This is what I've been saying since July, and I don't see why one wouldn't start the 18 months running then.

I'm less optimistic than Posen that once internal strategic equilibrium is reached in Iraq, Anbar won't resemble Waziristan wrt harboring AQ and AQ-like people.

Posted by: CharleyCarp at March 5, 2006 05:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

18 months sounds reasonable, though my understanding is that this is not much different from what the US military has been planning.

I do disagree, however, with Posen's implication that the Sunni population as a whole supports the insurgency. Given there are about six million Sunnis, if they were as a whole pro-insurgency, there would be at least 100,000 insurgents, instead of the present approximate 20,000.

Most Sunni citizens greatly dislike the Baathists, because they are basically a gang of thugs who terrorized them when they were in power and continue to do so now. Since Sunnis are largely moderate, they also hate the jihidist theocrats. The political leadership is mainly tribal sheiks, many of whom have come to the conclusion that the insurgency can't win, and would like to work out a deal with the Iraqi government. They are prevented from doing so, however, because that would bring them under threat of assassination by the insurgents. In addition, the Sunni sheiks are demanding that the government call off and disband the Shiite militias who have been regularly attacking the Sunnis.

I think that what is going to make the difference will be the Iraqi security forces getting strong enough to give the sheiks protection from the insurgents, though if the Shiite militias continue to assassinate Sunni's, then things will still stay stuck.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at March 5, 2006 11:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

Since most of Posen's article consists of the iteration of points I have made at one point or another over the last two years, I can hardly off vehement disagreement in general.

As to the specific recommendation that an 18-month clock be publicly announced, I think Posen's argument that it is only speculation that this would embolden the insurgency is a little glib. At bottom I suspect he knows that the real reason for announcing a timetable like this is to propitiate American public opinion; Posen's argument, effectively, is that this is so important that the consequences in Iraq don't matter.

Though agreeing in principle that the Iraq commitment needs to be liquidated within the next couple of years, I am not ready to go that far. A good rule in foreign policy is to be publicly direct and explicit about objectives and interests, while keeping tactics veiled when necessary. It is necessary here. At every step the American commitment needs to be discussed in the context of our objectives with respect to the establishment of a stable Iraqi government. Should one be established our position should be that American troops are not needed, and can begin to leave. Should the effort to establish such a government fail our position should be that Iraqis had a choice between order and chaos, and chose chaos -- American troops cannot help in such a situation, and can begin to leave. The key point is that in the meantime we hold the door open for Iraqis to take responsibility for their own fate as long as possible.

Though I think this a better way forward than Posen's timetable, I am skeptical that it will work. I have never thought Arabs, and Iraqis in particular, capable of sustaining anything we would recognize as a stable, liberal democracy at this point in history. I would rather this had not be selected as a key objective of American policy in the region. Since it has been, I think it best to do what we can to make it possible, even if this turns out to be less than is needed and even if we cannot do it for very long.

Posted by: Zathras at March 6, 2006 01:34 AM | Permalink to this comment

Good for you, Giving up emotions even negative ones is a very hard prospect. Reading you post made me think about if there are any negative emotions that I need to shut out of my life.

Posted by: Lili at March 6, 2006 02:05 AM | Permalink to this comment

Greg,

Posen's article on Iran makes even more sense than this.

Les, I urge you to read

http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Iraq_Jan06_rpt.pdf

This. Sad to say, but it's as clear as black and white that the near-universal majority of the Sunnis overwhelmingly reject the legitimacy of the current government, approve of the attacks on US forces, want the US to leave right away, etc. etc. etc. Your number of insurgents is a guess, completely out of thin air like everyone else's, and I'd like to know where you found some sort of absolute ratio between the number of sunnis, the support for the insurgents, and the number of insurgents.

In this time in Iraq of exploding sectarian hatred and fear, it's inconcievable that the Sunnis would *not be unanimously behind their insurgents. If so, they'd defy the logic of practically every insurgency in history.

