Hi Neocon; Re: "So far, my post holds up pretty well."
Your post was a fantasy. Still is. For reference, here it is again: #reply-17987695
Re: "The opposition collapsed very rapidly, as foreseen."
Wrong. Saddam is apparently still fighting.
Re: "It is also clear that I was correct about what the Administration hoped, which is the operant term in my post, regarding the post invasion situation."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Re: "It is still the intention to install a transitional regime, once there is greater pacification, and "stay long enough for them to become entrenched, and to destroy the WMD infrastructure." It is looking harder than expected, but not essentially impossible. Thus, as far as I am concerned, you just showed how prescient I am. Thanks.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Re: "We did not take an incrementalist approach in Iraq, we smashed the regime."
The incrementalist approach is in the pacification. Hell, even I said that the problem in Iraq was not removing Saddam from power, but instead the pacification of the "civilians". For example, see:
Bilow, March 5, 2003
Everyone knows, Saddam included, that his forces are no match for ours. That's why he's so willing to destroy those missiles.
The dangerous part of Iraq is their civilians, not their military. The problem weapons, as far as a US occupation goes, are rifles, grenades and pistols. #reply-18657990
Re: "What may be required for complete pacification was always subject to revision, since no one can foresee everything perfectly."
Two months ago, the administration was talking about having the troop count in Iraq down to 30,000 by the end of the year. Now they're talking about 150,000 for the next 2 to 4 years. That's hardly a "revision". It's a complete new f'ing edition.
Re: "However, it is not clear even yet that they cannot largely succeed by increasing the Iraqi security forces."
Since you were unable to appreciate how difficult the pacification of Iraq by US troops was going to be, there is hardly any reason for you to suppose that you have a clue as to how easy the pacification of Iraq by Iraqi police is going to be, LOL. But consider the facts. The US is going to rely on Iraqi police to suppress Iraqi nationalist sentiments. This is already a rather long shot, especially given that police forces tend to be more nationalistic than the rest of a society. But in addition, we're trying to get the process started in the exact same regions where Baathist sympathies are the highest.
The situation is already so far out of control that the police force we recently trained in Fallujah has already forced us out of their police stations:
U.S. soldiers heed Iraqi warnings
MSNBC, July 11, 2003
U.S. soldiers withdrew Friday from a police station in the tense western Iraqi town of Fallujah after Iraqi officers complained that the American presence put them at risk, the head of the town’s police force told The Associated Press.
...
msnbc.com
That's right. US forces "withdrew" from territory they held in the middle of the part of the country that hates us the most. Any Israeli can tell you that this will be seen by the Arabs as a great "victory", one that will inspire them to keep pushing against us. And it gives a pretty good clue as to what will have to happen in Iraq as a whole: we'll retreat, leaving an administration that is supposedly on our side, but that, in fact, hates us as much as Saddam's regime did.
Just remember, you read it here: As the US pulls out of cities where there have been ambushes of US troops, the number of troops we have killed will go down, at least for a short while, but within 3 months our military will begin complaining that the guerillas are using the regions we've pulled out of as "safe zones".
Re: "I do not see the humor in the last quoted post at all."
It wasn't funny as in "ha ha", but funny in the sense of cheese that's been in the refrigerator for too long. You were suggesting that the Israelis would "empty out the refugee camps and insist that other countries deal with that problem, thus cutting the population in the Territories severely".
What's funny is that you don't recognize this as a war crime. For your education, here's an article on the subject of "ethnic cleansing" from Foreign Affairs magazine:
A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing
Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Summer 1993
...
Despite its recurrence, ethnic cleansing nonetheless defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an "undesirable" population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.
...
foreignaffairs.org
-- Carl |
