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Banned
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Iraq:"It can be saved and won", Can You Be Reliably Informed Yet Have That Opinion?
A few hours ago, on another thread here, this was posted:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=38
What would be a sound plan? I'd say the mistake was going in as liberators rather than conqueror's but hindsight and all..
.. I think you fail to see the big picture here in that sure there have been a LOT of mistakes in Iraq, but its not as colossal a fuck up as you imply here. <h3> It can be saved and won</h3>, in fact I expect as soon as a democrat gets elected president we will start to see 'good things' stories from Iraq. New schools, new hope, blah blah. Really the way to make this a monumental fuck up is to throw up our hands and 'honorable redeploy' like so many on this board think is a good idea.
<h3>We've got a nation of 27 million people under our direct and indirect control, we need to make good on our promises.</h3> Not keeping them would be a true monumental fuck up.
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The above bolded opinions were so foreign to my own, I wondered how the poster of them could "know" enough, or be confident enough about the American leaders "in charge of the war" to post (and believe in) those opinions, from a practical standpoint.
I found that other folks who share those opinions are liars, incompetents, unqualified, incurious, clueless, and work at stifling and discrediting the opinions of folks I find reliable and who I depend on to be informed about the hopeless disaster that the US military has mired itself in, in Iraq....and some of them are our leaders!
Here's Michael Rubin, a neocon I've documented successfully campaigning to prevent Iraq & Iran expert, professor/blogger Juan Cole, from assuming a position at Yale University that he had already been offered:
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Quarterly
Middle East Quarterly (MEQ) is a quarterly journal devoted to subjects relating to the Middle East. A publication of the American pro-Israel neoconservative think tank Middle East Forum (MEF) founded by Daniel Pipes, the journal was launched in 1994. Edited by <h3>Michael Rubin</h3>....
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Quote:
http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=4796
.. Despite Yale’s hope that its professors will engage the outside world, Graeber worries that its policies discourage intellectual adventurousness. “The structure is such that it rewards mediocrity,” he said. “That’s the problem—the lack of transparency, the lack of communication, but especially that system that never rewards people for standing out.”
<h3>Last year, Yale decided to woo Professor Juan Cole away from Michigan. Then it changed its mind.
The decision raised several eyebrows and many questions. Cole, the president of the Middle East Studies Association, speaks Arabic and Persian, is considered a powerful scholar, and had been approved for the position by votes in the history and sociology departments.</h3> The provost’s office refused to comment on the reasons for his rejection; Dr. Cole refused to comment on this story. But many eyes turned toward Cole’s blog as a factor in the decision, one that may have raised his profile and polarized opinion on his candidacy. On his site, “Informed Comment,” Cole has provided commentary on the news coming out of the Middle East since 2001. Discussing politics is almost guaranteed to cause controversy, but when professors can speak to their passion while educating an ever-growing blogosphere, how can they resist?....
....Cole’s blog seems to reflect a similar desire to expand beyond his traditional academic outlets, commenting on a more specific topic with an even more extensive willingness to engage in strident discourse. Yet both Althouse and Cole have a single great advantage over many of their compatriots: lifetime tenure. If untenured David Graeber had kept an anarchist blog, would he have been more or less likely to have seen his contract renewed last year?....
....“Faculty should be evaluated on their scholarship alone,” Butler said. “We shouldn’t be judging faculty on what seem to be, or what we deem to be, or even what they say their views are about contemporary politics.”
But in reality, a professor’s politics can stick with us no matter how hard we try to focus on their classroom lecture. And the same can be true when faculty come up for tenure, admits Deputy Provost Charles Long. “Blogs can’t help but raise your profile and create controversy,” said Long. And while he wouldn’t comment on whether Cole’s blog affected his candidacy, he acknowledged that the question had been raised. “I know there was a good deal of talk about the degree to which what Juan Cole said in his blog should be considered part of his application material,” he admitted.
And even Butler—who chaired the committee that rejected Juan Cole’s candidacy—admits that there can be unintended consequences when one speaks as an advocate. “It’s not possible to isolate, in the real world, that kind of speaking out on public issues from one’s scholarship,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that that should be done.”
The issues surrounding advocacy can really be boiled down to a matter as old as time: that of free speech. As long as people have been able to speak, they’ve been saying things other people don’t want to hear. Speech has consequences; your right to speak is protected, but you’re not protected from what people think of you. ....
...If words are indeed weapons, then one must hope that the questions that surround advocacy get answered to the betterment of the academy, one way or another. Certainly free speech can have—has had—its consequences, but none of these three, when questioned, would have chosen any other path.....
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I learn more from Juan Cole, in real time, about what is happening in Iraq, than I do anywhere else:
Quote:
http://www.juancole.com/
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Extremists Move North
Security Guards arrested by Iraqi militiary
AP reports that <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/11/17/national/w023227S48.DTL">US generals in Iraq are talking about the move to northern Iraq</a> of the most violent Sunni religious guerrillas (the US calls them al-Qaeda and some of them style themselves that way, though it is misleading).
