THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

McTag wrote:

Ican, the situation in Iraq has gone way beyond USA v. Rotters.
It never was that simple, and it is more complicated now.
Really, it is.
But maybe things look a bit blurry from 45000 feet.

From 45,000 feet, one can see more with non-blurry radar, but that more is hard to see without looking at non-blurry radar.

Ok, I understand you think "the situation in Iraq has gone way beyond USA v. Rotters." As I see it in Iraq, the USA v. Rotters problem is about reducing the number of Iraqi non-combatants killed.

How do you see it in Iraq? Do you think the USA pulling out of Iraq before the government of Iraq asks USA to leave will solve or at least reduce the magnitude of that problem?

I think the USA pulling out prior to the government of Iraq asking the USA to leave, will cause non-combatant violent killings at a far greater rate over a much longer period than otherwise. I think it will make Saddam's average of 4,700 violently killed non-combatants per month over the last 11 years of his regime, look trivial.


And, don't give me that pseudology about 655,000 total violent Iraqi deaths since the USA invaded Iraq. That 655,000 number calculated from polls is more accurately an estimate of total Iraqi deaths and not total violent Iraqi deaths, since USA invaded Iraq.

Transcript:

BLITZER: I don't know about you, but I was pretty surprised by Senator Warner's comments, given the fact that from day one he's been an ardent supporter of the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq.

HAGEL: Well, I agree with Chairman Warner's assessment. Carl essentially said the same thing. We are going to have to find a new strategy. Let's start with this very clear understanding, and Carl noted it. The future of Iraq is going to be determined by the Iraqi people. It will not be determined here in Washington.

Now, that is a fact of life as far as I'm concerned, and we are now in a situation where we have very few options. Our options are limited. The American people are not going to continue to support, sustain a policy that puts American troops in the middle of a civil war.

Let's also examine what the Iraqi parliament did about three days ago, when they voted to go ahead and allow the 18 provinces in Iraq to start thinking about breaking up into autonomous regions. Now, they can't activate that for 18 months, but these are the kind of political decisions that are going to have to be made by the Iraqis. We do need to change some kind of course here.

Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton's commission is going to come back in by the end of the year with some new recommendations. That's a hopeful sign, finally, that we're getting another point of view. Also, this issue is going to be forced upon us by the U.N. because by the end of this year, coalition forces, the legal mandate to have U.N. forces in there, including the United States, is up.

So we need to find a new strategy, a way out of Iraq, because the entire Middle East, wolf, is more combustible than it's been probably since 1948, and more dangerous, and we're in the middle of it.

We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions, or used to inflict economic damage on the West," Bush said in a news conference last week in the Rose Garden.

Dan Benjamin, a former Middle East specialist with the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said the administration is overemphasizing the nature of the threat in an effort to bolster support.

"I think the administration has oversold the case that Iraq could become a jihadist state," said Benjamin, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If the U.S. were to leave Iraq tomorrow, the result would be a bloodbath in which Sunnis and Shiites fight it out. But the jihadists would not be able to seek power."

Quote:

Dan Benjamin, a former Middle East specialist with the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said the administration is overemphasizing the nature of the threat in an effort to bolster support.

"I think the administration has oversold the case that Iraq could become a jihadist state," said Benjamin, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If the U.S. were to leave Iraq tomorrow, the result would be a bloodbath in which Sunnis and Shiites fight it out. But the jihadists would not be able to seek power."

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My presence on these threads from the very beginning, was to point out what I believe to be a major international crime: the invasion and attempted subjugation of Iraq.
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this series of events was instigated on the basis of several big and deliberate lies.
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A Plan for Iraq
By Dennis Ross
Washington Post
Sunday, October 15, 2006; Page B07

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Second, a long-discussed regional conference with all of Iraq's neighbors should be held. None of them -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey -- wants the Bush administration to succeed in Iraq (at least in the way the president defines success). And yet every one of them fears the consequences of an Iraq convulsed in the aftermath of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal. A full-scale civil war, with refugees streaming out of the country, with instability bound to leak across borders, and with other nations intervening to protect their own interests and their Iraqi allies is just as much a nightmare for Iran as it is for Saudi Arabia. While Iraq's neighbors may agree on little else, the common interest of wanting to avoid an all-out civil war in Iraq could create a basis for a general set of understandings on what they will and will not do to help foster stability there. The administration ought to work for such a conference now.

