Big battle for Basra?

I’m particularly thinking of the line:

The Iraqi commander in charge, Lt Gen Ali Ghaidan, said the operation aimed to purge Basra of what he called “outlaws”.

plus the lock-down on the city, which seems pretty ominous to me.

We keep looking for meaningful punctuation in Iraq, but this is a long, tedious run-on sentence of incompetence and ferocity. Sadr’s militia isn’t strong enough to be anything but a perpetual spoiler. The biggest militia, the US occupation force, can put down any uprising through the application of massive airpower, and it has already done so many times.

The turmoil in Iraq will continue indefinitely, as an increasingly bored and complacent US citizenry ignore the piecemeal destruction of Iraq. Only financial exhaustion will end the US occupation, and that is still a few years away. Thus, looking for military “turning points” in the daily news from Iraq is a fruitless exercise.

a local puppet government that is prepared to lift a finger in its own defence is better than one which won’t

I’m honestly confused. What’s the positive outcome you now think is more likely? Suppose — in what seems to be your best case — that the intra-Shiite conflcit is resolved infavor of the Maliki government and whatever its base is, and Sadr is eliminated as a political force. What’s the route from there to a stable, unitary Iraq (especially given that the US continues to support Maliki’s major opponents)?

Real questions — I don’t understand the larger analysis here.

Attacks on the government are attacks on the occupation.

Badger
“This is about a meeting that took place in the NW Baghdad district of Kadhamiya. Voices of Iraq says the meeting, organized by the Sadr organization, included 300 tribal leaders, Shia and Sunni, from throughout Iraq, but the meeting also dealt with local issues including a promised re-opening of the “Bridge of the Imams” that links this mainly Shiite neighborhood on the west bank of the Euphrates with its twin district Adhamiya, mainly Sunni, on the east bank. (There is a nice satellite map on the website of the Meeting Resistance film, which was mostly filmed in Adhamiya.) Among the main points in the final statement of the meeting: A demand for scheduled withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq; and a statement to the effect the foreign forces are responsible for the internal divisions that have plagued Iraq since the invasion.”

I think you meant “political phronesis”

What’s the positive outcome you now think is more likely?

Getting some semblance of law and order (even simply on the basis of “government as the largest gang”) in Basra would in itself be an important positive outcome. More generally, if Maliki can come through this, then the prospect of stability until the next elections is enhanced, and at some point the US can credibly declare victory and depart the field. Assuming we then avoid the Rwanda-style massacre scenario (which might happen), then Iraq becomes a satellite state of Iran and the largely ungovernable province of Anbar becomes a fiefdom of roaming warlords and in all probability a training ground for al-Qaeda again. I meant “positive” in the sense of “sustainable improvement in the overall death rate in Iraq” rather than “geopolitically convenient for us”, and have more or less no interest at all in “can be spun into a positive talking point by British self-styled left wingers who want to vote Republican in the US elections”, just to be clear.

More generally, if Maliki can come through this, then the prospect of stability until the next elections is enhanced, and at some point the US can credibly declare victory and depart the field.

I see — you think a reduction in violence and a stronger government in Baghdad makes US withdrawal more likely. But why do you think this? Isn’t it just as likely that some measure of “success” will just encourage the US to stay?

Again, this is a real, not rehtorical, question.

But why do you think this? Isn’t it just as likely that some measure of “success” will just encourage the US to stay?

Because the US is running out of money and looking for excuses to leave, in my estimation. The other Vietnam book I keep re-reading is “Decent Interval” by Frank Snepp, and in my estimation, it’s begun.

satellite state of Iran

Sorry, but that’s just nonsense. For Iraq – with shitload of oil in the ground – there’s absolutely no reason to become economically dependent on Iran or any other state. And there’s no reason to expect Iran to invade and occupy Iraq militarily. How is this ‘satellite state of Iran’ scenario supposed to come about?

looking for excuses to leave, in my estimation.

Huh what? Please elaborate.

… and, there’s a bit of a contradiction here, isn’t there? Yes, a stronger Maliki government makes it more politically feasible for the US to leave, but it also makes it less politically costly for the US to stay. I mean, ok, Vietnam: If the US had found more effective proxies there, do you think the war would have been shorter, or longer?

