Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Please amplify on this."
For other than total war, it is US business that tames rogue nations, not our military. Sure our military tamed Germany and Japan (okay, we got some help with Germany), but they did it by killing on the order of 5% of the population. Translated into Iraq, that would be such a bloody occupation that the American public would never stand for it.
Take the town of Fallujah, with 500,000 people. Bringing them to heel would require killing about 25,000 people. Today the US military put out a press release that they've managed to kill a grand total of:
Marines killed at least one Iraqi ...
cnn.com
With the way our military operates, the probability that we will pacify Fallujah is exactly zero. No more than the Israelis, can we pacify Arabs. Just not going to happen.
Your point of view is to see the US military as the only "solution" to the "problem" of "terrorism". You got our boys sent into a conflict that the US public wouldn't support because you thought that it was the "only" thing we could do. But you're ignoring the fact that we have alternative ways of winning hearts and minds.
Think more carefully about how it came to be that the students in Iran are generally friendly (or were before Bush attacked their neighbor). You will eventually realize that it is stuff like popular music, American food, and our movies that converted them.
It wasn't Reagan who disemboweled the USSR, it was Nixon. And Nixon did it with weapons like Pepsi.
Re: "Which Iraqis? The Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds? All have their own agenda ..."
It doesn't matter. We have no real strategic interests in Iraq other than (a) its oil, and (b) its government's inclination to promote terror, and (c) its people's inclination to join terror groups.
(a) Every stable oil rich state on the planet is happy to sell oil, so as long as Iraq is not destabilized, they will provide us with the oil we want.
(b) The people who promote terror are never the ones actually in power in wealthy stable countries. Sure some Saudis got involved in terror, but it is not the policy of the Saudi government to promote terror. The reason for this is pretty simple. The people who are in power like life, they don't like to be have cruise missiles killing them and their family. As far as official government promotion of terror, it's only going to happen in places where the leaders have crappy lives. In this sense, making Iraq poor with sanctions made it more dangerous, just as the Israelis making the Palestinians miserable makes them more dangerous too. It is the happy rich people who want to live, not the sad poor ones.
(c) As far as the inclination of the people of Iraq to join terrorist groups, you yourself have repeatedly said that we have to make them wealthier and happier if we are to avoid long term problems. You made perfect sense with this, except that your tool of choice, the US military, can't achieve the goal you set for it. The most effective way of making the people of Iraq more wealthy is US business, not the US military.
As such, instead of invading the place and teaching the locals to eat bullets, Bush should have dropped sanctions, threatened to nuke Saddam if Saddam supported terrorism, and given tax relief to US companies that made life better for people in Iraq. Eventually Saddam, (like Qadaffi) would have mellowed, or (like Franco) peacefully given up rule, or (like the Shah) been thrown out of power. It is only the third case that would be bad for us, but it couldn't be any worse than the situation that Bush will leave when he pulls our troops out now. You guys thought that Iraq was going to be a great place for US business, but now the place is so dangerous that almost no businesses are stupid enough to go over there.
Re: "... and are only willing to compromise under the umbrella of outside arbitration and negotiation."
There is only one thing that we can realistically ask from an Arab state, and that is for it not to actively promote terrorism against the US. It is impossible to ask them to not promote terrorism against Israel because they believe that Israel uses terrorism against them. It is not realistic to ask them to influence their citizens from joining secret terrorist organizations because no government has ever had that kind of coercive influence on human thinking. The best you can do is to fool humans every now and then. Humans believe what they want to believe despite whatever it is that the government wants.
And that one thing that we need to obtain from the Arab governments we already have. So there is no need to negotiate with them.
Re: "Is that going to resolve the factional distrust and suspicions?"
It is not in our power to resolve the factional distrust and suspicions of Iraqis. Certainly your plan ain't doin it, LOL. Our government can barely resolve the factional distrust and suspicions of our own people. The Iraqis will have to find their own solution to that problem. Before Bush invaded, their "solution" was for the Sunnis to run rough-shod over everyone else. If they return to that situation, so be it. If the Sunnis end up on top, so be it. If they manage to find a republic style compromise, so be it. If they break the country up into 3 even littler and shittier countries, so be it. Whatever it is, we should keep our hands clean of it to the extent that we can, except that we must take actions against any government in Iraq that actively promotes terrorism. By going in there and crapping in their communal mess kit, all we do is piss them all off.
Re: "But it can definitely be said that your approach of leaving it up to "business" has miserably failed over the past decade or two, with regard to the entire region."
The countries that have done the best in the Middle East happen to be the ones that US business does the most business with. Iraq was the worst problem. From my point of view, this was hardly any surprise, US businesses were not allowed in Iraq.
We already made the experiment. The US left wing, who saw Saddam as a vicious right wing dictator, and the US right wing, who saw Saddam as a dangerous dictator, somehow ignored the fact that almost every other leader of every other Arab country is just as bad. Hey, you know that Assad has WMDs, supports actions against Israel, kills his own people, etc., but you didn't support making his population miserable with sanctions. Or maybe you did, but you weren't able to get the votes in the UN to support it. Whatever the cause, the experiment has been made, and the results are in: The US can make countries pretty miserable using sanctions, but the result isn't in US interests. You didn't like the result of banning US business from Iraq, but the choice of making this policy was bipartisan. Whenever you find yourself agreeing with a Democrat you should check your assumptions.
