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Julian Sanchez | December 5, 2005

Jonathan Rauch starts the countdown to the drawdown from Iraq.

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|12.5.05 @ 12:15PM|#

This article is a typical misunderstanding of the history of Vietnam. What caused the fall South Vietnam was not the military withdrawl, but Congress' cut off of aid in 1974 and President Ford's January 1975 pledge never to return to Vietnam under any circumstances. The North Vietnamese were soundly defeated during the Easter 1972 offensive. The Viet Cong had been totally routed and North Vietnam itself had a shell of its former Army. North Vietnam agreed in the 1973 peace accords to no longer attack the South and not to rearm. The North Vietnamese immediately broke the agreement and began rearming after 1973. That would have been okay, if the U.S had continued to arm South Vietnam. Instead, the U.S. cutoff all military aid and pledged never to return. This left the South Vietnamese virtually defenseless against the now re-armed North who promptly invaded two months after Ford's pledge never to return. Its basically the equivalent of what would have happened if the United States had cut off all aid to South Korea and vowed never to return to the Korean peninsula in 1955.

I don't think any of it is very applicable today, but if you are going to call Iraq a new Vietnam, at least have some idea what actually happened in Vietnam.

|12.5.05 @ 12:16PM|#

This topic always jerks by bobber because I was a Marine infantry officer in VN in 1969. For years, I thought that war was winnable mainly because the enemy was North VN. In more recent years, I'm not so sure even a relatively simple enemy like that would have been so easily beatable. Back then the USSR and China were bigger factors in the VN equation too, of course.
Amyway, from the article:
"Bush says the U.S. presence in Iraq is essential to fighting terrorism. That was a strong argument for a while, but the public no longer buys it."

Terrorism as the enemy is just too dadburn slippery. As I keep repeating, some of my neighbors in the 'hood are terrorists, and Bush hasn't even mentioned them... yet. (After recent events in France, I don't know why not.)

|12.5.05 @ 12:22PM|#

Ruthless,

It ultimately comes down to the Iraqis. We have given them every chance in the world. If they can't get their act together and stomp out the terrorists in their mists, then I am not sure there is anything we can do for them.

|12.5.05 @ 12:28PM|#

John,
It goes back to defining "terrorist."
To many Iraqis, US soldiers are the "terrorists."

Come home, John|12.5.05 @ 1:03PM|#

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1534323/posts

|12.5.05 @ 1:30PM|#

I doubt public opinion has anything to do with what this Administration is up to.

If the Army could sustain the mission for another five years, I think Bush and his enablers in both parties would just keep lying about conditions over there to keep up the occupation.

They need to give the Army about a year or so off before they send them on the next phase of "Operation Middle East Regime Change"

|12.5.05 @ 1:47PM|#

John said:
"If they can't get their act together and stomp out the terrorists in their mists,"

Did you see the movie about Diane Fossey, "Guerrillas in the mist"?

|12.5.05 @ 2:05PM|#

Yes Ruthless, good catch. I would disagree that to a lot of Iraqis the Americans are the terrorists. That is just not true. To some, specifically a few 1000 Sunni bathists leftovers and forgeign fighters, Americans are the enemy. To the rest of Iraq, they are either liberators or necessary evil. More importantly, more Iraqis have died at the hands of the insurgents than Americans. If the Americans are the terrorists, why is it that the terrorists keep killing so many Iraqis? This "they all hate us" crap is nothing but a bunch of horse dung put out by a media that is both too lazy, narrow minded and stupid to understand the complexities of the situation. There are huge swaths of the country that are secure and experiencing an economic boom. If most or even many Iraqis viewed Americans as the enemy that would not be true. People think the insurgency has been bad, have no idea how bad it could have been, had the Shia and the Kurds chosen to rebel rather than the minority Sunis.

|12.5.05 @ 2:13PM|#

From CNN

"In October, 18 U.S. servicemen who are part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia are killed in an ambush in Mogadishu. Bin Laden later says that some of the Arab Afghans were involved in the killings and calls Americans "paper tigers" because they withdrew from Somalia shortly after the soldiers' deaths."

Whenever the US withdraws from Iraq, it must be on it's own terms, if not it will just give more credence to the theory that it is a "paper tiger". That can only lead to an increased likelyhood of attacks on US citizens.

|12.5.05 @ 2:15PM|#

John,

Surely more than 1,000 Sunnis see America as the enemy. If all but 1,000 Iraqis saw us as either liberators or a necessary evil, I think things would be going rather well over there. The Shiites and Kurds have no reason to rebel... yet. We are taking care of business for them. They are waiting for our inevitable withdrawal before they begin using violence.

|12.5.05 @ 2:21PM|#

BarryJV,

That is one of the reasons this war has been such a strategic blunder. We will never leave on our own terms... Bush set the bar too high and left things too vague for us to leave on our own terms. No matter when we leave, bin Laden and co. will spin it as a retreat (and it likely will be one). If we stay for 25 years, the recruiting bonanza a permanent Iraq occupation would create for bin Laden far outweighs the elimination of ?paper tiger? name calling as an issue.

