au1929 wrote:I agree. The American public is #1 to blame.ci
In reality the idiot is the American electorate that put him in office for a second time.
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
THE PATH TO A STABLE IRAQ
By Kamal Nawash
Over the past two years the Free Muslims Coalition has published several critiques of the path to a stable Iraq. With the release of the Iraq study Group's report we think it is helpful to summarize our analysis of how to achieve stability in Iraq.
Iraq is a multiethnic heterogeneous society. While it has numerous groups, the three largest groups are the Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. For more than a 1000 years, Iraq has been ruled by Sunni Arabs. This of course changed after the United States invaded Iraq where power shifted to the Shias and the Kurds and where the Sunni Arabs now feel that the new government does not represent their interests. Consequently, the Sunnis responded to their marginalization with a deadly uprising that has resisted all efforts to quell it through military means. For this reason, the Free Muslims Coalition has repeatedly argued that the path to a stable Iraq can ONLY result from a political solution where all the parties and especially the Sunni Arabs feel that they have a stake in the new Iraq.
As mentioned above, after the invasion of Iraq, Shia Arabs and Kurds became the dominant powers with the prime Minister being a Shia Arab and the president being a Kurd. As to the Sunni Arabs, they lost all significant political and economic power. The marginalization of the Sunni Arabs was particularly painful because most of the Sunni Arabs did NOT support Saddam Hussein. Nevertheless, the toppling of Saddam Hussein affected them in a negative way. Among their grievances is the issue of Debathification. This is a process by which the new Iraqi government targeted those who were members of the former ruling Baath party. This process disproportionately affected Sunni Arabs who either lost their jobs or were not allowed to seek government jobs because of their past membership in the party. Those who were members of the Baath party argue that their membership was out of necessity and it is not fair to target them.
A second uncompromising grievance of the Sunni Arabs is that they want Iraq to remain united and intact. Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has ventured into a lose federation that brings enormous fear to the Sunni Arabs. The invasion of Iraq has divided Iraq into three jurisdictions. The Kurds who live in the oil rich north, the Shias who live in the oil rich South and the Sunnis who live in the center which is resource poor. The Sunni Arabs want an equitable distribution of resources so that they
do not become impoverished while the others prosper.
Moreover, in the new Iraq, the Kurdish area is behaving like a separate country. The new government of Iraq has no control over the Kurdish region. The Kurds do not allow the Iraqi government to open ministries and the Iraqi military is not allowed to venture in the Kurdish area. The Sunni Arabs fear that the Kurdish area may break off from Iraq and divide their beloved country.
To address their concerns, the Sunni Arabs want to amend the new Iraqi constitution which they feel does not represent them. So far, the American Supported Shai and Kurdish government has rejected political compromise with the Sunni Arabs. Consequently, the Sunni Arabs revolted against the new Iraq and have vowed never to accept the new Iraqi government unless political changes are made.
Again, the path to a stable Iraq is a political dialogue among the groups and not a military solution. At this point, the role of the United States should be to encourage its friends in the Shia and Kurdish lead government of Iraq to open serious dialogue with the Sunni Arabs. In other words, the U.S. should take the role of an aggressive mediator among the parties. In this context, it may be helpful for the United States to make it clear to the Iraqi government that it will soon leave Iraq and if a genuine political dialogue and power sharing does not materialize that the U.S. will leave even sooner.
The threat of abruptly leaving Iraq maybe the most powerful leverage the U.S. has with the parties, especially the Shias and the Kurds. This is because the new Iraqi government will most likely collapse if the U.S. leaves prematurely. Moreover, it is absolutely important that the United States encourage the parties to revisit the relationship between religion and state. The Kurds correctly supported the creation of a secular state. The new Iraqi constitution created a country where religion is substantially intermingled with the government. This is a formula for disaster. In a
heterogeneous country like Iraq the government will NOT succeed unless it is officially secular. The Kurdish position on this issue is the best solution and their position must be supported.
As to leaving Iraq, the United States military should first redeploy away from the population centers so that they will not be visible to the average Iraqi and yet be close enough to assist the Iraqi government if a major crisis occurs. Moreover, redeployment will send a clear message to the Iraqi government that the U.S. will not always be there to protect them and that they have to take matters into their own hands by reaching a political solution that is acceptable to most Iraqis.
In conclusion, if the United States wants peace in Iraq then the concerns of the Sunni Arabs must be given serious consideration or the war in Iraq will only get bigger, Iran's influence will increase and the Sunni Arabs will continue to revolt and harbor criminals like the now deceased Zarqawi and his deadly followers who are coming from all over the Muslim world to join the revolt in a "holy war."
