Ali Allawi’s book ‘The Occupation of Iraq‘.
In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation’s “shocking” mismanagement of his country – a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had “turned their backs on their would-be liberators.”
“The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order,” Ali A. Allawi concludes in “The Occupation of Iraq,” newly published by Yale University Press.
I’ve got a high tolerance for incompetence and mismanagement – since much of human history seems to be based on it – and so I don’t throw my hands up in despair when people talk about how incompetent the occupation has been.
But if we’re going to get better at it, we’d better list and learn from our mistakes.
Well said, on both points.
What exactly does “Iraqis had ‘turned their backs on their would-be liberators'” mean?
A) Does it mean that they supported the liberation initially, but because of the incompetent and corrupt government, together of course with all the terrorism, they’ve decided they were better off with Saddam? Perhaps they have given up all hope of defeating the terrorists, and wish for the U.S. to leave and let their country meet its awful fate sooner rather than later?
B) Or does it mean that they supported the liberation initially, but because of the incompetent and corrupt government, together of course with all the terrorism, they now support the terrorists?
There’s a big difference here. Writers are constantly implying that there are many people in Group B. I don’t think there is anyone in Group B.
Also, if the U.S. had used — rather than purged — the Baath party and army, isn’t it clear that they would have been condemned today for doing exactly that? What side is Allawi on? Is he pro-US and anti-terrorist but thinks things are worse now than under Saddam, or is he on the other side?
Years ago my mother and I enjoyed the author Kenneth Roberts. He wrote historical novels about our Revolution, both from our point of view and one novel dealing with a British sympathizer living in Massachusetts. At the conclusion of reading several of his novels, my mother said it would appear that the side making the FEWER MISTAKES, won the war. It would appear this rules still exists today.
It’s self serving fantasy for woulda-coulda-shoulda.
Iraq was not a nation but a collection of tribes that hated each other formed under the stinking corpse of the Ottoman Empire. Same as Yugoslavia.
As long as Tito or Saddam were around running various degrees of police states with gulags and mass graves, the collection of tribes that hated each other could co-exist under strong man rule.
No man lives forever and exit Tito (through natural causes) meant exit Yugoslavia. Saddam was like all men going to die sooner or later and we would have likely seen ..
The exact same thing.
After Tito it was inevitable that the Croats and Slovenes being Catholic and Western would separate from their Serbian Orthodox rivals. That Bosnian Muslims would demand Muslim independence and the Albanians would support their Kosovar Albanian brethren.
That same process was inevitable with Saddam — Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia were all going to go their own way. With big power involvement just as in the Balkans. Fear of what came after held back the first Bush in Gulf War 1. Of course Saddam had his own risks. Imagine Saddam vs. Iran in the nuclear sweepstakes.
We could have had the best and most competent group of administrators in Iraq on day one and not a darn bit of difference would have been seen.
It is the tribal struggle over the dead and stinking corpse of Iraq just as in Yugoslavia that causes problems. We will be in Kosovo and Bosnia for decades to come. Same with Iraq.
I think Jim is right about the foreseeable parallel between Iraq and Yugoslavia.
That illustrates why this Bush administration has been such a disaster.
At least Bush 1 looked into the future, and saw that toppling Saddam would lead to an unmanageable mess.
I would have some understanding and forgiveness if the Bush 2 administration had thoughtfully analyzed the mess, planned carefully, and believed that it would be manageable. But there’s no evidence of that. The evidence is that they expected Paris in 1944, rapid American hegemony over first Iraq, then the whole Middle East, and finally the New American Century of Pax Americana ruling the whole world.
Saddam’s potential nuclear weapons were nothing but an excuse.
Rosy Scenario turned out to be a fickle bitch, as so often happens, and we have squandered blood, treasure, honor, and reputation that will take decades to restore, if we get the chance.
A.L. hits the cogent point. Our gravest error, without question, has been the unwillingness to confront the brutal facts as they came to light. I dont even want to fight about it any more- the excuse making and enabling of incompetance and idiocy has put me beyond the patience to debate after 4 long years. Lets just say that in hindsight our mistakes and shortcomings are inargueable. Many were in realtime as well, but sadly that is water under the bridge.
