From Chris Allbritton, Back to Iraq:
The day after PM Nouri al-Maliki introduced his plan for national reconciliation, seven insurgent groups from the Ba’athist/Nationalist side of the insurgency have reportedly contacted the Iraqi government in order to offer a truce.
The groups include the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Muhammad Army (jaysh al-Muhammad), Abtal al-Iraq (Heroes of Iraq), the 9th of April Group, al-Fatah Brigades, and the Brigades of the General Command of the Armed Forces. The seventh group was not named by the Shi’ite legislator who says these groups are seeking the cease-fire.
The 1920 Revolution Brigades is allegedly led by Muthanna al-Dhari, son of Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, who is head of the Muslim Clerics Association, a hard-line Sunni group. Harith al-Dhari’s grandfather was a leading figure in the 1920 revolution and allegedly shot the English Col. Gerard Leachman, sparking the uprising against the British in the west. I’ve written about jaysh al-Muhammad before, and you can read about its place in the greater insurgency.
And here’s a chart from IntelCenter showing the linkages between the various groups (283KB .jpg).
As for the four other groups, I confess I don’t have a lot of data on them.
Hmm. No bad news there…
Maybe—oh yes, here we go. Spencer Ackerman, TNR’s The Plank:
[…] promising news if it’s true, but let’s not kid ourselves about early promises of acquiescence. The recent history of sectarian negotiations—see Larry Diamond’s Squandered Victory and Peter Galbraith’s forthcoming The End of Iraq—suggests that it only takes a tiny amount of frustration for these deals to fall apart. Just ask Salah Mutlaq, who frustrated the Kurdish and Shia delegations on the constitutional committee so much that they decided it would be better to cobble together a Kurdish-Shia constitution and tell the Sunnis to take it or leave it. And that was because Mutlaq made some too-strident demands at the negotiating table. Imagine what will happen to the deal when, over the next year (at least), these groups are under attack by U.S. forces, as today’s New York Times indicates:
“I see no reductions in American forces in Al Anbar into next year, at least through next summer, because of the restiveness there,” said the officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, who oversees marines in the Middle East and Central Asia. He was speaking about the western province of Anbar, the center of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq.
“Al Anbar is going to be one of the last provinces to be stabilized,” General Sattler said in a telephone interview from western Iraq, where he is visiting marines as well as American and Iraqi commanders.
Anbar, of course, is where these insurgent groups operate. I suppose that the theory here is that increased pressure on them and their colleagues will either bring them to the negotiating table or leave them dead, instead of stronger. Not a bad idea, but it has the tiny drawback of having been decisively refuted by the last three years of the war.
…Or, were we to spin it another way, we could argue just as persuasively that it took 3 years to mulch the insurgency to the point where such a strategem is likely to bear fruit.
But then, that would be looking at things positively — and we mustn’t do that! So take heart, all you anti-war dead enders. There’s still time yet for Iraq to become that quagmire you’re always on about.
****
Iraq the Model has more (via PJM); and then there’s this, from the Times Online:
Iraq’s main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence.
Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died.
The prime minister is believed to be ready to offer the Iraqi insurgent groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for prisoners who renounce violence and give up their weapons.
So, like I said—there’s still hope for those eager to see the world’s most menacing meddler fall ever deeper into an unwinnable quagmire. Though I tend to believe that it’s just a matter of time now before the Iraqis are able to quell the remains of the insurgency on their own, with a bit of help from the US in some of the more heavily fortified trouble spots.
Of course, I’m a bourgeois optimist, so don’t forget to take that into account when you’re deciding how much weight to give to my opinions.
The bad news? America wins the war and ends up standing beside a sovereign, unified, peaceful Iraq. al-Qaeda takes yet another enormous defeat and has yet another place it cannot operate from.
OK, whether that’s bad news or not depends on who you are. But it’s bad news somewhere.
tw: It’s bad news here, too.
How “not with the progressive movement” that news is.
The Times better watch out because the lack of oxygen is coming…
Any second now…
I can hear a massive sucking coming from the left…
Who cares if it’s good news/bad news the real news is that Limbaugh guy returning from a wild weekend in the Dominican Republic was caught with Viagra in his suitcase.
