I said in my last article that the proposed U.S. arms sale to the gulf is a possible sign that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might be closer than Bush wants to admit. With all my conviction I say: there will be no U.S. victory in Iraq and eventually they will have to pullout, if not before Bush leaves office then sometime soon after.
When reading an article about the continued violence in Somalia with my last article still fresh in my mind, I asked myself the question, where will the world be after the Bush administration? Further, will things calm down, or have the Neocons caused so much friction and meddled so much that the explosion of violence in so many places around the world will continue to worsen?
I will attempt to answer my questions in a series of articles, and through the course will also inadvertently show why electing the son of a U.S. President, as President is perhaps a mistake, that should not be repeated.
In most of the world's current conflict zones the U.S. has had some involvement, but never has their involvement been as catastrophic as under (the infantile megalomaniac) President Bush Junior.
Part I: Iraq
In Iraq for decades the U.S. has made mistake after mistake, funding, arming and otherwise cosying up to the maniac Saddam Hussein throughout the 80's and early 90's — under the same policy that the U.S. follows time after time, always to the world's detriment: my enemy's enemy is my friend. Bush Junior's predecessors learned from their mistakes when Saddam invaded Kuwait late 1990, therein doing the very thing his U.S. funding was supposed to stop Iran (their common enemy), doing: threatening the vital oil supplies of the Middle East.
Bush Senior was in charge when the U.S. teamed up with the U.N. to drive Saddam's forces back out of Kuwait. In doing so he decided to start uprisings in Iraq's oppressed Shiite and Kurdish communities, in television addresses promising their uprisings would receive U.S. support to topple Saddam. Help never came, Saddam's forces fled Kuwait and crushed the revolts — thousands were killed in reprisals.
The reason Bush Senior didn't send forces on into Iraq is likely the same reason that the current occupation is a disaster: Saddam's oppression keeping the lid on a sectarian powder keg.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This particular article of yours is actually intelligent. It makes the often ignored point that unseating Saddam Hussein would have been relatively easy in 1991. But for the bumbling of George Bush, there could be three relatively stable regimes in Mesopotamia today, with at least one or two under the heavy heel of American influence.
From a Biblical point of view, the American war on the Assyrian plains and threats to attack Iran are all one war, even if they are separated by twelve contentious years of "peace". But from the point of view of practical politics (or successful military strategy - take your pick), it was necessary to strike while the iron was hot. George Walker Bush did not understand this and the American invasion and occupation of Assyria will be the downfall of the American Republic; mark my words.
There is the one point that you do not cover - the essential weakness of the article - its premise. One needs to consider that events may transpire in such a way that Mr. Bush will see a path to retaining the presidency in 2009 and beyond.
I do not expect your article on Israel and the western edge of Asia to be as intelligently written as this one has been, but it's only fair to give you a chance...
2 - Dave Nalle
I actually thought this was one of his weaker articles, though it avoided such ridiculousness as your suggestion that Bush would somehow retain power after his two terms are up.
The problem is that Liam misses some obvious facts in his desire to put blame on Bush, particularly the reality that even if the US had not intervened a second time in Iraq, some sort of conflict would have been inevitable on the fall of Saddam, even if from natural causes, and that the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia was going to happen in some form or other, even if played out on a different battlefield.
I do give him points for realizing that the conflict in Iraq is mostly driven by the two major religious factions working through surrogates there, rather than by the US presence, which just forms a convenient excuse for the struggle over who will lead the new caliphate.
Dave
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"...though it avoided such ridiculousness as your suggestion that Bush would somehow retain power after his two terms are up."
Dave,
Until the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Gush Qatif, I never would have thought it was possible for a dictatorship to arise in America. When I saw things I viewed as impossible happening in front of my eyes, I began to understand that the world was very different from what I had imagined it to be - I had to look again at Robert Ringer's book Winning Through Intimidation to understand that reality was not the stuff of my desires. One gets so lost in one's desires for what ought to be that it is easy to forget how little we actually mean in the world.
Sorry, Dave. While the wolf of open dictatorship may not actually arrive and the process of replacing the chief executive in America may continue, the democracy that you believe in, and that I used to believe in is gone.
