I think traditional conservatives all along have known that the prospects for Madisonian constitutional democracy taking root in the world of Islam were slim. I think President Bush knows this too, but that he also knows that it is necessary to cover with idealism our anti-terrorism project, which is to shake up the Arab world and the middle east. A long term troop presence in the region creates a lively threat to regimes who would otherwise harbor terrorists and dabble in deniable terrorism as a way of enhancing their clout, and even their domestic popularity. Yes, we will sustain casualties from time to time, but does anyone think retreating to attempted non-involvement is a realistic proposal? Our very existence is the source of terrorism, and we must ruthlessly extirpate it.

The nation building project is a combination of massive institution building and national reeducation project. Both sides of the coin are necessary, and both are tremendous, long-term, uphill battles.

The list of institutions for which there is no heritage of proper functioning in a free republic, no institutional memory or competence, is a long one: police, civil service, judiciary, military, just to name the most pressing needs. To get a look at the rebuilding of the Iraqi military from someone with inside info, take a look at David Hackworth’s column at http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=66&rnd=83.8251255826577

Don’t hold your breath for the Iraqi military to take over operations from the coalition forces.

“Our very existence is the source of terrorism, and we must ruthlessly extirpate it.”
————

Alas, we have been anything but ruthless. We could well lose because of our dithering and our willingness to set up American soldiers in a shooting gallery, rather than risk arab lives.

I’m with Paul C., who makes a cogent point. I have had doubts about the Iraqis being able to govern themselves and control their own country ever since we went in. As many have alluded to or remarked about recently, as bad as he was, at leat Saddam had order! There is none, and as soon and the Shias gain power due to their overwhelming larger population, there will be much bloodshed. In this tribal war, our poor boys will be caught in the middle.

However, I do agree with Thucydides—we can’t simply cut and run. We need to go in NOW, not later, and destroy the radicals for the Iraqi people will not do so. Bush is playing “Mr. Nice Guy” with our troops, and that is a huge mistake. Let the Army/Marines do what they are best at and let’s give them the aerial support they deserve and need. I don’t want to see any more American hostages on parade.

On that subject, nomone is mentioning in the new about any rescue missions that have been going on to free the international hostages…

Indeed, they shouldn’t mention anything about rescue operations in the news.
Any rescue operations are almost certainly covert and would be severely damaged by publicity.

I recommend James Fallows’s article in the Jan./Feb. Atlantic about the administration’s deliberate choice in the period before the war NOT to discuss and make plans for postwar contingencies such as riots, infrastructure, the length of our occupation, and so on.

Also, the fact that we’ve allowed armed militias to exist in a country we’re supposedly occupying and preparing for self-government is an outrage.

Here’s the thing. Liberalism is the default position of modern society. Unless absolutely pushed to the wall to do otherwise, modern governments will do things the liberal way. So, when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, we were departing from the liberal way, because we felt it was absolutely essential. But, everything else we’ve done there since taking over the country, the “light” occupation, the tolerance for anti-American newspapers, the tolerance for armed bands of men, and so on and so on, has been liberal. We’re in trouble there now because we can’t stop being liberal.

In addition to the liberalism problems that Mr. Auster mentions, Donald Rumsfeld has an axe to grind. No matter what, we are going to be light on troops to prove that the new lighter, more agile army that he wants to build is better than the Cold War army of heavy tank divisions, etc.

We went light into Afghanistan because we were saving troops for Iraq. As a result, we actually rearmed the regional warlords to help us. Now they rule the countryside. THERE’S a brilliant move for you! And then we went light into Iraq and could not control the borders (still cannot) and could not control the looting. Read what the soldier inside Iraq had to say in the andrewsullivan.com article that Mr. Auster linked.

Mark my words: Donald Rumsfeld, in his own special way, is the second coming of Robert S. McNamara.

But how does Rumsfeld’s “light” approach to war-making translate into a “light” approach to occupation? These are two different things. And indeed, our experience there shows that they _are_ two different things. The “light” invasion by a small force worked magnificently (though admittedly it was quite risky) in destroying Hussein’s army and conquering the country. But on the basis of what logic would anyone conclude that a smaller rather than a larger occupation force would be sufficient to control the entire chaotic country of Iraq once we had defeated its army? And what would be the reason for Rumsfeld’s deep attachment to the idea? Is it just the desire to save money and resources, or the abstract idea of it, or what? I don’t get it.

Rumsfeld is the know-it-all civilian SecDef who comes into the job with some ideas about how things ought to be done differently. Every military officer who tries to disagree on anything is assumed to be a hidebound reactionary who just wants to defend his turf and stick to the old ways. Result: Rumsfeld does not need to listen to anybody. Numerous people from the inside have leaked confirmation of this very fact. In all these respects, the second coming of Robert McNamara of “the best and the brightest” fame.