Good for him.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
Even if the leadership of the the Iraqi terrorists rejects the offer, don’t you think that a lot of the rank and file will see the writing on the wall and stop their terrorist activities?
I can see Chimpy’s smirk broadening a wee bit.
Not a bad attempt at snark, but it has the tiny drawback of ignoring all thats happened in the last three years.
Preview TW: hard
Submit TW: member
ok, now your just doing it on purpose…
I really don’t think you can qualify terrorists setting off explosives as war, I really do not. We won the war in Iraq when the coalition troops defeated the Iraqi army, deposed Hussein, and took control of the country. This is just a really tough rebuilding time, not war at all.
The offer of a truce is a ruse, straight out of Muhammed’s (phui) playbook. When Muslims find themselves at a disadvantage in a conflict, they are taught to offer a truce to their adversaries in order to gain time to rebuild their strength, after which the truce may be broken and hostilities resumed. This is the same ploy OBL tried last year. The only difference here is that they aren’t supposed to lie (like offer false truces, for example) to other Muslims. The loophole is that Sunnis consider Shiites to be about half a rung above infidels in the first place, so I’m sure they are sleeping as well at night as their coalition pursuers allow.
This is a classic signal that they are on their last legs. Efforts to eradicate them should be redoubled, and the problem will be eliminated.
Actually, I think Jayls’ on to something. It may be a duplicitous move on their part signaling the need for a breather. How to handle it, though. I hope the Iraqis have an idea or two up their sleeeves.
Yes, we will continue to attack them while negotiating, to keep the pressure on. We will also attack them if they break the “truce” after signing on.
Why’s that a surprise?
Pesky sans-serif fonts. UC “I” and LC “l” are indistinguishable…
The point is, don’t negotiate with them, period. Their side will not negotiate in good faith anyway, so don’t bother. Hunt’em down and kill’em, then there will be nobody to break any supposed “truce.” They get their 72 virgins, and we get rid of them – its a win-win situation.
Yes, somebody on the terrorist side will break the truce, which is actually a “hudna” (or Muzzie false truce for tactical advantage, but MFTFTA is a lousy acronym.)
But it may pave the way for our troop drawdown. Once we’re (mostly) gone, of course the muj will attack the Iraqi govt and army, but I guarantee you any that get caught doing so won’t be getting a visit from any high-powered lawyers. A quick bullet and a shallow grave will be the rule. The Iraqis aren’t soft like westerners.
And we’re not responsible. Sweet!
I think the truce thing is actually a good idea. Sun Tzu said that if your enemy wants to retreat, you should build him “a golden bridge”.
If there are insurgents who want out, we should let them out. That leaves fewer enemies to fight. If they renege, well, we should be ready for that too.
From the perspective of Arab culture, giving your opponent an honorable (from their point of view, at least) way out of a conflict is a good way to end that conflict. Certainly I reject giving amnesty to baby murdering terrorist scumbags, but Iraq is their own government and they have to make their own mistakes and take their own steps. This may work, it may not. But any way you look at it, it’s rock solid proof the “insurgents” and “militants” are not of the opinion that things are going well for them.
So, we take them at their word but put them on double-secret probation? I don’t buy it. Even if some of these insurgents have changed their minds, that doesn’t change the fact that they first made a choice to kill and inflict mayhem upon our troops and the Iraqi public. We have to operate under the assumption of, “once a terrorist, always a terrorist.” Otherwise, for all we know we will only be exposing ourselves to future attacks by the very people to whom amnesty would be granted.
Sun Tzu never fought against muslims.
But the NYT has announced that they will not agree to a truce! You will have to pry their laptops from their cold dead hands before they surrender. So even if the militant arm agrees to and honors a truce, the propaganda arm will continue to fight the “good fight”.
Couldn’t have been that wild – he still had some left over!
tw: girls
“Militant arm” of what? “Propaganda arm” of what? The way I understand it, the insurgency is factional, not a unified front with a common agenda. I have my doubts about truces with these groups, because I don’t think anyone involved is acting in good faith.
So’s the
reality-basedastrology-based community.Oh, sure, but what about the timing?
