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Old 11-20-2007, 11:58 PM   #1 (permalink)
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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.
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>....
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.....
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:....
<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.
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?
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....
<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....
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.
Reviews of Galbraith's book:
Amazon.com: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End: Peter W. Galbraith: Books Amazon.com: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End: Peter W. Galbraith: Books

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.

_______________________

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.

_______________________

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.
[/quote]

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.....
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.....
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? ...
[/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?
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Old 11-21-2007, 02:25 AM   #2 (permalink)
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May I ask how posting articles dated years ago, some as early as 2000, is relative to what is happening in Iraq today. Is it merely to rehash old talking points and bygone history? Is the war in Iraq winnable in a winning sense? No I think not because we aren't there to conquer the land only there to provide security until they get on their feet. There is some evidence of this happening

New York Times 11/20/07

Will we ever win? No, but I believe soon the Iraqi's will be able to handle their own security and we will be able to pull most of our troops from the area. So in some sense we win because we accomplished what we set out to do.

One of your links even has the date Dec. 6 2007. What's up with that?

Last edited by scout; 11-21-2007 at 02:30 AM..
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Old 11-21-2007, 03:33 AM   #3 (permalink)
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This is as close to a flame or a troll that I have ever seen without actually being either of those things.

Host. We get it. You don't like Ustwo (and other's support of the war in Iraq).

Here's the thing.

Making a post like this is not going to win you support from those who don't share your point of view. All it does it more firmly entrench them their position. There is nothing like calling someone, "liars, incompetents, unqualified, incurious, clueless" to really get them to NOT listen to you.

I really think that you need to reasses your approach and attempt to engage people in disussion because your current method does little to change minds and everything to get their backs up.




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Old 11-21-2007, 08:13 AM   #4 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlatan
This is as close to a flame or a troll that I have ever seen without actually being either of those things.

Host. We get it. You don't like Ustwo (and other's support of the war in Iraq).

Here's the thing.

Making a post like this is not going to win you support from those who don't share your point of view. All it does it more firmly entrench them their position. There is nothing like calling someone, "liars, incompetents, unqualified, incurious, clueless" to really get them to NOT listen to you.

I really think that you need to reasses your approach and attempt to engage people in disussion because your current method does little to change minds and everything to get their backs up.




[/COLOR]
No,you don't "get it". Tomorrow, at American holiday dinner tables, there will be at least <a href="http://icasualties.org/oif/">3874</a> permanently empty chairs, and a much larger number (a 30 or 40 times greater number) of chairs occupied by young Americans who are no longer "whole"....all because of a "war of choice", a pre-emptive war that has also killed huge numbers of Iraqis who would be alive today if an ignorant, incompetent, incurious American president had been told what he needed to hear, instead of what he wanted to hear.

I would have written the OP, and done this thread, no matter who had posted
"It can be saved and won"
, and that "We've got a nation of 27 million people under our direct and indirect control"?

I avoided posting a quote displaying anyone's screen name directly, to make it clear that I am reacting to the opinions, not to the messenger. <h3>I would have started a new thread, with the same OP no matter who had posted those opinions.</h3> I don't believe that a reliably informed individual could post them. I've documented why, in thorough detail.

I started a new thread because the response I thought that "It can be saved and won", merited, was too OT for the thread topic where it was posted.

Consider that you had posted this, on that <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2348490#post2348490">other thread (Post #36)</a>:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlatan
You see this is where you fall off for me. You are correct in the resulting failure of Iraq will not be the fault of just one person. However, that fault lies in the absence of a sound plan for solving the issue of Iraq in the first place.

The invasion should never have occurred in the manner in which it did. The Bush administration entered Iraq without a Gulf War 1 coalition. <h3>There was arguably a good reason to take out Saddam and doing this was going to be easy.</h3> It was what comes after Saddam that they need support to pull off.

Regardless of the reasons for going in (anything from oil to building a stable democracy in the middle east) Iraq has been one giant fuck up of monumental proportion whether or not the so-called left decides to pull out or not.
"Good reason"? Can there be "good reason", without legal justification? The invasion was illegal, it's not me saying that, I only concur and pass it along:
Quote:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/
.....Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003.
Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."


Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council.".....
Charlatan, I've done my "homework", and I've shared all of the results of my research. I beg you to read it:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...pt#post2191248

THERE WAS NO THREAT TO THE US FROM SADDAM'S IRAQ THAT JUSTIFIED THE INVASION. THE LIES TOLD BY THE US OFFICIALS, DETAILED AT THE PAGES ACCESSED IN THESE LINKS, CLEARLY SUPPORT WHAT I'M SAYING:


http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=28

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...rs#post2239744

This disaster will not end until "It can be saved and won" sentiments are confronted vigorously, and exposed as uninformed, every single time they are publicly expressed....

