How does anyone, Democrats especially, come to the conclusion

[Dhalgren]

that we can somehow deal with the Iraqi insurgents while still maintaining troops in their country. I have heard many Democrats, both politicians and posters, here, say that we can't withdraw the troops until there is "stability" or "a viable government" or "order is established" or other like conditions. How can you get the insurgents to stop fighting while US troops still occupy their country? I do not see this happening. Before any resolutions or solutions occur in Iraq, the US military must be out - or am I missing some magic trick that hasn't been tried, yet?

[Warpy]

1. It's the hubris that kept us in Vietnam for over 55,000 dead

usually manifested by people who weren't there, who didn't pay attention, and/or who weren't alive at the time.

[Dhalgren]

5. I have really tried to get a grip on this idea that US troops must

stay until...(fill in the blank)...., but it just makes no sense to me. What is it, 70% or something of the Iraqi people want the US out and think it is justifiable to kill American troops, but we have to stay...why? If that many Iraqis want US out, how can staying even one more day be justified? I truly do not get it...

[IsItJustMe]

7. Bottom line is we can't. There can be no justification anymore. The problem is that this reality

has not sunk or jelled yet into the minds of the politicians. And it will take some time. But once it does, we will see changes. A critical mass has to form first however.

[Dhalgren]

13. I am afraid that you are right. And it is all of the deaths and maimings

that happen between now and then that will be yet another category of preventable tragety...

[NeedleCast]

2. You're Dead On

As an Ex-army solider who spent time in Afghanistan, I agree completely. Its a major catch-22. Everytime someone's brother, or kid, or (insert relative or friend here) is killed in a crossfire, we fuel the insurgency. I've had more than one buddy come home from Iraq and say there's just no effective way to combat something like this.

If G-Dubs didn't have his head firmly burried in his 5th point of contact, he would have known this prior to invasion (or maybe he did, and just didn't care). War is brutal and terrible. It should be the ultimate last resort, because when you fight a war, you have to be willing to win it. Winning the war means destorying your enemie's capacity to make war.

The problem we face in Iraq (well, one of many) is that we're not really at war with Iraq, or the Iraqi people, or the government (post-Saddam). We're at war with a faction of people who happen to be in Iraq, and the reason they're in Iraq is because WE'RE in Iraq.

[The2ndWheel]

3. Someone has to completely win militarily

Be it America, or some Iraqi faction, or Iranian, or whoever. That's the only way order has ever been established anywhere. As long as you have any significant portion of people seeing the world in more than one way, without a centralized military power, order won't exist.

That's just how nation-states and civilizations work. You want order, someone has to win. Diplomacy only works when the other guy knows he can't win.

[Dhalgren]

8. So, just to look at this more closely, do you think that someone

who holds the opinion that US troops must stay until (FIB) thinks that the US can "win"? And how is that different than what the Freepers and Bushniks think? Not being confrontational, just curious...

[The2ndWheel]

17. Depends on who the someone is

You'd have to ask somone who thinks that way to get a more accurate response. I'm just giving my opinion on how I see the world, and the relations between centers of power.

I don't even think we should have a standing army, since it will be used if it's there. But that goes back to another topic about nation-states, and a whole range of other issues as well.

[TygrBright]

11. Actually, there are several examples to refute this...

...both in modern times (Greece/Turkey/Cyprus; Balkan states, etc.,) and historically. Very often, a state of armed conflict, if external provocations and support are withdrawn, de-escalates to a state of armed standoff with "incidents" decreasing in number and intensity over time as exhaustion and lack of resources take their toll. As the "armed standoff" stage continues, internal economies begin to form and people experience the state of not being actively in conflict as a positive one, and will builds for a political solution or at least a negotiated settlement. Ultimately a new status quo, completely satisfactory to no one, becomes normalized, and at THAT point external assistance, focused on fostering further economic and political stability WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THAT STATUS QUO, can be effective.

