Ever since Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said on Wednesday that the administration is now aiming for a US troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea, there has been a flood of commentary, most of it highly criticial.
I wrote merely that it seemed “hilarious”, because so inappropriate. But as he so often does, Dan Froomkin caught the essence of the matter when he wrote Thursday, “the analogy is troubling. And flawed. And dangerous. And telling.” In that column he provides his own astute analysis of why those adjectives are apt, plus a broad roundup of other people’s comments on the matter.
I just want to add a couple of points:
(1) The whole idea that the US might send military forces sailing to distant places around the world, with guns, cruise missiles, and nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles ready to deploy almost anywhere at a few days notice, is something that may have come to seem “natural” to many US citizens during the Cold War, and evidently still seemed okay to many of them in the presidential election of 2004. Today, it seems– and in my view, rightly– more and more like an anomaly on the world scene, and one that needs to be reviewed and corrected.
Who asked the US to act as the world’s policeman, anyway? Back in the emerging-Cold War context of the early 1950s, the US was able to get some South Koreans to ask them to deploy there. But in the global security (and political) climate that we have today, why would anyone think a continuing US military presence would be “natural” at all?
(2) The notion that the US might have a “South Korea-style” continued military presence truly is, as Froomkin noted, an extremely dangerous one. However, if the US had a presence in Iraq today that was exactly like its presence today in South Korea, matters would be a lot better for the Iraqis than they are at present.
Primarily, you wouldn’t have extremely heavily armed US forces blundering around most of the country’s cities and highways causing tensions and destruction of lives and propoerty just about wherever they go by virtue of both their presence there and their actions there. And you wouldn’t have the US holding Iraq’s central government structure and its decisionmaking as virtual “captives” within a fortress-like, heavily (US-)guarded compound in the center of Baghdad…
Instead, you’d have the US forces corralled in a small number of bases, and also as “tripwires” along a border with… well, with which of Iraq’s neighbors in particular would that be? And all of that presence would be clearly regulated by a Status of Forces Agreement concluded with, as is currently the case in South Korea, a generally well accepted and democratically accountable government.
(I note that getting to this position in South Korea has not, however, been an easy or always pleasant process. US-protected “South” Korea was governed by military rulers for many years. Its US-constituted intelligence body, the KCIA, was a fiercer younger brother of Washington’s CIA… Etc., etc. So there is a huge remaining question of how the Bushites could even foresee the process of transitioning the US presence in Iraq to a “South Korea style” of presence.)
But I think it’s still important to note that the current situation in SK is so much better than than the current situation in Iraq. So if the Bushites see an SK-style presence as their goal, then in some ways that can be seen as a helpful opening position in any negotiation they have over the future shape of the US troop presence in Iraq.
Great, if they want, as a first stage, to withdraw all their troops to barracks rather than have them careening around the country continuing to try to bend Iraq’s political system to their will!
But if there really are serious negotiations over Iraq’s future– conducted both by the various Iraqi parties and by the US and other relevant international actors– then there is no way that a permanent or near-permanent presence of US-commanded troops in the country would be the outcome of such negotiations.
… Anyway, as part of the reconsideration of the US’s posture in the world that surely must occur as part of the country’s and the world’s post-Iraq evaluations and deliberations, the idea that the US should anyway continue to behave as the world’s policeman– in Iraq, South Korea, or elsewhere– should surely come under close scrutiny.
10 thoughts on “More on the Iraq- South Korea analogy”
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I have seen comments about Snow’s remarks all over the internet. They all take what he said as though the administration is talking about the ‘now’ of SK.
You can’t take what they say at face value. They lie.
More likely they are talking about the ‘then’ of SK. For MANY years SK had a pliant government that America dictated to. It was a military dictatorship that did what WE told them to do. They had no independant foreign policy. We picked the generals that ran the country. In the meantime we used our troop/naval presence to attempt to excert pressure on China and Russia, all while protecting Japan and Taiwan.
