Good for Americans for Peace Now– the support group in the US for the Israeli PN organization… They’re organizing a campaign to demand that the Prez implement the ISG report.
- (And for his part, Israeli PM Olmert seems almost apoplectically opposed to the report, especially its claim that there is a strong linkage between the US’s ability to avoid disaster in Iraq and the need to make some– long, long delayed!– progress towards implementing resolutions 242 and 338 on the Syrian and the Palestinian fronts.)
If they want the ISG implemented they should change their name to ‘Americans for Peace Sometime in the FAR Future, After the Oil is Privatized’.
The ISG makes NO stance for ‘peace’, only recommends pulling troops in ’08 IF Iraqi troops are ‘trained’, and then only SOME troops. It also calls for Iraqi oil to be privitized, by changing their constitution if needed.
It’s a scam to make occupation the status quo. Anybody who supports it supports making illegal invasions legal.
.
Helena
You might like to look at David Brooks piece in todays New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/opinion/10brooks.html?hp
He describes the chaos that might follow a withdrawal. You shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand as scaremongering. There is independent corroboration. Rosemary Hollis published something similar for Chatham House in April 06.
Her introduction starts:
Europeans will look back on the late twentieth century as an interlude between the Second World War and the sectarian war that will soon engulf what was once the Ottoman Empire and spill over into what is now the European Union. It will not be a war between states, or superpower blocs or empires. It will be more like a civil war.
In the conflict to come, armies will not be massed for combat at the geo- strategic fault lines between continents or countries, instead the combatants will be civilians, politicians and the police. Cities will fragment into neighbourhoods, states into rival ethnic and sectarian groups linked to allies elsewhere through the internet and organised crime. Disputes will be over identity, with tolerance and social harmony the casualties. Battles will not rage everywhere with equal intensity. Some states and enclaves will manage to stay above the fray, protected by tight security, intrusive surveillance and wealth. Mercenaries will come back into their own, as private security for businesses, gated neighbourhoods and politicians. For the rest, citizens will be obliged to choose between religious and ethnic patrons and militia, much as in Lebanon’s civil war. But only in some places will the conflict be deadly for months at a time – the suburbs of
Leeds, Copenhagen, Marseille, Aleppo, Hebron, Kirkuk and Alexandria, perhaps. In Europe states will survive but at the expense of liberal democracy. In the Middle East some states will unravel, and that is where the war will begin.
Robert Fisk is quite right. We get to sort out the messes made by our grandfathers.
Figuring out how to survive this mess is going to be quite interesting.
Robert Fisk is quite right. We get to sort out the messes made by our grandfathers.
O please. It’s not our grandfathers mess. It’s ours. We just continue the crimes and follies of our grandfathers. We never learn.
From “The Great War for Civilization” (2006), by Robert Fisk, page 1235 (as he is watching an immense column of American troops moving through the desert):
“And I do begin to understand. Two thousend years ago, a little to the west of here, we would have sat by the roadside as the ground shook to the tramp of Rome’s legions. Now we live in the American Empire. Yes, this war was about oil. Yes, it was fuelled by folly and arrogance and lies. But it was also about the desire – the visceral need – to project power on a massive scale, based on neo-conservative fantasies, no doubt, but unstoppable, inexorable. Our army can go to Baghdad. So it will go to Baghdad. It will pour over Sumeria and Babylon and all the caliphates and across the land where civilisation supposedly began.”
“He describes the chaos that might follow a withdrawal.”
So, from a whole-hearted supporter of the Iraq adventure who clearly opposes withdrawal, we get speculation, and we are supposed to give that a great deal of weight? The chaos that MIGHT follow a withdrawal as opposed to what – the lovely, peaceful calm that the American presence continues to bring to the country?
Sorry, but I cannot take this kind of nonsense seriously at all. (Actually, no, I am not sorry about that. What I am sorry about is that ANYONE takes it seriously.
And, Helena, I am disappointed to see Americans for Peace Now calling for implementation of what is clearly a plan to stay the course, but by slightly different means. I am even more disappointed to see your praise for Peace Now in this regard, and still more disappointed to see your apparent endorsement of the ISG report and its recommendations.
So far I can find only three positive things in the report. 1) Finally an official report that states clearly and realistically how bad the situation is. 2) There is now an official report that refers openly to the Palestinians’ right of return. 3) There is now an official report that not only remembers the usually overlooked Israeli colonization of the Golan Heights, but actually states that it should be returned to Syria, whose sovereign territory it is. The recommendations regarding Iraq are, as I said, merely stay the course, but change the means.
