Several commenters on the previous thread outlined some possible scenarios that fall short of just cutting and running from Iraq, but which the Bush team might embrace as a way of ginning up an artificial "victory" in time for next year's election. Karlsfini, for example, offers this one:
Bases would be set up in the desert and be difficult for guerrillas to get at. Civil war goes on, and the Army acts only when clear targets emerge. With 20,000-30,000 troops, the U.S. thus controls Iraq -- without concern for the Iraqis, who are left to face... well, like Afghanistan, it won't get much news coverage. This will be sold as a victory, the oil and big contracts will continue to flow, and Iraq will drop out of the public mind.
I agree that this -- or something like it -- could well be where things end up. But there are multiple problems with the "modified bug out" scenario:
- Keeping the oil flowing will be impossible if the security situation goes even more to hell. The Coalition is discovering -- the hard way -- that energy infrastructures (power lines, pipelines) are the hardest to protect, because they're literally strung out all over the place. If the oil doesn't flow, it's going to blow a pretty big hole in the "reconstruction" budget. And if the power lines come down and stay down, the cities are going to become boiling cauldrons next summer.
- Even as Third World puppet regimes go, the "Governing" Council is in an extremely weak position. It's hard to see how it could survive if Coalition troops were all pulled back into fortified desert bases. So presumably, a significant U.S. military presence would still be required in and around Baghdad. Those troops (and the U.S. and Iraqi bureaucrats they protect) would be targeted relentlessly by the jihadist/Baathists. So we could expect to see a lot more "progress."
- Without a strong, nationwide Coalition presence, the centrifugal forces already in motion could tear the country apart. The Kurdish factions would be tempted to push further and further towards de facto independence, especially if the Shi'a become more aggressive about pushing for a unitary state in which they are the dominant force. Iraq's neighbors -- particularly Iran and Turkey --- would be increasingly tempted (or feel forced) to intervene, making a bad situation even worse.
- The Sunni insurgency would continue to grow, and might move from what Mao called the "Strategic Defensive" phase (harassment attacks and selected assassinations) to the "Strategic Stalemate" phase (consolidate control of base areas, create a "shadow" governing authority). Although considering how nihilistic these guys are, the result might simply be violence and chaos on an even grander scale. In any case, large parts of the Sunni Triangle could become what the Mekong Delta was during the Vietnam War -- a no go zone for the "legitimate" Iraqi government.
- If Al Qaeda isn't in Iraq in force yet, it would be once the Americans withdrew into their fortified cantonments. As I've noted before, the creation of an viable Al Qaeda base in the Sunni Triangle would constitute an enormous strategic victory for the jihadists.
I guess all this can be boiled down to two points:
- Iraq isn't Afghanistan. It's a big, important country located close to the heart of the Arab world. Simply allowing most of the country to go to the dogs, while using a modest military contigent to keep a Karzai-style puppet regime in power in Baghdad, isn't a viable strategy.
- Counterinsurgency wars are never won simply by building forts. For better or worse, the fight really does have to be "taken to the enemy." More importantly, it has to be taken to the people -- who either have to be won over to the New Iraq®, or terrorized into abandoning the insurgents. Right now, the Coalition isn't doing much of either. It would do even less sitting around in fortified bases.
It might, at least for awhile, since the average American voter seems to have a relatively limited attention span when it comes to things happening outside his or her feeding trough. Iraq, like Afghanistan, could sink into media background noise.
But for how long? This gets back to point #1, above: Iraq is a much more important country, strategically, than Afghanistan. If the pot boils over, and Al Qaeda launches a string of spectacular terrorist attacks, or the insurgency spreads to Saudi Arabia, or an Iranian-backed Shi'a uprising declares the Islamic Republic of Iraq -- just to throw out a few of the possibilities -- then Iraq could end up back on the front burner in a hurry, presidential election or no presidential election.
Update 12:30 PM ET: I should add one final thought. From the above, it might seem I think the administration's "Iraqification" strategy is a bad idea. but it would be more accurate to call it the least worst idea. There really is no alternative. But the key to making it work is political, not military.
If a viable, pluralistic and reasonably independent Iraqi government could be created -- and could gain the loyalty of a substantial fraction of the population (especially the Sunni population) -- then it might at least be possible to keep the situation from getting worse as American troop strength is gradually drawn down.
But I'm guessing the Coalition will simply try to prop up the "Governing Council" under the cover of a sham constitutional process. Or, that failing, look for an Iraqi strongman to take over -- Saddamism without Saddam.
The former is just a short cut to failure, the latter is the slightly longer road.
I don't have a crystal ballm and you guys may well be right, but my guts, deep down below, tell me logic doesn't apply here.
