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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (123384)	1/17/2004 11:28:10 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

Carl, They just don't get it. The Iraqis will continue to fight us, and those they think are allied with us, until we leave. Obviously, that is the part that they (Sanchez et al) think they can change. Ergo, their calls yesterday for the insurgents to "lay down their arms," and their repeatedly stated belief that there are only "5,000" or so people actually fighting against us there. The other part that I think they don't get is that, even if that part is right (I'll stipulate it for the moment even I don't believe it), any government that is set up there still won't be "pro-American" in any sense that the Bush admin and their supporters will recognize. Or, as you say, to the extent that it is, it will be fought against and there will be a civil war with bad consequences at least for Iraq and, likely, for the whole region. Those who accuse people who were against the war for being short-sighted are, IMHO, the ones who were truly short-sighted, as they didn't see that even if the invasion was successful in the short term, the probability that it will be successful in the long term is slight. Unless of course, the real goals were (a) to win the '02 election, (b) to further divide the democratic party, (c) to buttress the republican party longer term by making "security" issues paramount in voters minds by (d) NOT focussing on actually eliminating Al Qaeda and Osama. I wish I wasn't cynical enough to believe that, for at least some republican party strategists, those were the real goals. If we have full elections tomorrow the Iraqis will conclude that we had done it for our own benefit, and that the elected party (assuming that it cooperates with us) is our puppet. If we postpone elections, the Iraqis will conclude we are doing this for our own reasons. Machiavelli had a great deal of experience with foreign powers trying to take over other states/cities/provinces. It was, in fact, the topic of the day in his time in Italy, as that country was constantly being invaded by France, Spain, Germany (or what passed for Germany of the time), not to mention all of the squabbles among the Italian city-states. The only way to hold a place with different customs, languages, religions than your own, he said, was to go and live there. But even then, he wrote, there were no certainties, especially if the people was a "free" people, that is, a people living under their own "ancient" customs and laws, and the only way to be truly certain to hold the foreign territory was to kill everyone. A conqueror can never please the people in the states he conquers, even if the former regime was disliked--expectations can never be met. Further, one thing that the conqueror should NEVER NEVER NEVER depend on is gratitude--whatever gratitude there may be will quickly dissolve from the unmet expectations. His analysis gets pretty complicated, but I thought I'd throw that in for the Straussians out there who may be reading this. Machiavelli is one their pantheon "saints," so to speak.