But we _must_ learn from that lesson. We are out of mulligans and running out of time. The wind way be shifting our way, but that can still turn on its head at any moment and we must be flexible and nimble to prevent that. This newest Al Sadr story is our next test, we can’t ignore the man any more now that he is openly sowing violence and insurrection- it simply wont due to pretend it isnt happening because it is inconvenient.
The lesson from this war is to ignore the “Stockdale Paradox”:http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/goodToGreat/ch4_p83.html at your peril:
_“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”_
Beard claims to be against “the mess”. But in his talk about “American hegemony”, it becomes clear that he really supports it, and is in fact on the other side. Is Allawi, I wonder (again)?
On March 11, Seymour Hersh in a radio interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran telling all that he knows about the American military strategy towards Iran including what he called “an intensive planning for an air strike” and “some sort of on the ground operation.”
The interview was transcribed at the IRIB website (h/t NRO’s Michael Rubin, emphasis added throughout):
http://english.irib.ir/ARCHIVE/INTER/March07/Seymour%20Hersh.htm
Well Yugoslavia and Iraq are pretty much the same thing — creations of the British out of the remnants of defeated empires in the aftermath of WW-I.
Difference is that in Yugolavia, the United States intervened on the basis of Wilson’s doctrine of self-determination taken all the way down to the tribal level people talk about, while in Iraq we applied the doctrine of a unified nation state with some form of majoritarian rule. Think of the Pravoslavni (for those who speak Greek, the word means Ortho-dox as in orthos meaning straight and doxha meaning praise as in religiously correct) Serbs as Shia, the Catholic Croatians as Sunni (actually the doctrinal divisions between the two are much less than the divide between Shia and Sunni but some of the hatreds are as strong), and think of the Russians, whom we don’t fully trust post Cold War as the Iranians, having strong religious and cultural ties to the Shia (Serbs), who are viewed with suspicion among the Sunni (Croatians) as well as in the West.
I mean which policy was incompetent — the one that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia or the one that led to the quagmire in Iraq? The main difference is that in one conflict we let the wogs do all of the suffering and dying, like the wog who was my uncle who suffered and died from untreated vascular disease because of economic sanctions and did this in the cold because we bombed the power plants. In that other conflict our own soldiers are in the middle of it doing some suffering and dying of their own, although the main share of suffering and death is dealt to the people over in Iraq.
I mean, go ahead, ignore what was done “in our name” to what was Yugoslavia but wring your hands and wave protest signs about the incompetence of George W Bush and his neocon cabal in Iraq because it is all about us — our soldiers, our tax dollars, our vision for a peaceful world, our honor, our reputation, what people in the world think of us — and if countries and social structures get wrecked without a direct American troop involvement, it is all out of sight, out of mind, and having nothing to do with us and not our problem.
Beard — After 9/11 the risk of letting Saddam lurch about erratically was too large. A man sitting on an ocean of oil who would not make a bargain and stick with it ..
And more importantly was NOT immortal.
You missed the main point: Yugoslavia was ONLY intact as long Tito lived. As soon as he died the fighting began and …
Drew us in anyway as Europe/NATO could not fight it’s way out of a paper bag.
Saddam was not immortal. As soon as he died we’d have a WORSE mess because Iraq would be splitting apart without US troops to influence things on the ground.
And if Iran’s nukes are problematic, imagine Saddam and Iran both racing to nukes and bidding up North Korea or Pakistan’s or Libya’s supplies. [Saddam did not need a domestic nuke agency any more than Apple Computer has to make stuff in Cupertino instead of Malaysia. Globalization applies to nuclear proliferation too.]
CHANGE was coming if we liked it or not. Change with Saddam dying or one of his sons killing him or being assassinated. CHANGE with Saddam launching another war or Iran launching one against him or whatever. CHANGE with Saddam using people like Abdul Sheik Ressam (only uncaught 1993 WTC bomber) to collaborate with Osama (as Clinton’s Justice Dept. charged).
The United States cannot stop change anymore than Canute could hold back the sea. Only acting to maximize our interests can the US navigate the risks change creates.
“New Century of Pax America ruling the World?” No. That’s delusional lefty hatred for GWB overthrowing their pet dictator Saddam. The Bush Admin hoped to break the logjam and promote liberalization by overthrowing the worst dictator in the ME. A bet that obviously failed. But the bet was on a liberal ME that would be akin to South Korea or Taiwan. Remaking the society so there would be no more support for terrorism.