The article says that Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling said from a base outside Tikrit north of Baghdad, that 1,830 roadside bombs were placed in his region in June, compared with 900 last month.
900 roadside bombs in one region of Iraq a month doesn't strike me as something to get all giddy about.
<a href="http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j2v8YwdxUAIBgMg5Lin9bfGT4HZQ">Abdul Aziz al-Hakim</a>, has recovered from cancer and is leaving his treatment, in Iran, to return to Iraq. A leader in a loose sense of the United Iraqi Alliance-- the Shiite fundamentalist coalition that is the largest group in parliament. <a href="http://www.alalam.ir/english/en-NewsPage.asp?newsid=009030120071119160712">Hakim met with the UN special envoy, Steffan de Mistura</a> to Iraq on Monday.
Speaking of the UN, <a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=157291">Mistura said Monday that he would work for better cooperation on Iraq among the country's neighbors</a>. He'll have his work cut out for him, Since Cheney has been trying to set the Arabs against the Iranians, apparently unaware that this move might cause a regional proxy war that would endanger the US.
Al-Hakim's son, Ammar, is <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1120/p01s05-wome.html">profiled by the CSM's Sam Dagher</a>. Money grafs:
' Ammar al-Hakim is presiding over an Iraqi Shiite building boom. His austere Shaheed al-Mihrab Foundation has raised 400 mosques in Iraq since 2003. It's building the largest seminary here in the holy city of Najaf and opening a chain of schools. And it now has 95 offices throughout the country.
What's more, Mr. Hakim's foundation is winning over adherents to his party – the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) – through all-expenses-paid mass marriages along with cash payments and gifts for the newlyweds, free education and stipends at his new schools, and an array of other charitable projects such as caring for orphans and displaced families.
All of this is being done to promote ISCI's core vision: a federation of nine provinces where conservative Shiite Islam would reign.
While opponents say that such a federation among central and southern provinces would only hasten the breakup of Iraq and create a ministate where Iran would hold great sway, Hakim and his party are making great gains.
For them, the plan would bolster security for Shiites and benefit the stability of the country as a whole. And, most significant, they are winning much support ahead of a national referendum on the issue by April 2008, as prescribed by the Constitution.'
In some provinces, such as Diwaniya, ISCI's paramilitary, the Badr Corps, forms the backbone of the police. The <a href="http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gG0LurY1ul2-zrn1hf96h4TYtt6A">Diwaniya police have been fighting a fierce battle</a> against the Mahdi Army (JAM) of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
An official of the Kurdistan Regional Authority in northern Iraq <a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200711191704DOWJONESDJONLINE000570_FORTUNE5.htm">warned that if the Turkish military raids into the region to crack down on the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the move would destablize northern Iraq</a>.
Reuters reports on civil war violence in Iraq. Major incidents:....
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<h2>After reading the latest from Juan Cole (above), I don't see the concept of a US "win" as one that makes any sense, given reported goings on, do any of you?</h2>
Former Sec. of Defense was shown giving "good news" about Iraq that he could not possibly have known, and other members of the Bush admin. spread Rumsfeld's "story":
Quote:
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mh...031201&s=brown
In Search of Rumsfeld's 5,000 Iraqi Small Businesses
by JOHN H. BROWN
[posted online on November 14, 2003]
The lies and half-truths of the Bush Administration are by now old news. And since so much of what the Administration says publicly is fabricated, it's easy to let certain things go in order to get on with our lives.
Still, certain statements continue to shock and infuriate us, because we can't, for the life of us, figure out where Bush & Co. got the information on which their statements are based.
This was my reaction to the declaration by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the September 29 issue of the Wall Street Journal that "5,000 small businesses [in Iraq] have opened since liberation on May 1."
On what data, I wondered, did the Secretary base this statement? And what exactly did he mean by "small businesses"?
For a month I tried to get an answer to these questions from the US government, sadly, I must admit, without success. Below is the story--not without its comic elements--of my minor quest for truth.
....But USAID, despite its numerous economic projects in Iraq, could not assist me....
A Ms. Palmer, whom I contacted there, showed little interest in my questions ....and she immediately directed me to the Department of Defense.
An Amiable Major at the Defense Department
So I e-mailed Maj. Joseph Yoswa, defense press officer, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, seeking answers to how Rumsfeld had arrived at the 5,000 figure and how his department defined "small businesses."
In his prompt reply, the major wrote that "the Secretary received this information from the CPA during his last visit to Baghdad. So you would need to get the details from them."...
After some insistence on my part, the major eventually provided me with the e-mail address of an actual person at the CPA whom I could contact, Ms. Karen Triggs, CPA public affairs.
On October 16, in reply to my query on how her search was proceeding, Ms. Triggs sent me a curt note stating that "Major Joe Yoswa of the Pentagon Public Affairs office is dealing. You should communicate directly with him. Many thanks, Karen."