The Free Muslims Coalition is delighted that the Iraq Study Group has reached much of the same conclusions as those advocated by the Free Muslims Coalition.
For more information, visit our Web site at www.freemuslims.org
ican, You keep blaming Kerry and Gore, but Bush won't even talk to Syria or Iran to accomplish what your post claims is the solution. You can't have it both ways; or maybe, you can. You always do.
Alas, there is a third choice in addition to stay and continue to "implode" or leave and begin to "explode."
Over the next ten years, that third choice will result in fewer total violent Iraqi deaths.
Destroy the neigborhoods and border areas wherever the deliberate killers of non-killers are found.
So far, failure [by Bush] to make that [third] choice in Iraq has permitted its accelerating violent death rate.
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What I call neighborhoods are ... less than 100,000 square feet each.
... The people who are #! to blame are the people who sponsored those two candidates--Gore and then Kerry-- that are far worse than Bush. The people who are #2 to blame are those who voted for Gore and then Kerry to be candidates inspite of the fact that those two were far worse than Bush. The people who are #3 to blame are those who defend what the #1 and #2 to blame did instead of naming better candidates for next time.
Oh, I advocate the US leaving Iraq. Immediately.
Don't dodge the question! What do you think are the "side effects" of your recomendation: "the US leaving Iraq. Immediately."
Your position is to gamble that destroying thousands of innocent lives will lead to less innocent lives lost in the long run. I think this is a poor gamble, and your record at predicting odds is just as poor.
What we are allowing to happen now is the destruction of thousands of good guy lives (i.e., the lives of innocent or not deliberate killers of non-killers) that, with current trends to inform us, will lead to many more thousands of good guy lives lost in the long run.
You recommend the USA leave Iraq immediately. It is self-evident, with current trends to inform us, that your recommendation will lead to many many more thousands of good guy lives lost in the long run.
What we are allowing to happen and what you recommend we allow to happen are each far more destructive of good guy lives, than is what I recommend we make happen.
World War 2 - Japan and Germany - are not comprable to the current situation, as much as you would like them to be, for two reasons -
First, they (JG) attacked the US (allied forces). There population knew that they were paying the price for losing the war. There exists no parallel to that situation in Iraq.
Wrong! the bad guys (i.e., Dkonks or deliberate killers of non-killers) more than once have declared war on Americans and more than once attacked Americans in just the first year of the 21st century. That should not have been a surprise to any of us, because the bad guys many times declared war on Americans and many times attacked Americans in the last five years of the 20th century.
Second, We no longer consider it okay to kill large groups of civilians in order to get a small group of bad guys. So what you propose is the same thing as losing.
More accurately: YOU no longer consider it okay to kill large groups of good guys in order to get a small group of bad guys.
Instead you consider it okay to allow large groups of good guys to be killed, in order to avoid the risk of killing good guys when killing -- what you yourself allege is -- a "small" group of bad guys. That allegedly "small" group of bad guys is currently large enough to be killing good guys at an increasing rate currently exceeding 3,000 per month.
The effects of what we do in Iraq will last far longer than the lives of any individual insurgent or terrorist. You would be well advised to start taking this into consideration before making pronouncements that we should end the lives of Iraqis.
Wow! YES! I have really better taken that into account than you have. Unlike you, apparently, I think the effects of what we do not do in Iraq will last far longer than the lives of any individual bad guy.
BTW, neighborhoods are much larger than a single city block. I realize it may be different in your small town, but in larger cities they can go on for some distance. Sadr City for example; you are advocating destroying pretty much the entire thing, and that's several square miles.
No! I am not advocating destroying an entire city. I am advocating destroying only what I call neighborhoods in large or small cities in which the bad guys actually are located.
What I call neighborhoods are the size I have specified. Those that contain bad guys are what I have recommended destroying. You cannot have it both ways. Either the group of bad guys is large enough to be spread over huge numbers of what I call neighborhoods, totaling several square miles, or small enough to be spread over a relatively small number of what I call neighborhoods of less than 100,000 square feet each.
A neighborhood whose size is 100,000 square feet is a trifle less than 317 x 317 feet each, or, including end zones, not much less than a football field long and a football field wide. If 10% or 50% or 90% of Sadr City had bad guys located in it, then killing all of those bad guys would be a good thing, even at the risk of killing some good guys. Dead, those bad guys would not be able to continue killing far more good guys at the current accelerating and terrible rate, than the number of good guys we would risk killing when killing bad guys..