Rumsfeld’s big idea is that the military is stuck in the last war, the Cold War, anticipating big land battles in Europe between big armored divisions. The better way is to be small and light and depend on airborne and special forces and light infantry, and have only a little in the way of heavy forces.

If we admit that two of the major areas of concern in today’s world — Korea and the Mideast — are actually well suited to massive armored forces, then we spoil his big idea. If we admit that occupation requires massive force, then the army simply needs to be bigger than it is today, else we admit that we should not have taken on occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. Everyone in the know says we are stretched to the breaking point and morale is going down the toilet.

So, should know-it-all Rumsfeld admit that we are too light and need a big increase in the Army, maybe even a draft? Or, should he admit that we were too light and thin to take on all these jobs at once around the world? Which of those admissions can you see Rumsfeld choosing to make in public?

I see the third alternative: Admit nothing, and claim that all is well. Rumsfeld is a genius. The military shall be transformed by his dictate. Big artillery and tank systems shall be cancelled halfway through development; we don’t need those any more. We can too occupy Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, while keeping troops in the Balkans and Germany and South Korea and the USA. All is well.

Mr. Coleman’s answer boils down to: Rumsfeld cannot admit that we don’t have enough forces there, because that would mean admitting that we should not have occupied Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time.

However, Mr. Coleman’s critical portrait of Rumseld’s thinking inadvertently contains a more sympathetic possible explanation for his actions. Assuming for the sake of discussion that the simultaneous occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq were _necessary_, then Rumsfeld had to find a way to do it. He _knew_ it wouldn’t be pretty, he _knew_ there would be problems. But he _had_ to do it, and the new “light” military approach gave him the way to do it. It was the best he could do, in a tough situation.

“…the fact that we’ve allowed armed militias to exist in a country we’re supposedly occupying and preparing for self-government is an outrage.”

And the answer is… gun control?

If Iraqis can’t be trusted with a militia, then they are by definition unfit for self-government. They may not be (as hard as they may try) subhuman, but they’re clearly subrepublican.

I think Caesar was not thinking very carefully when he wrote that comment. He seems to be equating militias in the U.S., which are organized by the state or at least under state law, with the militias in Iraq, which are private armies of thugs planning and carrying out armed insurrection and attempting to destroy any possibility of a transition to a government of laws in that country.

Mssngr. Michael Jose is correct, and I sit, corrected. What I meant to say was not that I wanted secret attempts to free the hostages to be broadcast, but rather that I would like to hear about a hostage rescue—if it happened and was broken in the international press already. I did not mean to suggest that a rescue should be broken in the news just so that I would know it had occurred.

Mr. Coleman and Mr. Auster are both right—the “war lite” by allowing citizens or the Iraqi Army to keep their guns was, as I remember saying to myself then, a huge error. The trouble with “going light” on troops (i.e. not 500,000 like we had in Vietnam at one time) is we depend on NATO or other counties to pick up the slack, and except for the British in in South early on and some attacks on Spanish troops, it’s been our war on only our war because these other countries don’t want to get more involved, militarily.

Mr. Auster is especially right in, “…the light occupation, the tolerance of armed bands of men”. If I may carry his point to its logical conclusion, we didn’t break down doors—until now, after we’ve lost so many soldiers in this uprising—and level buildings. It’s once again Bush’s “pc war”. It is insane. Again, I recommend what Michael Savage recommends so often these days—let’s take out the entire town/city with blanketed air bombardment and save our boys on the ground.

Last year, when everyone was moaning about our “stalled advance on Baghdad,” I defended Rumsfeld’s “light” army, and I’ll do so again. We don’t want to run Afghanistan or Iraq. We don’t want to artificially prop up unsustainable factions or powers because we won’t be there long. We want to minimize conflicts between our troops and the locals. We don’t want to reinstitute the draft. Presumably we have deployed our best soldiers—each new one we add will be from deeper down in the barrel and thus be worse-trained and more poorly disciplined.

The thirst of generals for more men is insatiable. Someone has to say no at some point. The complaints that we’re not aggressive enough aren’t related to our lack of troops but to our passive strategy.

Our problems in Iraq don’t stem from too few men, but perhaps from too many. After the public execution of Saddam and the other Baathists we have in custody, we should turn the other way as Iraqis settle some old scores by themselves and hope that the result is a vaguely stable federalized state.

