The US, UN & Iraq III

sozobe


OK I will bite. Show me some proof that the US knew the museum would be looted. I would also like to see some evidence that there were troops available to perform that function.

Just wanaa say I'm enjoyin' hell outta HofT's posts. Go get 'em, girl!

au, she already posted sufficient citations to prove that at the very least, the US command could have known - they read the same papers we do, I presume, or have someone at intelligence doing it ...

Either they omitted basic intelligence-gathering even amateurs like us can do - which I don't believe - or they knew, but chose to give it low priority.

As for whether there were soldiers available - well, you get back to the (now a bit tired) ministry of oil vs national museum argument - in the end, all's a matter of setting priorities, making choices. But how many soldiers on guard at the entrance would it have taken to intimidate potential looters into forgetting about the idea, really?

Concerning that makng of choices, HofT makes the point that this is a military operation and soldiers should focus on military aims rather than try play policeman (I'm paraphrasing here). But the US has gone into this war with explicitly formulated goals going beyond the mere military defeat of the opponent. This war was eventually dubbed "Iraqi Freedom", after all (after all the arguments of WMD and Al-Qaeda links and the like collapsed). When fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US gvt still made clear it was 'not in the business of nation-building', but this time around, the Bush government has promised democracy, and has planned an interim rule by a US military governor. The aims clearly go beyond winning in those last 'pockets of resistance' - they are about a functioning post-war Iraq.

In that context, the suggested clarity between the exclusively military jobs that are supposed to be appropriate to the work of soldiers and the kind of civilian-oriented work they shouldn't be expected to do - the latter presumably including protecting hospitals and the libraries of civilisation - is a bogus one. If the case that the new interim rulers really care about Iraqi society is to be made convincingly enough for this war not to end in the violent grumbles of resentment after all, the military better expand their job to take care of the most basic protection of social as well as military objects. As already noted above, when the glaring contrast between ministry of oil-vs-national museum at the very least was a PR disaster, that alone has immediate repercussions for the risk estimations on the military goal of the country's stabilisation as well.

nimh


I do not believe the powers that be understood what you seem to think they did. I cannot believe, if they understood or realized the extent of the looting which would ensue they would have if at all possible done nothing to stop it. It may have been stupidity on their part or it may just have been that they did not have the hindsight we are now blessed with.

au, here's a start -- I can dig further, if you'd like. (This is just something I happened to read in today's NYT.)



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/opinion/16DOWD.html

Here's something else:



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/muse-a16.shtml

And this one looks to be the most credible, from the Washington Post:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19691-2003Apr13.html

sozobe


Who Knows if this was not just a Rummy statement to coverup his stupidity. Anyone who has listened to Rumsfeld knows he makes stupid and unfeeling statements. Than again who knows.

Yeah. No argument from me as to Rummy's stupidity.

Thanks James Morrison, for picking up on my post there. Appreciate it.

You write:



I wonder. It seems to have precious few avenues to use in tackling a state like Syria, at first sight, though I really don't know enough about it yet. Concerning the DPRK, one could indeed say little has at least been achieved thus far, even in the matters of disarmament and the neighbour countries' military security - and nothing, of course, on the matter of brutal dictatorship. Yet the little that has been achieved on the former has been taken in gratitude by South Korea, and the chilly reaction of South Korea's government to the new, no-nonsense line Bush Jr seemed to propagate at least suggests that the "Iraq doctrine" might not necessarily be seen to yield better results than the cautious UN-mechanisms, by those who'd know best - who apparently mostly seem to fear it could escalate matters instead.

Concerning Iraq - in terms, again, of disarmament and of guaranteeing neighbouring countries' security, the UN, I believe, didnt do badly at all these past twelve years. In fact, the US didnt think so either, until just about a year or two ago. It's only been a few years since the US was boasting about the 80% disarmament achieved thus far. We have now, in this war, been able to see that the Saddam regime apparently did not have ready-to-use Scud missiles anymore, which meant that Israel turned out to be safe this time, in glaring contrast with 1991. Such contrasts plead for the partial UN success of this past decade. The no-fly zones and Kurdish autonomy had at least ended the very worst of the regime's human rights excesses - the attempted genocide against the Kurdish minority. No, in terms of the goals originally set by the UN, the US included, one can not say the UN has proven itself to be unable to handle such matters. The few examples used before the war started to suggest it was - the proposed matter of Iraq's nuclear programme, the suggested harboring of Al-Qaeda terrorists - thus far seem to have been proven unfounded.