Iraq again is unlikely to soon become as big an exporter as it once was

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2518224020080325

A shipping source at the Basra oil export terminal said operations were continuing as normal.

Crude oil shipments from the region totaled 1.54 million barrels per day in February, Iraq’s oil ministry said on Monday.

That’s just in the south and that’s the cheapest oil to extract in the world. 1.5 million barrels per day at $100/barrel is $150 mil/day is $54 billion/year. If there are, say, 10 million people in the south, that’s $5K/head/year; $20K/year for a family of four.

Am I wrong here?

I have to join in with Lemuel questioning Daniel’s judgment here. I think a defeat of Maliki would just be disastrous for the US presence in Iraq. I think the pro-war movement is heavily dependent on the ‘surge is working’ meme. I would compare a potential Maliki collapse to the Tet-offensive from a media perspective. You’d finally have people saying, “we’ve lost, there’s no point in staying”. To those paying attention, nothing has changed, but it could bring the public to see that without a political solution we aren’t making any progess. And we don’t have any idea how to achieve a political solution. Sure, more people might die if we leave, but Americans don’t care about that.

I think the pro-war movement is heavily dependent on the ‘surge is working’ meme.

Yes, and they were “dependent” on the purple fingers before that and on WMD before that. There will always be another bogus rationale for continuing the war as long as there are credulous or dishonest Americans willing to support it.

The US left Vietnam in 1975, seven years after the Tet offensive.

But what about the larger question?

You note that an important fact about Vietnam was the fecklesness of the US-backed factions there. And that if this Malki offensive in Basra is real, and successful, that will suggest his governmnet is importnatly different from its RVN equivalents. OK so far.

But you then suggest that this is a positive developemnt that is likely to hasten US withdrawal. With the logical implication being that if US-supported governments had enjoyed more political and military success, the US would have withdrawn from Vietnam sooner. Which seems, well, counterintuitive. No?

The US army will stay in Iraq as long as long as there’s some way of claiming that they have a legal right to be there. That includes the logic of the “right” to Guantanamo.

In the meantime the public hand wringing of the self consciously well meaning is more about self pity than concern. The arguments for staying and for leaving are both based on condescension and contempt.

“We have to help!”
or
“It’s hopeless!”

This has never been about Iraq or the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people are mature enough to know that. When westewn pwogwessives become as mature in their worldview as the average Iraqi we’ll be getting somewhere.

Lemuel, I prefer to think of all the puppies out there who aren’t being kicked, all because CT provides such a nice outlet for Seth’s bottomless, omni-directional rage and resentment.

The arguments for staying and for leaving are both based on condescension and contempt.

Mind you, he could save himself a lot of keystrokes by just creating an “Everybody’s wrong except me” autotext.

I like Seth’s fagbaitin’ “westewn pwogwessives” thing – it is so obvious those narcissistic lefties are also friends of a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPGb4STRfKw”>Biggus Dickus!” Wowdy wapscawwions!

If our goal is to have a functioning anti-terrorist buffer state, I would say that the length of time that we need to remain in Iraq would correspond almost exactly to the time required to exploit the Iraqi oil reserves. What a happy coincidence!

“hoping for US success in Iraq”

And what would that be, pray tell? Installling another Shah? Or another Saddam? Or Ahmed Chalabi? Apparently the only thing a “decent” American should expect is something that materially benefits the American Empire.

A decent American would summon up the honesty to denounce this appalling smash-and-grab attempt on Iraq’s oil and commence the payment of massive war reparations to the people of Iraq.

Americans are not always the good guys, and we have thoroughly disgraced ourselves in Iraq.

So, in the Vietnam context, at the margin an improvement in the performance of the South Vietnamese government would simply have prolonged the war with all its suffering and destruction.