The CPA Reacts
Meanwhile, I was severely reprimanded by a senior member of US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer's staff for having gotten in touch with Ms. Triggs.
In an e-mail dated October 15, this official, for whom I have great professional admiration and thus will remain nameless, said:
I am surprised and disappointed at you. Why in the world are you even asking (never mind attempting to bully) a junior press officer in Baghdad about remarks by the Secretary of Defense? If you want expansion of Rumsfeld's remarks, ask Rumsfeld's press office!
At this point I cannot deny a certain irritation on my part.
Noting in an e-mail to the above-mentioned official that I had been referred to Ms. Triggs by Major Yoswa, a Defense Department press officer, I sent a copy of the official's e-mail regarding Ms. Triggs's "junior" status to both Major Yoswa and Ms. Triggs.
Keeping everyone in the loop did not pay off: I have not heard from the good major or Ms. Triggs since--nor, of course, from the above-mentioned official.
Trying to Leave No Stone Unturned
In my search for information, I have hardly limited myself to USAID, the Defense Department and the CPA....
....But I was intrigued by a Q and A in a brochure on the site, "Doing Business In Iraq: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)," dated October 22, 2003:
--How can companies obtain background information on Iraqi companies?
<h3> --The U.S. Government is currently unable to provide background information on Iraqi companies. </h3>
I had a brief telephone conversation with an official at the State Department who demanded that I not quote him by name or in any way identify him (how dangerous, I wondered, were my efforts to obtain information?).
He said sotto voce that the department had nothing to do with Rumsfeld's statement and suggested that I turn to the National Security Council for further information.
A Report and a Specialist
Thanks to information provided by a Congressional aide whom I had contacted regarding Rumsfeld's statement, I did download a recent report prepared by the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, "Conditions and Expectations for Private Enterprise in Iraq."
This report, however, did not have the facts that I sought. I sent e-mails to the chamber, but thus far it too has not been able to figure out how Rumsfeld came up with the 5,000 figure.
As a result of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce report I identified a US government organization involved in business development in Iraq.
There I spoke with a privatization specialist who had recently returned from Iraq.
Requesting strict anonymity, he informed me that Rumsfeld's data was "not crazy" because there was in fact a growing private sector in Iraq. He underscored, however, that to the best of his knowledge the kind of statistics cited by the Secretary were simply not available....
....At the mention of Foley, I recalled that while researching Iraqi businesses I had come across his name in an article in the October 20, 2003, Los Angeles Times, in which he appeared to contradict the public optimism expressed by Rumsfeld's figures:
Already, the privatization program, which US officials began mapping out before the invasion, is taking longer than many in Washington hoped. Thomas C. Foley, a big fund-raiser for President Bush who heads Iraq's private-sector development, now predicts that the transition may take three to five years. "It's going to take a long time to convert these assets," Foley said.
My efforts to obtain Mr. Foley's e-mail address from the State Department have been unsuccessful.
Cheney, Bush and Evans
I may not have been happy with Rumsfeld's 5,000 figure, but his colleagues in the Bush Administration evidently were, expanding upon the figure in their rhetorical flourishes.
On October 3, the Vice President noted that "the economy [of Iraq] is picking up. There are thousands of new small businesses. The city of Baghdad, the streets are bustling with economic activity."
It's not without interest to observers of the Administration's use of language that, in Cheney's speech, Rumsfeld's already vague "5,000" had now been substituted for the less concrete and even more dubious figure "thousands."
And on October 11, in his Saturday radio address, George W. Bush--making a statement even more general and therefore even less verifiable than Rumsfeld's or Cheney's--noted that "Iraq has a strong entrepreneurial tradition, and since the liberation of that country, <h3>thousands of new businesses have been launched." Note that the adjective "small" used by Rumsfeld has disappeared.
Later, during his visit to Baghdad in mid-October, Secretary of Commerce Don Evans said the following, as reported by the October 21, 2003, New Republic Online:
As I drive through the streets of Baghdad, I see commerce is coming back--I see--I talk to people--I talk to the Iraqi people... I have talked to a lot of young entrepreneurs who are excited about the opportunity to now be real entrepreneurs and start new companies, thousands of new companies as a matter of fact have started since the end of the war. </h3>
Contacting the Commander in Chief
Like any frustrated taxpayer, I finally decided to write to the White House.
In order to get the full flavor of our exchange, allow me first to cite my letter in full, followed by the President's response.
Dear President Bush:
Could you please provide more details on your statement in your [October 11] radio address:
"Iraq has a strong entrepreneurial tradition, and since the liberation of that country, thousands of new businesses have been launched."
Specifically, I'd like to know:
What is the source for your statement? How many thousands are you referring to? What is the geographical distribution of these new businesses? ......Are these "businesses" the same businesses that Secretary Rumsfeld was referring to in the Sept 29 issue of the Wall Street Journal in which he notes that 5,000 new small businesses have opened in Iraq since "liberation" (May 1)?
