An open letter to Tom Maguire

At your blog, one of the most reasonable right-of-center blogs around,

Um, no. Maguire is a well-established expert at starting with the conclusion and working his way back to the facts. A well-worked mendacious argument isn’t ‘reasonable’. He must have hundreds of scars from Occam’s Razor.

What exactly is the issue here – that the bad guy stated something obvious? He and Michael Moore and the rest of the world minus a few wingnuts. Yeah, it’s a sensation.

Read the comments and you find:

To answer this: “Which one do you hate more?” Michael Moore or bin Laden?…tough call.

So this person can’t decide if they hate more a person presumably responsible for the death of thousands in a terrorist attack, or someone expressing political dissent through popular media.

The fact that this kind of hunger for totalitarianism is now unremarkable on the US right should really be a worry.

It seems like the real debate ender would be your position, in which it would be impossible to even point out or mention that bin Laden has shifted in his last couple of messages to arguments that just *do* overlap at points with the more extreme domestic war critics. That’s simply a matter of fact. Pointing it out doesn’t necessarily imply that these people share bin Laden’s other beliefs or support terrorism. It is to point out that bin Laden seems to be trying more to play to American audiences, using arguments first made by domestic critics which he apparently believes have traction. That’s an interesting change from his earlier statements which seemed more exclusive to the Muslim world. Discussing it doesn’t make you some sort of facist.

It is to point out that bin Laden seems to be trying more to play to American audiences, using arguments first made by domestic critics which he apparently believes have traction.

rd, that would be an interesting argument. In fact, I am interested by that prospect, and I don’t think you’re any sort of fascist for bringing it up.

But Tom Maguire (and I share Ted’s assessment of him) isn’t making that argument. I doubt Matthews was making that argument either. I think you’d have to be pretty careful, if you were to make that argument by comparing Osama’s rhetoric to lefty X’s, to make clear that you weren’t arguing “Lefty X is like Osama!” but rather “Osama is addressing Americans rather than exclusively the Muslim world.” Maguire isn’t even trying to thread that needle, as far as I can see.

There are times when the arguments made by virtually any partisan can be shown to be parallel to the rhetoric of some unsavory character.

But that’s not what’s going on here. Rather, the arguments made by certain partisans about how to deal with a certain unsavory character parallel the rhetoric of that same unsavory character.

When Osama bin Laden ridicules Bush for making a premature victory announcement on an aircraft carrier, or for reading a story about a goat during 9/11—just as many liberals and Democrats have—it doesn’t discredit the liberal/Democratic position, because Osama bin Laden’s awfulness makes his opinion of US presidential photo ops irrelevant, rather than wrong. (Likewise for his critique of American sexual mores, which occasionally parallels that of some conservatives and Republicans.)

Similarly, when he makes factual assertions on matters of partisan dispute, his claims are largely irrelevant. When he compares US torture practices to Saddam Hussein’s—as some liberals and Democrats do, to the consternation of many conservatives and Republicans—what matters is whether the comparison is factually supported, not whether Osama bin Laden happens to have endorsed it. Likewise, when he plays up his own imminent terrorist threat to America—as some conservatives and Republicans do, to the consternation of many liberals and Democrats—what matters is whether the threat is real, not whether he brags about it. His opinion on factual matters is in general untrustworthy, and therefore irrelevant.

But his opinion of how the US should confront and defeat him is much less likely to be irrelevant, since, although it’s not necessarily wrong, there’s strong reason to suspect that it’s at least calculated with his own interest, and not America’s, in mind. Thus, when he advocates American withdrawal from Iraq as the best course of action for America—when America’s presence is in no small part intended to combat the strength of bin Laden’s own organization there—it’s at least plausible to argue that (1) he’s arguing in his own interest, (2) his and America’s interests in that particular conflict are zero-sum, and therefore (3) his public position is highly unlikely to be in America’s interest as well.

So those who sound just like Osama bin Laden on the topic of what to do about Osama bin Laden’s insurgency in Iraq are a little different from those who sound like an arbitrary bad guy speaking on an arbitrary topic. Their position is the one that America’s enemy in war would like America to take with respect to him. That doesn’t make it necessarily wrong, but it certainly deserves its share of suspicion on that basis.

