THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

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There is no reason to suspect that what the NYT reported is inaccurate. Does your source give the Baghdad morgue figures for June and July?

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Ican .... what possible macabre interest could you have in dead Iraqis? If you could get an accounting with 100 % accuracy ........ wtf would you do with it.

Just curious

We negotiate with the Muslim societies that harbor the terrorists, not with the terrorists themselves. How hard is that to understand?

It's easy to understand your opinion. It is difficult to understand why you hold that opinion. Why do you think we can negotiate with Muslim societies that harbor terrorists without negotiating with the IT(i.e., Islamo Totalitarians) who via fear control both the terrorists and the people in those societies

We have to remove their base of support. The average Muslim doesn't want to see the US turned to Islaam by force, they just want us to stop propping up their dictators and killing their kids; as well as stop riling up the **** in their society!!!

Yes, "we have to remove their base of support." The USA finally, after too many years, stopped "propping up their dictators," when we invaded Afghanistan and removed its Taliban dictatorial government, and invaded Iraq and removed its Baathist dictatorial government. The consequence of the removals of such governments by force is unavoidably "killing their kids; as well as ... riling up the **** in their society." However, the "propping up" we did before removing those governments resulted in those governments "killing their kids; as well as ... riling up the **** in their society" to an even greater extent.

An alternative is to pay extortion to the IT. For example, in return for an IT promise to not kill non-combatants, pay 'em off. Of course, the problem with that approach is we cannot control whether they will subsequently inflate their monetary demands, or even what they will do with whatever payoff they receive.

Another alternative is to extort the IT by proceeding ruthlessly and persistantly to completely defeat them.

Another alternative is to kiss, hug and profusely apologize to 'em.

Another alternative is ...

I infer that you recomend persistent negotiations to get the IT or the people in the IT controlled states to understand the necessity for growing the courage they must have to themselves rid themselves of the IT.

Should we take your approach, I would immediately start looking for the appearance of another "star in the east" to grow hope for the success of your approach, even while the IT continue "killing their kids; as well as ... riling up the **** in their society".

Cycloptichorn

It's easy to understand your opinion. It is difficult to understand why you hold that opinion. Why do you think we can negotiate with Muslim societies that harbor terrorists without negotiating with the IT(i.e., Islamo Totalitarians) who via fear control both the terrorists and the people in those societies.

ican
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What must be done is to conduct ourselves in such a way so as not to create new terrorist.
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If we can convince Muslims in general that cooperating with the US will be better for them in the long run than cooperating with terrorists, then we will have won.

I think that outcome from your approach is improbable in the lifetimes of any of our contemporaries. I do wish reality were otherwise.
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You seem to operate off of a model in which peace will be achieved once the average Muslim fears us more than they fear the terrorists, and therefore does what we say (put the terrorists out of their societies) instead of what the terrorists say. I think this attitude shows a real lack of understanding about how people and societies respond to pressure and threats.

You have accurately described my model as far as your description goes. Subsequent to the Muslims coming to fear us more than the IT, and "put the terrorists out of their societies," we provide the help they request for keeping "the terrorists out of their societies" and for rebuilding the basic infrastructure of their societies (e.g., water, electricity, comunications, roads, railways, waterways, airways). That is, do the kind of stuff we did in Japan and Germany after WWII.

Cheers

Cycloptichorn

I think that outcome from your approach is improbable in the lifetimes of any of our contemporaries. I do wish reality were otherwise.

But, it will never happen. They will never cooperate with us if fear is the lever used.

When sufficient fear was used as the lever before it worked fine (e.g., WWI, WWII, Bosnia, Kuwait). Why not this time? And insufficient fear didn't work before (e.g., Korea, Vietnam)
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Gotta start working on it sometime. I could easily live another 80 years; that's long enough to see a great deal of change happen.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

But, it will never happen. They will never cooperate with us if fear is the lever used.

When sufficient fear was used as the lever before it worked fine (e.g., WWI, WWII, Bosnia, Kuwait). Why not this time? And insufficient fear didn't work before (e.g., Korea, Vietnam)
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Gotta start working on it sometime. I could easily live another 80 years; that's long enough to see a great deal of change happen.