Shirin,
I am even more disappointed to see your praise for Peace Now in this regard, and still more disappointed to see your apparent endorsement of the ISG report and its recommendations.
Me too from long time ago, that Helena went to this direction.
But she will say, her focus to get US troop home and speedy withdraw no worries…..US went to Iraq to stay as long as they do Helena not for the democracy and freedom…“The wolf shows his teeth”
Iraq Study Group
President’s Message to the Iraqi PeopleApril 10, 2003
Despite her many excellent qualities as a journalist, Helena has a tendency to be distracted by the grand gestures of politics. In the past, she has expended much of her apparently boundless energy analyzing such chimera as the Iraqi “elections” and the Iraqi “constitution.” Now another group of old white guys (with Vernon Jordan and Sandra D. O’Connor along for window dressing) has come up with yet another prescription for how the US corporate oligarchy should remake Iraq in its own image, and I’m afraid Helena sees this as some kind of encouraging sign.
Something amusing, because it’s Sunday:
http://www.skrab.com/CheneyCat.jpg
Its true, the ISG reccomendations – and that’s all they are – from paternal cronies that 43 can only resent – can have only three effects. They give congress and the chattering classes something to chatter about for months on end.
Laden with preconditions, they will confirm to all regional stakeholders that, like Israeli peace offers, the latent intent is to conserve – conserve “gains”, territories, positions, physical control, and internal constructs – at whatever cost.
They will increase Shrub’s cognitive dissonance to the point where he will no longer be able make or tolerate any decision that further conflicts with his pathological paradigm. It will become even more psychologically imperative to defend the construct. Any impact of rational input – and I’m not saying the ISG report fits that bill – will be subordinated to the defense of Bush’s internal “Homeland”.
And of course for the president of platitudes – freedom and democracy in YOUR region in OUR time – the best, the only defense, is offense.
Watch for increased violence, a telling example from Juan Cole today:
Further, as Israel stews about the Lebanese failure, the shift in global sympathy to the Palestinians, the ever-stoked “existential threat,
the recommendations for substantive peace with its neighbours and occupied peoples, as well as Gates’ confirmation testimony that Israel has nuclear weapons (quel surprize!) and that’s why others will acquire them, it too will feel isolated, abandoned, generating increased dissonance within its political process. The injection of the crazed Avigdor Lieberman, who never met a nutty, racist, violent idea he didn’t already own, into the Israeli government is a manifestation of this.
Otherwise, its meaningless.
Shirin
I am not quite sure which of the three of us you are referring to. I can’t remember David Brooks position on the war.
When you do risk analysis you multiply the impact by the probability of its ocurrence to estimate the risk.
Two independent analyses at different times that come up with similar conclusions are worthy of note. I suspect that the outcomes are the same whether the US and Brits go home or not. Which is a depressing thought.
However, at least someone is evaluating the downside and someone has to come up with a plan to manage it.
http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page269.html
The Home Secretary warned us today that people might try a spectacular in the run up to Christmas. That is from the 30 odd groups that they are tracking, and doesn’t take into account the ones they don’t know about. If the bombs in London in July 2005 had been on a Saturday rather than a Thursday they would have got me because Russel Square is one of the stops on the Tube beside SOAS.
So when the Tube shudders to a halt 50 metres below ground and the lights go out, one does tend to take things seriously, particularly as one wonders how long the air will last.
What means of identication do you carry while travelling on public transport so that your body can be identified and your family collect the life insurance if, God Forbid, something did happen?
David Brooks in 2004: “I still believe that in 20 years, no one will doubt that Bush did the right thing.”
Or, if you’re not convinced yet of Brooks’s powers of prophecy: again in 2004:
“Come on people, let’s get a grip. This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam.”
Brooks 2004: “No other nation would be adaptable enough to recover from its own innocence and muddle its way to success, as I suspect we are about to do.”
Indeed, when you think of Rumsfeld and Bush, the word “innocence” is what comes to mind…
Question: Why should we even listen to that clown?
Peace Now and Helena seem to endorse the ISG report in its entirety. But that’s not quite what Helena told us earlier. Nor is what the Peace Now statement says. I think a clarification would be useful.
