Is The War in Iraq Over?

[Bill Thompson]

Is The War in Iraq Over?

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/is-the-war-over--11599

And if it is, where did we go wrong? This was supposed to be another Vietnam. This was supposed to be a huge embarrassment for The Republican Party. We were supposed to leave after a long conflict in shame and dishonor. What went wrong? This did not play into our anti-american, anti-colonization, anti-imperialist agenda. This was supposed to hurt the USA and The Republican party.

One good thing is that our faithful liberal media is down-playing any hint that the war in Iraq might be over. We can be thankful for that.

[Praktik]

Wasn't there something about counting your chickens?

Methinks it'll take another decade before we can truly tell, the Maliki government has also been regressing into Shiite partisanship, so we'll see how the Sunnis like that...

[David Wong]

What really matters is how this affects the score of the Red vs Blue game of politics. Really, every death, every attack, every change in quality of life for the people who live there, only matters in terms of whether Bill Thompson can do an End Zone dance and say NAH NAH NAH!!! in the face of the evil, evil liberals.

Keep your eyes on the prize, Bill. The entire universe should really revolve entirely around your petty goals.

[Pardalis]

the Maliki government has also been regressing into Shiite partisanship, so we'll see how the Sunnis like that...

I prefer "partisanship" than what was there before.

[Praktik]

I prefer "partisanship" than what was there before.

Ya, well you know in Iraq their partisanship involves a little more beheadings, bombings, murder and kidnappings....

Opining on "what was there before" and whether 7 years of civil war are "better" or not is probably best left to people who, you know, lived through both.

[Upchurch]

Is The War in Iraq Over?

Golly, I thought it was over 7 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished).


Bill, please remember to take the time to check things out before you post them. It makes life easier on all of us.

[Darth Rotor]

Is it over for whom, Bill?

The Many vs Many internal struggle remains on, and will likely remain so for a while after we leave.

Golly, I thought it was over 7 years ago.
Uppie, you seem to have some learning to do about war, and the political continuum. Note my question to Bill in that regard.

For a related thought, the Viet Nam War was over, roughly, for the US in about 1973. It wasn't over for the Vietnamese for a few years after that. (Choose how much of the crap in Cambodia, 1970's, you'd like to associate with the Viet Nam war in this case. If none, then mostly done by 1975).

DR

[Pardalis]

Ya, well you know in Iraq their partisanship involves a little more beheadings, bombings, murder and kidnappings....
Any evidence that this is going on and is sponsored by the state, or Al-Maliki's government?

[Praktik]

Any evidence that this is going on and is sponsored by the state, or Al-Maliki's government?

I've been keeping up on the news I can search for some recent stories if the google machine is broken on your end... gimme a few mins

[Pardalis]

No rush.

[Upchurch]

Uppie, you seem to have some learning to do about war, and the political continuum.
Undoubtedly true, but in this particular case, I was being sarcastic.

I find it hard to take Bill seriously after some of these threads he's made.

[Praktik]

Good broad look at Maliki here from summer of 2009 over at Foreign Policy: (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/21/the_new_and_improved_nouri_al_maliki)

As Maliki's enemies were defeated, the state he commanded gained legitimacy, and as his own army became more powerful, his confidence grew. Starting in late 2006 and continuing through 2007, Maliki distanced himself politically from the Sadrists, first tolerating and then encouraging U.S. strikes against them. Eventually, starting with the Basra operation in March 2008 and continuing in Sadr City, Maysan, Mosul, Diyala, and beyond, Maliki took the initiative away from the United States and began to set security priorities on his own.

Over the course of 2008, Maliki began pushing away the members of his own governing coalition, the Kurds and ISCI. He not only challenged them rhetorically and sought to claim the credit for Iraq's security improvement, but also began to centralize more control of the government into his own hands. For example, he subverted the civilian ministries responsible for security and intervened directly in security matters himself, while working to secure the appointment of officers loyal to him in the security forces. Moreover, he used the resources available to his office to cultivate the indigenous support base he had previously lacked. He used state funds for "reconciliation" efforts, most notably the formation of "tribal support councils" whose ostensible purpose was to bring Iraqi tribes into the government fold but also were a means of giving funds to political supporters. The man who in 2006 had been derided for his weakness by late 2008 was being called a "strongman" in the international press, and Maliki's political opponents and some foreign analysts began to express concerns about a return to authoritarian government in Iraq.Interesting look in the NYT from october (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29abed.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss)about the politicization of the military and the police.