What you all say make sense. Way too much sense. Hell, how many sensible people told Hitler to NOT go after Russia in the winter?
We're not dealing with sane folks here. I've dealt with lots of crazy, self-destructive, my way or the highway folks before. I can smell the madness.
Defeat is for pussies. Hell, defeat is not even part of the vocabulary. The Titanic is NOT going down, now matter how wet my feet are.
My take: They will NOT surrender Iraq, no way, no how, no matter what.
Bush can't even conceive of letting go. Of anything. I'll consoder it a MAJOR achievement if he lets go of the White House.
Oh, they'll try even more incredible up-is-downism, flat earth-like talking points of denial, ponzi schemes and shell games with troops and stastistics and casualties. Lies on such scale that Disneyland will look like a potemkin village.
BUT-THEY-WILL-NOT-SURRENDER-IRAQ.
Oh, they'll try even more incredible up-is-downism, flat earth-like talking points of denial, ponzi schemes and shell games with troops and stastistics and casualties. Lies on such scale that Disneyland will look like a potemkin village.
So stipulated. In America, fantasy rules. But in Iraq, they still have to work within the political and military realities. One way or another, they're going to have to get by with much fewer American troops on the ground, starting next spring. That's going to force them (is already forcing them) to make some very hard decisions, any one of which could blow up in their faces.
How about a Modified Bug Out with Proxy scenario? The U.S. pulls out to a safe distance (say, Kuwait) but leaves behind a 'peace-keeping' army consisting of Arab states (who have all been massively arm-twisted or bribed with military toys) and a few Eastern European forces that have been Ponzi-fooled into thinking that sending replacement troops makes them A-list players.
KB&R and Bechtel hire their own paramilitary force to protect their people (full-time staff, that is--part-timers, contractors, and locals can fend for themselves). Every time a power or pipeline gets blown, the project manager writes up another change order and the revenue numbers go up a notch.
What we all should realize is the *instant* the U.S. forces pull out and are replaced with someone else, all the chaos and mayhem is instantly their problem. Anybody trying to point out who started the whole mess will be roundly shouted down as a 'historical revisionist' (with an elbow to the ribs, pointing at Guantanamo, suggestively).
How about a Modified Bug Out with Proxy scenario?
There are any number of variations on the scenario, but they all lead to enormous problems down the road.
The fundamental reality is this: The administration started a war that America cannot "win" by itself -- with victory defined as the creation of a peaceful and stable Iraq. But the rest of the world is offering minimal, if any, help. And the clock is ticking down towards the time when American soldiers will have to start leaving.
So it comes down to this: Can a viable (i.e. self-sustaining) Iraqi client regime be created over the next 6-12 months, one that will be able to win the war itself? If the answer is no, then there's going to be hell to pay.
But the faster Bush tries to push the process along (for strictly political reasons) the more likely it is to fail in the end.
It is interesting how Bush policy in Iraq mirrors their policy here i.e. they are hoping the the economy in Iraq rebounds, and once Iraqis have jobs and utilities they will support the US and its proxy government.
The problem (at least in Iraq) is that I suspect much of the support for the US (if there is any there) comes from the hope that they will be able to restore the infrastructure and maintain stability. Certainly, that was the expectation of the Sistani wing of the Shia's i.e. they thought we will wait until you restores stabilility and makes some investment and then we will politely but forcefully ask you to leave.
The idea that the IGC has any legitimacy inside Iraq is only believable inside AEI and parts of the Pentagon.
I think that the current situation is more or less the way they need it to be. The US has the most leverage inside Iraq while there is chaos in violence. Essentially, the administration views this as a media problem and not a policy problem.
So it comes down to this: Can a viable (i.e. self-sustaining) Iraqi client regime be created over the next 6-9 months?
I agree with this statement if you insert the perception among Americans of between "Can" and "a". You hint at this in your post. But the only thing the Bushies need is for swing voters to believe that they've fixed Iraq. If you get Schwarzenegger to say it, we know that about 50% of Californians will buy it. Have Leno "interview" Condi; Toby Keith writes a song about it. I see something along those lines hitting the media channels hard by early next summer, with time enough to grind it in by the GOP convention in September.
I know it seems preposterous that they could get away with it. But we know they're arrogant enough to try, and that the US press is facile and co-dependent enough to let them get away with it. And really, where have they been hurt by lying so far?
1:03 PM was me.
Interesting to watch the continuing evolution of liberals into the pro-war side of this debate.
"Don't bring the troops home" may be just the thing to get Billmon out to the polls in November, but it doesn't really work for me. Nor do i think the families of dead US soldiers will feel much better when it's a Democrat telling them that reasons of state require an endless US occupation of Iraq...