Thank you.
Sincerely,
John Brown
And here is the President's response:
October 24, 2003
Dear Dr. Brown:
Thank you for your letter about Operation Iraqi Freedom. In Iraq, we sought to remove a threat to our security and to free the Iraqi people from oppression. .... Iraqis are already meeting openly and freely to discuss the future of their country....
....Our war on terrorism continues. We look to our Nation's Armed Forces, with the support of our coalition partners......
Thank you again for writing. Best wishes.
Sincerely, George W. Bush
I somehow don't think that this letter will ever be found in the George W. Bush Presidential Library. But then one never knows.
Finally, Trust the New York Times
In an October 6, 2003, article on the Iraqi economy, "Baghdad Merchants Find a Boulevard of Dreams," Alex Berenson of the Times writes:
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that 5,000 new businesses have opened in Iraq since May 1.The consensus on the street is that business has improved since American troops ousted Saddam Hussein.
Berenson also noted, however, that "there is no way to know exactly" if what the Secretary said is correct.
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We have a culture in Washington that provides a disincentive for officials to "resign in protest" over administation policy decsions:
Quote:
http://www.slate.com/id/2128629
Now They Tell UsWhy didn't Bush's foreign-policy critics speak out a year ago?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Oct. 24, 2005, at 6:10 PM ET
....Which leads to a larger question: Why do so few U.S. government officials do what Wilkerson might now wish he had done—resign in protest and announce their reasons publicly? Dozens of officials and probably hundreds of military officers will speak privately, to their families and friends, about their fundamental disagreements with this administration's foreign and military policy. But none has spoken publicly.
One who came close was Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who, shortly before the war, testified before a congressional committee that a few hundred thousand troops might be needed to occupy Iraq—only to be upbraided, humiliated, and essentially dismissed from office a year before his term was up.
This problem with renegade truth-tellers isn't an exclusive feature of the George W. Bush administration. Cyrus Vance resigned from his position as Jimmy Carter's secretary of state in protest over the raid to rescue the hostages in Iran. Vance turned out to be right; the raid was a botch. But no one in government ever hired or openly consulted with Vance again.
Colin Powell might have had Vance in mind when he stayed in office, despite repeated defeats and humiliations in his four years as Bush's secretary of state. (Perhaps he calmed his conscience by leaking damaging stories to his old friend Bob Woodward.) And since Powell stayed, it would have been doubly—or quadruply—hard for his chief of staff, Wilkerson, to resign, if he'd ever contemplated that course.
Edward Weisband and Thomas M. Franck wrote a breezily insightful book 30 years ago called <a href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9300(197701)71%3A1%3C160%3ARIP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R">Resignation in Protest: Political and Ethical Choices Between Loyalty to Team and Loyalty to Conscience in American Public Life.</a> They observed that resignations in protest are common in Britain, where Cabinet ministers tended also to hold parliamentary seats; they could therefore leave the government and still retain power and a constituency. In the American system, officials who quit the president in protest are left with nothing. Not even the opposition party wants them because they're seen as loose cannons; if they squealed on their current boss, they might squeal on a future boss too.
Conscience-torn military officers confront another barrier—their oaths of loyalty to their civilian commander in chief. Breaking with the president would not only mark the end of their career, their entire way of life; it would violate a key tenet of that life.
And yet when the U.S. Army Command and Staff College issued a <a href="http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/biblio/deploylist.asp">reading list</a> for officers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the books included—with an asterisk indicating it should be among those read first—was H.R. McMaster's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060929081/103-6997454-3086225?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance">Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam</a>. McMaster, a West Point graduate, concluded—from extensive research of declassified documents—that the Joint Chiefs had told President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that the Vietnam War could not be won without a level of force that no one wanted to commit. Their civilian commanders ignored the Chiefs' advice, lied about the facts—and the Chiefs went along. McMaster's point was that through this collusion the Chiefs abrogated their professional responsibility and so had committed a "dereliction of duty."
How many officers read McMaster's book, as the Command and Staff College (rather astonishingly) recommended? Why haven't any of them taken his thesis to heart?.....
.....There is another critic lurking in the background of The New Yorker article, and if he were ever to step into the light, it would be one of the most sensational protests in history. That third man is the sitting president's father, George H.W. Bush himself.
Bush père answered Goldberg's queries via e-mail. Read carefully what he says about the ostensible subject of the profile, Scowcroft:
<i>He has a great propensity for friendship. By that, I mean someone I can depend on to tell me what I need to know and not just what I want to hear. … [He] was very good about making sure that we did not solely consider the "best case," but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not.</i>
Isn't the patriarch talking, implicitly, about the son? Isn't he saying that W. is in deep trouble because he's surrounded himself with people who tell him only what he wants to hear and paint only rosy pictures of best-case scenarios? Isn't he telling his boy to get some real friends?