It's an agonizingly slow-motion process and there are no guarantees that it won't stop and restart several times with periods of armed conflict alternating with exhausted armed standoff, and much internal misery for the populations involved. But it does eventually result in a status quo that is markedly better than the total economic/social/infrastructure devastation resulting from a "complete military victory" approach.

Unfortunately, the Cold War made us forget these realities, as it raised the stakes for outside kibbitzers (USA/USSR) in supporting internal conflicts.

Horrible as it is to watch, sometimes the least harmful thing well-intentioned neighbors and allies can do is simply "starve the conflict" by keeping hands off, providing only carefully-controlled civilian population relief in strategic doses, and working externally to get others to do the same.

That is almost certainly what we'll end up doing once blivet & co. are ridden out of DC on a rail. It will make no one happy, but it will apply a somewhat-effective tourniquet to the dreadful haemorrhage of lives and resources swirling down the pipe now.

resignedly,
Bright

[Dhalgren]

15. Yours is one of the most thoughtful and interesting posts i have seen

on the possible outcome of withdrawal and controlled, external manipulation. This is the kind of idea that needs to be spread around and debated. Withdrawing foreign troops and "starving" the conflict as much as possible. Very interesting....

[The2ndWheel]

18. I can't disagree

Unless we're talking about expanding centers of power.

[Alamom]

20. Seems it's about the only way to make it happen. As long as we

are there, the fighting & killing will be intense.

Someone has to take the first step and do something.

[IsItJustMe]

4. Very bad thinking. I was wondering the same exact thing. It honestly leads me to believe that we

are going to be there for quit some time.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. "We" can't "deal with" them at all.

And they aren't "insurgents", either. "Insurgent" refers to someone who's come from ANOTHER COUNTRY to fight. If they're Iraqis, then "insurgent" is the wrong word.

[TahitiNut]

9. Synonyms: insurrectionist, freedom fighter, rebel, revolutionary

Synonyms: agitator, anarch, anarchist, demonstrator, frondeur, insurrectionist, malcontent, mutineer, radical, resister, revolter, revolutionary, revolutionist, rioter

Antonyms: loyalist

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/insurgent

[Dhalgren]

10. I've always preferred "Freedom Fighter" but have gotten flamed

for it and didn't want to go there. How about the "Iraqi Underground"?

[flamin lib]

12. At this point, declare victory and come home.

We toppled the dictator--victory!
They had an election--victory!
They wrote a constitution--Victory
They had a second electioin--Victory!
Come home--VICTORY!

However, if the country were handled correctly from the first, we MIGHT have had a chance.

1. Don't disband the army--you're gonna' need 'em.
2. Repair the stuff you tore up.
3. Use Iraqis to repair the stuff you tore up--they built it in the first place and they've got lots of time on their hands.
4. If you're gonna' train new police/military make sure the trainers speak the languange. Damn hard to get the fine points across if all you can do is point and grunt.
5. Involve the neighbors in the rebuild--they have a vested interest in the area, nobody wants 26 million refugees.

Bush screwed up in every conceivable way. Not one single thing was done right. It could not have been done in a worse way if an all star committee was assigned fuck it up.

[Hippo_Tron]

14. It's obvious we can't stabilize the country with the status quo

There are arguments that we should keep the troops there to implement a three state solution or until we get Iran and Syria to help us stabilize the country (something that I highly doubt would be possible especially with the Bush white house). Honestly I don't believe there is much of anything we can do at this point.

[Jacobin]

16. The administration has no clue as to the culture, the

factions, their motivations, or what reality on the ground is. They have from the start operated in their neocon dream world, and so no good result will come of this....none at all. Get out and let them fix their own country the way they see fit. Its not ours, its theirs.

[Arkana]

19. It isn't just Republicans.

Americans as a whole have a hard time admitting their mistakes--and the Democrats are no exception to the rule.

[KharmaTrain]

21. The Sunnis Hate The Shiites...The Shiites Hate The Sunnis and Both Hate Us

The hubris that somehow our country is morally and culturally superior to these people is the biggest mistake and travesty of this invasion and occupation.