Posted by: glasnost at March 6, 2006 03:40 AM | Permalink to this comment

While Posen's analysis of the problem could have been written three years ago by Michael Moore or any "liberal" critic of Bush's war, his "solutions" are still inevitably polluted by the same neo-con perspective that got us into this war in the first place.

It is, however, refreshing to see someone like Posen finally acknowledge that it really is "all about the oil". Posen obviously doesn't give a damn about the potential bloodbath that may ensue should his recommendations be followed as long as that bloodbath does not result in the US losing its "strategic control" of the oil resources of Iraq and its neighbors. The one "solution" that has any practical chance of working -- i.e. letting Iraq's neighbors virtually "divvy up" Iraq -- is unacceptable to Posen because it means that the US will have less control over mid-east oil.

(In other words, like Bush, Greg, and the rest of the neo-con cabal that have been backing this war, rivers of blood of Muslims and Arabs are a perfectly acceptable "cost" for pipelines full of oil---- especially since its a cost that Bush, Greg, and the neo-con cabal will never have assessed upon themselves.)

It really is time to "divvy up" Iraq --- now that Bushco has abandoned all pretense of caring about nuclear non-proliferation with its deal with India, and has blown off its commitment to democracy by rejecting Hamas as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, only lip service to freedom and the fight against the spread of WMDs keeps us from achieving a realistic solution in Iraq in which we let Syria, Iran, and Turkey divide up Iraq.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 6, 2006 12:10 PM | Permalink to this comment

Lukasiak, you are looking at it from the point of view of iraq strategy.

But if you look at it from a DC view, giving parts of iraq to syria and iran can't be spun as anything but defeat.

Why accept defeat today? We have something that looks like a stalemate. Until we get a big news item that shows a decisive defeat, why not just keep spinning?

And there's no need to accept defeat even when we get a big news item. Why not claim the news was faked, and just keep going even then?

Notice the recent spin -- the problems of the last couple weeks didn't really happen, they were just fake news. Essentially no mosques were damaged, many fewer people died than reported, the iraqi security forces mostly did just fine, everything's settled down, nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Unless it's something that's impossible to spin away, news that can't be denied, why admit defeat? Thirty helicopters downed in one day, maybe, 300 US casualties in one day and 300 the next, the US ambassador killed in a firefight in the Green Zone, something like that.

Politically, isn't it better to let the army do whatever they can? Hope they pull a rabbit out of the hat. In the meantime, just keep repeating that things are getting better but true victory will only come in the long term, and deny the news, and wait.

That doesn't look real good but it's better than admitting defeat.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 6, 2006 01:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

