US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

How impatient we are these days. From the time the first Americans took up arms against the British until the Brits went home and we had a new but functioning republic was nine long years. Now Americans expect striking results in days or months. Back then there were the distractors who thought the whole thing a mistake, but the majority saw a vision of possibilities and they got it done. If we had modern day mentality during the Revolutionary War, I don't think there would ever have been a United States of America.

"The following document articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003 and provides an update on our progress as well as the challenges remaining."
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/iraq_national_strategy_20051130[1].pdf PDF-file. Source: National Security Council

Unfortunately George III was mad, and relied too much on his Hessian mercenaries.

Info re The Lincoln Group metioned in the above article
Info re The Lincoln Group metioned in the above article:

http://www.lincolngroup.com/

Semantics Debate: Rumsfeld Says Don't Call Them 'Insurgents'
Semantics Debate: Rumsfeld Says Don't Call Them 'Insurgents'
Published: November 29, 2005 5:22 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP)

More than 2 1/2 years into the Iraq war, Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided the enemy are not insurgents.

"This is a group of people who don't merit the word 'insurgency,' I think," Rumsfeld said Tuesday at a Pentagon news conference. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.

"It was an epiphany."

Rumsfeld's comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.

"I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe," he said. "These people don't have a legitimate gripe." Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.' He promised to look it up.

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as "rising up against established authority."

Even Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood beside Rumsfeld at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term `insurgent.'

After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, "I have to use the word `insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now."

Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How's that?"

So finally, we have an aknowledgement and more evidence that the Bush administration has had a plan for securing a democracy in Iraq since February 26, 2003, almost a month before the USA invaded Iraq. Not only that we have an aknowledgement and more evidence that the Bush administration revises its plan for securing a democracy in Iraq from time to time as they recognize the need to do that.

"Democracy" in Iraq is an oxymoron. The three tribes have been at war for centuries based on sect. World history teaches us a lesson; religious differences creates friction and wars - not democracy.

Unfortunate George III rationally went to war with the army he had rather than the army he wanted.

I think I heard someone say something like that more recently.

Re: U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Pres

Oh my How dare USA soldiers exhibit their devotion to truth as they see it. How dare they utilize their own right of free speech that they seek to defend for others.

ican, You fail to see the problems of paid/controlled news media in Iraq, because you are blind to so many things related to it.

Mountains out of molehills.

FALSE!
As I recall, the religion of the Pilgrims differed markedly from that of the Indians, but both eventually participated in the evolution of the USA democracy.

Immigrants from all over the world (including those from what is now Iraq), with multiple and often conflicting other religions, participated in the evolution of the USA democracy.

The posterity of all of these people are participating in the evolution of the USA democracy.

More recently Muslim immigrants from the middle east are participating in the evolution of the USA democracy.

Homogeneity of religion has rarely been a pre-requisite for the evolution of democracy.

In Europe, multiple different religous groups battled each other for thousands of years before they evolved their first democracy.

Even atheists (just another religous group -- a group whose system of beliefs is based on faith) are participating in the evolution of our democracy.

What do you think it is about the DNA of current residents of Iraq that makes them different in this respect?

What evidence do you have to support your allegation?

ABSENT EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, your allegation is at best your baseless opinion, and at worst your compulsive fantasy.

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What is the evidence that these are any more of a problem in Iraq than in western democracies?

Absent mountains, what else should we expect them to do?

The history of the USA as an example for democracy in Iraq is comparing apples and oranges.

Religious States and Religious Politics



From both a simple conceptual point of view and a simplistic historical perspective, this would appear the purest of the four cases, and perhaps the most common stereotype of non-Western, hence nonsecular, societies around the world. Because religion in one sphere is matched symmetrically by religion in the other, a religious state would seem to go hand in hand with religious politics.



In fact, the combination is more the exception than the rule, and this is because it is so volatile and potentially violent. When a religious state is faced with religious politics, there is a religious conflict at issue. Under such circumstances, the state's very legitimacy is called into question, and violence may reflect preemptive actions of state control as well as the clash among contending religious parties. If there is a single pattern that lends itself to the most widespread religious and cultural violence, it is surely this one. And, alas, while the category is rare, it is hardly nonexistent.



