Hard to know how to make a meaningful contribution given the rules & theme of this thread. However to start
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The nine postulates with which Blatahm started this thread are mostly opinion and consistently reflect Blatham's anti- Bush, anti Republican bias. They certainly do not represent any kind of objective recitation of facts or a suitable basis for a discussion representing any point of view other than his own.
However despite all this I will offer some predictions concerning things I believe we can all at least accept as likely and I will try to omit as much subjective judgment and interpretation as I can.
The Iraqi elections will occur as scheduled and a new government will take office on schedule. The Kurdish and Shiite sections of the country will be well represented in the election; the Sunni section much less so. The new President will nevertheless be careful to appoint some prominent Sunnis to senior government posts.
The insurgency will continue, but gradually and steadily the Iraqis will take larger and larger roles in combating it. The U.S. will construct several bases at which it will station rapid reaction mobile forces - away from the day-to-day conflict, but ready to intervene in an emergency.
The withdrawl of U.S. forces will begin several months after the new government takes office and will continue at a pace consistent with progress in combating the insurgency and the deployment of effective Iraqi forces.
If all this is tolerably successful, U.S. forces in the region will be garrisoned in new bases in Iraq, in neighboring Kuwait and at sea in and near the Persian Gulf. Their total number will be reduced from the current 140,000 (including troops now in Kuwait) to arount 70,000 over the next year.
The Iraqi government will be somewhat authoritarian by U.S. or European standards, but wildly open and liberal by those of the Middle east. Some degree of autonomy will be granted to the Shiite and Kurdish regions and this will also be held out as a carrot to the Sunnis to elicit their participation. It is possible that a near civil war will develop among the Sunnis, but I doubt it.
The attainment of even these modest objectives will constitute a significantly improved situation from the perspectives of U.S. security people and of Iraqi nationalists as well. I won't venture a prediction as to the speed and degree of any success the new Iraqi government might attain, but the continuance of an at least moderately effective government across the whole country is likely. The restive Sunni population is surrounded by hostile forces - the Kuwaitis who remember the invasion; the Shiites who chafed under Sunni domination and enjoy the support of Iran, and the Kurds who also resented Sunni domination and who are interested in developing their considerable natural resources. The U.S. will be in a position to put significantly increased pressure on Syria both directly and through the Israeli Palestinian peace process to limit the effectiveness of their covert support for the insurgency.
Overall things look reasonably good.
As this process unfolds the Administration will work hard to advance its domestic agenda advancing Social Security and Tort law reform and other initiatives. Some typical second term disruptions will occur, but they will be no worse than those of Reagan's & Clinton's second terms, and probably less distracting.
dyslexia wrote:Columnist Robert D. Novak
mush mouthed little apparatchik.
noun:
pl. ap·pa·ra·tchiks or ap·pa·ra·tchi·ki (-ch-k) KEY
A member of a Communist apparat.
An unquestioningly loyal subordinate, especially of a political leader or organization.
george
Do you think, honestly, that the US will allow circumstances to arise that will lead to a full withdrawl of all troops and presence? That's a theoretical possibility - and not an unlikely one - with truly free elections and sovereign governance.
Quote:LONDON (AP) -- Iraq's interior minister told British television Sunday he expected U.S. and other foreign forces to leave his country within 18 months.
Falah al-Naqib told Channel 4 News that Iraq was well on its way to building its own security force and multinational forces would no longer be required.
``I think we will be able to depend on ourselves, if everything goes in the right direction,'' al-Naqib said.
``We are building our forces and I think we will need 18 months. It's my estimate that we will have quite a reasonable-sized force, trained, well-trained force, well-equipped to protect the country.''
``So I believe very much that we won't need more than 18 months,'' al-Naqib said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Iraq-Force-Withdrawal.html
Much yet unknown, but I thought I'd post this item for its posited timeline and how that might relate to the next upcoming American election.
blatham wrote:Quote:LONDON (AP) -- Iraq's interior minister told British television Sunday he expected U.S. and other foreign forces to leave his country within 18 months.
