Presidential Race

Parent Cafe
441

<p>Mini:</p>

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<p>There’s nothing peaceful about Sunni/Shia relations in Iraq today. They are not singing Kumbaya. They are killing each other at a feverish clip. The powder is dry and the match has been lit. I don’t see anything on the horizon that would stop that. The Iraqi Sunnis have nothing to lose.</p>

<p>BTW, the Sunni/Shia battlelines aren’t really religious in nature. It’s just a good old-fashioned power struggle…who will have power in Iraq? The Shiia have a majority and Iran’s support. The Sunnis have a Baathist organization and the resources of the entire Middle East (except Iran). Could be as good as the Colts/Pats game last week.</p>

<p>Burns certainly believes that the bloodshed will escalate exponentially after the Americans leave and he believes it because his Iraqi friends (Shia, Sunni, and Kurds) all believe it.</p>

<p>There is no doubt that Iran will fund the Shia. There is no doubt that the House of Saud will fund the Sunnis. Nobody is likely to run out of bullets anytime soon.</p>

442

<p>The largest Muslim community in my town is Cham, mostly from Cambodia, some from Malaysia or Vietnam. They are nominally Sunni. They share the Masjid with the Shia community, mostly from India, a few Iranians. The religious leader of the community is a Sunni from Indonesia; the secular leader is a Shia from India, and the women’s leader is a Palestinian Sunni.</p>

<p>Does Professor Kurth actually know any Muslims?</p>

<p>The Iraqi Sunnis have a HUGE amount to gain by cutting the best possible deal. They’d be free to do so if it wasn’t for occupiers who have empowered Al-Sadr. I think we would do best to treat them as if they have some basic intelligence, and want the best they can get for their families and their children, given the circumstances.</p>

<p>Will it be difficult? You bet. Will it be ugly? My bet. But all kinds of things could happen once the aggressive occupiers leave the country, and not all of them terrible. (this presumes they are leaving, and that current actions really have much to do with Iraq at all.)</p>

443

<p>All day long, I’ve been asking myself who benefits from ongoing civil war in Iraq. I think we’ve just identified another group. The Free Republic types whose posts I showed you have a vested interest in prolonging the war as long as possible.</p>

<p>After all the administration rhetoric about how vital US presence is to Iraq, if we pull out now, they would have no moral basis for refusing to take in the refugees. But as long as they can keep the war going, they can claim that there’s no need because success is just around the corner. I think for some of the Free Republic types, there is no number of American or Iraqi lives that is too much to pay to keep Iraqis in the Middle East and off our shores.</p>

<p>The reason I keep trying to get at “who benefits?” is that the key to changing policy is to convince these individuals to change their analysis of risks and benefits. And immigration might be the key. If we stand up loudly and demand that a large number of refugees be granted safe haven in our country now and that a minimum quota must be granted asylum each month of the war…it could be that the Free Republic types will decide that since the war isn’t giving them what they want–keeping Iraqis out of the US–there’s no point to pursuing it so vigorously. </p>

<p>Surely this isn’t the only benefit that people see to enduring chaos in the Middle East, but taking away this one will be a start.</p>

444

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<p>I read something about this just today. The journalist said that at one point, early in the occupation, people would insist “We’re all brothers” and act defensive if he asked their sect. But now it’s often the first thing they mention about themselves. And he said the same thing mini did, that all the secularists and moderates are leaving if they can manage it. His address book is basically useless, because almost everyone in it has died or moved away.</p>

445

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<p>Cut a deal? They’ve been getting ethnic cleansed from their own neighborhoods in Bahgdad for the last year. 100,000 a month? Do you honestly think there is going to be “deal-cutting” with Al Sadr’s government?</p>

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<p>That’s all well and good. Somehow I doubt that you have 100,000 people a month dragged out of their houses at gunpoint in your town. That tends to make people a little less inclined to see eye to eye.</p>

446

<p>“Cut a deal? They’ve been getting ethnic cleansed from their own neighborhoods in Bahgdad for the last year. 100,000 a month? Do you honestly think there is going to be “deal-cutting” with Al Sadr’s government?”</p>

<p>Al-Sadr’s government supported by the occupiers? Not on your life. Take away the occupiers and the dynamics become very, very fluid.</p>

447

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601541.html[/url]”>www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601541.html</a></p>

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<p>Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</p>

<p>Apparently my comments from dozens of posts ago were not so off-the-wall after all. Chuck Schumer was on MTP this morning already dreaming about the day when Republicans will be marching into GWB’s office to demand an immediate troop withdrawal sometime in 2007. It is frightening the kinds of people we have in Congress today. It’s like they are deliberately following every disastrous decision in the Vietnam playbook. If I had a son in Iraq now, Mr. Schumer would do well to watch his back this morning, believe me. Despicable.</p>