November article on political blocs and the reduction of Sunni seats. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/weekinreview/29myers.html?hpw)

Bad Vibes in Baghdad (http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/20/the_unraveling_of_iraq_xl_bad_vibes_in_baghdad)

[Pardalis]

I'm sorry, but I browsed through them and I can't seem to see anything saying Maliki's govrnment is directly responsible for beheadings, bombings and kidnappings. Could you direct me to a specific part where such allegations are made?

ETA: Your links seem to agree with the fact that there is sectarian violence in Iraq (no news to me), and that Maliki's government's has to "do more", but nothing very outright incriminating.

[Thunder]

uh.....elections in Iraq are coming up. if they go the wrong way, all hell could break loose again, the Kurds could declare independence, Iran seizes some of the eastern territory. civil war breaks out..and our whole little adventure turn into a big disaster.

the political situation of Iraq...is as fluid as oil....and could fall apart easily.

I'll declare it a success once there has been stability and virtually zero political violence for a good 5 years.

[Praktik]

ETA: Your links seem to agree with the fact that there is sectarian violence in Iraq (no news to me), and that Maliki's government's has to "do more", but nothing very outright incriminating.

Oh I thought you wanted support for the claim that Maliki has been directly responsible for incubating a partisan atmosphere and acting against the goal of political reconciliation.

As for links with death squads, its not something I know enough about to comment - but I wouldn't be surprised that there would be a connection to some Shiite gangs of some sort, after all, each faction needs to arm itself and maintain street credibility given the state of flux.

[Pardalis]

Oh I thought you wanted support for the claim that Maliki has been directly responsible for incubating a partisan atmosphere and acting against the goal of political reconciliation.

No, I think it's 30 years of brutal oppression that did it.

[Praktik]

No, I think it's 30 years of brutal oppression that did it.

Really?

Its been repeated elsewhere - in a factionalized, unstable environment, this kind of thing is par for the course. On a smaller scale, this happens in areas like say, Juarez Mexico.

[Pardalis]

A stable totalitarian environment is so much better.

[Praktik]

A stable totalitarian environment is so much better.

Ah I got it, there's two parallel conversations going on here...

So, just go ahead and fill in the blanks on your end, and I'll consider my parallel conversation wrapped up, and then we can move on..;)

[Pardalis]

You still haven't proved Maliki's government is responsible for beheadings, bombings and kidnappings.

[Puppycow]

It's been "over" for more than a year, really.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/success-in-iraq.htm

14 July 2008
. . . the Iraq War is over. We won.

[Bill Thompson]

Golly, I thought it was over 7 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished).


Bill, please remember to take the time to check things out before you post them. It makes life easier on all of us.

An accomplished mission is not an end of a war. I am guessing what that link is. Did I guess right?

[Bill Thompson]

What really matters is how this affects the score of the Red vs Blue game of politics. Really, every death, every attack, every change in quality of life for the people who live there, only matters in terms of whether Bill Thompson can do an End Zone dance and say NAH NAH NAH!!! in the face of the evil, evil liberals.

Keep your eyes on the prize, Bill. The entire universe should really revolve entirely around your petty goals.

What are you talking about?

What do these vague metaphors mean?

For starters, are you talking about anything tangable? If so, what?

What is the Red vs Blue game of politics? Is this in reference to red and blue states? If so, how does this apply? You do know that the Clintons and Al Gore were the most vocal about doing something to take out Saddam, don't you?

Also, what are you talking about in terms of the lessening of quality of life. Stopping Saddam lessened the quality of life in Iraq? What are your sources for this information? According to my Iraqi friends, Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction. I have also heard from several charitable organizations what say taking Saddam out saved thousands of children lives that were dropping like flies due to the oil for food scandal.

What exactly do you think my prize is?

And as far as the liberals being evil, let us see if the liberal media ever tells us how bloody the war in Afganistan gets now that one of their own is in the White House. Notice that the daily body count has stopped?

If you are cursing me, you are cursing the messenger.

[oggiesnr]

The coalition war in Iraq is just about over, we're getting out. Whether Iraq is going to become a stable, peaceful country is another issue.

Steve

[DC]

This was supposed to be a huge embarrassment for The Republican Party.

yeah after they found the stockpilles of WMD's this totally changed....
oh wait a minute.

[McHrozni]

I'll declare it a success once there has been stability and virtually zero political violence for a good 5 years.

You do realize that very few if any nations in the region reach that goal.

McHrozni

[Praktik]

You still haven't proved Maliki's government is responsible for beheadings, bombings and kidnappings.