Doomed to failure because Muslim society is illiberal and tribal and incapable of change. Millennia of cousin marriage has had the same effect on Muslim society as that of the Hapsburgs. The severely retarded and deformed Emperor Ferdinand was reported to have bellowed in a State Dinner “I am the Emperor and I want noodles.”
GWB’s fundamental error was in thinking that Muslim society could ever be reformed in the first place without a great deal of killing. Japanese and German society only changed after most of their young men were dead.
And sadly after another whacking great atrocity against America we will get exactly to that place.
Jill — Hersh is delusional. He’s been predicting an American strike against Iran since 2003. He’s nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Mullahs and openly admires them. Interesting only in what it tells you about the Mullahs and their propaganda effort.
Armed Liberal: “But if we’re going to get better at it, we’d better list and learn from our mistakes.”
There were two Iraq wars. The first, which was good, was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That worked.
The second, which was bad and resulted inevitably in fiasco, was to liberate and empower a bunch of friendlies who were in fact hostiles, to build a nation that never existed nor could have existed, and to let freedom reign throughout the Muslim world, when what Islam aims at is not freedom but world domination.
Our mistake was to fight that war at all, and the lesson we should learn is that “you broke it, you own it” must not be our guide in fighting Islam.
–
#2 from LTEC: “What exactly does “Iraqis had ‘turned their backs on their would-be liberators'” mean?”
A large majority of Iraqis approve of attacks on Americans. That is what it means.
This is why “improvised explosive devices” are a threat – because too often Iraqis provide information to the Islamic terrorists who set them, and not to the infidel suckers who are under attack.
This is an insane war. We are fighting to protect our murderers from each other. We should go.
First principles first, Iraq has been composed
of three vilayet, Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra going back 500 years to the Ottomans and before. The area has been geographically continuous for a long time. It is true that
the Kurdish region was partially partitioned
to give the French some stake in the oil concession. Baghdad’s authority extended as far
as the Dulaimi (Al Anbar) region. And Basra’s
overlapped with Kuwait; although the Awazim and the Al sabah’s are entirely different. Speaking of the Dulaimi; one of them was Allawi’s Defense Minister, who had to flee to
Paris, after being involved in an embezzling
scheme, to the tune of several billion dollars;
which has left the Iraqi security forces chronically out gunned and out armored. That is
not to say that all of Allawi’s rehabilitated
Baathists have the same problem; witness Gen.
Shahwani and Gen. Thabit of the Muthanna division but many did. The failure to tackle
these forces and their assault on the Shia
at every level, bred the militia retribution
we see today. The alternative of maintaining
the bulk of the Baathist officer corps, the
Mukharabat, the SSO, among other elements was
not realistic. The Brits tried exactly this
strategy in the 20s, and were rewarded with
the thawra of 1920; an alienated Shia majority
that was virtually shut out of power; and a
scheming Sunni tribal based officer corps that
leaned toward fascism at first opportunity. A soft hand typified by Khalilshad’snegotiations with the insurgents has certainly hampered our cause. The reward; was the bombing of the Samarra Mosque; which touched off the last
major round of bloodletting.
Ironically, Mr. Milenkovic is right, but not for the reasons he claims; Milosevic was a
genocidal bureaucrat, who was enacting the
recommendations of the Serbian Academy of Arts
and Sciences study with regards to ethnic cleansing. through the efforts of Mladic &
Arkan. Ironically, by the time of the Kosovo
War, the proponents of action on this view; Misha Glenny, George Kenney, Susan Sontag had
done an about face. This should have suggested
how stalwart liberals would be with regards to
Afghanistan & Iraq. (Regardless of how the UN international tribunal ignored this)But Serbia was in itself was not a threat. to Europe. Now it is, considering the stories of Islamic insurgents like KSM, Moussaoi, Al Midhar and Al Hazmi,
to consider a few. Mostly due to the spread
of Wahhabi and Salafi influences. A current
example seen in a recent IHT dispatch concerns
events arising out of Novi Pazar and points south.
Jim Rockford [#10] writes:
bq. _”New Century of Pax America ruling the World?” No. That’s delusional lefty hatred for GWB overthrowing their pet dictator Saddam._
Sorry, Jim, I was referring to delusional neo-con writings from the Project for the New American Century.
And, speaking of lefties with “their pet dictator Saddam”, do you have a lot of photos of lefties like this one of “Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ ?