448

<p>Interesteddad: Conflagration in that part of the world between Shiites and Sunnis of the kind Burns predicts would have about a 99% chance of driving the cost of oil up somewhat to very significantly, particularly if SA was dragged directly into the war. This would be bad for US interests. If oil fields in either country (SA or Iran) were bombed significantly or supply chains were disrupted significantly, this would be disastrous for US interests.</p>

<p>The conflict might be good for Israel in the sense that if the Sunni-Shia had their hands full, those who want Israel gone or significantly weakened might otherwise be occupied with struggles internal to Islam. </p>

<p>Oh, and by the way, what your suggesting is an argument for us to leave Iraq today, if you agree with Kurth that that eventuality would be good.</p>

<p>I happen to think it’s very possible that such a conflict would heighten the interest that these nations would have in proving their anti-Israel and anti-West credentials. And therefore, between threat to oil and threat to Israel this part of the world would become a much more tense place, not to mention violent. And some of it could be turned toward us.</p>

<p>None of this is what our war planners had in mind, I hope.</p>

<p>And the final thing about Burns presentation, he basically said the surge was on the slenderest reed of having a chance of succeeding. In so doing, he underscored what many feel: the surge is not part of an overall strategic change. It’s simply a relatively minor shift in tactics. In other words, it’s a crap shoot.</p>

<p>We’ve come a long way from the goal to establish democracy in Iraq and being greeted as liberators.</p>

<p>What cracks me up is that anybody still listens to or interviews supporters of the war like Kristol, Kagan, or the like. And theirs are not the only ones whose reputations are permanently marred. There was an article in the Economist saying Sec. of State Rice’s reputation is in tatters. Rumsfeld’s legacy is on a par with McNamara’s. I have a friend who used to work with Wolfowitz and now works with one of Cheney’s daughters, and I talk to mutual friends who now despise her (not for her convictions, but rather because she never believed any of this stuff but worked on its behalf). And finally, there is Bush. If surge doesn’t work, poor Bush’s worst fears will have been realized. He went head-to-head with his father’s legacy, and came up seriously wanting; he just never measured up. Would that we had his father in office now to use diplomacy as well as warring to extricate us from this mess. Sigh.</p>

449

<p>Hereshoping: Schumer should watch his back, huh? I love the fact that you want to kill the messenger.</p>

450

<p>Hereshoping:</p>

<p>Kagan is a leading neo-con. In my opinion, the neo-cons should be required to stand in the corner wearing dunce caps while the class discusses Iraq. The neo-con ideology is what got us into this mess in the first place by filling the President’s head with fanciful notions of some idllyic post-invasion democracy in Iraq. They’ve disqualified themselves on this issue.</p>

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<p>Some of the Senators do have sons serving in Iraq, including Sen. Webb, Naval Academy grad who served as Secretary of the Navy appointed by Reagan.</p>

<p>Sen. John Warner also served as Secretary of the Navy, appointed by Nixon.</p>

451

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<p>Unlike Hereshoping, I think that it takes more than hope and prayers to have an effective military strategy. What the neocons are asking us to do is akin to refusing to go to the doctor for a broken arm because you “hope” it will mend OK on its own.</p>

<p>It’s indeed frightening the people we have in government. Like the ones who think that saying, “It will work this time. I/We told the generals it had to this time” means that they are assured of victory. </p>

<p>As Nancy Pelosi put it: “Why didn’t you tell them that before?”</p>

<p>What the neocons are saying now is no different from when they said: “It’s going to be a cakewalk. They’ll all be home in 6 months.” </p>

<p>It’s just magical thinking. The neocons expect us to believe that anything they can dream up HAS to be true, and we’re wrong for not living in their castles in the air, no matter how many times we’ve seen the people who try come crashing down.</p>

452

<p>Al-Qaeda has never attached the democratic republic of Iran, a Shia state. They provide aid to Hezbollah, a Shia political-military organization. They haven’t attacked the Shia in India, or in Indonesia, or Saudi Arabia. From their perspective, there are simply bigger fish to fry. Take the aggressive occupiers out of Iraq, and the dynamics change very much for them.</p>