May I refer you to post 15. I understand that in post 17 I surmised that its plausible there's a link to some Shiite baddies, but given your use of the word "still" I wonder if this is just further evidence we were operating with different conceptions about what this conversation was about.. hehe

In any event, my larger point was simply this: the sectarian conflict is by no means resolved, and I worry that Maliki's recent moves might cause more flare ups in the near future.

[Praktik]

Further to my broader point: (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23371)

For more than a year now, tensions between Baghdad and Erbil, Kurdistan's capital, have increased as the Maliki government has taken steps to roll back the Kurds' post-2003 territorial, constitutional, and political gains. These included a military foray into Kurdish-held towns in August 2008 designed to offset the power of Kurdish forces, which set off alarm in Kurdistan and caused a sharp deterioration in relations between Maliki and the Kurdish regional president, Massoud Barzani. A year of verbal sparring followed, with Maliki accusing Barzani of aspiring to secede and Barzani countering that Maliki was just another despot in waiting. The victory of an Arab nationalist list in the Ninewa governorate—which adjoins Kurdistan—in last January's provincial elections heightened tensions. This was especially the case along an informal, nondemarcated, but all-too-real line in disputed districts that separates federal troops under Maliki's authority and Kurdish regional guards under Barzani's.

[Praktik]

If you're looking for stuff about Maliki and death squads, there's a reference here: (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22111)

But the government was then firmly in the hands of Shia religious parties largely hostile to the Sunni minority, thus precluding any such arrangement with the tribes. By mid-2005, West writes, Shia death squads were killing Sunnis in Baghdad; the Shia government (first under Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jaafari, then under his successor, Nouri al-Maliki) looked the other way, and Sunnis in Anbar provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

HRW has something a little more meaty: (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15433.htm)

The Iraqi government must move quickly to prosecute all Ministry of Interior personnel responsible for "death squad" killings in Baghdad and elsewhere, the New-York based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Saturday.

"Evidence suggests that Iraqi security forces are involved in these horrific crimes, and thus far the government has not held them accountable," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW's Middle East division. "The Iraqi government must stop giving protection to security forces responsible for abduction, torture and murder."But as to this, I'm not sure it deserves any special criticism because it really is to be expected, especially given the milieu. It is only in recent years that the sectarian conflict has abated somewhat, if you're a shiite government and your voters are open to continuing attacks from Sunni gangs, are you really going to crack down on a counterforce that can offer some protection to those voters? Who are after all, shia like you?

It's not really fair to single out any one faction for these kinds of links because they were very much necessary given the dynamics at work.

And I guess to bring this back to the larger point, these links do help illustrate the degree to which Maliki's government is not the secular, conciliatory entity we might wish it to be. Its a product of its environment, one that happens to be especially violent and intermittently chaotic. I would hope that it could one day move past this history, but that's also contingent on partners willing to do the same.

We'll see.

[Pardalis]

At least now they have a shot at it. Before no.

You can't expect Iraq to become a democracy overnight, especially after 30 years of Hussein.

[Bill Thompson]

yeah after they found the stockpilles of WMD's this totally changed....
oh wait a minute.

It was the countless UN resolution violations that was the reason behind the invasion. Dems insisted that it was because of WMDs after the fact.

BAIpI8IxgFs

4R8bdod9lOM

[Praktik]

It was the countless UN resolution violations that was the reason behind the invasion. Dems insisted that it was because of WMDs after the fact.

Ummm no... violations of UN resolutions != declaration of war.

It's always funny to see apologists for an agressive war of occupation appealing to UN resolutions, when there was no UN resolution authorizing regime change or occupation.

Pretty convenient, invoke the UN for moral cover, ignore the fact the UN did not back the war.

Take it or leave it Bill - either go with UN authority or US-directed authority but you can't take parts from each willy nilly.

The violations could have resulted in any number of things: tightening of sanctions, penalties of other sorts. The violations could have easily resulted in continuing containment.

It is illogical to suggest that the only possible reaction to violations - even continued ones - meant war was the only option. I understand that's the way the planners of the war framed it, but it was only because they engaged in the same UN-as-fig leaf game you're playing.

The real cause of the war was the fact that US planners under Bush saw benefits to the American national interest that would be served by the war. I think those calculations were way-off, even on the narrow rubric of national interest, but the point is no nation committs blood and treasure unless they conceive of benefits to their national interest that are served by that committment. The UN is essentially irrelevant to that calculation - or perhaps - only relevant in that the Bush admin wanted to demonstrate American freedom of action even without UN authorization. People like Bolton see UN authorization as kind of a straight-jacket to American freedom of action, and were keen to ensure a UN authorization didn't happen even if it was likely they could get it.