Where has Condi been lately? Isn't she the one in charge of Iraq now? What is her plan/timetable.......oh, there isn't one. There is nothing but some shadowy"constitution" to be written then some elections (that ought to bring out the terrorists, huh). There is no plan that clearly shows how we "win". We win when we say we win.
The sad real truth is that Iraq was better off with Saddam than what they have now. There are lots of dictatorships around the world just as brutal as he was, most of which are propped up the the US.
All this lovely speculation is taken without considering the effects on other Arab countries and the pressures toward Islamification and radicalization in other neighboring states.
If we shitcan Iraq, the Arab world will be united against us, rather the current factional infighting as they are now. Several goverments could fall if their populations,which have been relatively quiescent, arise. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan are all on the knife-edge. Maybe Maylasia too.
majkia,
if Iraq is so important to these other governments you name, where is their help??? They don't want any part of this mess either. I've kinda been of the opinion that many of them are *already* united against us (and maybe with good reason).
"They have a card that they can play... terrify the population with some invented threat, and that is not very hard to do…The same people were able to present Grenada as a threat to survival of the United States the last time they were in office," Chomsky in Cuba this week.
So toss this in your dring and stir again.
Bush will win the next election, unless a democrat is found who will stick to the neo-con plan. The alternative is prison (or Gitmo) time for the neo-cons for the stuff that will come out if they lose.
Something big and scary will be invented. This will buy one more election, and four more years to come up with a plan for Iraq. Osama, we need you now more than ever.
Bushie doesn't have a way out!
This talk about bugging out isn't a viaible option... Freidman tells junior today that's if he pulls out -Friedman won't vote for junior, if junior cuts and runs out-not that I think Friedman's vote counts very much...but all those conseratives that push Bush toward war-and all that talk about telling Americans cold honest truth about staying the course in New Vietnam and the long hard slog...
All Bushie needs is a lot of uncomplaining military troops quietly living the retro Nam experience, but that possible either.
And if Bush isn't out to Iraq by voting time-all those oil contracts may well be divided up at the UN with the next income prez...
The American Enterprize folks and PNAC could lose everything....and all pawns bodies left littering the landscape.
er that should be: "but that isn't possible either.
In other words I think Bush is screwed but than so are all the those that followed the piped piper AND that would all the stupid Americans that didn't react to lies of George W Bush.
We've all seen a crazy person pouring useless buckets of water (or even, worse, gasoline) while ranting and raving onto a fire when any sensible person would have bailed out already.
We've all seen movies where the idiot keeps stuffing his pockets with gold and dies, while the hero escapes.
In my opinion, you guys are way too logical and sensible in your projections. You don't know how to think crazy.
Bugfuck crazy.
Caligula crazy.
Hitler-in-the-bunker crazy.
If Bushco wasn't bugfuck crazy, we wouldn't be in this sore spot already, would we? It's not like anyone didn't warn them. Hell, his own FATHER, a former prez, who'd been there, done that, warned him. And they still forged ahead.
In my book, that's bugfuck crazy.
So let'd think more bfc (bugfuck crazy), starting with the basic assumption: It's not because they say they'll get out that they will. They can hold two totally contradictory ideas in their minds. Like your Mom asking do you want cheese or salad and you respond "Yes" and she says,"which is it?"
Yes, we're getting out. Yes, we're staying in.
Reality, to these people, is malleable. The rules, at best, are Calvinball's.
They will not surrender Iraq, even if it kills us all.
Start from there, take a turn at bfc lane, then project.
So it comes down to this: Can a viable (i.e. self-sustaining) Iraqi client regime be created over the next 6-9 months?
I agree with this statement if you insert the perception among Americans of between "Can" and "a". You hint at this in your post.
I'm not talking there about the politics of this here in America, I'm talking about the actual, real world consequences of a failed Iraqification policy. An Iraq that turns into a "failed state" would be an absolute disaster -- although exatly how that disaster would come back to bite America in the ass remains to be seen.
Interesting to watch the continuing evolution of liberals into the pro-war side of this debate.
Point taken. But Bush has put us in a completely impossible situation. I'd love to say fuck it all, bring the troops home right now and let Iraq burn. But unfortunately my family and I still have to live in this loony bin of a country, and I'd rather not see another 9/11 -- or a string of 9/11s, or a violent revolution in Saudi Arabia that completely disrupts the world's energy supplies, or any of a number of really bad, no good awful things that could eventually happen if Iraq is left to become another "failed state."
All this lovely speculation is taken without considering the effects on other Arab countries and the pressures toward Islamification and radicalization in other neighboring states.
Yes, the domino theory all over again. Except this time it's true.