There you go again… pointing out something that just happens to have been the result of darn near every war in human history. Imagine, wanting us to believe that we have spent 3 years blasting some group and they might want to call it quits. Good thing our betters at the NYT are there to point us in the right direction!
BTW – my experience with the “truce” in the Afghan world would back the Iraqis doing the same. I think I pointed this out on another thread – so I won’t repeat the whole argument – just point out that the correct forms are being obeyed. I hope they take it.
Damn! I hate it when you get all optimistic and shit. Glad to know I’m not the only one..
Actually, I’m not convinced this “American Revolution” is going very well either. I mean, American “leaders” have had plenty of opportunity to live up to the lofty rhetoric of their founding documents, yet gangs of thugs roam our city streets, and real estate is pricey, and I can’t realistically afford to pursue happiness in this market. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad King George III is dead. But let’s not kid ourselves, this ill-conceived American experiment is a quagmire.
So’s the reality-based astrology-based community.
You know, you can slam people as much as you like, but there are some of us citizens who don’t just snap our heels and present arms when ordered to. I really don’t appreciate being given a back-handed slap just because I make an observation.
But apparently, dissention is simply not tolerated. It is all about the message. Must be maintained and perpetuated.
Isn’t a backhanded slap dissent?
But it may pave the way for our troop drawdown. Once we’re (mostly) gone, of course the muj will attack the Iraqi govt and army, but I guarantee you any that get caught doing so won’t be getting a visit from any high-powered lawyers. A quick bullet and a shallow grave will be the rule. The Iraqis aren’t soft like westerners.
And we’re not responsible. Sweet! <blockquote>
Cut and run, eh mojo?
This, obviously, is in large measure the argument advanced by John Murtha and many others for getting US troops out of Iraq. I’m not as sanguine as you about death squads, as many of the people who wind up in the “shallow graves” tend to be innocent noncombatants. And I think it’s not yet clear whether the Iraqi gov’t and army will stay together and fight back against “muj” attacks, or whether the Iraqi gov’t and army in large part consist of “muj” and potential “muj”, and will simply fragment into ethnic/religious militias and rival governments in the face of attacks. That is precisely the question that will be tested as the US draws down—and it’s to be hoped that they do hold together and don’t disintegrate.
But you’re absolutely right that the great advantage of getting US troops out of Iraq is that we then won’t be responsible for what goes on there. That will reap benefits in international relations with the rest of the Muslim and non-Muslim world; it will eliminate one of the main selling points in terrorist recruitment worldwide; it will pressure the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own mess (much as transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority is finally forcing Palestinians to take responsibility for their own mess); and, hey, it happens to save a lot of American lives and money, too.
So, you’re now in favor of a timeline for withdrawal? Or what?
TW: help, as in “Help, the conservatives are starting to agree with me without realizing it!…”
Or Christians. Or anyone, if you believe some of the more skeptical Chinese literary authorities.
It’s the plan that’s been in place forever, brooksfoe. You know, the one that we don’t have. The one that says we hang in and train Iraqis until they can take care of themselves via a democratically elected government with professional security forces at its disposal. It’s the plan we’ve been working with for 3 years.
You’re simply catching up to the news cycle.
But if it makes you happy, you can say you won the timeline once a plan is in place to move some troops out on a given date. We’ll take having won the war that you insist we’ve lost.
Oh, c’mon Jeff; you’re much funnier than that!
tw: perform – Tell the armadillo it’s time!
That would be the plan that said the Iraqis would greet us as liberators? That there wouldn’t be an insurgency? That US troop levels would be down to 30-40,000 by September 2003? That we would install a “coalition provisional authority” to run the place for about 3 years, convene a national conference to write a constitution, and only then hold elections – and that fought earlier elections kicking and screaming until Al-Sistani forced us to hold them on threat of a total collapse of local support for the US regime? The plan that said we were going in to find and secure Saddam’s WMD? (And, no, they didn’t exist; see rebuttal on earlier thread, referencing final ISG Duelfer Report.) The plan that said the reconstruction would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues? The plan that said the idea it might cost $100 billion was so outrageous that an Administration official was fired for suggesting it? (Actual cost: over $200 billion in purely military costs and running, at $6 billion/month IIRC—better estimates total $500 billion in direct and $1 trillion in total associated costs?) The plan that said collateral damage would be minimal? (Of the minimum 40,000 civilians killed directly in the violence over the past 3 years—definitely an undercount since it’s based only on concrete published news and other reports—40% of the first 30,000 were acknowledged by the US to have been killed by US military action, i.e. 12,000 or so. Since then fewer have been killed by US troops, more by insurgents.)
