I can’t believe that the NYT gave a huge chunk of its prime op-ed real estate today to allow war criminal Donald Rumsfeld to offer his views and advice on US. And Ahmad Chalabi. And Fred Kagan.
Among the gems Rumsfeld offers are, regarding Iraq, “By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point…” And reflecting on US military history more generally:
- The singular trait of the American way of war is the remarkable ability of our military to advance, absorb setbacks, adapt and ultimately triumph based upon the unique circumstances of a given campaign. Thus it has been throughout our history. And thus it will be in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we have the patience and wisdom to learn from our successes, and if our leaders have the wherewithal to persevere even when it is not popular to do so.
Chalabi’s piece is a little intriguing. It’s titled “Thanks, but you can go now.” In it he argues,
- The independent, democratically elected Iraqi government now representing the interests of its people is nearly identical to the government that could have been formed in 2003.
H’mm, I made something similar to that argument just myself, this morning. But unlike Mr. Snake-oil Ahmad Chalabi I never worked for a moment to try to get the US into this war, and I am not now and never have been on the payroll of any government.
Chalabi is most likely on Tehran’s payroll at this time (and has likely been for quite a while.) He is Mr. Look-after-number one, but he also has a good finger to the prevailing political winds.
In this piece, he tries to write “in the name of” all Iraqis. He writes:
- Iraqis want the closest possible relationship with the United States, and recognize its better nature as the strongest guarantor of international freedom, prosperity and peace. However, we will reject any attempts to curtail our rights to these universal precepts.
We welcome Mr. Obama’s election as a herald of a new direction. It is our hope that his administration will offer Iraq a new and broader partnership. Iraq needs security assistance and guarantees for our funds in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. But we also need educational opportunity, cultural exchange, diplomatic support, trade agreements and the respectful approach due to the world’s oldest civilization.
We also hope that Mr. Obama will support the growing need for a regional agreement covering human rights and security encompassing Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran (and any other neighbors so inclined). We have all been victims of terrorism. The mutual fears that have been festering for decades, augmented by secret wars and the incitement of insurrection, are no longer acceptable.
The United States has agreed to Iraq’s request to inscribe in any regional pact a prohibition against the use of Iraq’s territory and airspace to threaten or launch cross-border attacks. This laudable commitment gives us hope that America has a new collective vision of security in our region as not exclusively a function of armed force but also dependent on a profound comprehension of others’ fears.
Somewhat irritatingly, I find I agree with a lot of what he writes.
Luckily, no such feelings emerge when reading Kagan.
The best of the seven pieces the NYT has gathered today on the joint question of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undoubtedly this one by Rory Stewart. It’s titled “The ‘Good War’ isn’t worth fighting”. Stewart, a British adventurer, writer, and former army officer who knows both Iraq and Afghanistan pretty well, argues that,
- President-elect Obama’s emphasis on Afghanistan and his desire to send more troops and money there is misguided. Overestimating its importance distracts us from higher priorities, creates an unhealthy dynamic with the government of Afghanistan and endangers the one thing it needs — the stability that might come from a patient, limited, long-term relationship with the international community…
The whole of that piece is worth reading. Unlike Rumsfeld’s self-serving and ill-focused little rant.
Helena,
thanks for saving me some $$ by letting me know these criminals were prime features of today’s NYT.
“So-called Liberal Media”
Heh.
SP
You can’t believe the NYT did that? Sure you can. This is the same rag that fulsomely promoted the Iraq War, and just the other day erroneously reported that Iran had sufficient enriched uranium to make one bomb.
Rummy has fond memories of WWII and no memory of that little dust-up in Vietnam, which US military loss is more apropos of the current fiascoes. Talk about “absorbing setbacks”: When General Westmoreland failed in ‘Nam he was kicked upstairs to Army Chief of Staff. When General Casey failed to pacify Baghdad after four years he was similarly promoted. Now Rummy’s looking for vindication. What the hey, if Colin Powell can be rehabilitated so easily, then why can’t Donald Rumsfeld? he asks. Let’s hope the hang-man catches up with both, and a few others.
Chalabi dares to speak for Iraqis! What gall! And how disconnected he is with reality.
“Iraqis want the closest possible relationship with the United States, and recognize its better nature as the strongest guarantor of international freedom, prosperity and peace.”
In fact, Iraqis want the United States out of their business and the sooner the better. They very rightfully do not trust the United States. As for seeing it as any guarantor at all of freedom, prosperity, and most of all peace – well, after everything the United States has put Iraqis through for the last 18 years, they would have to be awfully disconnected from reality to see it the way the lying crook Chalabi claims they do.
As for a partnership between Iraq and the United States, what nonsense! Do you require a rape victim make a partnership with her rapist? Do you require a robbery victim to make partnership with the one who robbed him? Do you require the survivors of a mass murderer to make a partnership with that murderer? My god, how can any decent person suggest that Iraqis should make any kind of partnership with the United States after what they have suffered at its hands. It is simply outrageous. Furthermore, it is not necessary for Iraq to make a partnership with the criminals who destroyed it. There are plenty of other countries in this world that Iraq could form mutually beneficial relationships with.