I am willing to support the ISG’s recommendations regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict + dialogue with Iran/Syria, but I cannot endorse the report as a whole, for it is a thin disguise for a continuation of the occupation by other means.
Not to mention this training business, which is of true Brooksian stupidity.
Two main stories in the news, what tells you, what UN can do and what US did and mess around the world. Where UN from what Israelis did by thrown 4Millions of Bombes in the Last 72 hours in South Lebanon, what’s UN did to Israeli?
But in Iraq all those crimes and mess causing by US and the silent of UN and its all agenises.
What US did and doing to Iraqis no one business, US doing a Great Job in Iraq to set a Democratic Regime who is responsible for far more crimes and deaths from the Chilean dictator Pinochet who flee the world to his grave…
Frank,
“I am not quite sure which of the three of us you are referring to.”
The three of whom? As far as I can see, you are the only one who recommended David Brooks’ article.
“I can’t remember David Brooks position on the war.”
David Brooks’ record – and accuracy, or rather lack thereof – when it comes to Iraq is well known. It alone gives one good reason not to take anything seriously that comes from him on the subject.
In any case, what you are promoting here looks like nothing more than the current nonsensical pro-war Chicken Little talking point that says “if we don’t continue to fight them in Iraq, they will follow us here”.
“When you do risk analysis you multiply the impact by the probability of its ocurrence to estimate the risk.”
Well, I do not have expertise in risk analysis, but I do know something about statistical analysis, including calculating probability. There are no meaningful numbers on which to base a probability calculation for the events mentioned in your post, therefore there is simply no reliable way to calculate a credible probability for them. So, any “risk analysis” must be based virtually entirely on speculation, not credible numerical analysis.
“Two independent analyses at different times that come up with similar conclusions are worthy of note.”
Analyses by whom? Conducted for what purpose (the real purpose, not the publicized purpose)? Motivated by what? Based on what? Any analysis is only as good as the information that is used to make it. Put another way, garbage in, garbage out.
One of my relatives-in-law happens to have worked for about a decade for a company that produces and markets risk assessment products. This includes products that assess risks involving international conflicts. During 2002-2003 he and I got into a number of interesting arguments regarding Iraq, the impending invasion, and the reasons for it (for the record, though he voted for Bush in 2000 – not in 2004, though – he was personally opposed to the invasion). These arguments often focused on the existence vs non-existence of the Saddam regime’s so-called WMD’s and ties to Islamic terrorism, including, of course, to Al Qa`eda. Though he was opposed to invading, he believed there was a high likelihood that both existed. He based this view on the analyses of some “very experienced, smart professionals” who were working with his company at that time on risk assessments involving the invasion. Clearly I was right, and his “experienced, pretty smart professional” risk assessors were dead wrong. I don’t know on what they based their analyses and conclusions, but clearly it was garbage, and therefore their analyses were garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.
“I suspect that the outcomes are the same whether the US and Brits go home or not.”
The outcome of not going home should be very clear by now – continued deterioration on all fronts. The outcome of going home is unknown, but certain things are predictable, and those things are not all bad.
“However, at least someone is evaluating the downside and someone has to come up with a plan to manage it.”
All of the various Chicken Little doomsday scenarios for what would happen if the U.S. withdrew from Iraq are pure speculation with no actual realistic basis, and are virtually all self serving. This is irrespective of whether they come from someone who actually knows something about the Middle East, such as Juan Cole (who, despite his genuine expertise on the Middle East and Islam, is wrong in his analyses and conclusions on Iraq at least as often as he is accurate) or someone like David Brooks, who has, as far as I can determine, no actual knowledge of the subject, who appears to glean his “information” from the latest list of Bush regime talking points, and who is well known for his whole hearted support of the Bush regime’s Iraq adventure.
“The Home Secretary warned us today…”
Would that be the Home Secretary from the same government that, with the usual impeccable timing, foiled the much-publicized evil liquid-mixing plot – you know, the one that resulted in the banning of toothpaste, eye moisture drops and contact lens solution on aircraft?
Hi Shirin
So, from a whole-hearted supporter of the Iraq adventure who clearly opposes withdrawal, we get speculation,
I am not quite sure how you managed to make the deduction from a recommendation to an article that I support the “War” (more about the use of the word below) and oppose withdrawal.
As a pal of mine used to say “Dont take up parachuting as you tend to jump to conclusions”
The “War” originally started as an invasion, followed by an occupation that generated an insurgency, that is now painted as a war in win or lose terms. This allows it to be conflated with the Global War On Terror which allows the rules to be bent in “Wartime”.