Professor Barry R. Posen makes an interesting point that most commentators have failed to highlight: the demographics underlining the continued strength of the insurgency, namely, the high birth rate of Iraqi Sunnis and Arabic jihadis from other Muslim countries. This observation was also made by Professor Samuel Huntington of Yale in his book, The New World Order and the Clash of Civilizations. Because there is such a high birth rate in Muslim families, each year many Muslim males become of age to fight as insurgents and jahis. In fact Professor Huntington employed reliable statistical charts that showed Muslims have the highest birth rate in the world, and much of the resentment and hatred that fuels the insurgency comes from this sense of lost hope from unemployed males throughout the Muslim world. Politics aside, the demographics in the Muslim world provide Sunnis and jihadis with an almost inexhaustible source of recruits that are drawn to the Iraqi conflict against the American soldiers.
The demographics in the Muslim world will continue to confound the American political leaders, because our soldiers are members of a volunteer army, which now has had to lower its recruitment standards for admission and yet is still falling short of its goals. The volunteer army is, of course, one of the most important and saddest legacies of America's reaction to its misadventure in Vietnam, that other grand experiment in democratic nation-building that failed and resulted in a severe wound to the body politic. In order to defuse the anti-war protest in America against the Vietnam War, President Nixon insituted the lottery, in which males were alloted a number for possible service through the national draft. The higher the number, the less chance there was of being drafted. Eventually, service in the military become one predicated on a volutneer basis, which proved a wedge between citizens of the so-called red and blue states. And the majority of volunteers came fro the red states, thus making national service a career option rather than a shared experience that brought citiizens throughout America together in a common cause, the defense of the nation. One has only to look at the swift-boating of Rep. Murtha to see how the wounds of the Vietnam War have never really healed and how Republican operatives employed the tecniques of McCarthyism to sling mud at Murtha for his dissent on the war in Iraq.
And it is ironic that Rep. Murtha fougth in a war where demographics played such an important and decisive role in the outcome of that War. As David Halberstam noted in The Best and the Brightest, the Vietnamese population also had a high birth rate that equaled or surpassed the one of the baby boomers that American leaders relied on in the draft to prosecute this war. Halberstam estimates that each year appoximately 250,000 Vietnamese males came of age in the North for recruitment into the NVA army. The demographics in the North explain how the NVA could suffer such a military defeat as the Tet Offensive of 1968 and yet retain a resiliency to mount his decisive offense against the ARVN forces and capture Siagon.
In conclusion, no matter how bloggers feel about our involvement in the war in Iraq, the demographics are against us when it comes to the potential pool of fighters in this conflict and future conflicts in the Muslim world just as they were in the war in Vietnam. Demographics are a fact of life beyond political interpretations. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, facts are stubborn things. So no matter what happens in Iraq, the volunteer army will be at a disadvantage in the war on terror. President Bush wants to remain on a permanent war footing in his campaign against terrorism, which he has compared to the long, twilight struggle that his predecessors in the White House promoted to defeat Communism. But his predecessors had a national draft; President Bush does not. So the policy of a volunteer undermines his policy of another long, twilight struggle against militant insurgents and jihadis, who have an almost inexhaustible pool of potential recruits.
Demographics also fuel the fear of Europeans, which came to the fore in the roiting in France and the cartoon war in Denmark. It is common knowledge that the Muslim immigrants, who came to Europe in the 1950's and 1960's, had a much higher birth rate that the European citizens of the various nations into which the Muslims immigrated.
The French Muslims that rioted, of course, have a sustenance allowance from the federal government for housing and other basic necessities. But since there is such a high rate of unemployment and pervasive discrimination against them, the Muslim youth are experiencing the same humiliation and loss of hope that fuels the recruitment of jihadis to Iraq.
And in a February, 2006, poll taken by the Daily Telegram, four out of ten British Muslims believe that even though they are citizens of England, they should be allowed to insitute Sharia law in areas where Muslims are the majority of residents. Again, demographics rears its ugly head into the political arena.
Of course, in Denmark, France and other countries, the cradle-to grave benefits that the Europeans enjoy in their brand of socialism is another demographic time bomb as the indigenious population ages and the other younger citizens have such a low birth rate vis-s-vis the high birth rate of its Muslim citizens. But in order to receive these retirement benefits, the citizens have to have been gainfully employed during their years at work. But the system is biased against the Muslim citizens for obvious reasons, including the fact that small and large businesses operate in a market where the average wage and unemployement benefits are so high and thus makes trying to reverse the pervasive despair of so many unemployed Muslim a substantial risk to their profit margins.

Posted by: George Hoffman at March 6, 2006 01:46 PM | Permalink to this comment

George Hoffman: in a February, 2006, poll taken by the Daily Telegram, four out of ten British Muslims believe...

I think you mean the Daily Telegraph.

Posted by: DavidP at March 6, 2006 05:14 PM | Permalink to this comment

Boy, I sure am glad you all aren't making the decisions. First of all, I think that some of Posen's assumptions stated right at the beginning are dubious. It appears that for the last year or so there is progress being made, and that it is not a static situation. It also appears that the Iraqi army and police are gradually improving, although it is a long haul on both counts. At least we are not going backwards as we did for several years.

The biggest thing is that if we pull out without at least a semblance of victory there it will be a huge morale booster for Al Qaeda and terrorism. What Al Qaeda's victory comes down to is defeating the US, defeating the west, and that victory would be the biggest recruiting triumph they will have ever had. We would be handing them their biggest victory in the GWOT, bigger than the World Trade Center bombing. That will have major consequences.

