crackerjack
Well-known member
Probably not that different from Saddam's line ...
Maybe, but from where we're standing now, accurate.
Probably not that different from Saddam's line ...
Maybe, but from where we're standing now, accurate.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that but as Ollie and others said in the other thread I have become less and less in favour of that as it seems to get worse every day."Yes, of course, which is why the US should stay there and sort it out."
Well, I'm not sure that it is the benefit of hindsight because I seem to remember reading again and again that nothing but chaos would ensue. Even if there were many people arguing the opposite, I think it was irresponsible to say the least for the US to only believe that side of the argument. I believe that they basically heard only what they wanted to hear. They were reckless and they had no back-up plan."The benefits of hindsight! It's easy now to say that all of this was obvious to anyone, even to people who had no interest in the region or the struggles of the Iraqi people. What did Iraqi dissidents say? What did Iraqi opposition parties say?"
Yeah but every thread ends up being about that. I'm sorry if I derailed it."I think that we've run into two problems in this thread:
1. Attempting to prove or disprove the legitmacy of the invasion - but I guess I don't mind that because it's important"
Yeah."2. Slippage all over the place - Islamists, insurgents, ordinary Muslims, the fertile crescent, the penninsula, whatever else, have all blended in to each other at various points, which has made things more difficult than needs be."
Doesn't matter whose line it is, it turned out to be pretty much true didn't it? That's not a moral judgment, just saying that that is what happened.Probably not that different from Saddam's line ...
Who the hell is 'Ollie'?I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that but as Ollie and others said in the other thread I have become less and less in favour of that as it seems to get worse every day.
It's also worth pointing out that, quite apart from things like Abu Ghraib and the shooting of protesters - not to mention the disasterously stupid raising of Ol' Glory in Baghdad - that the basic infrastructure reconstruction has been an absolute shambles. Something like $23 billion of Iraqi money is 'unaccounted for' (i.e. embezzled, wasted or simply stolen) - and that was in a Panorama report nealy a year ago, it's probably more than that now. Money has been spend on public swimming pools while operating theatres have raw sewage sloshing around on the floor.Well, I'm not sure that it is the benefit of hindsight because I seem to remember reading again and again that nothing but chaos would ensue. Even if there were many people arguing the opposite, I think it was irresponsible to say the least for the US to only believe that side of the argument. I believe that they basically heard only what they wanted to hear. They were reckless and they had no back-up plan.
Doesn't matter whose line it is, it turned out to be pretty much true didn't it? That's not a moral judgment, just saying that that is what happened.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asking what makes me think Saddam prevented civil war better than the US or how I think he did it?"I'm also interested in hearing why people think that Saddam would be/was able to acheive what the American Armed Forces cannot do."
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asking what makes me think Saddam prevented civil war better than the US or how I think he did it?
The latter: What has Saddam got that America doesn't?
The latter: What has Saddam got that America doesn't?
(I think that that should say not at the start)" Not even the slightest compunction about imprisoning, torturing or killing thousands of civillians?"
I would guess that both of these are correct, along with the fact that after the invasion there was a power vacuum and all hell broke loose. The Americans have to push the jack back in to the box, not just keep it in there in the first place."The advantage that comes from being a part of the nation you're oppressing"
“Most, if not all, the terrorists are the old Baath Party members,” Mam Rostam said. “They changed their names and became an Islamist party. But they are the same guys. They have unified with some Sunnis around the Southwest of Kirkuk because they are living in this area. They are making these attacks to make this democratic experiment after Saddam fail.”
I had heard much the same from members of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Suleimaniya. What frustrates them most about the U.S. military strategy is the American prioritization of Al Qaeda. The vast majority of the violence, according to my Kurdish sources, is committed by Baathists and old Baathists under new names. Failure to identify Iraq’s principal terrorist organizations and treat them accordingly is the number one reason why Iraq is such a catastrophe. At least this is what I have been told. Kurdish officials I’ve met who try to explain this to the Americans are dismissed out of hand and ignored utterly.
“So their goals are not local to Kirkuk,” I said. “They are for the whole of Iraq.”
“They want all of Iraq to fail,” Mam Rostam said. “They want the Americans to feel that they are not able to succeed in this area. They want to force the Americans to negotiate with the Baath Party.”
“So they aren’t necessarily targeting you or us,” I said.
“They are targeting anyone just to achieve instability,” Mam Rostam said.
“So there’s no plan other than violence,” Patrick said.
“There is no plan,” Mam Rostam said. “It doesn’t matter where. It’s just random violence. Sometimes they bomb a kindergarten in their own neighborhood. Or a university. Or the civil office. Or a municipality. Or wherever. In these offices there are people of every nationality and religion. There is no way to say there are only Sunnis or whatever in these places. This is a multicultural country. Everyone is everywhere.”
Even the slightest compunction about imprisoning, torturing or killing thousands of civillians?
As badly as (some of) the Americans have behaved, they're not half as brutal as Saddam's goons were, are they?
The advantage that comes from being a part of the nation you're oppressing. A foreign occupying army is always vulnerable to a) nationalist resentment b) the knowledge your opponent has that you are far from home, in alien terrain, unable to speak the lingo, spending a freaking fortune and liable to be undermined by domestic opinion (surely your 4GW thang is partly about this last point).
Very true - it seems as though we're criticising the USAF for its harsh treatment of suspects, but at the same time lamenting the lack of a strong-man dictator with the necessary unscrupulousness to thoroughly put down the insurgency.
If we consider the operational and strategic situations in Iraq, we can easily see why no amount of tactical success can save us. Strategically, we are fighting to support a Shi’ite regime closely aligned with Iran, our most potent local opponent. Every tactical success merely moves us closer to giving Iran a new ally in the form of a restored Iraqi state under Shi’ite domination. The more tactical successes we win, the worse our strategic situation gets. This flows not from any tactical failure (though there have been plenty of those), but from botching the strategic level from the outset. Saddam's Iraq was the main regional counterweight to Iran, which means we should not have attacked it.
Operationally, we have been maneuvered by Iraq's Shi’ites into fighting their civil war for them, focusing our efforts against the Sunnis. As I have observed before, we are in effect the Shi’ites’ unpaid Hessians. That is why Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army not to fight us in Sadr City. It is not that he is afraid of us; he is simply making a rational operational decision.