Third, President Bush should inform Maliki that we will not impose a deadline for withdrawal but we are going to negotiate with his government a timetable for our departure. The difference between a deadline and an agreed timetable is the difference between leaving the Iraqis in the lurch and informing them they have to assume responsibilities. The former guarantees preservation of the militias as they anticipate a deepening civil war; the latter puts all sectarian groups on notice that they can shape the future but the clock is ticking and if they don't begin to get serious about reconciliation and about fulfilling their own responsibilities they face the abyss.

No one in Iraq seems to want us there, but everyone is afraid to have us leave. In the meantime, everyone seems willing to sit back, to avoid tackling the tough problems and to let us carry the brunt of the fighting. That has to stop.

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Running from Iraq
Don't imagine it will reduce the jihadist threat.
by Reuel Marc Gerecht
10/23/2006, Volume 012, Issue 06

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Al Qaeda spokesmen regularly declare that Iraq is at the center of their global effort to humble the United States, the great violator of Islamic lands and virtue. We should believe them--although their preferred battleground would still be America if they could figure out a way to put jihadist cells onto our soil. The Bush administration and Muslim Americans, who have shown themselves highly resistant to the holy-warrior call, have so far kept al Qaeda from again fulfilling its dearest dream.

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Point: Islamic militants loathe Israel, which they view as a Jewish-Western colonial state occupying land vouchsafed to Muslims by God. There are very few mundane things that anger militant Muslims more than the "peace process," the attempt by the Americans and the Europeans to once again seduce Muslim rulers into actions betraying God, his Holy Law, and his people. But would administration critics want to walk away from the peace process because such negotiations infuriate radical Muslims, making their transformation into lethal anti-American holy warriors more likely?

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Yet should we back down from advocating equality between men and women in Islamic countries because such advocacy makes some Muslims more inclined to convert civilian jetliners into fuel bombs? Was Madeleine Albright wrong to talk about such things incessantly? How about Karen Hughes today? Should we chastise our artists and writers--and Muslim artists and writers who've come to the West for its freedom--if they transgress the proprieties of faithful Muslims, especially radical Muslims who require only a little more psychological TNT to send them over the edge into anti-American holy war?

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The truth is that much of what the United States needs to do to win the war on Islamic extremism will naturally infuriate those who view the United States and American culture as threatening to Islam, all the more because they also find it appealing. Your average Muslim fundamentalist, who has no intention of becoming a holy warrior, fears and hates, and admires and envies, America. Such men and women are probably near a majority of all Muslims in every Arab land. Almost everything the United States does in this world ought to annoy these people. Much of what the United States needs to do will outrage them.

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We--not the Iraqis--need to lead a major effort to break the Sunni insurgency. We--not the Iraqis--must police the Shiite-dominated security services to ensure they don't slaughter the Sunnis, especially as we and a Shiite-dominated army with an important Kurdish contingent make a more serious effort to control Baghdad, Ramadi, and the centers of Sunni resistance. We need to keep building up a Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and slowly deploying it in ways that it can handle--with integral American involvement, as at Tal Afar. We should expect a few Iraqi governments to collapse before we start seeing real progress. Yet our presence in Iraq is the key to ensuring that Shiite-led governments don't collapse into a radical hard core.