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A comparison between France's Sarkozy and George Bush; one of several to document the reputation he has earned for himself as a result of his poor judgment and performance as POTUS:
Quote:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20859
Volume 54, Number 19 · December 6, 2007
Who Is Sarkozy?
By William Pfaff
...The ECB was modeled on the German Bundesbank—the anti-inflationary financial institution par excellence—and has a board largely composed of European national central bank veterans, educated in the era when the Chicago School and the ideas of Milton Friedman dominated Western monetary theory. The bank currently is preoccupied by the inflationary pressures of rising energy costs.
The United States in the George W. Bush era has given lip service to Friedman's doctrine while committing itself to trillion-dollar wars and unlimited foreign debt. The dollar consequently has fallen, which has been hard for euro-economy producers exporting into dollar economies......
....2.
Sarkozy the man is hard to assess since he is a person who has not cast a shadow....
...He is a French politician, ...who does things that work and advance him and his career. He is a practical man. His interest is in power itself, not—so far as one can tell—because he has some personal vision about what to do with it.
Sarkozy is much too intelligent to be compared with George W. Bush, <h3>but he makes one think of Bush's joy at becoming "a decider." Bush is happy deciding, even though he knows nothing.</h3> Sarkozy knows far more, but still gives an impression of someone for whom the most important thing is to be the decider. His vulnerability is that he leaves little room for anyone else to decide....
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<h2>Remember Juan Cole, at the beginning of this post? Here's Michael Rubin, attacking Peter Galbraith's book, just as he attacked Juan cole:</h2>
Quote:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2N216U...R2N216UD5JKN6C
The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, July 17, 2006
By <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Quarterly">Michael Rubin "Middle East Quarterly"</a>
Embracing the Three-State Solution in Iraq
....Mr. Galbraith's narrative degenerates into sloppy polemic rather than thoughtful critique as he turns to President Bush. While he lambastes previous administrations - President Clinton's excepted - for doing nothing to constrain Saddam, he takes Mr. Bush to task for liberating the country. He repeats conspiracy theories regarding the role of the Office of Special Plans, a cabal of neoconservatives, and the handling of pre-war intelligence peddled on Web sites such as that of a University of Michigan professor, Juan Cole - whose analysis he credits - but which have no basis in reality; indeed, some originate with Lyndon LaRouche......
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article...7496?badlink=1
<h3>Cole is poor choice for Mideast position</h3>
<h3>Michael Rubin</h3>
Published Tuesday, April 18, 2006
In the coming week, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies will consider the candidacy of Juan Cole for a tenured position to study and teach the modern Middle East. The vacancy is palpable, but Cole should not be the man to fill it.
.....Universities thrive on scholarly discourse. Professors should be open to new ideas omg-- not only those that challenge policymakers, but also those that test entrenched campus opinion. Unfortunately, Cole has displayed a cavalier attitude toward those who disagree with him. In a February interview with Detroit's Metro Times, he argued that the U.S. government should shut down Fox News. "In the 1960s, the FCC would have closed it down," he argued. "It's an index of how corrupt our governmental institutions have become that the FCC lets this go on." Many Yalies may not like Fox, but top-down censorship is no solution. Cole's outburst was the rule, not an exception. On Sept. 4, 2004, he wrote that "The FBI should investigate how [Walid] Phares, an undistinguished academic with links to far right-wing Lebanese groups and the Likud clique, became the 'terrorism analyst' at MSNBC." While Cole has labeled his own critics "McCarthyites," they have not called for his censorship or arrest....
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Far from being a "nation of 27 million", Iraq is already divided, no longer reflecting it's former, artificial, 1920 British imposed borders:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/op...galbraith.html
July 25, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Our Corner of Iraq
By PETER W. GALBRAITH
WHAT is the mission of the United States military in Iraq now that the insurgency has escalated into a full-blown civil war? According to the Bush administration, it is to support a national unity government that includes all Iraq’s major communities: the Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. O.K., but this raises another question: What does the Iraqi government govern?
In the southern half of Iraq, Shiite religious parties and clerics have created theocracies policed by militias that number well over 100,000 men. In Basra, three religious parties control — and sometimes fight over — the thousands of barrels of oil diverted each day from legal exports into smuggling. To the extent that the central government has authority in the south, it is because some of the same Shiite parties that dominate the government also control the south.
Kurdistan in the north is effectively independent. The Iraqi Army is barred from the region, the Iraqi flag prohibited, and central government ministries are not present. The Kurdish people voted nearly unanimously for independence in an informal referendum in January 2005.
And in the Sunni center of the nation and Baghdad, the government has virtually no control beyond the American-protected Green Zone. The Mahdi Army, a radical Shiite militia, controls the capital’s Shiite neighborhoods, while Qaeda offshoots and former Baathists are increasingly taking over the Sunni districts.
While the Bush administration professes a commitment to Iraq’s unity, it has no intention of undertaking the major effort required to put the country together again. During the formal occupation of Iraq in 2003 and 2004, the American-led coalition allowed Shiite militias to mushroom and clerics to impose Islamic rule in the south, in some places with a severity reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban.