The reason that I drew Helena’s attention to the Brooks article is the similarity between David Brooks piece and Rosemary Hollis piece. (I trust you have done your homework and read both) It is also striking that Brooks is one of two writers today to refer to the Thirty Years war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120801686.html
The Thirty Years War is something I know a little about, as I am, in fact, an honorary citizen of Mark, one of the disputed inheritances that started the shooting.
The forces that are in play today in the Middle East are the same forces that were in play then
We have an achronistic political system, a conflict of faiths, an undermining of exisiting legitimacy, an ambitious regional power, and power concentrated in the hands of supreme leaders who were of questionable ability.
If you haven’t read about it Geoffrey Parker’s book The Thirty Years War illustrates the complexity without going down to the level of detail of Oxenstierna’s reform of the Swedish taxation system to finance the war.
The reason Brooks article is important is that the Invasion of Iraq is generally seen as an example of strategic incompetence. I saw a reference to it being taught in a south east asian staff college as a case study, but the link is now broken.
The failure of the course of action followed has upset the equilibrium that existed prior to Patrick’s Day 2003.
Whatever happens now we cannot return to the status quo ante. So all the major and minor players in the region are reassesing their Grand Strategies, with of course the wildcard of the small groups who can influence outcomes, much like Gavrilo Princip.
Some assments will inevitably conflict with those of other countries.
One option mentioned in one of today’s newspapers sounds like More Troops and then “Battle of Algiers” in Baghdad. If you havent read it you might get yourself Alistair Horne “A Savage War of Peace” for Christmas.
Risk Analysis. There are people out there who get on passenger aircraft with explosive in their shoes. The impact of an explosion on a 747is 500 dead. Thus the steps necessary to allow me to fly safely need to reduce the probability of getting explosive aboard to a vanishingly small number.
As in the waning death throes of its Southeast Asian quagmire forty years ago, American policy in Iraq now seeks to win through worthless words what its undefeated enemies on the ground have never — and will not now — concede to violence. No empirical evidence to date that I know of suggests that such a transparent tactic ever has or ever will work. The winners already know their own identities and need to concede nothing from a position of strength. Only the biggest loser, the American government (always the last to know), still refuses to recognize its own sorry situation and supposes that it can demand the unrealistic from a position of utter weakness. Still, hope (in the fraudulent form of desperate denial) springs eternal within the human beast (not a misspelling).
A maladroit mongoloid now mismanages the entire, errant enterprise. Does America want to play White Whale to Deputy Dubya’s White Elephant? Do the senile old farts of the American Political Peril Patrol really care about Iraq and its people? Or do they care more about their own prestige and privilege: positions now unfortunately resting uneasily in the infirm grasp of the infantile imbecile so many of them helped ascend to the Romanov throne in the first place. I’d bet on the latter supposition.
To the tune of our erstwhile emperor fiddling while Rome burns, then, I offer a brief escape from our seriousness about the stupid. This Vietnam Veteran, for one, prefers to sing about the seriously solipsistic with “Dumb Peyote” and “Bring Home the Buy Time Brigade” (parental guidance suggested).
http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2006/12/dumb-peyote.html
http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2006/12/bring-home-buy-time-brigade.html
“I am not quite sure how you managed to make the deduction from a recommendation to an article that I support the “War” (more about the use of the word below) and oppose withdrawal.”
I was not referring to you, here, Frank. I was referring to David Brooks. Sorry that was not clear.
PS I also do not find the application of the word war to the Bushite Iraq adventure appropriate, but I have allowed myself to fall into the habit using it. (I have managed not to fall into the same habit regarding the term insurgent, which I find completely inappropriate in the Iraq context since 2003. The uprising of 1991 was an insurgency. What is going on in Iraq now is not.)
“Risk Analysis. There are people out there who get on passenger aircraft with explosive in their shoes.”
Maybe I missed or have forgotten some real news about a real event, but I do believe it is, so far, not “people”, but person.
In any case, your example misses my point, which was that there is no numerical basis for calculating the probability of the events that anti-withdrawal types like David Brooks are fond of speculating about. Unlike those events, there IS a numerical basis on which to calculate the probability of someone getting on a passenger aircraft with explosives in their shoes (or box cutters they intend to use as weapons, or whatever terrorist or “terrorist” action you care to mention). The probability is by the way, virtually zero.