4 - troll
never really was
5 - Dave Nalle
Ruvy, I've never believed in democracy. It's mob rule - rule by the rabble. If anything one of the problems we face in America is too much democracy and too many people trying to use democracy to justify the abuse of power.
The dictatorship thing just isn't happening, however. No evidence to support the theory... democracy and the demagoguery that goes with it hasn't gotten that far yet.
Dave
6 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"...I've never believed in democracy. It's mob rule - rule by the rabble."
Dave, it's an academic question now - I live here in Israel and won't get offended by an honest answer. But how would you define rabble? And would it include people who manage Burger Kings and McDonalds', for example? What gets the average Yank out of your rabble class and into the potential ruling class, or at least the class that gets somehow consulted when the élites come to their decisions?
7 - Alec
Liam - RE: I said in my last article that the proposed U.S. arms sale to the gulf is a possible sign that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might be closer than Bush wants to admit.
I'm not too sure about this. The arms sales to the Saudis may be little more than a cover to appease them while also selling arms to Israel. The Saudis want weapons as an ego stroke. But in real terms, no Middle East Muslim power, with the possible exceptions of Pakistan and Turkey, is capable of fielding a competent military force. The arms sales cannot provide any meaninful stability to the region.
RE: A U.S. withdrawal will only see the sectarian violence worsen.
Here we are between a rock and a hard place. Sectarian violence will worsen no matter what the US does.
RE: The reason Bush Senior didn't send forces on into Iraq is likely the same reason that the current occupation is a disaster: Saddam's oppression keeping the lid on a sectarian powder keg.
This is probably true. However, US meddling in the Middle East, on the part of both Democrats and Republicans, likely helped motivate Osama bin Laden. Ironically, taking out Saddam helped bin Laden because, as Liam notes, Saddam kept a lid on sectarian activity within Iraq. On the other hand, Islamic fundamentalists are attempting to target those who they perceive to be US puppets, which makes in harder for US-supported strong men to rule, whether wisely or with an iron-fist.
RE: An easy victory unlike that of the 2003 war, because the Shiite's and Kurds wouldn't have hated and mistrusted the U.S. for the thousands killed when they revolted on Bush Snr's word.
The Kurds are still our allies. Unfortunately, an incoming president, whether Republican or Democrat, may end up sacrificing the Kurds again in order to maintain relations with Turkey. The Kurds are in the most precarious situation of any of the three major groups in Iraq. The Shiites will ruthlessly suppress them if they remain a part of Iraq, but the Turks (and the Iranians) will seek to suppress them if they attempt to break away.
However, any supposed love that the Shia had for the US was little more than a fantasy fueled by frauds like Chalabi.
The sad fact is that there is no war on terror being fought in Iraq that has anything to do with the US. The Shia and the Sunnis are fighting for their own perceptions of their national interest. I have no idea who Al Queda thinks that they are fighting for, but neither does Bush.
Along with this, fundamentalists in Pakistan are attempting to topple the regime there, which again weakens any US influence in the region.
The wild card in all this is that there if some Islamic fundamentalist factions are like the Taliban, then religious purity might be more important to them than oil sales, which then gives them no particular reason to care about the impact of their actions on the US or any other industrial country. Thus, neither the US, nor China nor any other potential superpower has any leverage to make a deal with any possible fundamentalist regime.
Bush is also getting played by the Saudis, who may still have some influence over some militant factions, but who could also be caught up in the aftermath of fundamentalist frenzy.
No matter how you look at it, Bush stepped into it by toppling Saddam Hussein, and none of the blather that we are hearing from him or the Republican presidential contenders about winning the war on terror can disguise the enormity of Dubya's miscalculation. Also unfortunate is the likelihood that simply pulling out, as some Democrats (and Ron Paul) would want, will not necessarily lead to any cooling of tensions.
8 - Lumpy
Miscalculation it may appear, but given the proven threat of islamic terrorism, getting them fighting each other rather than us seems kind of clever to me.
9 - gonzo marx
"Miscalculation it may appear, but given the proven threat of islamic terrorism, getting them fighting each other rather than us seems kind of clever to me."