A few thoughts:

The James Fallows article Mr. Auster references is available online:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/fallows.htm
“But how does Rumsfeld’s “light” approach to war-making translate into a “light” approach to occupation?”
I do think that Rumsfeld’s “light-army” approach was intended for the occupation as well as for the initial military invasion of Iraq. After Iraq was conquered, the initial estimate was that we could reduce our troop levels to some low number (under 50,000, as I recall) by the end of the summer. If you consider our current force to be a “light occupation,” then there was never any evidence that Rumsfeld had intended a “heavy occupation” after the invasion was over. And until recently, there has been no indication that Rumsfeld thought that a larger force would likely be needed.

I am not certain if I would entirely agree with Mr. Coleman’s implication in his statement that “we can’t occupy Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” namely, that we could occupy Iraq if we didn’t have commitments in Afghanistan. We currently only have about 10000 troops in Afghanistan, which I do not htink is enough to make a decisive diference in Iraq. (Admittedly, though, we could do more in Afghanistan if we had all of the troops in Iraq moved over there).

The main reason, I thought, that so many people were upset at Rumsfeld’s “light army” is that people who disagreed with his approach were sidelined.

Finally, the big question no one has yet asked. However justified Rumsfeld may have been for having us go in “light,” what are we going to do if it turns out that we don’t have nearly enough troops? Whence shall we get reinforcements, and if we cannot, what are our options?

Agricola’s ideas are interesting (he hadn’t posted when I started writing my piece).
Unfortunately, they do not seem to represent the strategy that Bush has laid out that Iraq WILL be a democracy, darn it!
Moreover, they are predicated on the assumption that the US is willing to let Iraq fall apart into chaos and does not see that as a future threat to security.
Also, I should point out that the strategy he proposes is in some ways more passive than our current one (except for how we deal with the Baathists), in that we don’t intervene to stop the Iraqis from engaging in at least low-grade civil war (“settle old scores”).
Not that I necessarily disagree with him, but these points need to be considered.

As for Iraq falling into chaos, please remember that this is the standard state of affairs for arabs. Indeed, they *thrive* in chaos, just as much as the Germans thrive on order. All of which is why it was so absurd for Rumsfeld and Rice to continue to compare the postwar occupation of Iraq to those of Germany and Japan—which they have continued to do as recently as February.

And when, btw, did I know we were in for trouble during the occupation? Actually, during the very first days of the war, when American forces entered (I believe) Nassariya and encountered a large mob of Iraqis blocking the way towards and “defending” some Shiite mosque. Our troops backed off. Imagine a group of devoted Nazis defending Hitler’s Berghof during the final days of World War II. Would our army have backed off or blasted them to pieces? Of course, the Germans were white and the arabs are the brown skinned “oppressed of the earth”, who must be forgiven every atrocity they commit, because it’s all a just retribution stemming from the legacy of colonialism.

THANK YOU PAUL C!!!!!

These peace loving Arabs don’t think twice about blowing up Jews at a place of worship or Americans. The Arabs love turmoil. Look at them on television. They have children holding rifles with live rounds saying to kill Americans and whatever else they see as an infidel. They are ass backwards. Look how these people live. They live as though it is 2000 years ago.

The reason Israel is so hated by them is because Israel has prospered. The Arab hates progress and their own ignorance holds them back. Look at the treatment of women alone.

The lessons of Vietnam were 1) never fight another country’s civil war and 2) if one is going to fight a war, either go all out and fight to win or get out.

Bush it seems has not learned the second lesson. I am not knowledgeable enough about whether lesson 1 applies to Iraq, but I am sure lesson 2 applies. Beginning early on in the war, there has been a continuous stream of complaints by soldiers about shortages of equipment and troops and about too many restrictions on targeting. Lou Dobbs on CNN reports on this regularly.

These are the same complaints we heard during Vietnam, yet Bush supporters continue to say “stay the course” instead of “put up or get out.” Staying the course was the horrible result in Vietnam and it is happening all over again. His supporters might say, “well at least we are trying.” I say we are not trying but are playing politics again with the lives of our young men. Yet Mr. Bush is somehow perceived as a decent man. I don’t look at him but at his actions. He is playing politics with the lives of our soldiers.

Mr. Murgos has pinpointed the very thing that’s driven me mad about the “stay the course” mantra since last summer. “Staying the course” is not the same as “Giving the armed forces the means to win.” “Staying the course” just means the blind stubborn adhesion to a policy that is not leading to victory and logically does not even seem to be designed to lead to victory. Victory means permanently suppressing or destroying all the jihadist or Ba’athist forces that would violently challenge the Coalition and the successor Iraqi government. Not only do we not have a policy aimed at that. We have not even had a national debate on how to do that. The reason I often refer to Michael Ledeen, despite my disagreements with him, is that his strategy of going after the Terror Masters represents at least a logical attempt to show how we could achieve victory. One does not see any such attempt going on within the administration.