This may be too much for the United States now. It certainly appears to be too much for the Democrats. We would have all been better off if President Bush and his team had done what Senator John McCain advised back in 2004, when the insurgency started to rip: Tell everyone that the war would be long and hard, and pour in more troops. If we no longer have the stomach for this fight--and it's going to be ugly, with few sterling VIP Iraqis who will make us proud--then we should at least be honest with ourselves. Leaving Iraq will not make our world better. We will be a defeated nation. Our holy-warrior and our more mundane enemies will know it. And we can rest assured that they will make us pay. Over and over and over again.

A Plan for Iraq
By Dennis Ross
Washington Post
Sunday, October 15, 2006; Page B07

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Clearly there should be a relationship between the effort to finally produce national reconciliation and our approach to working out an agreement on the timing of withdrawal. If the Iraqis create a real national compact, the United States can be more flexible on its timetable for withdrawal. If they fail to do so, the United States must be more demanding in negotiations on the timetable. Clearly there should be a relationship between the effort to finally produce national reconciliation and our approach to working out an agreement on the timing of withdrawal. If the Iraqis create a real national compact, the United States can be more flexible on its timetable for withdrawal. If they fail to do so, the United States must be more demanding in negotiations on the timetable. Ultimately, if Iraqis are ready to resolve their internal political differences, to adjust to reality and to make the hard choices they face, our presence can help in the transition. But if they continue to avoid reality, our presence will simply prolong both their state of denial and ours. It is time for a change in course.

What about all those purple fingers?
By: John Amato @ 12:10 AM - PDT Submit or Digg this Post

David-Brooks.jpg David Brooks has incredible access to the White House so when he said this shocker on "The Chris Matthews Show," I believed him. Bush is thinking about replacing the entire Iraq government. I kid you not.
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Gelisgesti wrote:

What about all those purple fingers?
By: John Amato @ 12:10 AM - PDT Submit or Digg this Post

David-Brooks.jpg David Brooks has incredible access to the White House so when he said this shocker on "The Chris Matthews Show," I believed him. Bush is thinking about replacing the entire Iraq government. I kid you not.
...

Allow those fingers to get purple again!

Yes, it would probably be a good idea to convince the current Iraq government to resign after holding a new election ... and to keep doing that ... until the Iraqis finally elect a government that is capable of protecting Iraqis against those deliberately killing them.

ican711nm wrote:

Gelisgesti wrote:

What about all those purple fingers?
By: John Amato @ 12:10 AM - PDT Submit or Digg this Post

David-Brooks.jpg David Brooks has incredible access to the White House so when he said this shocker on "The Chris Matthews Show," I believed him. Bush is thinking about replacing the entire Iraq government. I kid you not.
...

Allow those fingers to get purple again!

Yes, it would probably be a good idea to convince the current Iraq government to resign after holding a new election ... and to keep doing that ... until the Iraqis finally elect a government that is capable of protecting Iraqis against those deliberately killing them.

You know, at first I thought you missed the point .... then I thought naaa, you ducked the point.
Then I realized .... you don't have a freakin clue.

Iraqis 'fleeing rising violence'
Pam O'Toole
BBC News

Iraqis getting on coach to leave Iraq
Tens of thousands of Iraqis leave the country each month
Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing the country every day, in what the UN's refugee agency describes as a steady, silent exodus.

The number of Iraqis claiming asylum in the West is growing, says the UNHCR.

The agency also says the number of internally displaced is growing, with some 365,000 Iraqis uprooted this year.

ican711nm wrote:

Gelisgesti wrote:

What about all those purple fingers?
By: John Amato @ 12:10 AM - PDT Submit or Digg this Post

David-Brooks.jpg David Brooks has incredible access to the White House so when he said this shocker on "The Chris Matthews Show," I believed him. Bush is thinking about replacing the entire Iraq government. I kid you not.
...

Allow those fingers to get purple again!

Yes, it would probably be a good idea to convince the current Iraq government to resign after holding a new election ... and to keep doing that ... until the Iraqis finally elect a government that is capable of protecting Iraqis against those deliberately killing them.

You know, at first I thought you missed the point .... then I thought naaa, you ducked the point.
Then I realized .... you don't have a freakin clue.