WTF?
as opposed to, let's say....taking out bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the rest of the upper echelon of the real al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan?
rather than that, you think it is ok to destabilize a regime that was bad, but under control, give all kinds of bad guys a place to practice on OUR soldiers in THEIR homecourt and preside over a bloody civil war?
that's your idea of "clever", Lumpy?
not mine
Excelsior?
10 - Alec
Lumpy - RE: but given the proven threat of islamic terrorism...
There ain't NO proven threat of Islamic terrorism. The only question is how long conservatives are going to continue to delude themselves about this.
Consider the recent mosque incident in Pakistan. The fundamentalists shouted, "If you don't transform the state into a fundamentalist society, we will kill ourselves!"
What the hell kind of threat is that? And what happened? One cleric tried to sneak away dressed as a woman and the other fundamentalists ended up being crushed.
The Palestinians get more control in their territories and immediately start fighting each other. The Taliban in Afghanistan keep trying to pull that country back into the 9th century.
In parts of France and England, some Muslim communities refuse to adapt to modern society, push themselves deeper into economically backwards fundamentalist ghettoes, and then whine and riot when the rest of the country refuses to accomodate their backwardness.
The godless secular West is not going to convert to Islam anytime soon. Committed Christians, Jews and other religious people in the industrial West are not converting to Islam. Neither India nor China nor Japan are going to convert to Islam. By the way, how many Muslims are there in Japan? Here's a hint. Practically none.
There really is no competent army anywhere in the Muslim world, and Islamic fundamentalism is incompatible with a professional military. Even Saddam's supposedly capable army proved to be a mirage, in part because Saddam didn't trust any of his officers enough to let them develop their units into capable, professional forces.
Yes, there can be serious, deadly terrorist threats. But have years of suicide bombers and other attacks brought Israel down? The short answer, of course, is no.
Islamic fundamentalism is like that tape at the beginning of each episode of "Mission: Impossible." It self-destructs.
Islamic fundamentalism has had some success in under-developed regions such as Darfur. But that's about it.
Given an opportunity to rebuild their country after the fall of Saddam, Iraqi Sunni and Shiite extremists chase moderates out of the country and then set on each other like rabid dogs, more interested in killing each other than in ejecting the US from the country.
The really sad thing is that some moderate Muslims are either beginning to believe the BS of the extremists, or are too cowed to mount an effective resistance. But moderates who refuse to offer an alternative and instead take the side of the extremists are essentially committing suicide.
If there were another large scale suicide attack in the US, or if, worse case, some Islamic group unleashed a "suitcase nuke" or similar device, there might be an hysterical call to simply take over the oil fields in the Middle East and to launch punitive strikes against various Middle Eastern regimes. And if this kind of retribution were to be unleashed, what, exactly, could any Muslim country do to prevent it?
And so, I ask, exactly where is this supposed Islamic threat, except in the intellectual masturbation otherwise known as neo-conservatism, right wing radio, and uninformed right wing bloggers?
11 - Lumpy
Gonzo. You think that hundreds pf thousnds dead in genocide, rape rooms, torture chambers and political murder is 'under control'? Are u nuts?
Alec. You're clearly too ill informed on Islam and the middle east to engage in a discussion on this topic.
12 - gonzo marx
Lumpy - cite your source for "hundreds of thousands" please...just as i would ask someone who made unfounded claims as to how many Iraqis have been killed since the invasion..i gotta ask you to show your numbers...
we know about gassing the Kurds....about 6000 or so if memory serves...you cannot be seriously getting numbers from the 8 year Iran-Iraq war, can you? would be silly since we sold him the weapons (and probably that gas too)
during the time between Gulf War 1 and the current Invasion...that is the crucial number...compare that to the folks killed since
a cold calculation, yes...but there you have it, and the approach i proposed would have caught bin Laden , Mullah Omar and the rest first, then you could have dealt with Iraq if deemed needed
THAT is "clever", imo
Excelsior?
13 - STM
In my view, Iraq would benefit hugely from the inclusion of a Union Jack in the corner of its flag. It qualifies too, having once been a British protectorate.
