Letters to the Editor
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I recently remembered reading, early on in the occupation, that under Saddam, there was no legitimate police force ....
that "the police" were largely shakedown / graft takers, to be avoided if at all possible... and that generally graft was rampant and necessary to get much of anything done.
I believe that there were (like because of this) neighborhood watch committees (rather like the current militias) ...
So, the point this article made was that there's no precedent for the sort of "local constabulatory" and that post-Saddam those who signed up to be "policemen" certainly expected that it was now their turn to collect ... and bestow ... and punish ...
In many places, graft free police and civil servants are an extreme exception ... and those jobs were doled out based via favoritism and also with the expectation of a kick-back.
We still seem to be quite naive wrt just how byzantine much of the third world is. (Rather like that article last week about how calls for democratic reforms in places like Saudia Arabia totally confounded the "normal" ex-officio process by which compromises were reached. Having "rules" drove the process to a screaming halt)
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Listen to Iraqis
Please go look at some statements from Iraqis at the site on my signature. They are heart-rending. We did this. We are responsible.
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We'll be there forever, as planned
The purpose in going in to Iraq was indeed to occupy the country and make sure that U.S. oil companies will have access to the Iraq's oil forever. The new American Embassy complex is evidence of this, in case anyone needs evidence. We are not leaving. So poor kids will be left there to draw fire from enraged Iraqis forever. We are a permanent occupying force. This was the plan. It makes a lot of Americans rich and the US and Iraqi casualites are just the cost of doing business. Check out Exxon's profits!
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Stability Must Exist FIRST Before Our Military Can Even Be Minimally Effective
Susan is correct.
Our massive military is brilliant at fighting traditional/conventional wars against national armies – but extremely limited (almost to the point of being totally ineffective!) in its ability to fight small terror cells and gangs living in a civilian population.
That’s not to say our military couldn’t be used to increase general security in Iraq – but I am saying our conventional (keyword) military cannot “stabilize” a totally unstable country. They don’t have magic powers, folks!
Our military can only(!) be effective if the Iraqi government were unified, strong and had a clear sense of direction in addition to a highly stable police force and judicial system.
When people hear that the Sunni, Shite and Kurds are “fighting” they aren’t exactly sure what that means.
Best example: Imagine a government composed not of somber lawyers and stately Jeffersonian politicans – but imagine a government filled with a quarter Aryan Nation a quarter Latin Kings, a quarter ACLU and a quarter Conservative Republican!
Bush’s master plan was to have these groups set aside their differences and work together to come up with a cohesive plan for all of Iraq that all Iraqi’s could rally behind.
If it were a Saturday Night Live skit it would have been rejected for being to far-fetched to be humorous – yet that 21st century Alexander the Great, president Bush, came up with this great idea all by himself! Military genius or mildly retarded? You decide.
But even if the Iraq government were fractured and paralyzed by in-fighting the military could STILL be useful if only the police force and the judicial system and the infrastructure were stable!
There is MASSIVE unemployment in Iraq – so you’ve got a lot of poor, desperate people who are angry and looking for someone to blame. Not to mention starving and dying from lack of access to medical care.
The infrastructure was bad before we got there and the bombing campaign has destroyed it totally. The vast majority of Iraqi’s have no access to clean drinking water!
The police force is hopelessly corrupt and has fractured along religions/ethnic lines. Shite are arresting Sunni for driving while Sunni and the Kurds are popping everyone.
The civilians are all fighting each other. Imagine the feuds between the Crips and Bloods being played at by over a million people – none of them share the same goal, the same strategy, heck even the same language in some cases.
In such a deeply, deeply destabilized environment our military (which only would have been minimally affective in a stable environment) is totally useless.
But this is all theoretical to us. The kids coming home with limbs amputated or in wheelchairs joined the Army believing that the guys in charge would never put them into another Vietnam. They joined up believing this time the experts would do right and if they got hurt they could trust it was in pursuit of a realistic/workable military strategy. The best of the best would plan it this time.
Can that 20 year old with no legs really sit back and say with total confidence that his sacrifice was not in vain because the “plan” he was following made sense?
Is staying in Iraq and continuing to execute a strategy that has no chance of succeeding really honoring our soldiers?
Every time a soldier gets put into a wheelchair for the rest of his or her life – can we really say it was worth it because this is REALLY the best plan we could come up with in relationship to the actual reality on the ground?
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Too little, Too late
The Surge
The "surge" is working -- it is just too little and too late. What the surge is intended to do is provide islands of security within Baghdad. And it is actually providing this security. Bush is hoping against hope that this will buy some time and it will act as a catalyst causing the rest of Iraq to stablize itself.
But this is what we should have done at the outset. I was against the invasion, but if you are going to invade a country, you need to do it right. This means that you need sufficient troops to secure the country: No unguarded amunition dumps, no "freedom is messy" riots. We should have followed Colin Powell's plan of 300,000 troops.
But ultimately the surge will fail because (1) we don't have enough troops to stablize Iraq on our own, (2) we are unwilling to work with Iran and Syria so that we wouldn't need as many troops, and (3) come March 2008, we are either going to have to start withdrawing troops or overextend their deployment. We are not going to have enough warm bodies to continue to fight Evil George's war.
The Withdrawal
Second, even if Bush saw the light today, it will take AT LEAST A YEAR to safely and securely withdraw all of our troops and our equipment from Iraq. You all think that just cause we can capture the country in two weeks, that we should be able to withdraw on that timeline too. . . Fat chance. . . We got too many people and too much equipment. Remember that before the war we used Kuwait as a staging area. It tooks us months to prepare. We are going to be in Iraq for awhile no matter what we do.
This, of course, is good news for Bush, but bad news for the rest of us. Bush can keep the war going and then if anything bad happens, it won't happen until he is out of office for awhile and he can point his finger at his successor (particularly if it is a Democrat) and blame them. If something good, or at least not half bad, should miraculously happen, Bush can take full credit.
Let's face it, given the political constraints (i.e., Evil George in office) and military constraints (it takes time to withdraw), we are going to be in Iraq until at least 2010.