Let me also add that if the American leaders and the American people _had_ thoroughly thought through that problem, we might well have come to the conclusion that such a victory in an Arab Moslem country cannot be achieved. And that would have led to a total re-thinking of what to do with Iraq after toppling Hussein. We might have adopted the Daniel Pipes idea of setting up a democratically-minded strong man in power, and quickly leaving.

It cannot be emphasized too much: the condition of the democratization of Iraq is victory as I defined it above. If such victory is not possible, then democratization is not possible, and some other approach has to be found. But the Bush administration is between two stools: insisting on democratization as the linchpin of our Iraq policy and of our very own security, while at the same time continuing stubbornly in a “stay the course” mode that cannot, by itself, ensure the victory that is the condition of democratization.

Of course, I may be wrong. Perhaps the insurgency will soon collapse, and all the jihadist forces will die out and Iraq can continue forward to some new government. But if that hoped-for event occurs, it will have happened as much by good fortune as by any design on the part of by the Bush administration.

Here is something Bush could say to the Iraqis:

“People of Iraq. We are not your liberators. We are your conquerors. We will rule you as we see fit. We are going to keep a permanent garrison here in order to further our strategic objectives. Any resistance will be crushed with the full force of American military power.”

Of course Bush won’t say this. (Mr. Ledeen probably wishes he would) He prefers to babble about how,”Everybody all over the world wants freedom and will will bring it to them.” Limbaugh and the rest of the rah-rah crowd cheer him own. They (GWB probably is) may be dumb enough to believe Iraq can be made into a pro-American democracy.

I fully agree with the idea of a forward, proactive, aggressive defense, which is vital to any country. When we do turn over power orderly or simply disengage, we should consider leaving one or powerful forces in the many easily defensible parts of Iraq. These forces would be poised to attack in the event the hard-working, peace-loving, god-fearing Islamic people of Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran decide to resume or to continue supporting Islamic terrorism against the United States and its interests.

But this proactive strategy is well on its way to being abandoned by politically correct people such as Bush and other liberals. It is no wonder they and many Americans emphatically dismiss the idea of a draft. The outcry by the families of the draftees would stop Bush’s tiptoe strategy in its tracks. Evidence for this potential outcry is the fact that America can’t even get enough of its men to fight voluntarily but instead MUST rely on aliens and women. If we are so strong now because of our diversity, why has this situation not existed before?

Evidence for the fear our leaders have about America’s resolve is our soldiers are being fed pure propaganda to motivate them just as they were fed in Vietnam. It is disgusting to hear our soldiers and leaders on TV justify our presence by pointing to the many Iraqi’s that the soldiers have made happy by eliminating Saddam Hussein or by making democracy a possibility

The hell with the Iraqi people; the only justification ever used must be we eliminated a state that sponsered Islamic terrorism (and maybe WMD’s now or in the future). We are fighting for our democracy and our way of life, not for Iraq’s. Bush’s commanders should tell our soldiers that Bush’s happy talk is meant for foreign and domestic nitwits instead of them—or is it?

“If Iraqis can’t be trusted with a militia, then they are by definition unfit for self-government.”

Rather than pick nits over the meaning of the word “militia”, let us rephrase this as follows:

“If Iraqis can’t be trusted with private gun ownership, then they are by definition unfit for self-government.”

In Switzerland, most families have a real assault rifle in the house, yet it seems not to be a problem. It seems that the Swiss do not have “scores to settle”, etc., and hence can be trusted. If we need to not merely break up the organization of Iraqi private militias, but go around the country confiscating guns, then a rational conclusion is that the difference between Iraq and Switzerland is a rather large one. Would it also be rational to conclude, on this basis alone, that the Swiss can be trusted with self-government, and the Iraqis cannot?

It seems self-evident to me that any country on earth where widespread gun ownership leads immediately to armed bands of thugs roaming the country and tearing the country apart with civil war is NOT ready for self government. In which case, what are our realistic goals over the next 3-5 years in Iraq?

Of course, Clark Coleman and Mr. Auster and Paul C. and P Murgos all make excellent points. I am “exhausted” trying to find an answer, a solution for the U.S. and its soldiers in this mess called Iraq.

