Discussing the one-year anniversary of President Bush’s call for the “surge†on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, Washington Post Pentagon reporter Thomas Ricks said that, “judged on the terms in which the president presented it, the surge has not worked.†“The purpose was to improve security, but to improve it to lead to a political breakthrough,†said Ricks. “And that political breakthrough has not happened.â€ÂAsked about whether the Iraqis “think it has worked,†Ricks said they “recognize that large parts of Baghdad are more peaceful,†but only compared to the “pure hell†of 2006:I think Iraqis recognize that large parts of Baghdad are more peaceful than they were, but violence is basically back to 2005 levels. And that was no picnic, 2005. It’s just 2006 was pure hell.
Stupid Iraqis. If only they had the insight of WaPo journalists and Think Progress bloggers.
Typical reporters, imposing their colonialist pattern on The Other…
” It’s just 2006 was pure hell.”
Like when you stapled your ass to the crapper with a case of Giardia last year. Makes this years bout with the Flu a picnic.
I keep reading the title and picturing a bunch of drunken Iraqis. like they picked up some bad habits in Jordan.
I’m not sure which is a bigger douchebag — Olbermann or Ricks.
Thomas Sowell once said that anything can be termed a success if judged by low enough standards, just as anything can be judged a failure if assessed with high enough standards. After every achievement in Iraq, the MSM, which had previously declared said achievement impossible, then said “well sure, that was the easy part; but now…”
Once I settle in, I invite Mr. Ricks to come and talk to the jundee I am helping train, and they can maybe start to educate him on why he is full of crap. If not, I will be more than willing to assist them.
Hey, Cleo. Are you trying to compare Iraqis’ lives under Saddam and now? Pretty accurate comparison.
Major John, I’m going to be extremely interested in your dispatches. I wonder if something interesting may be happening.
Those of us who thought about it realized from square one that whatever political arrangement the Iraqis came up with would be different from ours — Bush even said so at one point. We more or less forced them to put together a fairly classic Parliamentary system, and it’s that that isn’t “working” in the sense of coalescing into a functional means of decision making. But what if what they need isn’t as similar to what we have as was first thought?
It’s been said over and over recently that the big part of the success of the “surge” was the Anbar Awakening — chicken or egg isn’t relevant to my present point, which is that the Awakening came from what is, after all, the basic structure of most of Iraqi society: the sheiks and tribal leaders. Perhaps a modern Parliamentary system doesn’t fit, and something different is needed.
The Roman Republic had an odd attitude toward power, at least to modern ears. If a person had real power, be it through wealth, leadership in some group, priest(ess) of some god, etc., they were, willy-nilly, regarded as either part of the Government or part of the problem. Election to the Roman Senate was less an elevation and honor than it was co-option. A person with sufficient power was elected — by the other Senators — and more or less told This is the system. Work within it or else. It seems to me that this is a perfectly valid way to adapt a strongly tribal system which also has other, non-tribal, power centers to a republican form of Government.
Suppose you started with a Council of Sheikhs. That would be an extremely powerful group; it would represent anywhere from 90% of the local population in the rural areas to 60% or better in urban zones. Point out to the sheikhs that they didn’t have time to devote to such a thing; it would be better if they appointed viziers to attend and do the routine business, only taking their seats for the most important debates. That shouldn’t be too hard a sell, and once it’d gone over, urge them to also elect to that number important people from outside the tribal structure — respected religious figures, especially wealthy merchants, perhaps elected representatives of non-tribal groups; that last could include political parties in a slightly different form, more political associations.
Starts looking more and more like a majlis, fourteenth-century (since the Prophet, PBUH) version, doesn’t it? It wouldn’t look much like what we do; it’d be more like the gang of robber barons and evangelists that extorted the Magna Carta out of Happy Jack, crossed with the Chicago Board of Aldermen. But itt would certainly command enough respect that its decisions could be regarded as binding by most folks, and it has the quality Robert Heinlein called “looseness at the corners”, plenty of room for logrolling and influence peddling.
