[I just re-arranged the order in what follows, late Wednesday. Same content though. ~HC]
The two big narratives
As I see it, there are two big mega-stories currently dominating Iraqi politics, with a lot of criss-crossing other narratives going on within each of them, as well as between them.
The two big ones are:
- (1) the continuing contest over the legitimacy of the election process itself, and
(2) the contest within the victorious Shiite mega-list over the policies it should pursue (as well as over the linked issue of who gets which job in the new government).
Regarding the second of those narratives, JWN readers would do well to go down to this recent post, where the well-informed Norwegian researcher Reidar Vissar has now posted two additional comments that describe his own increasing understanding of the power-balances within the UIA… Bottom line there: SCIRI is actually not as strong inside the UIA as many people seem to assume. Check out Vissar’s analysis there!
Regarding the first narrative, Iyad Allawi and the Sunni parties have been very busy in recent days marshaling the forces that question the integrity of major aspects of the election process.
Those parties have formed a new coalition called Mu’tamar al-Rafideen lil-Intikhabat al-Muzawwafa (Maram– the Conference of those rejecting forged elections), that has called for a re-run of the vote in Baghdad Province and elsewhere. Maram pols recently held a planning meeting in Amman, Jordan (a significant location for them); and today they organized a demonstration in western Baghdad which drew either “at least 5,000 particiapnts” (AFP), or “more than 10,000” (AP).
I think it’s great that Sunnis, secularists, and supporters of a non-sectarian Iraqi state pursue their grievances through the means of peaceful demonstrations (and of course, the ballot-box.) I have to say, though, that on the scale of events of a similar type in Iraq since March 2003, these numbers seem pitifully low. The Sadrists have put hundreds of thousands of supporters onto the streets at the drop of a hat, a number of times; and Sistani pulled out ways more than a million back in (was it?) late 2003.
Juan Cole wrote today that the Maram gathering in Amman agreed to, “inform the Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa, of their demands that the election be held all over again in the provinces where widespread fraud occurred, especially in the northern cities and in Basra and Baghdad… They are also planning to write a letter to Kofi Annan.”
He also cited al-Sharq al-Awsat as reporting that Maram pols Allawi, Adnan Dulaimi, and Saleh Mutlaq had decided “to boycott parliamentary sessions in an effort to paralyze it if it will not heed their demands.”
Juan’s comment on this boycott plan was this:
- Generally speaking, in parliamentary systems boycotts usually backfire and [are] a poor political strategy. If the Sunni Arabs and secularists were smart, they’d make themselves swing votes in parliament and use their economic power to lobby for policies they want, thus leveraging themselves into great influence. The Sunni Arabs and ex-Baathists were used, however, to ruling by the iron fist from above, and so are hardly canny parliamentarians, and don’t know how to make themselves indispensable as a minority.
I found this commentary more than a little bizarre. His analysis might well be applicable to a minority grouping within a well-established parliamentary democracy. But Iraq is very from being such! Indeed, the very first item of business the new “parliament” will have will be to reach agreement on the 55 places in the draft constitution where agreement has thus far not been possible! In other words, the rules on the basis of which the parliament will be operating have themselves yet to be agreed.
Then this: “using their economic power to lobby for policies they want… ” What on earth is he talking about here? This might be possible in a situation of a well-established, largely privatized economy, in which Maram people had lots of support among private business owners. (Though even then, using this power to get what they want is not what any democrat should be urging in quite so crude a way as Juan does there… ) But this is not even applicable in any way that I can dsicern, in present-day Iraq! The country’s economy remains overwhelmingly in the hands of the state. Not many Iraqis have been able to build up strong private businesses in the past three years– and those that have, have most likely done so overwhelmingly through the “wasta” (pull) they’ve had with the incumbent administrations… So maybe a handful of Allawi supporters were able to do that back when he was PM? But almost no Sunnis, at all…
And anyway, as noted above, the very rules for how Iraq is actually going to operate as a “democracy” (if indeed it ever does) are still completely up in the air. That’s why I find Juan’s suggestion bizarre, and why I think the three pols’ threat of orchestrating a boycott of the incoming parliament is not a crazy or self-defeating idea at all.