On top of that, the war could spiral into the biggest black hole imaginable, with all the Middle Eastern countries potentially getting involved and others from there, like Russia or even Europe to try to contain it. Ironically, it is a mirror image of the major mess that some on the left tried to warn us about before going into Iraq. If we don't stabilize Iraq there is a good chance that that major mess will expand exponentially.

Posted by: Napablogger at March 6, 2006 08:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

Boy, I sure am glad you all aren't making the decisions. First of all, I think that some of Posen's assumptions stated right at the beginning are dubious. It appears that for the last year or so there is progress being made, and that it is not a static situation. It also appears that the Iraqi army and police are gradually improving, although it is a long haul on both counts. At least we are not going backwards as we did for several years.

The biggest thing is that if we pull out without at least a semblance of victory there it will be a huge morale booster for Al Qaeda and terrorism. What Al Qaeda's victory comes down to is defeating the US, defeating the west, and that victory would be the biggest recruiting triumph they will have ever had. We would be handing them their biggest victory in the GWOT, bigger than the World Trade Center bombing. That will have major consequences.

On top of that, the war could spiral into the biggest black hole imaginable, with all the Middle Eastern countries potentially getting involved and others from there, like Russia or even Europe to try to contain it. Ironically, it is a mirror image of the major mess that some on the left tried to warn us about before going into Iraq. If we don't stabilize Iraq there is a good chance that that major mess will expand exponentially.

Posted by: Napablogger at March 6, 2006 08:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

If we don't stabilize Iraq there is a good chance that that major mess will expand exponentially.

here's the thing. For the last five years, we have been confronted with incontrovertible evidence that every situation that Bushco involves itself in only gets worse. So the odds of keeping US troops in Iraq under Bush's command for the next three years means that the odd of a major mess expanding exponentially are far greater than if we get the hell out of Iraq as soon as possible.

The only thing that the US can contribute now is cash -- and that cash should be raised by raising taxes on the idiots in the Red States who put this moron in the white house in 2004.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 6, 2006 10:02 PM | Permalink to this comment

Napa,

The rhetoric on here is a little hot, but you're (i assume carelessly, and not deliberately) missing the entire point of Posen's argument. It leads me to doubt that you read his analysis at all. Really, it just went completely by you.

Posen's #1 assertion is that the presence of US troops - and not only that, but their kingmaker role in politics, their guarantee of untrumpable force, their bales of cash, and so on and so on and so on - are what is in fact proloning the insurgency and making it worse. In other words, Posen expects the situation in Iraq to improve once we leave.

Now, I'm not above the possibility that people will initially attempt to run wild when we leave - and neither is Posen. However, that so much hatred has been allowed to percolate between these sides as they flail and bloody each other that this may be inevitable, only a question of when. Furthermore, even if Iraq goes through a period of more open and fully joined internal conflict, the balance of power at the end will be a truly honestly-negotiated one, that all players involve have agreed and/or surrendered to.

The US Army is the stick in the jaws of Iraq. As long as we're there, it can't be consumed.

So, point #1 is that Posen thinks that Iraq's political and security climate will get better, not worse, if we leave. And why shouldn't it? What would anyone do that they aren't already doing?

Point #2 is that Posen's withdrawal plan, like all the other withdrawal plans out there, are not complete withdrawal. We remain enough forces concentrated in the region to handily discourage a regional war or too much more meddling than is already happening, and enough Spec Ops in the conuntry to make sure no terrorist concentrations of power form. Kind of like Pakistan, which no one seems to be demanding we conquer and occupy.

Point #3, responding to the point of yours that honestly makes me the angriest, because it's such a playground, anti-factual, outright childish argument, is that "we can't leave, because the terrorists will when we look weak." Last I heard, nobody including the US military has any hope whatsoever of eliminating armed resistance to US forces in Iraq. Only places like Syria totally destroy guerilla armies. In all other scenarios, there is either a negotiated agreement, or the ocupying power just gives up and goes home. So if leaving Iraq and letting the terrorists gloat was really such a security disaster for the US, I'd be sleeping unwell tonight, because it's as close to a sure thing as you can think of.

