A car bomb kills 32 people in Kirkuk after US troops move out of cities.
I’m much less hopeful about the future of Iraq than I was about a year ago. They seem to have done absolutely nothing, and I get the sense that we’ll have either another dictatorship or a civil war in the not too distant future, now that we’re ostensibly taking a backseat.
Well, what’s important to most is that we are getting our troops out, amirite?
It’s not like the car bombs weren’t going off earlier.
Most Iraqis, certainly.
There are still roughly 11 people killed daily in Iraq by sectarian violence, it isn’t close to a happy playground. So yes, it’s important that we’re getting our troops out, since we can’t go backwards and never put them in.
H.
Our continued military presence in Iraq is deeply unpopular with the Iraqis themselves. The prevailing belief among Iraqis seems to be that once we leave, the insurgency will run out of steam - after all, the whole point was to drive us out, right? - and the Iraqis can resolve their differences and go back to fixing their country in peace. I’m not sure I consider that a realistic expectation - there’s already been so much Sunni vs Shiite violence it’s unlikely animosity and distrust will go away quickly and with malefactors like al Queda and Iran presumably still willing to stir the pot, who knows what will happen? - but at this point my feeling is we’re doing more harm than good staying in Iraq.
Apologies if I gave you too much credit by taking your question seriously.
I wouldn’t bet too much against ethnic cleansing once we’re fully gone, to be honest. The Shiites have a lot of history in that area, and with Iran egging them on, they may go for a full wipe.
H.
It’s the sound of Freedom! FREEDOM!
Mission Accomplished.
Among the many miscalculations with the invasion of Iraq, the long-term presence of US troops was one of the biggest, IMHO. As a “get in, get rid of Saddam, leave” proposition it might have worked, even if the UN had to get involved to help with the transition. But you can’t have what amounts to an occupation by foreign (both ethnic and religious) troops and expect the population to be happy for long.
Not that there would have been a “win” situation in any of it. Once we invaded we were going to be responsible whether we left right away or stayed this long.
Look, it’s an unrepentant neocon! You don’t see many of those anymore.
-TomHA! How dare you, sir?
The least you can do is bump some threads on Bosnia!
I get where you are coming from, unbongwah. No one likes the genocidal dictator, but there is typically just as strong resentment for the occupying force who liberated the country from said dictator. It’s my feeling that escalated civil war, ethnic cleansing, and terror attacks on civilians are all very likely results if we leave too quickly.
Quite frankly, I’m disgusted by the quick-fix-knee-jerk-no-patience/stomach approach many people have had to withdrawing the troops. There were major mistakes made, clearly, but a quick exit plan would have had even worse consequences. So, I guess I am cynically serious with my question.
Depending on how things go after this late exit, I suspect leaving right away wouldn’t have been any worse. I mean, if the end result is mass violence and genocide either way, then all we did was hang around for several years spending money and the lives of our soldiers.
That’s not to say I’m advocating that we should have left a few days after Baghdad fell. But once Saddam was found, the timetable should have been pretty quick. Train up the Iraqi’s as much as possible and head out within a year or so. Anybody who’s done any study of recent middle eastern history should have realized that an extended US presence was only going to lead to problems.
I don’t think the price of staving off genocide and mass violence is too high. Did you really mean to say it that way?
I agree with the training strategy, but I think that the army was not ready to stand on its own after the training was underway. If the Iraqis are in a place to protect themselves from the previously mentioned atrocities, then I fully endorse lending intel/support forces until that branch of the military is caught up with their fighting forces. And, I would endorse moving our fighting forces out of harm’s way in their cities.
And popular public opinion polls by the Iraqis doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Come on, where are all of the moral idealists out there?
Unlike the period from the invasion up to right now, where every one of those things is happening. There is no evidence our presence has reduced any of those things.
Of course it can be too high, particularly if there is no strategy beyond counterinsurgency fire chasing being applied with the American presence. The relative success of the surge is not a testament to American effectiveness in theater. It is, in fact, a condemnation of how incredibly fucked our approach prior to that was. The Iraqis may or may not end up in the grip of genocidal lunatics after our departure, but it is part of the same arrogance that landed us there to think the possibility of that outcome is mostly under our control.
