There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.
Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.
It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no formal communication. The next installment would be this weekend's unprecedented meeting in Iran of the presidents of Iran, Syria and Iraq, if it takes place.
What does this tell us? It tells us that regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work in their own self-interest -- without the United States. This is the most encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East.
We are a long way from a sustained peaceful resolution to the anarchy in Iraq. But this latest set of events is moving the Middle East in the only direction it can go with any hope of lasting progress and peace. The movement will be imperfect, stuttering and difficult.
America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission.
The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.
We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.
It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.
To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.
The writer is a Republican RINO senator from (a zoo in) Nebraska.
Men without honor uttered the words "Peace with Honor" 35 years ago, and they failed to live up to them. I bought into them then, but I won't now.
Wars are messy. Victory is not always apparent, but I guess dishonorable men prefer the certainty of defeat to the uncertainty that we are winning.
We cannot win if we leave. We cannot kill terrorists if we leave. We can no longer convince any ally that we are serious about supporting them militarily if we leave.
No, I think you summed it up pretty well: We cannot win if we leave. We cannot kill terrorists if we leave. We can no longer convince any ally that we are serious about supporting them militarily if we leave.
Though I wonder if the bulk of the damage has already been done: how can any adversary listen to the words coming out of the Donks, the MSM, and idiots like Hagel, and still take us seriously?
Posted by: Dave D. ||
11/25/2006 12:56 Comments ||
Top||
#4
We are getting ready to make History here. If the LLL's have thier way we are going to become the FIRST nation in History to ever SURRENDER in a war because the enemy was killing to many OF HIS OWN CIVILIANS.
People if the LLL's suceed in this humiliation of humiliations of our nation. I don't know about you guys but the only next war I will be willing to go to will be the one in our own streets to deport ALL LLL's and thier allies and ilk.
Iraq War historically speaking on every level= economic the Military budget including the supplementals is around 4.5% GDP less than the early 80's peace time budget (no war bonds no war taxes BOOMING Economy still), US civilian draw .05% of the population is involved in this WOT, military casualties we lost more men on Wake Island in WW2, ect..
The LLL's since day one has been on a mission to make this WOT a failure wether it is or is not (tell a lie enough it becomes truth, Gerbals).
#5
By the way even those UNIMAGINABLE CARNAGE the LLL's call Iraq's regular murder rate (that is what it is when terrorist randomly kill people in the street either with bullets or bombs or knives whatever) are not even SOOoooo unimaginalbe at all.
#10
Hey people. After US army leaves Iraqi Shia will massacre Iraqi Sunnis. In response, Shia will be massacared in majority Sunni, Dar countries. Now, some people might say that this is a bad thing.
#11
"CANNOT IMPOSE A DEMOCRACY" > Get real, compared to MacArthur, Patton, or Chesty Puller, etc.......or even General Crook, CENTCOM HASN'T EVEN TRIED YET. There are some things that only War = Military Force = Force of Command = Brutality/Fog of War can accomplish, NOT THE POLS IN WASHINGTON. Things = Decisions = Actions that can induce a Commander at any level to wilfully put his Rank, Career, + Authority in jeopardy. We can't all be Politically Correct, we can't all be YES-MEN. MUDVILLE GAZETTE > "Good people can sleep well/soundly at night becuz ROUGH/BAD MEN ARE READY TO DO BATTLE ON THEIR BEHALF". HENRY FONDA > "Captain York, when you command this Regiment, .... .... COMMAND IT".
The draft would weaken the world's best military.
Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel created a stir once again this week with his call for renewing the military draft. His own party leaders quickly disavowed any such plan, suggesting just how unpopular the idea is among most Americans. Yet the proposal deserves some further inspection before it vanishes, if only to expose its false assumptions about the current U.S. military.
A vocal Iraq war critic, Mr. Rangel told CBS News recently, "There's no question in my mind that this President and this Administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."
In other words, Mr. Rangel's real argument is about class in America, not over the best way to fight Islamic terrorism overseas. He's suggesting that somehow only the poor serve in Uncle Sam's Army. But his views are both out of date and condescending to those who do serve. Alas, they are shared by many on the political left, who think that the military places an unfair burden on the working class.
Americans have long made fun of the French love of finding solutions before knowing what the problem is. Yet the U.S. political and media elite has itself taken up the habit - with a quest for "elegant solutions" in Iraq.
The sense that unhappiness on Iraq led to losses by President Bush's Republicans has opened the floodgates for all sorts of ideas, some fanciful, others derelict. Two such ideas appear to be the talk of the town in Washington.
The first is to "cut and run" - or, more palatably, "whistle and walk away." Supporters of this idea don't care what might happen to Iraq or the Middle East as a whole. For most, the toppling of Saddam Hussein was a secular version of original sin, which nothing short of the political destruction of Bush (and Britain's Tony Blair) can expiate.