Luckily, it doesn't mean diddly squat. It's going to piss a bunch of right-wing americans off when Al-Zarqawi claims victory when the US occupying force leaves Iraq, but that's really the extent of it. Recructing won't increase, it will decrease, because Al-Jazeera will run out of live footage of dead Iraqi kids blown up by US bombs. Militants are attracted to and radicalized by war and violence. Sudden outbreaks of peace are not known to create this effect.

Besides, as I said, none of the withdrawal plans, including Barry's, call for the end of the U.S. ability to hit anyone in there that needs to get hit.

Really, just because some people on here are angry, you must think we have very small brains to use such tired and unrealistic arguments.

Posted by: glasnost at March 7, 2006 02:54 AM | Permalink to this comment

Glasnost, as to the number of insurgents, a great many stories have said it is estimated to be 15-20,000. Here is another way of looking at it: from what I have read it takes about 15 regular soldiers to stand up against each guerilla insurgent. Given that US and IRF number about 350,000, and much of the later are police, the insurgency couldn't be much over 20,000 or it would be overwhelming its opponents, something that is definitely not happening.

Regarding the population-to-insurgent ratio, I am not an expert in the area, though I do recall there were about 150,000 viet cong. If there are about 1 million adult males under 40, a reaonable estimate, then only one adult in 50 is an active insurgent, a number which is very low, especially considering that unemployment is very high in Sunni areas and so there are a lot of young men interested in fighting for pay.

You say, "In this time in Iraq of exploding sectarian hatred and fear, it's inconcievable that the Sunnis would *not be unanimously behind their insurgents. If so, they'd defy the logic of practically every insurgency in history." However, the survey says that 66% of Sunnis disapprove of attacks against Iraqi security forces.

The Sunnis are between a rock and a hard place. They distrust the Shiites, but most of them also hate the Baathists and Sunni theocrats. In addition, people make the mistake in talking about the Sunnis of thinking of them as a unified group in eternal opposition to the Kurds and Shiites. Actually, on the one hand, Iraqis developed a fair amount of unity in the 80 years since their country was formed. On the other hand, as Arabs their main form of organization is in terms of kinship: family, clan, and tribe. Saddam Hussein attempted to suppress the tribes, but since his government fell they have become more powerful and are in competition with the Baathists, and also with the Jihadists and often each other.

I have noticed that most people who want the US to get out immediately have little or no interest in what is actually going on within the Sunni areas, including how the battles between the various groups (including numerous criminal gangs) are making life difficult for the people living there. They tend to assume that the US is bad, and so the Sunnis must be united and peaceful among themselves. Alas, that is not at all the case, and internal Sunni politics are going have a great deal to do with how things end up in Iraq.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at March 7, 2006 03:01 AM | Permalink to this comment

Glasnost, thanks for your comments. I did read it but the point is that I disagree with him. I think a lot of his thinking is shallow and unsupported. I don't think Iraq's security climate will get better if we leave, not at all, and if the security climate is not better the political climate won't be either.

Nothing is going to get better until the Iraqi army and police are sufficiently depoliticized and trained, and you can't put a time frame on it. Posen states at the beginning that the army isn't hardly any better after two years---then whoops he states at the end it will be sufficiently improved in 18 months that we can pull back. He says as long as the US troops are there the Iraqi army won't improve. He seems to pick whichever point will support his position at that particular juncture in his paper.

To me it sounds like Republicans talking about poor people and saying, if we just stop giving them money they will pull themselves up by their boot straps. It is going to take more than that.

And I am sorry if I sound like a child but this is an assymetrical war which means it is not about who can shoot the most people. It is about Al Qaeda destabilizing the world through winning a political and ideological battle the old chestnut of winning hearts and minds.

It is about appearing to the Muslim world as the strongest horse, in Osama's words. If they win in Iraq it will be a huge victory and huge recruiting tool. Isn't one of the biggest concerns that Bush's war in Iraq has caused there to be even more terrorists and terrorism? Well, the same thing will happen if we leave without some kind of victory. And the Muslim world along with everyone else will know if we are leaving with our tail between our legs or not, regardless of this weeks Pentagon pronouncements.

