THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

Bush needs to have his head examined.

Israel model for Iraq, says Bush

Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq has run into trouble
US President George W Bush has appealed for people to give his strategy in Iraq a chance - holding up Israel as a model for defining success there.
He said America would like to see Iraq function as a democracy while dealing with violence - just as Israel does.

Speaking at the US Naval War College, Mr Bush said success in Iraq would not be defined by an end to attacks.

His remarks come as members of his Republican party are increasingly turning against the war in Iraq.

The US president characterised the war in Iraq as primarily against al-Qaeda forces and their use of "headline-grabbing" suicide attacks and car bombings.

The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities

President Bush

He said: "Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing in the evening news."

The terms of success set out by Mr Bush included "the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens and function as a democracy even amid violence".

Mr Bush suggested Israel as a standard to work towards.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Bush Turns Iraq into Israel/Palestine;
Gaffe endangers US Troops


Bush said in a speech on Thursday that he hopes Iraq will be like Israel, a democracy that faces terrorist violence but manages to retain its democratic character:


' In Israel, Bush said, "terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq." '


These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.

The US political elite just doesn't get it. Israel is not popular in the Middle East, and it isn't because Middle Easterners are bigots. It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch Indonesia-- and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders, but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.

Let's just take the analogy seriously for a moment. Israel proper is a democracy of sorts, though its 1 million Arab citizens are in a second class position. But it rules over several million stateless Palestinians who lack even the pretence of self-rule. It is hard to characterize a country as a democracy when it has millions of disenfranchised subjects. Bush manages to only think about Jewish Israelis in the above analogy, wiping out millions of other residents of geographical Palestine who don't get to participate in 'democracy' or exercise popular sovereignty.

It is true that the Israelis managed to blunt the terror attacks of Islamic Jihad, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades over the years after the eruption of the 2nd Intifada. But there are still attacks, including by rocket. The reason for those attacks is that the Palestinians had mostly been driven from their homes and off their land, and were militarily, politically and economically subjected to the Israelis. The Israelis reduced the terror attacks by essentially imprisoning millions of stateless Palestinians in the territories, further restricting their movements, destroying their trade and livelihoods. The Israeli government continues to grab Palestinian land and put more colonists on it, even as we speak.

Israel-Palestine is among the world's hottest trouble spots, and the conflict has poisoned politics throughout the Middle East. It was among the motives for Bin Laden's attack on the US on September 11, so it has spilled over on America, too. A second one of those would be a good thing?

So who would play the Palestinians in Bush's analogy? Obviously, it would be the Sunni Arabs, who apparently are meant to be cordoned off from the rest of Iraqis and put behind massive walls and barbed wire, and deprived of political power. That is not a desirable outcome and is not politically or militarily tenable in the long run.

And, let's just stop and think. Even if it were true that an Israel-Palestine sort of denouement were in Bush's mind for Iraq, was it wise for him to make it public?

That sort of scenario is precisely the propaganda message broadcast by the Jihadi websites in Iraq and the Arab world! They say that the US military occupation of Iraq, in alliance with Shiites, has turned the Sunni Arabs into Palestinians! Bush could not have handed the guerrillas a better rhetorical gift. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that DVD's of Bush's comments will be spread around as a recruiting tool for jihadis, and that US troops will certainly be killed as a result of this speech. You could say that the US military presence is already pretty unpopular in the Sunni Arab areas. But what of the progress in al-Anbar Province? Will Bush's speech help or hurt Sunni Arabs who want to ally with the US against the foreign Salafi Jihadis? Hurt, obviously.

If Bush had said something like that in 2002, you could have written it off as inexperience and lack of knowledge of the Middle East. But he has been the sitting president for so many years, and has had so much to do with the Middle East that this faux pas is just inexcusable. I don't know the man and can't judge if he is just not very bright. I can confirm that he says things that are not very bright. And, worse, he says things that are guaranteed to put more US troops into the grave in Diyala, Baghdad, Salahuddin and al-Anbar Provinces.

I don't know whether to sob in grief or tear my hair out in frustration. How much longer do we have to suffer?
Labels: monumental stupidity

most Americans say they don't believe it (war) is morally justified,

Quote:

Asked whether the U.S. action in Iraq is morally justified, 54 percent said no, versus 42 percent who said yes and 4 percent with no opinion. Just two weeks ago, a poll found less than half (47 percent) saying the war was morally unjustified.


Support for President Bush matched his lowest rank ever in a CNN poll, with 32 percent saying they approve the way he is handling his job, and 66 percent saying they disapprove, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.

That's a drop of 6 points from the 38 percent of respondents who said on May 4-6 that they approved of Bush's handling of his job, and equal to the 32 percent he got in a poll conducted in April 2006.

Bush's popularity peaked the week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when 90 percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing.

Americans were split on whether to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, with 46 percent saying it should continue to operate; 45 percent saying it should be closed and the prisoners transferred elsewhere; and 9 percent offering no opinion.

The telephone poll of 1,029 adult Americans has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 3 points.

He's already buying arms from China...and as a sovereign country they can do whatever they want including telling us to go to hell which he will eventually do IMO.

Everybody already knows that Maliki is a Bush puppet; that's the reason he doesn't have any influence or power. The Iraq government was never viable from the beginning.

The real issue is that the different sects want political power in Iraq, and the military intrusion by the US only exacerbates the chaos and killings. The history of Iraq has always been about politcal power; not democracy.

We've lost the military war when Bush attacked Iraq.

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Wednesday, August 22 2007 @ 07:19 PM CDT

Bush Reminds Puppet that He's Still a Puppet
Friday, August 10 2007 @ 11:34 PM CDT
Contributed by: Admin

President George W. Bush sternly warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki Thursday against cozying up to Iran, amid what Washington sees as unsettling signs of warming Baghdad-Tehran relations.

From ABBASWATCHMAN:

Meanwhile, not even Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki is onboard with the neocon plan, as should be expected of an obedient puppet. "Maliki is on a three-day visit to Tehran, during which he was photographed Wednesday hand in hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Unconfirmed media reports said Maliki had told Iranian officials they'd played a constructive role in the region."

In response, Bush declared he will have "a heart-to-heart with my friend the prime minister, because I don't believe they are constructive.

I don't think he in his heart of hearts thinks they're constructive either." Is it possible al-Maliki will suffer the fate of the "Winston Churchill of Asia," Ngo Dinh Diem, the puppet president of South Vietnam, assassinated by the United States for his inability to follow orders as prescribed?

For now, Bush tells us he will talk to his "friend," but once the talking stops, as it did with Diem, al-Maliki may show up as a corpse. No doubt a dance with Ahmadinejad has consequences.

June 2005: Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country. The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). "We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored," read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.

We've heard Bush say we will leave when the Iraqis ask us to leave. Guess what?


The Bush administration has ignored repeated requests to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

June 2005: Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country. The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). "We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored," read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.