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Gamal Abdel Nasser used poison gas in Yemen, and would have used it in the Six-Day War had the Arabs not had to scream for a ceasefire so quickly. Of course, if they do use poison gas against Israel, they know what will happen to them. Wherever they can get away with it, as in Iraq, they use it.
In Iraq, American soldiers are inhibited from giving the response they could give, even as they risk their lives for a foolish goal, set by foolish men ignorant of Islam. Those men are ignorant apparently of anything outside of the theatrum belli of Iraq, and even there so misunderstand things as to squander the lives of better people than they are, because they cannot even conceive of how removing American troops will accomplish exactly what needs to be accomplished -- to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. They're just too stubborn, too dumb, and too unimaginative. Bush, and those who remain loyal to Bush out of -- loyalty.
It disgusts. It is madness. Una follia. American policy is now a runaway train, with a madman in the engine car, who will not stop, will not listen to anyone except himself. It is the most incredible situation in American history.
And that others do not see it as such, or do not attack the policy for the right reasons, is likewise madness. For god's sake, isn't there a single person in Congress who can stand up and say, “I want to defeat or weaken the forces of Jihad, and the way to do that is clearly to remove the troops”? Is that so hard to do? And then to read out a list of all the things that should and could be done, to make sure that this is perceived, in a month or two, not as a retreat, but as part of a much more determined and ruthless campaign against all the instruments of Jihad.
Within a year of the invasion, that is, after Saddam Hussein, his sons, and almost all of the people in that game of fifty-two pick-up had been killed or seized. After the country had been scoured for weaponry, the continued presence of American troops made no sense. It made no sense to ignore the fact that the Sunnis were now exposed as constituting a mere 19% of the population, and without Saddam Hussein or some other Sunni despot equally ruthless, they would not be able to hold onto the power they had possessed during the entire history of modern Iraq. That modern history began with a revolt by the Shi'a tribes, and is now ending with a revolt by the Shi'a, though now many of them are now urban dwellers and their tribal loyalties may have lessened. This is the main point: the inevitability of Sunni-Shi'a conflict. It did not depend on any act by the Americans after the regime fell: the collapse of the regime itself guaranteed that power would pass to the Shi'a from the Sunnis. It might pass as a result of armed conflict; it might pass, as it apparently has, through the purple-thumbed voting -- with the Shi'a enthusiastically participating because they knew that they outnumbered the Sunni Arabs by more than 3-1, and the Sunnis hardly participating at all, because they knew they would lose, and the Kurds of course voting, to protect their interests in a national government of whose existence they are not particularly fond: the very same day a referendum was held in the Kurdish north and 98% of those voting voted for an independent Kurdistan.
The government that resulted is, to the extent it can be, of, by, and for the Shi'a Arabs. No matter what cosmetic changes are made, what phony "oil bill" is passed that may outwardly satisfy the Americans, just as soon as those Americans leave the Shi'a militia will go at it and get their revenge, and they will be even more likely, having been held back by the Americans, to engage in the kind of warfare that is the only kind that gets the attention, and possibly some cooperation, from the Sunni Arabs. It won't be the kid-gloves treatment of the Americans in Iraq, nor the scrupulous Israelis. It will be Muslim on Muslim. From outside Iraq, others will supply money, men, weaponry, to their coreligionists, and within Muslim lands -- Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan being the main ones where there are significant Shi'a communities -- all kinds of spillover effects will only increase the domestic unrest and headaches for regimes that, until now, have managed to export to the Infidel world, the Western world, all of the refusal to compromise, the aggression and the hostility to which Islam naturally gives rise, and which those growing up in societies suffused with Islam exhibit. It will be a very nice Demonstration Project for the Infidels of the world.