After all, the main thing the Iraqi political system needs right now is internal and international legitimacy. The Maram pols are in a position to withhold that, at the internal level, and to cause serious complications to the regime’s quest for it at the international level. Legitimacy, as I’ve come to understand it over the years, is an attribute of governments that is determined primarily at the internal, domestic level– but in which the attitudes and policies of the “international community” can also play a strong role, and especially at times of intense political uncertainty and threat.
Hence, for example, the importance of the Maram pols’ appeals to the Arab league, and to Kofi Annan…
Democracy and the Viceroy.
Anyone who thought the December 15 election would quickly resolve anything in Iraq’s internal politics must be starting to feel disappointed. I listened with half an ear the other night as the US t.v. network ABC News declared “the Iraqi voters” to be their “Persons of the Year”. The voice on the segment said all kind of saccharine things about how brave the Iraqi voters were, etc etc. Yes, many of them were very brave. But one election does not a democracy make– and nor, either, do two elections and one referendum all held within a single year…
Democracy, after all, is centrally about the accountability of the government to the citizenry. We have not yet seen that happen inside the “New” Iraq– and it looks extremely unlikely to be the outcome of the present, very complex negotiations going on in Baghdad. In all the accounts of the present government-formation discussions that I’ve read, US Ambassador Zal Khalilzad is portrayed as taking part in them in a very direct way: almost exactly like all those descriptions of the way British Viceroys used to conduct their affairs in the long-gone days of the British Raj in India.
You can see all kinds of glimpses of the way that Khalilzad and his colleagues view their currently declared task of “handing over” government functions to Iraqi control… For example, in this piece in today’s WaPo, Jonathan Finer describes how the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division has been “planning” to hand over control of the very sensitive security sector that includes both the Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone to the Iraqi Defense Ministry– but it has been unable to effect the handover until now because the Defense Ministry has refused to approve the appointment of the 3rd ID’s favored candidate to take over command of that sector.
Finer includes this great quote from Capt. John Agnello, a public affairs officer with the 3rd ID:
- “We do not want to transfer authority if we don’t know the person who will be put in command.”
Queen Victoria could not have phrased this more prissily herself!
The US military’s favored candidate there is one Col. Muhammed Wasif Taha, who since August has served as acting commander of the Iraqi army unit that’s set to take charge of that vital sector of the capital. Finer cites Iraqi defense Ministry sources as saying that Taha “was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard and has more than 20 years of military experience… He began working closely with U.S. forces after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.”
But for some reason– which Finer’s American interviewees describe themselves as unable to fathom– the Defense Ministry has so far refused to sign off on his paperwork. “It might be political,” one US officer guessed. Well, yes, indeed it might be, given that the present (outgoing) Iraqi government– just like the one that will follow it– is dominated by parties and individuals who (1) suffered mightily under Saddam Hussein and (2) are now probably, on many issues, more open to suasion from nearby Iran than they are to the diktats of the US Embassy.
Chala’s free-fall continues
It is still far from clear what the next Iraqi government will look like. I would say that one near-certainty is that our old ‘friend” Ahmad Chalabi won’t be getting any good place in it– he seemed to make a huge tactical error some weeks ago when– according to this other WaPo piece– he “pulled out of the governing Shiite alliance [the UIA] ahead of the elections, opting instead to form a small party of his own, after the alliance refused to guarantee him the top job of prime minister, his aides said at the time.”
So what with not staying inside the UIA, and then having Sistani come out and urge Shiite voters not to let their allegiances stray away from the UIA– Chala is now left with the prospect of not commanding even one seat in the new parliament.
I said I “would” have ruled out a future role for him… Except that he is such a slimy character, and has such an amazing record as a comeback artiste, that nobody should ever rule him out forever, from anything… Besides, he’s been burnishing his credentials very carefully with the Iranians over the past couple of years, so that might give him another way to get a leg back up….
