The War on Iraq is a sham

[moghrabi]

http://www.newstarget.com/z000967.html

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Bush Trying to Win Over Americans on Iraq By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jun 25, 4:55 PM ET



WASHINGTON - As public support for his Iraq policy declines, President Bush is working to convince wary Americans that he has a military and political strategy for success in the war in which 1,730 U.S. troops have been killed.


In his radio address on Saturday, Bush warned that there is likely to be more tough fighting to come in Iraq. And, as he did in his meeting at the White House Friday with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Bush urged Americans to share their confidence in a positive outcome to the war.

"The Iraqi people are growing in optimism and hope," Bush said. "They understand that the violence is only a part of the reality in Iraq."

In the Democratic radio response, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, alleged that the war has been conducted with "tactical and strategic incompetence."

"Two years later, America finds itself more isolated than ever before, the object of unprecedented international mistrust," Brzezinski said. "As a result, we are not as safe as we should be here at home."

He said the war has turned Iraq into a training ground for terrorists and noted that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has not been captured. "The violence in Iraq continues at increasing rates and American casualties continue to mount," Brzezinski said.

Bush's message that Iraqis are overcoming their fears and working to defeat those opposed to an Iraqi democracy is likely to be echoed in a prime-time address he'll make Tuesday from Fort Bragg, N.C. The address at the home of the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division will mark the first anniversary of the transfer of power from the U.S.-led coalition to Iraq's interim government.

The president told radio listeners his strategy for military success is to defeat members of Saddam Hussein's former regime and foreign and Iraqi terrorists and criminals responsible for the violence. At the same time, the United States is helping train Iraqi security forces so U.S. troops can eventually return home. Bush again turned aside calls in Congress and elsewhere for him to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops.

"The terrorists' objective is to break the will of America and of the Iraqi people before democracy can take root," Bush said.

"Two years ago, they tried to intimidate the Iraqi Governing Council — and failed," he said. "Last year, they tried to delay the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq — and failed. This year, they tried to stop the free Iraqi elections — and failed. Now the terrorists are trying to undermine the new government and intimidate Iraqis from joining the growing Iraqi security forces."

On the political front, Bush said the United States would continue helping Iraqis build a democracy. He said al-Jaafari assured him the Iraqi government would meet its deadline to draft a new constitution. By Aug. 15, Iraq's National Assembly is to unveil the draft of a constitution. A ratification referendum would follow within two months. If approved, the constitution will provide the basis for general elections by Dec. 15.

Trying to build public support and ally the concerns of Americans anxious for the war to end, Bush said, "Americans can be proud of all that we and our coalition partners have accomplished in Iraq. Our country has been tested before, and we have a long history of resolve and faith in the cause of freedom. Now we will see that cause to victory in Iraq."

Ongoing violence in Iraq has taken a political toll on Bush and has raised alarms in Congress. Just over half of Americans now say the United States made a mistake going to war, and almost six in 10 say they don't approve of the way Bush has handled Iraq, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

Friday evening, al-Jaafari told questioners at the National Press Club that the violence would not deter establishment of an Iraqi democracy. "The challenges are very, very real but also is the determination of the Iraqi people." He thanked Americans for their support and sacrifices on Iraq's behalf.

While Bush says progress is being made, Brzezinski points to a Pentagon warning that the Army Reserve is turning into a "broken" force.

In January, the military services' own estimates indicated that at the pace of U.S. deployments to Iraq, the Pentagon would be hard pressed by next year to provide enough reserve combat troops. Army Reserve chief Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly advised at the time that his citizen militia was "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force."

"Patriotism and love of country does not demand endless sacrifice on the part of our troops in a war justified by slogans," Brzezinski said.

___

Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report.

the operative question remains: Will the American population continue to "buy" it????

( gosh, he sure does not make any rational sense at all. )[/url]

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/229771_basraed.asp

well stated item. This invasion is NOT about "winning" or "losing" , it is about what is best for the Iraqi population. So here is another area where bushlier is so misleading /lying. This is not a US "win". ....yet he keeps using the terms of "winning" and "success".

How can the US claim victory when it was not attacked???

more spin. from the spin meisters .

 

[I think not]

I agree here. This isn't about the US "winning" or "losing". This is about what will the end result bring to the Iraqi people. The deed of invading Iraq has been done. I hope someday the Iraqi people will live in peace and prosper.