I keep asking anyone who supports this misadventure to imagine if this country had been invaded by China or some other alien culture, how would this country react? How would you react? Would you collaborate? Resist? And if you were to resist, what would in what form would it be? Passive? Or would you pick up a weapon and set roadside bombs? My bets are many of the political divisions of this country would vanish as the common enemy was more important than our own divisions. I feel the same is what's going on in Iraq.

Nothing will be resolved while we have our foot on these people's throats and any and all American lives lost, sadly, will be in vain. Anyone who had a sense of history would have realized what a foolhardy concept all the neo-con and booosh explanations for the invasion and its subsequent occupation. They know, like we do, that our only interest in that country is selfish...it's oil and running a war to fill up the coffers of Repugnican benefactors and the Military-Industrial complex.

I honestly believe this regime thought it would vanquish the Iraqis in a month and we'd be the "liberators" for millions of Happy Iraqis. The ignorance and arrogance of this attitude still pervades every time his assholiness claims "we're there for victory" and had little clue what such a victory will be other than it means more death and carnage. He doesn't know what it is, but he'll know it when he sees it. Hopefully the World Court in the Hague will see it, too...booosh and his cabal will eventually be made to pay for this needless bloddletting...both our invasion and the eventual internal war that won't really begin until our asses have been chased out of the country...and that's coming sooner rather than later.

Last night I heard Joke Line...err Joe Klein...who, in a very rare moment of sanity, laid out the disaster ahead. I call it Mogadishu II...as our military is forced into the Green Zone and then bled dry until a retreat is the only option...and a difficult one at best. We have ZERO influence over events now and the longer we remain it just delays the inevitable "balkanization" of the country.

Unless some strongman emerges that can completely sugjugate the opposition. like Saddam Hussein, this sad country will disolve into enclaves run by local militias with various alliances and allegiences. Our inteligence has been a total failure as either we're one step behind the events or missing the real "backstory" of what is going on. Booooosh is totally clueless as he keeps throwing the Al Queda strawman around and lumps all into one neat, scary picture. It's time he's shutdown and out of the process...and Chenney, too.

I've long felt the only "honorable"...or should I now say "safe" way out is by having a group like the Arab League cover our asses. The UN may be able to serve the same role, but without any US participation. The Arab League is one of the few organizations that has credibility in that part of the world and could organize a multi-national Arab force that could help us get our asses out in an orderly fashion and save lives...and then work as an honest broker in bringing whatever peace they can to the country...like they did in Lebanon.

Democrats are stuck in the middle politically on this issue. Calling for an immediate withdrawl is taken by the corporate media and made to sound like we're weak and capitulating and being disrepectful of the troops. We know this isn't the case, but this regime will spin like mad to paint any call for immediate withdrawl as being a Democratic defeat and the corporate media will start the "Who Lost Iraq" game and you know where they're gonna point fingers.

The unforunate reality is this situation is now out of our control...it's not a matter of how when we'll leave Iraq, but how soon we're force out and how chaotic it will be.

[Heewack]

22. Its' very complicated and unlike any other situation in history.

It is so fucked up over there I doubt I can even put it into words.

Except for Anbar province we are acting as the police force that is preventing an all out slaughter by the militias versus each other. Also it's not just Sunni v. Shiite, but clans within each group that are fighting for power. That struggle ceneters around which clans in each sect will have control over the money and power of the future Iraq. The Iraqi forces that have been formed are first beholden to their clan, then their sect, and lastly to the country itself. Add to that that the militias have infiltrated the Iraqi forces and you have this government sactioned force that is meeting out justice on its own terms often times against each other. So, at this point the Iraqi forces are not capable of maintaining any sort of order. If we leave immediately you will have a free for all. The government will disband and whomever kills the most will end up putting their brand of government in place. My money would be on al-Sadr. The neighboring countries are concerned that with a full scale civil war in Iraq it will boil over into their countries creating sectarian struggles that they are in no way capable of handling.

I am half convinced that maybe they need to have their civil war for anything to be resolved, but the possibility of it moving into the countries of Jordon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt makes me pause. For me it's not so much staying for Iraq'a sake, but the region as a whole.