I dunno. That’s just noodling; none of my business how they set it up, although I’d really rather they built something that worked well enough that we didn’t have to do this again. But is Muslihoon around? I’d be interested in his take on it. From my faraway vantage it sort of looks like the Army and Marines have been putting that sort of thing together ad hoc for the last couple of years, and it seems to work. Formalize it instead of trying to shove a square peg into a round hole?
Regards,
Ric
Something more like the Afghan Jirga might be a good fit, and that’s not so different form how things worked before the Great Game.
Exactly, RTO. You’ve been there, I haven’t — but neither one of us is part of it, are we?
The system we imposed — and we did — is a fairly bone-standard Parliamentary setup. Bremer and the rest didn’t do that because they were evil, or trying to do it wrong; they were in a hurry and extremely distracted, and they knew some variant of it worked in a lot of different cases. It isn’t working because it doesn’t fit the society it’s supposed to govern. It’s a patch, a jerry-rig, and something more permanent needs to be put into place, because the duct tape is starting to fray.
What I hope, and consider at least possible, is that the cobbled-together coalitions and ad hoc assemblies being put together all across Iraq to handle day-to-day affairs can and will coalesce into something stronger and more lasting. There’d be a better chance of that if it was a deliberately formulated goal, no?
Regards,
Ric
Dan:
I suspect Ricks hasn’t revisited his opinions on Iraq since he wrote his book, but in any case, I think y’all missed the most jaw dropping moment of all. Ricks asserted that the surge was supposed to have worked by last summer! Apparently, he missed the fact that the surge didn’t actually get under way till the troops were assembled in June. Of course, maybe he was just confused by the fact that Pelosi and Reid were already calling it a failure for so long before it got started.
Ric:
“There’d be a better chance of that if it was a deliberately formulated goal, no?”
Not necessarily. It depends on who is doing the formulating and/or the imposing and why.
I’m not sure which is a bigger douchebag  Olbermann or Ricks.
David Cay Johnston? ;-)
(he eventually took his ball and went home BTW)
Perhaps we should call it a tie.
As usual, political “change” in Iraq is occuring under the MSM’s nose, but not in its alternative universe:
http://tinyurl.com/22vphm
Open question to ric, RTO, and Major John:
What, if any, is the potential downside of a more tribal based system? Does empowering the sheiks allow for increased order at a cost of renewed or continued tribal rivalries and sweeping corruption? It all makes sense to me but I wonder about the long term ramifications, especially as it relates to country wide decision making.
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Comment by Semanticleo on 1/11 @ 7:02 pm #
†It’s just 2006 was pure hell.â€Â
Like when you stapled your ass to the crapper with a case of Giardia last year. Makes this years bout with the Flu a picnic.
Here’s a thought. Try NOT vocalizing every thought that comes into your tiny little head. There’s a good lad.
The obvious downside to a political system based on tribal allegiances is that there are people who don’t identify with the tribes, and they would be at least partially disenfranchised. This is why I would urge anyone setting up such a system to use the Roman model (“anyone who has significant support should be co-opted into the system”) rather than pure tribalism. It’s also why the jirga (as recommended by RTO Trainer) might be a better starting point than the majlis — look up the differences.
It may not be particularly evident, but the Parliamentary system is based on the same idea. The only reason our (American) system works at all is that we have very little tribalism remaining — the upsets and bloody wars of the first part of the second millenium damaged European tribalism severely, and the mechanism of settling the New World didn’t preserve the remnants. That leaves us free, as individuals, to join whatever coalition appears to conform to our own notions. Europe, still based on the remnants of the tribal model, does better by empowering groups directly.
I’m not saying a tribal model would be ideal; I’m saying it might be (1) possible with the materials available and (2) better than either nothing at all or trying to make bricks without straw, OK?
Regards,
Ric
You know. For a country that went to the polls three times while terrorists tried run the country, I think they’ll to pretty well for themselves. They already know what the worst is.
I hate being linked to those hell holes. Why do I read the comments over there? Why? *kicks self* Why? *smashes face* Why?