A charming representative for democratic practice!
(Irony alert there.)
Hayat reported today (Arabic) that Amb. Khalilzad was trying to tempt Allawi back into the fold by offering him the Interior Ministry!
Iraq as Lebanon?
Are we heading for a situation in which Iraq becomes another Lebanon, (whether Lebanon of the late 1800s, or Lebanon of post-1975)… that is, a country in which the internal politics are stalemated and each major population group has its own strong patron-power from outside?
In Iraq, could we see Iran supporting the Shiites; the Arab states supporting the Sunnis; and the US (and Israel) supporting the Kurds?
Not exactly. Iraq is not quite analogous to Lebanon, since the Shiites form so strong a numerical majority of the population in Iraq. That is why I think that the struggle for power and influence inside the UIA will be one of the strongest factors of all determining which path the country will travel. I do not see the UIA as simply the client of the Iranian regime. But it is clear that just about every single faction within the UIA has close links with one or another strand within the Iranian ruling regime. (And so does Jalal Talabani’s PUK and maybe even some other non-Shiite factions, too.)
Democracy, horsetrading, peace, an Ayatollah
And now, a final note about “democracy” in Iraq. The UIA has thus far adamantly rejected Maram’s demands for rerunning the elections in any place. But Sistani, who is the UIA’s spiritual eminence grise has called for the creation of a government of national unity. (A pretty good idea, I think.) And as part of their pursuit of that goal, Khalilzad and the leaders of the outgoing Iraqi government have reportedly been talking about somehow handing over ten parliamentary seats to the Sunni parties. That link there goes to a piece in today’s Al-Hayat, in Arabic. Another piece in the paper specifies that the proposal is for these ten seats to be “donated” by the UIA.
So much for the December 15 election as a “triumph for democracy”.
But the fact is, that democracy has yet to be built in Iraq. The horse-trading and intensive internal and international negotiations that are now going on may set the country on a path to democracy. Or they may not. They may set the country on the path to the free exercize of national sovereingty and national independence. Or they may not. On both counts, I am doubtful. But who knows? Maybe Ayatollah Sistani is a wise, far-sighted and inclusive enough person that he can help steer the country peacefully to these kinds of good outcomes?
But democracies are supposed to rest on a solid foundation of mutually agreed laws, not on individuals. And I find it very weird indeed to think that the best hope for a decent outcome in Iraq might lie in the wisdom (still largely unproven, in the political field) of one frail old religious scholar.
Cole on Iraqi delusions
#1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9 – perfect expert analysis, must know for anybody interested in the subject. It is really hard to discuss ME and Iraq without understanding this!
IMO, #3, 4, 10 are conceptual problems, not much to do with the concrete region. Once we know that there is advanced guerilla conflict in a country and its neighbors are involved, discussion of winning / losing becomes irrelevant. Simple loss – victory scale is hardly applicable in this situation.
When social groups rather than individuals are main players, poll numbers can’t replace concrete analysis of participants and their relationships. “Free elections” – what is this supposed to mean on the ground? Anything close to fair Western elections is impossible in occupied colony anyway.
#8 – well… hmmm…
Juan Cole. Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005 http://www.juancole.com/2005/12/top-ten-myths-about-iraq-in-2005-iraq.html
But Sistani, who is the UIA’s spiritual eminence grise has called for the creation of a government of national unity. (A pretty good idea, I think.) And as part of their pursuit of that goal, Khalilzad?
Is it his call realy Helena? Sistani serving Iran first and the secondly the occupier Helena, this all clear from his actions.
The other point I like to make if you think Iraqi Shi’it all same your conclusions not write the faction that believes in Sistani are Iranians in Iraq.