You have got to remember, however hard it is in today's heady time, that until the very advent of this war, the argument of the Iraqi's plight under brutal dictatorship was almost wholly absent in the US case for war. It just didnt figure. The US had shown no particular concern for their plight in any of the earlier phases of this protracted crisis - not when the Kurds were gassed, not when the Shi'ites were persecuted, not when Powell was preaching to the UN about the risk Saddam posed to the US and the world. We were supposed to go to war about terrorism, about WMD. Only when the first argument wasnt bought and the second was disclaimed by those "in charge" of the resolutions in the matter, did the US turn to its present tagline of "Iraqi Freedom".

Its turned out, thus far, a tremendously successful tagline. If the war had dragged on into a new Vietnam, it would have looked ridiculous. But it didnt, and no matter what anarchy currently prevails and what risks loom for the regional and national stability of the future, the liberation from Saddam must be like manna from heaven to many Iraqis. It is all the more succesful a tagline when you consider that it is exactly this - tackling the harm dictatorships do to their own citizens - that the UN has thus far turned out to be mostly impotent about. It can mediate in civil wars, keep cease-fires, control atomic programmes and development and use of banned weapons, it can reconstruct countries after wars, but the principle of national sovereignty still is overriding to such an extent that the UN can not do all that much about the harm a dictatorship does at home.

Not that no progress hadnt been made. Kosovo: the first war waged against a country for its persecution of its own citizens (in casu the Kosovar minority). The UN legitimized it, be it afterwards. That was a very first step, but not a precedent the Iraqis could have profited much from: no escalation of persecution of the kind the Kosovars seemed to be facing (i.e., imminent attempted genocide) was on the agenda, just the depressing continuation of three decades of totalitarianism.

It is that part that I was writing about where you quoted my frustration: "why are we only ever talking about what Rumsfeld wants or means or what really behind what Powell wants or thinks - have they robbed us of our ability to formulate our own analyses of Middle East problems, on what would be good policy responses to what clearly are situations that could do with change?"

I do want to note that it was about that, specifically - in casu, concerning finding alternatives on what to do about the Syria type of dictatorship, when one rejects the Rumsfeld strategies. Thats the part where I feel the pacifist case is lacking arguments.

You call it


but I disagree that the observation would hold for the debate we had here on Iraq. I have seen people on this board clearly argue their case for a mix of UN actions on Iraq, falling short of war but still having been proven sufficiently succesful in containing the matters at hand in the debate at the time: WMD, terrorism, danger to other countries and the outside world. Yes, they pleaded - we pleaded - for a form of containment. Not because we believed Saddam would have ended up spontaneously "doing the right thing". But because we saw enough evidence that he might be forced to do enough of the good thing in those matters, without us having to go to outright war about it, to safeguard world security. Enough evidence to grant those in charge of the matter - the UN weapon inspectors - the extra time they asked for, at least. The war seemed - still seems - too fraught with risks to justify for something that would merely speed up a process we saw as already being underway and having been largely successful.

But of course that was a 'is the glass half-full or half-empty' debate. The 'still half-full' part would refer to how this policy of containment, though in our eyes succesful enough in world security matters, involved continued repression for those remaining in the core Iraq, though a repression robbed of the fighter jets and chemical weapons used in earlier times. It's that part that now deserves discussion, in my view. This war has, to my eyes, shown that a dictatorship can be toppled with considerably less time of war than was foreseen by war critics. We have to wait a while now to see what costs additional to that of these three or four weeks of war are involved. But should it work to even any minimal degree, then the Rumsfeld clan has a powerful enough argument about being able to overturn dictatorships and restore basic human rights at a cost less than had been expected - whether that was really a sincere goal in their original plans or not (I believe not). Its argument will be all the stronger the longer the war opponents fail to come up with convincing notions on alternative equally succesful, but less damaging ways to achieve the same.

