We can't kid ourselves about Iraq

[dsc]

First, there will be no UN bailout as long as Bush is in office, nor will there be any substantial NATO bailout as long as Bush is in office. Anyone calling for more troops between now and 2009, will be calling for US and UK troops.

Second, the last chance of salvaging anything out of Iraq is to send in a large number of troops to be policemen while we train Iraqis to be policemen in a stable, neighboring country. We also would have to build up the infrastructure to at least Saddam era levels. This would take a minimum of six month and at least a doubling of current troop levels for that time.

Given the above, we have only a few, realistic senarios from which to choose.

One, immediate withdrawl and accepting defeat. This is still an unacceptable option on many levels but may well be necessary.

Two, a certain, non negotiable date of withdrawl combined with a heavy handed approach to making a Constitution, maybe even dividing up Iraq into three seperate countries. Troop strength would have to be increased, though not as much, for this option. This would also take around 6 months.

Three, Doubling troops and buiding up Iraq while training police. Have a date certain for withdrawl with a police force in place and letting Iraqis negotiate a constitution with the knowledge we will be leaving and thus the necessity of Shiite cooperation to let the Sunnis have some power.

Four, Our current policy which is a demonstrated failure.

I think that only two and three are viable right now both for moral reasons and for strategic ones. First, morally the pottery barn rule does apply here even if it doesn't at pottery barn. We owe this country a realistic shot at survival upon our leaving given that we decimated it upon our arrival. Only options two and three give us that possibility. Second, strategicly having a theocratic failed state with oodles of oil is a recipe for exactly what Bush said we had before the war. Imagine an Iraq that had WMD, that was cooperating with the likes of Al Quida, and did supply WMD to terrorists. If we choose option one, we likely won't have to imagine the above. Option four only delays the date when we have to do option one.

We are in this mess due to Bush's idiocy. We are stuck in this mess due to his stubornness. But as Democrats we need to offer a realistic solution to this mess even as he is President. The UN and NATO aren't realistic in 2006, since Bush will still be President. Options 2 and 3 are. We can't win the midterms if we can't convice people that we are serious about dealing with Iraq as we find it as opposed to what it would have been but for Bush's incompetence. We have to accept some hard truth and then relay them to the country. Being right about the war isn't enough, since we weren't listened to. Being right about what to do now is important.

[bemildred]

1. There is no viable option but withdrawal.

This has only begun to get ugly.
This is far from the worst that it can be.
Drag it out as long as you like, there is no "better" to be had.

[dsc]

6. Clearly either option 2 or 3 may well end up being option 1

but I think we owe it to both us and them to try. I think there is a decent, though not huge, chance of a decent regime if we do one of those options.

[bemildred]

8. We disagree. Some things cannot be fixed.

But no hard feelings.
It's no shame to want a bit of hope.

[dsc]

23. Even in failure, there would be some honor in having tried

In all honesty I believe that both option 2 and option 3 are slightly more likely to fail than to succeed. But if we fail after either option, then we at least did try to mitigate our moral error.

[bemildred]

36. You cannot mitigate a moral error by pursuing it further. nt

[SlowDownFast]

50. Ooooh.

Hard truth.

It hurts.

[evilqueen]

48. I actually agree with you...

and there is that 400 tons of explosives that disappeared because this administration deemed oil wells more valuable than munitions to guard.

I think there is really no solution. If we leave, the whole thing sinks into civil war. On the other hand, it's pretty much already a civil war, and all sides want us out of there.

[bemildred]

56. There are many things like that.

No matter how much we would like to undo the mess, you can't, and mucking around in denial just keeps making it worse. The longer we sit there, the less we look like the invincible empire. Napoleon got his comeuppance in Spain, and then got crushed in Russia trying to pretend the old magic was still there. Vietnam was our Spain, Iraq will be our Russia.

[Cleita]

2. It is a given that we have to get Bush out of office.

In the meantime. Keep your kids from signing up for military service. Pressure your Congressional Reps and Senators about getting those in the military the equipment they need and the care they need once they return from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Time to take back Congress in 2006. At least if he's still there, he will be neutered until we can impeach him.