Iraq, Iraq? Suppose the crazy goals of Bush could be obtained, with another $750 billion being spent -- or even another $250 billion. (What if, by the way, that money had been spent, or were now spent, on energy projects, so as to deprive the Muslims of the "money weapon"?) So what? Why would a functioning Iraq be a Good Thing for us? How would a Shi'a-run state linked economically and politically and religiously to Iran conceivably serve as a "model" (that Light Unto the Muslim Nations -- that "light" I have made light of here many times before) for Sunni Arab states? They will be permanently enraged that the most important place in Islamic history, the Land of the Two Rivers, for five hundred years (roughly 750-1250) the site of the Abbasid Caliphate and the center of what they see as High Islamic Civilization, will now be in the hands of those "Rafidite dogs" the Shi'a.
Nothing that happens in Iraq will keep the Arab and Muslim states from acquiring another ten trillion dollars in the next 30 years. It was not senseless, if indeed there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Saddam Hussein had or was soon to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to invade so as to destroy or seize that weaponry, or disrupt his putative projects. Let some Arabs scream with delight as we now leave. They'll soon enough come to realize that extricating American forces from Tarbaby Iraq does not represent an American defeat, but rather, at long last, intelligent recognition that this is not a "war on terrorism" but a war of self-defense against the worldwide Jihad and its many instruments -- and that the theatre of Iraq, or even the larger Middle East, is not the main theatre. There is no one particular place where "terrorists" will gather (as in an Iraq after the Americans pull out), because they can gather in Pakistan, or in Saudi Arabia, or for that matter in Madrid or London or Falls Church, Virginia, if they feel like it. The very idea of taking over, and holding, at incredible cost -- $750 billion in past, present, and committed future expenses -- an entire country, is worse than senseless.
It is and will be a country riven by civil conflict. The Sunni Arabs -- the ones likely to be more favorable to Al Qaeda, for example -- will be devoting all of their energies to attacking, or repulsing the attacks of, Shi'a Arabs. Both kinds of Arabs in the north will be attacking, or repulsing the attacks of, the Kurds. The Kurds will see the Sunni-Shi'a conflict as the perfect opportunity to make the most of these conditions to make their move for independence, a move that should be supported by the Americans. The Americans should realize that an independent Kurdistan would cause great problems to both Iran and Syria, and even to Islam more generally. The spectacle of a non-Arab Muslim people throwing off the Arab yoke would or could inspire other non-Arab Muslims, such as Berbers in North Africa, and even Berbers in France, to recognize Islam for what it is: a vehicle for Arab imperialism, linguist, cultural, economic, and political.
Will this be recognized? Is there anyone in Congress who will state this kind of opposition to the war? Who will show up the Bush Administration not for its being too ruthless, or too tough, but for being too ignorant, too inhibited, too un-ruthless, too uncomprehending of all the things that it should be trying to accomplish instead of the things that it is trying to accomplish in Iraq, which is to say a stable, unified country.
There are two things wrong with the Administration's goal of a stable, unified country:
1. It is impossible of achievement.
2. It is exactly the wrong goal.
Other than those two reasons -- it's just fine.
Posted by Hugh at March 18, 2007 5:27 AM
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Dead right Mr. Fitzgerald.
Cox & Forkum said it in a cartoon four years ago.
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/IraqiFreedom-X.gif
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at March 18, 2007 8:41 AM
Hugh, I understand and respect your opinion as stated, but what about the precedent it would set? Bin Laden saw after Clinton pulled out of somalia that all they had to do is inflict a few casualties and the U.S would cut and run.
I think we should at least attain the goel of reducing the violence to the degree that the Iraqis can take over and with that one specific goal met, declare victory and leave.
Then we would have shown them that the U.S. does have the will, even with Dhimmicratic opposition at home to achieve victory. Then whatever happens so be it.
Then the next time we have to do this we will have more crediblility.
Posted by: TEXROCK at March 18, 2007 11:43 AM
"Hugh, I understand and respect your opinion as stated, but what about the precedent it would set? Bin Laden saw after Clinton pulled out of somalia that all they had to do is inflict a few casualties and the U.S would cut and run."
-- from a posting above
You have not been reading, or not taking in, the 400-500 postings on this matter that I have put up here.
