since 2001 has been by design.
Of course they could have planned an exit strategy, of course they could give the troops body armor, of course they could have caught OBL, of course they could have helped New Orleans, of course they could have stopped 9/11 -- BUT THEY HAD NO INTENTION OF DOING ANY OF THOSE THINGS.
Just think about all they wanted to do for 8 years and what they got done -- it is mindboggling. And they encountered almost no resistance.
Their reign of terror has been bad for democracy and human rights and all that sort of stuff. But for them and their business partners/associates, it has been a windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars.
I wish I could be 5% as successful as them in what I want to do.
If Laura does not mind, I want to quote a post by Jack Riddler (who has done some great work re 9/11 research) at DU. In February 2006, he started a thread called "The Awesome Competence of the Bush Regime":
Those who call the Bush mob "incompetent" make a fatal error. On some unconscious level, they seem to think that these criminals somehow share any of the goals of decent human beings, and have therefore "failed" to produce good results. But that, of course is the idea that motivates the Bush crime family: to produce evil results that happen to enrich their own class.
The situation in Iraq for example is not the result of "incompetence." It is all according to plan, which was to destroy that nation.
Over and over we see the awesome competence of the Bush regime in accomplishing their radical plans - at every stage very much thanks to the enablers who run the Democratic Party, and who have smoothed the way for the Bush mob in each of their following accomplishments:
Stealing Election 2000.
Trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, intentionally plunging the country into deficit.
9/11. Exactly as desired.
Stealing a sum specified as "2.3 trillion dollars" from Pentagon assets.
Repealing the Bill of Rights in the USA PATRIOT Act.
Getting dozens of other countries to pass their own PATRIOT acts.
Invading Afghanistan. Exactly as planned, years in advance.
Funnelling trillions more legally into the Pentagon.
Establishing a Homeland Gestapo.
Instituting Rule by Fear, color-coded no less.
Railroading the idiot Congress into approving the war in Iraq.
Accepting the assassination of Wellstone by whatever lower-level operative delivered it.
Stealing Election 2002.
Establishing "Total Information Awareness" and getting away with it, even after departure of Poindexter.
Invading Iraq. Killing untold thousands.
Getting the Iraqis into a civil war, with the intent of making sure that country never recovers.
Covering up 9/11.
Using 9/11 as an election device and excuse for everything.
Stealing Election 2004.
Using Katrina as the opportunity to empty out New Orleans and test out long-standing "civil disturbance" doctrines.
Pushing through two right-wing Supreme Court appointments without a filibuster.
Rewiring Americans overnight to believe Iran is now the enemy.
Wow! What a list! A veritable juggernaut of competence.
The Bush mob (almost) always get what they want, and the Democratic "leadership" (almost) always helps them when it counts. Yes, they had to take a loss on the first attempt to steal the entire Social Security fund, but there are many opportunities yet to come.
Yes, it's all at a time of awesome crisis to US-based capitalism, so much of it looks jerry-rigged but so what? It's not like the Bush mob invented the crisis of capitalism. So far, they're getting away with a particular plan to thrive in that crisis, by plundering everything, whether nailed down or not.
Competent at what they do, which is what they've always done: pillage and plunder.
And those who call them "incompetent" sadly serve to excuse and enable their crimes.
********
It's well known here that I agree with Redsock on the competence vs incompetence front.
To me people who look at the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft (remember him?)/Gonzalez gang as incompetent are wearing strange blinders indeed. Just because they had a bumbling idiot for a front man doesn't mean a thing. That's just part of their evil genius.
I say that without a trace of sarcasm or humour. They have been brilliant, learning all the right lessons from past US mistakes.
Calling the Cheney junta incompetent because Iraq does not have a peaceful democracy is like saying Hitler or Stalin or Pinochet was incompetent because they killed so many people.
To call either Hitler or Stalin competent is to stand reality on its head. For example, Hitler's ill-conceived scheme to conquer the Soviet Union was blindingly stupid. Stalin was far too paranoid to be considered competent. He murdered the bulk of his capable general staff in the years prior to the war and refused to accept his own intelligence services' warnings of the looming German invasion. Please don't confuse brutality for competence.
To suggest Bush/Cheney formulated a devious plot to do all the dastardly things you attribute to them is pretty far out there. For you see there's one thing that Americans have never been able to achieve and that's secrecy.
The far-reaching plot you contend demonstrates their competence would have involved hundreds of people in a pryamid all leading back to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush at the very top. Not only would there be a human train of evidence but an indelible documentary evidence train also.
How would anyone begin to cover that up? Unless, of course, you claim that Obama is in on it too; that this is some sort of perverse, bipartisan freemasonry.
No, sorry but I'm sticking with sheer incompetence.
My analogy to Hiter and Stalin was that they achieved quite a lot of their goals. The people they killed were not accidental deaths. They set out to kill them, and kill them they did. I wasn't implying that they were infallible, or that all their plans were perfectly executed.
For you see there's one thing that Americans have never been able to achieve and that's secrecy.
You are quite underinformed about US history. Read the book "Overthrow", by Stephen Kinzer, for example. Do you think those plots were all known at the time?
There has been an enormous amount of secrecy in the making of the US Empire. None of it has been transparent.
We're talking about a "plot". We're talking about verifiable facts.
Which of the points on Redsock's list do you dispute?
No, sorry but I'm sticking with sheer incompetence.
It makes a lovely cover story. It's sad that intelligent people would grab at such a simplistic (and obvious) lie.
TMOS:
Let's look at the response after Hurricane Katrina. Please read what I collected here and here back in September 2005.
I believe that no one with an open mind can read all of that and continue to claim it happened because of "incompetence".
Or read Naomi Klein. That will help, too.
If what I linked to shows incompetence, then this is coincidence.
One of the big problems with the focus on incompetence and coincidence is that it leaves the systems that created the empire untouched by criticism. If it's just the fault of some bungling ne'er-do-wells, then all we need is to change leaders and we'll be fine. But the corporatism and imperialism continues unabated, no matter who is at the helm.
OK, I asked Allan not to pile on, so I shouldn't either. Bye now.
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