Within our "sample" of countries, several cases invite inclusion here - at least at various points in their histories. Like most other Latin American countries, both Brazil and Guatemala were once officially Catholic states in a religious political system that involved the subjugation and suppression of indigenous religious alternatives. Formally, both countries had severed these state religious ties by the end of the nineteenth century; informally, ties have persisted in varying forms. In Brazil, the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy is now seeking to reappropriate and renegotiate its seat at the right hand of the state, while at the same time both church and state are engaged in a new religious politics animated by persistent strains of liberation theology on the one hand and a surging pentecostal Protestantism on the other. In Guatemala, the dominant military state has shifted its ostensible religious affiliation from Catholic to Protestant in the last decade, and there is no question that its ongoing guerilla opposition is in part a movement of Mayan religious revitalization.



Or consider the case of Israel. Many Israelis would protest its categorization as a religious state, arguing that Zionism itself can be seen as a secular movement, and that the state makes ample provision for both secular practices and various non-Judaic faiths, especially Islamic and Christian. At the same time, there is no question that the Israeli state is perceived as Jewish by most Jews and non-Jews alike. Even if this were not the case, Zionism itself may be a sufficiently sacred commitment to qualify as religious in its own terms. Certainly there is no question that Israeli politics often take religious forms. This not only applies to the participation of Muslim Palestinians, including the Hamas, but also to the struggles among various Jewish groups - whether secularists on the left or contesting movements on the right, such as the Gush Emunim and the ultra-orthodox Haredi. As Yitzhak Rabin's assassination makes clear, the stakes are large and the rates of violence are correspondingly high.



But perhaps the clearest combination of a religious state with religious politics is found in Northern Ireland. There is no question that the state is perceived in Protestant terms, whether de jure as a result of its inclusion within Anglican Britain, or de facto because of the three-hundred-year political dominance of local Protestants. Certainly there is no doubt that politics are riven with religion - at least insofar as they have involved extreme civil religious blocs that are "culturally" if not always "religiously" Protestant and Catholic respectively. The recent truce and possible signs of a negotiated settlement signal a change in the religious politics, but by no means its end. What was once a small Catholic minority may well become an effective political majority early in the next century, and Catholics have already begun to make gains through the ballot rather than the bullets of the IRA. Such a development is hastened by the increased out-migration of Protestants with resources, who read the new writing on the graffiti-emblazoned walls; it is compounded by the frustrations of those less advantaged Protestants remaining behind.



As all of the above examples attest, the combination of a religious state and religious politics has occasioned some of the most deeply rooted and tragic violence of the modern era. This makes it especially important to consider the alternatives, even though it is one thing to point out the dangers of this combination in the abstract and quite another to prevent countries from sliding towards it in reality. Then too, some of the alternatives have warts of their own.

Bush outlines Iraq 'victory plan'

Mr Bush has never laid out his plans in this way before
President George W Bush has said he will not accept "anything less than complete victory" in Iraq.
In a major policy speech, Mr Bush refused to set an "artificial deadline" to withdraw US troops, saying it was "not a plan for victory".

It comes after the release of the first Iraq strategy document, which rejects widespread calls for a timetable.

Mr Bush has come under growing pressure from Democrats on Iraq. Polls give him the lowest approval of his presidency.



As such, this was a speech from a president in deep trouble, says the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington.

Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said Mr Bush's speech was "recycled... tired rhetoric", and that the president had "once again missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home".

I agree with this essay. However, this essay does not contradict my previous post on this topic.

I wrote:


I acknowlege the difficulties your essay points out that religious states have frequently had. Nonetheless, some religious states have nonetheless evolved into democracies as the essay you posted here acknowledges.

I also acknowledge that the USA by design did not start to evolve from a religious state into a democracy.

The Holy Roman Empire is an example of a religious state that did successfully evolve into a democracy, actually more than one democracy.

Iraq has not been a religious state in recent history. It is not a religious state at present. The Iraq Constitution declares tolerance for the coexistance of religions in the country of Iraq. However, its Constitution does say that the "undisputed" laws of Islam and those of the country of Iraq shall not be inconflict.

It is not, as you alleged, a foregone conclusion that Iraq will not evolve into a democracy:

US Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey said Wednesday that he thought Iraqi commanders were responsible for recent cases of detainee torture by Iraqi security forces.
Dempsey, who oversees the US program to train security forces in Iraq, said he believed the recent cases of abuse were caused by a lack of leadership, rather than by individual soldiers or police or shortcomings of the US training regimen. Dempsey said the US program educated Iraqi security forces on human rights and the rule of law. US troops found 170 detainees imprisoned in an interior ministry building in Baghdad earlier this month, and several detainees showed signs of being tortured and being in need of food and water.
The Iraqi government has promised a probe into the torture, but has not delivered any results in two weeks as promised.

Yahoo News: Iraqi command to blame for detainee torture