Post 1968, maybe, but I don’t think that’s the relevant analogy – there’s no equivalent of North Vietnam in Iraq. Between 1963 and 1968, the North Vietnamese cadres were repeatedly surprised by the fecklessness and cowardice of the South Vietnamese army command, and the extent to which they undermined the USA’s attempts to reduce the VietCong from a ragtag guerilla army to isolated bands of terrorists (which would have been a manageable problem for South Vietnam, allowed it to persist as a state and saved thousands if not millions of lives). By repeatedly engaging in half-hearted attacks, and by manning and equipping outposts which it didn’t intend to properly defend, the ARVN basically ran a training and supply program for the VietCong, allowing them to upgrade from a ragtag guerilla army to a proper army. At the same time, the civilian South Vietnamese government systematically undermined their own power base through their innovative “fuck everyone who isn’t a French-speaking Catholic, then fuck half the French-speaking Catholics too” policy.

All of these acts of “learned helplessness” (an endemic condition among US puppet governments – if you have a policy of rewarding weakness with more troops and punishing success by withdrawing troops, you find out that, in my new favourite proverb, the military-industrial complex actually does work the way that Richard Posner thinks the whole government works) had the effect of lengthening the war and increasing American involvement. If the Diem government had taken more responsibility for its own security and handled its internal affairs better, the Americans could have been out of Vietnam in time for the 1966 World Cup. As it was, they gradually (gradually because their generals on the ground and cheerleaders in the media kept telling them they were “winning”) realised that Diem was a liability and got rid of him, but by that time things were irredeemably fucked.

Maliki had the chance to be a Diem and may still turn out to be one – there are powerful incentives pushing him that way. But I’m on the lookout for any evidence that he might be playing against type and the attack on Basra might be it.

I absolutely think it’s possible to hope the Americans win – since the war is a fact, I don’t really understand what it means to be “anti-war” in context. I also hope that the subprime mortgage crisis has a happy resolution and that Bear Stearns will trade at $75 a share, but I try not to let these hopes colour my assessment of what’s actually happening.

Thanks for the reply.

I absolutely think it’s possible to hope the Americans win – since the war is a fact, I don’t really understand what it means to be “anti-war” in context.

So let’s say, then, that the conflct is between wanting the war to end soon, and wanting it to end with an American victory; not only in the sense that it’s unlikely for both hopes to be realized, but in that efforts toward the latter are likely to actively impede the former.

You disagree, and think that effective control of Iraq by a US-backed state or states — a colorable US victory — is possible in the near term. Maybe you’re right, it’s an empirical question at this point. I do still think peace is far more likely to come to Iraq through American defeat, than through American victory, but it would be foolish to be very confident on this point.

Anyway, your argument is much clearer to me now, so thanks again. Guess I’ll leave it at that (and go borrow my mom’s copy of A Bright Shining Lie.)

“I would compare a potential Maliki collapse to the Tet-offensive from a media perspective

?analogy? The US left Vietnam in 1975, seven years after the Tet offensive.”

MPowell is correct; Tet was a crucial turning point, not least from a media perspective. After Tet the notion that America might eventually win in Vietnam became drastically less tenable. This in turn caused the media to start spinning in a different direction. The fact that things took as long as they did to wind down does not alter the fact that a phase change had taken place.

There will not be any good outcomes of this war, whether or not the US wins, just like in Vietnam.

You either get a weak Iraqi puppet regime, a Saddam-lite so to speak, with an ongoing civil war, or no puppet regime but still a civil war, or perhaps an Iran backed puppet regime with a civil war. But in any case, once the Americans finally leave the country will still be shot up, with over a million dead, millions more wounder or fled and no working infrastructure.

Vietnam had a good outcome after the Americans left. Vietnam defeated colonialism and imperialism, became independent and evolved according to its own nature. What other outcome could be better?

Vietnam had a good outcome after the Americans left. Vietnam defeated colonialism and imperialism, became independent and evolved according to its own nature. What other outcome could be better?

a purist might suggest that a totalitarian police state with nearly 10% of the population becoming refugees was not the optimal development path. ffs.

“Eyewitnesses in various parts of Sadr City told VOI that the American forces encircled Sadr City as of this afternoon, closing off all entrances, and took over the place of the Iraqi forces at the entrances to Sadr City. They said there was the intermittent sound of gunfire and the sound of explosions in various areas of Sadr City, which is under partial cutoff of electric power to some areas, as residents hurried to markets for food-supplies, fearing a deterioration of the situation.”