To disarm militias and dismantle undemocratic local governments now would bring the United States into direct conflict with Iraq’s Shiites, who are nearly three times as numerous as the Sunni Arabs and possess vastly more powerful militias and military forces.
There are no significant coalition troops in Kurdistan, which is secure and increasingly prosperous. Arab Iraqis have largely accepted Kurdistan’s de facto separation from Iraq, and so has the Bush administration.
In the Sunni center, our current strategy involves handing off combat duties to the Iraqi Army. Mostly, it is Shiite battalions that fight in the Sunni Arab areas, as the Sunni units are not reliable. Thus what the Bush administration portrays as “Iraqi” security forces is seen by the local Sunni population as a hostile force loyal to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, installed by the American invaders and closely aligned with the traditional enemy, Iran. The more we “Iraqize” the fight in the Sunni heartland, the more we strengthen the insurgents.
Because it is Iraq’s most mixed city, Baghdad is the front line of Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite civil war. It is a tragedy for its people, most of whom do not share the sectarian hatred behind the killing. Iraqi forces cannot end the civil war because many of them are partisans of one side, and none are trusted by both communities.
For the United States to contain the civil war, we would have to deploy more troops and accept a casualty rate many times the current level as our forces changed their mission from a support role to intensive police duties. The American people would not support such an expanded mission, and the Bush administration has no desire to undertake it.
The administration, then, must match its goals in Iraq to the resources it is prepared to deploy. Since it cannot unify Iraq or stop the civil war, it should work with the regions that have emerged. Where no purpose is served by a continuing military presence — in the Shiite south and in Baghdad — America and its allies should withdraw.
As an alternative to using Shiite and American troops to fight the insurgency in Iraq’s Sunni center, the administration should encourage the formation of several provinces into a Sunni Arab region with its own army, as allowed by Iraq’s Constitution. Then the Pentagon should pull its troops from this Sunni territory and allow the new leaders to establish their authority without being seen as collaborators.
Seeing as we cannot maintain the peace in Iraq, we have but one overriding interest there today — to keep Al Qaeda from creating a base from which it can plot attacks on the United States. Thus we need to have troops nearby prepared to re-engage in case the Sunni Arabs prove unable to provide for their own security against the foreign jihadists.
This would be best accomplished by placing a small “over the horizon” force in Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is among the most pro-American societies in the world and its government would welcome our military presence, not the least because it would help protect Kurds from Arab Iraqis who resent their close cooperation with the United States during the 2003 war. American soldiers on the ground might also ease the escalating tension between the Iraqi Kurds and Turkey, which is threatening to send its troops across the border in search of Turkish Kurd terrorists using Iraq as a haven.
From Kurdistan, the American military could readily move back into any Sunni Arab area where Al Qaeda or its allies established a presence. The Kurdish peshmerga, Iraq’s only reliable indigenous military force, would gladly assist their American allies with intelligence and in combat. And by shifting troops to what is still nominally Iraqi territory, the Bush administration would be able to claim it had not “cut and run” and would also avoid the political complications — in United States and in Iraq — that would arise if it were to withdraw totally and then have to send American troops back into Iraq.
Yes, a United States withdrawal from the Shiite and Sunni Arab regions of Iraq would leave behind sectarian conflict and militia rule. But staying with the current force and mission will produce the same result. Continuing a military strategy where the ends far exceed the means is a formula for war without end.
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Reviews of Galbraith's book:
Support for the opinion that Bush is not up to anything in Iraq beyond failure:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080600801.html
Tuesday, August 8, 2006; 3:00 PM
"Despite its troubling prescription, Galbraith's book is important because, as much as any American, he has lived the Iraq tragedy up close and personal. From the beginning, he focused his attention on the plight of the Kurds, becoming a kind of adviser and emissary of the Kurdish leader (and now Iraqi president) Jalal Talabani." <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/04/AR2006080400511.html">( Review: "The Center Cannot Hold"</a> , Post, Aug. 6).
Diplomatic scholar Peter Galbraith fields comments and questions about his latest book, "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End."
...Anonymous: Is Peter Galbraith John Kenneth Galbraith's son?
Peter Galbraith: Yes.
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Phoenix, Ariz: Isn't a de facto break up of Iraq already under way, as evidenced by the quasi-independence of the Kurds and the ethnic cleansing and house-swapping in Sunni and Shia areas of Baghdad?
Although Senator Biden's proposals may be more reality-based than most, he was treated by the media as almost certifiably mad, not to mention, treasonous, when he advanced this position. In your opinion, what will it take for Biden's proposals to gain traction with the American public (short of a full-blown civil war that is so dire that even the deniers can no longer deny the severity of this situation)?
