The escalating situation in Iraq...
 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html
http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?...articleID=5745

Well what do you think? Despite the claims to the contrary, that I've heard in various sound bytes, you have to admit that the situation in Iraq is not getting better & better, and this is at least a setback to the road to peace. How much of a setback is unclear, but I personally get the distinct feeling that there's a lot more political damage control being done, than actually dealing with the unfolding situation.

Why do I say that? Well, in Rumsfeld's recent talk, he himself couldn't account for the number of insurgents loyal to al-Sadr, and whether or not al-Sadr supporters are the only ones in the frey.

Yet the troops we have over there is more than sufficient.

Frankly, I see this as a big mistake. Having too many troops, while expensive, is a far better thing than to have too few. Since military intelligence is obviously failing us, why not go the route of over-estimation? At least it puts our troops at far less of risk.

Trying to save face, while the house is buring down, will only result in a bunch of ashes, which are always harder to re-build.

Sky Warrior Bob

The situation in Iraq is continuing to get worse, and there seems to be no change to this trend. The only problem is that the budget is already spread very thin, so they would have to cut spending in other major areas of the budget. Especially with Social Security the way it is. However, they could take troops out of areas that we already occupy. That could also help ease relations with countries that resent us for having troops in them even after the conflict is over, for one reason or another.

The situation is indeed getting worse and it doesen't seem to help what ever the coalition does. And the fact that Spain is pulling out doesen't help anything. (I do think that it's good that Spain is pulling out though)

No, I disagree. While I do share the sentiment that the situation in Iraq isn't being run correctly (and I'd point to the heavy-handed way in which we go after suspected insurgents & trying to find some; by breaking into practically every house 1 by 1), I don't think pulling support is a good thing. I'd much prefer that Spain try to, well for lack of a better word, blackmail the US for putting the total & complete control of Iraq into UN hands.

Not that the UN is likely to take the mess the US has made of Iraq, but at least the effort should be made. Should have been made a long time ago. The whol coalition IMO, is nonsense. Its just mostly the US, with meager support that we've manged to bully because of our economic clout.

Sky Warrior Bob

But that is exactly what Spain is doing. They have said that unless total control is given to the UN they will pull out. I don't think that UN will take this to them anymore...not with this current situation.

That raiding the houses 1 by 1 tactic isn't really working. The only thing that has come out of it, is people hwo are even more against the coalition. And this new radical shia leader isn't helping things.

I hope though that order is restored in Iraq.

the current problem in Iraq is because a Shia thug, er, "cleric" who kills his rivals and wants his militia to take over and make him a dictator was going to be arrested for the murder of a rival cleric, so decided to go for broke today.

If Iraq is going to ever prosper, law and order has to be maintained. When political "clerics" for death squads and kill people for power, those guys have to be stopped.

I don't particularly care WHO does the law enforcement. As it was, the plan was to let the Iraqi security and police forces deal with the rebel clerics and other 'internal' type things once they had the ability to. But they couldn't be trained fast enough. But Al Sadr pushed the issue, so the US is going to play Cops some more.

If the UN really wanted to take up the mission of arresting murderers and Mafiosi, I wouldn't mind. Except they have a shitty ass track record. The blue helmets in Kosovo and Serbia couldn't protect a small refugee camp from being attacked.

Plus, the US pulling out, or even taking a back seat, would be completely detrimental to peace in Iraq. A lot of focus is given to those who are annoyed that we are there. But you CANT forget the people who we are standing behind. The IGC and the members of any new intern government know that they DON'T have the power to control the government at this time. and they know that, with out us, they are targets.

if it were not for the US presence, the people working towards an Iraqi democracy would NOT be working. they'd be playing the power game. They'd be trying to align themselves with a group that they think is strong enough to survive.

America’s leaving would lead to a fatal blow to the morale of any fledgling Iraqi government.

I don't quite understand people who want us to pull out of Iraq. I don't think we should have gone in there to begin with (well, maybe under different circumstances), but I'll be damned if we don't clean up the mess we made. Pulling out wouldn't solve any of the crap that's going on over there.

As far as security, who exactly is enforcing over there (besides for US Troops). I've been hearing things about outsourcing a lot of unregulated mercenaries, or is that just like a police force?

Yes, I must say things don't look good right now in Iraq. If things keep on this way, there'll never be a peacefull transfer of power to the people of Iraq and the whole war will have been a waste. Does anyone see a soft, smooth transition to a democratic Iraq any time particularly soon? I give it another year MINIMUM before US forces manage to clean up the current anarchy of terrorism and insurgence and that's me being as genorous as possible.

So there you go, the war's just a giant American screw up in my opinion. I mean, was it really fiscally prudent to blow so much money on such a costly war in the middle of a recession after tax cuts? I mean, yeesh, for how many years are education and healthcare and so on going to have to take a hit to pay off such a ridiculous defecit? And then how much more money is it going to take to at least give Iraq enough sanity to institute a viable democracy?

