AP said:

I’m getting real tired of this around here. Next time you’re banned. Capisce?

You know Allah, that is a pretty widely held belief. I have heard both liberals and conservatives suggest nuking or otherwise wiping out one or more groups in the middle east out of exasperation.

I’m sure many people felt the same way about Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. That is why so many people either supported or were ambivalent towards Calley after My Lai. I bet if the Abu Gharib pictures came to light NOW, or maybe 6 months to a year from now if things get worse, a lot fewer people would care. Mentally a lot of people are just writing off Iraq and have stopped caring what happens to that country. That is why you have the ISG not talking about nor caring about victory, and instead assuming ‘defeat’ and just looking at how to get us out.

When we are fighting a war on behalf of allies and our own allies seem utterly worthless, the natural inclination for many people is to leave the allies to the wolves, but to at the same time avoid defeat to save face. The only way to pull that off is scorched earth. You hear that more from the right than the left only because the left wants to see America ‘defeated’ because they believe it will stop our evil neocon capitalist adventurism over wars for oil to make Bush/Cheney’s friends at halliburton rich etc etc, so the left doesn’t care about saving face. If an American black eye puts the brakes on ‘capitalist aggression’ then they see it as a good thing.

kaltes on December 11, 2006 at 2:32 PM

One thing absent from these discussions:

The Kurds are doing great. If nothing else, we can at least take pride in the fact that we saved the Kurds from Saddam, and they are being mature enough to move on and develop both politically and economically. The Kurds are a success story. Read Totten’s posts about visiting Iraqi Kurdistan.

Most Shiite areas are peaceful. The Sunni areas generally aren’t but why? Because we threw THEM out of power and they are fighting back to recapture that power. They’ve been doing this for years now, since shortly after the shock of us wiping the floor with them in the initial invasion.

and now the ‘bad’ news…

We wanted the Iraqis to handle their own security right? WELL BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. The Iraqis ARE handling security, and part of how they handle it is to lay the smack down on the Sunnis. Most Iraqis are Shiites, so it figures that the shiites are policing the sunnis, and that all this conflict is an outgrowth of that. We have Kurd units that do very well, and some shiite units too, but then there are also less disciplined shiites who want to fight old school like how Saddam did and eveyone else did in the old days before people gave a sh*t about the geneva conventions and all that.

What is the worst that could happen? A civil war? Well… maybe. The sunnis aren’t going to be able to do more than they’re doing now. Even if the Saudis equip and fund them. The shiites are simply too powerful, too well organized, and too mobilized now to be stopped vis a vis the Sunnis. The sunnis don’t know this, and think they are superior to the shiites, kindof like the how the whites used to be in south africa. The difference is, of course, that the shiites have had years to mobilize themselves economically, politically, and militarily, so they will wipe the floor with the Sunnis if it came to that. The sunnis don’t have saddam’s fedayeen and republican guard protecting them anymore, and their terrorist tactics might work to get America to leave, but will NOT work against a Shiite offensive. If the aggressors are willing to fight dirty, insurgencies invariably are crushed at great loss of life to the insurgents’ side.

So let’s say this all happens. Let’s say things get ugly and the Shiites take over and subjugate the Sunnis, then the Shiites proceed to run a democracy on their terms. Is this a defeat for America? I think not.

(1) Iraq will be a democracy. It won’t be pretty, it wasn’t what was promised on the neocon brochure, but America’s primary objective will have been accomplished.

(2) A major US enemy, Saddam Hussein, will have been defeated. Not only that, but his entire support base will ahve been crushed and subjugated by those whom they previously repressed. This will have accomplished the goal of deterring enemies of the US from seeking WMD, EXCEPT that the media will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, spin this as a defeat of US interests, and embolden US enemies. However, the facts on the ground at the end of the day will be that the US kicked a*s, took names, and pulled off regime change in a way that ended up completely screwing over the former elites. This reality won’t be lost on other nations where elites repress others. These enemies will see that, at the end of the day, the sunnis lost. America didn’t kill them, their own countrymen did. These countries should not fear America, but SHOULD fear that America will create a situation wherein their domestic enemies will be able to turn the tables on them.

(3) WMD. Iraq won’t have any. A major future proliferation risk was eliminated.

(4) Human rights? Well it will be better than under Saddam, though not by much in the near term. 10 years from now? Well, a democracy being what it is, human rights will follow to some degree. Don’t think Iraq will look like the West, but maybe something like Turkey.

kaltes on December 11, 2006 at 2:57 PM