Oh, yes, and then there is this from Chalabi (and one has to wonder who this “we” is that he refers to: “We welcome Mr. Obama’s election as a herald of a new direction.”
As contrasted with this far more realistic statement of the Iraqi Presidency Council as reported by Al Jazeera that “there is only one U.S. policy in Iraq, and the changes that may occur during Obama’s time ‘would be only technical’.”
“We have all been victims of terrorism.”
Iraqis were not victims of terrorism until after the United States launched its unprovoked invasion in 2003. Until then they had mainly been victims of imperialist interference in their country’s political and economic affairs, including an eight year bloody and debilitating proxy war with Iran, having their once thriving country “bombed back to the stone age” followed by nearly 13 years of US-led blockade and sanctions so horrific that UN Humanitarian Coordinator Dennis Halliday and others have described them as “genocidal”.
Chalabi, as usual is doing nothing but spewing self-serving processed bull food.
One more comment on this, not from me, but from a very old and dear friend of mine from Erbil. Here is his reaction to Chalabi’s claim that “Iraqis want the closest possible relationship with the United States, and recognize its better nature as the strongest guarantor of international freedom, prosperity and peace.”
“I do not think the students in Sulaimania and Erbil before few days who went out in demonstration demanding better conditions to be able to live like humans share Choochoo his opinion.
“I do not think the 4 millions who went abroad to escape from the hell share his opinion, and I do not think hundreds of thousands and even millions who live below the level of poverty share his opinion.
“will be difficult to believe.”
Chalabi?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQOADi3ef8E
The man talking to Chalabi he is the Rusafa (Part of Baghdad across Tiger River) Police commander.
He accuses Chalabi all the distraction in Iraq due to him who brought the Americans. Chalabi left, Chalabi Militia killed the man three days after.
كشف شريط فديو مصور من داخل مجلس عزاء احد ضحايا القصف الجوي الامريكي على مدينة الصدر مشادة كلامية بين رائد الشرطة (احمد محسن رحمة) مدير مكتب شؤون الرصافة واحمد الجلبي الذي حضر المجلس لتقديم التعزية..
اذ اتهم رائد الشرطة المذكور انفا احمد الجلبي بأنه سبب بلاء العراقيين لأنه هو المسؤول الرئيسي في جلب الامريكان لاحتلال العراق وسط اصوات منددة بالحكومة وازلامها الذين لا هم لهم سوى مغانم السلطة فيما يحصد الموت بشكل يومي ابناء الشعب العراقي..
ووفق ما ادلى به اقرباء المغدور ان المشادة الكلامية تمخضت بعد ثلاثة ايام الى اغتيال الضابط وتوجهت اثرها اصابع الاتهام الى الجلبي الذي غادر حينها مجلس العزاء دون اتاحة الفرصة له بتقديم التعازي وعدم الترحيب به من قبل جميع من حظر مجلس العزاء الذي اقيم في مدينة الصدر..
“Go away, fat man, I’m King now”
In addition to six grown-up policy people invited to reflect on the state of Uncle Sam’s various aggressions and occupations, a dotty Scotch flâneur and littérateur was invited to present a Transbrookian [1] perspective .
Many Cisbrookians are less tolerant of this sort of comic relief than the NYTC editors. Abú Aardvark went off into a swoon about the six pack:
“A well-balanced group of contributors… Fred Kagan, Don Rumsfeld, Pete Mansoor, Tony Cordesman, Ahmed Chalabi (and Linda Robinson). Now that’s a diversity of views, and very reflective of the new President’s likely policies. Wow. [1]
Notice who is missing — (even inside parentheses)!
Mlle. Robinson is mentionable, though unswoonworthy. M. de Stewart does not even make the mentionability cut, as naturally he should not for any high-and-dry Cisbrookian or credentialled PowerPointer.
Certain gentlebeings may in good faith suppose that Prof. Lynch must be spoofing with his “well-balanced” and his “diversity of views,” especially when the latter is pronounced “very reflective” of what BHO is about to perpetrate — as if Himself were poised to “[fling] himself from the room, [fling] himself upon his horse, and [ride] madly off in all directions.” [2]
Not at all, for here in Cisbrookia we locals and natives all understand pretty well what is going to get flung. So does Prof. Lynch, despite his slightly mysterious reputation for sympathizing with shabby and dubious unpolicy persons.
If there was ever any spoofery to him at all, which I doubt, it was his faking left at a period when he had no hopes of a deputyundership or underdeputyship of State or War in any case. Now that ‘we’ are in at last, of course he has to be earnest and respectable if his C.V. is to become all that it can be. So naturally poor M. de Stewart must get the Falstaff treatment.
Happy days.
___
[1] “Left of the Brookings Institution; radically unserious”
[2] S. Leacock, Nonsense Novels, anno 1329/1911.
Why Not? It was the NYT that gave its pages over to Judith Miller and Chalabi to lie about WMDs in Iraq.
Nothing has changed.
Why Not? It was the NYT that gave its pages over to Judith Miller and Chalabi to lie about WMDs in Iraq.
