I think we need to pull out and let the regional powers settle things for themselves. Don’t kid yourselves. Iraq isn’t about Iraq. It’s about Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Iran - and then Iraq. We’re just the rentacops trying to keep the craziness to a minimum so the Iraqis can get a real handle on the security situation. If Basra is any indication we’re going to be stuck there for a long time. At the end of that day, and probably at the end of this long story, Iran’s still going to be there and Sadr’s still going to have majority support amongst the Iraqi nationalist Shiites. Our governmental allies are the ones with the closest historical ties to Iran!
Why do you think the argument about Federalism is going the way it is? The current national coalition wants to hack off the oil rich part of Iraq, and the attached port of Basra, snuggled up next to Iran and leave the rest of Iraq to fend for itself. The Kurds want more independance so this works for them. But this screws the poor of Iraq, fronted by Sadr and the Mahdi Army, who don’t want Baghdad to be forgotten nor do they want the rich aristos that could afford to flee Iraq during the Hussein years to control all the oil money and levers of power. And here the Sunni agree with Sadr. They too want a strong national government and national largess to go around equally.
At the same time Sadr and the Sunni are at loggerheads because their militias constantly clash. And when SCIRI and Dawa crack down on Sadr the Sunni back them.
The situation is screwy enough to make your head spin. And that’s not even getting down in the weeds of the various subfactions and tribes or political/religious extremists with a wide range of conflicting motivations and goals.
So, if the Iraqis running the central government are total screwups and each passing day gets us that much more in debt to China. What do we do? Just keep going and going?
I suppose if you believe we can somehow forge a stable government in Iraq and bring some kind of temporary balance of power about in the region you’d have to believe we need to stay in and do whatever we can, at almost any cost, to make it happen.
If you believe this situation is only marginally under our control and that this is just a lull before the storm as every side gathers as much political legitimacy and military logistical support as it can before the real fighting starts - you’re probably ready to call it a day. In the end Iran and Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and to a lesser extent Syria and Jordan, need to figure out how this is going to play.
OK, let’s call it what it is - arrogance to think that we (the US) can “fix” the political situation in another country.
The only people who should feel shame are the ones that supported the war in the first place (I won’t bother naming names - my fellow Qt3ers know who they are).
Do you feel Iran would be a suitable replacement for the US in Iraq? How could Iran actually help? If there is an actual flow of weapons from Iran to Iraqi militias, why would they stop supplying weapons if the US left?
I don’t think a country that is having economic problems of their own can actual help. Iran appears to be in no condition to actively fix a fractured country.
Edit: Don’t the Kurds have some oil fields as well
It sucks we are there. It sucks we disposed of their horrible leader, because he was stable. It sucks we invaded their country. We were wrong to do so.
It also sucks the two sides of some arbitrary religious/tribal/cultural war are killing each other. That’s not our fault though. We didn’t cause them to act like barbarians. I guess we should have left a dictator in that tortured his own people on a routine basis, huh? There would have been less death overall. And none of it blamed on us. And none of those TRILLIONS of dollars of our own money wasted. Whoever said we were over there to steal oil or keep it flowing have been proven completely wrong. It’s cost us way more to fight this war than any benefit in oil production or revenue (which we’ve seen none of).
We need to wtihdrawl, slowly, and let that country figure itself out. We can’t play referee to a fight we didn’t start forever. It’s like having an electric fence up between two packs of wolves. Occasionally some of the wolves gets killed by the fence. Mostly the wolves on one side of the fence. Then someone comes along and pulls up the fence. The wolves start killing each other. Then they look at the guy who pulled up the fence and say “Hey, but you pulled up the fence! You are responsible now and have to look after us!”. But you know, we didn’t make you wolves. You did that yourselves. Sorry about the fence, we thought you could act civilized if it was pulled up. I guess we should have left you alone, getting electrocuted.
It’s more of if your goal is really to make Iraq the best off here, and the US is incapable of doing it, so it’s going to have to be someone else, and by the process of elimination the only plausible candidate is Iran. They’re not exactly a poster child for improving international welfare and comity, but unlike all the other nations they have motive and means.
The US method of “bury Iraq in money funneled through our contractors and shoot lots of people” isn’t the only way to improve things there; Iran has a lot more interesting options.
It’s very fixable, we just lack the will. I can point to several practically feasible if morally repugnant options for restoring stability in Iraq. The most palatable is probably setting up another thug in place, a Hussein mk 2 if you will, to maintain order with force. Even more repugnant would be a modern reprise of the Boer wars. Both options would quite likely work.