Or would this be the plan that said we’d fancy-pants around with the meaning of the word “torture” until our soldiers got so confused they weren’t sure whether sicking dogs on naked people qualified or not? Or the plan that said we’d gear up a humanitarian supply operation worth tens of millions of dollars and hire a couple of stoner backpackers who used to run a T-shirt biz outside Fenway Park to run it, because, hey, they were American, and there was nobody else around? Or the plan…
Oh, forget it. If the Iraqis manage to salvage their country despite the idiocy of people like you, more power to them.
What are you saying? If there had been no American Revolution, we’d be a totalitarian communist kingdom by now! Just look at what happened to Canada, and Australia! Or Britain itself, for chrissakes!
Talking points, huh? This all took too long for you but now it’s your plan, huh?
Sorry you’re so sad, brooksfoe. But we’ve won. 2 countries in 5 years, and we can ostensibly consider them both allies. By and large, they do indeed consider us liberators, with the exception of those who were in the privleged class that was relieved of its position. There must be something blinding you to that. Perhaps they swore. “Bush Akbar” or something?
We all hope for the best for the Iraqi people. Some of us consider that we have done their country a favor by blowing it to pieces and allowing it to reconstitute itself (if in fact that’s what will happen, rather than that it will fall apart completely). Others feel we owe them an apology for having blown it apart and having had no idea how to run it in the aftermath. Some of us feel that the Iraqis would deserve the credit for putting their country back together, if that happens, while others feel that credit should go to the idiot who blew it apart.
It’s taken 3 years, at least 40,000 civilian deaths, and so on and so forth for the Iraqis to get back to the same living standards they had in March 2003, and the country is still balanced on a knife’s edge between civil war and reconciliation. The US is engaged in a last-ditch effort to pacify Baghdad, which commanders today say is going “slower” than they would like. Yesterday, 18 people were killed in sectarian violence in Baghdad, which represents an improvement from just before the pacification operation started. If this is what things look like in the middle of a massive, do-or-die pacification operation with many more US and Iraqi troops in the streets than usual, then I would say the self-congratulation is a bit premature.
But, again, we all hope for the best in Iraq, and if they manage to put their country back together we will join them in a toast for having managed to extricate themselves from the incompetent idiocy of the Bush administration. Perhaps they will do a better job of it than we have in the US.
It’s taken 3 years, at least 40,000 civilian deaths, and so on and so forth for the Iraqis to get back to the same living standards they had in March 2003…
Curiously enough, they’re not the same living standards – or dying standards, if you will (and even if you won’t). Gone are the plastic shredding machines for opponents of the regime, gone too the possibility that Uday or Qusay will take up the reins of leadership once Papa Saddam shuffles off the mortal coil. Gone are the realities of daily life that basically boiled down to: if you’re a Ba’ath Party loyalist currently in good favor, you get electricity, running water, and all the mod cons; if not, screw you and be sure your will is in order.
Gone is the need for a No-Fly zone and the Oil-For-Food program, gone the need for basing troops on Saudi soil. Gone and dead are old myths about what could and couldn’t be done in the Middle East, and soon to be gone as well, popular myths about the hopelessness of democracy emerging in the Arab world. Gone is Saddam himself, soon to be acquainted with the business end of a hangman’s noose.
Spin it as you like, Brooksfoe, refuse to accept it if you wish. Just don’t ever stop to consider why it’s so vitally important to you to deny these things, and why it bothers you so that they’re true. That’s a reality you likely don’t wish to face.
Whose myths were those? Perhaps the kind of people who say “the Iraqis aren’t soft like us”?