Now having that said, getting up and leaving is not the answer right now. The Iraqi army was obliterated during the war. Their security and law enfrocement ogranizations dismantled. Until they are able to function on their own, we cannot, we dare not leave. Leaving would be worse than invading.

I believe their training is having an effect. It seems insurgents are soley focusing on killing Iraqis than they are US or Iraqi troops or law enforcement. I don't think we will know until the dust settles. Hopefully it won't be too long, I'm hoping for the end of 2006 to begin leaving Iraq.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF25Ak04.html


it's a sham to say that the insurgency is in "it's last throes". Poetic , perhaps.......but not reality.

It might be so much more constructive ....if the bush regime would come clean......admit they have a serious problem , and indicate possible solutions/ strategies as to how they plan to deal with this. It is the continuous spin/ rhetoric and lies that cause much of the problem too. Their lack of credibility is working against them.


(ITN: good post... :thumbleft:

 

[jimmoyer]

What is the ideology of the insurgents?
You all have certainly examined the evils of Bush.

So let's look at the faith of the insurgents, their beliefs, their mission.

Let's look at it more deeply, without all of the automatic programmed, knee jerk responses that you accuse the Americans of doing.



------------------------

On Sunday night Iraqi insurgents bombed the Al Riadhy ice cream parlor in Baghdad, bringing to mind a movie that was much on the minds of some U.S. military leaders on the eve of the war with Iraq. The 1965 Italian movie "The Battle of Algiers" depicted France's military struggle in the second half of the 1950s to subdue the Algerian uprising against French governance of that country. One particularly horrifying scene showed the placing and then the explosion of three terrorist bombs in crowded businesses, one of them a shop where, in a riveting cinematic moment, a small child was enjoying an ice cream cone.

The differences between the Algerian insurgency and today's Iraqi insurgency are, of course, profound. In the former, North Africans were rising in the name of self-determination against rule by Europeans. Since the Jan. 30 elections, Iraqi insurgents have been fighting an Iraqi government, albeit an embryonic on e with a dangerously protracted gestation period.

Still, a nagging question is whether, in Iraq as in Algeria, time is on the side of the insurgents. In Algeria, French counterinsurgency measures were skillful, ruthless and, by late 1958, successful. Briefly. In 1962 France retreated from Algeria.

The Algerian insurgency was fueled by the most potent "ism" of a century of isms -- nationalism. In contrast, one of the strange, almost surreal, aspects of the Iraqi insurgency is its lack of ideological content. Most of the insurgents are "FREs" -- former regime elements -- who simply want to return to power.

Unlike most of the violent cadres of the 20th century, the insurgency does not have a fighting faith; it does not bother to have an ideology to justify its claim to power. But it seems to have an idea, which points purely to tactics. The pedigree of the idea can be traced to a 17th-century Englishman.

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588, the year Protestant England defeated the armada of Catholic Spain. He lived 91 years, through the sectarian strife of England's Civil War and the regicide of Charles I. Hobbes wanted tranquility. His project was to establish the philosophic foundations of government that could guarantee safety.

He said that without government -- in what Hobbes called the "state of nature" -- even sociability itself was problematic because life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." To escape such horrors, people would make a rational, if stark, social contract. They would consent to surrender their natural rights to empower a severely strong government that would at least release them from fear of violent death.

Actually, his rationale for strong, even absolutist, government led to consensual and limited government. This was because he postulated natural rights and because the idea of contracting rebuked the idea of the divine right of kings. Power, even if absolute, was to arise from consenting people. Hobbes died in 1679, the year of the Habeas Corpus Act, a milestone on the road to limited government.

Iraq's insurgents are degenerate Hobbesians -- Hobbes's subtlety reduced to the ruthless cunning of one idea: By promiscuously dispensing death, thereby creating the chaos of a Hobbesian state of nature, the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.

To create chaos, the insurgents are applying -- again, unwittingly -- another borrowed insight, this one from an American thinker who died last year. Daniel Boorstin, historian and librarian of Congress, understood the special strength of small numbers -- indeed, the veto power of a sufficiently ruthless minority -- given society's dependence on "flow technology."

Through most of human history, Boorstin wrote, "in order to do damage to other people, it was necessary for you to set things in motion -- to throw a rock or wield a club." But in modern societies, where "the economy and the technology are in motion," you do damage by stopping things -- oil deliveries, electricity distribution, garbage collection, water purification, etc.

Iraq is more urbanized than Wisconsin. Baghdad, where about one in five Iraqis live, is a social organism about the size of Chicago. The insurgency cannot hope to defeat the U.S. military but can believe that it does not need to.