|12.5.05 @ 2:23PM|#

John and BarryJV,
I know little about the specifics of Iraq, so I won't comment further, but I'll part here with one more VN experience.
I felt the US presence was hendering rather than helping the South VN Army to be effective.
It's like teaching a kid to ride a bicycle. The high-level people in Washington--like Bush--never know when to let go, even if people on the ground would have let go much sooner.

|12.5.05 @ 2:46PM|#

John:

How many Iraqi's have died at the hands of the insurgents, and how many been killed by the Coalition Forces?

|12.5.05 @ 3:15PM|#

"To some, specifically a few 1000 Sunni bathists leftovers and forgeign fighters, Americans are the enemy. To the rest of Iraq, they are either liberators or necessary evil."

In reality, a large plurality of Iraqis - 45% - say that attacks against American forces are justified, and even the government we set up is calling on us to leave.

This isn't a novel problem. Every self-proclaimed liberal empire has had this argument. We can't leave yet because the political culture isn't mature, but the political culture will never be mature as long as we're there. There's an ongoing bloodbath, but there will be another bloodbath if we leave. What to do, what to do, old chap?

Ultimately, John's "we did out best, let them kill each other" argument is how the once-idealistic hawks will justify slinking away.

|12.5.05 @ 3:44PM|#

"In reality, a large plurality of Iraqis - 45% - say that attacks against American forces are justified, and even the government we set up is calling on us to leave."

joe: Do you have a reference for this? I'm not being confrontational, I've been trying to figure out what those numbers are like and can't find a number I thought was reliable.

|12.5.05 @ 3:47PM|#

I would disagree that to a lot of Iraqis the Americans are the terrorists. That is just not true. To some, specifically a few 1000 Sunni bathists leftovers and forgeign fighters, Americans are the enemy. To the rest of Iraq, they are either liberators or necessary evil. More importantly, more Iraqis have died at the hands of the insurgents than Americans. If the Americans are the terrorists, why is it that the terrorists keep killing so many Iraqis? This "they all hate us" crap is nothing but a bunch of horse dung put out by a media that is both too lazy, narrow minded and stupid to understand the complexities of the situation. There are huge swaths of the country that are secure and experiencing an economic boom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

|12.5.05 @ 4:18PM|#

http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/indexarchive.htm

Iraq data for everyone to argue about. Casualties are near the beginning.

|12.5.05 @ 4:39PM|#

Whatever Pig. The fact is that the Iraqi economy grew 52% in 04 and at a more realistic 10% in 05. Like the old Watergate movie, follow the money. Something is going right over there or the economy wouldn't be growing.

Joe,

I do not believe that we should just let them kill each other. That is you and Jennifer who believe that Iraqis are too stupid to have a democracy not me. Ruthless is ultimately right though, we cannot do everything and at some point they have to stand up and run the country themselves, which they are increasingly doing.

|12.5.05 @ 6:43PM|#

to say that after the december elections the US will draw down troops and then begin redeploying to the desert leaving the front to iraqis is fairly obviouse and in line with the plan of the Bush admin and the one i saw drawn out in front of congress by wolferwitz a year and a half ago...to now call it a hasty retreat precipitated by negative public opinion would at best be called SPIN.

|12.5.05 @ 10:05PM|#

It's "fairly obvious" that what you're doing is pre-spin.

Just a few weeks ago the administration 'went off' on anyone even suggesting redeploying troops. With your help they'll spin it and claim it was all part of their strategery.

|12.6.05 @ 1:00AM|#

the evolving structure of public opinion about Iraq has made the current war effort there unsustainable

Anybody who reads the news, knew long ago what the "structure" of "public opinion" was going to turn into. We've been hearing the same MSM garbage for so long that there was never any doubt which way the brainless masses were going to sway.

Unfortunately Bush made it much easier for them to succeed, because he hasn't put up much of a coherent case from his side.

May the pigeons target the both of them.

Nonetheless, "public opinion" is easier to spin than anything going on in Iraq. You can design a poll that will elicit answers supporting anything you started out wanting to say.

"How fortunate it is that man is a reasonable creature, for it enables him to make up a reason for anything he has a mind to do." -- Benjamin Franklin

I don't buy this article even a little. Who actually gives a crap about "world opinion"? John Kerry? The NYT? Walter Cronkite?

Who gives a crap about them?

Rauch apparently doesn't know much about Vietnam. Or else he's deliberately misusing Nam history as part of his spin.

Which is about all this article is.

This is a freaking Dem/Rep skunk fight. What is it doing here of all places?

|12.6.05 @ 8:36AM|#

Jason Ligon, the 45% number is from the recent poll by the British military.

John writes, "That is you and Jennifer who believe that Iraqis are too stupid to have a democracy." Wow, I've gone from being "objectively pro-Baathist" to actively, consciously pro-Baathist. How does complete intellectual bankruptcy feel? When you can't even admit your opponents' beliefs, let alone refute them?

|12.6.05 @ 8:42AM|#

joshua corning, you are correct that the tactics of the drawdown have been around for quite some time. But that's not the "hasty retreat in the fact of public opinion" part.

