Comments on: Troops out, slowly

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 13:15:20 +0000

Steve – Consider the possibility that the Iraq debacle was not a mistake, not the result of incompetence at all. That the stability of the country was itself the target. That the “mission” really has been accomplished, so of course it’s time to bring the troops home.
Doesn’t that mean withdrawng the military isn’t really the thing here? Important as it is.
Consider the possibility that Bush is no more responsible, in the sense of originating the drive toward and the execution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq than Zell Miller is.
Doesn’t that mean we have to do something more, something harder and scarier, than simply electing Democrats and getting out of Iraq? Don’t we have to get down to what really took place?
Isn’t it possible, given those possibilities, that some of these stalwart non-Republicans may be just as prone to puppetry and venal compromise as their GOP counterparts?
Thus proceeds my plea for a formal attitude about withdrawal and a slogan to represent it. Because to get it will necessitate confrontation with what has happened here as well as there.
That’s what’s missing from all the clamor.
The tacit assumption is incompetence and greed. My personal view is those were and are complicitous and ennabling flaws, but the main actors – the real causative players – are driven by zealotry and unbounded arrogance, and they’re still off-stage.
I’m with Foucault in this – politics is war by other means.
Know your enemy.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:27:07 +0000

Roy, I don’t think that’s really true of “the left”, it’s simply a question of how you reach those who are not on the left in order to deal with the immediate emergency- building support to get the hell out ASAP. I’m surrounded by conservatives where I live and work and I know how they think. They would be violently against many beliefs that you and I share, and sadly cannot be motivated the way you suggest; they may well NEVER reach the level of “honest grief and remorse” (or even frankly the level of giving a rat’s ass about Iraqis or any other foreigners) we’d both like them to feel. But they are turning against the war because their kids are dying for what they’re beginning to perceive as no reason, and they’re also susceptible to the argument that it’s making them less safe. Politics is the art of the possible, and we have to start by meeting people more or less where they are.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 03:50:50 +0000

italics end.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 03:50:08 +0000

Steve – agreed agreed. and it seems the big invisible obstacle to leaving would be the presentation of an accurate, moral, ethical, human attitude toward what happened as well as what’s happeing(leaving).
Thus the pseudo-debate involving “cut-and-run” and “stay-the-course”.
Troops out now yes good okay but you have to say something while you do it, and that as to be something real and solid and more than a soundbite catchphrase. It has to be meant and it has to be real.
And it will come reflecting the thing that went before, which was…?
It’s as though the whole clamoring left-wing, disparate and disorganized as it is, has no more regard for the Iraqis than the right-wing does.
We have to tell them something, and “Sorry, here’s your country back” won’t cut it.
My dream scenario has Bremer and Rumsfeld and a contingent of upper-rank rah-rah generals ceremonially redeeming the honor of America by comitting seppuku on the tarmac at Bagram as the last of the troops embark for home.
Something less cathartic but more realistic might get the job done at least temporarily, and I’m saying – point here in fewer words – that the groundswell of demand for it will form around a nucleus best signified by an honest expression of grief and remorse for what’s happened.

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 21:29:15 +0000

The post by maidhc (#17) lists possible outcomes if we leave, without trying to predict which will happen, which is intelligent, since the record of people making predictions about what will happen in Iraq is miserable. Maidhc missed at least one possibility: the longer we stay, the stronger Al Qaeda grows, so that when we eventually withdraw, Al Qaeda has a new political and territorial base, probably in the Sunni part of Iraq.

The fact is, folks, we do not know what will happen if we withdraw, and we do not know what will happen if we stay. Maybe withdrawal will be followed by massacres; maybe it won’t. We simply don’t know. Worse, whatever path we take, we will never know where the other path would have led.

It is safe to say that if the US withdraws now, it will be perceived as having been defeated. This will have repercussions, bad repercussions. For example, “stab in the back” politics by right-wing Americans. From a cold blooded political point of view, it would be better to let the Republicans burn for two more years in the fire they lit.

For me, withdrawal as soon as possible is the right answer, but I don’t like the politics of it.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:07:15 +0000

I don’t think they do ‘400 friends house by house’; Iraq is not Alabama. They have a structure, hierarchy; they do what their ayatollah tells them to do. And ayatollahs aren’t necessarily stupid people.

