{"id":1016,"date":"2006-03-01T00:36:55","date_gmt":"2006-03-01T00:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:36","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:36","slug":"canaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1016","title":{"rendered":"Canaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comments to my post below, uber-commenter Chris raises a simple and direct question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ll play your game, AL: what metrics would you find acceptable in determining that the war in Iraq has failed? Do we have to stay in country for 20 years, as allahthatjazz suggests above? or is there any set of conditions that could take place within the calendar year that might make you reconsider your position?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I replied<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What’s the metric? Militarily, ongoing, organized, large-scale fighting between militias. Politically, the renunciation – and not just a theatrical renunciation – by significant blocs from the political process.<\/p>\n

\nThe real metric is the willingness of the US public to support the war, and what frustrates me (and I’m not yet articulating it) is the circular nature of the argument, which goes “we can’t support the war because the American people aren’t supporting the war enough to win”.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So let’s go to today’s newspapers…in today’s Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the days that followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine, Iraq seemed within a hair’s breadth of civil war. But an aggressive U.S. and Kurdish diplomatic campaign appears for now to have coaxed the country back from open conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, according to Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats speaking in interviews on Monday.
\n…<\/b>
\nAmong those most upset by the Sunni boycott threat was Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who was able to take a central role in the negotiations because he was perceived as a neutral party.<\/p>\n

\nIronically, the Kurds stood to gain the most from a civil conflict. They have long wanted an independent state, and revolted against Saddam Hussein in 1991 only to be brutally repressed. But Talabani was deeply troubled by the Samarra crisis, said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who was in contact with Talabani throughout the crisis.<\/p>\n

\n“I’ve known President Jalal Talabani for over 20 years,” Galbraith said. “It is the most pessimistic I’ve seen him, and that includes being in Iraq the night the uprising collapsed and we were fleeing for our lives. Here, he was profoundly disturbed about the future of Iraq.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a central figure in the population that flat-out wins when the nation of Iraq collapses – depressed by the risk of collapse, in a position to profit from that collapse, and stepping up to keep it from happening.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall any parallels to that in Lebanon in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. And while the risk of collapse is obviously there, no I don\u2019t think we’re near it yet and I still believe that we can avoid it. The question is – will we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal looks for impending collapse in Iraq, finds some indicators that it might not be all that close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}