Letters to the Editor
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“Is there any chance that Democrats and rumored Republican war opponents will challenge Bush's constant redefinition of success in Iraq, and demand a timetable for withdrawal?”
Short Answer: NO
As reporting over the weekend has indicated it’s already pretty much a ‘done deal’ that Democrats will cave in once again and give Bush his $50 billion dollars to ‘build on the success’ of the ‘surge.’ They’ll be lame talk about ‘bringing troops home’ and more of the ‘blame the Iraqis’ mantra that Democrats have seized on but no real action or effort to stop what is happening in Iraq.
Pelosi and Reid have consistently proven themselves utterly incapable of standing up to Bush and actually fighting for anything. And the majority of the Democratic Presidential candidates (particularly the two frontrunners) have conceded the ‘surge’ has succeeded in ‘decreasing’ the violence.
So it will be the spring all over again with empty talk from the ‘opposition’ party but no action. The various Republican ‘defectors’ will vote ‘support our troops’ with money and against timetables that ‘tie the Generals on the ground hands.’
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Is There Really A Question In Your Mind?
"The most unbelievable thing is, the Bush September rollout plan could work again."
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Why "unbelievable"? You saw the Democrats completely and unforgivably roll over last time. And they have already signaled that they intend to do so this time. Indeed, they aren't even pretending anymore.
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"Is there any chance that Democrats and rumored Republican war opponents will challenge Bush's constant redefinition of success in Iraq, and demand a timetable for withdrawal?"
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No.
There will be a few who continue to remember why the electorate gave the Democrats a majority last November and who continue to demand an end to our involvement in this travesty (Feingold), and there will be some showboating by a few (Kerry, for example, is always good for this), but if the question is whether the Democrats as a whole will form a united front and demand an end, the answer is an unqualified and simple "No." And as for the Republicans "war opponents", you can forget it.
Bush has already said unequivocally that he is turning this mess over to his successor, and the Democrats--well, the kindest thing you can say about them is that they are complicit in Bush's scheme to do so.
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Tribes are both things at once
Do these tribes represent proto-local governments, or are they simply regional bands arming themselves in anticipation of a cataclysmic civil war?
They're both things, at the same time.
That's how the tribal system works. Tribal leaders impose order within the tribes -- acting as a substitute for what modern people call "government" -- while they wage an armed competition over resouces and power with other tribes.
Americans need to start learning about tribal societies, since we're running up such huge debts trying to modernize these societies using military force.
Is there really debate about the answer to that question?
Why does there HAVE to be a debate?
Look at Afghan history. You can see quite clearly that Pushtun tribes have simultaneously acted like local governments while they have engaged in a constant state of civil war that was broken only by official truces negotiated with great pains by tribal leaders.
We got rid of Saddam, but we've turned Iraq into another Afghanistan.
It's not certain that tribal Pushtuns in Afghanistan will EVER accept the modern idea of government, and it appears that we may have pushed Iraqis into that mode of existence as well.
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And One Other Thing...
I am certain that we all remember what a good idea (Bush Sr.'s/CIA's) it turned out to be to supply tribal resistance fighters in Afghanistan (led and largely financed by then little-known "freedom-fighter" Osama bin Laden) with advanced weapons to use against the Russians.
Those same U.S. weapons later were used by the Taliban to take over and suppress Afghanistan, and still later to fight us when we attempted to oust bin Laden and the Taliban. For example, shoulder-fired guided rockets--the key to bringing down Soviet helicopters that otherwise effectively pursued the Afghan "freedom fighters" through the rugged Afghan terrain--dramatically changed the balance in the war between the Russians and Afghans, but those same weapons (among others) later were used against us and brought down our copters as well. Simply, our weapons were used to kill our troops.
I guess the question is--How many times do we need to repeat the same mistakes? Why would we believe that some of the weaponry that we provided to a large and disparate group of Iraqis having a wide variety of ever-morphing goals will not come back and be used against us in Iraq (or, just as likely, elsewhere)?
One definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.
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I hate to be the one to break the news to you but....
Iraq is a tribal society. Tribes are families. And, yes, Middle Eastern tribes police and control their own turf (this is not limited to Iraq). That is why almost all Middle Eastern countries are authoritarian - the tribes aren't going to listen to much of anything unless there's overwhelming force available to the speaker (read: central government).
Nobody's said this... but wait! Coming soon to a news broadcast near you... Supporting one side over the other in a civil war is like stepping into the middle of a "domestic disturbance". Ask any cop you know what they think of that....
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"The Bush September Rollout"
"Five years later it's déjà vu all over again, as the Bush administration rolls out a new marketing plan to sell the Iraq war this September..."
Dogface, it was Harry Reid who scheduled "The Bush September Rollout," you hack.
Are you going to delete my comment again?
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Tracing the arms
Reading this made me think about the July 31 GAO report that tells the story of how the Department of Defense lost 190,000 assault weapons allegedly headed to Iraqi police and military units. Is it possible that they lost these weapons on purpose to various groups involved in undeclared wars and civil wars in the region?
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@virtue001
I don't think Joan deleted your other comment, you just posted it in the wrong place (it's under her last blog entry). Kinda makes you look like you're a jerk AND stupid. How surprising.
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Send in the Posting Police, Anonymous!
Actually, Anonymous, I DID place it under the wrong blog post at first. Then, realizing my mistake, I placed it here, where Joan promptly deleted it. So send in the posting police! Emergency! Emergency! I guess when you don't like the message, you can always find a way to shoot the messenger.