Osama – “Pull troops out of Saudi Arabia”

Bush – “OK, all out”

Osama – “Pull troops out of Afghanistan ”

Bush – We will reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan.

Osama – “Pull troops out of Iraq”

Bush – “We will reduce troops in Iraq

Does this mean that President Bush is objectively pro-terrorist?

Does this mean that President Bush is objectively pro-terrorist?

….Or that the Democrats actually approve of his conduct of the war?

Just Dan Simon. Disappointing.

Has Tom boarded the ‘Swiftboat’ against
Jack Murtha?

OBL did say we should get out of Iraq.
Does OBL sound like Murtha too?

BTW, Tom, many democratic legislators have
admitted that they too, like Bob Ney,
enjoy a round of golf on occasion.

I’m just impressed at Tom’s guts in releasing into the blogosphere an implicit defense of one of the most basic fallacies of logic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_undistributed_middle

Slocum – From what I understand about Muslim tradition it is customary to offer a peaceful solution before you anialate your enemy. In their own way they are trying to be true to their ideals. What bush has never understood is that a ground war against these people won’t work. Ask the Brits and Russians. OBL mentioned that it took 10 years for Russia to leave Afganistan having accomplish nothing but destroying their own economy. See, 10,20,50,100 years is nothing to these people. They just go back in their caves and wait. I think we should pay close attention to what he is saying. Unfortunately, if we were to do that we would either be weak pansy asses or traitors. So, I guess the only solution is to dump another 56k American lives, several more trillion $ and then declare victory. Just like in Vietnam.

No concern that Bin Laden obviously thinks they advance his own interests?

Nah, no concern here; this is just a replay of typical cold-war nonsense. As Studs Terkel would say: suppose bin Laden comes out against cancer – does that mean we should be for more cancer?

walt – Yes, we chose to let him go. Not worth the effort. I suppose the arguments were partially that he is semi-marginalized. It’s brutal terrain there. Heavy casualties to get him or anyone else.

I think that this is the pigeon-hole I had for you, slocum:

And oh yes, the Bush libertarians—who understand that the true libertarian sometimes has to suspend habeus corpus.

Could this be ‘reverse psychology’? C’mon—does anybody seriously believe that Bin Laden is using anti-war left arguments for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as a way of trying to make sure that U.S. doesn’t withdraw its forces?

Nice ad populum you got there.

Why not? Iraq is currently draining US resources and military preparedness — I believe that Mr Osama said that he wanted to do that. It foments anger and resentment. It provides the few foreign fighters in Iraq (I mean, apart from the 100k+ foreign fighters who are American) with a new Afghanistan, where Osama himself learned the jihadi thing. Bush’s Iraq policy is the gift that keeps giving.

Why not? Iraq is currently draining US resources and military preparedness—I believe that Mr Osama said that he wanted to do that. It foments anger and resentment. It provides the few foreign fighters in Iraq (I mean, apart from the 100k+ foreign fighters who are American) with a new Afghanistan, where Osama himself learned the jihadi thing. Bush’s Iraq policy is the gift that keeps giving.

Yeah, the 4+ years since 9/11 have been great ones for Bin Laden and Al Queda. Routed in Afghanistan along with their Taliban allies and reduced to hiding in the mountains. Despite repeated bluster, unable to mount even a single additional attack in the U.S. The brutality of the Iraq affiliate under Zarqawi in killing large numbers of Muslim civilians has disgusted so many that Al Queda’s support has been dropping almost everywhere in the Muslim world:

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/20051028203455.asp

The exception was Jordan, and that polling was done shortly before the sick bastards blew up the wedding in Amman. In Iraq, Al Queda’s Sunni allies have gone from boycotting to becoming ever more deeply involved in electoral politics (and are, of course, currently involved in negotiations over a unity government). There are also scattered reports of Iraqi Sunnis turning against and attempting to expel Al Queda’s foreign fighters from their areas.

Somehow, I don’t think all these bullet points were on the slides of Bin Laden’s five-year powerpoint plan in 2001.

…Al Queda’s support has been dropping almost everywhere in the Muslim world…

It must be this poll here; take a look.