Not that liberating the opressed is not noble or anything, but a nice precident for toppling random tin-horn dictatorships in international law would be nice. Why Iraq and not Cuba or North Korea or so on and so fourth? And without the support of NATO (Who really gives a damn about the UN eh?) this whole thing cost a lot more for the US than it could have. Of course, the whole initial basis for the war was weapons of mass destruction, the evidence of which beforehand was sketchy at best, and the evidence of which afterwards seems to be nonexistant, so that was a pretty stupid rational.

Yet if the US backs out now, it's most likely that some cleric or another with a horde of followers will just stage a coupe and everything will go more or less back to square one. Then if you do leave because of all the terrorism and insurgence, the US also looks weak from responding to such threats. But then, staying is going to cost quite a lot... Shitty situation.

Remember, the UN were the ones to run out of iraq after their building got bombed, after they refused our protection. Look at the other cases of countries the UN has taken charge of like Bosnia and Serbia(genocide) and Rwanda(genocide). So what happens when the UN takes over? Will there really be a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis?
Also ask yourself, who do you want controlling our troops? Elected officials, accountable to the American people, who we can vote out next election? or Kofi Annan, France, Germany, Russian, China, and which ever dictator is on the council this year(is it still Syria?)

As for Al Sadr (who most likely has received money and possibly trained men from Iran, scroll down to the bottom of the page) the estimate I heard from journalists was that he had a couple thousand followers (Rumsfeld says less than 2000) who were following him. Source
Thats who these people are, people who fight without reason.
Sadr has been wanted for over a year for the murder of another cleric, and most shiites do not support him.


Also, lets examine why the timing of this violence is a good thing. We invaded Iraq and were expecting some opposition. We found little. There were a lot of Republican guards, people loyal to Saddam, and shiites who didnt want democracy because they would lose power in Iraq. They didnt all start attacking us, so we said, "Ok, we wont mess with you if you dont attack us" so it went along that way for awhile. Till now, now we are cleaning up all the people who dont want that June 30th deadline to come and bring Iraq closer to democracy. These are the people we should have been fighting during the invation, but they didnt attack.

Now by attacking now, Sadr and the opposition in Fallujah, have shown their true colors. Source

Now we have the opposition holed up in Fallujah (bad move for guerrila, to try to occupy a city or base) and Sadr and his supporters all bunched together trying to hold their parts of the cities. Now we have targets to attack and clearly defined enemies who are not popularly supported by the Iraqi people.

Enemy Mistakes

mostly Iraqis. From what i hear, there's something to the effect of 4 volenteers for each position we want to fill... but we can't train them all at once, so the Iraqi security forces remain small.

plus, the Iraqi security forces still suffer from corruption, and the after effects of being terroristed by Saddam's secret police. We like taking experienced candidates... but that sometimes means we get bad apples.

luckily, the real lesson for the Iraqis is that Corruption can be delt with. Corrupt police are getting axed. The Iraqi's are used to corrupt police, but they are getting used to the fact thet somehting can be DONE about it. Its kind of a novelty right now.


i dunno about that. Al Sadr won't last long. We won't tolerate him. The outside influences of terrorists might take longer to take care of, but i'm not sure it can't be quelled. Since a lot of the terrorism is funded from outside Iraq, the larger War on Terror can do a lot to pin down their abilities.

What WILL take a while to do, and probably more then a year, is to change the culture. Al Sadr is just one example of a "My way or i shoot you" principle that is far mroe prevelant in the Arab world then the Western world. In order to get a western democracy to work, the loosers have to be PEACEFUL about it. If everytime an election rolled around the loosers went on a kill crazy rampage, our government would have crumbled long ago.

That might actually be the fatal factor that prevents a long term freedom in Iraq.

But in that event, i'd say break Iraq up. Ok, let Al Sadr types control a section of Iraq... but let Kurdistan be its own democracy, as well as any other section of the nation wanting to be independant. The Geography of Iraq was arbitrary anyway, so theres no rule saying that it has to stay the current shape it is.

you were just saying we were spending too much money as it is...

but you already know why. 14 years of broken resolutions. Kim Jong-Il wasn't even in power when we were in Kuwait in 1990. And we were playing nice with him for 9 years, while Iraq was shooting at our planes, kicking out inspectors, violating treaties and resolutions, killing its people.

besides, you forgot the other nations that we "went after" diplomatically with success. Pakistan, for one. Iran... altho they're playing games with us. Libya, after sucessfully hiding its WMDs from EVERYONE decided to cough them up and play nice.

because our NATO "allies" were making gads of money off of oil and weapons deals with Saddam and didn't want to cut off that income?

besides, NATO and the UN being invovled barely save us anything. When the UN goes to war, the Americans put on blue helmets and pay for it anyway.

consider that the second largest military in the world doesn't even spend $87 billion in a year anyway (ok, so the $87 billion isn't a lump sum, it covers a more then a year. but you get the point)

yeah. It'd be nice if we could have given Saddam the ol' boot in the ass then let the Iraqis just sort of coalesce into a working democracy that establishes essential freedoms. But life sucks, and things are harder to do then that.


This does kidn of put a kink in that whole arguement from before the war that we could "Just assassinate Saddam and be done with it!" doesn't it? maybe i should go thru all the old threads and make people apologize for that PoV.

naaaahhh.