Sistani propaganda created by the occupiers, it isnot really related to his spiritualty in fact the support that he got from UK and all those you call them spiritual peoples who are safehavened in UK like Abdul Majeed al-Khoei and others..
president Abd al-Karim Qasim. He embraced religion when Arab, rather than Islamic, nationalism was the popular ideology in Iraq, and when the number of theology students was dropping by the thousands. In 1918, for example, 6,000 students studied at the theology schools of Sistani’s Najaf, while by 1957 it had dropped to 1,954, of whom only 326 were Iraqis.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB10Ak02.html
This reality of the bitter that Iran playing with Arabs in The gulf, in Lebanon, Syria and other Islamic nations.
Nearly three-fourths of Japanese voters want the country’s troops withdrawn from Iraq within the next six months, a newspaper poll said on Wednesday.
Where is the democracy FROM THE PEOPLE TO THE PEOPLEFROM THE PEOPLE TO THE PEOPLE
This comment isn’t directly related to this post, however, it is related to iraq. i read your post “What Happened In Tall Afar” which was posted in Sept 04. I was in that operation. I was a 20 year old light machinegunner in an infantry platoon. I’m not posting this to harass you or to be rude in any way, but I don’t beleive you told the whole story. The heaviest fighting I saw in Iraq was in Tall Afar. You portrayed that operation as if it was directed at the civilians in the town. I know that civilians were killed in that operation, I was there, but that town was completely overtaken by enemy, and the civilian casualties were not intentional. please beleive me. I don’t agree with every tactic our commanders used,however, the enemy overran the govt of the town, imposed strict Islamic law on the citizens, and was using children as ammunition runners. They put lists up in the mosques of people who they beleived were working with Americans, and then executed them one by one. They even executed our BARBER. I know that our informants often took advantage of us to get back at groups or people they didn’t like for whatever reason. Often times we wouldn’t even take our informants seriously.
Whenever we would enter the town you could literally count down from ten, and before you hit one we would be in an ambush.. and not just some little 20 man ambush, I mean large scale ambushes which were very well coordinated. Try looking at this from my perspective.
Literally days before that operation the enemy shot down one of our Kiowa helicopters and then tried to overrun the crash site and capture the pilots. This resulted in a 6 hour battle, which i was also a part of,to defend the crash site. Ugly things happened in that town.
You might think I’m a bad person for taking part in the operation and I don’t care. I know what war does. I know innocent people lost their lives in Tall Afar, and many other places in Iraq and I literally think about it daily. All I’m saying is the intention wasn’t to punish the citizens. There was a real threat in that town. I faced that threat daily. War is an ugly thing, and I cannot wait for the day when this one will be over.
I’m proud to have served in Iraq, and i’m proud of every other uniformed service member who has served there. I’m not going to go into my views about iraq or politics, but i will say that i regret nothing. thankyou
Nick –
I don’t think anyone (outside of Iraq anyway) believes that U.S. troops deliberately targeted civilians. What we are all so angry and upset about is the Bush/Cheney administration’s grotesque misrepresentations to con us into the war and the appalling incompetence of the administration in conducting same.
Virtually EVERYTHING that is known to us today about Iraq, it’s politics and pitfalls, was KNOWN before the war. I knew it, and I’m just a housewife with too much time on the internet. The professionals in the Bush/Cheney administration knew it, but the reports coming up from the CIA and other sources were routinely squashed so that no reality would intrude on President Bush’s perceived religious calling. The whole thing is a FUBAR of historic proportions.
We (like you) will pay for this for a generation or more. Thank you for your service. It is a crime that you were sent there, but your courage and that of your fellow soldiers is admired and respected by even those (like me) who have always been opposed to this war.
Mr. Miano, Sir:
You and other vets should expand upon your recollections of various military campaigns, strategies, and events. This might elucidate lots of things the media can only guess or obscure. For instance:
1) You courteously point out what you believe are omissions in Ms. HC’s recount of Tal Afar. Have you read any accounts of this or any other aspect of the war which you believe are judicious and comprehensive? Please share.
2) Is there any place in Iraq were US troops can stroll the open streets at ease? Or must they always be on guard?
3) If much of the local population is hostile, and if there is little way to tag the core insurgents, is it ever possible to pacify a single town or neighborhood, without it reverting to insurgent control?