[dsc]

4. By then we might have 5,000 Casey's instead of 2000

Time isn't free here. Bush will be in office, neutered or not, until 2009. Winning in 2006 is necessary for lots of things but not sufficient to end the Iraq quagmire.

[Cleita]

27. It doesn't look good does it.

But we can't give up in despair.

[Solly Mack]

3. I don't ever kid myself about Iraq

I have too much to lose to ever do that.

[Pepperbelly]

5. How can we train them to defeat the insurgency when we cannot do it? nt

[dsc]

9. The same way a football coach can teach

a person to play football even if they haven't done every position.

In addition, they will have an easier task one we are gone. While the insurgency won't totally disappear, it will lose a decent slice of its members upon our leaving.

[Pepperbelly]

19. Why not apply the same logic and use it to design a policy.

You bet your ass that a good slice of the insurgency would end if we left. How about ALL of it. If we withdraw now, it will degenerate into a three way civil war. If we do not withdraw now but do so later, we will have enough Iraqis trained to put off the degeneration into a 3 way civil war for a short period of time before it indeed, turns into a 3 way civil war and we would have bought that delay with however many more soldiers we sacrifice along the way. Is that short delay before civil war worth it?

I don't think that Iraq is a 'natural' nation and like the former Yugoslavia, required a strongman dictator to bind it together. I just cannot see the artificial Iraq laid out by the Brits to survive.

[MichiganVote]

7. Why is it that Americans insist that "defeat" in Iraq is the end of the

world? What makes us all so certain that Iraq will not set itself right w/o our meddling? What makes Americans think that they can just order up a type of government in Iraq? Isn't it up to the Iraqi's to determine what kind of givernment they have? Shall we permit other countries to order up our government system?

Tired of all this bogus nationalism on the part of the US and its citizens. We have done our bit and its time to leave. Period. Never should have been there in the first place.

[dsc]

12. because we can read history books

Everytime a country has had its infastructure destroyed along with its government and then been abandoned the result has been a failed state that endangers at least its neighbors. It happened with Germany between the world wars. It happened with Afghanistan after the Russian fiasco. I can't think of one example of leaving the kind of mess we would leave in Iraq and not having at best chaos and at worst the second coming of Hitler.

[alcibiades_mystery]

Several dubious propositions

1) That Germany had its infrastructure and government destroyed by World War I
2) That Afghanistan had any "infrastructure" to begin with
3) That the historical singularities of each of these situations can be applied unproblematically to current-day Iraq
4) That withdrawal of US/UK forces is de facto abandonment.

[dsc]

20. Several answers

1) I haven't read any history book, anywhere, at anytime, that didn't suggest that post WW1 Germany was a basket case. It was in economic ruins and had to pay big bucks in reperations. They entered the Great Depression long before the US and did so after a ruinous bout of hyperinflation that had wiped out all savings. If that isn't a decimated place, I don't know what is.

2) Afghanistan was surely no great citidel of modernity, but it was much more modern in comparision to other places in its area before the Russians and the Taliban destroyed it. I doubt that pre Russian Afghanistan would have hosted Osama.

3) That is what history is for. If you don't learn from it you repeat it. We learned our lesson in WW2 and thus didn't abandon Germany or Japan but instead built them up.

4) I see no reasonable senario underwhich the UN or NATO would intervene now.

[Selatius]

24. There's evidence to suggest Carter egged the Russians to invade Afghanista

If that is true, then the Afghani people were the sacrificial lamb in the drive to give the USSR it's version of Viet Nam.

In a 1998 interview with French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that US President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to anti-Soviet elements in Kabul on July 3, 1979. The aim of this was to "knowingly increase probability" of Soviet military intervention.

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

What was the date of the Soviet invasion? December 24, 1979...six months later. It would seem Carter laid down the foundation for revenge...at the expense of the welfare and the lives of the Afghani people.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Soviet-invasion-of-Afghanistan

[dsc]

26. Brzezinski isn't known for being totally honest about his role in things

I suspect a little bit of self aggrandiziment in that interview.

[Selatius]

30. But do you challenge Jul. 3, 1979 as the date Carter signed that directive

Regardless of what Brzezinski may gloat about, do you challenge that date, six months before Soviet troops set foot in Afghanistan?

[dsc]

33. Agreeing to help an insurgency

isn't the same as dragging in the SU for a war.