I deny that living standards in Iraq today are better than they were in March 2003 because living standards in Iraq today aren’t better than they were in March 2003. Instead of being tortured by Saddam, people in Iraq today are being tortured by sectarian militias. Their access to clean water and electricity, their life expectancy and malnutrition are worse than or no better than they were in March 2003. What you refer to is the hope that living standards in Iraq will be better in the future. The chances of that happening look slightly better this week than they did last week. It is a gamble. It may roll in Iraq’s favor, and let’s hope it does.
But the whole war was a gamble, undertaken with obscene recklessness for the possible consequences to Iraqis. The chances that Iraq will devolve into a full-fledged separationist civil war are still very high, and the cause of that civil war would be the U.S.’s invasion. You don’t run around invading other countries unless you have to, because god only knows what kind of shit can blow up in your face in the aftermath – as we’ve seen, our leaders had absolutely no idea what would happen in Iraq after our invasion. What makes this all so important to me is the fear that, if Iraq manages to right itself at last, after three years of insanity engendered by Bush administration arrogance, ignorance and incompetence, Americans will think, “Hey, that didn’t turn out so bad – let’s try it again!”
All wars sorta are a gamble, Brooksfoe – as indeed is much of life itself. You seem to be suggesting it would have been better to leave Saddam in power, with the certainty that Uday, Qusay, or some other bright young Ba’athist would take his place. As well as suggesting that it would have been better to allow the Oil-For-Food scam to continue, not to mention the No-Fly Zones, where acts of war against the United States took place on a near-daily basis.
And, while we’re at it, to have allowed the UN resolutions regarding Iraq to go unenforced, as well as to continue to allow Saddam to finance Palestinian terror attacks and give aid, comfort, and shelter to any number of terrorists like the warm and cuddly Abu Nidal. We should perhaps ignore as well the fact that Saddam was a less than stable player in the politics of the region, and his track record of attempting to seize territory and de-stabilize neighboring regimes.
Above all, it would have been clearly better to deny the Iraqis the chance at free elections and the creation of a real democracy under a real constitution, when Ba’athism provided a stable, sustainable alternative.
God forbid that we should be encouraged to attempt to engender the same results elsewhere too, eh? Those poor benighted brown folk are happy in their stable totalitarian reality, and we shouldn’t be so presumptious as to meddle with that. We need to be going instead after the root causes of terrorism, whatever those might be – maybe some sort of inequity or tyrannical system that produces such individuals, but I dunno – where would one find something like that? Certainly it’s clear that unless we can guarantee absolute perfection in the results, we shouldn’t act at all. It’s imperative that we achieve the same degree of mistake-free execution that has been the norm in other approved past conflicts.
That sounds workable.
And yet there is a small difference between the kinds of gambles I face in my everyday life in a peaceful country, and the kinds of gambles one faces when ordnance is exploding all over the place and people are being kidnapped and having holes drilled in them. And subjecting another people to those sorts of gambles is something one ought only to do if it is absolutely necessary. I could argue the point about the sanctions and so forth, but I have no time to go through all that right now. Suffice it to say that every bit of good news from Iraq so far has been followed by another torrent of awful news, and that every time you guys declare victory, it seems to fall apart. If a cease-fire is actually at hand, that’s fantastic news. But please remember what has led to the fire that needs to be ceased.
And this is a really lame-assed trope. The majority of the left backed the invasion of Afghanistan, and it was leftists who were raising the hue and cry about the Taliban in the ‘90s when conservatives didn’t give a shit. The vast majority of those who have made serious commitments to democracy-building in (ex)dictatorships from Serbia to Ukraine to Burma to Kazakhstan to Kenya to Burma to Zimbabwe have been leftists who opposed the war in Iraq. The “you don’t think brown people deserve democracy” critique is pure idiocy. We don’t think brown people deserve to be invaded for their own good without anyone asking them for their opinion. The fact that roughly 90% of Sunnis and 40% of Shias support attacks on US troops (as of January, even before things really got vicious in February) suggests they may not be so grateful to have been invaded, either.
Brooksfoe, I get the impression your investment in the Oil-for-Food program was dependent upon the gamble you took that the anti-liberators in America would do everything possible to insure Saddam remain in power in order to control the UN’s purse-strings. Saddam certainly counted on that voice of appeasement.
