Mr. President, Democratic Leadership: There Is No Such Thing as Iraq

[Ibby]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/13/214325/233

Sure, look on a map, and it exists. It’s got a seat in the United Nations. The electrical grid is national, and the people who live within the geographic boundaries are considered, by other nations, "Iraqis." But George W. Bush is trying to fool a nation and a world in to thinking that there is a nation known as Iraq.

There isn’t.

There are Kurds, and they don’t want to be in a nation that includes Sunni Arabs, whose leadership they blame for the genocidal policies known as the Anfal. Expecting Kurds to remain part of the Iraqi nation-state is like expecting Jews to have gotten a national homeland adjoined to Germany after the Holocaust, but expecting the Jews to make nice with the Germans and let bygones be bygones. Most Americans probably don’t realize that it’s ILLEGAL to fly the flag of Iraq in Kurdistan. The Kurds are Kurds. They are not Iraqis, and they never will be.

Iraqs Sunni and Shia Arabs have been in a civil war for several years. In southern Iraq, rival blocs are vying for power in a Shia-Shia conflict. In Anbar--which is NOT a success, and is NOT relevant to the "surge"--we can expect a lot more Sunni-Sunni violence like what we saw today. And if you’re reading this, you know that Baghdad has and remains a horrifically violent place; any minor reductions in violence have as much to do with the "success" of ethnic cleansing as anything else. It’s like declaring Srebrenica a success story because the ethnic cleansing ended.

What’s busted and not working in Iraq isn’t because of Iran, or Syria. It’s because of Iraq. When we invaded and clumsily occupied Iraq—a country that had no cohesive nationalist identification before Winston Churchill and the British drew it on a map after WWI—we unleashed forces beyond our capacity to contain and control, especially as long as we continue to occupy Iraq and be distrusted by ALL factions in the country. Sure, one would have to be naïve to think Iran wasn’t meddling in Iraq. Same thing with Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and a bunch of other countries. But they’re only bit players. There’s no functioning government. There’s no "Iraqi" military, there are only units comprised entirely of single ethnic/religious groups; there are Kurdish units, there are Shia Arab units, there are Sunni Arab units. But there are NO multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian units.

Iraq is Humpty Dumpty, but we pushed him off the wall, and all the king’s Armored Cavalry and all the king’s mechanized brigades will not put him back together again. The president said this war in Iraq is "just, and right, and necessary." No, the war in Iraq is futile. The American people have figured that out. Now, it’s time to stop talking about leaving our troops in Iraq to train Iraqi military units, because there aren’t any. It’s time to stop expecting progress and the achievement of benchmarks by the Iraqi government, because there’s no Iraqi government that has legitimacy with the population of Iraq. It’s time to stop thinking that we can put Iraq back together again. It’s time to face the reality that Iraq no longer exists, start making plans to remove our troops, and get the leadership of the Iraqi factions and the leadership of the surrounding nations to engage in trying to mitigate the suffering and chaos that will ensue when we leave, but will also happen if we stay.

There’s no good solution for Iraq. There is no Iraq. It’s time to get our troops the hell out.

Amen.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So, the opposition has whipped The Daily Kos, and by extension, you.



Just another reason that pack of antidemocracy browneyed shit-pitchers shouldn't be given serious regard. They don't want us to win, and never did.

So, a puppet regime centered around Basra and the mouth of the Euphrates, the strings being pulled by the mullahcracy in Teheran -- a good thing, on balance, or a bad thing? It does mean a major petroleum field controlled by unfriendlies, after all. How much of the world's petroleum do we want controlled by unfriendlies?

[Ibby]

...So what you're saying is that the whole piece is bullshit?

You, sir, are the REASON we're losing over there. Because you think this is yet another example of righteous america coming as the heroes. You probably agreed with the administration that they'd greet us as liberators, with parades in the street, rather than the occupying oppressors we are.
Until you understand that, UG, we are doomed to defeat in Iraq. We've already lost the war; let's not lose the withdrawal too.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

We are not "occupying oppressors," and in that regard I know better than either you or Kos. Accept it, and you'll be saner than eighty percent or so of the Kos crowd.

Now how about the longer range outlook I'm mentioning and you're not, son?

The Stateside opposition has wasted years looking and looking for some -- for any -- substitute for victory. For them our victory would be unconscionable. Fine: we should win, and these people with no faith in democracy should writhe in agonies of shame. They deserve that, and have worked diligently to get it, and they should have all that shame and more.

No one's ever been able to justify the shameful ones' point of view. It's all just fascist sympathy.

The Islamofascist opposition is banking on outlasting us. We should deny them any least hope of doing that, by scourging them over and over and over again until they no longer exist and can't generate any new ones. They have to be made discouraged, and I do not shrink at having to discourage them a lot, or for a couple of centuries. They have to be made discouraged, and it doesn't matter how much discouraging is needed. Simply attend to supplying the need. The antidemocracy, and therefore antihuman, fanaticism must be a way to a too-young death and a certain one.

[DanaC]

We are not "occupying oppressors," and in that regard I know better than either you or Kos.

What, you're posting from Iraq?