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I think that Iraq will either descend into civil war, or it won't, depending on how hard the Shia and Sunnis decide to work together.
Note that I think this is an inevitable outcome regardless of whether we stay or leave. We provide a significant enough irritant that our presence is not a mitigating factor that will keep this civil war from happening. In truth, it has already begun (as we all know).
R&I strategy >> Remain and it will Implode from continuation of USA's present tactics, and that will result in a continuing escalation of the Iraq violent death rate.
L&E strategy >> Leave and it will Explode from USA leaving Iraq before Iraqis can defend themselves, and that will result in a continuing escalation of the Iraq violent death rate and the violent death rate of others.
S&D strategy >> Search for and Destroy bad guys and the neighborhoods in which they are found, and that will result in a de-escalation of the Iraq violent death rate.
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The majority of killings in Iraq occur because of Insurgent activity against the US - which is perfectly morally justified, btw - and Shiite milita reprisal killings. Neither of these groups seeks war against the US.
FALSE! The majority of killings in Iraq occur because of bad guy activity against the Iraqi people -- which is perfectly morally unjustified.
Germany and Japan actively sought to invade and dominate other countries. When they were militarily defeated, they decided to give in rather than to continue to fight for years. This is not the case in Iraq at all. What you have chosen to do is pick two examples of decisive American military victories, and try to apply the tactics used there to situations which are inherently unlike them.
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Military defeat almost always leads to the defeated giving in rather than continuing to fight for years.
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It's not just me - Americans as a whole do not approve of the killing of innocents, even if it does get a few bad guys in the process.
Americans will approve the Iraq war being won! Americans will disapprove the Iraq war being lost! Americans disapprove the current lack of progress toward winning the war.
You explain to me why we show such restraint in war, why we don't level cities and just shoot 'em all and let god sort it out, if you don't believe it is because the American public (and world as well) would not support such butchery. I doubt you will be able to find a satisfactory explantation other than the fact that we have progressed beyond such barbarianism.
Cut the pseudology! I am not advocating that we level cities and just shoot 'em all and let god sort it out. I have never regressed to that.
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Um, okay. You are the one who is willing to gamble that the murder of civilians will lead to less murdering of civilians in the long run.
I am not willing to gamble that. I am willing to gamble that risking the killing of some good guys in order to kill all bad guys will save the lives of many more good guys who would otherwise be killed by the bad guys, because that looks to me like an excellent and necessary gamble.
Apparently in your head, demolishing schools, apartments, markets, water processing plants, power plants, stores, etc., none of that has any effect on people's lives at all; destroying all these things people rely upon, that won't turn them against the US at all; that huge groups of refugees with nowhere to live will be less of a problem than what we currently face. I say your plan is idiotic, because as usual you don't bother to think about what the consequences of your actions are.
Your pseudological characterization of what I want done is idiotic!
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I have zero doubt that the entirety of Baghdad has 'bad guys' living in it, relatively evenly spaced across the whole part. Sadr city definately does.
Baghad is a city much larger than 10 miles by 10 miles. The original plan for the City of Washington D.C. was 10 miles by 10 miles. That's an area 52,800 feet by 52,800 feet. That equates to 2,787,840,000 square feet. About 2,788, 100,000-square-foot neigborhoods could fit in that space. At one bad guy per neighborhood, that would be 2,788 bad guys in Baghdad. That's not a small group.
However, I'll compromise and change the S&D strategy to: Search for and Destroy bad guys and the buildings in which they are located, and that will result in a de-escalation of the Iraq violent death rate.
Now assume the cross sectional area of the average building space in Baghdad is 100 feet by 100 feet. At one bad guy per building (regardless of its height), that would be about 27,878 bad guys in Baghdad. Now that is a large number--a number probably much greater than the actual number of bad guys in Baghdad.
How would you distinguish between insurgents, terrorists, and civilians, in the huge press of those fleeing the destruction?
How would you house, feed, water, and employ hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqis?
If the bad guys simply 'take over' neighborhoods, what is to keep them from merely moving before we attack, and then going to another neighborhood - until we blow that one up as well?
Please remember, the S&D strategy I recommended consists of covert military operations. That would include secret monitoring of communications, secret interogations of both civilians and prisoners, and secret attacks on bad guys.