As for hatred for GWB, the right word is probably “contempt” rather than “hatred”. He has earned every bit of it, piece by piece. I can’t speak for others, but although I voted against him in 2000 and 2004, I actually wrote admiringly of his speech on September 20, 2001. (In retrospect, it was probably speechwriter Micheal Gerson I was admiring.)
David Blue —
Read my whole comment.
I have no doubt that there are many Iraqis who support terrorists and who want to kill Americans. I’m simply
claiming that they didn’t turn their backs on us; they always wanted to kill us.
Beard —
If you’re looking for photo ops:
Albright in North Korea, Pelosi in Syria.
But that’s not the point.
As far as the current war goes, there are many
prominent and popular left-wingers who have come out
for the other side. I’m sure you are not one of them,
but it would be nice if you made it clear that, however
unwise it may be to be fighting this war, you agree that the U.S. is on the right side and the people fighting us are monsters.
Re: #14 from LTEC: I read your whole comment, but I misunderstood you. That was my fault. Thanks for the correction.
By the way: “Also, if the U.S. had used — rather than purged — the Baath party and army, isn’t it clear that they would have been condemned today for doing exactly that?”
I agree entirely.
Beard —
At no time and place have the “neo-cons” argued for America ruling the world. Instead as they have argued, America can only secure it’s own security by promoting reform and liberalism throughout the Muslim world. Specifically freedom, democracy, and rights for women.
Which of these do you object to?
About the worst you can say about the Neo Cons is that they did not understand that Muslims by definition cannot partake in Democracy, freedom, and rights for women. Because Islam denies individual freedom, rule of law separate from God, and rights of women.
Yes of course Rumsfeld shook Saddam’s hands. He also efficiently toppled him. If your point is that neither Rumsfeld nor Bush nor any man living is sufficiently morally pure to conduct foreign policy, well point taken. More evidence IMHO of the feminization of the Western World where moral purity ala Carry Nation’s crusades take precedence over … efficacy.
If you argue that GWB failed to reform Iraq or the wider Muslim world I would agree. I would go further and say that without killing a goodly portion of the male population of the Muslim world we will ALWAYS be in conflict with them, and the Muslim world is trapped by both Islam and genetics (cousin marriage over millennia) into barbaric Dark Ages Savagery and always will be short of something akin to WWII’s killing off great amounts of men in their societies.
But I would argue that you are deluding yourself if you think that letting Saddam drive events was a wise course or that absent invading and toppling Iraq things would be better.
Was Saddam immortal? No. Was he stable like Tito and could deals made with him “stick” … No. Did Saddam have an essentially neutral position relative to the US ala Tito? No he was hostile.
I don’t blame GWB because I know no leader is either morally pure nor omniscient and the cost of NOT acting to drive events was shown on 9/11. Saddam could have choked on a date and things would be a zillion times worse.
AT LEAST the US military is in Iraq and can drive events. Given that Iran has 3,000 centrifuges in action and has very likely only a few months to have material for nuclear weapons, it’s a very GOOD thing to have all those guys there.
Saddam isn’t getting nukes (or buying them from NK or Pakistan or whoever). That’s hardly a trivial benefit unless you’d want to bet cities on Saddam’s goodwill. Not a bet I’d make.
_”And, speaking of lefties with “their pet dictator Saddam”, do you have a lot of photos of lefties like this one of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam ?”_
I always find it ironic that lefties have kittens over these pictures while in the same breath insisting that we negotiate with Iran and Syria. I’ve got a picture of Nancy Pelosi shaking hands with Bashar Asad thats less than a week old.
I guess the difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives stop paying off their pet thugs when they stop cooperating- which is right about when liberals decide they need to start paying them off. What a world we live in.
Nothing in this particularly messed up part of the world is EVER the fault of the people who LIVE THERE.
This tendency is as much to blame for the fact that post-Saddam Iraq is as horrible as Saddam’s Iraq as is the incompetence of those who naively believed Iraqis would be willing and able to make democracy work in the near term.
“What side is Allawi on?”
He is on Allawi’s side. No other.
_About the worst you can say about the Neo Cons is that they did not understand that Muslims by definition cannot partake in Democracy, freedom, and rights for women. Because Islam denies individual freedom, rule of law separate from God, and rights of women._
Really? That’s the worst that can be said?