I heard the same BS for seven full years, about Vietnam, after Walter Cronkite's Feb. 27, 1968,post Tet offensive appraisal of the US war in Vietnam. It was wrong then, and we are immersed in an Iraqi civil war today because the lessons of Vietnam were unlearned by the people who led us into Iraq in present times.

Last edited by host; 11-21-2007 at 08:35 AM..
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Old 11-21-2007, 08:31 AM   #5 (permalink)
I Confess a Shiver
 
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Well, seeing as how I was in Iraq in 2003 when we started the war and witnessed the internal destruction... I don't think we (the US) can save it.

I think perhaps it'll save itself. Over a very long period of time.

Right or wrong (mostly wrong) we gave them a chance to start over.
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Old 11-21-2007, 11:07 AM   #6 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
"Good reason"? Can there be "good reason", without legal justification?
Not a fan of Rosa Parks, eh?

Laws do not encompass all that is right and rational. Sometimes - often? - they are in direct opposition to the correct course of action.

Saddam was bad for Iraq. He was a murderous tyrant.

That's not enough to cap the discussion, of course. We can still argue the extent to which the U.S. should get involved in the domestic problems of other countries. We can still argue whether Saddam actually posed any threat to the U.S. (and you're obviously ready for that argument). We can still argue about the questionable tactics - lies? - used to promote the war. And most importantly in my view, we can definitely argue about the cure and whether or not it became worse than the problem.

But that good reason remains, and I'm not seeing how your mountains of article citations can erase it.

(Fwiw, I'll be an interested spectator on this discussion of the war's winnability, as I'm probably not currently 'reliably informed'.)
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Old 11-21-2007, 02:21 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Last edited by ottopilot; 12-26-2007 at 08:33 PM..
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Old 11-21-2007, 03:55 PM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Not a fan of Rosa Parks, eh?

Laws do not encompass all that is right and rational. Sometimes - often? - they are in direct opposition to the correct course of action....
At Nuremberg, US prosecutors defined pre-emptive war as a crime againt humanity, the

Rosa Parks had no role in originating the Alabama racial segregation law she was arrested for breaking:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/

The US government, on the other hand, was directly responsible for defining aggressive war as a crime against humanity, and prosecuted others for that crime, and then executed them after finding them guilty.

Robert L. Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, speaking August 25, 1945:
Quote:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm

...We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy....
It is clear to me that US leaders ordered and wage illegal, aggressive war against Iraq:
Quote:
http://www.benferencz.org/arts/75.html
State University of New York at Stony Brook Radio (WUSB)

Mort Mecklosky Interviews Benjamin B. Ferencz.

December 22, 2003

...M: OK. Nazi war crimes, okay. And we’re talking international law. I understand that it’s a violation of international law to go to war without approval of the UN Security Council when not under armed attack. Is that true?

F: Well, there are differences of opinion. In my opinion, any violation of the United Nations charter is a violation of international law. Since the charter supercedes all national laws and has been accepted and ratified by all of the member states. The charter says specifically that you are prohibited from the use of armed force except under very restricted circumstances. And those are if you are subjected to a direct attack by someone else and until the Security Council can respond to restore order, you can defend yourself. Those were not the conditions which existed in the case of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. Now, there are some international lawyers who take a different view and they say the charter was written before the nuclear age and you can’t expect any nation to wait to be destroyed before it responds to a nuclear attack. And therefore they invented the excuse that Saddam is creating weapons of mass destruction and has them and is ready to go and we have to, therefore, intercede even though it does not comply with the UN charter. So we do have this division of opinion and since we don’t have any enforcement mechanism on an international scale despite the charter requirement that we set up an international military force we’re stuck with the kind of situation we have today.

M: Now, if Saddam Hussein or any nation has the nuclear weapons and we consider them a threat are these people saying we can go and invade them and go to war against them? Is that their position?

F: Well, that seems to be the administration’s position, that preemptive strikes are permissible. It’s preemptive self-defense. My difficulty with that is that laws have to apply equally to everyone and if we assume that we have that right you must assume that other nations have the same right. And that would certainly pose an immediate threat from such countries as North Korea, which we know has such weapons, and India and Pakistan and Israel and France and England and all the other nations that may have nuclear weapons now or in the near future so this doctrine of preemptive self-defense, to me, is a prescription for self-annihilation in the long run.

M: According to that we can then, in their minds, go to war against North Korea or any of the other nations that have nuclear weapons if someone here feels that they are a threat.

F: That would be the logic of the president’s recently declared policy for the United States.

M: How many lawyers, international lawyers of international law agree with that, or are most of them critical of the US and its invasion?