Good News! Fortunately for Iraqis you’ll have to live with your losses. The anti-liberators can no longer profit from the sanctions which brought so much misery to the Iraqi people.
Get over and moveon.org
Brooksfoe – you say that you truly wish for the best of outcomes in Iraq, both for the Iraqi people and for us as well. I want to believe that, not least since you’ve shown yourself to be fairly principled in your other posts here.
I disagree with your notion that the war in Iraq was an instance where the U.S. casually rolled the dice – of the options on the table, doing nothing was not the most promising. I disagree as well with your contention that matters on the ground in Iraq are in hopeless disarray – by the template of other past wars, to the extent that any historical event can be used to judge another, matters are proceeding better than one might have otherwise feared. Take a look at the American South from 1865-1877 for an indication of what I mean here. I see clear signs of success and a promising future for the region where you see chaos and threats of more to come.
In the lengthy build-up to this conflict, mistakes were undoubtedly made, although I’d prefer a few more years and a little bit better hindsight before I’d feel comfortable adjudicating that. The messy realities on the ground aren’t always amenable to staff planning either – again, however, we still need a bit more time to see whether efforts will bear fruit. What encourages me is that the young men and women at the sharp end in this matter are enthusiastic and committed to their mission, and have said so at length. We owe it to them to keep faith with their efforts, not to infantilize them and thwart them with talk of “bringing them home” before they are able to accomplish the tasks set for them.
At least, in the end, we want the same thing for Iraq and its people, and for those young men and women who willingly went there to do a difficult and dangerous job removing Ba’athist rule. Let’s hope and pray for their success.
I can go with that last paragraph. On the second to last, it’s certainly better that our soldiers in Iraq be enthusiastic and committed to their mission than that they be demoralized and opposed to their mission. But I have many reservations about trusting their estimates of their likelihood of success, especially when writers on milblogs seem so universally certain that Iraqis want US troops there, while opinion polls indicate very strongly that they do not. Anyway, yeah, let’s hope for the best in Iraq, and, looking at the subject of Goldstein’s post, the answer is no, this isn’t bad news.
Quiet, you!
<backhanded slap>
(I mustv use this power only for … my own amusement.)
brooksfoe sez:
The polling is extremely clear. A large majority of Iraqis want our troops out, but not yet. Also, 77% of Iraqis think that despite any hardships, our removal of Saddam was worth the cost to them.
Your reservations likely stem from your utter disbelief that your precious democrats have screwed the pooch while the Rethuglican administration and our evil troops have gotten the job done.
America wins. Iraq wins. You lose. And I feel fine….
Master Tang sez:
Allow me to disabuse you of that notion with a trip down Haditha lane. Dig the principled attack on our Marines.
Your comment reminds me of a proto-fascist movement active in the USSR in 1990-91. Its main content was great-Russian opposition to the democratic secessionist movements in the Baltic and other republics. Its adherents, mainly young men, went around wearing black armbands emblazoned with the word “nashi” – “ours”, better translated as “our guys”. Interestingly, I first saw them at a pro-Soviet, anti-democratic, anti-Western demonstration in front of the Hermitage in January 1991, where many of the demonstrators carried signs supporting Saddam Hussein.
Obviously, “our” guys can never do wrong.
As for the poll results, are you saying most Iraqis want our troops to stay for a while? Because then I’m confused as to why, even six months ago, half of them supported insurgent attacks on our troops. They wanted them to stick around so they could kill some more of them?
Okay, who slipped little red pills in brooksie’s M&M’s?
I think you’re using your power only for your own amusement there, McGehee.
And you couldn’t help but join…
Our guys deserve a full hearing of the facts prior to convicting them. As those facts come out, they’re looking better and better. So, on behalf of the USMC, fuck you very much.
Yes.
Does that clear things up for you?
18% of Kurds, 88% of Sunnis. If you’re confused, your ignorance is likely the culprit. Be sure to consider the bounties on Americans that drive such opinion.
Must have been Rove.
And 41% of…what was that other group? Oh, yeah – Shias. Making it 47% overall.
We’re all working from the same poll here. The key problem at the heart of the poll is raised by the pollsters:
The pollsters answer that perhaps Iraqis want the attacks to continue to encourage the US to leave eventually – but not right away. And that perhaps they want the US to leave, but fear the Iraqi government is not yet strong enough to take over.