4) Will any Iraqi accept the view that US forces pursue a minority of troublemakers or that civilian casualties were unintentional? If not, is it not regretable that we get into a situation where this is the case?
5) Did anything you or your comrades were told beforehand about Iraq, or why we are there, fit what you found?
6) Is any of our weaponry, equipment, or intelligence suitable to the type of situation our troops face in Iraq? What might you change?
7) Of course one can be proud of doing one’s duty and honor the memory of fallen buddies. But is it not also possible to have a non-partisan view about the efficiency of continuing a military occupation? Any comment on the views of Gen. W. Odom, who argues that US security would be best served by a rapid exit from Iraq? He has written several potent analyses, of which the latest is at http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=129
Thanks for any follow-up.
Nick, hi–
I really thank you for coming onto the blog and sharing your recollections of Tall Afar in such a vivid and reflective way. By doing that, you really help all of us to understand what it must have been like for you there…. Which clearly was extremely scary and stressful.
My personal judgment is that almost no members of the US forces intentionally target noncombatants though sometimes in the heat of this war, as all others, people probably do things they wouldn’t if they had more time to think clearly. I am truly happy for you if you can say in all honesty that you’ve done nothing you regret, and I believe you.
However, as you point out (and illustrate so well in your comment), “war is an ugly thing”. And it almost always has terrible and unpredictable consequences that flow from the violence embodied in it. That’s why there is such a very heavy responsibility put on national leaders to seek every single possible option other than war to resolve their problems, and use war only as a “last resort”. That responsibility is not only in law (e.g. in the Charter of the UN, an organization founded by the USA back in 1945) but also in e.g. Christian beliefs.
It’s true that my Quaker church is part of the (currently minority) view that the Bible tells us to avoid all war. But even Christian thinkers from St. Augustine on who have believed in the possibility of a “just war” have started from the basic understanding of the extreme harmfulness, damage, and unpredictability of war. That’s why they set such strict limits on when it might be justified.
Anyway, I really thank you for your contribution. Stick around! If you have some longer recollections about your time in the service or some reflection on the questions Jkoch has asked here, that you would allow me to publish here the blog, I’d be happy to do that and can promise you your views will be treated with respect here. You could send a text to me as an email attachment and it would not take me long to put it up as its own post, with full attribution to you.
Nick
Its nice to hear the perspective of someone on the ground. Your story is quite consistent with others that I have read. The “enemy” or “insurgent” or “resistance fighter” depending on your perspective is organized and is a third world guerilla fighter in the classic sense. And it seems they are improving their tactics and creating zones of “control” until they are dislodged.
Each narrative from the battlefield carries the perspective of the writer. Your definition of “enemy” is someone else’s father or brother or son. Or “freedom fighter” or “patriot” willing to die defending their freedom from a very powerful foreign invader and occupier. Each story is poignant in its own way. But of the all the stories the least I have seen are from the perspective of the Iraqi civilian caught in the middle or even stories of the “enemy” or “resistance” fighter.
I have tremendous respect for our soldiers like you who are following orders and doing their best in the service of their country. Grief is universal for the families – wether it is one of your buddies who paid the ultimate price or a Iraqi fighter KIA or a child caught in the blast zone of an aerial bombardment.
The debate I believe is not about if what people like you did was right or wrong, but, the decision making of our political leadership that ordered you into battle. The debate is about if the near total destruction of Iraq and the loss of thousands of lives both Iraqi and American was a good tradeoff for removing a dictator. The debate is about the legitimacy of orders when those orders from political leadership is based on lies and deceit. The debate is about the right of nations to invade another just because their leaders want to.
I hope you can participate in these debates.
Nick Miano,
Thank you telling us and joining us here.
