by immediate withdrawal, I of course meant immediate as of NOW, i.e. (as the date is now 25th December). 45% of those polled wanted an immediate withdrawal OR IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL AFTER THE DECEMBER ELECTIONS which, according to my calender, has now passed.

Therefore as of the time of writing (NOT the time when the poll was actually conducted, but now), to the best of our knowledge, 45% of Iraqis want an immediate withdrawal of all UK/US troops. Plus or minus 2.5%. There is another 4% who couldn’t make their minds up, so possibly they might go into the withdrawal camp (or not, of course). I would argue to the pro-warriors that the fact that (if the 2.5% proves to be on the minus side) 47.5% of Iraqis want a withdrawal is hardly the ringing endorsement of coalition behaviour they seem to think. I would also point out that since this might mean that only a 2.6% shift in Iraqi opinion would mean that a majority did want withdrawal, they should hardly be sitting back and resting on their laurels.

Moreover, this should be viewed in the context of a previous post which stated that a majority of Iraqis did indeed want a withdrawal of US/UK forces. Not to mention the fact that a majority of British and American people undoubtedly want an immediate withdrawal (i.e. they wanted a withdrawal after the December elections). Not to mention the huge majorities of people in Africa, South American and elsewhere who never wanted this war in the first place.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

You:
another stated that nearly 50% wanted an immediate withdrawal (with 4% who couldn’t make their mind up).

The poll you were talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/12_12_05_iraq_data.pdf

Question 33:How long do you think U.S. and other Coalition Forces should remain in Iraq?
They should leave now: 25%

Most of the other categories call for a withdrawl in the short or medium term: in another question only a tiny 4% did not consider the withdrawl of US forces to be ‘any kind of a priority’.

But only those 25% were calling for an immediate withdrawl, with job not done and insurgency active.

soru

Oh please. Quote what bit I have misreported.

Incidentally, Uncle Kvetch, I quoted to Soru a few threads ago an up to date (this year) report in which aides of Bush (allegedly or presumably (depending on your point of view)) briefed journalists that the model for Iraq was South Korea..i.e. a country where American bases were going to stay for years or decades (or longer). So Soru knows very well that there is reason to believe that Bush wants permanent military bases.

Incidentally, Soru has a fantastically naive view of how force is applied in the modern world. It’s true that you can use bombs and bullets (and the US/UK certainly haven’t been shy about using THEM). But you can use other methods of influence as well. You can apply what is euphemistically known as ‘diplomatic pressure’: i.e. you can make it very much worth the countries’ while to do what you want. You can bribe the country (i.e. the political elite) with arms and oil deals. You can threaten the country with loss of preferential trading, sanctions and all sorts. So the fact (and it is a fact) that the US wants permanent bases does not imply that the US/UK will be forced to use actual military force to get them. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Find me a credible news source that documents the conscription, mass hiring of foreign mercenaries, (or perhaps development of some kind of robot soldier), that would be necessary to impose such a thing in the face of the Iraqi public opinion that brendan only somewhat misreports?

Any of those is too big to keep quiet, so if they are not being put into place now, then anything that would rely on them is not being planned for.

soru

Incidentally, in 10-20 years time, the robot soldiers thing is probably a real danger – it very plausibly could recreate the preconditions for classical imperialism. Robo sapiens with a gun, or just a Predator Mk IV, is politically a very scary prospect that really would change a lot of things.

‘Most westerners have, from watching war films if nothing else, some kind of instinctive feel for how horrible a war is. They don’t need lecturing on that, it’s not 1914 any more.

I don’t think many first-world people watch ‘third world dictator’ films, have any kind of comparable feel for what a life of grinding poverty under sanctions and repression under a dictator are actually like.’

This is self-evidently and blatantly false. Most of Eastern Europe and Latin America for example know perfectly well what totalitarianism was like (and even in Western Europe, most European countries were totalitarian within living memory). And yet in Latin America, where they had much experience of regimes very similar to Saddam’s, the population were overwhelmingly against the war. There is no mystery here: most South Americans view the US in the same way the Poles and Czechs view Russia, and would see a ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the US and the UK, not as a serious issue to be discussed but simply as a joke.

They are right.

Incidentally, ignore the ‘pay attention to what the people on the ground’ stuff: as Soru well knows (as we have been through this discussion) the people on the ground loathe the occupation and despise the occupiers. One recent poll stated a majority wanted an immediate withdrawal of the US/UK, another stated that nearly 50% wanted an immediate withdrawal (with 4% who couldn’t make their mind up). And this varies widely over the country. Almost all Sunnis, for example, and most Shias want an immediate withdrawal. The fact that many Iraqis think their lives are getting better (a meaningless statistic, since we don’t know from what point this optimism began to develop….pro-warriors always assume it was since the invasion, but rarely provide evidence for this) ignores the salient point which is that they think they would be doing better still if we would just **** off and let them run their own country.

Since the ‘oil deals’ have already been done, incidentally, I have no idea why you think they won’t happen.

Incidentally, yesterday, according to Omer of Iraq the Model, over a million people demonstrated in Baghdad, and demanded a recount of the votes, alleging huge fraud.

Please name a credible news source that’s reporting that the US has abandoned its plans for permanent military facilities in Iraq.

I think most Iraqis did want Saddam gone, and Saddam’s crimes are black (in fact, in my own opinion Saddam should be dead right now—it was highly stupid not to shoot him after his capture), but the fact is that the economic activity that has come to Iraq has been mostly as a result of the removal of the sanction regime, while the massive insistence of the occupiers on making economic decisions and doing the ‘reconstruction’ has mainly benefitted an array of American companies, at great cost to the American taxpayer. Basically, America is justly resented for its appalling and unnecessary occupation, which is reflected even in the (obviously flawed) polls of public opinion taken in Iraq over the past couple of years, and the trend is only getting worse for the Americans. Occupations get more onerous over time, not less.