[Selatius]

34. Oh, but I think it had far reaching negative consequences regardless

When you go down the road of adopting "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," you end up building up people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein into much bigger problems than if one had decided not to get involved. And if you'll remember, folks like Osama were trained and equipped by the US government for the fact that they were killing Russian soldiers. 20 years later, he came back and visited the US.

[dsc]

35. clearly this was not a great idea in retrospect

and it had several problems but that is different than planning it for revenge purposes.

[Selatius]

37. Oh, but perception is reality in our world

For Carter himself, it may have been out of some altruistic need to fight oppression, but could you just as easily assume that Reagan, his successor, as well as many within Reagan's government did it for such lofty reasons or for more base ones?

[dsc]

38. It was for a combination of reasons clearly

I think it started out humanitarian and hopeful that the SU would just let that government fall, but then as the SU didn't we accepted that we could drain them of money and will.

[alcibiades_mystery]

31. I'm more with Marx than Santayana on this one

where Marx says: "Hegel said all great world historical events and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Which is to say, history never quite repeats, so we should always attend to the non-repeating singularities of history, rather than rushing headlong into analogy. Historical analogy can be useful, but tends to attribute cause too easily.

As for UN intervention, see my response below.

[rbjensen]

21. Afghanistan

used to be a "real" country with roads, bridges and all the rest. It was a big tourist draw back before the Soviets came in. A beautiful country of beautiful people.

But I buy the thrust of your argument.

[newyawker99]

54. Hi rbjensen!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. I think your premise is wrong

There is no viable chance for UN or third-party force involvement until the US withdraws (rather than "while Bush is President"). The US cannot be a good-faith broker in any Iraq process. The initial step must be a transition period from US/UK/Colonial power occupation to third-party (including UN) military assistance. But nobody is going to come in to help the US out of its self-made catastrophe if the US still expects to reap the rewards of that help, either financially, strategically, or politically. If, however, the US/UK/Colonizing forces go to the UN and ask for assistance on the condition that US/UK troops withdraw, and the US cedes command or advisory functions, and all contracts entered into under the illegal occupation government are voided, then third-parties will be willing to assist in the process, and, moreover, the violence will decrease proportionate to the pace of the US withdrawal. The right wing is so frantically spreading the message that US withdrawal will immediately result in a failed state and increased violence that one suspects the opposite. It is the US/UK/Colonial occupation that is encouraging the violence, so that occupation must end first.

[dsc]

14. Do you honestly think the UN would bail us out

after our behavior if Bush is still in office? We could forswear oil revenues tomorrow and they would, quite legitimately, tell us to fuck off.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Yes, I honestly believe

that the only thing preventing a third-party intervention is the insistent presence of US troops and US power, such that any intervention would be a reward to the US for starting this asinine war in the first place. For the US to humbly admit defeat and ask for help would result in help, so long as the US agreed to keep its bloody paws out of the process.

[dsc]

22. I see no reason why they would

The UN told us not to invade, France and Germany told us not to invade, we did it anyhow. We made a huge mess. Now they have every right to tell us to clean it up ourselves.

[alcibiades_mystery]

28. There are a number of reasons why the initially opposing countries

would intervene on condition of US withdrawal. First, and most obviously, it increases their international stature at the expense of US hegemony at the same time that it buys them instant access to a crucial oil producing region. They get the oil contracts AND look like the good guys. Second, they also have intrinsic national interest in preventing Iraq from becoming a failed state, but that interest is currently weighed against their interest in watching US hegemony go down in flames, and whatever domestic political interests they have in non-participation with the US mission. Once the US/UK agree to pull out, the scale tips the other way in terms of their national security interests, and their domestic constituencies can be sold on the humanitarian aspect of the mission, as opposed to cooperation with the open US/UK banditry. Third-party involvement, at this point, would be the smart move strategically, financially, and politically, so long as the initial condition is met: withdrawal and non-involvement of the US/UK powers.

[dsc]

32. I honestly have severe doubts in this

This is an epic mess and we don't have a Hercules to clean up these Agean Stables.

[alcibiades_mystery]

44. I gave you reasons

I'm not hoping for a miracle. Then again, you asked for reasons, and I gave them to you. The appropriate response is counter-argument.