So what I am saying is that yes it is true that our prescence increases the insurgency, and our lack of prescence could well increase it even more.

It is not about them gloating, it is about them winning, which is what their goal is---drive us out. There are so many young people in the Muslim world who will be attracted to a winner like that. The whole problem ultimately is not about fighting, but about convincing Muslims that moderation and not becoming terrorists is the preferred path. There are millions of them who are trapped without a voice and radical fundamentalism and terrorism is the path to hope that they are being given. If Osama and his crowd win victories over the US, it will help keep that whole sick thing going.

We should stay as long as we need to to make sure Iraq does not fall apart. It looks like there is so much interest in setting a date, though, that all the terrorists are going to have to do is wait us out.

Posted by: Napablogger at March 7, 2006 08:27 AM | Permalink to this comment

Now, I'm not above the possibility that people will initially attempt to run wild when we leave - and neither is Posen. However, that so much hatred has been allowed to percolate between these sides as they flail and bloody each other that this may be inevitable, only a question of when. Furthermore, even if Iraq goes through a period of more open and fully joined internal conflict, the balance of power at the end will be a truly honestly-negotiated one, that all players involve have agreed and/or surrendered to.

one more point, based on what I have read and I am mainly thinking of George Packers book here, the problem with all the fighting is the lack of a rule of law. The government needs to settle land disputes and disputes about civil order between the various groups which in the past have lived together successfully, because I do not feel that most Iraqi's want a civil war at all. But once one really gets going people will give up. Once it runs wild, there may be no controlling it. Isn't that exactly what is happening now with the way the war was conducted by us?

Iraqi's are turning toward civil war out of a lack of government control and justice on a mundane, day to day level. This is something that Bush and Rumsfeld should have done right away but didn't. But they are gradually finally putting it into place.

I do not think the Iraqi's have given up yet, and we have to try to get some security and process going to resolve land and territory disputes before we leave there.

I think Americans just want to wash their hands of all this because it is so ugly and mistaken, but that would just be another mistake.

Posted by: Napablogger at March 7, 2006 08:38 AM | Permalink to this comment

Glasnost, as to the number of insurgents, a great many stories have said it is estimated to be 15-20,000.

Yes, that's most peculiar, isn't it?

Like the estimate was 15,000, and we killed 5,000, and the estimate was still 15,000. So then we killed another 5,000 and the estimate was still 15,000. And we detained 15,000 of them, and the estimate was still 15,000. We razed Fallujah and killed 6,000 of them right there plus we detained an unknown number of others, and the estimate was still 15-20,000.

It really gives the impression those estimates are not reality-based.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 7, 2006 11:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Like the estimate was 15,000, and we killed 5,000, and the estimate was still 15,000. So then we killed another 5,000 and the estimate was still 15,000. And we detained 15,000 of them, and the estimate was still 15,000. We razed Fallujah and killed 6,000 of them right there plus we detained an unknown number of others, and the estimate was still 15-20,000."

If you are in fact so ill-informed that you believe that insurgencies never recruit new fighters, then I think you really shouldn't be commenting on what is going on in Iraq.

Posted by: Les Brunswick at March 8, 2006 12:31 AM | Permalink to this comment

Les Brunswick, is there some reason the estimates for insurgent numbers don't track insurgent recruitment and don't track insurgent losses?

My best guess is that these estimates have no connection to reality. That the real estimates are classified, and the public estimates are determined according to whatever will look best to the public.

Do you have another guess?

Posted by: J Thomas at March 8, 2006 01:23 AM | Permalink to this comment

Napablogger,

I certainly agree with you that the key to the GWOT is the passive support for Muslim hearts and minds.

If you think our coninued occupation of Iraq is winning over the hearts and minds of the Arab world, you are acutely suffering from a lack of exposure to what the Arab world is actually thinking and saying.