The thing is, though, that Al Queda is not fighting the US to destroy the US. Al Queda is fighting to end US domination over the region they consider ‘theirs’, the Muslim world. Thus those in the US who want to stop imperial overreach (or whatever you want to call it) do indeed share this particular objective with Al Queda, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The Muslim world has to deal with Al Queda and obviously Muslims can do it much better than Messrs. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Blum is a friend of Meteor Blades from dailykos, John. Here’s my take on this issue:

(1) OBL (or whomever) has adopted Farenheit 9/11-type rhetoric. He appears to be making overtures to the US left.

I agree with (1).

(2) OBL wants the US to withdraw from Iraq. He thinks domestic criticism of the Iraqi war from the left works to his advantage.

I grant (2). It’s a reasonable interpretation of his intentions behind the recent taped speech.

(3) Therefore, the left is providing aid and comfort to OBL.

Nope on (3). What OBL thinks is irrelevant. He doesn’t know whether the Iraq war will in the end harm or aid his interests. Whatever else attacking Iraq was, it was a bold move with broad consequences. These consequences far outstrip anything OBL has expertise on.

OBL isn’t hooked up to the insurgency, has never lived in Iraq, and has no privileged perspective on whether the factions in Iraq are likely to accept an externally-imposed government and cooperate w/in that framework, or whether that goal is a pointless waste of US resources.

He’s also not an expert re how the war is going to reverberate across the region. Instead, he’s a fanatic with a warped view of history and his surroundings. For him, the Iraqi war is part and parcel with the 1492 Moore struggle for power in Spain.

Whatever faction of the US OBL judges to be a weakness is fairly irrelevant. Again, OBL is not an expert in forecasting the geo-political consequences of US involvement in Iraq. His views are a curiousity, sure, but really nothing more.

Reps and OBL apparently agree that opposition to the Iraq war weakens America. Bully for you guys for arriving at this alignment in judgment. I didn’t accept this judgment when it was just the Rs making it. My opinion doesn’t change because now the Rs *AND OBL* are making it. Suffice to say that you’re both wrong, and looking to OBL to bolster your position does you no credit.

I didn’t accept this judgment when it was just the Rs making it. My opinion doesn’t change because now the Rs AND OBL are making it.

Is that judgement a falsifiable one, something that evidence could show to be wrong?

We are not talking about opposition to wars in general, or to a hypothetical bad war, but this opposition to this war now.

If so, what evidence would you count as causing you to change your beliefs, if this tape, the afghan and iraqi elections, and so on, have not done so?

soru

Nice line – you would change your mind ‘if you came to believe’ various things. That almost makes it seem like you regard the matter as an empirical one, something to be decided by the evidence.

But of course, not quite, as you can simply continue to believe those things despite the evidence. Given the clearly counter-factual nature of some of the things you already believe (‘most’ money disappearing in graft, nowhere outside green zone secure, ‘young Republicans’ still running the operation), I would be interested to find out if you do end up changing your mind if the others become false too.

I have to say I’m getting tired of people saying “OK, up until now this has been a big lie and an incompetent mess, but that’s going to change, and if you don’t believe me about that you love OBL and hate freedom.”

You are aware that is a complete straw man, aren’t you? It is perfectly possible to oppose the war in an irrational and emotional way, leading to predictably bad consequences of the type Juan Cole talks about, without in any way ‘loving OBL’ or ‘hating freedom’. Or do you think good intentions alone spares anyone from responsibility for consequences?

The question is whther or not actions taken will have that result, not the emotional state of those advocating the actions.

soru

Yeah, evidence would help, soru. You’re starting to sound New Ageish.

Except for the Kurdish areas (I forgot to mention them! so sue me) as far as I can tell, no one is safe outside the Green Zone. That’s one of the lessons people are drawing from the recent kidnapping of the American reporter, but it isn’t really a new idea to most people. Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman think differently of course. (If the reporter turns out to have been in some way a liberal, I imagine we’ll see peanut gallery gloating if she’s killed, too.)

The other stuff I said wasn’t counterfactual either. There are billions of dollars of unaccounted dollars in Iraq, and there was plenty of graft in what’s accounted for. Many of the hirees in Iraq have none but ideological and family qualifications.

Yes it’s possible to oppose the war in an irrational and emotional way. What’s your point here?

