Comments on: Broadening the Coalition

By: jet

jet — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:45:45 +0000

The Guardian has already started running articles on how the US is hyping the genocide in Darfur so that it can cut out French and Chinese oil interests (which was to be expected). Maybe the NYT’s and the Guardian’s editors go on team building retreats together?

By: jet

jet — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:44:54 +0000

By: George

George — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:49:52 +0000

Compare casualty figures between Serbia and Iraq. Human Rights Watch claimed that 500 civilians were killed in the 70-or-so day bombardment by NATO forces. The Yugoslav government claimed the figure was more like 5,000. After the Serbs capitulated, Kosovar-on-Kosovar (ie, Albanian-Serb) violence surged, and I’d be surprised if the death toll didn’t get to the thousands. In a way we simply exchanged one ethnic cleanser for another (although we did stop the career of a world-class dictator and serial mass murderer, Slobodan Milosevic). Was it worth it? Well, the NY Times editors came out clearly in support of that action before the bombs started falling, but they apparently learned their lesson by the time it was a Republican who wanted to act outside the UN.

By: mona

mona — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 18:34:48 +0000

Well no wonder the US don’t want anyone else if they’re not under their control – now they even want British troops under US control. Imagine that. Kerry is seriously misguided, no fault of his, it’s just the consequences of the Iraqi mess, it’s unthinkable that countries opposed to the war (everyone, by now) would send more troops under these conditions and with the likely request to have them under US command. It’s just pure wisfhul thinking.

By: a different chris

a different chris — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 17:05:24 +0000

>we’re supposed to extend them engraved invitations? I think it would be hard to top disbanding the Iraqi Army when it comes to invitations of that sort, but that’s just me. Weirdly, I do agree with the general thrust of Brett/jet’s post about Muslim troops being a great carrier to infect Iraq with OBL sympathisers. I said that every time, pre-war, that the idiots in the Bush misAdmistration talked to Pakistan, and our Bush-apologists spewed out their talking points about Bush’s great coalition building. For instance, notice jet’s nice rant on SA. Very interesting that he’s so informed – he could probably rant on similarly about virtually every other ME country that could supply troops. Therefore he should know that by far the cleanest goddamn country in the ME as per Al-Queda was Iraq, my pretties. And now you wingnut geniuses have gone and contaminated it, and you have no exit strategy that doesn’t leave it as Afghanistan squared. Brilliant. Not.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:19:28 +0000

I don't know who this "David Bowden" y'all keep talking about is. Perhaps he's some relation of Mark Bowden, who wrote Blackhawk Down.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:18:38 +0000

I don't know who this "David Bowden" y'all keep talking about is. Perhaps he's some relation of Mark Bowden, who wrote Blackhawk Down.

By: jet

jet — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:08:00 +0000

Forget my previous post, I wrote it, then decided it not worth posting, but I then managed to confuse my browser into posting. Sorry, for the blathering.

By: jet

jet — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:33:04 +0000

Brucer, “It is also worth noting that the whole Aidid hunt began when Aidid ambushed and butchered a force of 24 Pakistani soldiers in Mogadishu in June, 2003. No Americans rushed to their aid then, either.” So you are implying that while those 24 Pakistani soldiers were being skinned alive in one of Al Queda’s more horrific attacks, the US not only knew about it, but refused to send troops? With arguments like that, I don’t know how I remain unconvinced. This being the same US army willing to send soldiers with rice in their packs on long hikes in the desert, take sniper fire and casulties, but not fire back (probably because they were issued 5 rounds), just to deliever a day’s worth of food to a villiage? (That was one of the UN missions a guard unit undertook). David Bowden may not have said the US had to threaten/bully the Malaysians into moving, I’ll have to check tonight, but there was certainly a delay in getting authorization to get the vehicles moving. David Bowden covered in great detail the animosity between the US and the rest of the coalition and that it almost appeared as if the UN commanders were realishing the mess the US was in. But it has been a while since I read his book, feel free to cite me wrong.

By: jet

jet — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:18:33 +0000

Since we are all speculating without a whole lot of data, I have another wild assed, just as good as yours, guess. Maybe Iraq and the US have their doubts about the ability of the Saudi government to weed out Al Queda members from any forces sent to Iraq. Wouldn’t that be just grand if Al Queda started semi-openly operating from the Saudi protected sectors? It wasn’t that long ago that the Saudi police somehow managed to let escape Al Queda members that they had surrounded and had plenty of time to prepare for. Even the provincial Russian police supplemented with civilians were able to kill or capture their terrorists in Beslan. You’d think that Saudi’s best could do the same. And maybe this was the thought running through the Pentagon’s head?

By: tony

tony — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 09:15:53 +0000

“Okay, then—let us suppose, for a moment, that the one foreign Arab country to be (indirectly) contributing troops to the US effort in Iraq were….Saudi Arabia.” Why would we suppose this, Dan? “Iraqi officials said they did not want countries that border Iraq to contribute to a security force, ruling out Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Turkey. The Saudis agreed with that condition and promised to provide financial support to the peacekeeping force and possibly to some of the nations that agreed to contribute troops.”Now I’m not suggesting that based on this act of apparent good intentions, the Saudis are to be unconditionally trusted, but it sounds like these negotiations held far too much promise to be thrown out for this reason alone. For that matter, it sounds like insanity to dismiss it on the grounds that the forces wouldn’t be under US control.

By: vernaculo

vernaculo — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 06:20:40 +0000

“…we should all applaud their passing up this opportunity to sully themselves by lending credibility to a frighteningly odious, highly terrorist-friendly…” Probably the two most familiar Iraqi names to the American public, after Saddam Hussein, are Chalabi and Assawi. Paragons of virtue the both of them, unless by virtue you mean something like human decency and moral leadership.

By: krkrjak

krkrjak — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 05:07:16 +0000

Say now, all you Kerry supporters should be happy to learn that your guy has received an endorsement from a very important foreign leader. Just picked up info on another blog site that non other than Yasser Arafat has given Mr K. his blessing.

By: pyrrho

pyrrho — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:23:30 +0000

Kerry moral leadership that could cause some of us outside the US to become involved in Iraq? For an outside view Gooogle Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, Article: “Call him a liberal hawk.” If Kerry returned to multilateralism we would have no choice—even though getting involved in the Iraq quagmire is the last thing we want.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:21:33 +0000

Okay, then—let us suppose, for a moment, that the one foreign Arab country to be (indirectly) contributing troops to the US effort in Iraq were….Saudi Arabia. Anybody who’s seen “Farenheit 9/11” care to speculate on how that scenario would be greeted by Crooked Timber’s authorship and readership—not to mention John Kerry? Yes, some of us are indeed heartened that the Bush administration is not accepting “help” in Iraq from the Saudi Arabian government. And the folks at Crooked Timber should be relieved, as well. The reason has nothing to do with racism (sheesh!), and everything to do with the fact that Saudi Arabia is governed by a corrupt, highly secretive monarchy with numerous deep, long-standing connections to pretty much the whole panoply of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations (including an obscure group with the little-heard name, “Al Qaeda”). If anything, the current administration has been too cosy with the Saudi monarchy, and we should all applaud their passing up this opportunity to sully themselves by lending credibility to a frighteningly odious, highly terrorist-friendly regime.