Your plan has so many holes in it, as to be completely unworkable. Compare that to my plan, which has the benefit of saving the US lives and money, and giving the Iraqis the ability to decide whether or not they want to save their country from themselves or not.
Your L&E strategy and the current R&I strategy have far higher probabilities of failure than my S&D strategy. Also, my S&D strategy risks the lives of far fewer good guys than do the L&E and the R&I strategies.
Cycloptichorn
Now assume the cross sectional area of the average building space in Baghdad is 100 feet by 100 feet. At one bad guy per building (regardless of its height), that would be about 27,878 bad guys in Baghdad. Now that is a large number--a number probably much greater than the actual number of bad guys in Baghdad.
secret interogations of both civilians and prisoners
You create more enemies with your strategies than you kill.
We already have created more enemies in the last 17 years than we have killed. And we have done that by our reluctance--or fear--to face the reality of the true nature of our enemies. Our worst and most capable enemies know what they want and have the courage to try and get what they want. We, this split populace of ours, does not seem to know what we want, much less possess the courage to get what we want.
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I would predict that there are far more than 28 thousand 'bad guys' in Baghdad. Far more.
That's a change. You previously wrote that you thought the number of bad guys was small and not worth all the concern I was giving them. If the number of bad guys in Baghdad alone is as large as you think, then it is all the more urgent that my Search & Destroy strategy be implemented as rapidly as possible. A total of 28,000 bad guys is more than 1,400 times the number of 9/11 bad guys.
You state that your plan relies upon,
Quote:secret interogations of both civilians and prisoners
No doubt this includes torture, right?
These interrogations would exclude killing, maiming, disabling, injuring, or sickening.
Your plan assumes that we have capabilities that we don't have. It is a fantasy, not a real plan. We don't have the special forces to find all the bad guys in baghdad. We don't have bombs which are accurate enough to hit the right buildings. Your proposal is basically to turn each and every square inch of Iraq into a war zone where you could be killed by a US bomb at any second, intentionally; and you think this will increase goodwill towards the US, that it will create less bad guys in the long run?
The USA does possess the means and capabilities to do exactly what I recommend. We do have the trained special forces in our military to find, and kill or remove all the bad guys. We do possess the ordnance necessary to destroy all the buildings that will need to be destroyed. Your pseudological characterization of what we will be able to do and would do is hysterical--and I do not mean funny. I have no interest in creating goodwill towards the US, until after we kill or remove all the bad guys. Then and only then, as before in our history, we will have earned and will receive the goodwill we should all seek by saving the lives of so many good guys.
The reason that you cant' understand why the US forces don't adopt your strategy, is because your strategy is completely unworkable and doesn't take into account any real-life factors at all. It is like an archetype, an idea of what a winning strategy might be if you ignored all the details neccessary to produce such a situation and ignored the consequences of the situation all at the same time....
The US forces are eager to adopt my Search and Destroy recomendation. Hell, I've simply copied their recommendation. They have been and are advocating that strategy. It is the current administration that currently lacks the courage to authorize that strategy.
It is you who are ignoring the almost certain deadly consequences of your recommended Leave and Explode strategy. You appear to think that somehow, if we do nothing, we will be absolved of all guilt for the huge number of good guys we leave behind to be killed by the bad guys after we leave. You deceive yourself by thinking that, since we don't know for sure what will happen, we will not be hated for our choosing by default to do what we know damn well is going to happen if we leave.
You will not be loved by youself anymore than by anyone else if we leave before our job is done. If it is love you seek, then earn and obtain it by at least supporting doing what should and must be done.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:You create more enemies with your strategies than you kill.
We already have created more enemies in the last 17 years than we have killed. And we have done that by our reluctance--or fear--to face the reality of the true nature of our enemies. Our worst and most capable enemies know what they want and have the courage to try and get what they want. We, this split populace of ours, does not seem to know what we want, much less possess the courage to get what we want.
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I would predict that there are far more than 28 thousand 'bad guys' in Baghdad. Far more.
That's a change. You previously wrote that you thought the number of bad guys was small and not worth all the concern I was giving them. If the number of bad guys in Baghdad alone is as large as you think, then it is all the more urgent that my Search & Destroy strategy be implemented as rapidly as possible. A total of 28,000 bad guys is more than 1,400 times the number of 9/11 bad guys.
You state that your plan relies upon,
Quote:secret interogations of both civilians and prisoners
No doubt this includes torture, right?
These interrogations would exclude killing, maiming, disabling, injuring, or sickening.