Posted by: glasnost at March 8, 2006 05:13 AM | Permalink to this comment

Glasnost, my impression of Napablogger's stand -- only my impression -- is that the wars aren't intended to win arab hearts and minds. The intention is to show them that they cannot win, that no matter what they try they will always lose.

This approach is on the verge of working for israel, after close to 60 years. There's the prospect that palestinians might accept that no matter what they do they will always lose, they'll always be hurt far more than israel is hurt, and they might finally surrender and accept whatever terms the israelis impose.

If we can succeed that way with the whole arab and muslim worlds, they might eventually accept utter defeat. But if al Qaeda appears to achieve some goals, then maybe all the other arabs/muslims will flock to them as winners. So to keep that from happening, we must look at every al Qaeda demand and whatever they want, we must arrange that they never get it.

So US troops leaving saudi arabia looks like a defeat for us and a win for al Qaeda. It would be preferable to overthrow the saudi government (which also wanted us out) and occupy the country to prove that al Qaeda can't win.

Similarly, we must never leave iraq, because al Qaeda has demanded we leave. We must keep troops there at least until there is no more al Qaeda.

We must publish lots of cartoons that enrage muslims, because they demanded that we stop.

We must detain and deport any arab or muslim in this country who gets even the tiniest bit out of line, including any involvement in politics.

We must confiscate any arab or muslim money that might potentially be used to fund terrorists.

We must detain or kill any arab or muslim scientists who might discover sensitive scientific facts, and try to make sure that arab/muslim students not be allowed to take science or engineering courses anywhere in the world.

Etc. Once we show them that they cannot win then they will be as likely to give up as the palestinians are to give up to the israelis.

The implication is that winning their hearts and minds is neither practical nor desirable. If by some chance iraq actually does turn into a peaceful democracy whose citizens have no desire for revenge, then we can win that way and of course they won't mind that we keep big bases to threaten their nondemocratic neighbors. But failing that the important thing is to convince our enemies that they must always lose no matter what.

Apologies if I have missed the point.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 9, 2006 01:19 PM | Permalink to this comment

To stay in Iraq until AQ or any other terrorist group or insurgent group "gives up" reckons without the entire history of the Mid-East.

How long did the Crusades last? Did the Crusaders win, did the ME become part of the Christian world?

More recently, how long did the Iran-Iraq war last? Eight years, and the war wiped out an entire generation in both countries. Do you think their capacity for tolerating losses has changed since then?

Using the Israel-Palestinian issue as a benchmark is breathtaking, and not in a good way. Are you presenting that conflict as a success story? Are you saying that the Palestinians - or the Arab world generally - is more reconciled to Israel's existance, more likely to make peace with Israel now than it was 30 years ago?

Another thing that amazes me about pro-war commentators' is their blithe assumption that staying in Iraq will improve chances of winning the respect of the local population, and reconcile them to our continuing presence - not to mention our permanent presence, since the US is still building permanent bases in Iraq, and clearly means to stay semi-permanently in some capacity.

What amazes me about this is how the pro-war commentators have, apparently, decided Iraqis are the most forgiving and magnanimous people on the planet. Perhaps the pro-war commentators have forgotten 9/11.

On 9/11, you may recall, we suffered an unprovoked attack that killed 3000+ people. Did it make us forgiving and magnanimous? Somehow, I don't remember that being our response to the attack; not then, and certainly not since.

The war in Iraq was unprovoked. Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat to us - and certainly the people of Iraq had done nothing to deserve what we did and have done and continue to do to them. The casualties Iraqis have taken dwarf the 9/11 casualty rate by any calculation, as does the physical and economic damage Iraq has suffered - as a direct result of the US invasion.

By what possible reading of human character do the pro-war commentators think inflicting the equivalent of a London bomb attack every few days, the equivalent of a Madrid bomb attack every few weeks, and the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every year, will somehow result in the Iraqis thanking us or respecting us?

Posted by: CaseyL at March 10, 2006 06:05 AM | Permalink to this comment

Casey, I am not pro-war. I am presenting standard pro-war points in the only way I can make logical sense of them.