[Pardalis]

Praktik, what would you have done about Hussein?

[Praktik]

Im pretty sure we've been over this ground some time ago.

Containment. And there's lots of smarter people than me that have advocated for the same.

I'm a realist though, not a neo-Wilsonian, so that might explain it.

[Pardalis]

Containment, that's a nice word, what does it mean?

[Praktik]

Containment, that's a nice word, what does it mean?

Is this a serious question? It's a basic concept in strategic thinking.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time on this very question some time ago. May I refer you to here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5203967&postcount=39)and here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5211107&postcount=99) and here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5211156&postcount=101).

May I gently suggest that our disagreement here rests on pretty fundamentally different conceptions of the following:

- the benefit to the Iraqi people of overthrowing Saddam
- the benefit to the American national interest of launching the war

While morally speaking I still am opposed to the war and can make arguments based on those moral precepts, the realist in me understands the jungle that is the world and I try to frame my opposition to the war on a more narrow look at the ways it has either helped or hindered the American national interest and geopolitical stability more generally.

[Pardalis]

How many people would have died if internal groups had tried to overthrow the regime?

Wouldn't there have been a violent suppression of those groups? What makes you think they could have won? Who would have armed them? And even if they had won, don't you think there would have been a civil sectarian war anyway as a result?

I think an internal insurgency would have failed, and there would have been an even greater and more brutal reprials from the Baath party, maybe even a Kurdish genocide.

And the sanctions weren't working, because Hussein was still trying to acquire WMDS, and still getting rich.

[Praktik]

How many people would have died if internal groups had tried to overthrow the regime?

Wouldn't there have been a violent suppression of those groups? What makes you think they could have won? Who would have armed them? And even if they had won, don't you think there would have been a civil sectarian war anyway as a result?

I think an internal insurgency would have failed, and there would have been an even greater and more brutal reprials from the Baath party, maybe even a Kurdish genocide.

Don't take just one item out of those long posts. Would an internal rebellion have ever been successful? Impossible to say with certainty either way. But the fact there was internal dissent kept Saddam focused inwards and kept him off balance. Its part of the overall containment strategy. Maybe it would have never succeeded, but I think there are plenty of examples in history where particularly brutal regimes are overthrown by indigenous forces precisely because of that brutality. It may not happen as quickly as we would like or in the form we'd prefer, but history is full of these examples.

Again, this is not some "lefty-lib" argument against the war, it is grounded in a foreign policy tradition with a lot of weight and past success behind it. In fact, realism is most often criticized for the absence of moral calculations to it - from both the right (the Cheney/Wolfowitz/Kristol right) and the left, both of whom try to append their specific moral worldview to foreign policy which is much more firmly grounded in things like security of access to necessary resources, places for export, balance of power, collaborations with states who have similar needs, stability in regions where those needs are most pronounced and national security.

Famed realists in American foreign policy include Scowcroft, Kissinger, Neibhur, George Kennan, Dean Acheson. Presidents who followed this tradition include Eisenhower, HW Bush and even Reagan.

The fundamental mistake of Bush and the neoconservative nexus was the discrediting of this tradition and the dreamy idea they could come up with an approach that was better through marrying a leftist-neo-Wilsonianism with the conservative strain of being "tough" and unilateral. This got them into a huge mess whose end is still unknown and has fundamentally damaged the American interest around the world, to say little of the horrible price Iraq as a country has had to pay for their fantasies of democracy rolling across the Middle East - a kind of perverted domino theory where the dominoes would be falling into the glories of democracy and free markets rather than the cold-war conception of "dominoe theory".

[Pardalis]

The US would have had to fund and arm that insurgency, and we'd still be at the same place today, a sectarian civil war. At least now the Hussein element is out.

[Peephole]

http://users.telenet.be/peephole/forams/Bla/large_vietnam.jpg

"The war's over, guys! Great success!"

[Pardalis]

Has Belgium ever fought a war?

[Dorian Gray]

The war in Iraq has been over for years, dude! Mission Accomplished!

[Darth Rotor]

Has Belgium ever fought a war?
Belgium spent two wars as a German doormat.

Since then, cowering behind better folk.

DR

[Peephole]

has belgium ever fought a war?
We did World War 1, we were kind of too lazy to do the second one.
belgium spent two wars as a german doormat.

Since then, cowering behind better folk.

Dr
HURRR ME TUF

ME KILL PEOPLE

[Praktik]

I dunno why Peephole didn't chose to be born in a country with a prouder martial heritage...