[evilqueen]

49. Suppose China agreed to send military intervention? n/t

[Imagevision]

11. Don't feel bad...Bush hasn't a clue neither.

[dsc]

16. that line won't work

Imagine you have a bad employee and you decide to fire him. Then say a potential new employee says well I have no idea how to do this job but I'm not as bad as he is. Do you think you would hire the guy? Democrats need a realistic solution.

[BillZBubb]

13. We were defeated the moment Busholini invaded.

That's the plain fact that most people can't comprehend. Once the iron lid was removed from the top, the whole can of worms was opened up. Bush and the neo-con idiots along with far too many DLC types believe we can put 10lbs of worms back in that 5lb can.

It is not going to happen. A bloody civil war is inevitable. We have only two options: 1) Stick around and waste more money and lives postponing the inevitable civil war. or 2) Get out and let the Iraqis solve their own problems.

No option is good, but getting out now is by far the best. We are in this situation because of the lies and deception of Bush. The price we must pay is immense--and defeat in Iraq is just the down payment.

[dsc]

25. I am close to your position but honestly feel we need to do one

more option. Both morally and strategically we can't do any less.

[KnowerOfLogic]

41. You are correct. The decision to invade was fatally flawed. No amount

of good intentions is going to save us now.

[cornermouse]

15. I firmly believe that had we invited troops from the other Arab countries

into Iraq with us and used them to help police the area, Iraq would probably have settled back down quickly and we would not be in the situation that we're in now. As it is, we've now killed too many civilians, not been able to replace their infrastructure, and put a puppet government in place. We've made too many mistakes and they aren't going to stop until we're gone.

[dsc]

29. It may well be insurmountable

I hold no illusions about the difficulty here.

[Selatius]

17. Look, I don't think Bush will listen to any of us

There goes options 2 and 3. He doesn't give a flying fuck what we say. He doesn't have to run for re-election, and Cheney et al have already made their money off the war. I fear when they leave office, they're just going to run back to their huge estates and lock themselves away in relative comfort, while we burn in proverbial hell.

Bush doesn't like to admit mistakes. That's what would happen if he were to adopt options 2 or 3 because it would be a tacit admittal of error. He and his buddies have said we have enough troops, and to turn around and say we have to double it would be seen as admitting things have gone wrong.

He's going to stay with option 4. End of story, and when 2008 comes around, there would not be anything left in Iraq worth saving except withdrawing in defeat. It will be like Saigon 1975 all over again when that government in Baghdad is swallowed up by the chaos in the surrounding countryside.

[KnowerOfLogic]

39. There are some mistakes from which there is no recovery; the Iraq war is

one of them. We are in a lose-lose situation right now. IMO, i believe that there are certain inevitabilities ahead of us that will occur regardless of what we do: 1. Iraq will split up. 2. The shiite portion will become an iranian-allied theocracy. 3. The sunni portion will also become something of a theocracy and will be heavily influenced and infiltrated by anti-american terrorists/terrorist sympathizers from the sunni arab world. 4. All of the above will occur with at least a low level civil war and great loss of life / destruction. 5. Anti-americanism will continue at extremely high levels in the arab world and iran for a least 15 years.

[Faygo Kid]

40. Stop the War

It was a good, clear slogan then. It works now.

[understandinglife]

42. Get. Out. Of. Iraq. Now. We are invaders and occupiers. We were not ...

... invited.

We had no legitimate reason for invading.

We are illegally occupying the country.

We must leave before we can begin to do anything legitimate in the form of retribution.

And, you betcha, we will be doing retribution for decades.

Any stance short of this is immoral and illegal.

Anyone who does not understand that and act accordingly will not ever get my vote.

p.s. The tactical, logistical details of how we get our personnel out with minimum harm to them is something America has vast expertise. I suspect something less than 60 days with a clear message to all Iraqi citizens, and their allies that attacking our troops as they exit will be met with maximum fire-power. We should already have required all the Blackwell mercs, Bechtel and Halliburton and other leeches to get out. From some reading I've done, folk in the 'green zone' have their bags packed and close at hand at all times.


Peace.