Clearly, we can't expect our current policies to make us friends in arab or muslim areas.

So the remaining possibility is that we defeat them to the point it doesn't matter whether they like us.

That worked for germany and japan in WWII. We knocked them down, we set them back up, and they don't complain about it.

It worked for the philippines after 1900. Their home-grown armies helped us beat the spanish. They thought we were going to let them set up a democracy, but we instead sent in overpowering force to crush them. After a sufficient number and intensity of atrocities the rebels surrendered. We set up a puppet government that ran the place. There were guerrillas in the hills but they couldn't cause much trouble. Then the japanese invaded. The filipinos who had collaborated with us collaborated with the japanese. The guerrillas fought the japanese. After awhile we helped the guerrillas fight the japanese. After the war, we let the collaborators go back to collaborating with us and we pushed the guerrillas back into the hills. After a very long time the filipinos refused to accept Marcos and he left on a US Navy ship. They got a democracy. They told us to remove our military bases, after more than 70 years. And they don't hold a grudge, they tend to like america and americans.

It worked for mexico. After a disastrous war replete with atrocities, mexico ceded a great deal of territory. Rather tha complaining about the unfairness of it all, mexicans have accepted the situation with exceptionally good grace. They have shown no hint of resentment over many years of bad treatment.

It worked for the confederacy. After a ruinous defeat, southerners became enthusiastic citizens of the USA. They serve in large numbers in the armed services and play US politics fiercely.

Provided we can utterly defeat all the arab and muslim nations -- and then treat them nicely, though on our own terms -- we can expect them to accept it all with good grace. Supposing there's a way to do that, supposing that they think of themselves as peoples and nations rather than members of a religion, then in twenty to fifty years we might win that war and have it ended. With luck we might win it just in time to face the threat that China would then present.

All this looks utterly bleak to me. But it makes the rest make sense, and it's the only way I've found to make sense of it. If you believe:

1. that war is inevitable between all of islam and all of western civilization
2. that the war has already started but most westerners and most muslims haven't noticed yet
3. that coexistence is impossible; there is no choice but victory or defeat

then it follows that we must not simply accept defeat in the earliest battles, unless we are in fact defeated.

If we retreat from iraq we will have a harder time defending saudi arabia and jordan. Then it becomes harder to defend greece and spain, europe generally, and if terrorists become a serious threat then it will be hard to defend anywhere. Even if we can't get any iraqis on our side, the longer we can prevent iraq from developing a strong economy and a strong military, the better. Before sanctions, iraq was one of the stronger arab economies, with many engineers and advanced medicine. The longer we can keep them from rebuilding, the longer we can deny that economy to the enemy, the better the war goes. And if we can get sunnis and shias to fight each other in iraq -- or better yet all across the middle east -- that's another plus.

Once you accept that we are in the starting stages of a twenty-year war, little setbacks in iraq don't mean the same thing. Since there is no alternative to victory, any griping or second-guessing aids the enemy and is treasonous. Our role as citizens -- as members of civilization as opposed to islam -- is to further the plans of the powers-that-be however we can. We must hope that they have good plans because arguing about the flaws in what we *think* the plans are, can only hurt the war effort. And lead to defeat.

I tend to think of the continuing iraq war as something isolated, a bad choice to get into and a bad choice to stay in. It doesn't make sense. But once you accept that all of islam is at war with us (but most of them don't know it yet), then it becomes a bold move that might eventually make all the difference. Don't think about what happens in iraq within the next five years. That isn't very important. What matters is our ability to use those bases against other countries over the next twenty years.

What iraqis think about it makes no more difference than what filipinos thought about our naval bases. We couldn't project power into the western pacific without bases, we needed to do so, it didn't make any difference whatsoever what the natives wanted.

Again, I don't like this point of view. But when I try it out, it turns the pro-war stuff into a coherent viewpoint. And I haven't found any other way to do that. Every other approach leaves them looking plain stupid, believing twelve impossible things before breakfast.

Posted by: J Thomas at March 11, 2006 01:24 AM | Permalink to this comment