Your plan assumes that we have capabilities that we don't have. It is a fantasy, not a real plan. We don't have the special forces to find all the bad guys in baghdad. We don't have bombs which are accurate enough to hit the right buildings. Your proposal is basically to turn each and every square inch of Iraq into a war zone where you could be killed by a US bomb at any second, intentionally; and you think this will increase goodwill towards the US, that it will create less bad guys in the long run?
The USA does possess the means and capabilities to do exactly what I recommend. We do have the trained special forces in our military to find, and kill or remove all the bad guys. We do possess the ordnance necessary to destroy all the buildings that will need to be destroyed. Your pseudological characterization of what we will be able to do and would do is hysterical--and I do not mean funny. I have no interest in creating goodwill towards the US, until after we kill or remove all the bad guys. Then and only then, as before in our history, we will have earned and will receive the goodwill we should all seek by saving the lives of so many good guys.
The reason that you cant' understand why the US forces don't adopt your strategy, is because your strategy is completely unworkable and doesn't take into account any real-life factors at all. It is like an archetype, an idea of what a winning strategy might be if you ignored all the details neccessary to produce such a situation and ignored the consequences of the situation all at the same time....
The US forces are eager to adopt my Search and Destroy recomendation. Hell, I've simply copied their recommendation. They have been and are advocating that strategy. It is the current administration that currently lacks the courage to authorize that strategy.
It is you who are ignoring the almost certain deadly consequences of your recommended Leave and Explode strategy. You appear to think that somehow, if we do nothing, we will be absolved of all guilt for the huge number of good guys we leave behind to be killed by the bad guys after we leave. You deceive yourself by thinking that, since we don't know for sure what will happen, we will not be hated for our choosing by default to do what we know damn well is going to happen if we leave.
You will not be loved by youself anymore than by anyone else if we leave before our job is done. If it is love you seek, then earn and obtain it by at least supporting doing what should and must be done.
Cycloptichorn
We do have the trained special forces in our military to find, and kill or remove all the bad guys.
We do possess the ordnance necessary to destroy all the buildings that will need to be destroyed.
I have no interest in creating goodwill towards the US, until after we kill or remove all the bad guys.
You appear to think that somehow, if we do nothing, we will be absolved of all guilt for the huge number of good guys we leave behind to be killed by the bad guys after we leave.
You will not be loved by youself anymore than by anyone else if we leave before our job is done. If it is love you seek, then earn and obtain it by at least supporting doing what should and must be done.[/b]
First off, your idea of 'covertly finding bad guys and blowing up their buildings specifically' is ridiculous, because it requires Iraqi assistance to happen (we can't tell the bad guys from the good ones without it, because hardly any Americans speak the language at all) and they couldn't keep a secret if they tried; hell, the 'bad guys' are interspersed all throughout the government.
These operations would have to take place without Iraqi assistance; and they would have to take place without warning, or you would get the building and miss the occupants (who would just relocate and cause trouble elsewhere).
SO what you are basically proposing is to use airstrikes to pinpoint buildings and blow them up without warning; even if there are women, children, shops, whatever inside the building; as long as we get some 'bad guys' it's worth it, right?
Do I even need to point out how many problems there are with such a plan? How ineffective it will be? How many innocents will end up being killed? Bombs which hit the wrong buildings? Sheesh, what idiocy...
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You see, you cut out the part of my response to you in which I detailed the various difficulties in carrying out the proposed plans of yours. You cut them out because you don't have an answer for those holes in your theory, I suspect.
You wrote
Quote:We do have the trained special forces in our military to find, and kill or remove all the bad guys.
No, we most certainly do not. I don't know why you would believe this is true.
I don't know why you would believe that it is false. The various difficulties in carrying out the proposed plans that you described are fantasies. They reveal your ignorance of the USA's actual capabilities.
Between the Insurgents, the Terrorists, and the Sectarian Militias, there is little doubt that we are talking about dozens if not hundreds of thousands of people. These people are intermixed into the population of Baghdad and Iraq as a whole (with the noted exception of the Kurds). We - the US - have no reliable way to tell who is a Terrorist/insurgent/militia member, and who isn't, in large part because so few Americans speak the language. We must rely upon the Iraqis to help with this, and that's a severe problem; it blows the 'secret' aspect of your plan away immediately.
This is your fantasy. You appear to be unaware how successful we are in detecting stored ordnance, and how sucessful that detection is in locating and identifying bad guys. Also there is our, I thought, well known electronic and mechanical capabilities to spy on suspects
Quote:We do possess the ordnance necessary to destroy all the buildings that will need to be destroyed.