Unfortunately, Cheryl, the list of people who are screwed is longer than this. It also includes those Americans who were on to the Bush lies from the start... and arguably a lot of people in the rest of the world who were yelling, "No, don't do it!"
Bad decisions affect more people than just the folks who made them.
In my anti-Bush II Bizzaro world scenario, the USA sets a date for Iraqi Independence; writes a federated three state constitution; turns over control of the oil to the UN; pleads, begs and throws temper tantrums but gets the Arab League and European Union to send peace keeping troops, and the US withdraws to the Kuwait and Turkey borders.
Billmon,
Do you think an Iraq that has defeated the US in the short term is more dangerous than an Iraq that has defeated it in the long run? That's really what it comes down to. Winning or even US-friendly outcomes are not options -- not when you have the Iraqi people against you. Short of total war or going nuclear, which are probably (?) either politically or militarily possible, there's no way out.
unfortunately my family and I still have to live in this loony bin of a country, and I'd rather not see another 9/11 -- or a string of 9/11s
I think you will; I think we all will.
My shorter projection: there's NOTHING meaningful or substantial that BushCo will do in Iraq. They'll try to hide it but it'll grow steadily worse.
The question isn't as much what will happen in Iraq, but what will happen in the US.
After November 04 the paths are so divergent it's really futile to project.
I totally agree, Lupin. They have been since August, from what I can glean, trying to keep the soldiers out of harms way to keep body count down, which I think has added to the problems for the non-violent Iraqis. And it has forced the resistence to come to them, which has been all too successful for the resistance.
We are in a stale-mate now. Based on some on ground reporting I have read today, I would find it hard to believe that reconstruction efforts are making much progress. Just the description of the green zone fortifications (15 foot cement barricade, barbed wire, one controlled entrance, thorough searches, limited Iraqis allowed in) and the resistance still nearly got Wolfi. No oil flowing in the north, the "friendly" north of course. The resistance closing in around the Bagdad airport and blowing up supply trains (starting to sound like a movie).
Yet, so far, stay the course is all you hear. What course, what is the course? Just pretend things are getting better but stay hunkered down until we stop paying attention? I do not think the resistance will allow that but I have seen no change out of WH and things have been getting worse since the UN bombing in August. Like Chris Rock said "What happen to crazy?"
The CPI report is up. They're looting our treasury, just like a 3rd world country.
Welcome to the first first Burger Republic.
You wanna some fries wid dat?
I don't believe Bush will just pull American troops out of Iraq and let the country fall into total anarchy. This Administration has an almost pathological obsession to continue this crusade and hope for divine intervention. If they were to de facto admit failure, they would at the same time be admitting that perhaps God was not on their side, and that their vision of advancing Armageddon to help Him out was apparently not His vision. The fact that this born-again ideology has permeated this entire invasion makes it even more difficult to bow out.
As for what they will do, I somehow think that the answer to that is as elusive to them as it is to us. We at least are thinking about all the ins and outs and possibilities. The Administration is, in short, most likely just hoping for a miracle.
What the Democratic candidates may consider is using one of the Bush strategies themselves and, when asked what they would do, merely say that Iraq is an "ongoing process" and this would not be an appropriate time to comment on it. In the meantime though, work themselves into exhaustion trying to figure out an exit strategy since it is looking more and more like the entire nauseating situation is going to be dumped in their laps.
I think Lupin has it right. They never intend to leave, and they've created (by chance or design) a situation which will continue to further their aims even if by some chance we evict Bush from office and pursue Billmon's "least-worst option".
When they hung the "Mission Accomplished" banner, the real Mission was establishing the military foothold. The PNAC-ers are all about hegemony - and control of vital resources. These insane fuckers want to control low-earth orbit, too, and that scares me more than ten Iraqs ever could - the eternal boot-in-the-face will be descending from a great height.
One, two, three, what are we fightin' for?
Don't know and I don't give a damn
Next stop is chez Saddam
Five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates
More hijacked planes rainin' down from the sky
Whoopee! We're all gonna die!
Excellent analysis, Billmon.
As you pointed out, the infrastructure will always be a major weak point of the occupation: You need pipelines to move the oil, electricity to operate the pumps, water for the guards and technicians.
There is simply no way to keep enough manpower in place to protect everything that has to be protected, for some indeterminate length of time. Plus, by its very nature, a "guard critical infrastructure" strategy would leave the troops vulnerable, strung out in small groups that would be easy to attack.
I really don't see a good way out of this: Our original plan never involved creating anything approaching real democracy and self-determination for the Iraqis. The intent was to create a client state, with Iraqi resources in U.S. hands and a couple of military bases to cow the rest of the ME -- and prop up their Iraqi puppets, when necessary.