You simply throw back at me, as question -- wouldn't American withdrawal be "cut and running" (all you have added is: "as in Somalia") and be perceived as "weakeness"?
Answer: No. Further answer: Not if it is clear that, whether stated or not, the American strategy has become much more inteligently ruthless and less naively messianic. Not if other acts by the American government, such as raising taxes on gasoline and announcing that those taxes will keep going up, and forever, in order to diminish the power of OPEC as well as to encourage the development of other sources of energy, or seizing southern Sudan and Darfur (and denouncing "the Arabs" for continuing to support the murder of "black Africans"), not if more military aid is given to Ethiopia, not if the nonsense about that "two-state solution" which is simply a call for Israel to surrender more territory to allow the Arabs, in that final assault they intend to ultimately make on Isarel, to move up the date of that assault, not if the Americans call a special meeting of NATO to discuss "security threats" in Western Europe resulting from "the large-scale presence of" -- well, "populations susceptible to the call of Jihad" for now, but everyone will know what we mean, and that is a good thing.
You seem to think that a withdrawal from Iraq would simply take place in a vacuum, with nothing happening outside of Iraq to show the direction , or change, in American policy. Why?
You seem further to think that nothing will happen in Iraq to cause those Muslims ululating in triumph at the American withdrawal to suddenly stop their ululation, and regard with horror what they will realize (actually many of them are perfectly aware right now of what will happen, and are eager to keep the Americans tied down there, and also protecting the various groups from one another, even as the American officers and men are sacrificed).
Isn't it obvious that within a very short time, the situation in Iraq will disintegrate further, and that outside Muslim countries and groups will interfere, and have to use their men, their money, their materiel, and we will watch, watch as Muslims (as in Gaza) show themselves inicapable of real compromise, and capable of acts of brutality that the American presence has helped to hide or disguise.
It will not be "cutting and running." That is a phrase that deserves to be permanently retired. It is idiotic. And applied to Iraq it is completely inappropriate.
Posted by: Hugh at March 18, 2007 12:49 PM
$750 billion. Pocket change. Don't you know that Jesus can do all things?
My sister lets Jesus do her finances. She was surprised by her $100k capital gains tax bill this year, but not worried.
This stuns me. It shouldn't. The President is the same way. The President is just as careless. He has the same financial advisor.
Yes, Christianity is less viral than Islam. It will not make you a suicide bomber. But when our leaders are infected with it, things go to hell.
at March 18, 2007 2:19 PM
According to Carolyn Glick, America has already abandoned its offensive strategy in the the Middle East, essentially vacating the field to Islam. If her evaluation of Bush & Rice is correct, and she is on the ground, I would have to agree with Hugh.
See Glick's article: The Waning of American Will:
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=10285&
Does ths mean that Bush-Rice are also abandoning Europe to Islam?
Where is this nation going? Does anyone know?
Posted by: Jimmy Bones at March 18, 2007 2:50 PM
I still find amazement in people that post in the manner that politicians worry about anything other than thier own hides and the future of thier party.
Immigration is a tool for politicians otherwise the problem would be fixed.
The lack of funding for education is a tool as our money is handed away by the gobs to people who care for nothing else we have to offer,nothing.
Healthcare is a tool,let every single immigrant or illegal alien have free health care and expect nothing else from them while the people that work like dogs can't afford basic healthcare.
Religion is a tool,we import islam year after yaer and close our own churches to sell for the erection of mosques all of which teach hate for all except thier kind.In the meantime they kill the 'others' in thier lands and all but and up to ban them from practicing,burn thier churches and rape thier women.
So if you are the average joe shmoe you pay for the elites tab,the illegal aliens tab,the immigrants tab.While you watch the rest forklifted over to the rest of the world that could care less if you drop dead at work tomorrow.
These are all tools for personal agendas,political and elitest agendas,even islam is muhammads personal agenda,which has turned into every crazy persons personal agenda.