My view since 1992 has been the same. If we felt that Saddam had to go, we should have taken him out in 1992. If we felt that he had to go later, we should have assassinated him and hoped for the best. But running a policy of sanctions was bad for our business, worse for the civilians in Iraq, and bad for our security.
Re: "The situation has gone from some measure of stability to outright hostility ..."
Yes, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II all had a policy against Iraq and not only did it fail spectacularly, it pissed off most of the other countries of the region. And the country that is most pissed off with us now is Iraq.
Re: "[Sistani] apparently considers himself a religious leader, not a political one."
Even in the (unlikely) event that Sistani does "wuv" us, we'd still have too many casualties in Iraq to stick around there, at least with our current political climate. But as usual, your analysis is one of hope. You've been wrong before about what our relations would be with the Iraqi people and you're going to continue your perfect streak of 0%.
Re: "And you're like an officer who fights every one of his battles out in his mind dozens of times, each time contemplating nothing but defeat ..."
I'm not contemplating defeat. Admit the truth. I've outlined a complete strategy in this post. The defeat is in your mind because you don't think it can work, LOL.
It's evident from your own posts that you are slowly coming around to realizing that we will have to pull out of Iraq. We both agree that this is a defeat, but it is only you that think that this is a final defeat. From my point of view, the Iraq fiasco is only one battle in a very long war.
Like the Dieppe raid, the Iraq adventure was ill considered, but like the Allies in WW2, we will eventually prevail. We just have to use the right strategy and tactics.
When you are trying to break an enemy line, the way you do it is not to reinforce failure, but instead to reinforce success. You act like there is no success in the Middle East, but there are differences in degree of failure. What Bush did was to reinforce the failure in Iraq.
Re: "But you forget that business (economics) is war too. In fact, war is often nothing more than economics by other means."
Actually, you're the one who forgot this. I've already posted many times that it is our business that is the true strength of the United States. By the way, every dollar we spend on the military makes it more difficult for our businesses to compete.
Re: "And those competing business interests (such as the French and Russian ones) have vested interests in seeing our goals defeated, and their own advanced, even if via totalitarian regimes. ... But what do you do when other nations, and their business interests, decide to ratchet up the competion an extra step?"
Why is it that you can write this and then sit there and say that I am the one that is defeatist? Look at what you just wrote. If French and Russian business interests could kick our butt, then how come Microsoft is based in the US? I could go on, but you should get the point. And you've already made, many times, the point that if the war on terror fails, it will fall harder on the French than on us. They're closer.
But take another look at what I'm saying about our business interests. French business interests have just as much a positive influence on Arab countries as US business interests. The standard of living in Iraq didn't begin improving until sanctions began to be lifted (or avoided). If the companies that made the Iraqis happier, healthier and wealthier were French, why should I care? All I want is for the Iraqis to be happy and healthy enough to not listen to those religious nuts.
I've repeatedly stated that I thought that sanctions were bad policy. To the extent that the French evaded them (and I do not know how much that was), I hold that to be a good thing. That's because I see western business as having a positive influence on the populations of foreign countries. It's the left wing that thinks that when Addidas moves into a country it makes the locals miserable, not me. And what's your view? Are you one of those lefties that thinks that business is bad? Of course you aren't. Or do you think that US business is run by a bunch of sissies that can't even compete with the Russians? Maybe you do. Do you know how poor Russia is? Do you know why it is so poor? How the hell can you imagine that the combination of their government and business can outcompete the combination of our government and business.
Re: "So I await with bated breath, you explanation as to how "business" is going to solve this problem without another 9/11 event (or worse) occuring in this country."
There isn't any 100% solution to 9/11 events. All we can do is to reduce the probability. And of course your plan not only wasn't a 100% solution to 9/11 events, it failed in its objective.
The President's own men are deserting him on the issue of the war in Iraq.
The continuing terror attacks and warnings belie Bush's claims that he is making progress in the war on terror.
-- Carl
P.S. If the right wing doesn't come around to me (and Buchanan's) concept of how to fight terrorism, we are going start losing elections. I know that you will always vote Republican (and I will too, probably), but there are a lot of swing voters out there that are smart enough to see that Bush is full of it, and they don't want any part of it.
While we may lose an election or two, I think that the long term prognosis isn't as bad as the liberals would wish it. But we have to get this country back to the principle that the business of America is business.
I told you before the war that the American public would not stand for the bloodshed required to pacify Iraq. Hey, if this country had been like Nazi Germany, I would not have been "defeatist". I'd have told you to go ahead and invade Iraq, and that we could exterminate the vermin if we got too much resistance to our extracting our oil. The war would have gone just fine and we'd all be proud of being members of the master race. But this is not Nazi Germany, and I'm not a Nazi.
Our people do not suffer the delusion that they are the master race, and they will not stand for the tactics necessary for the successful occupation of Iraq. I knew this before the war and I warned you about it, but you ignored me. In this sense, it's not that Iraq was "unwinnable", it was that we couldn't win it.
And it ain't me that ruined your war in Iraq. I had no effect on it whatsoever. I'm just one guy. What killed the war was Bush's refusal to send in the million infantry soldiers required to make a (non Hitlerian) occupation work. He wouldn't do it because it was not politically feasible. Bush's decision to go with Iraq "Lite" was because of the swing voters, not the Republican faithful like me. |
