Recently in Iraq Category

Atmospherics

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by shep

John McCain’s 100 (or 10,000 or a million) years comments (and now an attempt at damage control by the GOP noise machine) are generating quite a bit of buzz, for good reason. They expose several candidacy-breaking problems for McCain.

First, it makes him look like the warmonger he appears to be in his heart. Coupled with his pre-9/11 agitation to invade Iraq, along with the likes of Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol and the rest of neoconservative cabal, and his now well-telegraphed desire to attack Iran, it seems as though a president McCain won’t be satisfied unless he is attempting to conquer every Middle East country that pisses him off. Given the desiccated state of The War Powers Act and wild expansion of executive power under George Bush, there’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t send the entire region up in flames, cutting off the flow of ME oil and sending the world into economic and social collapse.

Second, his attempt to control the damage by suggesting that he means an indefinite US military occupation without any US casualties, creates new and troubling questions: 1) when will the clock start on this 100 years of peaceful Middle East occupation (In other words, how much longer does he intend to police the simmering civil war in Iraq, losing soldiers and mortgaging our future to the Chinese - he also claims to intend to cut more taxes?), 2) if he doesn’t have an answer to that question, why should anyone accept the premise that we will achieve a peaceful presence there at all and 3) by comparing future Iraq to American troop presence in Germany, Japan or North Korea, he demonstrates a deep, fundamental misunderstanding of history, military history and geopolitics that destroys his argument that his experience qualifies him above the other candidates. He has literally lived long yet still learned nothing.

Third, the one thing we must do to defuse the continuing global damage to American prestige and the jihadists ability to recruit thousands more terrorists dedicated to killing Americans is the exact opposite of McCain’s “100 year” statements, namely, announce that the official policy of the United States is the complete, unilateral and unconditional withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq. Until that becomes official US policy, it will be presumed by practically everyone that the US lied to the world and intended all along to permanently occupy Iraq for oil and Israel, just as many have suspected.

None of these things change the basic facts on the ground and, for that matter, little we can do will change them for the good because we do not control the situation. But what we say does matter and, in the long run, the stated plan to leave Iraq along with the beginning steps of that operation will put the matter squarely in the hands of Iraqis and their neighbors. They have even more at stake in securing some peaceful resolution for the disaster we have created as we withdraw but little motivation to do so as long as we can keep a lid on their conflict with US lives, even as they suck us dry to the tune of billions of dollars a month. As long as US leaders claim that our intention is to stay there virtually forever, Iraq will continue to claim our blood, our treasure, our moral standing and our future.

[Cross-posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

Iraq ♥ Iran

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Jon Stewart compares and contrasts the reception our president gets when visiting Iraq...and the reception recently received by Iranian President Ahmedenijad.

"Hey Iraq: After we built you an entire Green Zone....It would be nice, when our sworn enemy visits your country, that you give him a slightly tougher reception than the one he got when he visited Columbia University."

Iraq Not An Issue in '08?

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[cross posted, with poll, at Daily Kos]

So suggests Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. Skeptical? Hear him out:

First off, he debunks the observation that everything is on a glide path to a soft landing.

Zakaria:

This is a nation where 4.5 million people have fled their homes, ethnic cleansing has transformed whole cities and religious fanatics have imposed a theocratic rule that is often more extreme than in Iran.

In much of the country, thugs rule the streets. The police chief of Basra told the Iraqi newspaper Al-Sabah last week, "Most of Basra's ports, especially Umm Qasr, are under the control of militia gangs. The police force is incapable of executing its duties because its members report to the militias."

The central government is barely functioning. Half of the cabinet ministries are either vacant or nonfunctional.

Iraq's oil production is down this year. Sectarian divisions are, in some ways, getting worse.

No purple fingers here, folks.

On the ground, far from Bush's rhetoric of transformation, these conditions have moved American policy toward realism.

So if you thought "victory" was going to be a democratic Iraq friendly to US interests, then we lost the war.

That said, it hasn't stopped Petraeus, according to Zakaria, from seizing an opportunity to take credit for himself and his clients:

Petraeus has been willing to do what no American official has until now: accept Iraq for what it is and not what Washington wants it to be. Searching for a stable order, Petraeus has allied himself with whoever, within reason, could produce that order.