The fundamental mistake the neocons made was in convincing themselves that since Saddam was pure evil, the Iraqis would be so grateful to us for removing him that the classical dynamics of colonial occupation and resistance wouldn't kick in. Or if there was a resistance, it would be weak and disorganized, and couldn't rely on the locals for support.
Yeah, if we cut and run, there are liable to be terrible consequences. But, like che, I don't see that "staying the course" is going to bring any better outcome.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: We're long past the point of sweet reason. The longer we're there, the stronger the resistance becomes, and the support for it outside Iraq is only growing.
Establishing "security" in these circumstances is nothing more than a euphemism for counter-terror, requiring even more harshness and brutality. You must be willing to kill or lock up lots of people for a long, long time.
The Iraqis don't seem to be responding very well to that approach, though so far we're implementing it in a piecemeal fashion. A full-blown counterinsurgency would likely result in a nationwide uprising.
All this speculation about what BushCo will do to shore up the 2004 election leaves aside one important possibility: another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, God forbid. I don't think it's beyond the current adminstration's lack of conscience to ignore solid intelligence through the subterfuge of "falling through the cracks" or "uncooperative bureacracies" and allow such an attack to occur, just so they can galvanize popular support for the war party. Then they could blame the attack on the Democrats' relunctance to 'go all the way' in the war on terrorism. Such a strategy could also easily backfire, and render their supposed strength on defense completely null and void.
I am not sure "WILL fall into anarchy" if we pull out is a concern. I think we may be already there.
I don't think that the iraqis could be terrorised into abandoning the insurgents. The best way for the US to go about this would be to restore reliable electricity to all the major centers, and then pipe in the Fox Channel 24 hours a day. You'd get a passive, jaded and apathetic population in no time flat. Its a proven formular.
Our original plan never involved creating anything approaching real democracy and self-determination for the Iraqis.
This is really a subject for an entirely new post, but even now I'm still not sure what the neocons really intended to do in Iraq, in a broad, ideological sense.
Obviously, their plan was to install Ahmed Chalabi as the friendly head of a friendly pre-Baathist (if not pre-1958) regime. But I'm not convinced this was simply, or at least entirely, a cynical ploy to create a Manchukuo-style puppet government.
The peculiar genius (and insanity) of the neocons is their ability to create imaginary worlds in which their rather ruthless will to power exactly coincides with the democratic desires of the people they wish to excercise power over.
I don't think it's implausible to think that at least some of the neocons -- Wolfowitz, for example -- really believed a secular bourgeois regime could be installed in Baghdad, and would quickly gain mass popular support, allowing it to govern democratically and with a minimum of state terror.
Others -- Perle and Feith in particular -- are clearly much more realistic (i.e. openly fascistic) and probably understood from the beginning how the deal would really work, although they obviously didn't expect this level of resistance.
But I think it may be overly simplistic to say the administration's goal all along was simply to turn Iraq into a Middle Eastern Aistrip One with oil wells -- I don't think these guys could allow themselves to think about it that way.
One of the classic bourgeois characteristics (see: Weber) is hypocrisy -- the ability to believe that naked self interest is actually noble idealism. But that also means the exercise of bourgeois power is often constrained (thank God) by the need not to be seen openly violating those ideological norms. The neocons are just an extreme case.
This administration has an almost pathological obsession to continue this crusade...
Indeed. This whole bug out scenario game goes on the assumption that the administration will do something reasonable to assuage public opinion by election day. Wrong assuption. They never have and they never will. Their stategy, both for war and economics and all else, is: let's do whatever we want and when faced with consequences, just lie about it. (They still will not admit there are no WMD, in fact they say they've found them!) Another reason why they don't really care about pulling back: Halliburton provides the logistics. The whole gig is a cash cow for them and when Dick finishes his term of "public service" his new salary on returning to Halliburton will be a reflection of how much money this job brought them. He's the president's main advisor. You can rest assured that he's in no hurry to get the troops out.
They've lied all about their plans along and will continue to do so. When they say they want a stable Iraq and the troops out in one or two years, it's just PR. They're thinking more like five years or even ten. But...
Even that's a dream because the grand plan sees 1. a democratic government there 2. hand picked by us and 3. this accomplished without civil war. That's their package, but they'll never get all three. The one thing that must go is the governing council. Since it's picked by us -- an invading nation, it is tainted and will never stand without huge amounts of US troops there to prop it up.
Hopefully a Democratic US president will realize this and let the Iraqis do what they want while not letting things get too far out of hand in terms of bloodshed, though that may not be possible. At any rate, Iraq will eventually be in the hands of Iraqis. The idea of the democratic/utopian/American ally Iraq is a pipedream hatched by people with an almost hostile view of reality and the limitations written into that. This is not to say the democratic, American ally couldn't happen. But if it does it will be a happy accident.