These are all man made my friend God has nothing to do with it 'perse',except for allah who revels in the deeds of today....obviously!
Posted by: Dar al-harb at March 18, 2007 7:47 PM
Is it really Bush's religion that is the problem, or is it the approach that he takes to that religion--the same approach he takes to everything else?
When Bush was running his first campaign, I'm sure it escaped no one's notice that he was shockingly inarticulate. Consider that, for a politician, being glib, if not eloquent, is usually a core competence. But in Bush we found a lack of fluency that made his father's spoonerisms seem all silvery as they spilled from his mouth. The younger Bush's frequent stunned silence in front of the camera almost suggested something beyond a tangled tongue: one almost had to imagine he was stupid.
Now, for political reasons, many were only too willing to go there. But in fairness, some smart people can speak, others cannot; and if Bush's problems with cogency were truly a problem of intelligence, then one was confronting a vast and frightening problem: the Republican party had put up a candidate who did not simply lack genius, and who was not simply of middling intellect, but one who was gapingly, howlingly, long-echos-between-the-ears dumb.
Is it really possible that a mistake of this magnitude--a veritable half-wit sitting at the most powerful desk in the world--could have befallen us?
Not only is the answer yes, but it is worse than yes. Not only has the empty vessel situated himself at the seat of power, but behind him, whipspering into his ready ear, is a capable, if plodding, intellect; a deformed intellect, sifted by self-interest and economic pragmatism: too many quarterly reports, too many summary pages from state department white papers, not enough literature, not enough philosophy, not enough history--not enough of the rest of that stuff that, having no clear relationship to next quarter's earnings, is of indeterminate, unquantifiable, and (ergo) little value.
It's all very simple once you accept a glorious economic reductionism: Political stability means price stability, means lower interest rates, means economic expansion, means more jobs (means pacified voters), means more earnings, means higher stock prices, means a stronger america.
A credulous fool, following a capitalist ideologue.
Posted by: mountainecho at March 18, 2007 10:28 PM
All but the last strikes me as just fine. Instead of the phrase "capitalist ideologue" why not -- these are "both free-market fundamentalists and Marxists" at the same time.
Why do I write that?
They are "free market fundamentalists" because they appear to believe that the so-called "free market" always and everywhere gives the best result, and they fail to recognize that there are things that can and should and indeed can only be done by government.
In policies designed, for example, to diminish the money weapon of the world-wide Jihad, they shy away from imposing stiff taxes on gasoline (the "free market" will take care of it), they refuse to subsidize mass transit (let the "free market" somehow handle it, but that "free market" does not internalize the real costs of gasoline made from oil that we are now spending one trillion dollars, or almost, in Iraq -- that too is part of the real price of oil and therefore of gasoline). They refuse to build, at government expense, nuclear reactors -- starting right now, and all over the place, the way the French have intelligently done --the "free market" cannot bear the insurance costs and only the government has pockets deep enough for that.
In everything to do with energy policy, the free market just won't do. Or won't do in time. And neither the money weapon that Muslims possess (ten trillion dollars in OPEC revenues since 1973), nor the environment, can wait upon people who are capable of thought rather than mere blind fundamentalism of any kind. And the child of privilege that Bush is, a man who has never had to think and doesn't know how to think, can never overcome this.
And he, and others around him responsible for the Iraq folly, are at the same time Marxists. What do I mean? I mean that they are economic determinists. For them, as long as "prosperity" is brought to Iraq, or to other Muslims the other little problems and resentments they have, those Muslims, will go away. They don't believe that anything matters except economic well-being. They can't quite grasp why the fabulously rich Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Qataris and the people in the Emirates fund the Jihad, fund mosques and madrasas and campaigns of Daw'a, and are someretricious with the Americans who want only to help them, and why the Saudis supported the Taliban, and why they have no intention of ever giving up their support for the world-wide expansion of Islam. Marxists like Bush just don't understand: isn't economics absolutely everything? That is how they think.