Falah al-Naqib told Channel 4 News that Iraq was well on its way to building its own security force and multinational forces would no longer be required.
``I think we will be able to depend on ourselves, if everything goes in the right direction,'' al-Naqib said.
``We are building our forces and I think we will need 18 months. It's my estimate that we will have quite a reasonable-sized force, trained, well-trained force, well-equipped to protect the country.''
``So I believe very much that we won't need more than 18 months,'' al-Naqib said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Iraq-Force-Withdrawal.html
Much yet unknown, but I thought I'd post this item for its posited timeline and how that might relate to the next upcoming American election.
why blatham, surely you aren't suggesting anything untoward or manipulative, are you ?
:wink:
Earlier here, I passed on the David Gergen statement that one thing Bush and Rove were working towards was a long term (20 - 30 year) dominance by the Republican Party.
Quote:Second-Term Plans Look to Undercut Democratic Pillars
By Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A01
When President Bush stands before Congress on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union address, it is a safe bet that he will not announce that one of his goals is the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.
But a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.
Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.
GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.
Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.
If the Bush agenda is enacted, "there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an operative who speaks regularly with White House senior adviser Karl Rove.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47559-2005Jan29.html
blatham:-
Who pays off Iraq debts and costs incurred in establishing "democracy"?
Yeah! Who's paying for all this freedom?
Probably the petro-chemical companies will solicit donations down in the company cafeterias.
blatham wrote:george
Do you think, honestly, that the US will allow circumstances to arise that will lead to a full withdrawl of all troops and presence? That's a theoretical possibility - and not an unlikely one - with truly free elections and sovereign governance.
Blatham,
I think it would be appropriate for you to venture a guess to this answer in view of the recently completed elections.
I stand by my forecast above. The U.S. government has already said that if an elected Iraqi government asks us to leave, we will go. I guess you are suggesting that somehow we will not allow such a situation to arise. Why wouldn't we? We already have base rights in Bahrain, the Emirates, and Oman. We don't need more. The development of a relatively democratic government in Iraq, accompanied by free economic development, will have enormous benefits for us and the world - not to mention the Iraqis themselves. It will change the direction of political evolution in the Moslem world in a way very favorable to all concerned. Why would we wish to resist that?
Iraq represents a huge investment for American businesses and interests. We're not going to abandon that investment. Period. If you think otherwise, you're fooling yourself about how we work as a country.
Sure, it would make a lot of good-will amongst the arab countries, but since when did that matter to the US?
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:Iraq represents a huge investment for American businesses and interests. We're not going to abandon that investment. Period. If you think otherwise, you're fooling yourself about how we work as a country.
Sure, it would make a lot of good-will amongst the arab countries, but since when did that matter to the US?
Cycloptichorn
I would be curious to know where you got your "huge investment" data?
The fact is U.S. commercial investments in Iraq are extremely small on either an absolute or relative basis. Your facts are as defective as is your sweeping conclusion.
I am certain that many of the U.S. troops will leave. I am also almost certain that a few thousand will stay behind. Permanent army bases are alledgedly being built in the vicinity of the oil fields. They may not necessarily be there to meddle with Iraqi affairs or guard the oil fields purely for American interests, but as permanent army bases in the Middle East. Which, from the point of view of American foreign policy, makes sense. Now yes, that requires some factual ground. I have heard this discussed by Daniel Ellsberg who had read army reports. so as of now it is just a hear-say from me. I will try to find what I can on the subject. Until then, it is a hypothetical scenario.
Iraq held elections. At this point, that's pretty much all we know. Everything else is just spin.
Couple of questions.
With all this altruistic motivation re "bringing democracy to Iraq", will we now want to bring it elsewhere, say to Saudi Arabia, our ally, home of the Saudi Royal Family a.k.a. Bush's oil buddies?
And, hypothetically, if Bush had come before the American people before his invasion of Iraq and said "We're going to send our young American troops to Iraq to bring democracy to the oppressed Iraqis", does anyone honestly believe the American public would ever have given him the green light?