“The impact of an explosion on a 747is 500 dead. Thus the steps necessary to allow me to fly safely need to reduce the probability of getting explosive aboard to a vanishingly small number.”
That is all intuitively obvious. What I referred to is more technical.
Given that the probability of someone getting on a passenger plane with explosives in his shoe is already vanishingly small – less, in fact, than the probability of the plane crashing with a loss of all onboard – those steps don’t need to do much.
But this example is hardly apt in terms of the risk involved in withdrawal from Iraq. Added to the fact that there is no numerical basis on which to calculate the probability of the doomsday scenario posited by Brooks and his fellows, there is the huge disparity in the cost of taking steps to obviate the near-zero chance that someone will get onto an aircraft with explosive shoes and the cost of failing to withdraw from Iraq. The cost of the former is some added expense plus unconvenience and annoyance for passengers. Therefore, despite the extremely low probability, it is probably worth the cost. The consequences of the latter are a predictable catastrophe, as opposed to a completely speculative result.
As for your 30 years’ war example, please forgive me if I do not give it a lot of credibility. It may be that I am ignorant about the 30 years’ war, or it may be that I know Iraq and the Middle East better than you do, but what you have said about that both in the past and now does not resonate for me, and in any case, what I do know (and what I predicted based on my knowledge) is what is happening now, and that is catastrophe, and what else I do know is that there is absolutely no possibility of turning things around until and unless the official American involvement at all levels and in all aspects is ended.
These poets by Iraqi/Jew a heart braking poet wish him all the best……
Prof. Shmuel Moreh,
Chairman, Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq in Israel
Mevasseret Jerusalem, Israel
هداة إلى أخواتي وإخوتي العراقيين في كل مكان
لمعرفة سيرة الشاعر انقرهنا
قالت لي أمي: “ظلمونا في العراق،
وضاقَ المُقامُ بنا يا ولدي،
فما لنا و”للصبر الجميل” ؟
فهيا بنا للرحيل!”
وعندما بلغنا الوصيدا،
قالت لي: “يا ولدي لا تَحزنْ،
إِاللّي ما يريدكْ لا تريدَهْ “،
هَمستْ: ” يا حافرَ البير ”
“بربكَ قلْ لي لهذا سببْ؟ ”
ورَحلنا …
وقبلَ رَحيلِها الأخيرْ،
قالتْ لي أمّي،
والقلبُ كسيرْ :
” أحنّ إلى العراق يا ولدي،
أحنّ إلى نسيمِ دِجلة
يوشوِشُ للنخيلِ،
إلى طينها المِعطار
إلى ذيّاك الخميلِ،
بالله يا ولدي،
إذا ما زُرتَ العراقْ
بعدَ طولِ الفراقْ
قبّلِ الأعتابْ
وسلم على الأحبابْ
وحيّ الديار
وانسَ ما كانَ منهم ومنّا!”
* * *
هذه الليلة، زارتني أمّي
وعلى شـفتيـها عتابْ:
“أما زرت العراق بعدُ ؟
أما قبّلتَ الأعتابْ؟”
قلت: “واللهِ يا أمّي،
لِي إليها شوقٌ ووَجْـدُ،
ولكن “الدار قفرا، والمزار بعيدْ “،
بعد أن قتلوا مجد هرون الرشيدْ !
ففي كلِّ شِبر منَ العراقِ لَحدُ
ومياهُ دجلةَ والفرات، كأيامّ التتار
تجري فيها دماءٌ ودموعُ
تحطّمت الصواري وهوتِ القلوعُ
فكيف الرجوعُ؟
أماه، ليس في العراق اليومَ
عزّ ومجدُ،
لم يبق فيها
سوى الضياعِ والدموعْ!
أماه، كيف أزورُ العراق؟
أما ترين كيف يُنْحرُ
عراقنا الحبيبْ،
من الوريد إلى الوريدْ؟
ويَقْتلُ المسلمُ أخاه
فكيفَ بنا ونحنُ يهودُ !
خبّـريني بالله يا أمي !
كيف أعودُ ؟
ولمنْ أعودُ !
ونحنُ يهودُ ؟؟؟
القدس، 26 / 10/ 2006
http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWeb/ElaphWriter/2006/12/196753.htm
Pat Lang has an interesting piece on the David Brooks column and the 30 Years War. The thread makes interesting reading also. (Helena has the link on right sidebar).