No, people are actually accusing us of loving OBL and hating freedom. It’s not a straw man. That’s what we’re talking about on this thread. (And yeah, you and Dan Simon aren’t saying exactly what the others are saying. You’re just saying that you think that they are, in many respects, right. But they are still the topic of the thread, not you.)

Are you a philosophy or speech major? Law student? What I see in your posts is a lot of what seem to be your favorite argument forms, but with only weak connections to any actuality? Which jibes with your stated indifference to evidence, I suppose.

_Is that judgement a falsifiable one, something that evidence could show to be wrong?

We are not talking about opposition to wars in general, or to a hypothetical bad war, but this opposition to this war now._

Falsifiable? My argument was that OBL’s opinion on the anti-Iraq war movement is *utterly and entirely irrelevant*, given the specifics of this war, at this time. E.g., a little specific like the fact that the Iraq war has little to do with Al Qaeda and a lot to do with the larger dynamics of the Middle East (and the EU), about which OBL is no expert.

Why conservatives like yourself think you can get some anti-left traction out of OBL’s apparent approval of the anti-war movement is beyond me. OBL’s got some sort of intelligence, sure, but he’s also deranged and has a penchant for placing events into idiosyncratic context. His opinion should be noted, and then tossed in the nearest garbage can. OBL doesn’t have a clue what’s in the best interests of the US, for all the reasons I listed above.

So I can’t see why you think I’ve insulated my position from recalcitrant data, such as to make my position unfalsifiable. Allow me to turn the tables: why do you put any stock in a nutcase such as OBL and his opinion that the anti-war left (note: a war to which he is not a party) is weakening the US?

I’ll play your falsifiability game briefly, though this brings us rather far afield from OBL’s specific contribution. I would reconsider my position if:

* a large majority of Iraqi’s wanted us there. They don’t.

* Their was good reason to think our presence would quell sectrian hatred and help Iraq avoid civil war. There isn’t.

* The price tag for such an operation was much, much less than 1+ trillion, several 10s of k dead, and many more injured. In fact the price tag is growing.

Reverse those three, get rid of the permanent bases and nationalize the oil and you might have a humanitarian operation on your hands vs. a pie-in-the sky hope for a fulcrum of US power in the region.

Why conservatives like yourself think you can get some anti-left traction out of OBL’s apparent approval of the anti-war movement is beyond me

First thing, I’m no conservative.

Second thing, forget weakened, I think america would be immensely strengthened by the presence of an actual left wing or liberal party, one that had a clue about world history, an idea about the way people outside america lived and thought, and a basic grounding in the knowledge of how and why wars are fought.

What you’ve got is a big gaping hole between John McCain and Michael Moore. How could that hole not be a weakness?

Go check out some facts, like what the last opinion poll in Iraq actually revealed, who is running the current US operations in Iraq, or how many seats insurgent-associated parties actually won. Then think how you can base a policy, a platform, on those realities, not the world as you wish it would be to make your job easier.

soru

I see you’ve moved on from intimating, via rhetorical questions, that the anti-war movement is aiding and abetting OBL:

_No concern that Bin Laden can incorporate them [anti-war talking points] wholesale into his worldview without any cognitive dissonance?_

Now you’re making questionable admonitions:

_Go check out some facts, like what the last opinion poll in Iraq actually revealed_

First, I told you what to make of bin Laden’s incorporation: absolutely nuthin’. And I told you why. You haven’t really responded.

Re opinion polls, last one I saw had:

• 82 per cent are “strongly opposed” to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml

It’s a few months old, but I doubt things have changed. IIRC, the US enjoyed about 50/50 Iraqi support in summer ’03 and there’s been a steady decline since. Hence the absurdity of any argument that we ought to stay at this point ‘for the Iraqi’s sake’ since they themselves don’t want us.

You’ll have to be more specific about your other complaints re; the results of the recent elections and whose currently running the operations etc. None of your metrics for improvement, I note, have been occasioned by a drop in violent deaths. Feel free to enlighten further, but you appear to be grasping at straws.

abb1, OBL had this famous quote:

“Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia be repeated in Palestine,”

http://www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0162.htm

Not the same as calling for the reconquering of Spain, obviously, but some speculate that this sentiment is linked to the Madrid bombings.

Hence the absurdity of any argument that we ought to stay at this point ‘for the Iraqi’s sake’ since they themselves don’t want us.