What do you think, Doc? :)
14 - Dave Nalle
Stan, isn't that true of most countries?
Gonzo, I've seen death figures much higher than a few hundred thousand. During the period of the oil for food program it's estimated that 500,000 people died because of inadequate food supplies while Saddam was using the proceeds of the program to build more palaces.
And your figure of 6000 for the Kurds reminds me of the nazi sympathizers who minimize the number of jews killed in the holocaust.
In fact, about 100,000 Kurds were killed in 1988-89 - mostly not gassed but shot and buried in mass graves. 60,000 Shiites were killed in reprisals after the first gulf war. Kidnappings and political murder in the general population account for at least 100,000 more. A widely accepted overall death count not including starvation or war deaths is about 300,000 during the course of Saddam's regime. If you add in starvation and war casualties the total is about a million.
Dave
15 - Lee Richards
Dave,
You forgot to answer Ruvy's question in #6: "How would you define rabble?"
16 - bliffle
Anyone notice that the Loyal Royal Iraqi parliament is taking a month off while US soldiers continue to die? Is that what the 'surge' was for? To give Iraq politicians room to go on vacation? I though the 'surge' was to provide slack so they could find political solutions.
Are the Iraqis laughing at us? What fools we must appear to them that they dare to affront us like this.
Can anyone believe that ANY bunch of Iraqi politicians could agree on anything (other than taking a long vacation, that is)?
The reponse of the Slacker-In-Chief is to take (another) vacation himself.
17 - Dr Dreadful
#13: Yes, Stan, that is true, and I think in their heart of hearts the Iraqis know it. I seem to remember that after the invasion, the British troops in Basra were a hell of a lot more popular with the locals than the American troops in Baghdad were. Now, of course, they'll just shoot at anything wearing combat fatigues, including each other. Oh well - nice while it lasted! ;-(
18 - Silver Surfer
I notice the boys and girls have been badgering you into writing some yarns. You should - it's fun, and the rest of us would like it too.
Even moonraven, possibly :)
19 - Alec
Lumpy - RE: Alec. You're clearly too ill informed on Islam and the middle east to engage in a discussion on this topic.
I didn't realize that your were a professional comedian. Your unsubstantiated belief in an Islamic threa should have been a tip off.
20 - Dr Dreadful
Just one more reason why Lumpy should be president. We've got a comedian in the White House right now: there's a lot to be said for smooth continuity.
21 - Dave Nalle
Anyone notice that the Loyal Royal Iraqi parliament is taking a month off while US soldiers continue to die? Is that what the 'surge' was for? To give Iraq politicians room to go on vacation? I though the 'surge' was to provide slack so they could find political solutions.
A month of vacation is an opportunity for those politicians to go back to their local constituencies and try to gauge the willingness of local leaders to back them up and to assess the mood of the public. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing at all. If they come back more willing to work together than they were before the vacation then the result will have been positive.
The reponse of the Slacker-In-Chief is to take (another) vacation himself.
Don't forget that Congress is taking the month off too.
Dave
22 - Dave Nalle
You forgot to answer Ruvy's question in #6: "How would you define rabble?"
In the context of my original comment, the 'rabble' is the element of the population which follows the leadership of demagogues. They are those people who are easily swayed by emotion and irrational fear adn driven into a frenzy over the outrage of the hour. Contrary to Ruvy's suggestion it is not a social class, but a class defined by its mentality - that of the mindless follower.
Dave
23 - Dave Nalle
There ain't NO proven threat of Islamic terrorism. The only question is how long conservatives are going to continue to delude themselves about this.
He's not entirely wrong, but the threat of terrorism is only a symptom of the problem. The root problem would more properly be called Islamocentrism and the desire of powerful groups within islam to reestablish the Caliphate and take on a larger role on the world stage. Their tools for accomplishing this are the unifying power of hatred for Israel and by associatio the US. The main stumbling block is that they can't agree on whether the Sunnis or Shiites should be in charge and are willing to fight amongst themselves to work that out.
The rest of your comment is so bizarre and has such a skewed perspective on reality that I'm not even sure how to respond to it. It comebines so much ignorance of the Islamic world with such crazy statements that I'm not sure where to start. Maybe I'll just hit a couple of high points.