All I know is one thing for certain—we can’t “stay this course”, and we shouldn’t try to! We’re being picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery. We aren’t giving our fighting men the support (ammo, aerial/bomber assault) that they need to root out and chase the enemy out of Fallujah and Najef. We are stalled because Bush is in the political fight of his life at home and the sharks (Demos and leftists) are circling, attacking him every chance they get. He is out duck hunting when our boys are being killed. He gives stumbling, stupid briefings/speeches when he should be leading with our bombers and smart bombs and munitions. His military commanders now saw “We aren’t going after those who desicrated our dead Americans who were mutilated after being murdered.” He and his generals are sending the wrong message. It is still, sadly, a pc war and Bush seems to want to be seen as “a nice guy” and not as a tough leader. He has poorly communicated the goals we have made. And the rebels/skanks know the American people do not want another Vietnam. Their attacks are forcing Bush to deploy more men, which will shortly bring on the draft.

We captured (or were given) Saddam and conquered his army. Our generals, if I can believe it, have given orders to our troops “not to engage”? What they hell are we doing there, then, except to prop up some formerly exiled Iraqi leaders who are disliked and distrusted by most of their Iraqi countrymen? Where is our exit strategy?

Bush’s indecisiveness and fumbling the football at this point in the game is going to cost him re-election. Americans want a strong leader, not a wimp. But for some unexplained reason, Bush does not seem to want to be seen as a strong leader!

The word is, terrorists are streaming in from Iran and Syria to Iraq to join against us. The bloodbath has only just started. What are we doing to stop this? I agree that simply sending in more troops won’t solve anything. The focus HAS to be on the borders with these other countries. But then, who else is going to join us? WE are probably c;ose to losing Britain’s support, and then we’ll really be alone.

Thanks, Mr Coleman, for coming to my rescue on this.. A creature who is a threat with an assault rifle will be even more of one with a voting lever. The danger of imposing democracy is not that it won’t represent the people, but that it will.

This failure to compute 2+2 gets enough practice at home. We give a 16-year-old the keys to our country’s deadliest weapon, and two years later, a machine gun (as long as he’s on another continent), but make him wait three years beyond that to touch a “lite beer”.

This might be more of a pipe dream than a realistic goal, but the best thing we could do for modern Mesopotamia is to combine Ann Coulter’s idea with Steve Sailer’s and put an end to incest over there, in order to break up the clan system. No, not interfaith (Sunni/Shi’a) or interracial (Arab/Kurd) marriages; just someone a little further afield than one’s niece. Rome’s consanguinuity law is a good model; even better is the Northwest Indians’ (i.e., B.C. and Alaska) intra-clan taboo.

It would take a generation to see how the progeny turn out, but the effects of living with unrelated in-laws would be immediate.

I actually like Paul C.’s idea that we back off and let Iraq fall into chaos and let people settle scores.
I hope my previous comments were not taken to mean that I support escalation.
I guess my point is that we currently have three options:
(1) Lose conrol of the country.
(2) Keep control by total fear (e.g., adopt rules such as “we will execute fifty Iraqis whenever a US soldier is killed”)
(3) Increase our troop presence.
Seeing as Bush won’t do the first, as seeing as the second will likely require near-genocidal fury in order to actually work (e.g. Joseph Farah’s idea of flattening Fallujah will just create a refugee problem and give us 200,000 angry homeless Iraqis to deal with unless we make certain that there is no evacuation beforehand, i.e. flatten the city with everyone still inside), we are going with the third, and until someone has the courage to say, let the Iraqis blow each other up, or the ruthlessness to mass murder them, we are stuck with it.

Mr. Jose writes:

“I actually like Paul C.’s idea that we back off and let Iraq fall into chaos and let people settle scores.”

Well, even Charles Krauthammer seems to be lowering his expectations re Iraq, accepting the realities of ethnicity and religion, and saying that civil war in Iraq is ok with him. Here is the closing of his column:

” … There is no organizing anti-Saddam resistance myth. There is as yet no legitimate Iraqi leadership to fight and die for.

“What there is to fight and die for is tribe and faith. Which is why we should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalization as a useful tool. Try to effect, within the agreed interim constitution, a transfer of power to the more responsible elements of the Shiite majority, the moderates who see Sadr as the Iranian agent and fascistic thug that he is.

“This is no time for despair. We must put down the two rebellions — Fallujah’s and Sadr’s — to demonstrate our seriousness, then transfer power as quickly as we can to those who will inherit it anyway, the Shiite majority with its long history of religious quietism and wariness of Iran. And antagonism toward their former Sunni oppressors. If the Sunnis continue to resist and carry on a civil war, it will then be up to the Shiites to fight it, not for Americans to do it on their behalf.”