They disgust, but the phrase "capitalist ideologue" simply sounds too much like the Marxists of yore, the Communist kind, and they were, of course, not to be tolerated for one minute. You don't want to confuse people, or make you think you support any of that -- in the first place because you will lose support for all the sensible things you say, and in the second place because such a view would be wrong.
at March 18, 2007 11:19 PM
As to your main point -- yes, he's very very dumb.
Posted by: Hugh at March 18, 2007 11:23 PM
The only question I have for Mr. Fitzgerald to answer is this: If the Americans pull out, and the region goes to hell with sectarian strife, what will be the probability that this will seriously destabilize the petroleum markets such that the price of a barrel of oil is so prohibitively high that it will throw the world economy into a tailspin? What happens then? What should be our response, and that of the other Western countries?
Posted by: prman at March 19, 2007 12:14 AM
As for who will stand up? One must remember one of the main backers of the Democrats is the American Jews. So democrats will be far more willing than republicans to just pull out of Iraq and let the Muslims kill themselves off.
Iraq has become a gravy train of multi-billion dollar corruption. That is the ONLY reason the Maliki Shiite government wants us there , so they can continue to siphon of billions from the American tax payers. And the chosen companies make their billions too off the American tax payer all the while our troops are being short changed in the field of battle not to mention the Iraqi people in the construction of that nation.
There was a similar logic to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. They too were fighting jihad terrorist and trying to build a secular government in Afghanistan. Rest assure some Russian weapons makers were also pocketing billions of rubles ( even if it was under a state ownership the profit motive still exerted it's self on the dynamics of weapons making ). That war more than Reagan spending billions of dollars on Star Wars system that was never deployed is what brought down the Russian economic business model that we know today as Communism.
If we don't watch out , the same thing could happen to our business model here in the United States as well. The United States government goes bankrupt ( it is just trillions of dollars in the hole now and stacking on billions more of debt each and every week ) the American economy and even world economy goes into a depression. It is as simple as that. The war in Iraq is pushing us closer to that edge of the cliff of no return.
Unlike the Russians in Afghanistan we are not even trying to build a secular government. We are trying to build an Islamic government and perfect the Islamic State. With such goals the terrorist can't help but to win in Iraq. The question is how much are we going to lose?
----Nossy
at March 19, 2007 12:37 AM
"The only question I have for Mr. Fitzgerald to answer is this: If the Americans pull out, and the region goes to hell with sectarian strife, what will be the probability that this will seriously destabilize the petroleum markets such that the price of a barrel of oil is so prohibitively high that it will throw the world economy into a tailspin? What happens then? What should be our response, and that of the other Western countries?"
-- from a posting above
I've gone over this many times before.
There was an example, not of internal sectarian strife, but of full-scale warfare, and it lasted for eight years. It involved millions of men, huge battles, gigantic losses. It was no-holds-barred. Remember? It was called the Iran-Iraq War, and it went on for eight years, from 1980 t0 1988. In the beginning there were a few little attacks on oilfields, but they promptly ended when both sides realized that each was vulnerable to the other. Those attacks became off-limits.
Well, what happened to the price of oil during those eight years? It went steadily down. That's what happened.
But suppose it is different this time. After all, terrorists could attack oilfields. Come to think of it, if the Sunnis don't get what they think is coming to them, they will probably intensify their attacks on the oilfields that the Shi'a possess, and possibly on those in the north, in or near Kurdistan, as well. So what? Shoudl the Americans stand guard in perpetuity?
If there were a real crisis, one that meant that the oilfields of Saudi Arabia were about to be destroyed -- very unlikely, since they are so well guarded -- but suppose. Okay, then what?
The those oilfields, near Dammam and Dhahram, right on the Gulf, so that there are no long pipelines to defend, could be far more easily seized and their oil off-loaded, if need be, than any other fields in Iraq or elsewhere. And the same goes for the oilfields of Abu Dhabi, or the other emirates that have oil (some do, some don't), and for Kuwait, and for the gas of Qatar. It would not be hard, not nearly as hard, not nearly as expensive, not nearly as wasteful, as guarding the oilfields of Iraq from Iran or vice-versa, if such were even possible.