Puppet.

The link comes from B of course.

[you are also banned and for good reason, Dan, did you forget or something? There is a quite simple criterion here; if you accuse the hosts of being racists or apologists for genocide then it’s clearly impossible for you to have a civil conversation with us, and that means you can’t have a conversation at all. “I have a feeling that you would be happy to see thousands murdered” isn’t a “contrasting viewpoint” and nor are the accusations of anti-Semitism which earned you your own ban -dd]

There is always a cover story when a superior power plunders an inferior one. The Spanish conquistadors did not come to America to steal gold, but to save souls.

The Americans did not come to Iraq to steal oil, but to destroy WMD – no, to build a democracy – no, to defeat Al Qaeda – no, to protect the people from civil war – no…

Abb1: Vietnam had a good outcome after the Americans left. Vietnam defeated colonialism and imperialism, became independent and evolved according to its own nature. What other outcome could be better?

It was also a country whose infrastructure was devastated by three decades or more of constant war, with enormous environmental problems thanks to the Americans waging chemical warfare, not to mention quite a few physically disabled people as a consequence of the war.

Currently it’s attempting to make itself rich by being a low wage/slave labour manufacturing country serving America and China.

You might think everything was sweetness and light after the US was defeated, but for the Vietnamese it was a phyrric victory.

The US is supporting Abbas against Hamas and Maliki against Sadr.
Defending corrupt leadership against popular nationalist, not only sectarian, uprisings. I linked to a discussion of a meeting “organized by the Sadr organization, included 300 tribal leaders, Shia and Sunni, from throughout Iraq.” Is there any discussion of that in the pwogwessive media? Kvetchnik? No.

On Israel I’ve said this again and again, linking to discussions and data by recognized experts, who speak arabic, who’ve dealt with Hamas. Now I’m saying the same thing about Iraq. And DD who’s spent hours, days and weeks defending the various Lancet studies is now arguing in defense of the puppets of those responsible for the destruction on Iraq over the past 18 years.

Watch Sinan Altoon explain it.
For some reason its important for “serious” people to have more contempt for Iraqis and Palestinians than Americans and Israelis.

“Seriousness” is a disease that develops when self-importance, labeled “reason” trumps empiricism. You rage against Lieberman without recognizing the same symptoms in yourselves.

I disagree with defining Vietnam as ‘phyrric victory’. By this logic almost any victory in a defensive war would be a phyrric victory. Take the Soviets vs. the Nazis in the WWII, for example: they lost 20 million people, infrastructure was largely destroyed, etc. – but they won and that’s what counts. A victory is a victory.

Seth,

Here’s some coffee – no, not that cup, the real cup. Yes, you see two cups and two right hands, and that’s a problem. Let me put the cup into your hand. Here’s some aspiring – you’ll need it in a bit. Here’s the trashcan; you look like your stomach is about to send the whiskey back up. No, not the bottle; that got you where you are now. Just relax and drink some coffee.

The Visser piece is certainly very good.

The Visser piece is certainly very good.

Roger that.

Naaah, I’ll stand by my earlier evaluation: Vietnam might have won the war, but it was still a devestated country that is still suffering the consequences.

[what part of “banned” do you not understand?]

#78:
More accurately, Seth says some things that you’re trained to recognize as opportunities for scorn and derision, so you scorn and deride.
One of the unwritten rules of stuff like this is you don’t escalate negativity. You meet it head on, preferably with reserve and superior language. But you don’t escalate.
That what he said was in no way incoherent or whack is beside the point. You met his earnestness with pettiness and personal insult. Which makes you an asshole.

r.bubba-
If Americanizing “arsehole” is escalation, I stand guilty as charged.
Otherwise, no.
I can barely bring myself to type the quoted word, let alone speak it.
It’s always seemed bizarre. Until I met someone from England who could conclusively verify it wasn’t just some prissy stand-in, but was actually commonly used, I thought it was like that disemvowelled “f*ck” or “the ‘f’ word”, that some squeamish folks find to be acceptable parlance.
It’s unmelodious, and doesn’t scan.