Not reliably, sorry. The 'pinpoint' bombs we drop from planes don't exactly have an awesome track record with hitting exactly the targets they should.
I guess you are unaware of our ground based capabilities for destroying buildings in which bad guys are located?
Many of the places you are talking about blowing up are incredibly dense urban areas. You seem to think that you can blow up certain buildings with supreme precision, without warning, without much of an effect on the surrounding areas. This is ludicrous. It shows a real lack of understanding in the way the military works.
Gad! We have for years been deliberately and precisely destroying buildings within densely packed USA cities for the purpose of replacing them with new structures or merely clearing the land for parks.
Quote:I have no interest in creating goodwill towards the US, until after we kill or remove all the bad guys.
Then you never have any interest in creating goodwill towards the US at any point, because what you propose will never happen. Ever. You haven't shown any evidence that it would happen at all. It is an impossibility, for it assumes a static number of actors, when in reality there is not a static number of actors; to wit, we turn good guys into bad guys in the process of our war against bad guys, if we take your tactics and use them. Not a productive strategy.
Creating goodwill by defeating bad guys is the way we have earned goodwill in the past. We did it before and we can do it again. You're "never happen" is ridiculous. It has happened frequently throughout the 20th century. What do you think is so special about the 21st century to preclude that from happening again?
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You seem to believe that we will be absolved of our guilt of murdering thousands of innocent civilians, intentionally.
We will kill some good guys when we kill bad guys. We will not be intentionally killing good guys. That will sometimes be an unavoidable consequence of killing bad guys, but it is neither a desired or avoidable way to kill some bad guys to stop the bad guys from killing good guys.
I don't think we will be absolved of anything. I think we are already massively guilty, you and I, of allowing this travesty to take place. No matter what happens, we all have blood on our hands; I see no reason to make things worse by intentionally murdering civilians like you propose.
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Any time you say something should and must be done, the exact opposite is closer to the truth. You have proved this by being consistently wrong about your recommendations and projections in Iraq. You have continually displayed a frighteningly poor understanding of both the human mind, history, and military tactics.
Specify where I have been consistently wrong. And then provide evidence to support you specification.
Therefore, leaving Iraq as soon as possible is obviously what should and must be done.
Predictions:
We will not leave Iraq within a year, but neither will we turn into murdering, torturing butchers like Ican proposes.
We will be chased out of Iraq much in the same fashion as Vietnam within 4 years after that year as the populace realizes that the one thing they have in common is loathing for the US.
Conservatives will not learn the lesson of their errors and will instead blame the loss on the Liberal Media, the most Powerful Force in the World.
Cycloptichorn
ps, here's the part of my post which you snipped, even though it was directly relevant to your sophmoric attempt at military strategy:
Cice, emphasized below in geen by me is what I consider your ridiculous and ignorant allegations about what the USA does not have the capability to do--many of these I have already refuted; some more than once.
First off, your idea of 'covertly finding bad guys and blowing up their buildings specifically' is ridiculous, because it requires Iraqi assistance to happen (we can't tell the bad guys from the good ones without it, because hardly any Americans speak the language at all) and they couldn't keep a secret if they tried; hell, the 'bad guys' are interspersed all throughout the government.
These operations would have to take place without Iraqi assistance; and they would have to take place without warning, or you would get the building and miss the occupants (who would just relocate and cause trouble elsewhere).
SO what you are basically proposing is to use airstrikes to pinpoint buildings and blow them up without warning; even if there are women, children, shops, whatever inside the building; as long as we get some 'bad guys' it's worth it, right?
Do I even need to point out how many problems there are with such a plan? How ineffective it will be? How many innocents will end up being killed? Bombs which hit the wrong buildings? Sheesh, what idiocy...
I'd like to see you offer specifics on how you think we can:
-secretly find out who thousands of insurgents, terrorists, and militia members are, without them knowing;
-pinpoint their houses and blow them up without hurting the houses of innocents who live directly next to them;
-provide for the food, education, shelter, and employment for the thousands and thousands of displaced Iraqi citizens, who no longer have homes/schools/jobs thanks to the US bombing campaign;
-provide for the food, education, shelter, and employment for the thousands and thousands of displaced Iraqi citizens, who no longer have homes/schools/jobs ... ;
-make all this seem as if we are somehow helping the Iraqi people.