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20040416.shtml

Another point on Rumsfeld:
Even if Mr. Auster is correct that Mr. Rumsfeld took a “light approach” to invasion and occupation because the invasion of Iraq was necessary and because we didn’t have enough troops available for a “heavy approach,” this still does not excuse the arrogance that Mr. Rumsfeld showed according to Mr. Fallows’ article.
It seems to me that he cold have told the army “we only have so many troops available, and we need to invade, so let’s determine how best to use these troops to ovrthrow Saddam, and how to do as best as we can afterwards at securing Iraq. We can’t do as a good a job as I’d like, I know, because we don’t have as many troops as would be preferable. But let’s see what we can do with what we have.”
Instead, it appears that he avoided dealing with any of the issues or problems that come with a “light invasion and occupation,” and just assumed that things were hunky-dory.

Rumsfeld evidently has many things to answer for, particularly his bizarre refusal to plan for postwar Iraq.

Mr.Jose’s 3 points two posts ago:

“…we currently have three options:

1) Lose control of the country
2) Keep control by total fear (i.e. adopt rules as 50 Iraqis will be killed for each American soldier killed)
3) Increase our troop presence”

…are very interesting. In actuality, there IS no “choice”. The first one is ALREADY a fait accompli.

We ARE losing control of the country because:

1) Half of the Iraqi police we trained have mutinied and either joined Sadr or refuse to fight/kill other Iraqis.

2) We don’t have enough troops to seal the border with Iran and Syria.

3) The men and women we have propped up for the Iraqu Governing Council have either been assassinated or have resigned or those that are still left—like Chalabi—are already talking trash towards us and some like Chalabi don’t have the support of the Iraqi people.

4) Most importantly, we are now seen as an occupying force. If we go in guns blazing in Najef—which I hope we do—the entire Arab world, including some of our friends in Jordan and elsewhere, may turn against us. The scumbag (Sadr) and his minions are hiding out in mosques and behind women and children like the cowards they are, like the Palestinians do vs the Israelis.

We are in a no win situation, I believe, Bush has got to lose this silly idealistic notion that Iraq can be a democracy. When we leave, and we MUST leave some day, there will be (as there was in Bosnia) feudal, tribal bloodshed and anarchy. There already IS anarchy. So really, it comes down to “How many American lives does Bush want to save?” Sadly, I don’t believe he’s thinking about that. It’s all political with him and his advisors. He knows that if he cuts and runs now, he very likely will lose in November. Yet, that would be, in my opinion (and I have never heard of this fellow Lind so I am certainly not a disciple of his!) the WISE thing to do. Tell Americans that he has NO interest in creating another Vietnam which this is becoming, that there are other places our troops are needed and handing over the control to whatever Iraqi Council there is LEFT in June as per the timetable. He can then AVOID instituting the draft which is not far off. It actually may HELP recruitment if we leave Iraq. We need more than “a few good men”—we need many thousands.

Our next action might be against Syria, but I believe we can do that with planes. and drones.

After we withdraw or even AS we withdraw, it will give the UN or NATO some time to consider entering the conflict. If they don’t, the Iraqi’s will handle things themselves.

This is NOT a perfect solution, but I am actually with the left on this one. I don’t want to see another American soldier lose his life in that toilet country called Iraq. While I feel badly for the Iraqis who are depending on us, they knew going into this that we couldn’t stay. We removed Saddam and dismantled his army. Now it’s time to come home.

In a sense, Bush will redeem himself for getting the job done as far as Saddam is concerned. We have other countries like North Korea and Iran to be concerned about, and they have nukes.

I failed to mention a timetable for these ideas of mine, but I would at least wait to see how “the turn over” in June goes before pulling our troops out. Yet, a full-on attack on Najef and/or Fallujah can’t wait until June, and Sadr needs to be taken out or at the very least, arrested. So, that is one dilema.

Another is what to do with Saddam—turn him over to the new Iraqi Governing Council, or bring him home for a Human Rights “trial of the century”.

“If we go in guns blazing in Najef—which I hope we do—the entire Arab world, including some of our friends in Jordan and elsewhere, may turn against us.”

———————————

It seems to me that the “entire Arab world” has always been against us, as has the entire muslim world. Let’s face facts: our “friends in Jordan and elsewhere” consist primarily of a few Arab dictators desperately holding onto power because of the pipeline of American dollars and weapons they receive. The *people* of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and all the rest hate the United States and the West with a 1400 year-old passion.

Our mistake was to ever allow these savages to enter the modern world and access technology and advanced weaponry. Now, because we have, we are facing a war between civilizations—no matter how much Bush, Blair, and the rest of the appeasers want to deny it. Because of our foolish, suicidal policies abroad and at home—that allowed Islam to flourish in very midst—we are in a position were we may to need to kill them all. Or they will kill all of us. Unfortunately, if resolution is any indicator, THEY have the advantage at the moment.