I don't think this has been posted on either of these two threads. But here is what PNAC-of-the-PNACKERS Richard Perle apparently said in an interview in Russia:
[Interviewer] How soon do you think the American army in Iraq will be “shortened” (curtailed?)
[Perle] As soon as we will have taught enough Iraqis how to protect themselves and their country, the army immediately will go away.
I would have thought Perle would have been the last to voice support for an early pull out.
emptywheel --
It's a trick answer. What the Iraqis are "protecting themselves" against is Americans occupying their country and trying to dictate their future to them. So his answer is really, "we'll leave when you roll over and play dead for your conquerors". So the answer is never. And he knows it.
4:14 post is mine
Lupin, Mary Ellen, CJW, Prof Fate have hijacked this thread with someting that I haven't seen since just before the US blew its way into Iraq. There is a note of panic in the postings that says billmon, you are probably right, but all such thinking is irrelevant now.
We raced around the blogs before the war, all seeking a sign of rationality, of a sensible way for things to happen when, in our hearts, we knew that it was hopeless, that the maniacs were going to have their war come hell or high water.
I think the smart people who sensed the appalling danger then are doing the same thing now. The situation in Iraq is melting down and Bushco either cannot see it, will not see it or are crazy enough to deny the reality before them.
The US is facing multiple enemies whose ranks and numbers are growing every day, not just old regime types with their army, but terror cells, possibly working in cahoots, then Al Sadr and his radical Shias trying to find a way to prise the thing open for them, the Kurds having seen the insanity of inviting in the Turks are cleaning their weapons and making sure their ass is covered from the Yanks and 60% of Iraqis en masse now define US as Occupier. A strategy that will work for one enemy will piss off the others, no matter which way the US goes it HAS to open up gaps for its enemies, and that is why the panic is rising.
There is the possibly apocryphal story from WW2 about the French partisans in a secret compartment in a bus that is stopped by the Germans. A woman and her baby are in the compartment and the baby begins to fret. If the child cries out, they are all dead. When the Germans leave the partisans realise that the mother has smothered her baby to save the group.
When Rummy and co talk about "hard" decisions, the American people don't seem to understand that this is the quaity of choice they now face.
To have 10 people killed because a baby cries is insane, for a mother to kill her own child is insane. Now choose.
The March withdrawl scenario? It depends on which Bushco faction wins. The Rove political wing will argue that there's no real domestic political downside to just declaring victory and leaving Iraq. The Chickenhawk neocon faction will argue for staying based on their imperial fantasies, and will offer a doomsday scenario if an early withdrawl occurs.
A compromise might well involve a Fort Haliburton partial withdrawl to the oil fields, at least until election season is over. Just because this option is untenable doens't mean Bushco won't pursue it.
I'm afraid we are stuck with:
Failure is not an option.
Unfortunately, sucess is now impossible.
marku
The baby killing story was in fact incorporated into the M*A*S*H finale, if memory serves.
"...They're looting our treasury, just like a 3rd world country..."
A more apt comparison would be just like Enron looting California energy-consumers. And guess who's skimming campaign funds from the loot again?
Excuse me while my head explodes.
You're leaving out the possible role a reconstituted Iraqi Army could play. My sense is that if you picked the right people to lead it, it could win the fight against the Baathists and Al Qaeda, particularly if we have moved to the borders and made our air force available to them.
The secular Iraqis don't want to be hostage to religious fanatics, just as we do not want to be hostage to the Republicans.
The secular Iraqis don't want to be hostage to religious fanatics, just as we do not want to be hostage to the Republicans.
I guess it depends on how you define "secular," and what percentage of the population (and the reconstituted Army) you could call "secular."
In Sunniland at least, it appears secular means either "Baathist diehard" or "angry nationalist,"
and both are quickly finding common ground with "jihadist."
It seems to me that sooner or later the Bush regime will HAVE to do something, as the present situation is untenable. We obviously don't have enough troops to maintain order, we're unlikely to get any more troops from our allies, and come March the troops that are there will have to be rotated out. What happens then?
I keep thinking back 8 months ago, "when we win the battle over Iraq's military then what do we do?" I think the bushies actually believed that the Iraqi people would be peaceful and thankful and quickly help us put it all together again. Now the bushies don't know what to do either and obviously didn't have a good back-up plan. There's not much to do now but continue with bad advice and poor policies and hope for the best.