453

<p>Interestedad: Couldn’t agree with you more about the neo-cons and how they should hide themselves in some remote part of a large land called shame. However, they are attacking anyone but themselves: they say Bush and Rumsfeld got the execution of a great idea wrong and the Senators are not leading when they should be. I’ve said it ad nauseam: I was against this war, but once we were in there I thought we had to really pour on the gas and quickly. At that point, I was in agreement with the neo-cons, for a brief period. But essentially, going to war was a great way to accomplish more terrorism against us (the war promised to be a great Al-Qaeda recruiting tool) at great cost. A bad idea. But the neo-cons won’t accept responsibility for the mess they created. And people like Hereshoping blame the messengers. If you call it a defeat, the logic goes, you’re responsible for the defeat.</p>

454

<p>Background on Robert Kagan: <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>No military experience whatsoever. He does have experience as a speechwriter for George Schultz though. Is that the part that’s supposed to make him a better judge of military strategy than generals like Wesley Clark, Barry R. McCaffrey, Joseph P. Horn, Lt. General Odom, and General John Abizaid? </p>

<p>Want to know what’s really frightening? The people in this country who don’t know the difference between rhetoric and substance. Or who think anything they can dream up is automatically as valid as the professional opinion of qualified experts in their fields.</p>

455

<p>I saw a funny column comparing Kristol, Kagan, and Bush. All sons of much more successful men who seemingly make up for their inadequacies by being extremely belligerent. I have no idea if they actually all three feel a sense of inadequacy, but it’s a funny/compelling idea.</p>

456

<p>Well, Kagan has it in spades, because he has a professionally successful wife too.</p>

457

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<p>I don’t agree nor disagree with Kurth’s hypothesis. I just find it an interesting and thought-provoking counterpoint.</p>

<p>Obviously, the biggest risk of a wider Islam versus Islam struggle in the Middle East would be the disruption of oil supplies and the threats to Arab dictatorships favorable to the United States. IMO, Kurth glosses over those risks a bit in his published articles. If I had a chance to ask him a question, it would be precisely that: what gives him confidence that a Shia/Sunni war would not destabilize oil supplies?</p>

<p>As for pulling out of Iraq, I think that is inevitable, beginning in the next six months. I have seen no discussion of logistics, so I have no clue what shape the pull-out might take. My guess is that we will reposition troops to the Kuwaiti border and focus our resources towards containing the war to within the Iraqi borders and maintaining oil and shipping infrastructure in the region.</p>

458

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>You are forgetting that Al Queda in Iraq made a tactical decision to trigger Shiia/Sunni violence as the most effective means of destabilizing the situation. They bombed the holiest of Shia mosques – the event that really put the match to the power keg in Iraq and marked the day that the situation sprialled out of control.</p>

<p>Whether they like it or not, Al Queda and the flow of Arab dead-ender suicide bombers into Iraq are now linked with the Sunni Baathist insurgency, led by Sadaam’s vice-president.</p>

459

<p>Agreed. I am glad you brought that idea to our attention, of Kurth’s. I had read a similar notion previously from a well-known commentator, I thought maybe it was him, who basically believes that war can have a very cleansing and salutory effect. I agree that it can accomplish the goal of a more stable order or more stable disorder. However, I think it is very hard to predict the ways in which a war of that sort could go very wrong beyond its effect on oil.</p>

<p>I basically agree that there’ll be a lot of pressure to pull out in six months or a bit more, but I don’t think it will happen until there is a true bipartisan consensus on it. No one wants to get blamed for losing Iraq. People like hereshoping (not trying to snipe at her per se, I have friends like her) tend to think that if we don’t win it’s only 'cause we lacked will. Oh, and she might disagree with that characterization, but I have friends that feel this way and feel that that’s what went wrong for us in Vietnam. My point is some people feel we lose only when we pull back and thereby concede defeat. They’ll never admit that we can’t win. And these people, however small a minority they increasingly are, will be there to call those who make this decision defeatist, and the congress knows this. Furthermore, I agree with Jim Pinkerton who worked for Bush I. He said W’s plan basically is to not have the war end when he’s president. And Bush has said that it would be a future president that would preside over the war. And by Bush’s side you’ve got Cheney who has been downright *****y over the implication that he’s also been presiding over a major league debacle. After all, his buddy Rummy is forever a failure. In other words, there are a lot of forces at work to avoid the tar baby and avoid being the messenger. In this sense, the parallels with Vietnam are eery.</p>

460

<p>We woke up to a disheartening front page headline in our local fish wrapper: “Strain on US forces fuels debate over draft - The war in Iraq marks the first time in modern history that the United States has fought an extended conflict with an all-volunteer military…” (I choke on my coffee at this point, rather sensitive to this train of thought) “…Even if troops were to pull out of Iraq tomorrow, the United States faces a war of unknown duration against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Other threats include Iran and North Korea…” I lost my appetite for breakfast by 9:00 a.m. Any thoughts? I would hope this is just one more sensational headline…</p>