The godless secular West is not going to convert to Islam anytime soon.
So? The choice is 'submission or death' and many prefer that we choose death. What westerners actually want doesn't factor into the equation.
There really is no competent army anywhere in the Muslim world,
You don't need a competent army to launch a nuclear missile. You just need a few guys who can do some basic math and computer programming.
and Islamic fundamentalism is incompatible with a professional military.
I don't see any evidence of this at all. There's absolutely no reason why that has to be the case. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard have demonstrated themselves to be quite competent from what I've seen of their work in Lebanon. Historically some of the best armies in the world have been composed of fanatics.
Even Saddam's supposedly capable army proved to be a mirage, in part because Saddam didn't trust any of his officers enough to let them develop their units into capable, professional forces.
Which has zero to do with Islam. Saddam was a secular atheist and ran his country and his military that way. The failure of a secular army of Arabs doesn't tell us anything about the potential for competence of an army of fundamentalist muslims.
Yes, there can be serious, deadly terrorist threats. But have years of suicide bombers and other attacks brought Israel down? The short answer, of course, is no.
And this means that you'd like the US to experience the same thing?
Islamic fundamentalism has had some success in under-developed regions such as Darfur. But that's about it.
Islamic fundamentalist control the government of IRAN for christ's sake. It's the most educated, technologically advanced, culturally sophisticated and organized country in the region. It's more advanced than some of the countries recently let into the EU.
Given an opportunity to rebuild their country after the fall of Saddam, Iraqi Sunni and Shiite extremists chase moderates out of the country and then set on each other like rabid dogs, more interested in killing each other than in ejecting the US from the country.
If this is the level of your understanding of what's going on in Iraq, no wonder you sound like such a lunatic. What's going on in Iraq has very little to do with the Iraqi people. It's a struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia representing the extremist factions of Shiism and Sunnism respectively. The Iraqis are just caught in the middle.
there might be an hysterical call to simply take over the oil fields in the Middle East and to launch punitive strikes against various Middle Eastern regimes. And if this kind of retribution were to be unleashed, what, exactly, could any Muslim country do to prevent it?
Set the oil fields on fire, nuke Israel, and defeat the US army in a pitched battle if the target was Iran. Our military is NOT capable of launching a successful invasion of Iran.
And so, I ask, exactly where is this supposed Islamic threat, except in the intellectual masturbation otherwise known as neo-conservatism, right wing radio, and uninformed right wing bloggers?
The neocons have some very bad ideas based on an insane ideology, but to their credit they at least did what you haven't done, which is to make some effort to study the situation in the middle east and come to grips with what's really going on there and what the real dangers are.
Dave
24 - gonzo marx
@ #16 - not trying to argue figures, i was actually using the SAME argument that you and others used when some claimed the death toll of Iraqi civilians was hundreds of thousands since the invasion...
show, or link you sources please
because i still have yet to see solid number for EITHER of the time periods i mention...
oh yes, and nice fucking job attempting to conflate me with Holocaust deniers...you just can't resist stooping to such gutter tactics, can you?
Excelsior?
25 - gonzo marx
"The neocons have some very bad ideas based on an insane ideology, but to their credit they at least did what you haven't done, which is to make some effort to study the situation in the middle east and come to grips with what's really going on there and what the real dangers are."
and now we have proof of just how dangerous some fanatics with no solid basis in Reality can fuck things up, even if they are from a Western Democracy...don't we?
it's called Iraq, and one can make an Argument that what has been done there, by those fanatics has been just as damaging as anything else could have been (not the worst case scenario, but pretty damn close, and can still possibly get worse)
so..for all their "study"..they still had no clue as to hwo Sunni and Shi'a would "get along", about how Turkey would feel concerning independent Kurds...and of course just how much "freedom is messy" as per Rumsfeld...
no defense for the indefensible, imo...especially since the objectives are still such a long way off in the future and NOTHING has gone the way those "fanatics" have predicted it would...
yet still and all, some continue to think that those fanatics had the "right idea" and a "good plan" and continue to defend them
Excelsior?