I think of an old Randy Newman song which goes something like, "they don't like us anyway so let's nuke them all." If we are stupid enough to attack another country then we should be willing to do whatever is necessary to assure success. The nazi's as well as many other totalitarian leaders over all of history knew how to do it, go to each area and kill the most important people and keep killing them until the ones that are left do what you want. Kind of like saddam did it. If we are not willing to do this in order to shove a form of government (including democracy) upon them then we really shouldn't attack them in the first place. If we're not prepared to totally force a government onto a country in ways that have been proven to work then we are essentially going in with a huge amount of hope and a prayer and are destined for failure.
these miscreants will do anything to get what they want. and that is what is so unsettling. will they cut and run or have they already cut and run and left the lugs of the military to hold face as the charade collapasea. look at enron look at w look at cheney. on and on. the defeat happened months ago. how to sell it to the peasant population is the skill that these sickos hon in a true art form. all of your 'what ifs' are happening, just go check out the northern lights or burning west coast. democracy in action, indeed.
Withdrawing to forts in the desert doesn't even make it safe for occupying troops, just look to Lebanon for an empirical example.
Look, Billmon, it's got to be obvious right now that the nightmare scenario for you and me (I live in NYC, as it ahppens) and our families is getting closer with every day US troops are in Iraq.
A UN resolution won't change the fact that the occupying troops are American. A Democrat in the White House won't change the fact that those troops don't speak Arabic and have no training in administering the country or (re)building civil society.
We can't impsoe a pro-American government in iraq. US support will delegitimize whatever regime recieves it. The presence of American soldiers strengthens the hands of the ultras, and with every Iraqi who dies from an American bullet, they get stronger still.
As you say, bringing all our troops hom enow is a short cut to failure. But the alternative is the long hard slog to catastrophe.
Canadian Reader
I often wonder if folks in foreign countries think we Americans just went completely loony or bonkers after 9/11? So damaged were we all. Bush took it all in stride and used it do unspeakable things...
I'm not staying in this country if Bush is re-elected. We Americans are suppose to believed in a set of laws and values and it seems that most of Americans living in the US don't even know what the framermakers intended, they don't care about the need to adherent to the principles of such laws and have compromised and compromised themselves right out of basic our rights.
My great grandfather left Germany after writing a humorous politcal piece that indangered his life> He gather his family and fled to the US leaving may assets behind...after what happened Germany, I think it was a good thing he left - years before Hitler came to power.
Bush has done some incredibly ciminal acts that the press fails to cover and congress fails to to do anything about and the people of the nation don't care about this. Hallibuton's no bid contracts and Cheney's conflict of interest is so ugly it screams...Hallibuton has been in trouble several times now already because of overcharging taxpapers and yet the government uses them still.
Our government is so horribly corrupt these days...and there is no doubt in my mind that this war was motivative by need of campaign contributors to control the oil and gas in Iraq - and that most eductated Americans really know this but still just don't care.
Americans know now that there was NO WMD and they're just fine with Bush's lies. We Americans expect our President to lie, it's become a great American value now, to just lie and lie and lie and it's all okay.
But that isn't who I want to be and it seems only to bother me and hand full of other Americans.
A majority of American can toss the flag around and pretend that we are free instead of being owned more and my corporated biddings.
I just don't like being that kind of citizen. I refuse to be. It seems the new world must be in old Europe somewhere (Canada too) but I think it's with the euro now and people that couldn't make themselves do Bush's bidding because he was such an ugly lying A-hole what with is name calling and indifferent approach to members of the UN - those UN members that didn't kneel down like our government did something right.
Okay, I'm going to buck the trend here for a moment: What's the *best case* medium term scenario you can imagine, US & Iraq, that might actually happen? That is, short of Superman and the Silver Surfer coming to our rescue, let your imagination run wild.
I'll start with a few thoughts (and please, help me out here folks, optimism is hard to come by tonight):
Josh Marshall is hinting that something big may be about to blow re: Cheney and the Niger docs. Let's imagine that things blow truly wide: Plame, Niger, everything, in some public, personalized, ugly way that can't be papered over NOHOW. So badly that multiple 'senior admin officials' are forced to resign, Cheney among them. (I know, I know, but c'mon, bear with me for a moment.)
Tripping right along, this galvanizes public outrage, military disgust, etc. to such a degree that the weight of the Establishment plops down on Bush II, and he is forced to accept some sage old Bush I hands to try to make things right. (How does that Beach Boys song go? Wouldn't it be nice. Buh bu-duh da. )
Meanwhile of course the issue reframing Dean/Clark/whatever tidal wave is cresting....
So, the stage is set, the die is REcast. The most brilliant stodgy old Republican minds available are trying to save us. Regime change is in the air.... Then what?
We turn backflips to bring in the UN, and start working on the Arab League.