I have one question for you, if your country invaded and all the infrastructures and common services destroyed by foreign troops what will be your story to us? Thanks
IF YOU WANT to meet the future political leaders of the United States, go to Iraq. I am not referring to the generals, or even the colonels. I mean the junior officers and enlistees in their 20s and 30s. In the decades ahead, they will represent something uncommon in U.S. military history: war veterans with practical experience in democratic governance, learned under the most challenging of conditions.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kaplan24dec24,0,1795116.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
“The occupiers are shot at. To protect themselves, they search for weapons. They have learned it is dangerous to approach a front door. Where houses are wall-to-wall, they pound or blast through the wall instead. This is a tactic proven to reduce casualties. “We invented it,” said Chayut.”
“The occupier has to “suppress terrorism.” The occupier has to take “security measures.” Always the occupier has to “defend.” Those are labels. From the perspective of far away they may be satisfying. From the perspective of these two soldiers, pushing the muzzles of their rifles at frightened fellow humans, they were false labels, heavy carpets thrown over inconvenient facts.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002707197_rams28.html
There definitely is an obsession with Allawi and Chalabi here in the US. I can understand since they have been financed by the US as potential surrogates.
If Khalilzad is truly the “viceroy” making the final decisions, then these two will have a serious role to play in the next government. But if the preliminary election results turn out be correct would the UIA just give up power easily?
I read that the Sadr group has the largest number of seats in the UIA coalition. If that is accurate, then it would imply a divergence between Iranian influence and a more Arab nationalistic influence.
Salah’s first link isn’t working. Here is the correct link to Kaplan’s column.
There is another major narrative we should not ignore: the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. The pieces are all in place for a final showdown over Kirkuk and its nearby oil fields. This is coming, whether anyone wants it or not. Tom Lasseter had another great story in Tuesday’s Knight Ridder newspapers that gives a pretty clear picture of what is about to go down:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/13495329.htm
Imagine how low the morale must be among the Arab soldiers in these Iraqi army battalions stationed around Mosul and Kirkuk. I’m sure they all know that sometime in the near future, the order is likely to come down for the Peshmerga majorities in these units to slaughter their Arab “comrades,” probably in the middle of the night. The most they can hope for is a chance to throw down their weapons and run. Once that has happened, it seems there will be no option other than total civil war, which in turn is likely to broaden into a regional conflict. I have seen no indication that any plans exist for how US forces will respond to these circumstances. Are we going to assist the Kurds in the ethnic cleansing of Kirkuk and Mosul and the establishment of an independent Kurdistan? Surely, we are not prepared to stop it.
John C. Wrote
I have seen no indication that any plans exist for how US forces will respond to these circumstances.
”There has never been a single declaration among the higher levels of government now that we ever intend to withdraw completely our military forces from Iraq,” Carter told reporters.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/07/president_carter_doubts_us_military_will_ever_leave_iraq/
”My belief, and it may be erroneous … is that the top leadership in this country intends 20 years from now, 50 years from now, we’ll still have a major military presence in Iraq.”
Christiane,
Thanks for the correction
the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. The pieces are all in place for a final showdown over Kirkuk and its nearby oil fields. This is coming, whether anyone wants it or not.
“The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states.”
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
قررت المفوضية العليا للانتخابات في العراق إلغاء بعض الدوائر الانتخابية التي ثبت وقوع تلاعب بها في أنحاء متفرقة من العراق.
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E9D78599-5DEF-4BC5-9B38-62209D82F291.htm
Here we go the miss in the voting box solved by discounting the votes!!!!!
Good job from The High Commission about the allegations and investigations that we promised to get the real story of miss voting process that reported happened.
There is something special about Haaretz
Although the general flow of their PR operations is well known, you never know what will happen next in any details. So, now Mr.Sarid, like a playful kitten, rushes to the scene, produces his opinion, and the next thing you know is that it is all gone.
How GWB’s “admission of mistakes” is related with the real world, I cannot even imagine, but PR artistry of this cute little piece is unquestionable.
Yossi Sarid. At least the U.S. admits its mistakes: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/663139.html
The gates of 2005 are about to shut, and the war in Iraq will end in 2006. It will end not because it is over – in fact, it’s at its height, and escalating still – but because George Bush has no choice. The war has degenerated into a morass, taking its toll with every passing day, and the American public is fed up: it wants to see America’s 160,000 soldiers come home.