It's the transparent abandonment of the "finish the job" position. Like Lenin declaring feudal Russia to be in the capitalist phase, the administration's declaration that Iraq is on the brink of stability and democracy are obvious pretexts, divorced from reality. Violence is up, American and Iraqi troop casualties are up, civilian deaths are up, civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites is heating up, and the Iraqi military is still an auxillary of the Americans. To suddenly declare, a couple weeks after the Murtha earthquake, that some kind of corner has been turned is bullshit. Conditions very similar to these existed a year and two years ago, and talk about pulling out then was denounced by hawks everywhere as a cowardly abandonment of the plan.

You think maybe there's a reason why the administration has refused to establish benchmarks?

|12.6.05 @ 8:45AM|#

Nothing will complete the rout of the neocons hawks better than asking every hawkish politician what went wrong in Vietnam.

Waah waah, nattering nabobs, we were just about to win when those cosmopolitan types in the media who don't share the values of the people stabbed us in the back.

Mike H.|12.6.05 @ 9:32AM|#

I thought 'finishing the job' meant building an Iraqi security force that could handle things itself? In line with that meme, numbers of Iraqi troops are up and the competency of those same troops is also up.

It's not quite the absolutist quagmire that you're making it out to be, joseph.

|12.6.05 @ 11:35AM|#

|12.6.05 @ 11:37AM|#

Nice defining down, joshua.

|12.6.05 @ 12:07PM|#

yeah joe and at best what you are doing is spin.

This was the plan from the beginning..the one I understood to be true a year and a half ago.

Democracy in Iraq cannot be viable unless Iraqis participate in and defend it themselves.

and they cannot do that if the US is doing it for them. You said it yourself.

This is not a bug but a feature. And along with that i would say that low troop numbers and the chaos and looting that accured just after the fall of bagdad were also features.

|12.6.05 @ 1:02PM|#

And that whole "Ooopse, there aren't any WMDs" - a useful exercise in instilling a healthy skepticism of government. Al Qaeda terrorists overrunning the country? Flypaper.

You flipped the bike, Peewee. It doesn't matter if you say "I meant to do that." We've all just watched what's happened over the past two and a half years. (BTW, if you realized all this a year and a half ago, what were thinking for the first year?)

For your lone, substantive point, Iraqi self-determinatin is a NECESSARY condition for Iraqi democracy, but it is not a SUFFICIENT condition for Iraqi democracy.

Mike H.|12.6.05 @ 1:30PM|#

Once upon a time, Mike H, "finishing the job" meant establishing a liberal democracy that would serve a beacon to the peoples of the region to embrace democracy; it meant establishing an Iraqi government that would allow the Iraqi peoples to live in peace, and respected their rights; it meant avoiding an ethnic civil war; it meant denying international terrorists the opportunity to operate in Iraqi territory.

Yes. I agree. However I disagree that this has somehow changed. That goal remains, but in order to meet it others must first (obviously) be met.

The strategy of defining down of "the job" so that is is satisfied merely by having an Iraqi security force that can fight off terrorist bands, down from the idealistic claptrap we heard early on, and heard even more vehemently once the WMD charade collapsed, is how the Bush administration will attempt to save its political ass as it bugs out of Iraq. Hell, the standard you just provided for "finishing the job" existed under the Baathists.

But the entire point of having a competent Iraqi army isn't merely just so that there's a compentent Iraqi army - it's so that the LARGER goal of a liberal Iraq can eventually be realized.

What you say is "defining down" I say is doing what is necessary to complete the original goal. The "standard" I provided was obviously brief and incomplete - I didn't think I'd have to run through the entire litany once again providing every caveat and minute detail...

|12.6.05 @ 2:01PM|#

"And that whole "Ooopse, there aren't any WMDs" - a useful exercise in instilling a healthy skepticism of government."

Jesus christ joe..how many ways does this have to put, france, germany, clinton, briton, US congress, us media and just about everyone else was wrong...hell clinton bombed the place thinking they had it, but you go ahead and pin it solely on bush there buddy.

"Al Qaeda terrorists overrunning the country? Flypaper."

zarquawi went to iraq before not after we invaded.

You flipped the bike, Peewee. It doesn't matter if you say "I meant to do that." We've all just watched what's happened over the past two and a half years. (BTW, if you realized all this a year and a half ago, what were thinking for the first year?)

Yeah it might have been 2 years ago...it was on cspan and it was wolfowitz talking to congress when I first saw and understood the stratagy.
I was using a year and a half thinking that that was about 6 months after the start...and that was only when i became aware of it...the point of me mentioning it was to demonsrate that this was not a recent plan and that it was being exicuted on schedule...and if the US begins to draw down troops it will not be becouse of recent falls in the polls but simply an exicution of a plan drawn up well beforehand

"....but it is not a SUFFICIENT condition for Iraqi democracy."

history will determine that not you or me...one thing is sure going the other way was a failer in vietnam and a failer in Europe after ww2.