President Jalal Talabani said Sunday that the American program to train Iraq's security forces had been a repeated failure and he denounced a plan to increase the number of American advisers working with the Iraqi Army, saying it would subvert the country's sovereignty.
Mr. Talabani's remarks, in an interview with Western news service reporters that was later summarized and distributed by his office, amounted to an extraordinarily harsh denunciation of a central American strategy in Iraq as well as a major recommendation of the report issued last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in Washington. He is the highest ranking Iraqi official to criticize the report, adding to anger among Iraqi leaders who have disagreed with some of its recommendations.
American commanders have poured more than $12 billion into training and equipping Iraq's security forces and have tied a withdrawal of American troops to success in these efforts. But Mr. Talabani ridiculed them. "What have they done so far in training the army and the police?" he said. "What they have done is move from failure to failure."
Mr. Talabani, who is Kurdish, said the Iraq Study Group report offered some "dangerous" recommendations that he said were "an insult to the Iraqi people" in that they undermined the country's ability to control its own army and police.
He did not offer specific criticisms of the American training program, except to blame the Americans for inadequately screening recruits to the Shiite-dominated police to ensure their loyalties to the state rather than to a sect.
American and some Iraqi officials say some Iraqi police and army units are more beholden to Shiite militias than to the government and have helped to drive the cycles of retributive violence by attacking Sunni Arabs. Some Iraqi officials have also said that Sunni Arab officers have abetted the Sunni-led insurgency.
The Americans, Mr. Talabani said, "gathered them from the street regardless of their loyalty to the new Iraq, their capacity, their ability. These mistakes would be repeated if the Iraqi Army would be under the control of foreign officers, and we would never accept it."
The Iraq Study Group called for increasing the number of American trainers to as many as 20,000 from the current level of more than 4,000, in the hope that it would help Iraqi units move more quickly to assume full control of the nation's security.
Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, told Congress last month that he envisioned doubling the number of American trainers, but senior military officers now say they are planning to at least triple the number of trainers.
The shift has been endorsed in general terms by President Bush, and in recent weeks, commanders in Iraq have started moving hundreds of troops from their combat ranks to training teams.
American commanders have argued that expanding the training teams would allow trainers to work more closely with Iraqi soldiers and police. In addition, trainers would be able to watch more closely for sectarian biases and abuses.
But Mr. Talabani said the proliferation of American advisers threatened Iraqi control of the security forces.
"Assigning foreign officers in every unit of the Iraqi Army is a breach of Iraqi sovereignty," he said, according to the translation issued by his office. "What will be left of this sovereignty if the Iraqi Army becomes a tool in the hands of foreign officers coming from outside?"
He added, "We want our hand to be free, not paralyzed, in fighting terror."
Mr. Talabani's remarks may be dismaying to the American leadership, which has regarded him as one of its more reliable and like-minded partners here.
Mr. Talabani's attack on the Iraq Study Group report was wide-ranging and vociferous.
He criticized a recommendation for a law that would allow some former members of the outlawed Baath Party to return to government. The measure would reverse a "de-Baathification" process that has marginalized thousands of Sunni Arabs who worked in the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein.
He also said he supported a statement issued Thursday by Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region, who objected to several elements of the report that could weaken Kurdish autonomy by delaying an opportunity for the Kurds to govern the contested oil city of Kirkuk, and by giving the central government control over all oil revenue.
Mr. Talabani bristled at the report's recommendation that a continuation of American military and financial assistance to Iraq be contingent on Iraqi performance. Setting conditions, he said, "was an insult to the Iraqi people."
The leaders of the Iraq Study Group, James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, defended their report on Sunday against Mr. Talabani's attack. "Up until this point, we've given a blank check to the Iraqis," Mr. Hamilton said on CNN. "And I'm not surprised that the president would like that sort of a deal. But we believe that the American people want our aid to be conditional. We want that aid to be given only if there is a response from the Iraqi government that shows performance."
Mr. Baker called Mr. Talabani's comments "disappointing" but said that unless Iraq's leaders were able to unite under a national reconciliation plan, the world could expect "not just a broad-based civil war but a wider regional war."
Those last two concerns of yours (the first modified by me) were true for thousands under Saddam's regime. They continue to be true for thousands. These concerns can be successfully dealt with only after the bad guys are killed/removed from Iraq. Certainly what you propose will do nothing to ameliorate these concerns of both of us.
ican711nm wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:
-provide for the food, education, shelter, and employment for the thousands and thousands of displaced Iraqi citizens, who no longer have homes/schools/jobs ... ;
-make all this seem as if we are somehow helping the Iraqi people.