F: I think most of them are critical, there are a few who d agree with that for example State Department lawyers and Pentagon lawyers but most – not only those, there are some academic lawyers who take the same point of view and it’s a conservative point of view – of those who believe that armed force is more important than the force of law.

M: Alright, so in your view, the US is guilty of violating international law.

F: In my opinion, yes, if we did have a legal test of that I would reach that conclusion.....


http://www.legalhistory.com/LargeFra...&N=Ferencz0506
Benjamin Ferencz (May 2006)

Benjamin Ferencz studied jurisprudence under Roscoe Pound at Harvard, and after World War II served as Chief Prosecutor in The Einsatzgruppen Case, a war crimes proceeding held at Nuremberg subsequent to the work of the International Military Tribunal (IMT). In this case, the first to recognize crimes against humanity, Mr. Ferencz stated: "Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution. We ask this court to affirm by international penal action, man's right to live in peace and dignity, regardless of his race or creed.....

...The Legal History Project interviewed Mr. Ferencz in May 2006.

How did you come to be involved in the Nuremberg trials?

As a student, my career path was focused on crime prevention. At Harvard Law School I won a scholarship for my exam in criminal law and did research for Professor Sheldon Glueck, America's leading criminologist, who was writing a book on war crimes. Upon graduation, I entered the U.S. Army as a private assigned to an artillery battalion being trained for the invasion of France. When U.S. troops reached Germany, I was assigned to the HQ of General Patton, who had been directed to set up a war crimes program in fulfillment of promises by world leaders that Nazi criminals would be held to account. I investigated murders of allied flyers who had been shot down and beaten to death by German mobs. I entered various concentration camps as they were liberated by the U.S. army and secured evidence of criminality. I witnessed scenes of incredible inhumanity and prepared reports for trials by U.S. Military Commissions that took place in the Dachau concentration camps. On the day after Christmas 1945, I was honorably discharged as a Sergeant of Infantry and awarded five battle stars for not having been killed or wounded.

Shortly thereafter, I was urged by the Pentagon to return to Germany with the simulated rank of Colonel, to do essentially what I had done as a Sergeant. I finally agreed to go as a civilian with that simulated rank. The Nuremberg trial by the IMT was then in progress, The decision had been made that there would be another dozen trials at Nuremberg to bring to justice the broad panorama of German society that had supported the Hitler regime that had made the crimes possible. Telford Taylor, one of Justice Jackson's key assistants at the IMT trial, was appointed to head the "Subsequent Proceedings" under U.S. auspices. Taylor persuaded me to join him and assigned me to set up an office in Berlin to find the evidence needed for the planned additional trials.

As Chief Prosecutor in The Einsatzgruppen Case, which involved German officers of death-squads that murdered over a million people during World War II, you obtained convictions for all 22 defendants, plus 13 death sentences. Can you describe your work in preparing and conducting this case?

A Berlin researcher discovered a complete set of top-secret reports by Nazi extermination squads called "Einsatzgruppen" (EG) operating on the Eastern front. They described how more than a million Jews, Gypsies and other perceived enemies of the Reich, including women and children, were systematically exterminated by the EG units. Taylor was convinced that a new trial, that had not been scheduled, was required and named me as the Chief Prosecutor in what was surely the biggest murder trial in human history.

I decided to rely on the official German reports which showed the place and time of the executions, the number of victims, and the SS commander in charge. I did not desire any witness testimony because there were few survivors and because documents were much more reliable. I had 3 assistants and each one was assigned to prepare the case against different defendants. I rested the prosecution's case after 2 days. Each of the 22 defendants was entitled to choose his own German defense counsel plus one assistant. Their denials and alibis took several months and an equal time to be rebutted.

Could you describe the Einsatzgruppen defendants, and what it was like to see them regularly in court? One often reads about the "banality of evil," but how did these men strike you as human beings? Were they all unblinking fanatics, or do you think some had qualms or regrets about their activities?

I never spoke to any defendant outside of the courtroom. I wanted to know them and judge them only on their own records of their deeds. They showed no remorse whatsoever. They were convinced that their deeds were justified. The lead defendant, SS General Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, whose unit killed about 90,000 innocent people, sought to justify the slaughter as self-defense. <H3>He argued that Germany knew that the Soviet Union (despite the non-aggression pact) was preparing to attack Germany. A pre-emptive strike was therefore necessary. It was "known" that Jews supported the Bolsheviks and that Gypsies were untrustworthy, hence they had to be eliminated. Since the children of victims might grow up to be enemies of the Reich they too had to be killed. It was all very logical, in the eyes of the murderers. Not in mine, nor in the eyes of General Telford Taylor or the U.S. judges.</H3> All of the defendants were convicted, and 13 were sentenced to death.....