How do I know President Bush has already understood that the war he began has ended? He said it himself: Last week he pronounced victory. On live television, the president declared: “The United States is winning the war in Iraq. We know it, and our enemies know it, too.” This is the practice adopted by the enfeebled: When they announce “victory,” it is a sign that they are already packing their belongings and that preparations for a disengagement have already begun. Wars are no longer won; the “victors” only pretend to have won, and write yet another fruitless and superfluous chapter. Although the two sides are pretending to be the same thing, this doesn’t prevent either side from ostentatiously licking its wounds, or from fleeing and forgetting.
Bush not only declared victory, but also issued a confession and apology. Three years late, the president admitted the basically flawed intelligence that prepared the groundwork, and the hearts and minds, for the war: there never were weapons of mass destruction, he confessed, and no trace of any relationship between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was unearthed.
You do realize, don’t you, that Sarid was using Bush’s speech as a foil to criticize the Israeli intelligence establishment, and that he was probably at least half sarcastic in calling it an admission of error?
I am interested in what info if any this article provides on Iraq. The answer is, pretty much none. Same on the US and Israel.
As for the author’s attitudes, it is all his problem as far as I am concerned.
when i made that post it told me that the server timed out so i figured it never posted.. i never came back to read all the followup comments but rather came back and rewrote my comment under a different post. someone pointed out that i’d posted the exact same thing so i came back and read what everyone had to say. i guess posting the almost the exact same thing twice looks a bit foolish.. sorry about that.
when i made that post it told me that the server timed out so i figured it never posted.. i never came back to read all the followup comments but rather came back and rewrote my comment under a different post. someone pointed out that i’d posted the exact same thing so i came back and read what everyone had to say. i guess posting the almost the exact same thing twice looks a bit foolish.. sorry about that.
Yes, this is great analysis, thanks a lot! My understanding is, UIA is more of a herd of cats than a unified Baath-like force. From the other side, Sistani is a quietist and Khomeini never had to fight against foreign occupation, this was done by the Lebanese Hizballah. So Iraqis have quite a lot to figure out from square 1.
Reidar Visser. A Disunited Iraqi Alliance Triumphs in the South
i read your post “What Happened In Tall Afar” which was posted in Sept 04. I was in that operation. I was a 20 year old light machinegunner in an infantry platoon. I’m not posting this to harass you or to be rude in any way, but I don’t beleive you told the whole story. The heaviest fighting I saw in Iraq was in Tall Afar. You portrayed that operation as if it was directed at the civilians in the town. I know that civilians were killed in that operation, I was there, but that town was completely overtaken by enemy, and the civilian casualties were not intentional. please beleive me. I don’t agree with every tactic our commanders used,however, the enemy overran the govt of the town, imposed strict Islamic law on the citizens, and was using children as ammunition runners. They put lists up in the mosques of people who they beleived were working with Americans, and then executed them one by one. They even executed our BARBER.
Well, that’s guerilla war, it does not know any distictions between guerillas and civilians. War is hell 🙁
Only morons blame soldiers for what they do, this is not the right way to oppose the war! IMO, it needs to be made as clear as possible.
“Only morons blame soldiers for what they do”
At the risk of alienating nearly everyone, I would like to point out that American soldiers, being volunteers, are not entirely blameless in regard to the effects of US military actions. One can, perhaps, excuse some (not all) young recruits for being naive, poorly educated, and/or economically vulnerable. I am sure very few 18-24 year old American youths have any realistic idea of what war is like prior to enlisting. Many, no doubt, are motivated by ideals of patriotism and public service.
However, it is an inescapable fact that when joining the armed forces, one is deliberately choosing to become a professional killer, and is relinquishing any right to select one’s own victims. My wish is to live in a society in which fewer people are willing to make that choice.