Again, in terms of the issues at play during all of the debate running up to the war - WMD, regional security, terrorism - I think the war opponents came up with many valid notions on what else could be done "about this situation", without threatening to tear the world apart. They just suggested different ones than the proponents of war - who on this thread seemed more concerned with defending and celebrating America than with the Iraqi population in any case.

It's like in the UN itself - you may be right where you write that "the position of 'No War, no matter what' is probably the most pernicious abdication of morality that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq" - but while France was taking that line, a majority of SC member states did not exclude the military option, but simply considered it as of yet unwarranted and unjustified. I still haven't seen any convincing argument why their proposals had to be swept aside and why the war was needed right now, no delay, no compromise. The argument basically seems to be that you're gonna run out of patience some day, and the US happened to run out of its patience this day.

My truck with the pacifists is purely that they seem to lack a coherent strategy about dealing with the excesses of dictatorship, in general, too, whereas that's the subject the Rumsfeld victory in Baghdad has - unintendedly, I'm sure - put on the agenda of the moment.

Thanks for your link about the Friedman piece and the "aggressive engagement" line, btw. I have to look my NYT password back up, but "Something between outright military engagement and useless constructive engagement" does sound supiciously like what most of us war opponnents have been suggesting on Iraq all along :wink: .

Hey timber. Allow me a repost:



Thats quite some statements you have there.

"Timing and location determined which buildings could be protected before they were looted. It was an operational matter, not political ..." So its sheer coincidence that only the Ministry of Oil and, I believe, the Ministry of Defence are protected and the other ones looted? You are better in military strategy matters than I am, so perhaps you can explain how the location of these ministries in the city determined they were the only ones the US troops could get to in time?

"Global Terrorist Activity is way down" - question mark? How do you measure that one? Is way down from since when? Since America started the war, a month ago? Could you compare for us the amount of "Global Terrorist Activity" this past month with that of, say, the month before, or that of October 2002, to name but one random month? <shrugs> It sounds like mere rhetorics to me.

"The Iraqi People appear increasingly grateful and cooperative" - I'd say the evidence is mixed so far - hugs and kisses here, grumbling there, and political murder in Najaf. It's an impression.

"Iran and North Korea show signs of having noticed"? Anything about Iran we missed? Did their ongoing democratisation process of the past few years suddenly drastically speed up? And North Korea? Is the record anything more than mixed there? I for one remember this quote from Yahoo News:

I am hours back, thinking about nimh's question about Syria. Working on that.

Then I find timber's post:




This post is not worthy of you.

While likely shortsighted of them, I believe CENTCOM and The Pentagon actually overlooked the potential magnitude of looting. Hindsight is always 20-20. More attention could have been paid to the preservation of cultural treasures, but still the task would have been formidable, possiblt insurmountably so in an active warzone. The military force on the ground really was just about what was adequate to accomplish the assigned mission of eliminating the control of The Regime, and in fact was strained by the rapidity and magnitude of its own success. It may be a nice "If only they had thought of it" thing, but the fact of the matter, from my perspective, is that it simply is impracticable to maintain civil order while simultaneously actively engaged in combat ... no matter how good the idea sounds. The buildings secured and the buildings looted show a logical correspondence to the actual route-of-advance taken as US troops entered the city, such buildings as were initially secured were secured from a tactical, not a cultural, set of priorities, and the bulk of the looting occurred in areas not yet under US control ... either contested or distinctly enemy territory. Tellingly, the hardest hit by the looting were the assets of The Regime itself and private enterprises owned or controlled by prominent Ba'athists. It is ludicrous to expect Civil Security Action to coincide with Combat Action. Combat troops aren't cops; their perspectives and training are quite different. Using them for such easily results in incidents such as the killing of civilians at checkpoints or during protest rallies. As the organized resistance declined, the US began exerting more and more control of the civilian populations as more and more of the cities' neighborhoods, throughout Iraq, were cleared of enemy combatants.
It has been less than a month since the first bomb struck Baghdad. Using roughly 1/4 the manpower and 1/3 the airpower utilized during Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom destroyed the Iraqi military, eviscerated the Ba'ath Party, and toppled The Regime in less time than it took merely to evict Iraq from Kuwait. In some neighborhoods of Baghdad and in much of Southern Iraq, there is now more access to potable water than ever there was under Saddam. Over 1/2 the Iraqi population subsisted on government handouts under Saddam, and much of that demographic now has available more calories-and-nutrients-per-person, and superior medical care, to that which was afforded them by Saddam. That aspect of US Occupation increases hourly. Of course there are vignettes of heartwrenching tragedy, but The Average Iraqi is measurably better off now than a month ago, and things are getting better rapidly. Quagmire, Disaster, Civilian Holocaust, Bungle .... dunno where any of that is evidenced. There have been no significant terrorist attacks since The Bali Bombing, itself a mere whisper compared to 9/11, and the Israeli/Palestinian violence has been if anything notably subdued since the onset of hostilities with Iraq ... hardly indication of an upswelling of terrorism.
The governments of the opposition to US intervention, and The UN as a body, have toned down their rhetoric and begun to cozy up and lobby for participatory rights in the reconstruction of Iraq. Documentation of ongoing evasion, if not outright violation, of UN Mandated Sanctions by intervention opponents mounts day-by-day. To the dismay of most who opposed it, The Attack on Iraq continues to disappoint the pessimists. Domestic Polls show solid support for The Current Administration, and both Domestic and Global Economic Indicators continue to show resilience and strength which cannot but be hieghtened by stabilization of supportable oil prices. Meanwhile, Chirac, Schroeder, and Putin face declining public support at home. All in all, if Bush the Younger continues to meet and surmount challenges and obstacles in similar fashion as has been demonstrated, things look even bleaker for not only The Pessimists, but the entire Opposition.