[Ibby]

The only outcome that will not end in wholesale genocide is american-facilitated partition and subsequent withdrawal. And that will still probably end in massive sectarian violence, as it did in India/Pakistan. Truly, now that we've broken it, there's nothing we can do to fix it except install a military dictatorship every bit as bad as saddam's.

What would you have us do, UG? Sit there in Iraq for another generation or two, until every single person that hates america for it gives up and dies of old age? Our staying doesn't help a single iraqi, and our leaving won't hurt a single american. There will be civil war, already is civil war, whether we stay or not. Our leaving won't change that. It may get worse, but it will happen either way. We need to look out for america's interest in this case, as much as I hate to say it. I have no love for america, no more than I have for every other place - but I'm still more pro-america than you are on this, UG. You want us to stay, to no positive end, spending countless dollars and ending the lives of many of america's finest men and women in uniform.

We must leave, now.

[queequeger]

I'd like to point out, for the record, the few errors in the Kos blog. A) There are many Kurds that consider themselves Iraqi. They can be compared (amongst these Kurds) to Texans. They're very prideful of their own people, but that doesn't mean they want nothing to do with Iraq. That being said, there are plenty that would like their own country.

B) There are in fact multi-ethnic units in the Iraqi army, bunches of them. Everything I've seen or heard shows me that the Iraqi army functions pretty well (far better than they should, considering how we've "trained them"). The police force is swiss cheese, with a large number of units owing almost no loyalty to state, only to their tribe or militia (usually Jaysh al-Mahdi), but the army's pretty unaffected on the whole.

Aside from that, most of the other things he wrote are true. Not that I agree with it's conclusion, or much of what Kos writes, I think he's inflammatory at best and doesn't do much good except preaching to the converted.

And UG, which of the hundreds of groups that are vying for power, the majority of whom who could give two shits about the US, is the ominous 'Islamofascist enemy' that you keep referencing? This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make about this war. There is not one single enemy that can be defeated with firepower. If we want to be successful at our self-appointed job of nation building, then we'll need the military, but there is not some big enemy we can shoot at, there are almost a dozen major players, and hundreds of minor ones all vying for national or local power.

They're not 'the Islamofascists' and they're not all terrorists, they're each trying to get their piece of the pie. Contrary to popular opinion, for most that pie has almost nothing to do with the US.

[xoxoxoBruce]

by scourging them over and over and over again until they no longer exist and can't generate any new ones.

If you get a strike in every frame, does the bowling ally run out of pins?

[piercehawkeye45]

We will probably leave Iraq with a dictator.

[Undertoad]

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

If you get a strike in every frame, does the bowling ally run out of pins?

People are not as easily set up as bowling pins, Bruce. I think you could use a better metaphor. Bowling pins do not have morale considerations, nor are they influenced by reason.

People, the overall necessary strategy is to reduce the number of Gap nations, evolving them into "seam" nations and in due course into the New Core -- or the Newer New Core if there is some necessity for partitioning degrees of globalization development to keep things straight in the observer's mind.

The troubles for the Core nations (North America and Europe -- the developed nations), sayeth Thomas P.M. Barnett, will come from out of the Gap nations -- the largest swath of which are much of the Islamic world and the bulk of Africa, with South Africa being the notable exception, and I think some non-Gap pockets here and there like the environs of Mombasa, Kenya. He calls this the "Gap" because it's not at all well connected informationally nor economically with the global economy and the developing global culture. He speaks of the Old Core nations (as above) and the New Core nations (Russia, China, India, Brazil), these being the nations and economies that are strongly developing and unlikely to stop or be stopped in their growth and improvement. Part of the Gap's overall troubles are political -- there are just about no genuine democracies in it, just lousy governance that runs the gamut from autocracy to kleptocracy, and mixtures of these may be found in any one country. The symptoms of these undemocratic societies are pretty common and easily observed: unresponsive governments that take no interest whatsoever either in good stewardship or sound national economy, lack of secure property rights, scant education and what there is is often sex-specific -- men only, no public health, damned little public life, and all the rest of the ills the wealthier nations try to address with foreign aid and charitable work and works.

You want less trouble in the world, you remove the political-cultural impediments to repairing all this, and one thing that means is devouring the terrorists, the fascists, and the obstructionists, alive or dead. Conversion of such troublemakers is to be preferred of course, and will happen in many cases -- but the ones immune to reason are not immune to the knife.

This is all I ask. It's all I ever ask. Some jackanapes will tell me I'm a terrible person for asking it. I know what to think of those people.

[DanaC]

This is all I ask. It's all I ever ask. Some jackanapes will tell me I'm a terrible person for asking it. I know what to think of those people.

Well presumably you think them jackanapes?

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Bowling pins do not have morale considerations, nor are they influenced by reason.

Neither are most people. Reason has to line up with their personal beliefs in order for them to see it.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Now how about the longer range outlook I'm mentioning and you're not, son?

Way to be a condescending dick, good job.

[queequeger]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Neither are most people. Reason has to line up with their personal beliefs in order for them to see it.

Way to be a condescending dick, good job.

He's pretty good at that, I've noticed.

...And can I get an amen for cognitive dissonance. There's that college edjukayshun.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Way to be a condescending dick, good job.

Not so. To be condescending, one must be talking down from a higher plane. He ain't on a higher plane.