Those last two concerns of yours (the first modified by me) were true for thousands under Saddam's regime. They continue to be true for thousands. These concerns can be successfully dealt with only after the bad guys are killed/removed from Iraq. Certainly what you propose will do nothing to ameliorate these concerns of both of us.
Sure it will.
Iraq will only know peace - not have 'bad guys' - when and if the Iraqi people decide to band together and fight against Insurgents, militias, and terrorists themselves, by no longer providing them with support and shelter.
I agree that this banding together by the Iraqi people is a necessary[/U condition for Iraq to succeed in ridding itself of [i]bad guys[/i].
What we disagree about are what are the sufficient conditions--that is, the additional necessary conditions--for achieving that banding together by Iraqis.
Until that happens, we have a zero percent chance of pacifying Iraq, unless you are willing to murder hundreds of thousands of people. Something which you seem okay with, but not me.
We can help the Iraqi people get the courage to band together by helping them reduce the number of bad guys to a level they believe they can subsequently manage by themselves.
I am not willing to murder any good guys, not even one. What I am willing to do is risk killing good guys while I kill bad guys, because I believe taking that risk will reduce the total number of good guys killed. The number of good guys killed by this strategy will be far less than the number of good guys killed if we follow your recommended strategy.
Our presence doesn't help the situation at all, so we should leave and let them go about making the decision whether to stick together or hang seperate.
Yes, it will help the situation. Our presence following the Search and Destroy bad guys strategy will reduce the number of good guys killed from what would otherwise be the number of good guys killed.
Your recommendation to leave the Iraqi good guys to be killed by the Iraqi bad guys and blaming it on the Iraqi good guys would be too reprehensible to permit adequate description of such evil.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:ican711nm wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:
-provide for the food, education, shelter, and employment for the thousands and thousands of displaced Iraqi citizens, who no longer have homes/schools/jobs ... ;
-make all this seem as if we are somehow helping the Iraqi people.
Those last two concerns of yours (the first modified by me) were true for thousands under Saddam's regime. They continue to be true for thousands. These concerns can be successfully dealt with only after the bad guys are killed/removed from Iraq. Certainly what you propose will do nothing to ameliorate these concerns of both of us.
Sure it will.
Iraq will only know peace - not have 'bad guys' - when and if the Iraqi people decide to band together and fight against Insurgents, militias, and terrorists themselves, by no longer providing them with support and shelter.
I agree that this banding together by the Iraqi people is a necessary[/U condition for Iraq to succeed in ridding itself of [i]bad guys[/i].
What we disagree about are what are the sufficient conditions--that is, the additional necessary conditions--for achieving that banding together by Iraqis.
Until that happens, we have a zero percent chance of pacifying Iraq, unless you are willing to murder hundreds of thousands of people. Something which you seem okay with, but not me.
We can help the Iraqi people get the courage to band together by helping them reduce the number of bad guys to a level they believe they can subsequently manage by themselves.
I am not willing to murder any good guys, not even one. What I am willing to do is risk killing good guys while I kill bad guys, because I believe taking that risk will reduce the total number of good guys killed. The number of good guys killed by this strategy will be far less than the number of good guys killed if we follow your recommended strategy.
Our presence doesn't help the situation at all, so we should leave and let them go about making the decision whether to stick together or hang seperate.
Yes, it will help the situation. Our presence following the Search and Destroy bad guys strategy will reduce the number of good guys killed from what would otherwise be the number of good guys killed.
Your recommendation to leave the Iraqi good guys to be killed by the Iraqi bad guys and blaming it on the Iraqi good guys would be too reprehensible to permit adequate description of such evil.
Cycloptichorn
Cycl, I am interested in what strategy will result in the fewest good guys killed and the most good guys free. I am not interested in what strategy will gain America the most love or the least hate. I am not interested in what strategy best conforms to the Sorosick Doctrine of atheistic collectivism. I am not interested in what strategy will best demonstrate that the Bush administration is no damn good. I am not interested in what strategy will lead to the election of a Democrat or a Republican or a someone else for president.
Got it?
...
Oh, I got it; I don't question your motives, just your judgement.
Killing innocent people - even if it is just a mistake - leads to their family and friends turning into your enemies. Do you agree or disagree with this?
Cycloptichorn
Cycl, I am interested in what strategy will result in the fewest good guys killed and the most good guys free. I am not interested in what strategy will gain America the most love or the least hate.