Peter Galbraith: You are absolutely right that Iraq has already broken up. Further, the Bush Administration de facto accepts this break up while saying it is committed to a unified Iraq. It has done nothing to dismantle the Shiite militias that mushroomed during the period of official US occupation (2003-2004). It has accepted that Kurdistan retains its own army and wisely has made no serious effort to reintegrate Kurdistan into Iraq. As noted, the Administration deals with Iraq's Sunni-Shiite civil war by pretending it isn't happening.
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Washington, DC: Now that US has physically destroyed and obliterated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, we recommed the break up of the country? Did US break up into factions (except political) after the Civil War?
Peter Galbraith: I am not recommending the break up of Iraq. I am simply saying that it has happened.
But I see no reason to hold countries together against the will of their people. We lived with the break up of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Just like Iraq, these were multinational states put together after WWI and held together by force. The real issue is not the break up but avoiding the violence that can accompany it.
Alas, we have not learned the lesson of Yugoslavia where we put all efforts into preventing a break up--a futile task-- when we should focus on stopping the war.....
....Princeton, NJ: But there are no clear boundaries. What of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Baghdad? Will the Sunni get any oil? Will the Turks allow an independant Kurdish state? Partition is a recipe for war.
Peter Galbraith: The Iraqi constitution does have a formula for resolving the status of the territories in dispute between the Kurds and the Arabs by the device of a referendum to be held not later than Dec 31, 2007. Kirkuk will probably vote to join Kurdistan while Mosul is not part of Kurdistan--although it has a substantial Kurdish minority. Baghdad, tragically, is dividing between the Shiite east and Sunni west.
Delmar, NY: I'm looking forward to reading your book. In reading about "The End of Iraq" it is said that shortly before the US invasion of Iraq President Bush was unaware of the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. This is the second time I have heard this. While I was skeptical the first time it at least seemed credible based on what we seem to know about the President's ignorance due to his lack of curiosity. What is the source for this? Did Cheney and Rumsfeld know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis?
Peter Galbraith: The anecdote is told--and sourced-- in the book. <h3>It wasn't that Bush didn't know of the differences but that they he didn't know that these two branches of Islam existed.</h3>
Rumsfeld and Cheney certainly did know, but operated on wishful thinking about the leanings of Iraq's Shiite paties.
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Support for the opinion that Bush and Rice are not up to anything in Iraq beyond failure:
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE ADVISOR; Bush's Foreign Policy Tutor: An Academic in the Public Eye
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: June 16, 2000
.....Ms. Rice herself admits that there are vast swaths of the world that are new to her. ''I've been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope,'' she said. ''I'm really a Europeanist.''.....
........Ms. Rice is a fit for Mr. Bush. ''There's a real chemistry between them,'' said Dov S. Zakheim, one of the Vulcans.
''I like to be around her,'' Mr. Bush said. ''She's fun to be with. I like lighthearted people, not people who take themselves so seriously that they are hard to be around.'' Besides, he said, ''She's really smart!''
Mr. Bush feels comfortable asking her the most basic questions. He has identified Ms. Rice as the person who ''can explain to me foreign policy matters in a way I can understand.'' Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush's communications director, said that when she recently showed him a news article about the strife in Sierra Leone, Mr. Bush told her to ''call Condi and see what she thinks.''
Ms. Rice's role is all the more critical because Mr. Bush doesn't like to read briefing books on the nuts-and-bolts of national security, and his lack of experience in foreign affairs has raised questions about his preparedness for the White House.
When a writer for Glamour Magazine recently uttered the word ''Taliban'' -- the regime in Afghanistan that follows an extreme and repressive version of Islamic law -- during a verbal Rorschach test, Mr. Bush could only shake his head in silence. <h3>It was only after the writer gave him a hint (''repression of women in Afghanistan'') that Mr. Bush replied, ''Oh. I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan! Absolutely. Repressive.''</h3>
Of course, Afghanistan is also not Ms. Rice's primary area of expertise. Asked in an interview to support her assertion in her recent article in Foreign Affairs that Iran is trying to spread ''fundamentalist Islam'' beyond its borders, she replied, ''Iran has been the state hub for technology and money and lots of other goodies to radical fundamentalist groups, some will say as far-reaching as the Taliban.''
When reminded that Iran was a bitter enemy of the Taliban and that the two countries had almost gone to war in late 1998, she replied, ''They were sending stuff to the region that fell into the hands of bad players in Afghanistan and Pakistan.'' She did not identify ''the bad players.'' (In a subsequent conversation, she said that of course she knew that Iran and the Taliban were enemies).
On Iraq, she believes that President Saddam Hussein is an evil man, but declined to say what a George W. Bush administration would do to get rid of him.
Despite her deliberate vagueness in areas with which she is unfamiliar, she has a reputation for being a quick study.....
