{"id":471,"date":"2004-08-01T00:27:20","date_gmt":"2004-08-01T00:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:41","slug":"srebenica_on_the_tigris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"Srebenica on the Tigris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juan Cole lays out<\/a> his notion of how the ‘Kerry Policy’ in Iraq might work. Go read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

No, really.<\/p>\n

OK, in case you didn’t. Let me summarize:<\/p>\n

* Iraq holds elections, gets UN legitimacy.<\/p>\n

* Asks for UN peacekeeping force.<\/p>\n

* The UN agrees, because force is under UN command, not US command, and because the Iraqis asked.<\/p>\n

Here’s the result he hopes for:<\/p>\n

This UN force, with vastly reduced US participation under a UN general, would give the new, elected Iraqi government time to rebuild its own armed forces and national guard. As effective Iraqi divisions were trained and equipped, they could begin relieving UN troops, allowing all the multinational forces, including those of the US, gradually to rotate out of the country as they were no longer needed. At the end of this process, Iraq would have an army of 60,000 men, able to maintain order in the country but posing no threat to neighbors. It would be an independent country, midwifed by the United Nations. The US would have finally gracefully exited the country, since it is unlikely that an elected Iraqi government would want foreign troops on its soil any longer than necessary.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait……there may be problems with this idea. He continues:<\/p>\n

I would be the first to admit that the plan is not perfect. Sometimes UN troops have not performed very well.<\/b> Iraq is a complex and highly armed society, and would be the biggest challenge ever faced by the UN. But I think the plan has at least a chance of working. And, it is hard to see how it could produce results worse than those produced by the Bush administration in the past miserable 16 months.<\/p>\n

(emphasis mine – AL)<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No shit, Juan.<\/p>\n

Just because I know that I have known unknowns, let me start by tossing a question out to the crowd: Can any of you think of any single case where UN peacekeeping forces have prevailed in an environment where the participants really wanted to fight, rather than have the UN provide a fig leaf for armistice? I can’t. I’m hoping there is one…<\/p>\n

Because I have one reply to Juan’s suggestion. Srebenica. Srebenica. SrebenicaSrebenicaSrebenicaSrebenicaSrebenicaSrebenicaSrebenica.<\/p>\n

…of course if there are facts that suggest I’m wrong, I’m wide open to changing my mind and apologizing.<\/p>\n

And I’ll point out that it keeps looking like the key issue, to Juan, and the other Democratic foreign policy experts is simply that it’s Bush’s<\/b> policy. And so it cannot stand. We’ve gotta do better than this, team.<\/p>\n

I really want to vote Democratic this fall. But someone, somewhere, has to show me a foreign policy that makes some modicum of sense for me to do it. Help me out, will you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juan Cole lays out his notion of how the ‘Kerry Policy’ in Iraq might work. Go read the whole thing. No, really. OK, in case you didn’t. Let me summarize: * Iraq holds elections, gets UN legitimacy. * Asks for UN peacekeeping force. * The UN agrees, because force is under UN command, not US […]<\/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\/471"}],"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=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}