Hi all; Well it's official, Iraq has a civil war. Time for me to say "I told you so". In 2006, my expectation was that the Sunnis would eventually win the civil war, and that the civil war would last a year or two. And now I see that the Sunnis have indeed "liberated" the north part of the country. Game on. I suggest we participate by staying on the sidelines. Eventually the Saudis will have to get involved, but it's too far for us to have to play. And the Saudis are moslems, their soldiers will be better accepted than ours.
Here's a good sampling of my comments on the problem:
June 13, 2002
Blackhawk Down quote: "People in these countries -- Bosnia is a more recent example -- don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it."
And what good would it do to push over the regime in Saudi Arabia? (Or Iraq, for that matter.) Does anyone really think that a peace loving democracy is going to grow out of the ruins? And beating the Saudis into submission is not an option. Under international law, beating another state's public into submission (as opposed to military) is termed "genocide", and is universally frowned upon.
Message 17596453
June 8, 2003
Do you know what "honor" means? Of course you do. It means that if you tell someone that to avoid an invasion they must disarm, then if they disarm you must not invade them. That's the honor that Bush broke, and I can no longer include him as a patriot. He does not deserve to lead a country based on duty, honor and country. [I was really pissed off with Bush. But given who ran against him, I voted for him again.]
Message 19012733
June 12, 2003
This is just like the Vietnam war, in a certain way. Long after the end of the hopeless war, conservatives were still yammering about how "winnable" it was. Okay, now you've got a war in Iraq. And you've got a Republican House and Senate (at least until early 2005). So [when] this war turns out to not be winnable, you will be forced to admit that all your bullshit about Vietnam being winnable was just as fallacious as your current bullshit about Iraq being winnable.
But will that change you? Not a chance. In 2006, you'll be saying that "Iraq was winnable", but we were "stabbed in the back" by "the left wing elements", just like Hitler was saying about WW1 in the 1930s.
Message 19028029
June 13, 2003
Like I've said before, it takes 6 months to develop a reasonable resistance. I don't think that Iraq is an exception to this rule. So give them another four months and you will get an idea of what the "beginning" is like.
Message 19031471
June 27, 2003
I don't think that there is any leader in Iraq who can control the situation. I think that Iraq is doomed to follow the Lebanese example after we pull out. That is, the various sides will fight it out, and then eventually a winner will become obvious, and the losers will knuckle under to the new authority. Eventually everything will calm down, but our continued presence is ineffective at producing that calm. That is, the calm will only happen after the civil war that happens only after we leave.
Our situation somewhat mirrors that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. That is, until we leave, we will be faced with rebellion. After we leave, the country will dissolve in civil war. Eventually someone will come out on top, and that is who we should be prepared to deal with (diplomatically, economically and maybe even militarily). But to try to deal with the Iraqi civilians directly, through the actions of scared (but brave) 20-year-old Christian, Western, well armed boys, is hopeless.
Message 19068712
June 29, 2003
As far as "abandoning" those who are "two scare and weak to defend themselves", yes, that's what I'm in favor of, more or less.
If they're not willing to fight to be free, then let them be slaves in their own country. It's not our God-provided Duty to free the peoples of the world. Especially when our sending soldiers has no effect other than to create new recruits for those who are against us (and wishing to create another totalitarian government to enslave those same sheople you're so intent on saving from slaughter). But to explain our actions in Iraq as humanitarian is a thin lie. If protecting the scared and weak were really our objective, we'd be intervening all over the planet.
Message 19070558
February 3, 2004
Hi all; It'll be one hell of a civil war. A rather complete list of the resistance in Iraq. Who they are and what their motivations are. Even the list of groups is amazingly long. Here's a list of them according to the "jihadunspun" website, with their dates of initial action, if shown:
Message 19762602
November 26, 2006
Well, it's really not quite a civil war yet. If it gets there, it'll be pretty obvious.
During the 4-year long fight between the Republicans and the Democrats (1861-1865), something like 600,000 US citizens were killed, about 400 per day. The population at the time was around 31 million, a little larger than the current population of Iraq. A lot of those deaths were due to disease. Modern warfare has its own efficiencies; I doubt that the numbers would be smaller nowadays.
So as far as the numbers go, Iraq is getting up there. But they don't have the organized fighting with lines of supply and no mans lands and trenches and all that yet.
To a large degree, the death toll in the US civil war was low because the two sides were so well separated geographically. Iraq, by contrast, is a bit of a melee. I would think a real civil war in Iraq would kill a few thousand per day, maybe for as long as a year or two.
The worst wars are the ones that are between well balanced opponents and Iraq has that. The Shiites have the numbers in country, but the Sunni have the overall numbers in the region and also have the stronger military tradition. It was the military tradition of the Democrats in the Southern US that kept the rather unbalanced US civil war going as long as it did.
If I were a wagering man, I'd say the Sunnis eventually win, but it really depends on what Iran and the neighboring Arab states do. US actions won't influence the outcome much because we don't have a dog in this one. Only the Kurds pretend to like us (but do not trust us - for very good reasons) and they're too small to matter.
Message 23042799
-- Carl |