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Support for the opinion that the Bush admin. is not up to anything in Iraq beyond failure:
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...gewanted=print
November 25, 2001
The World According To Powell
By BILL KELLER
...When I interviewed Powell in a more innocent time, four days before the hijack kamikazes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I asked him to describe his vision of the world. (Powell has compiled a list of maxims he likes. No. 11 is ''Have a vision.'') The answer he gave was an articulate and utterly uncontroversial discourse on an America that would lead by the power of its example -- a riff that paid effusive homage to Ronald Reagan's ''shining city on a hill.'' Except for a somewhat heavier foot on the pedal of free markets than you might have heard from a Democratic administration, it was uplifting, nonpartisan boilerplate and <h3>seemed to confirm what just about everyone who has worked with Powell says about him, that he is a problem solver, not a visionary......
...On Sept. 11, Powell was sitting down to breakfast in Lima with Alejandro Toledo, the president of Peru, when an aide handed him a note saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. ''Oh, my God,'' he said to his host. ''Something terrible has happened.'' It would be 10 hours before he could get through to President Bush, who was being ferried around the country by a nervous Secret Service.....
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Support for the opinion that the US civilian and military leadership is still not informed enough about Iraq to do the only realistic thing, withdraw most or all US troops from within Iraq's borders:
Quote:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004766.php
January 23, 2005
Fitzgerald: <h3>The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD</h3>
Lt. Gen. John H. Vines, who is set to take command of American ground forces in Iraq, has assigned a <h3>series of books on Islam</h3> to his staff members. Here are comments on Vines' choices from Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald:
The Reading List of General Vines deserves further detailed study. There are two books by Esposito. There is one by Karen Armstrong, whom, one would have thought, is by now regarded as a complete buffoon. There is something about Islam for Dummies. There is a book by the jejune Sandra Mackey on Iraq, when either the Letters of Gertrude Bell (those from Baghdad up to 1927, when she killed herself), or Philip Ireland's book published in 1939 would have helped -- and best of all would have been the essay on Iraq by the native of Baghdad, Elie Kedourie, published in Islam in the Modern World.
Nothing by Lewis. Nothing by Kedourie. Nothing by J. B. Kelly, not even that essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" which, while it dates in the section on the Soviet threat, does not date as a description of the misperception of Saudi Arabia. The spirit of ARAMCO propagandists still lives.
What is good about the Reading List is that it is so bad, so truly bad, that eyebrows should be raised all over Washington. Who compiled this list? Who carefully allowed in, as the single sop, the Naipaul, but left out the Lewis, the Kedourie, the Kelly? Who left out any serious essays on the nature of Islam, on Jihad? How are the Infidel soldiers supposed to comprehend the hostility that is felt towards them, even though they are only there to "rebuild" Iraq? For if they cannot understand that hostility -- which is in every textbook, every mosque, every madrassa, every Arab satellite channel, every Qur'an and volume of the Hadith and every life of Muhammad, they will be eternally confused. And confusion and incomprehension, or miscomprehension, leads to demoralization.
Here is an example of a little colloquy reported by NPR Correspondent Deborah Amos this morning. She was reporting from Basra. She interviewed a man, asking him as follows:
Amos: "Do you want foreign troops to leave?"
Iraqi: "Would you want your country to be occupied?" (Iraqis, she said, and soldiers know, tend to reply to questions cannily, warily, with questions of their own, and almost never give a straight answer to anything).
When Amos then presses him if he wants the Americans to leave, he answers:
"Yes, I do. But not before they fix everything, and stop terrorism."
How nice. I hate you, and I want you to leave. But first you have to "stop terrorism" and, oh by the way, "fix everything."
That kind of attitude will not be understood by reading Karen Armstrong, who describes Muhammad as the man who "brought peace" to the Arabian Peninsula. It will not be understood by reading John Esposito, author of The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (we know which he chose), a man who in previous editions of his books does not give more than a single mention of the word "Jihad" and has never treated of the dhimmi.
How can American officers figure out why the Christians are being terrorized, if they know nothing about the 1350 year history of Jihad-conquest and of the imposition of dhimmitude? How?
How can American officers understand what is going on if the inculcated hostility toward them is not understood?
The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD. It was about Islam, its tenets, its nature, the attitudes and atmospherics it engenders. It was an intelligence failure that continues as long as we prate about how everyone wants freedom (nonsense), that "democracy" will lessen the threat in the Middle East (double-nonsense), that the best way to limit a threat based entirely on the classic ideology of Islam is to say nothing, to learn nothing, to hint at nothing, about Islam itself.
Supposedly, the "faculty at Yale" and people at the "Foreign Service Institute" were responsible for this list. Let's find out something more about precisely who was involved in the selection of the final group of eight books. What are their names? What are their own interests? ...
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[/quote]
So...with the record of the Bush administration, and the reputations forged by the president and those he appoints to key positions, is it possible to know enough to be confident that <h3> "It can be saved and won"</h3>, or that <i>"We've got a nation of 27 million people under our direct and indirect control"</i>?
....I see the believers and their leaders engaged more in keeping us from knowing, then in sincerely communicating true US military prospects for "success".
...And what would Iraq, "saved", and the Iraq war, "won", even look like? How would we know if they happened? |