By: Victor Freeh

Victor Freeh — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:50:19 +0000

Umm..what do you think is happening in Iraq right now? Corporate restructuring?

This is the immediate response to “But if we withdraw there will be chaos!” and it’s certainly got some merit. Still, I can’t help thinking that at least in our current situation, you can’t march an army down the main street of Baghdad. If you hate Sunnis (or Shiites, take your pick), you can go get yourself an IED and set it off in the appropriate marketplace to kill a bunch of them. What you can’t do is get together with 400 of your best friends and go house by house through the appropriate neighborhood, killing everyone you find. (Something you’re especially likely to do if you suspect that the folks in that neighborhood are planning to do the same in yours.)

By: BruceR

BruceR — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:02:52 +0000

I’m personally looking forward to Jonah Goldberg’s next “enemy on my garden lawn” analogy. If a ravenous grizzly bear walked onto your lawn, would you run away, or would you maintain eye contact and back away slowly, etc… You can all write the rest by now.

By: Nabakov

Nabakov — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:44:24 +0000

“…major massacres of civilians…a Lebanon-type civil war is highly likely to break out…”

Umm..what do you think is happening in Iraq right now? Corporate restructuring?

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:12:37 +0000

“Major massacres of civilians” are likely to come when the majority Shi’ite government militias try to clean up all the Sunni militias…

Most likely they won’t. They do it now because they have the US military protecting them and assisting them; and as long as the US is protecting them, they have no reason to compromise, because they can’t lose; they will keep trying to “clean up” forever. Whatever compormise the Sunni leaders might offer – the Shia leaders have the clear incentive to reject it and press for more; why wouldn’t they – they can’t lose.

This is similar to the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

By: Victor Freeh

Victor Freeh — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:08:41 +0000

This is not a facetious question, I’m irritated beyond bearing by all this clamor for withdrawal that universally sidesteps the central question – what message you’ll leave in your wake.

I’m not clamoring for withdrawal myself but what a bizarre thing to say. For me the central question on this front is whether withdrawal will result (as I suspect) in an ethnically based civil war with all the attempts at mutual genocide that such things often entail. The central question is what message we leave in our wake? In this (and little else) you sound a lot like the current crop of Republicans.

By: stuart

stuart — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:21:03 +0000

“Major massacres of civilians” are likely to come when the majority Shi’ite government militias try to clean up all the Sunni militias and insurgents who, unsurprising, won’t really believe the democratic process is going to do anything except weaken their position – which it already has been doing. In doing so they are likely to kill civilians, and radicalise other Sunni’s and it is likely large numbers will die before that burns itself out or drops down to a lower intensity.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:11:11 +0000

“Withdraw troops slowly” seems like the sort of thing Steven Poole excels at eviscerating. It sounds careful, like putting a smoking bomb down gently before running for cover, or putting a fretful baby to sleep at night. It doesn’t speak of unseemly haste. It simultaneously panders to popular opinion (get the troops out now) while dressing it up as masterly control (proceed firmly but gently, as befits a Great Power). It contains, as noted above, no thought of how such a trickling out would play out on the ground.

How weird and sickening that it should be accepted as a wise thing to say to the public at election time.

By: abb1

abb1 — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:54:37 +0000

I got the feeling (infamous gut feeling) that “major massacres of civilians” aren’t nearly as certain as most people think. Again: most insurgent violence, perhaps over 90% of it, is directed against the foreign troops and the puppet government’s troops. Remove the provocation, remove the motivation – and there doesn’t seem to be much reason to fight.

Well, except perhaps Kurds vs. Arabs, but that should be relatively easy to prevent or at least to moderate.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:51:12 +0000

If there was a point in there somewhere, roy, I’m afraid it failed to pentrate my thick skull. Could you summarize it in fewer but more pointed words?

Anyway I was not attempting to discuss international morality, but merely strategies for making US politics, not perfect, to be sure, but more decent than at present. I always prefer to pursue limited but worthy and achievable goals rather than utopian ones.

I certainly agree that “everyone who’s died because we didn’t [leave] died without cause or justice.” I am outraged by that. The immediate problem is to convince the US public that we need to get the hell out of there before there’s any more of it. Furthering their education beyond that point is something we can worry about at our leisure after that’s been accomplished.