Reconstitute the Iraqi army as many have advocated.
Then we need some Grand symbolic gestures of apology that aren't too apologetic (we're still talking republicans in charge for the moment.) But we need to figure out some damn good ones, and fast.
Oh, and hire *Iraqis* to rebuild their country and the looted buildings, etc., and toss out Halliburton.
Okay, it's a dream. Any takers?
Stevelu
Billmon: "The administration started a war ... with victory defined as the creation of a peaceful and stable Iraq."
Absolutely not. That may be the public face they put on, but that was never their real definition of victory. Pick up the Cheney Task Force PDF's from Judicial Watch and you'll see the problem. During sanctions, we had effectively locked ourselves out of oil contracts. While we could buy their oil, our oil companies couldn't make any serious money on it. The solution? "Regieme change". Poof! All contracts cancelled. U.S. companies get the new ones. (BTW: It was the same deal with Afghanistan. Caspian Sea pipeline, in that case.)
Now, that's what it was to start with, but then an interesting idea took hold. If they could loot Iraq for its oil, why not loot it for everything else? After all, it wasn't just oil money that put Bush in the White House, so why not use Iraq to pay off some of the other folks. (This is the plan to sell non-oil assets internationally.)
So this "cut and run" idea doesn't work. Too many people left to be paid off.
Inspector Hound: "It depends on which Bushco faction wins."
Right idea, but the situation is much more complicated than that. BushCo is actually a large coalition of competing interests. As you mention, there is the Rove Political Machine and the Neocon Imperialists. But there is also the Lukid/Fundamentalists, the Cheney Corporatists, and the Powell Doctrinists. Complicating this even further is that some of them strattle groups (Wolfie, Feith, Perle), and some aren't in any (Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld).
The real trick in anticipating possible outcomes is to figure out who is in which camp(s). For example, Rumsfeld and Cheney are considered by most to be Neocons, but though they both signed PNAC statements, neither are. Rumsfeld is simply a hawk (but not an imperialist) who honestly believes he is working for the good of our country. With a different cast of characters, he might actually do so.
Cheney is a pure corporatist who allied with the Neocons simply because he viewed them as a useful tool in advancing his agenda. So useful in fact that he spread them out across Defense, NSC, State, and his own office, not because he believed in their cause, but because they were loyal and because he could co-opt their zeal to his own purposes. They wanted to rule the world; Cheney simply wanted to own it's mineral rights.
Stevelu wrote Okay, it's a dream. Any takers?
Nope, wake up.
Rumsfeld is simply a hawk (but not an imperialist) who honestly believes he is working for the good of our country.
Upon what evidence do you base the belief that Rumsfeld is not an imperialist?
And can't imperialists believe they are working for the "good" of the country -- as they understand it?
Talk about your kremlinology! Thanks Benedict, though I think you're overly-generous to Rumsfeld. How do you see Rice, exactly?
Billmon: Evidence on Rumsfeld
Admittedly subjective. Several items come to mind. (1) Only one PNAC document signed. PNAC is useful to him only because they are hawks like him. (2) His idea to "streamline" the military. He dwells on this. He wants to make them more efficient. I don't particularly agree with his ideas, but I sense him to be honest in his feelings. Now this idea is in PNAC (Rummy may have put it there), but PNAC goes way beyond this. Rummy doesn't seem to. (3) His infamous memo of late. There are solid moments of introspection in this. This is not PNAC talking. You never see this level of introspection from PNAC. (4) Rumors of late that Rummy is being abandoned. PNAC are fierce loyalists. Abandoning one of their own is seen as an admission of fault, and they just don't do it.
Is all of this "proof"? Not really, but I'm trying to look under the surface for personal motivations, and I just don't get the same sense about Rummy that I do about the PNACers.
Inspector Hound: Ah, yes: Condi. Pretty woman, especially for an intellectual. But that's all she is; an intellectual. She belongs on a college campus. She is way out of her league here. These boys (esp., Cheney, Rove) are playing serious hardball, and she doesn't know the game. And remember, her academic expertise is Russia, not the Middle East. She really had to depend on intel, and obviously that was well corrupted.
Note: I know it's fashonable these days to view everything through the prism of Neocons and Leo Strauss, but I just went through two months of solid research with the Niger FAXs as my starting point. Who and why? I eventually ended up back to 1991 in Iraq and to 1996 in Afghanistan. The PNACers were around some of this, but could simply not explain it all. They simply didn't have the power. That's when I started looking for coalitions that might be sufficient.
All of this ended up in the Cheney energy task force. I know what he's hiding. And he damned better hope that he can get away with it.
If the troops move into a few isolated forts they might as well call themselves Crusaders while they're at it.