How about jeopardizing success on the ground by sending pollitical appointees to Iraq over those who were the “most qualified”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html.
How about an administration which “refuses to accept anything but best-case scenarios”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/?
I think the biggest mistake this president/administration made is assuming that democracy is inevitable. They assumed that if you let people free, democracy will naturally create itself. And so, they removed Sadam with much planning and vigor, and tried to stand back and let the seeds of democracy grow on their own.
This is naive, not just in the ME, but anywhere. Democracy can be difficult to grow, especially in places that have been brutally sedated for generations,(with or without Islam) However, since this administration has a tendency to favor loyalty over debate, it was blindsided against preparring ‘worst-case’ scenarios that could have prevented some (or all) of the problems we now face.
Is it all Bush’s fault? Of course not. However, the president will always carry the undue burden of failure, or the glory of success.
As it happened, author Ali Allawi was the guest on the Diane Rheem Show on NPR. She often picks Netroots-type Leftist guests and gives them a sympathetic hearing; the debate often seems to be between whether the Bad Repulicans and Bad W are entirely to blame, or whether it is America itself that is irredeemably bad. Usually her voice sends me back to a music station.
continuing…
The pieces of the interview that I heard made Ali Allawi seem like an intelligent, articulate, secular, reasonable Iraqi exile. Exactly the sort of elite that we hoped, in 2003, would be willing to step forward and make a committment to returning to Iraq and transforming it into a decent, functioning state. Allawi did so; he served in Ministerial positions in the Transitional Government.
Events from 2004 to the present has amply demonstrated that people like Allawi have a very small constituency within Iraq. Secular parties with “reasonable”, pan-Iraqi platforms get 2% to 8% of the vote, IIRC.
To riff on another commenter, Rosy Scenario confidently predicted that people like Allawi would populate the upper reaches of the New Iraq. Ms. Scenario was entirely wrong about that. Allawi, like so many of the well-meaning, decent, English-speaking, educated, patriotic exiles was entirely out of touch with the passions of the major groupings within Iraq. His hopes, like those of the Neocons, turn out to have little or no connection to what religous Shi’ias/religious Sunnis/Ba’athists/Kurds want for Iraq.
Nonetheless, he seems to have a realistic analysis about the situation as it stands. He presents a nuanced picture of Iraq and US policy. One of his points is the paradox within the surge: US successes will empower forces in the Iraqi government that are more aligned with Iran than with the West.
I would have expected that deep thinkers in Washington would have anticipated this issue and developed contingencies, but at this point the record of the Bush Administration in considering realistic scenarios and undertaking contingency planning speaks for itself. Probably safer to speculate that the points raised by Allawi, and for that matter by commenters in this thread, have not been anticipated by those in Bush’s inner circle.
AMac writes –
“Probably safer to speculate that the points raised by Allawi, and for that matter by commenters in this thread, have not been anticipated by those in Bush’s inner circle.”
…but they sure as heck need to be, which is why I’m interested in reading the book.
A.L.
Rockford —
You lost me with genetics.
Jim Rockford [#17]:
bq. _I would go further and say that without killing a goodly portion of the male population of the Muslim world we will ALWAYS be in conflict with them, and the Muslim world is trapped by both Islam and genetics (cousin marriage over millennia) into barbaric Dark Ages Savagery and always will be short of something akin to WWII’s killing off great amounts of men in their societies._
This is where you really scare me. This and similar statements you have made elsewhere in these discussions.
It wouldn’t take much text-replacement in some of these arguments, replacing “Muslims” with “Jews”, and fixing up a few details, and one might think these arguments came from Hitler or Ahmadinejad, arguing in favor of the Holocaust.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall you advocating elsewhere a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran if they refused to give up their nuclear program. You say, we have to prevent the loss of an American city to nuclear terrorism. But, for fear of a hypothetical horror, should we take the initiative to kill tens of millions of people who have not attacked us? Which side of WWII were we on?
There are people who accuse the Left of blaming America for everything. That’s a silly position to take, but this kind of language feeds right into that. It certainly _is_ blame-worthy to argue that we have no alternative to “killing a goodly portion of the male population of the Muslim world”.
I could be chastised for what are, indeed, _ad hominem_ remarks. But I actually do want _you_, Jim Rockford, _personally_, to look in the mirror and ask yourself what kind of fundamental morality would allow you to kill millions of people because of the belief that sometime in the future they might do something terrible to our country.