The trouble is, "cut and run" is easier said than done: It is always easier to send an army in than bring it out.
#4
I'd nominate atomic weapons and neutron bombs in particular as exceptionally "elegant solutions". With minimal exposure to danger for your own troops, your foe can be subjected to tremendous fatalities with incredible damage to infrastructure, if so desired. All at economical cost, easyly delivered and conveyed in a manner that is very difficult to thwart.
Japan's surrender was obtained with minimal loss of life on both sides. This, in contrast to potential millions of lives lost via conventional warfare and land invasion. Our use of atomic weapons was indeed an elegant solution.
If Islam persists in its commission of escalating atrocities, nuclear incineration of the MME (Muslim Middle East) will again represent another elegant solution to an equally intractable problem. It is up to Islam to avoid making this necessary.
#6
One option I've seen little discussion of is a US pullback mostly to Kurdish Iraq, which currently has very few US forces there (they're not needed). The Kurds (compared to the remainder of Iraq) have been working together relatively peaceably since before 2003, and their existence in a disintegrated Iraq would be threatened by Turkey and Iran. Media and government ruminations about "solving" the Iraq mess continue to ignore the existence of a peaceful and orderly portion of Iraq that might be serve as a place of refuge for civilization and a germ of regrowth. There is a fair amount of oil to financially support an semi-independent "Kurdistan" and quite a bit more in the formerly Kurdish areas near Mosul and Kirkuk. US forces there would be well-positioned to keep Iran away from the remainder of Iraq, or to take over after the Sunnis and Shiites depopulate and wreck the rest of the country, an outcome (given the amount of munitions, political corruption/incompetence in the new government, ill-will and general Islamic truculence) that seems more and more likely as the months go by. An inelegant and impractical "boots on the ground" solution (maybe the only thing that would work in the sense of having the fewest number of innocent and unjust deaths) would be an army of a million or more ground troops to enforce order under martial law, seal the borders, confiscate weapons, search & destroy terrorists, military tribunals followed by death by firing squad and the noose, and generally knock blockheads together until a new generation of Iraqis have a chance to grow up knowing what a peaceful existence under rule of law feels like. I know there isn't enough military force available to the US for this, and certainly insufficient domestic and international political support for this. This is also anathema to the political traditions of the USA, although the Roman Empire would have understood this solution. Many potential Iraqi allies/collaborators (with respect to the US) have been killed, discouraged or rendered insane by the sustained terror campaign since 2003. Something similar is necessary to protect the helpless in Darfur, but even people who would like something productive done there don't have the stomach for the amount of violence and abrogation of locally-revered "sovereignties" that would entail. Nothing productive will be done for the Darfur situation until one side is annihilated. There are too many sides to Iraq for even that kind of "victory".
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page B07
The Baathists of Baghdad killed their opponents for all the usual reasons and a few original ones. They often slaughtered just to keep in practice, or for recreation, as shown on the videotapes they systematically made of their crimes. The Baathists of Damascus are more traditional. They murder adversaries only when necessary, after bribery, coercion or intimidation fail.
A disease is eating away at the Middle East. It afflicts the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Lebanese, even the Israelis. It is the idea that the only political determinant in the Arab world is raw force - the power of physical intimidation. It is politics as assassination.
This week saw another sickening instance of this law of brute force, with the murder of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese Cabinet minister who had been a strong critic of Syria. Given the brutal history of Syria's involvement in Lebanon, there's an instant temptation to blame Damascus. But in this land of death, there are so many killers and so few means of holding them to account, we can only guess at who pulled the trigger.
I fell in love with Lebanon the first time I visited the country 26 years ago. Part of its appeal, inevitably, was the sense of living on the edge - in a land of charming, piratical characters who cherish their freedom. Lebanon has great newspapers, outspoken intellectuals, a wide-open democracy. It has almost everything a great society needs, in fact, except the rule of law.
#5
The so-called "prophet" of the Arabs, participated in 59 separate wars, bandit operations, sieges, and massacres. He also kidnapped a fellow tribesman, for ransom, and once raped a woman while her murdered husband's blood was on his clothes. Arab Muslims can be expected to emulate their racial hero.
Pity the Europeans who are importing by the million, these dregs of humanity.
#7
Those who imagined they could stop the assassins' little guns with their big guns - the United States and Israel come to mind - have been undone by the howling gale of violence. In trying to fight the killers, they began to make their own arguments for assassination and torture. That should have been a sign that something had gone wrong.