North Koreans and U.S. Plan Talks in Beijing Next Week

By DAVID E. SANGER

[]ASHINGTON, April 15 — President Bush has approved a plan for the United States to begin negotiations with North Korea in Beijing next week, the first talks between the countries since the government of Kim Jong Il threw out international inspectors and restarted its main nuclear weapons plant, United States and Asian officials said today.White House officials refused to comment on the negotiations. But officials in several countries said China has promised the United States that it will act as a full participant in the talks rather than just convening them. The Chinese had hoped to conduct the initial meetings in secret, officials said.The agreement to enter the negotiations with both China and the United States marks a major concession for North Korea and an apparent victory for President Bush. Mr. Bush's strategy of not engaging in one-on-one talks with North Korea had been widely criticized by Asian allies and by many Korea experts.

Can anyone doubt that the softening of North Korea's stance was in response to the results of the action in Iraq?


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/international/worldspecial/16KORE.html?th

au, there is no doubt in my mind the two are connected ... and in fact, beginning hundreds of posts ago, a few folks, myself among them, postulated over many replies in several different interactions on this thread's progenitors, precisely that eventuality, including China's "Sudden Interest". Nobody is right all the time, but a number of participants here have, at least in The Short Term, gotten very little right so far.

A few days after looting the Museum of Antiquities, two important libraries are burned down -- Iraq's National Library and the Religious Affairs Ministry.
(Please read some news links listed on another thread)

We're all familiar with the photo event created for journalists, when Saddam's statue was pulled down. If even half that many U.S. troops were stationed at the museum and the libraries, don't you think we could have saved some pretty huge cultural treasures?

Which was more important, photographing a statue of Saddam, or saving some of the most priceless museums and libraries in all of Iraq (some would say all of the Middle East)? Is there ANY way the world can judge U.S. sympathetically in this?

Is it really that difficult to place a few troops at the most valuable locations in the city? Is it?

It is damned inconvenient if active combat action is ongoing, and locations are currently contested or even in supply and under effective control of enemy combatants.

Just an additional observation; it is not unreasonable to expect a few days of disorder, chaos, and relative unrest following the collapse of a regime following 30 years of vicious repression. Get real, here ... reality ain't pretty, and bad things happen to both bad people and good in war.
Another question I'd like to see answered ... who pillaged the Iraqi Treasure? Was it the Iraqis themselves, or were Third-Nation parties or entities involved? There are indications the looting of the museums in particular had a certain air of professionalism about them, a sophistication of execution not cutomary of a rampaging mob. Not that that has anything to do with US responsibility in the matter, just a curiosity point. To my understanding, Europe is the largest market for pilfered antiquities and artwork.