Go read about the “Stanford Prison Experiment”:http://www.prisonexp.org/, where a well-meaning professor at Stanford suddenly realized that he had gotten himself, and his students, into some very troubling moral waters. He woke up and backed off. Maybe you will too.
. . .
Yes, I realize that there are serious problems in the world. We have serious enemies who hope and plan to do us harm. We need to find ways to protect ourselves, and to put an end to the threat.
But that doesn’t mean to turn ourselves into people who condone genocide, and who write off large ethnic and/or religious populations of the world as irredeemable monsters deserving only death. Doing that would cost us not only our lives (which we only have on temporary loan anyway), but our souls.
Beard –
Jim’s position worries me, too.
I think he’s wrong about the problem and the solution.
But here’s something to think about. What do you think it would take in the way of events to make Jim’s position the majority position in the U.S.?
And what would the world be like when that happens?
Preventing that is pretty close to the top of my ‘to-do’ list.
A.L.
A.L.
I hope and pray that it would _never_ become the majority opinion in the US.
The event most likely to make it happen, though, would be exactly what Jim fears: a nuke going off in NYC, or LA, or some other American city. Dozens of groups would promptly claim credit, quite possibly not including the actual culprit.
Fear is what mobilizes hatred and genocide. Fear can propel an extreme minority into power, and can silence the majority who would otherwise restrain them. Read Joseph Goebbels if you want to know how to make it happen. And arm yourself against it, because there are plenty of unscrupulous people around who would be perfectly willing to transform America into Nazi Germany, as long as they had the power.
How to prevent it? Why haven’t American terrorist movements arisen? When groups of nut-cases try for it, why do they fail? Because the ordinary people reject it, and turn them in to the authorities. What would it take for this attitude to extend to the rest of the world? I don’t think it takes democracy or Christianity. But it does take trust in the honesty and justice of the government.
It’s not out of the question to get there, world-wide, but we’ve been taking more steps backward than forward in recent years.
B.
I belive that a well placed nuke can be the answer. However why use a nuke when a few well aimed smart bombs could do the same job for a lot less money and negative press. So I’m some where between Jim Rockford and Beard. I got the blue dog democrat blues.
I realize modern Turkey is far from an angelic state and that they have their own problems with radical & violent Islamofascists, but isn’t Turkey a pretty good argument against the “Muslims/Arabs are incapable of democracy”?
IMO it’s ridiculous to claim that the problems of germinating democracy in Iraq have anything to do with genetics (and I think could be labeled as “racist” quite reasonably), and blaming Islam for it doesn’t make sense for the above reason. I don’t doubt that it’s harder to get democracy to work in such a circumstance, but it clearly isn’t impossible. Doesn’t that then leave culture as the culprit, by a process of elimination? And isn’t culture something that can be changed, albeit slowly?
I’ve discussed this a bit before….
I beleive both groups fear the emergence of the next ‘Hitler’. I beleive the farther right you go (presently & historically) the more you fear that such a character exists NOW, and that we must go farther and farther to stop him/them. ON the flip side, the farther left you go, the greater you fear that our military power/foreign policy is causing us to become/or become allied with ‘Hitler’, and wants us to avoid that route at all costs.
Somewhere inbetween is a viable military/foreign policy strategy. However, partisanship destroys the middle ground and sets us purely on one course (or the inverse).
“I mean, go ahead, ignore what was done “in our name” to what was Yugoslavia but wring your hands and wave protest signs about the incompetence of George W Bush and his neocon cabal in Iraq because it is all about us — our soldiers, our tax dollars, our vision for a peaceful world, our honor, our reputation, what people in the world think of us — and if countries and social structures get wrecked without a direct American troop involvement, it is all out of sight, out of mind, and having nothing to do with us and not our problem.”
Damn. That cuts to the quick.
A point well made and as this thread shows, very quickly dismissed by both sides.
It was however the reason I supported the war. I note some here very quick to praise Bush 1 for his policies… that lead to the genocidal murder of 100,000’s of men, women, and children that believed we cared and wanted to help. Easily forgotten if our treasure and our sons are not part of the mess, but no less of a mess.
On a related note, I want to say that its easy to blame the US for making the mess, but that’s a bit of hubris as well. Ofttime clumsy giant we may be, the mess was far bigger than the US made on its own and it was plenty messy before we took some responcibility for it.