Puhleeze ... this is the old "fighting the terrorists on their level will make you into terrorists" horseradish. What our "own arguments for assassination and torture" prove is merely that the level of depravity and thuggery we have encountered goes well beyond the capabilities of those normally civilized tools we tend to apply. If Medieval is called for, Medieval is what they'll get, with a few technological updates thrown in at no extra charge.
The Middle East needs the rule of law - not an order preached by outsiders but one demanded by Arabs who will not tolerate more of this killing. Any leader or nation who aspires to play a constructive role in the region's future must embrace this idea of legal accountability.
None of which have any Arabs shown the slightest inclination for putting in place. It defeats their only known methods of achieving success, namely, corruption, graft, bribery, venality and a rapacity normally matched only by cold-blooded reptiles.
If once upon a time I did manage to Pity the Arab nation, that was something I scraped off the bottom of my shoe before entering the real world.
The strategy of militant Islam is to create anarchy by near-random killing and destruction. The unpredictability of the destruction is a 'force multiplier' - a little destruction goes a long way in creating the perception of helplessness of the authorities to effectively maintain order.
The common people (sheeple) cannot handle chaos, so Sharia law becomes acceptable as the only percieved alternative to no law at all. I would contend the establishment of fascist governments throughout history and geography is based on this same human characteristic ('At least he (Mussolini) made the trains run on time'.) That the rule of law is Sharia and the fascists are theocrats is all that distinguishes the current conflicts from so many others in the past.
#12
Perhaps David Ignatious needs to read some 107 words of wisdom from Winston Churchill instead of wringing his hands:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as
hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The
effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly
systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of
property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A
degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the
next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every
woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a
child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of
slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among
men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence
of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being
moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has
already spread throughout Central Africa , raising fearless warriors at
every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong
arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the
civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of
ancient Rome ."
Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages
248-50,
London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
The leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah has urged his supporters to stay off the streets in the wake of the assassination of anti-Syrian politician Pierre Gemayel. Hezbollah is supported by Syria, and the Hezbollah leadership is clearly worried about being attacked over its ties with Damascus at such a sensitive time. But Hezbollah has been making a play for more political power and its largely Shi'ite Muslim support base is impatient for an improvement in its position, as our Middle East Correspondent Matt Brown discovered when he visited Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut.
MATT BROWN: This is Hezbollah territory. In Dahiyah in southern Beirut, the yellow and green flag of Hezbollah dominates the scene. The locals are overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslims.
(Sound of car stereo)
Young men drive around with the words of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, blaring form their car stereos.
(Sound of motor scooter engine)
And Hezbollah security men patrol the streets on motor scooters, a two-way radio on their belts, a handgun sometimes stuffed into their waistband.
Hezbollah is sponsored by Iran and Syria and all three are popular on these streets.
VOX POP 1: All the people here love Hezbollah, and Syria is not a terrorist and Hezbollah is not a terrorist, and Iran.
MATT BROWN: Dahiyeh is a suburb devastated by Israeli bombing during the war with Hezbollah in July. A massive clean up and construction job is underway and Hezbollah has funded much of the reconstruction with the generous support of Iran. Syria's been accused of doing its bit by resupplying the Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon with advanced weapons, ready for the next round with Israel. Meanwhile Hezbollah's been making a bid for greater political power in Beirut.
(Sound of vox pop speaking)
"We just hear insults everywhere we go," this man says. "Why not go to the streets to demand our rights?"
(Sound of local Sheikh speaking)
This local Sheikh agrees. "Of course we must be peaceful," he says, "but the Government's corrupt and it has thrown itself into the lap of the West."
The locals here are worried their bid for more power may be derailed by the wave of anti-Syrian sentiment unleashed by the assassination of anti-Syrian politician Pierre Gemayel.
(Sound of vox pop speaking)
"The death of Pierre Gemayel is a great loss for all of us," this Hezbollah supporter says. "Why are his people blaming the Shi'ites for this? It's not fair."
The Shi'ite militia group cum welfare organisation and political party treads a delicate line. Hezbollah claims to defend Lebanon against Israel, but draws on foreign support to do so, and not everyone in Dahiya is happy with Hezbollah or its links with Iran and Syria.
Two local Sheikhs who wouldn't be recorded due to the pervasive presence of Hezbollah informers say they're sick of the group's hold on their community. "We forced Israel out of Lebanon in 2000," one told me. "Why did we have to fight them again? Look at all this destruction! What will we get from this? Nothing "
The Lebanese Government's working with the United Nations to set up an international court. It would prosecute the pro-Syrian Lebanese officials who have been accused of being involved in a string of assassinations, including now that of Pierre Gemayel.
Responding to that will be the next big test of Hezbollah's loyalties and its strength beyond this stronghold.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/25/2006 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By David Ignatius