....In closing, what projects are you working on at the moment?

Although I am in my 87th year, I am still determined to do my best, for as long as I can. I receive about 100 e-mails per day. I lecture, write, appear on TV and radio, and teach wherever I can. My main focus now is on only two "projects." I am trying to tell the American public the truth about the ICC. The current administration, following the insistence of former Senator Jesse Helms and his protegés who are still in office, are trying to undermine the ICC or kill the baby in its cradle....

....My final goal is to keep alive the main achievement at Nuremberg by Justice Robert Jackson and unanimously affirmed by the General Assembly of the U.N.,<H3> that aggressive war is not a national right but an international crime.</H3> The ICC lists it as a crime but the court cannot exercise its jurisdiction until very onerous conditions are met. There will never be a war without atrocities since war is the biggest atrocity of all,<H3> and illegal war-making is the greatest crime of all....</H3>

http://www.benferencz.org/arts/83.html
The Legality of the Iraq War

........On the eve of war, the British Attorney General's abbreviated statement of March 17 was accepted as legal approval of the official US/UK line. Not everyone in the British government could agree that the war that was about to begin was legal.

Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."

Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943)

Last edited by host; 11-21-2007 at 03:57 PM..
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Old 11-21-2007, 04:42 PM   #9 (permalink)
Pissing in the cornflakes
 
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One of these days someone is going to tell me about a legal war.

Winning = the war is legal.

Losing = illegal.

Its pretty straight forward.
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Old 11-21-2007, 04:42 PM   #10 (permalink)
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Host, it is clear to you, "that US leaders ordered and wage illegal, aggressive war against Iraq." This is your opinion based on the reading you have done.

The thing is, there are many opinions about why and what should have been done about Iraq. They are just that, opinions. You have the support of Benjamin B. Ferencz, who comes with a pretty convincing argument that supports your opinion. However, another person can read Mr. Ferencz's take on things and dismiss it. Mr. Ferencz is offering an opinion, a weighty opinion to be sure, but just an opinion.

I look at the mess that is Iraq. I look back and think, there are many positives to having Saddam out of power. I think there are very few who would argue that he was a force for "good" in the world. I look back and think, what would be the best reason for going into Iraq (regardless of all the wrong reasons)? I conclude that in the best case scenario, Saddam is removed from power, a new democracy rises and serves as a beacon of hope and stability in a part of the world largely ruled by despotic regimes. This is but one opinion among many for why an invasion might have been a good thing (others, just as valid as opinions include: revenge, seize the oil, clean up the mess the US made in giving support to a despotic Saddam, etc.).

Anyone looking at what has happened since the actual invasion occurred can see that, regardless of the reasons for the original action, it has been mismanaged, has resulted in needless loss of life, brought about sectarian division and violence, etc. I believe the term cluster fuck was used above and I tend to agree.

I don't believe there was a solid plan beyond, "let's take out Saddam". They managed to do that in weeks.

The point I am trying to make is that there are many opinions. Some come with heaps of research and some just come from person feelings. I don't feel that any one opinion is less valid (regardless of my own opinion in the matter).

What you offer here is not a discussion. What you offer is a speech. You do not wish to change other's opinions, rather you wish to justify your own.

EDIT:
I ask you, are you interested in changing people's minds... changing their opinions? If the answer is yes, you are failing to communicate and are suffering from the same lack of diplomacy that plagued Bush and his team leading up to the invasion.

I sense and see your frustration with many on this board. If you don't feel that people are hearing you, the answer isn't to shout louder. Perhaps you should try a different approach.
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Last edited by Charlatan; 11-21-2007 at 09:44 PM..
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Old 11-23-2007, 10:02 AM   #11 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by host
Rosa Parks had no role in originating the Alabama racial segregation law she was arrested for breaking:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/

The US government, on the other hand, was directly responsible for defining aggressive war as a crime against humanity, and prosecuted others for that crime, and then executed them after finding them guilty.
If, in some bizarre parallel universe, Rosa Parks had had a hand in the segregation law, it'd still be wrong and she'd still be right to defy it. Her best course of action when approached on that bus would be to... wait for it... flip-flop.

Likewise, if Iraq counts as the aggressive war that the United States helped criminalize, then it doesn't immediately follow that our mistake was to defy the law. Our mistake might've been in the wording of the law. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and our second invasion of Iraq might both fall under the category of 'aggressive war' - depending on definition - and they might even both be immoral, but let's not pretend that they're identical and that you must accept both or reject both in order to avoid the nauseating stench of hypocrisy.

Besides, hypocrisy in the right direction is a good thing.

Laws can be worth breaking. Even when the lawbreaker was once the legislator.
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