Judith:
Arundel, Northwest Passage, the Hornblower Series, etc. Northwest Passage (and to a lesser extent Arundel) were pure romances. In a sense they were shocking romances, since nothing but romance really played any part in the stories. I was probably fundamentally corrupted by Roberts… so much so that I can’t even remember my state of mind before I read Arundel.
There’s a nascent “public intelligence” that puts the NYT to shame. Perhaps they’re also leaving room for some of that romantic idiocy.
(Romance and fantasy are hardly the same thing.)
David Blue #11:
Eh? That’s sort of like saying the Civil War was a bad idea because we muffed Reconstruction.
Come again?
Jim #17:
Can’t think of any other strategy, because there isn’t one. No matter who’s calling the shots.
Mark #18:
Heh.
Nicholos #30:
Not only that, but take a look at a map. The troublemakers in the Levant are bracketed by Israel and Turkey, who have common interests as well as a compatible perspective (as upstart powers emerging from Euro roots). Syria takes a quick look at this situation and can only hope that no one else is looking.
But my bottom line is Arundel. One of my primary protagonists prior to the Iraq War was a Shi’ite named “Salem” from Australia, from whom I haven’t heard since about 6 months after the invasion. He went back to Iraq, not because he thought the invasion such a great idea, but because he couldn’t stay away. But before he signed off he was “resigned to hope”. Dragged kicking and screaming, as it were…
I’m hoping he’s writing a story that’ll inspire, against all odds.
#33 from Demosophist: David Blue #11:
Eh? That’s sort of like saying the Civil War was a bad idea because we muffed Reconstruction.
Come again?
How is turning a successful war to topple a hostile regime into an unrealizable nation-building project to be compared to it being a bad idea for (the Union? the Confederacy?) to fight a civil war on the ground that Reconstruction was “muffed” (though it was historically successful, as demonstrated by the state of the Union now)?
Come again?
Good essay. I do wonder why it is that so many will resist the evidence of their own observations. Magical or delusional thinking? Some people, like me, saw the outcome as likely to be very detrimental to our interests, way before the first shot was fired. Not prognosticating just widely read in geopolitics and military history.
Again the hysteria over Iran or DPRK is adverse to our best interests. The real threats we face are all internal, looting the wealth of entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, and wage earners by capital pirates. The crappification of our schools. And the growth of a radical sectarian religious movement fueled by the lunacy of the leaders and the credulity of the led.
These are all self created problems whose solution is entirely domestic. This period after WW2 gave us an unprecedented chance to finally make a decent society. We are blowing it by stages, fearful when we should be confident and petty when we should be great.
Rockford’s opinions are what I call Mitigated Nonsense. Among his comic book calls for mass slaughter of Muslims, their genetic problems and his opinions being unceasingly generated by fear and other nonsense, he mitigates these extremist fantasies with good insight vis-a- vis his comparison of Iraq to Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately, the nonsense far outweighs the mitigation.
I see a deal of slamming Jim Rockford as an individual.
I don’t think much of it.
If you think you can win an argument on facts and reason, go for it. Trying to win my making the opponent shut up, by making it socially too costly to uphold certain views, is an inferior approach. It is obvious that attackers using this method prefer not to rely on being able to uphold their own positions rationally.
Obligatory on-topic comments:
“The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order,” Ali A. Allawi concludes…
If anything dropped in the pool is soon corroded, it is reasonable to guess that this is a pool of acid.
If any government introduced to a people is soon highly corrupt, even if it came from a people who by reasonable global and historical standards are less than averagely corrupt, it is reasonable to guess that the people are corrupt, and that key features of the native culture are conducive to corruption.
“The real threats we face are all internal, looting the wealth of entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, and wage earners by capital pirates.”
No agenda here. No sense of irony either.
“This period after WW2 gave us an unprecedented chance to finally make a decent society.”
Finally, eh? You know, I’ve seen alot of societies and I have to wonder what your definition of decent is. As if I didn’t know.
#37 from David Blue at 2:33 pm on Apr 11, 2007
I see a deal of slamming Jim Rockford as an individual.
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I clearly stated
Rockford’s opinions are what I call Mitigated Nonsense.