I find this unconvincing. One thing that strikes me about the poll is that Iraqis do not seem to have been asked whether they favored American troops leaving immediately. Someone who just wants US troops out immediately might (illogically) respond “no” to the question of whether he wants them out in six months – he wants them out right now, not in six months. Or the poll might simply reflect a heart-head divide: a logical desire for US troops to stay, but emotional sympathy for nationalist insurgents who attack them. Though the expectation that security would increase after an American departure contradicts that theory.
In any case, the poll having been conducted in January, those six months are up. So by now, those who wanted the US out in a year at that time should want them out in 6 months. (Assuming people are logical, which, of course, they aren’t.)
How about it is bad news that we have been in Iraq spending money and getting killed for four years for any goddamned reason?
Why is this thread so hard to follow:
(1) we wanted Saddam out
(2) we wanted all the WMDs
(3) We did both in about 6 months, 12 if you insist on a long fruitless search for WMDs.
Now it is all about “Iraqi Democracy”. Spare me, not our job and not worth the life of a single soldier. I could care less about Iraq, Iraqi democracy, Iraqi public health, the Iraqi army, or anything else Iraqi.
It is all about George Bush making the biggest strategic mistake in the new century, and then trying to cover his butt politically by selling democracy pablum and biggie baddie terrerrist smoke to a bunch of halfwits.
Then why did you quote it, troll? Begone.
Absolutely. And I trust the jurors in the case will have access to far more information than anyone looking at newspaper accounts has or will have, and will acquit these soldiers if the evidence warrants it.
As average citizens, however, we are not in the position of “convicting” anyone. We are just called upon to form an opinion based on the information available to us. The information available to us sounds like the Marines killed a lot of civilians for no clear reason. The NewsMax-supported link you provide says there are radio tapes and drone surveillance video which may support the Marines’ account, but it doesn’t even say the NewsMax “reporter” (now there’s a misnomer) claimed to have seen the tapes. He had just been assured by a source of their existence and content. That’s hardly comparable to the Time report, which is very clear about who the sources are, and which vouches for what is on their videotape. Even the website you link to says the account of the timing of the house-clearing, firefight, and surveillance seems confused.
Look. Reports of US soldiers indicted for committing murder in Iraq and Afghanistan are now coming out on a weekly basis. In that environment, given the information we have through the media, what does a reasonable person conclude most likely happened at Haditha? I have never said I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that these Marines killed civilians in cold blood. But based on the information we have, that’s what it sounds like. And I do think that the reflex to call anyone who believes our Marines could have committed an atrocity a traitor, or what have you, is jingoistic bigotry. We win no credit in the eyes of God, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, the rest of the world, or our own consciences for refusing to admit the possibility of sin by our tribe. You demand from leftists evidence that we really want the best for Iraq. Fair enough. I demand from conservatives evidence that you really care about innocent Iraqis being killed by Americans.
Then why did you read it, billygoat? Your objection makes no sense.
Uh, you quoted a poll to support your argument and then declared it unconvincing when that suited you better. Now you claim not to understand.
You are a troll, and not worth the effort.
And yet you keep expending the effort.
I said that the pollsters’ attempts to explain the acknowledged logical inconsistencies in their poll’s responses were unconvincing. This inconsistency is exactly what I have been pointing out since the beginning of this little minidiscussion we are having. Is it too complicated a thought for you to hold in your head?
To which your contribution is not to be underestimated.
Please, dial back the compassion a thousand or so there, Searp.
or not. How many times is Time going to ammend their story?
If I understand you correctly, you’re cynically suggesting that the American Revolution was of little import and contributed little to the expansion of human freedom from repressive, authoritarian governmen–suggesting that the histories of Canada, Australia, and Britain itself are somehow independent and do not owe in overwhelming measure their own freedom, such as it is, to the developments of the American Revolution and the subsequent founding of the United States government on democratic principles. In fact, the American Revolution likely pales in comparison to the Australian gambit to remove the Queen from their money and the Canadians’ dedication to no taxation without free medication.
But don’t question your patriotism. Got it.