The telegraph poll has been discussed at length here before – there has never been any supporting data released along with it, in the way you get with other polls, and while perhaps the summary is not innacurate, I think trusting it as a primary source, as opposed to a rumour of what someone said to someone else, is rather foolish.

In any case, a more recent BBC-sponsored all-provinces poll produced rather different results:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/PollVault/story?id=1389228

Specifically, 26 percent of Iraqis say U.S. and other coalition forces should “leave now” and another 19 percent say they should go after the government chosen in this week’s election takes office; that adds to 45 percent. Roughly the other half says coalition forces should remain until security is restored (31 percent), until Iraqi security forces can operate independently (16 percent), or longer (5 percent).

So if you are calling for withdrawl now, according to that poll 75% of Iraqis would disagree.

In my judgement, withdrawl very likely will happen sometime within the next two years. But, the difference between a withdrawl based on a solid military judgement of success in reaching identified goals, and one based an what looks rather like a domestic political panic attack, is similar to the difference between climbing down a cliff and being pushed off it.

soru

But, the difference between a withdrawl based on a solid military judgement of success in reaching identified goals, and one based an what looks rather like a domestic political panic attack, is similar to the difference between climbing down a cliff and being pushed off it.

Bush wil do what he does based on domestic political considerations. This whole argument is about getting ready to blame Democrats if Bush decides to withdraw at a bad time, as seems possible.

Soru pretends to believe that the war is going well and that Bush will do the right thing if allowed to, but everything he’s ever done has been political and opportunistic (except for the whoring and the drinking and the cocaine), and once his Iraq dreams turned sour, he had no idea what to do next there.

But he does know how to use the Iraq war to marginalize his domestic opponents, and that’s what he’s doing.

Soru’s accurate and detailed statistics on Iraqi approval ratings represent the moral defeat of the anti-war opposition left. There’s no way possible to overcome a force that can conjure numbers like that without having to leave their fortified hotel rooms.
“BBC-sponsored” – that means it was contracted out? But it has that cachet of ubiased integrity from the good old days of BBC intrepidity.
To whom it was contracted we need not bother about. Except that most non-military presence in Iraq now don’t go anywhere that would expose them to, you know, bombs and stuff.
So either the very precise poll numbers are being generated by wishful thinkers in virtual space, or they’re being collected by highly-select individuals out in the very dangerous field of war – like say Blackwater or one of the other fine organizations now deployed in Iraq to further the interests of their paymasters.
Which interests don’t seem to coincide too frequently with the needs of the increasingly desperate Iraqi people themselves.
It’s just that numbers like 26% and 19% and 45% and 31% have such a ring of truth to them; they seem so precise, or something.
You’d have to really know what you were doing to come up with numbers like that. None of this “around” 20% or 30% nonsense.
How could we ever hope to defeat such omniscience?
Maybe with God on our side.
Or was that a different post?

…presence of an actual left wing or liberal party…

There’s hardly anything in common between ‘left-wing’ and ‘liberal’.

Their desire for “an actual left wing or liberal party” existed purely in the abstract; when pressed to describe such a party—what policies it should espouse, how it should dissent or otherwise oppose the existing conservative movement—my respondents invariably ended up describing “an actual left wing or liberal party” that was basically indistinguishable from what anyone else would call “moderate conservatism”.

Free universal health care, national minimum wage, wealth redistribution through taxation, the outlawing of all forms of paid political advertising, the founding of a second-generation Kyoto regime, security handled through a credible system of international law that reflected the world realities of 2006 not 1945, want me to continue?

In short, you are wrong about the contents of my head. Given that fact, are you prepared to consider the possibility that you are wrong about some other things too?

soru

Free universal health care, national minimum wage, wealth redistribution through taxation, the outlawing of all forms of paid political advertising, the founding of a second-generation Kyoto regime, security handled through a credible system of international law that reflected the world realities of 2006 not 1945, want me to continue?

Its funny, because in most of Europe these positions would easily be held by someone who might plausibly be called a moderate conservative. The only real exception is the “outlawing of all forms of paid political advertising” which, depending what you mean, probably isn’t a view held by very many people on the left.