I have a problem with Rockford’s opinions. I don’t know anything about Jim Rockford so I assume your post was not referring to me.
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If any government introduced to a people is soon highly corrupt, even if it came from a people who by reasonable global and historical standards are less than averagely corrupt, it is reasonable to guess that the people are corrupt, and that key features of the native culture are conducive to corruption.
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It is reasonable to assume that the body politic is susceptible to corruption, not that the people are corrupt. There is a difference.
I would go further to say that this insight is not earth shattering in regards to the Middle East after 6,000 unbroken years of corruption across the region. Unfortunately, the present administration and its NeoCon strategists completely ignored this or worse were unaware of it, being, as they were, fixated on their Pollyanna fantasies of making the ME Safe for Democracy.
I am a conservative and I expect good hard headed thing from Republican strategists. I also expect the ability to admit and learn from their mistakes. This administration seems incapable of either. I read this morning that Newt admitted the human role in global warming. Thank God. Finally, there is hope for a reasoned debate and input into the solving of a very complex problem.
The religious right and the Neo Cons have hijacked the conservative movement and led it off into LA LA Land. Let’s get it back. the first thing to do would be to purge the Bushites from any position of power.
#35 from Tom Perry at 3:37 am on Apr 11, 2007
Excellent post. The geo strategic blunder committed here was the most basic. Don’t create a power vacuum. We have created the circumstances in which a Regional War (if we are lucky) is unavoidable.
We have aligned ourselves with the Shiites, who are not only a minority in the Muslim world but form a dangerous minority in the countries in the region that are our traditional allies.
We have aligned ourselves with the Kurds in opposition to our traditional allies the turks.
We have strengthened the Iranians at the expense of our Gulf allies
If we have proved anything by our occupation of Iraq, it is that there are limits to our power and we are incapable of nation building in the area. Most especially if we continue not to listen to those in the area who had cautioned us against this mindless policy.
Strategic withdrawal from Iraq looks more and more like the only feasible option. Tying down a large part of our army in what amounts to fruitless Children’s Crusade in the ME, makes no sense.
By the way, don’t look now, but it looks very much like we might not have won the Cold war after all.
David Blue [#37],
My comment [#26] was explicitly addressed to Jim Rockford. My intention was (and is) to call him on a rhetorical position that he takes repeatedly, that essentially advocates genocide. I can’t believe that any right-thinking person in America today could take that position seriously. But I also think it’s irresponsible to advocate that position non-seriously.
Rather than saying, “Oh, that’s just Jim, and he’s actually a good fellow”, I believe it’s important to make an explicit statement that genocide is not an acceptable solution to any problem. Just as one would hope not to remain silent when an acquaintance makes a racist joke.
It’s easy for otherwise good people to get carried away, perhaps by logic, perhaps by fear, and find themselves advocating things that they, themselves, do not actually believe in, once they consider them carefully. That’s why I suggested reading the history of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Presumably good people, thoughtful faculty, well-raised students, got themselves into a pathological situation, and had to drag themselves out, not altogether willingly.
I believe that Jim Rockford is a moral person, whether we disagree or not about matters of fact or policy. Therefore, as an article of faith, I believe that he (and others of like mind) can be urged to take a fresh look at what they are saying. If they realize that their statements amount to advocacy of genocide, I believe they can and will change their minds.
It’s a matter of trying to speak to the good in someone, not of slamming them as an individual.
Cheers,
B.
Re: #41 from Beard,
I’ve said many time that a nuclear “solution” is impossible, impossible for us even to attempt, immoral even if it was possible which it isn’t, and entirely useless and harmful to talk about. It is a red herring that too often diverts the discussion from things that are do-able, moral and likely effective, and that require thoughtful discussion, which “drop A-bombs on them!!” does not.
Given that that’s my view, and the only one I would have a clue on how to defend, I have nothing more to say.
David Blue [#42],
We agree on this.
My point in [#26,#41] is that I wasn’t “slamming” Jim Rockford as an individual. However, I was trying to speak directly to him as an individual person, in a way that he might actually hear what I was saying, as opposed to simply playing another round of the ping-pong game that blog discussions often are.
#40 TOC
Thanks for saying so.
Interesting comment about the cold war. Chaotic freedom beat organized security, and planned economies… and since then, we have moved toward security and planning. Homeland Security = Committee for State Security, and WTO = ComEcon.
It could drive one to drink.