If I could, I would have added air-quotes to the words "stable order."

Petraeus has, in effect, given up hopes of Shiite leaders in Baghdad reconciling with Sunnis, and instead he's made up with them himself. The result has been that Al Qaeda in Iraq has been marginalized, Sunni leaders no longer demand an American withdrawal and the Shiites have recognized that America's support is not unconditional.

Hey, if it means fewer dead Americans, good on him. Declare victory, for all I care -- just come home, godammit.

In the Shiite south, U.S. policy has abandoned the goal of an impartial government and has picked a side: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which holds sway over most local governments in the region.

I have a feeling we'll regret this someday, but ... whatever.

Petraeus has even been somewhat accommodating of the Sadrists. In Baghdad, U.S. forces now primarily target "rogue" Mahdi Army militants. The more maintsream Sadrists have been tacitly allowed to operate in several Shiite areas.

"Let Freedom Reign?" Nuh-uh. This is us pointing a gun at everyone as we slowly back out of the room.

Bottom line: Hundreds of billions flushed down a hole, tens of thousands dead and wounded -- and the same people who got us into it are still in power...ready to do it again in Iran.

As for Iraq being an issue in the fall of '08, Zakaria suggests that you not bet on it:

In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the economy now tops Iraq as the issue that voters say will most influence their choice for president, 22 percent to 19 percent. For two years, Iraq dominated these kinds of surveys. Only a month ago, in a CBS News poll, 28 percent of respondents wanted Iraq to be the campaign's most-discussed issue, while the economy came in second at 16 percent. One can't make too much of one poll, but other evidence also suggests that the gap seems to be closing.

It's the economy, stupid!

P.S. Of course, he doesn't mention the fallout if the US is at war with Iran 6 months from now. If that happens it is not going to be good for the Dems -- or anyone else for that matter.

You know it's coming. Will we be ready -- whoever we nominate?

Arming the Terrorists

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by shep

Certain people, who need not be named but who whisper in the ear of the president and the leading Republican candidate to replace him and who are hired by the most prestigious (and not so much) news organizations to share their opinions with the public, think we should attack the country of Iran for providing (completely unproven) support for insurgents fighting against the US occupation of Iraq.

Well, who wouldn’t want to attack the country that arms its enemies, who end up killing their troops? Still, the main moral difference between Iraq/Iran and this seems to be that the Soviets were actually invited into Afghanistan by its government (much like our own venture into Vietnam). (Can you imagine if they simply came up with some phony excuse to invade and occupy the country, hanging its leaders and killing a million innocent Afghanis?)

Yet the IEDs Stinger missiles and other support supplied by our Quds Force CIA and China, Pakistan and Iran (”The Coalition of the Willing”), killed 10,000 or more Soviet troops (good thing the Soviets didn’t have nuclear weapons and strategic bombing capability, huh?).

The (most ironic) poison fruit, poisons us still:

“Some American groups, particularly neoconservatives came to believe that they were responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union. The Islamists that fought also believed that they were responsible for the fall of the union, and this may have indirectly lead to 9/11. Osama bin Laden, for example asserting the credit for ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahidin in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role,’ but ‘collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.’”


But, as we have learned from tragic effect, they are absolutely incapable of learning anything from history:

“Some participants felt leverage was not the main issue; rather, US policymakers knowingly abandoned Afghanistan to the Pakistanis and Saudis to ‘sort out’ Afghanistan’s future. However, the participant said, ‘The Pak-Saudi agenda for Afghanistan was totally ruinous . . . it was [that] agenda which leads to Al Qaeda and all the rest of it. . . . Did you not see this in 1992, as it emerges?’”

The obvious answer is either “no” or they just didn’t think it mattered very much.

Regardless, the Soviets didn’t attack the US over arming its enemies in Afghanistan, we didn’t attack China for arming our enemies in Korea and Vietnam and China didn’t attack us for arming theirs. Pakistan has illegal nuclear weapons, Maddrassas, a Muslim population that is far more radicalized than Iran and it arms Islamic radicals who kill our troops in Afghanistan while it provides safe haven to Osama bin Laden (if he's still alive). We call it an ally.