Still, soru’s most important question remains what would convince us on the left to see the war as legitimate? What would convince those of us that never believed there were any WMD that the failure to find those was an honest mistake? What would convince us that the complete disinterest in assessing what appear to be enormous Iraqi casualties stems only from compassionate humanitarianism? What would finally win us round to the idea that rendition, indefinite detention and torture are essential in this fight for freedom? Or that the millions of dollars “earned” by US companies was all for the Iraqis own good?

I really don’t know.

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

Soros, here’s the actual poll.

Check questions 31 and 32.

Q31 – Since the war, how do you feel about the way in which the United States and other Coalition Forces have carried out their responsibilities in Iraq?

Base = All respondents who heard of the Coalition Forces (Q19)
Have they done … Count %
A very good job 164 9.6
Quite a good job 454 26.6
Quite a bad job 322 18.8
A very bad job 679 39.8
I do not know enough about it 47 2.7
I prefer not to answer this question 41 2.4
Total 1707 100.0

Q32 – Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the presence of Coalition Forces in Iraq?
Base = All respondents who heard of the Coalition Forces (Q19)
Count %
Strongly support 218 12.8
Somewhat support 330 19.4
Somewhat oppose 355 20.8
Strongly oppose 746 43.7
Difficult to say 58 3.4
Total 1707 100.0

58% say we’ve done a bad job, 36% say we’ve done a good job.

64% oppose our presence, 32% support our presence.

Consider question 38. The people who think security has improved mention coalition forces 1st or 2nd about 5% of the time. We come in 8th on the list, where Don’t Know/NA comes in third.

But the ones who think security has deteriorated attribute it to coalition forces 33% of the time, we’re the first on that list.

Getting US forces out of iraq is one of the top three priorities for 25% of the sample, we came in fifth after regaining security, rebuilding infrastructure, establishing a stable national government, and getting a decent living for most iraqis. It ranked above rebuilding the economy, increasing oil production, rebuilding education, etc. (Q14A)

Q10 — What would be the worst thing that could happen to Iraq in the next 12 months? The occupation not leaving came in fourth, ahead of Division of the Country, No government, Current situation continues, No services, etc.

You interpreted Q32 to say that 51% of iraqis don’t want us to leave soon. But the way it went, 45% said we should leave when the government is in place (that should be by April at the latest). Another 31% said we should stay until security is restored. You figure that will be a long time, but maybe they think it will be pretty quick. Another 15% thinks we should stay until their security forces can act independently. Again you figure that’s a long time, but they likely expect it to be very soon. If we include those with the get-out iraqis instead of the stay-put iraqis, it’s 91% that want us out pretty quick. Which way should it get interpreted? I dunno, but the other questions I quoted look less ambiguous than that one.

Incidentally, Q22 is interesting in itself.

When they asked people about political actions they have done, might do, or would never do, 65% said they’d never join a political party. 64% said they’d never take action like demonstrating. And 22% told the polsters they’d never talk with other people about politics!

These are people who’ve lived a long time with secret police. Two thirds of them say they oppose the presence of coalition forces. Only 4.3% say that getting us out of iraq is no priority at all. (Q14B) Rather like the Q33 4.5% who said we should stay forever or leave eventually. These are likely to be the ones who still don’t trust pollsters not to turn them in to the secret police. On the other hand, some of them might be kurds.

. You figure that will be a long time, but maybe they think it will be pretty quick. Another 15% thinks we should stay until their security forces can act independently. Again you figure that’s a long time, but they likely expect it to be very soon.

Actually, I would expect that to be relatively quickly, starting this year if nothing unexpected happens.

Militarily (i.e. as a matter of counter-insurgency, see other posts on this blog for a primer) the war is won, has been for over a year ever since Sadr failed to organise a unified national resistance movement.

The only requirement is to successfully get out in a way that avoids turning that victory into a defeat.

This means a voluntary, planned withdrawl, not one forced by domestic political pressure, or one that looks like it was.

If we include those with the get-out iraqis instead of the stay-put iraqis, it’s 91% that want us out pretty quick.

Except if you dont have insider info, you don’t the faintest idea what the actual questions in the other poll were – as we have shown, the same question and answers can be reported as 75% for or 91% against. This makes them pretty worthless.

soru

But elections, what about the elections…

I don’t think that that’s the best way to frame the question, but the answer is probably “no”. Al Qaeda is in Iraq opportunistically, and they will go somewhere else if Iraq stops being fun for them. (The Iraqis will have to stay, of course.)