And then what? The oil and gas revenues can be held "in trust" for the ruling families, if that is what one wishes to do. Or held "in trust" for the "people of (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, etc.)." Or held in trust partly for those countries, and partly to pay the West, or the Americans, for the expense of guarding that oil --shall we say something nominal, like 50-100 billion to start with? Yes, I think that would be about right.
There are all kinds of possibilities. And of course, the sooner that oil prices go sky-high, and the real costs of mucking about in the MIddle East are internalized in the real cost of gasoline (and oil) the better. We should all want the price of oil to go up and up and up, but prefrerably, through our taxes on it, taxes which the governmnet keeps and that do not flow to the OPEC members, who deserve to have as much downward demand pressure (through higher prices from self-taxation by oil-consuming states) on oil as possible.
That's what.
Posted by: Hugh at March 19, 2007 3:46 PM
"both free-market fundamentalists and Marxists"
Yes, perfect. They both group under the heading "Homo economicus."
It's all a bit of projection: Cheney and his ilk have always cared almost exclusively about money, so they imagine that mammon is the overwhelming motive for the rest of mankind, too: each at his own level.
Bush has been motivated by all kinds of things--from Jesus to booze to the kind of serpentine undulation that he found, even in the smallest articulation of a wrist, practiced as an art in the far east--but these images and impulses, never having been forged into concepts in the too-cool furnace of the man's brain, are shaken from the synapses by the smarties who come in with their Risk-board global theories.
The marxists are just Cheney plus guilt. A rich man projecting his own self-hatred on the poor.
The homo economicus, of whatever variety, is always some form of karamozov's grand inquisitor, condemning Jesus because he did not stay on and give them bread.
at March 19, 2007 5:45 PM
Hello Hugh:
It's always a pleasure to read your postings because more often than not, I think along the same line.
I find it demoralizing, the fact that most of our fellow Americans continue to ignore the problem that Islam represents to freedom and justice world wide. I believe that we will pay a horrendous price for this stupidity. We are a nation at war, yet only a small percentage of our young men feel the need to step up to their duty. The way we treat those honorable heroes is shameful. What happened at Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg. I believe that any of these youngsters that had enough love for America to put his life on the line, should have a better life in the land of opportunity than all of the selfish parasites that are in our colleges preparing to step into positions of leadership that they very much did not earn. And that my friend, is the reason why our politicians from both parties are incapable to recognize the swamp we are in. All we can do is keep the faith.
at March 19, 2007 11:28 PM
I would, at a minimum, guarantee to every soldier who did one tour of duty (and none of the Reservists or National Guard should be expected to do more than one tour, if there is any decency left in the Pentagon, or if it wants to retain a civilian army with capable personnel), certain lifetime guarantees. Not necessary medical treatment in VA hospitals, but rather, lifetime payment of medical insurance premiums, so that those who had been in Iraq can go wherever they wish. I would add to it that anyone who served at least one tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan should be guaranteed a home mortage, up to a value of $400,000, with a fixed very low interest rate, the difference between that fixed rate and the market rate being paid by the American government, so that every such soldier could have, if he or she wished it, a house or apartment.
I would further add that every soldier or Marine who is in the regular army, as well as all Reservists and National Guard, who completed at least one tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, should be given a flat payment of $10,000.
That's a lot to guarantee, some will say. Tough. It doesn't even come close to giving them what they deserve, in this "war on terror" that is such an error, and that falls so heavily on so very few.
Posted by: Hugh at March 20, 2007 2:27 PM
I say, right on Hugh, nothing is to good for our young people in uniform. Your proposal sound good to me. There ought to be a grass roots campaign to make it right by Americas' finest.
Posted by: kiko at March 20, 2007 3:42 PM
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