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Viking Moose|5.1.06 @ 1:29PM|#
very interesting.
thanks!
|5.1.06 @ 1:54PM|#
Is it just me, or does Michael Young's piece read like an apology from somebody who wants to assure us that his intentions were good?
Warren|5.1.06 @ 2:08PM|#
Leon Hadar is exactly right.
|5.1.06 @ 2:08PM|#
It's not just you, thoreau. As Santa Esmeralda sang:
Baby, don't you know I'm just human
And I've got thoughts like any other man
And sometimes I find myself, oh Lord, regretting
Some foolish thing, some foolish thing I've done
But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Oh Lord, don't let me be misunderstood
Please don't let me be misunderstood
|5.1.06 @ 5:24PM|#
"As the �insurgency� gained momentum, as civilians were randomly slaughtered by a so-called re-sistance, it became obvious there was one assortment of forces, both inside and outside the country, that wanted Iraq to succeed, and one that did not."
If, at this late date, Mr. Young is still pretending not to know the difference between the international jihadis carrying out suicide bombings against civilians, and indigineous insurgents carrying out guerilla attacks against military forces, then I can't take anything he has to say seriously, because he is still allowing his vision to be clouded by ideology and political convenience.
R C Dean|5.1.06 @ 5:51PM|#
I wonder, joe, if the Iraqi government that both the foreign AQ killers and the native Baathist killers seek to overthrow, and the civilians they both kill, see much of a distinction.
There are very few attacks on the foreign military forces in Iraq these days. Even your romantic native resistance fighters aren't attacking the US out as they are seeking other goals.
|5.1.06 @ 5:53PM|#
It's not just you, thoreau. As Santa Esmeralda sang:
That was actually an Animals song originally. But the Santa Esmeralda version (I have it on the Kill Bill 1 soundtrack) is pretty good too.
|5.1.06 @ 8:18PM|#
V-I day?
Should we change V-J day to Dec 7th then? I guess a Congressional declaration of war, to FDR, was "mission accomplished".
|5.1.06 @ 9:00PM|#
Although I will probably be daid and gone, I'm hopeful V-LXIX day will be celebrated with a lunch at the "Y."
|5.2.06 @ 1:26AM|#
Leon Hadar provides a clear summary of the reasons we should never have gone into Iraq, and an excellent strategy for withdrawing while making it clear that those who harm us will feel the pain.
|5.2.06 @ 2:56AM|#
Hmm.
Leon Hadar provides a clear summary of the reasons we should never have gone into Iraq,
Yes. You don't get to have a nice stable central gov't anywhere in the ME, unless you're will to seriously knock heads together and make the children behave.
They aren't in the mood to behave, because nobody ever made them. And the Western world is simply not willing to do the head knocking that will be required. THAT is why we should never have gone in.
In fact, if the Head Knocker ever shows up on the scene, I predict the UN will shut him down, thereby leaving the ME a perpetual disaster area.
and an excellent strategy for withdrawing while making it clear that those who harm us will feel the pain.
That sounds like as much of a pipe dream as "we're gonna democratize Iraq". How exactly are we going to make anyone "feel the pain", when we can't find them?
|5.2.06 @ 3:04AM|#
In fact, many of those fighting the U.S. and the elected government don�t want the U.S. to withdraw. They want to draw us in further, hoping, as Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri recently put it, to �make the West bleed for years.�
If that's true, then it may not be so far fetched to say "better to fight them in Iraq than here". But then again, if terrorists want to hit us, wouldn't be all that difficult.
For some reason, I once thought it made sense to stay on in Iraq. I had this insane idea that as long as we made the blunder of going in, we might as well try and actually accomplish something good.
It's increasingly clear that we won't do anything good from here on, because we aren't going to do the head knocking it would take.
I'm not sure it makes any real difference whether we leave now or later. The odds of Iraq hanging together or not are probably about the same either way.
Which says, we may as well get the hell out now. We won't though. We won't until the public outcry is deafening in the White House.
Maybe it's about time to start outcrying.
|5.2.06 @ 10:11AM|#
"Yes. You don't get to have a nice stable central gov't anywhere in the ME, unless you're will to seriously knock heads together and make the children behave"
Actually, unless you call Saddam's Iraq stable, I don't think that's true. And actually, Iran has been pretty stable, but up until we named them as part of teh "axis of evil" they were liberalizing quite nicely, with the young generation showing quite a bit of fondness for western culture and ideas. Of course, now that we have threatened them with physical force, they do what any nation does - cling to the state (see also U.S.A. after 9/11).
I think what it takes is to allow the people of the ME to create their own states and solve their own problems without outside pressure or interference forcing them to conform to what British or American planners want from them.
Given a few years of localized conflict, I think what we now know as Iraq would settle into three (possibly more) fairly stable states. And if we stop rattling sabres at Iran, the young generation will take over and be very friendly to us (see Vietnam - 30 years after we stopped military intervention, even the most died in the wool local communists there admit that it is their own government, and not the west, that is the problem. And even the government is eager to embrace the west.) The middle east is unstable because its political order was enforced from the outside, and did not arise from self-organization. Heck, FDR - yes, FDR! - was the first president to pledge our national might in exchange for propping up the Kingdom of Saud in exchange for relatively open access to their oil. And yet people think the problem has nothing to do with our earlier interventions, and that history started with Jimmy Carter, or Ronald Reagan.
It's amazing how many people believe in the law of unintended consequences in domestic intervention, but think it never applies in foreign intervention.
|5.2.06 @ 12:00PM|#
I think what it takes is to allow the people of the ME to create their own states and solve their own problems without outside pressure or interference forcing them to conform to what British or American planners want from them.
There was an Egyptian leader (forget his name now), somewhere around 1840's-50's, who was what I'd call a "head knocker". He built an army and a reasonably stable state, and was building a fairly respectable little empire. He was getting his people educated and, while not libertarian, at least he was getting his subject peoples educated. Leaders like this don't arise very often.
The British and French couldn't take it. They came in and "clipped his wings".
That's the kind of intervention that I consider destructive over the long haul. Now we get Saddams and his type because they have to rule over these arbitrarily drawn state boundaries.
The middle east is unstable because its political order was enforced from the outside, and did not arise from self-organization.
Truth is, it would probably be unstable anyway. Even the empire builders in history have never been able to control more than slice of it, going all the way back to Roman times (Ottoman rule was pretty loose, btw).
Our interventions haven't helped though, to be sure. All we've done is given them excuses to blame their own problems on us.
Western foreign policy hasn't made any sense for at least the last 400 years. We've never quite been able to figure out what the hell we're trying to accomplish.
|5.2.06 @ 2:27PM|#
"There are very few attacks on the foreign military forces in Iraq these days."
Bullshit, RC - there were dozens of American combat deaths in April alone, as there were in March and February. Somebody's gotten a little too comfortable with making shit up about Iraq, methinks.
Your pathetic attempt to call me a terrorist supporter - "my romantic Iraqi resistance?" - just demonstrates how seriously you deserve to be taken.