That is the ‘Korean Model’ Rice and Chaney see. They want to use a 50 year military presence to pressure Iran (after bombing them back 30 years) and Syria into behavour that is ‘friendly’ to American interests.
It is not the Korean ‘now’ they are wishing for, but the process that was used to get there. Hegemony.
This is not new. It has been the policy all along. They just thought of a new way of phrasing it.
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“This is not new. It has been the policy all along.”
Warren is exactly right here. In fact, Ret. Gen. Jay Garner, the first US administrator in Iraq (before Bremer), expressly stated back in Feb., 2004 that the US military presence in Iraq was to last for decades. Instead of South Korea, he compared the situation to the Phillipines. Garner’s comments may be found here:
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0204/020604cdam3.htm
“To me that’s what Iraq is for the next few decades. We ought to have something there … that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that’s going to be necessary.” – Jay Garner, Feb 6, 2004.
Our very own General Odierno also considers a 50+ year miltary occupation of Iraq “a great idea.” He probably figures that kind of Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism will see not only himself and his peers but the next two generations of military officers, as well, through to regular guaranteed promotion and retirement pensions. With great-idea career ticket-punchers like him helping to run our devolving disaster in Mesopotamia, we see once again how when Parkinson’s Law meets the Peter Principle, we get the Lunatic Leviathan.
I just heard Representative Dennis Kucinich (on a CNN “debate” fragment) call for cutting America’s monstrous “defense” budget by 25%. Good for him, as usual. That and raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans back to the previous balanced-budget/surplus levels of six years ago might not please Generals Petraeus and Odierno, but it ought to put their 50-year-occupation-of-Iraq fantasies to rest once and for all. If these two inept excuses for military “leadership” have proven anything over the last four years, they have shown that both America and Iraq have little more than self-promoting salesmanship to expect from them and other f*ck-up-and-move-up “warriors” like them. If anything, a long overdue cut in the Pentagram of only 25% would still leave far too many of these bloated bureaucrats feeding at the public trough while stapling even more stars and rows of shiny trinkets on their freshly starched uniforms.
Medals of Freedom all around, though, for sheer chutzpah. Military historian Martin Van Crevald has rendered the following unflattering assessment of them: namely, that “the American military in Iraq is completely incompetent. They only know how to train Iraqis in how to fight Americans. How stupid can they be?” So, oh yes, by all means, let our invested incompetents demand that their country give them fifty more years to blow twenty-billion dollars a month and over a hundred dead GIs (at currently budgeted rates). What nation on earth wouldn’t want to celebrate and reward that kind of “leadership” by projecting a continuation of it for the next half century?
Truly, America no longer qualifies as a serious country with a serious government or informed electorate. The mad, monkey-on-a-stick militarists have gotten loose from Bedlam again only to make the world outside their former residence look largely indistinguishable from the raving chaos inside of it.
It will worry the chaps in Tel Aviv no end if the Americans stay for a long time in Iraq particularly if their army mainly cosnsists of immigrants who sign on for a green card.
The history of the English and their sucessive invasions of Ireland is that after a while the invaders became “More Irish than the Irish themselves”.
As everything else in this completely cocked up invasion of Iraq has followed the Irish pattern why not do the same with that bit.
Then you get some fairly formidable Helicopters and Tanks heading off to rescue the unfortunate Palestinians after a few years.
This South Korea foolishness probably does not deserve all the detailed attention it has been getting. I suspect it is legacy time down at the ranch and the main point is simply that if the USA still has troops out there in 2057, nobody can claim that Mr. George Walker Bush was forced to slink away with his tail between his legs.
Speaking about Ret. Gen. Jay Garner, and others ruling Iraq, most of them if not all of them working for Israel’s interests.
That’s why Iraq’s destruction is a part of revenge from “Babylon Kingdom”….