Its comes to me, that Chalabi who is a spoiled kid of CIA they can hold all things on him, this remind me with China Mao’s wife that called “gang of Four” appred in court and sentestd
When the jadge reads the sentence she laughed loudly the judge surprised and he asked here why she laughed.
She answered you sentence the mouth of the doge not the doge!!
Chalabi was faking thigs, Chalabi persuade US to go to Iraq, Chalabi lie on CIA, Chalabi did this and that.
Is it US and CIA run by one like Chalabi to go to war?
Where are the minds of people to believes in this carp.
Of course you agree with Chalabi, you are also very likely to be on Iran’s payroll. Victims of terrorism? Actually perpetrators before the war and during the US occupation.
Of course Iraq could have settled to this same solution in 2003 without any bloodshed, but that is the way in a culture that uses Kalachnikovs for weddings and every political expression involves chanting something about blood or death to somebody.
If it were up to me I would nominate Rumsfeld for the Nobel Peace Prize, but actually that would associate him with Arafat, forget that.
Titus, please read the commenters’ guidelines and understand that your gross stereotyping of entire other peoples is neither appropriate nor welcome here. Ditto your childish and quite unsubstantiated ad-feminam attacks.
Geez, like you Helena never engage in smearing and stereotyping.
Just now in the morning NPR had the piece about the 10 muslim militants in Kandahar caught for disfiguring young girls with acid on the way back from school. Is that their individual fault? Or of a culture/faith that sees female education as a grave offense. Whatever book they learned that girls cannot go to school should be burned in acid. You tell me where they learned that and how can you have an opinion on that without stereotyping.
Without fail, accuse an Islamofascist of stereotyping an entire people, up pops the gallant defender of Muslim womanhood. Titus, you’re so predictable you’re laughable. Bet the only time you remember to remember Muslim women is when, conveniently for you, they are attacked by Muslim men. How about remembering those thousands of women the Americans have murdered under some crazed “new world order” thinking? Or, closer to home, how about the greatly increased incidents of domestic abuse that take place in the homes of returning American soldiers? Ever think of those women? Or are you a participant?
Kassandra my list is long, so long I have to just reach the muslim outrage du jour. Today my answer would have been the carnage in India (I know, nobody kows who did it, it may have been Martians). The fact is that Maddrassas create this monster and its manifestations are putrid. It is a travesty that the US is aligned with Pakistan, the morons who sold us the prisoners in Guantanamo, the guilty and the innocent, as Pakistan can hardly export anything of use other than that. At the brink of the collapse that bastion of Islam that once stated they’d rather go hungry but create their atomic bomb were almost bankrupt until the IMF stepped in to rescue them. Lets align with India and leave that retrigrad blach hole of Pakistan to blow up into a millin hungry and hateful pieces.
As for how muslims treat their women that is their problem but it surely reflects on them when they claim their peace loving ways and illuminated culture/religion.
Would love to know your gender and ethnicity Kassandra so we can know if you speak out of personal knowledge and experience.
I speak out of personal knowledge and experience, Titus. Lots of very personal knowledge and experience.
Thanks Shirin. I am listening then. Just go ahead and explain the reality of Islam where unthinkable acts are the weekly norm and the mainstream masses have no voice nor say, other than the tired accusations against the West and against the host countries where they can live with a freedom and tranquility they do not afford to others in their home turf.
If you want to take this week we have acid in girls faces for going to school, Somalian pirates, and the carnage in India. And it’s been short week for the holiday.
That’s just it, Titus. Unthinkable acts are not the norm. The “mainstream masses” as you call them live their lives, as does everyone else on this planet, as best they can. Some do better than others, some have harder struggles, most are good people trying to live good lives, and a few are not such good people – just like everywhere else, including the United States.
And by the way, you cannot pin the Somalian pirates on Islam. They are not some kind of “Islamic pirates”, they are pirates who happen to be Muslim. And if you look more deeply into that situation you might just understand it a bit differently.
My advice to you would be to look more deeply into all kinds of things before making sweeping judgments, but then that would spoil it for you, I am sure. After all, having someone to hate is so much more important, isn’t it, than anything else.
Shirin, I was expecting a bit more substance than that. Maybe a diagnosis of what is admittedly wrong and what you and the masses are doing to change it. Islam is not my people and I don’t really need to spend the effort to understand it, I have better things to do, I just would like it to leave us alone.
Tell me a bit this acid justice system in Sharia, is it from your Koran. Today it popped up in Iran:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7754756.stm
A court in Iran has ruled that a man who blinded a woman with acid after she spurned his marriage proposals will also be blinded with acid.
The ruling was reported in Iranian newspapers on Thursday.
The punishment is legal under the Islamic Sharia code of qias or equivalence, which allows retribution for violent crimes.
The court also ordered the attacker, 27-year-old Majid Movahedi, to pay compensation to the victim.
The acid attack took place in 2004. The victim, Ameneh Bahrami, went to Spain for surgery to reconstruct her face but efforts to restore her sight failed.
The ruling was a response to her plea to the court in the Iranian capital Tehran for retribution.
“Ever since I was subject to acid being thrown on my face, I have a constant feeling of being in danger,” she told the court.
Ms Bahrami also said that Movahedi had also threatened to kill her.