[Karenina]

47. The "we must help them..."

bullshit makes me quite irritable. The assumption of superiority is grotesque. GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW.

[understandinglife]

57. If 'they' had ever wanted our help, 'they' would have asked. Fact is ...

....most of those 'theys' have been telling us to leave since our illegal and devestating arrival.

You are so correct.


Peace.

[Minstrel Boy]

43. Let Bush be wrong about the war. Democrats need to be right about

the peace.

Get out. Leave behind your credit card info to pay for damages, but get the hell out.

[Eloriel]

45. Nominated! Good post. n/t

[OneBlueSky]

46. defeat was assured the moment we invaded . . .

and has just grown more and more inevitable with each day of the occupation . . . with each Iraqi civilian death, with each arrest and detainment of innocent people, with each bombing of each city, with each application of depleted uranium to the landscape, with each cluster bomb picked up and detonated by a young child, with every hour without electricity and water . . .

the only question for us is when to accept this reality -- now, or later? . . .

[MadHound]

51. Sorry friend, but I have to disagree

The longer we stay there, the greater amount of death and destruction we will cause. And no matter when we pull out, a couple of things are going to happen. First, the Iraqi people will reject any government that is set up under our auspices, leading to a short, sharp civil war. It is inevitable. And it might wind up being a Shi-ite theocracy with close ties to Iran. This cannot be prevented, no matter what we do.

The longer we stay, no matter what we do, the greater amount of death and destruction we bring. This isn't an "insurgency", nor a "terrorist action". This is a group of people who are fighting for the right to self rule, and to take their country back. And much like our own forefathers, they will continue to fight, no matter what. They will target civilians, much like we did, and military personal alike. And the death toll will continue to rise.

Thus, there really is no other option. It is time to get the hell out and bring the troops home. We should pay heavy reparations to the Iraqi people, we should send aid and money, but we should march up on the boats and planes and come on home. Yes, it will be a mess after we leave, but the thing is that it is going to be a mess in Iraq no matter when we leave, no matter what we do. So let us take the way that promises less blood for ourselves and the Iraqis, and leave, now.

[confludemocrat]

53. Only we can save a situation? Here's news: they can do it themselves

despite the misguided thinking based on deep seated belief in our innate superiority and their innate inferiority, we need to accept that we are not the solution here, withdrawing our world class killing machine (would be great to have in truly defending us) married to an incompetent, malevolent government spells disaster, is the only solution. How much more proof do we need?

Anyway, when Bolton/Bush get done with the UN alienation job they are engaged in now, how is Kerry's naive childish scenario of getting them to help gonna fly? Especially since the Demo leadership has been with Bush all the way on Iraq except to say they could "do it better"? Suddenly they will embrace a Kerry or Biden or Clinton who have nearly fully parroted the Bush line on Iraq: stay the course? illegal codesmilie_remote(':smoke:')illegal codesmilie_remote(':banghead:')

[rman]

52. Already defeated; none of the official objectives have been achieved. nt

[Lorenzo]

55. I'm sorry, Americans, you can't withdraw

1. Bombing people - anyone can do, that's not the real work
2. Making sure the war actually leads to a change and to peace, that's the real work
3. The entire world warned you that going to war in Iraq would be a disaster and create an impossible situation (remember Dominique de Villepin's wise words)
4. We now face 2 basic scenarios:
--1: if you withdraw, chances are we'll see a total civil war, and your war will have been in vain
--2: if you withdraw, chances are a Shia dictator will rise up and align Iraq with a nuclear Iran, and your war will have been totally in vain, because you then have created a Theocratic Empire of Mollahs With Nukes (far worse than little cute Saddam with his russian tanks)

So what if you do not withdraw? You will be stuck forever in the biggest swamp in US history. A similar war brought the Soviets down (in Afghanistan) because you are facing an enemy consisting of troops coming from more than 50 countries (the international jihad is similar to the first war of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan).

In short, there's no exit strategy, only guaranteed suffering and violence.

***One scenario offers a way out, and that is to help Iran acquire nuclear weapons, so that Iran becomes the regional superpower. You then ask Iran to threaten you with its nukes, so that you have a valid reason to pull out.*** That's about it.


The world warned the US, if it launches this mad war, it will regret it, and cause much more suffering than Saddam.