Where do we go from here?

Juliette N. Kayyem: Consider the unintended consequences

A lot of Democrats and human-rights activists supported the war in Iraq, and the question they always ask is, "Aren't we better off without Saddam Hussein?" That question is way too easy. The harder question, the important question, is whether it was worth the price.

Getting someone out of power has a price. And these efforts have tremendous costs. My thing is counterterrorism. I always ask, "How has this war affected our counterterrorism strategy?" Well, in Iraq the cost is the war on terrorism.

The truth is, if we had had a better idea of what we wanted the peace to be like, we would not have fought the war the way we did. Our goal was, we go in there fast, Baghdad falls, and that's okay, that's that. We were all watching our trucks barreling down the highway, now they're two hours from Baghdad, now they're an hour from Baghdad. That was our military strategy. There was no thought to how you bring stability to those areas
you're driving past. In hindsight, as you were driving to Baghdad, you didn't stabilize
Shiah areas, and you bypassed huge amounts of guns and military caches that are currently being used against us. How we waged the war was clearly the wrong way for winning the peace.

The justification for going into Iraq was that we didn't want governments that wouldn't or couldn't control terrorists inside its borders. Well, if the US leaves now, we will have created another Afghanistan. So, what should we do from here? Dump the June 30 deadline. Nobody thinks it means anything. It's a cosmetic deadline. It's a date that has just come to plague us. That date exists purely for political reasons, for United States
politics. It has no meaning within Iraq. We should increase troops, internationalize the troops, and commit for the long haul. Withdrawal is the wrong thing to do. The idea that we have no interest there boggles my mind. Not just for moral reasons, which would be enough, because we created the problems the Iraqis are facing. But there is a real
consequence to what happens now. If we leave, the best-case scenario is a Shiah-majority
government. The worst-case scenario is civil war. In a Shiah government, you would have Kurds facing persecution by the majority, so Turkey would want to go in to protect them.

If you walk away, why wouldn't Iran and Turkey get involved? What would be their incentive not to get involved?

Juliette N. Kayyem is a senior fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and national-security analyst for NBC News.

This sums it all up.

Hey, Wilso! What time is it where you are?

Christopher Hitchens: This is nothing like Vietnam

The only people that you can decide to ignore in this debate are people who start by talking about Vietnam. There's absolutely no meeting point between the two at all, of any kind. The Vietnamese, even at their most Stalinist, had never been condemned by the United Nations or the international community for invading neighboring countries, for using weapons of genocide at home and abroad, or for sponsoring and encouraging terror. I think it's an insult to compare the Vietnamese revolutionaries to these jihadist and Baathist riffraff. Most importantly, Vietnamese nationalism, even in its communist form, could never be described by anyone as a threat to international order or to civilization. The forces of jihad have to be described that way. It is as important to prevent them taking over Iraq, which they would have had a strong chance of doing if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to run out his term, as it would be to prevent them taking over any other country, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Uzbekistan.

This is a bit more like Bosnia or Kosovo. That was an attempt to rescue Muslims from massacre in the heart of a largely Christian setting. This is an attempt to create something like a democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, so the context is different. But it belongs with the post-Cold War nation-building operations that we're going to have to get much better at.

When I was in Iraq last summer, a lot of my Iraqi friends were saying to me to look out for this guy Moqtada Sadr, he's a small guy at the moment but he's very unpleasant and he could become a real nuisance. They were wishing something could be done about him. If what I read is true, that they had a warrant for his arrest on the charge of murder of a senior Shiite imam, I certainly think it was a mistake to close his newspaper rather than arrest him. I do remember feeling a qualm, a pang, when I read about the closing of the paper. Not that it's a newspaper exactly, it doesn't deserve the name of newspaper, but still, his propaganda sheet. I'd like to have it out where I could see it if I were in charge of Iraq. I'd like to know what they were saying. So that doesn't seem to have been handled very brilliantly.

Also, Dr. Ahmed Chalabi argued that there should have been a transfer of sovereignty much sooner, and I think that he has been proved right. The basic training you have if you're Iraqi is keeping your head down and watching out to see which side will be the winning side. It's evident from looking at the newspapers that that's what people are doing to a large extent. So this is potentially a very great tragedy. It's not as bad as it would have been without an intervention, though. My God, then it would have been like Somalia, squared.

Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor for the Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair, and the author or editor of more than 35 books.

4:32pm right now.

You can put that down to the influence of one person. Rupert Murdoch. He has an incredible proportion of the world's media under his control, and these outlets have become rabid right wing propaganda machines. Anything he controls in Australia, have been vocally supportive of this war. Even public polls have had their questions structured in such a way that opponents of the war did not have a question available to answer. Letters to the editor are only printed which support the conservative governments of our countries.

?
"Dump the June 30 deadline. Nobody thinks it means anything. It's a cosmetic deadline."

A few people are advocating this but it will be surprising if it is postponed because the pig sheeit for brains Pres. we have keeps saying that this date cannot be changed.

Exit plan? There was never one because this NeoFascist Govt. of the US is not planning on leaving. the largest Embasy in the world is in the planning stages or Iraq and 14 Military bases are in the works. All the US Multi-Corps are waiting for the natives to be subdued so that they can start up their businesses there.

All the sage advice on the planet can be offered to the NeoFascists but they won't take it because they have their PNAC Plans to fullfill.

There is only one solution to Iraq. Vote the NeoFascists out. If they take power anyway, a Coup must be advanced to throw them out and trials of their criminal actions must be held.

Let us hope that Americans will do that. Otherwise, we may as well resign ourselves for nothing but the same as been happening the past three years and who knows how it will all end up other than it will not be good.

..."other than it will not be good."? How's that for an understatement. Are you from the the British Isles?

They do have a reputation for understatement!

One little tidbit I just picked up while reading other stuff: one reason why Bush might have given Woodward such unfettered access to him and his team is the fact that Woodward's last book on Bush (about immediately post-9/11) was relatively complementary about him.

Interesting thread, Suzy.

I'll be back to comment when I have more time.

KP

summac

no just kentucky, usually my statements are anything but understatements, but I just can't imagine how all this is going to end up other than I know it will be bad. I keep picturing our way of life being as dramatically different than it is now, it is just a general feeling of doom. I don't know if Kerry is the answer to everything but surely he has got to be a little less damaging. A presidents first rule of thumb aught to be like a doctors, "first do no harm."

Maybe we shouldn't have presidents at all but elective bodies who have to decide everything by majority vote. But that is probably unrealistic.