In any event, the people who have shaped the foreign and military policy of the United States for the past seven years (especially Vice President Cheney) are not the people who should be allowed anywhere near that sort of power ever again. Just as their authoritarianism, bellicosity and aggression has made Osama bin Laden’s fondest wishes come true it has also driven the price of oil to record highs, funneling ever more $billions to countries like Iran and Russia even as it unites Muslim nations against us and weakens us economically and militarily.

If the nation’s political and media leaders had either the slightest bit of level-headed judgement or a functioning moral compass the neoconservatives wouldn't be setting the agenda, they would be driven from the public sphere in shame and eventually tried for their crimes against humanity.

[Cross-posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

War Cost: Sticker Shock

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Here it is -- we (you and I) are slated to spend $2.4 trillion (with a T) over the next 10 years on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House brushed off the estimate as too conditional. "It's just a ton of speculation," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "We don't know how much the war is going to cost in the future."
Better not to think about the future. Same goes for how we got here -- that's the past and we certainly don't want to dwell on that either. All there is, is today. Live in the moment! That's the ticket.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said voters were suffering from "sticker shock...America's future is being held hostage by the cost of the war," he said.
His concern would be most admirable if it wasn't totally covered in crap. Why doesn't he just say "no" to more funding? Why doesn't he, you know, lead the way to ending the war?

It reminds me of something I saw while watching the trailer for that new Robert Redford movie, Lions for Lambs. In it, Reford's character said this:

"They bank on your apathy. They plan strategies around it...The problem is not with the people who started this. The problem is with us -- who do nothing."
Don't just sit there: call your Congressman. NOW.

Call Rahm Emanuel.

Call Nancy Pelosi.

Tell them -- again, as many times as it takes -- "no." Just "no."

"The problem is with us who do nothing."

(Cross posted at Daily Kos)

General Petraeus is going to give his September report next week. And/But whether or not you believe that the violence is down in Iraq (it's not), whether or not you can even tell me how many benchmarks there are, let alone name a single benchmark or quote the ones that have (or have not) been missed, the single most important fact about the Iraq occupation is not in dispute:

Political reconciliation is nil. Iraq has no functional government -- not even a bad one. It doesn't exist. It has no ability to govern or ensure the safety and security of the Iraqi people. And nothing we do will change that.

We're just marking time, counting down the days until this president (who will not take marching order from al Qaeda) leaves office. Then we'll tote up with the final number of American and Iraqi war deaths so we can plug it into the history books.

And if this is true (and it most surely is), have the lives of our fighting men and women been wasted?

Last spring, Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain both said yes, but quickly revised their comments when faced with an uproar of agonized denial. But there's a difference between honoring our fighting men and women and recognizing that they died in vain.

    "Vain" is the root word of "vanity" and dying in vain means you died because of vanity -- the vanity of men like President Bush and General Petraeus. We can, we must, honor the dead while utterly rejecting the vanity for which they died.

President Lincoln, a real wartime president, knew the difference and his words give meaning to us even today -- if we'll listen:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Our continued presence in Iraq will not produce such a government; it will be for the Iraqi people to do that. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

But it's still not too late, after the occupation ends and our troops come home, for the people of the United States of America experience a new birth of freedom. And if that happens (and I hope to God it does) then "these dead will not have died in vain."

Christopher Hitchens, accustomed to striking out so often with men on base, does sometimes manage to hit one out of the park:

How do I dislike President George Bush? Let me count the ways. Most of them have to do with his contented assumption that 'faith' is, in and of itself, a virtue. This self-satisfied mentality helps explain almost everything, from the smug expression on his face to the way in which, as governor of Texas, he signed all those death warrants without losing a second's composure.

It explains the way in which he embraced ex-KGB goon Vladimir Putin, citing as the basis of a beautiful relationship the fact that Putin was wearing a crucifix. (Has Putin been seen wearing that crucifix before or since? Did his advisers tell him that the President of the United States was that easy a pushover?)

However that may be, I always agreed with him on one secular question, that the regime of Saddam Hussein was long overdue for removal. I know some critics of the Iraq intervention attribute this policy, too, to religious motives (ranging from messianic, born-again Christian piety to the activity of a surreptitious Jewish/Zionist cabal: take your pick).

In this real-world argument, there is a very strong temptation for opponents of the war to invoke the lessons of Vietnam. I must have written thousands of words attempting to show that there is absolutely no analogy between the two conflicts.