In short, the news from iraq. I don’t know what news source anyone could have that would cause them to think otherwise.

In any case, even if it does, against my prediction, turn out that there ends up being a US air-base in Kurdistan or something, would that really move the war from good to bad?

I can’t recall a single one in which you acknowledge the fact that war—by its very definition—involves an enormous degree of human suffering.

Discard your preconceptions, and listen to what the people on the ground are actually saying. A large proportion, probably a majority, find their personal lives better, right now during a low-intensity war, than under saddam’s rule.

This is not because war is fun: war is, as everyone knows, a bloody, horrible mess, where children get blown apart by shells, young men die for no good reason, mothers weep.

It is because the available alternatives are comparable or worse.

Recognition of Saddam’s regime killed millions, containment killed hundreds of thousands, the war has so far killed tens of thousands. Very likely there was a better plan than ‘this war now’, but it was probably still a war or the credible threat of one.

Most westerners have, from watching war films if nothing else, some kind of instinctive feel for how horrible a war is. They don’t need lecturing on that, it’s not 1914 any more.

I don’t think many first-world people watch ‘third world dictator’ films, have any kind of comparable feel for what a life of grinding poverty under sanctions and repression under a dictator are actually like.

That means the only way to honestly engage with these issues is to try to be as rational and detached as possible, because your instincts and prejudices will mislead, emotive language that feels true will be a lie.

soru

Thats not entirely true. The US did turn on European afffairs after WWI, but the idea that the US turned towards “isolationism” in the 1920s and 30s is an outdated and generally discredited thesis. The US was heavily involved in Latin America, for example. And even, to an extent, in Europe.

What there was in the wake of WWI and the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles was a rejection of “internationalism,” not a turn towards isolationism. Rather, it was a turn towards unilateralism and ad-hoc bilateralism.

You mean visible defeat for the jihadis who weren’t actually in Iraq until we invaded and turned the country into a terrorist theme park? Sorry, but I hardly see how that qualifies as an “achievement”—more like cleaning up one’s own mess.

And I’d love to see the source of your optimsim on this “no bases or oil deals” business. Why do you think either outcome is “pretty likely”?

Just as an aside, Soru—I have to say that the way you write about war is downright eerie. Apparently in your world, the cost-benefit analysis of war is really a benefit-benefit one: benefits realized, or benefits that could have been realized, or that might be realized at some point in the future. The costs are apparently either totally absent insignificant. I think at this point I must have read literally dozens of your comments on CT about the Iraq war. I can’t recall a single one in which you acknowledge the fact that war—by its very definition—involves an enormous degree of human suffering. You don’t minimize that suffering—you simply ignore it altogether. It’s really extraordinary.

So if, as seems pretty likely at the moment, the result matches that description (democracy and visible defeat for the jihadis, but no bases or oil deals), will you come back here and make a post admitting you were wrong about the war?

soru

Ok, but I meant what you outline in the next sentence. ‘Stability’ in Iraq was only possible through a brutal containment, which as you say, impoverished the ordinary people whilst allowing the regime to survive with contemptuous ease. This is basically why I ended up supporting the war. It shortly became clear, post-Gulf War I that sanctions were going to operate very differently from those opposed on the RSA but I didn’t know that at the time and wouldn’t have supported them if I had. The point you make about unemployment in Iraq is well-made: it’s one of the reasons I felt the decision to dissolve the army was such a bad one (pissed-off unemployed young men + guns = instability, see under ‘Weimar’) but again forms one of the reasons I supported the war. Prior to Saddam’s accession to power, Iraq had a GDP per capita roughly equivalent to that of Australia; post-Saddam, with his American-sponsored assault on Iran, and the sanction imposed after Kuwait, it’s now on a par with, god knows where, Somalia or something.

I certainly don’t disagree with the notion that the Americans are responsible for this, which is why I found myself welcoming the shift from containment to regime-change. I’d reiterate the point that it was the previous policy that was the scandal – but not many people got too worked up about that because it wasn’t on the telly that often.

I also wouldn’t deny for a moment that America had its own interests at heart; it has never fought a war – not even WWII - where it’s interests were not at stake. But the installing the democracy idea was a genuine motive behind the invasion for the simple reason that in the neocon analysis at least, it is in America’s interests to do so and I think (although I should probably only speak for myself) most of us who supported the war only found this the overlapping point of agreement with neoconnery. The point you make about their hubris and corruption is one I’d largely take but I was, and am, more sanguine about this because while everyone seemed to be concerned about runaway US power, I was always more conscious of it’s limits. Or to use a popular blogosphere example, it doesn’t matter what the PNAC have cooked up for a ‘New-American Century’ because it isn’t going to happen. Moreover, if I may strike a pessemistic note, I think there’s a good chance that the 21st century will see shifts in the world balance of power that’ll put the evils of ‘American Imperilaism’ rather in perspective. And I think, since you mentioned the 1930s, the whole 20th century, rather than just the juicy bits beloved of the hard left – misdeeds in Central America, secret bombings of Indo-China etc – should be taken to provide a little perspective now. The story of the 1930s, with its mass unemployment, civil unrest, and the rise of fascism, cannot be understood unless one takes account of the huge economic impact, never mind the political, of the United States turning in on itself. Is it really the case, even when one takes account of realpolitik in Latin America, Indo-China, and the Middle East, that the second half of the century was worse for the world – and for the reason of American interference? I couldn’t agree with that.