The basis of the insurgency's hope -- desperate and implausible but not completely delusional -- is also the basis of American hopefulness: Iraq now has an Iraqi government. Another Iraqi government -- nasty and brutish -- will come, in time, if today's evolving government seems incapable of preventing Iraqi life from being nasty, brutish and, often, short.

georgewill@washpost.com

 

[Ocean Breeze]

What is the ideology of the insurgents?

coupla questions arise:

Do they (insurgents) have an "ideology"??

Are they united in their "ideology"???


but , you raise a good point about trying to see it from their side.

( am I reading this right???)

 

[jimmoyer]

Do you know about Hobbes ?

That editorial is packed with several points.

So it's worth reading several times, slowly.

But to requote one paragraph in partial answer to your questions:

Iraq's insurgents are degenerate Hobbesians -- Hobbes's subtlety reduced to the ruthless cunning of one idea: By promiscuously dispensing death, thereby creating the chaos of a Hobbesian state of nature, the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.

 

[jimmoyer]

And the first 3 paragraphs requoted below, is the most cogent description of Hobbes' ideas ever, and the 4th paragraph is the application of part of Hobbes by the insurgents' intuitive thinking:
--------------------------------------------------

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588, the year Protestant England defeated the armada of Catholic Spain. He lived 91 years, through the sectarian strife of England's Civil War and the regicide of Charles I. Hobbes wanted tranquility. His project was to establish the philosophic foundations of government that could guarantee safety.

He said that without government -- in what Hobbes called the "state of nature" -- even sociability itself was problematic because life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." To escape such horrors, people would make a rational, if stark, social contract. They would consent to surrender their natural rights to empower a severely strong government that would at least release them from fear of violent death.

Actually, his rationale for strong, even absolutist, government led to consensual and limited government. This was because he postulated natural rights and because the idea of contracting rebuked the idea of the divine right of kings. Power, even if absolute, was to arise from consenting people. Hobbes died in 1679, the year of the Habeas Corpus Act, a milestone on the road to limited government.

Iraq's insurgents are degenerate Hobbesians -- Hobbes's subtlety reduced to the ruthless cunning of one idea: By promiscuously dispensing death, thereby creating the chaos of a Hobbesian state of nature, the insurgents hope to delegitimize the Iraqi government for its failure to provide the primary social good: freedom from fear of violent death.

 

[Karlin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1916755.stm

Saddam speach 2002 on oil cut:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1917361.stm

We didn't hear much about this back then, in 2002, as there were a lot of things going on.
but now, as the price of oil reaches $60, and maybe $100 by mid-winter, we should review a bit....

Saddam cut off all oil exports in 2002, and then we saw the USA invasion of Iraq within a year [March 2003 if memory serves]

But this isn't new, many of us felt it was all about oil.
This just adds fuel-oil to the fire eh?

Karlin

 

[moghrabi]

Well. Good article Karlin. When Saddam was in power and cut off he Oil, the price went up by a mere $1. Now after the war and the failure and lies of Bush it went up $33. So, who is the better of the 2 evils?

 

[mrmom2]

The smoking gun right here
8O

 

[Just the Facts]

The price of oil is being driven by demand in China and India more than anything Bush or Saddam have ever done.

No smoke. Not even a gun. :roll:

 

[mrmom2]

Yea right JTF the unstabilty Bush and his gang has created has absoulutly nothing to do with it :roll: His oil buddys are bringing in record profits

 

[Just the Facts]

Yea right JTF the unstabilty Bush and his gang has created has absoulutly nothing to do with it :roll: His oil buddys are bringing in record profits

When Saddam was in power and cut off he Oil, the price went up by a mere $1.

'Nuff said.

 

[mrmom2]

The fact is he never cut of oil JTF :wink: And at the time the US was not running around the region threatening every country there with invasion

 

[Just the Facts]

The fact is he never cut of oil JTF :wink:

Oh. I just took Karlin and Moghrabi's word for it. Guess I should have known better. 8)

Still, point remains - no smoke, not even a gun.

 

[mrmom2]

OK well if Mog posted than it's probably true :wink: But i do find it maddening the Oil companys are making record profits at our expense :x

 

[moghrabi]

Do not take my word for it JTF. Do the math.

 

[moghrabi]

OK well if Mog posted than it's probably true :wink: But i do find it maddening the Oil companys are making record profits at our expense :x

Thanks Mrmom. How is mrsdad?