Then, addressing the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the President came thundering down the pike to announce that a defeat in Iraq would be - guess what? - another Vietnam. As my hand smacks my brow, and as I ask myself not for the first time if Mr Bush suffers from some sort of political death wish, I quickly restate the reasons why he is wrong to join with his most venomous and ignorant critics in making this case.

Read the whole thing.

Klein’s Coup

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by shep

Watching Joe Klein’s reluctantly awakening political consciousness is like watching a scene from Jackass in slow motion; you know from the outset that it will be stupid, it takes far too long to get to the chase (yet you can’t look away) and, in the end, you just wind up thinking, “what a…,” well, you get the idea.

Klein has finally caught up with the majority of Americans who have long known that they were suckered into the worst foreign policy debacle in American history but Klein still thinks that Congressional Democrats are all wrong to be holding votes on war funding, including trying to specify when we should start bringing our troops home:


“1. The chances of changing Bush's Iraq policy are minimal, to nonexistant, under any circumstances.

2. The Congressional Democratic strategy only makes Bush more stubborn.

3. If there is any chance for a change in policy, it resides with the uniformed military in the Pentagon--who want to save their all-volunteer Army--plus the voices of realpolitik in the Administration, possibly Secs. Gates and Rice...Plus Petraeus who has become Bush's Voodoo Icon and has a big, big choice to make about his own legacy.”


So, to recap, Klein thinks that George Bush will use the US military as he (and Deadeye Dick) damned-well please regardless of public opinion or the law and he likes the idea of a military revolt against the Commander-in-Chief to end the current Iraq policy, rather than Congress performing its constitutionally assigned duty to make war policy. You see, that just pisses off the boy king and makes him hold his breath until Iraq turns red(der).

You really have to wonder why these people have jobs telling the public what’s what when they seem to have not the slightest understanding or concern with how the American political system is supposed to work. One can only assume that in Kleine’s shrunken worldview, the mommy Democrats are always ineffectual against the mighty authority of daddy Republicans so they shouldn’t even try. It’s just humiliating. I suppose that if Democrats were to succeed and actually, you know, make policy, it would shake Joe’s Republican-centric world to its knobby white legs.

And, as usual, he completely fails to grasp his own ongoing complicity in preventing Democrats from doing what the public demands. What a jackass.

[Cross posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

Still Not Getting It

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by shep

Joe Klein asks:

"A reasonable reader might ask, Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren't you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn't you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history? And why on earth does any of this matter?”

Worse yet, he seems quite earnest in his confusion.

Joe, let me explain: your problem is the same as most beltway insiders, you see everything in terms of politics. I mean everything. No substance. No ethical or moral principle. Just plain political calculation.

Your world – and by that I mean your career and colleagues and the politicians and politics you cover – is all about the competition to win and succeed. Pretty soon, there’s just no room left to analyze the real substance and truth of things.

Liberals don’t give a rat’s ass whether you are sufficiently and reliably partisan. We just don’t think that way. That’s for politicians, media elites (elites of most stripes, really), conservatives and kids in middle school.

No matter how many times you say Bush sucks, the next time you write something false, lazy, stupid or biased, you’re going to get called on it. It matters to us because it is wrong. Hellooooo.

We aren't offended by bad politics, we are offended by bad conduct. That includes arrogant statements by “liberal” columnists that it must be simplistic, extreme apostasy that we should de-fund a disastrous, illegal and immoral occupation in the Middle East. Maybe it’s a really bad idea (Hint: No. One. Really. Knows) but right now the official policy options fall somewhere between a 50-year occupation littered with dead American soldiers and innocent Iraqis or nuking Iran. Tell us again what’s simplistic or extreme.

Sorry if you are offended by the “tone.”

BTW, I liked your takedown of Dick Armey’s libertarian dogma.

H/T: Digby

(cross posted at Daily Kos)

Recently, while browsing another blog's comment thread I was brought up short when I came upon this statement:

It’s still unclear where the main source of our problem in Iraq lies.
Gosh, where do we start?

But let's cut the snark and try to answer the man's question. Because until we can do that, not only will we have lost the Iraq war, we will have embarked on a path that will lead to one disastrous war after another, being bled dry by "leaders" who want one thing only: ultimate power.

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