How so? That’s a serious question. My perception is that insurgencies haven’t gotten any more sophisticated. It’s just that nobody is really ruthless enough to squish em anymore.
Not only in Iraq but everywhere in the region. And there are elements in the Shiite community that are plenty happy to take Iran’s money and weapons but wouldn’t be happy about a naked overlordship. There’s still a memory alive of the Iran-Iraq war in which Shiites did fight for Iraq and there’s, among some, quite a consciousness of the difference between Arab and Iranian Shiites.
I think Iran has to play a role but their influence has to be balanced out with the interest of other regional players so folks can agree on some kind of outcome for Iraq that everyone can live with.
There’s a bunch of changes in the rebel/army equation, and they basically all point in the favor of rebels. Nationalism, the spread of democracy or democracy-style legitimacy, and comparable movements have created far greater capacity for loyalty than used to be the case. Military firepower has increased incredibly, but in relative terms the balance has shifted to rebels. Theory wise, how to fight an insurgency is well developed, while theory-wise for the militaries the industrialization of the military has made military vulnerable institutionally to “kill some people and then go back to base” type setups; they used to be pretty much living locally and forced to interact with the population they’re stabilizing. That’s what I’ve gathered here and there, at least; LK probably can provide more nuts and bolts commentary.
Obviously the Sunnis won’t like Iran’s influence very much, but the important part is that only one group dislikes them and they at least have some theoretically common ground on ethnic and religious grounds. It’s definitely better than what the US has to offer.
Car bombs exploded amid busy streets and official buildings in Baghdad this morning, killing at least 127 people and wounding 450 more, in the latest assault on the Iraqi government by militants, according to police officials.
Four car bombs shook the city on its eastern and western sides in the span of about 30 minutes, starting around 10:10 am, police officials said. One blast gutted portions of the city’s main courthouse on the western side of the Tigris River; another lay waste to a street in front of makeshift offices for the Iraqi finance ministry, which had been forced to move employees after a powerful bombing in August; a third car bomb exploded at a busy intersection as a U.S. convoy passed by; and a fourth car bomb ripped a main street in the mostly Sunni district of Dura.
An Iraqi taxi driver may have been the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.
Or rather, would be funny if it hadn’t led to the deaths of far too many people.
This just makes me wonder what the fuck all those checkpoints are for that we have setup specifically to prevent shit like this. Apparently, checkpoints are useless while at the same time making people feel like prisoners in their own country. Go America.
Do you have an actual question about what checkpoints are for or how they are employed in Iraq, specifically in the current framework? Or are you really climbing all over this rhetorical tree in the midst of a veritable forest of strategic and tactical problems? Go America!?!
Checkpoints manned by Iraqis are about security presence. They are preventative in the sense that they provide the illusion of government control, but not in any material way that can’t be defeated by a teenager with some 155 shells and a station wagon.
Checkpoints manned by Marines or soldiers are preventative in the sense that the staff manning them generally have 1) better training overall and on escalation of force procedures and 2) a broader latitude for those shoot to kill procedures to be employed preemptively, coupled with having no personal stake in the situation in terms of how much collateral damage is generated by an overreaction. Other than that, they are largely symbolic unless they are part of a defensive position, in which case they can set up the buffer areas that are the only true protection in any material sense.
Every vehicle search is a suicide mission, so a checkpoint that regularly deals with unfiltered vehicles (eg, anything that isn’t US military equipment only) is a temporary operation when employed outside of defensive position, and the most expendable line when used as a part of one. You can translate that into “staffed by Iraqis ASAP, nope, nothing shady about that”.
All that said, there is not enough information in that article for me to be able to judge it on specific details, for whatever that would be worth. Playing defense against VBIEDs is a losing proposition on a long enough timeline, as it is much easier to build a significantly more effective bomb than it is to fortify a defense against it. Most of all, it is extraordinarily difficult to assess from a distance whether the current attacks are coming from a position of strength or weakness. I’m inferring the latter, but only because of my relentless optimism and the amateurish emphasis on symbolic timing.
Iraq has spent millions on VBIED divining rods which they’ve given out to checkpoint guards. There was an alternately horrifying and then amusing writeup in the NY Times a few weeks ago on this development. Apparently the rods can “detect” bombs in aircraft as they fly overhead or when they’re buried underneath concrete a mile away. The reporter was unable to get the device to work though in the demonstration. His liaison explained that was just a lack of proper training.