It sounds as though you are still pushing a version of the flypaper theory, but I think that the US is more tied down in Iraq now than al Qaeda is.

“Militarily (i.e. as a matter of counter-insurgency, see other posts on this blog for a primer) the war is won, has been for over a year ever since Sadr failed to organise a unified national resistance movement.”

Militarily, the war was completely won in the first three weeks. End of story. Sadr was irrelevant, he said he wanted us to withdraw, and we said we were going to kill him or put him in Abu Ghraib. The conflict with Al Sadr was a war of choice for us. We didn’t need to fight him at all, and it hurt us to do it — despite our military “victory” which Sistani interrupted.

If we had announced that we did intend to withdraw, but we wanted to leave things orderly and it would take as long as a year, then Al Sadr wouldn’t have had much support for military action and the whole resistance would have been dramatically weakened. But Bush refused to say anything like that. Withdrawal was not the plan. Bush had no intention of withdrawing at all. Various americans pointed out that we hadn’t withdrawn from germany yet and there was no reason to think we’d ever, ever withdraw from iraq.

About the time of the Sistani-imposed truce with Al Sadr, various military guys claimed that Bremer started it, that they didn’t make the decisions. But they had been pretty enthusiastic in their kill-or-capture operations against Al Sadr, If they’d shirked on that a little, Bremer wouldn’t have found out.

“The only requirement is to successfully get out in a way that avoids turning that victory into a defeat.”

Well, yes. Getting out without a defeat would be very very nice. That ought to be the goal now, and I think if we do it carefully it’s possible.

“This means a voluntary, planned withdrawl, not one forced by domestic political pressure, or one that looks like it was.”

Sure, but what’s the evidence that we’re planning one? What I see being planned is a reduction in forces — one demanded by our military manpower crisis. Scheduled before the November elections this year. I have no real clue what the Bush administration is planning beyond that, and neither do you.

If it happens that we aren’t actually planning a withdrawal but only an occupation with fewer troops, then the chance of a successful withdrawal is small.

Soru, by the usual way of thinking, “withdraw” means we get our troops out of the country.

Bush had no intention of doing that back in those days which seem so long ago. He may have no intention of doing it now.

“Except if you dont have insider info, you don’t the faintest idea what the actual questions in the other poll were – as we have shown, the same question and answers can be reported as 75% for or 91% against. This makes them pretty worthless.”

Ignore the poll where you don’t know what the questions were. The question you quoted can be interpreted as 55% for or 91% against. But look at the other questions on the poll. They want security, and they don’t trust the USA at all to get it for them. They don’t trust the USA to do reconstruction. They get scared when they see US forces and try to avoid them. (It really doesn’t matter whether they avoid us because they’re afraid we’ll kill them, or avoid us because they think we attract fire.)

A large minority of the iraqi representative Assembly has signed a demand that US forces pull out. It would be interesting to see how many of the native iraqi representatives have signed it compared to expatriate representatives. But it’s hard to get much information out of iraq.

Anyway, this particular poll does not seem worthless at all to me, though it was done back in November. But as usual with polls you have to be careful what conclusions to draw from it. They didn’t ask the question “How many years should US forces stay in iraq”. They certainly didn’t ask how many years US forces should continue to occupy iraq. Officially we aren’t occupying iraq any more, we handed off sovereignty to Allawi a long time ago. Just, the iraqi military takes its orders from us, and we do whatever we want, we can’t be tried in iraqi courts and our contractors can’t be tried in any court, that sort of thing. There’s a subtle legal distinction between what we’re doing and occupation. Since we can’t say we’re occupying the country, we can’t make the distinction between what israel does in palestine versus what the USA does in germany. We can’t promise we’ll stop occupying them and just stay in our bases. It turns into a question of stay or go.

I would say the right way to frame this question in the present circumstance is: ‘can al qaeda be defeated in Iraq?’

Not to the Iraqis, it’s not.

Militarily, the war was completely won in the first three weeks.

I think that Saddam’s forces planned exactly what we’re seeing, having learned from the first Gulf War that their formal military was useless and helpless. So I don’t think that we won much.