Cycloptichorn

Go for it! Maybe you'll live to 113! I'm guessing that will give you another 93 years.

Success!

When sufficient fear was used as the lever before it worked fine (e.g., WWI, WWII, Bosnia, Kuwait). Why not this time?

"Iraq was never a unified country," said Asos Hardi, editor in chief of Awene, an independent Kurdish newspaper. "When you released the only factor keeping this country together, Saddam, all the problems came to the surface."

In the market square of Sulaimaniya, the main city of eastern Kurdistan, a schoolteacher said the historical enmity between Arabs and Kurds would not disappear anytime soon.

"The Kurds and the Arabs have been like neighbors, but the Arabs have always been occupiers on this land," said the teacher, Anwar Abu Bakr Muhammad, 33, as he chatted with friends before dusk. "Being separated from them is much better."

The drive for independence is evident simply from a glance around the square. On one side of a building is a towering painting of Sheik Mahmoud al-Hafid, who fought for a Kurdish homeland in the early 20th century. The square's center is dominated by a bust of Piramerd, a poet best known for his writings on Kurdish nationalism.

Across Kurdistan, the Iraqi flag is almost nowhere to be seen. The red, white and green banner of Iraqi Kurdistan, with a yellow sunburst in the middle, flutters along streets and from government buildings.

Children are not required to learn Arabic in schools, which means an entire generation is growing up without the ability to communicate with other Iraqis. Arabs arriving from other parts of the country have to register with local security forces. The Kurdish regional government has its own militia, called the pesh merga, which is estimated to number more than 100,000 and operates checkpoints on the border between Kurdish Iraq and Arab Iraq.

Moreover, the rift between Arabs and Kurds could be widened rather than healed by the trial of Mr. Hussein and six aides for their brutal 1988 military campaign against the Kurds, called Anfal. Survivors on the stand last week used a term that has recently entered the Kurdish vocabulary to describe the fate of relatives taken by government forces and never seen again: "Anfalized."

Such memories of suffering might hinder Iraqi unity, but they serve to reinforce the foundation of Kurdish nationhood.

"The Arab nationalists think of us as inferior to them," said Bahman Jabar, 30, another teacher in Sulaimaniya's market square. "It'll be better for us to split from the Arabs and have our Kurdish state."

Yerevan Adham contributed reporting from Sulaimaniya for this article.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Rumsfeld More Stubborn than Bush

July was the deadliest month ever in Iraq. More than 3,000 Iraqis died violent deaths. Or as Maliki said, "The violence is not increasing.... No, we're not in a civil war. In Iraq, we'll never be in civil war. What you see is an atmosphere of reconciliation." Baghdad Bob couldn't have said it better.

Or let's get even more detached. Here's Bush from his press conference last week: "You know, I hear people say, Well, civil war this, civil war that. The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box."

It's sort of like saying, "The people of New Orleans know that the federal government loves poor black people." Because something has happened since then that makes you look, I don't know, out of touch now.

The morgue in Baghdad counted more than 1,800 bodies last month, which was a record high. Or a normal month in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. But this month, the morgue is on track to receive less than a quarter of that. Why? Because we've redeployed 8,000 U.S. soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops to Baghdad and sent them on house-to-house sweeps for militants and weapons caches. In other words, we've knocked Baghdad back from complete and total madness to borderline chaos.

Geez, it's almost like more soldiers works better. And it only took three years to figure this out.

Of course, the forces weren't added; they were moved from other parts of the country, which will now descend back into complete and total madness. Whack-a-mole, as they say.

Isn't this just more confirmation that Rumsfeld's plan was totally inadequate? And I don't mean that just as an attack. I just want to know how to get things right for when we invade Iran the week before the election.

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" which airs every Friday at 11PM.

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When sufficient fear was used as the lever before it worked fine (e.g., WWI, WWII, Bosnia, Kuwait). Why not this time? And insufficient fear didn't work before (e.g., Korea, Vietnam)
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Different situations. We weren't threatening any of those nations, but responding to the agression of others. We didn't win any of those situations through intimidation.

Cycloptichorn