Bush steadfastly refused to address political solutions to political problems. The Iraq he dreamed of was a united, strong Iraq that was closely allied to the United States. The possibilities that were actually available after a few years of mismanaged occupation (if in fact there were ever others) were a weak, divided Iraq pulled between the regional powers or a united, stable Iraq under a new strongman, both with (at best) a sense of ambivalence towards the US role in their country. Currently, we are coasting towards the latter with Maliki’s successful consolidation of power. By refusing to engage with Iran and everyone else who should have been at the negotiating table early on, he burned bridges that cannot be rebuilt with a simple change of president on our part.
I agree with the training strategy, but I think that the army was not ready to stand on its own after the training was underway. If the Iraqis are in a place to protect themselves from the previously mentioned atrocities, then I fully endorse lending intel/support forces until that branch of the military is caught up with their fighting forces. And, I would endorse moving our fighting forces out of harm’s way in their cities.
And popular public opinion polls by the Iraqis doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Come on, where are all of the moral idealists out there?
The moral idealists are in plastic bags and pine boxes right alongside a whole bunch of kids who had no idea what the hell was going on right up until they melted into a humvee dashboard. I don’t even want to imagine what the fate of the Iraqi idealist was, hundreds of thousands of dead later. There are, however, plenty of blowhards willing to encode their avarice in morals, who are always glad to spend more blood and treasure so long as the former belongs to others and the latter can be substantially redistributed their way. I’m sure many of them will find much to love about the modern day stab in the back theory you are laying the groundwork for here. Either way, one of the positive things to come out of our Iraqi adventure is the extent to which our failure has been documented, the best efforts of Bush and Obama notwithstanding. That evidence speaks to the broader idea of the end of the Pax Americana as it was understood by its neocolonialist architects, and the beginning of a frightening new age where we as a people are no longer able to efficiently outsource the costs of our way of life. Better now than later, anyway.
At any rate, Iraqis are not children that require patronizing sentiments. They don’t want America out because they are fickle and ungrateful, they want us out because they know that come whatever may, no real progress can be had unless it is on their own. Victims of American concern (and that of any other empire) worldwide can attest to the wisdom of that view. Amputation is always preferable to gangrene.
So, they were better off with the Butcher of Baghdad in power? Or leaving rapidly and letting another thug take Saddam’s place?
Sorry, we don’t need to go further than this. You’ve made your point.
The USA had it’s own civil war. What’s most important is to try to tie the factions together enough so that when the inevitable happens that the ties that bind them are a bit stronger than the divisive issues.
In some ways they were, as tough as it may be for the idealist to say so. At least a lot fewer Iraqis would be dead. Certainly the Iraqi immigrants I know that left between the two wars feel that this is a worse outcome. There were further sanctions and other options available had the real goal been a free Iraq with the minimum of bloodshed on any side. But of course, that wasn’t the goal or the motivation for the US invasion, regardless of what was said. Instead it was the simplistic and mistaken neocon theory about what could happen combined with Bush II’s own issues about how Bush I “didn’t finish the job 10 years earlier,” all wrapped up in a post-9/11 blank check made out to “Fight’n Terrorism.”
The problem with Iraq, as is the case with many artificially constructed former colonial territories, is that its borders and history do not really allow for the idealized solution of a free and happy democracy. Hell, even in places that have none of the ethnic and religious conflicts democracy is a tough thing to accomplish. So no matter what you do in Iraq, you face those long, bitter issues that divide Iraqis into at least three different groups. And in the end those are issues that only they can decide, not some outsider who proclaims to have their best interests at heart. Perhaps I’m cynical, but the last 60+ years seem to prove that view IMHO.
I don’t know what the outcome would have been if we’d left after only a few years. What I do know is that it is probably long overdue for the Iraqi people to decide what their future will be and that had we gotten out of the way there were other factions that might have proven more capable of supporting Iraq (the UN, a coalition of arab states, etc.) without the inherent anti-westernism that pollutes the scene and was easily predictable.