Adding further to the mysterious behavior of the Iraquian people is its prominence in the Biblical record. The Garden of Eden was established here. Abraham was born at Ur which is located in the southern portion of this country. The greatest revival was preached here at Ninevah. And the Tower of Babel as well as other interesting facts all transpired in this now forsaken country. I hold to the belief that a new awakening must take place here in the form of the gospel as we view it. And I think that this Word of hope and promise and deliverance can break the rocks of the most hardened hearts and bring a sweeping reform to the devastation as now occuring. It has happened in many places in history. And it certainly is not off-limits here in Iraq. It would be very interesting to see a work of God displayed here and the ensuing results. If minds and hearts can be centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and His message of salvation for all, then we might see a remarkable change in attitude and conduct in this war-fested region. Maybe the Bible instead of bullets will win the day.I wonder if the Pentagon would agree.I do believe that there are many Christians praying for this event among the Iraquian people.

To David Levin:
I say, turn Saddam over to an Iraqi Court, with the condition that they cannot kill him. Let the harshest sentence be amputation of his arms and legs. After they do that, then hand Saddam over to the Europeans and let them try him in the Hague.
To Paul C.: if Europe and the US reduce the presence of Arab Muslims in our countries, there should be less need to worry about them in their own.
To Joan Vail: Yes, that’s a good idea, but it is beyond the scope of the military. It will have to be done privately.

What perturbs me is that most of those rightly ridiculing the Bush Administration’s quasi-religious obsession with installing democracy in Iraq, right away, seem to have no concrete objective to substitute for the spurious official one — Michael Jose seems to be closest to getting one. Cutting and running, or letting the Iraqis sort it out, don’t seem to me to be viable alternatives.

After seeing how the Iraqi’s are with Huessin gone it is obvious that these people needed a tyrant to keep them in line.

Giving these people democracy is something they would never be able to handle and just don’t want. It seems as though they like being backwards and unprogressive.

The majority of these people are fanatics! There is no reasoning with fanatics that live 2000 years back.

I think we have two general options:

(1) Install someone or a few people who are respected in Iraq as the strongmen. Choose people who are native (in other words, not exiles) and who have a following (Probably not Sistani, as he does not appear to have any ambitions for direct political control). Get two or three Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, and let them run the country as an oligarchy, on the condition that they be reasonably humane and do not cause trouble for us. They can bad-mouth Israel all they want as long as they take no concrete actions against it.

(2) Break Iraq up into several ethno-religious states. Bribe Turkey in some way to accept this outcome, and encourage them to transfer Kurdish troublemakers in Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan. If we are concerned about Iran and Syria, then this will be a very good solution, as an independent Kurdistan in Iraq will encourage the Kurdish sections of these countries to rise up (and the Kurds in Iraq will probably give them aid). A reality of this plan may be that the US will have to loan some troops to Turkey to hel put down any Kurdish unrest in Turkey, and that we may have to explain in no unclear terms to the Kurds n Iraq that if they attempt to help the Kurds in Turkey to rebel, we will bomb the hell out of them.
We may also need to consider the possibility that the Turkmen in Iraq will need to be transferred to Turkey.

As I distrust centralized governments, I like option 2 much, much better.

Since I can easily control my enthusiasm for the Arab world myself, I hate to have to remind people that the Muslim Arabs were, once, a highly civilized people, though I cannot think of any time when their political institutions were a model for anybody else. It is arguable that India was once even worse terrain for free institutions than the Middle East is now, but they eventually took root there. It is not necessarily the case that they cannot be implanted in the Arab world, although it is surely a fantasy to imagine that it can be done all at once with no resistance, which seems to be the basis of Bush’s policy. If it can be done at all, it will take a long time. And, like training the proverbial mule, you’ll have to get the Arabs attention…..

Michael Jose: I’m all for reducing Arab Muslims who have invaded Western nations. Non-arab muslims as well. And it’s not all that hard. If we just stopped trying to bend over backwards to make them feel comfortable, they would leave. We are literally giving away our birthright to them. Muslims cannot, for long, tolerate being in any social circumstances where they either do not dominate or have the prospects for dominating. Make it clear that theirs is an alien, unwelcome ideology, which will never gain political legitimacy, and they’ll move on like locusts to devestate someone else’s green lands.

For Alann Levine, not every problem, IMHO, has a solution. Iraq is one of those problems. There can be no happy ending, there, no matter how much we may wish it so. As far as I’m concerned, the threat of WMDs is now gone, the Saddam political machine is broken. I don’t care about whether Iraqis establish a democracy. It’s up to them. I doubt we’ll see it in a thousand years.