While Garner is widely admired for his work with the Kurds, he has his critics. Michael Young, a leading columnist in Lebanon who writes often about Islamic issues, says Muslims are suspicious of Garner because of his strong ties to Israel. It’s easy to see why. In 2000, Garner signed a statement by the conservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, praising Israel for its handling of the Palestinian intifada. And as president of SY Technology, a unit of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Garner worked closely with Israeli security to develop its Arrow missile-defense system. “There is the problem of credibility if you have someone who can be tagged as [Zionist],” says Young.
Credibility was a problem after the first Gulf conflict, too. Part of Garner’s job then was to deploy the Patriot missile to protect Israelis against incoming Iraqi Scuds. While he told a skeptical Congress that the Patriot was effective, Defense officials many years later pronounced it a dud. This time, Garner won’t be able to sugarcoat events. His success or failure will be on display for the entire world to see.
Bush’s Man in Baghdad
BusinessWeek
Good to read this:
How Did Iraq and the United States Become Enemies?
By Robert Buzzanco
http://hnn.us/articles/1066.html
the CIA produced in August 2002 a six page report stating the following:
The worst case scenario for the Iraqi invasion are:
– the division and total partition of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines.
– the very high possibility of a long civil-sectarian war.
– the increase of terrorism in general and terroristic attacks against the U.S in particular.
– the increasing hatred of the America and American worldwide.
The American government went ahead and invaded Iraq 7 months later. Trust zionists and most of them are zionist jews for conducting your affairs. DUMB Americans.)
But you don’t believe me. Maybe you are secretly wishing to see us ALL dead, thus fullfilling Bremer’s injunction “Let’s bring them down to 5 million”. Maybe this is what you really want deep down.
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Iraq is in the grips of the Triangle of Satan. Iraq is dying.
Iraq is dying.
Do not stand there and watch. Watch until she finally expires her last breaths. MOVE.
Do not stand there until you rush to her burial. By then she will be gone. MOVE.
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2007/06/50-degrees-in-shade.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/washington/03assess.html?pagewanted=print.
The War in Context Blog comments on the above NY Times artice put the joke into words:
“Think of it as a Zen analogy, driving at the truth through paradox.”
As Warren and Patrick’s comments opened, this isn’t anything like announcing a new plan. Except now they are actually saying the plan is to keep indefinite military control of Iraq,-and one would assume as much of the ME oilfields as possible! Not just refusing to say when they are leaving, for seemingly rather one-way “strategic” reasons. Which, sure, is stupidly funny. But it is also confirmation that the US governments intentions are indeed just as criminal and tragic as the appeared at first blush. “What” might ask the Marx brothers,….”is to be done?”
I can’t help but notice a lack of discussion following Susan’s rather important question last week about how to stop this occupation. Almost as if the only purpose of this forum is simply to talk. Well all this talk on Iraq has established (surely by now) that voting more Dems in isn’t going to do it. And if not, they themelves now surely have.
Traditional protesting, now pidgeonholed by the MSM as a hippie pastime) isn’t going to do it.
Simple analysis; while a worthy pursuit, isn’t going to do it.
With all due respect, I fear the arguably intrinsic phillosophical justification of workers control of factories isn’t going to do it.
Every week we chat here and every day these people die as a result of occupation.
Can anyone on the forum at least moot any new strategy?
And yes, Salah, the awful truth is they knew exactly what could happen and it did not put a single dent in their resolve to carry out “Operation Iraq Liberation” as fast as they possibly could.
The Dan Fromkin piece was a good resource thanks Helena. Some of the “good oil” is a little bit buried in the hyperlinks.
Permit me to suggest here’s a good spot for one’s rig to drill down to:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014379.php
It’s just some forum post, but it shows the clarity that logical deduction and reduction bring one:
“Occam’s Razor supports me in this; the creation and maintenance of a long-term military presence is the only policy objective that unifies, aligns and makes sense of everything Bush has done. If any other goal is posited, his policies and actions are incoherent; but if this goal is posited, they all make sense.”
Absolutely spot on. Well done that man!