(I'm thinking not, which is of course why he had to lie.)
This is a key question, don't you think? I mean, the president may technically have the right to launch a pre-emptive invasion without the "consent" of the American people, but how do you feel about the fact that he did not come to the people with this so-called and recently adopted "democracy" agenda?
Quote:I would be curious to know where you got your "huge investment" data?
The fact is U.S. commercial investments in Iraq are extremely small on either an absolute or relative basis. Your facts are as defective as is your sweeping conclusion.
Bullsh*t.
I don't see how you can type things such as this and expect people to take you seriously. US investment in Iraq is one of the most promising new sectors for development being pimped by our government these days.
I suggest you start here:
http://www.export.gov/iraq/
http://www.portaliraq.com/
http://www.iraqprocurement.com/
The region has nothing but potential for advancement as a whole host of western ideas, goods, and services become available. Someone has to provide those services, and the vast majority of those someones will be US businesses.
None of this is even to mention the investment in democracy that we have taken there; the lives of the coalition forces that have been given up to see Iraq stable. We're not going to just up and leave the area. You're really being obtuse if you believe that we would do such a thing...
Cycloptichorn
Oh I agree there is substantial investment potential, but it is a fact that we have little investment there now.
I don't think one can make a case that we intervened in Iraq to make a profit on future investments. Perhaps if we did things the way the British and french did in their colonies and claimed OWNERSHIP of the natural resources themselves we could eventually make a buck on this deal. However we don't claim ownership. Whatever economic benefits that eventually result will hardly pay for the war. We did it for security and historical reasons - not to advance our business interests.
Elections in Iraq are a turning point. The high turnout amidst bombs tells us at least two things: 1) the majority of Iraqis prefer democracy to resistance, votes to guns, poll stations to machine guns or suicide bombings; 2) the majority of Iraqis want to determine what their new government will be like. Those are good news for the world.
We'll see how the results turn out (I can tell, from direct second hand information, that the Iraqi election officials are truly committed to respecting the will of the people, regardless of the foreign occupant's opinion). Who will have the majority of the Assembly. We don't know, but it's fairly safe to say that no one will, so a stage of political negotiations is coming. Let's hope there is as little foreign intervention as possible in those negotiations.
One bleak element was the low Sunni turnout. The former political majority (but religious minority) took these elections as a farewell to their power. This means that insurgence/resistance/terrorism has some hold in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Even if, by many means, this isn't Vietnam (the Vietnamese couldn't have dream of free, albeit closely watched elections, and opposition to US presence was, seemingly, more widespread), we have a few things that still remind us of that war: the US thought it was an easy victory and kept the war going for too long.
In Iraq, the US may think they won, and may fall into the temptation of keeping their military for too long "to sustain democracy".
Whatever the United States does, we are likely to be criticized for it. Envy and ingratitude are more powerful human motivations than respect and wisdom. We are still dealing with the consequences of British and French greed and duplicity during WWI: WWII was act II, the Cold War, act III and the distemper and disorder in the former Ottoman Empire, act IV.
In the 1915 secret Sikes Piqot treaty, Britain and France agreed on the division of the spoils of the Ottoman Empire, which they had just invaded in the ill-conceived Gallipoli campaign. Neither bothered to inform the USA of this agreement when we entered the war in 1917. Within eight months we had put almost 800,000 soldiers on the Western front. The "hard pressed" British and French promptly put 500,000 in the Mideast and eventually succeeded in their campaign, partly by invading Mesopotamia (Iraq).
Dag
Not long after the war began, a US general stated that a permanent military footprint was in the works. I posted the piece in the US, UN, Iraq thread at the time. I've noted a couple of subsequent statements with same/similar content.
It seems likely that the Sauds would be pleased as punch to have US military out of their country (that's Osama's big complaint, after all), particularly if they remained close at hand.
Quote:Whatever the United States does, we are likely to be criticized for it. Envy and ingratitude are more powerful human motivations than respect and wisdom.
An example, and george supplies us with many, of what Tocqueville described as America's "perpetual utterance of self-applause".