You are entitled to your opinion. I am proud of my service in Iraq and I would do it all over again if I had to. Knowing what I know now, I still wouldn’t change anything about my decision to join the army. I was asked to be a professional killer and I feel that I handled that task responsibly and with honor. Again though, you’re entitled to your opinion
“I was asked to be a professional killer and I feel that I handled that task responsibly and with honor.”
I don’t doubt it, Nick. It is fashionable these days for people who oppose the war to say, as Henry did, that the soldiers are not responsible. You seem to agree with me that you are, in fact, responsible for your own involvement in the matter. I respect that.
So please tell us why you think it makes sense for our country to be fighting this war in Iraq.
I know we were misled about weapons of mass destruction. I’m not going to pretend to be a conspiracy theorist and figure out who did what, but we were misled somewhere along the line. If that’s what it took for us to invade Iraq and remove Saddam, then that’s fine with me. He was just flat out bad for Iraq. This war confuses me. Even after a year in Iraq it confuses me. I know there is a humanitarian reason for us to be there, but our prescence is the source of a lot of the violence. Our hearts are in the right place, we’re really trying to put that place back together, but I’m not sure if it’s working. I don’t have an answer for you. I guess I hope it makes sense. I hope that Iraq will turn out like Germany or Japan, that’d be really nice. I guess we’ll just have to see how it turns out. There are def some things that could’ve been done differently that I feel would’ve vastly changed the outcome we have so far. I’m not very politicaly minded, but I sort of grew an attachment to the Iraqi people.
Nick, John C., and Henry J., just to say that I am really getting a lot out of reading your thoughtful discussion here and I appreciate you all participating in it with such a high degree of respect and consideration.
Nick, I am truly sorry that you earlier had such problems with doing multiple posts here. The software does still take a couple minutes to check the comments for spam and spambot, etc., before it publishes them, so some commenters (certainly not limited to you!) will then tend to “re-post” the comments, resulting in the doubling of posts…. But anyway, you now seem to have got the hang of it.
The filtering is needed because of the proliferation of really nasty, mainly pornographic spam that is out there.
Btw I really appreciate both your idealism and your courage in thinking these tough issues through in “public” here. They aren’t easy issues, I know.
(-: Thanks for kind words 🙂
I was going to try to answer Jkoch’s questions but I’m not sure I feel comfortable answering them. I’m not a military tactician or a politican. I hate politics and i hate the media. I’m not a republican and I’m not a democrat. I went to Iraq for a year and I saw a pretty heavy amount of combat. I’ve had way too many close calls and I’ve seen people die. I hate the fact that innocent people are usually the ones who suffer the most in all wars. I hate the fact that we’re still fighting this war. I’ve been asked if I feel like an ugly American for having served in Iraq. I hate it when people who are my age say they support the troops but won’t join the army themselves. “Oh I support the troops, but uh, hey i’m in college man I can’t join the army.” i don’t relate well to my peers now. I used to be a social butterfly. I hate talking to people I don’t know about Iraq. This is a huge departure for me… and its because I got angry about an article I read. I hate the fact that I get angry now. If you met me you’d probably have no idea that I was in the army or that I’ve been to Iraq. I’m a skinny Italian kid who was known as a class clown in high school. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Iraq. For the most part I liked the Iraqi people. I don’t even hate the people I viewed as enemies. I never hesitated to return fire but I don’t have them. One time we captured an enemy fighter in Tall Afar who was very nice. He didn’t hate us. He told my friend that he should be back in America with his wife and baby girl. I hate the fact that all all the left and right are doing is bickering about Iraq instead of trying to work together to come up with some way to work it out. Now that I’m done with Iraq I just want a quiet comfortable life with my girlfriend. I don’t want my future children to ever experience what I’ve experienced. I want the war to be over so that it will feel like it’s over for me.
well, i felt even more uncomfortable not answering those questions so i’m going to sit down and try to answer them.
Don’t worry, Nick. We’re all just trying to figure things out.
I think the moment when you beccome an adult is when you realize that nobody really knows what they’re doing – everybody is just making it up as they go.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Your information is valuable.
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