BTW, the one “remedy” I do have, is the one I’ve been recommending since the start of the most recent round of hostilities. Establish an independent Kurdistan that is totally dependent on the US for its military strength and political survival. Everyone around them would hate the Kurds—much like the Arabs hate the Jews in Israel. But we would have two true client states in the region. If the Turks, Iraqis, Syrians, or Iranians got out line, we could simply threaten to unleash the Kurds and allow them to “free” their kinsmen in those countries. Not to mention that Kurdistan would be immensely oil-rich. Let the Sunnis and the Shia annihilate each other. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

I think that if you break up Iraq into small enough bite-size pieces, you have a chance of establishing consensual governments in a few of the pieces.

The Kurds may have the best chance of establishing a decent nation-state of any size.

First, we could say that our paramount purpose in going to war was to eliminate a non-transparent terror-supporting rogue regime in possession of or developing weapons of mass destruction, and that we have fulfilled that purpose. We then say that we want to leave Iraq in the best condition that is achievable. That introduces a range of possibilities from best to worst.

In lieu of democracy, we aim at a democratic-oriented strongman. We’d have to find such a man, help him set up his government, set up an army, and so on. However, that may not be feasible for the same reason that we’re having so much trouble today: the ongoing insurgency, Iraqi army unwilling to resist it, and so on.

The next option might be that we let the majority Shi’ites (65 percent of the country) run Iraq, while protecting minority rights, allowing for Kurd semi-autonomny, and so on.

If that doesn’t work, and the country devolves into civil war, we give aid to the side we favor in order to keep the country from devolving into chaos or from being taken over by jihadis or terrorists.

We tell the world that we cannot run Iraq and cannot reconstruct Iraq, but that if any dangerous regime takes power there again, we will just go in again and destroy it like we did Hussein’s.

Some will say that our reconstruction effort might have worked if it had been done differently, with more troops, more stringent controls, and so on. Others will say that no matter what we did, the reconstruction effort was doomed because of the nature of the society. If the latter is accepted, America will still be respected for having attempted something noble, but now the world will understand that “democratization” is no longer part of the war on Islamic radicalism, and George and Tony and the thousands of sloganeering democratists mimicking and supporting them will have to find a different “noble ideal” to justify that which doesn’t need any extraneous justification: Western self-defense against Islamism.

Another option I didn’t mention is partitioning the country. I like what was said about Kurdistan being a good client state for us.

As long as we are in Iraq, I don’t see why we do not try to encourage Palestinian immigration.
If we could get Palestinians to come here from Jordan and Israel, we would decrease the pressure on Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, and open up more space in Jordan to take Palestinian refugees without losing the country to them.
We could sell the idea to the Sunnis on the basis that it would give them a larger population to protect them from the Shiites. In essence, they would be encouraging the migration for the same reason as the Jews did in Israel in the early 20th century.
The two problems we would have to deal with, of course, is that 90,000 Palestinians lost their homes in Iraq last year due to returning exiles, and so we would need to build a lot of new housing, and that we would need to find some way of attracting Palestinians to Iraq.

Thank goodness for Mr. Auster coming to my rescue! He said what I was trying to say better than I ever could.

The general concensus here seems to be that creating a separate Kurd-Iraquistan might be a wise move, assuming the rest of Iraq were to go for it and the Turks wouldn’t invade, feeling threatened. I had not considered the Kurds in all this.

Michael Jose’s post describing two possibilities:

1) Install someone or a few people (who are respected) as strongmen

2) Break up Iraq into several ethno-religious states

…are interesting concepts. I like the second one the best and feel it stands the best chance. It means our really going to bat for the Kurds, militarily. It also presumes that the Shiites and Sunnis won’t continue to receive tons of arms and bombs and help from Al Qaida and Iran’s Rev. Guard. Because if that coninues, Kurd-Iraqistan will be the next battleground.

I do not agree with Mr. Jose that we should find and prop up some strongman who is respected…that person does not exist in the feudal turf known as Iraq. Each group has their own political/power interest and up until recently, they have not banded together, except perhaps against Iran during that war. I think the U.S. should have “0” to do with providing leaders/government for Iraq. They are a proud people and they deserve to do it themselves without our approval. The difficulty however, will always be how to keep Al Qaida and other terrorist groups out of Iraq. That only the Iraqis can do once they have a government. We can only hope they will do so.

Mr. Jose’s other point—about the Palestinians—is also news to me. I had no idea there was a Palestinian “problem” in Iraq. I am a big supporter of Israel, and I do not believe in giving one more dime to the Palestinian leadership (Bush is about to give another $30 million). All it does is make fatcat/sicko Arafat richer and buys a lot of arms and munitions that kill Israelis. If we and the Europeans would cut of the money to the Palestinians, I truly believe there would be less bloodshed in Israel.