Cobb

Bro, I guess I'm a wrong thinking American. Iraq has been liberated from Saddam Hussien. Goal accomplished. Are we there now for "Liberation Strikes Back: Terrorists Begone"? Man you know how that goes. This can easily go on for a decade or more without any gains. I haven't heard any concrete proposals from Bush OR Kerry on how you stick in there and win out. This is a job for the Arab people in that region unfortunately. They are the ONLY people equipped to end the bloodshed in Iraq. And it may not go well. But there won't be a big motivating factor there called the U.S. military.

See, I love when people say that is weakness. I say whatever. When I was gang banging, the police arresting us, shooting us, beating us, killing us never stopped us. We still got new recruits. Still were strong. To this day, the gang I used to be in still is a power in Detroit. I know the analogy isn't that good but my point is the ROOT of the problem needs to be dealt with. The root of gangs stems alot from poverty, drugs, and disenfranchisement. The roots of the Iraq terrorism stems from disenfranchisement, unemployment, and the US military presence. You have to deal with the roots, not the fruit.

The roots of Iraqi terrorism stems from dictatorship, lack of democracy, free markets and self-determination. I can't say why exactly kidnapping is the biggest pastime there, but that needs to stop. It will not stop without our military assistance.

We are now part of a mercenary coalition in Iraq at the behest of the provisional government. That provisional government becomes *the* government when elections take place in January. Do you suppose that when that occurs, Russia and France will suddenly send troops?

What nobody seems to appreciate or care about is that every nation that has no troops in Iraq today is hedging against Iraq. And we all know that without the coalition Allawi would be overrun. Kerry talks about flying Iraqis out of the country to train them. Incredible! The point is that Iraqis are NOT equipped to end the bloodshed. They're motivated, but they're not equipped. We are there to equip them. We're busting heads, and setting up a neighborhood watch.

The point is that you stick it out; that you don't back down.

I'm curious. What exactly were the rates of terrorism before occupation? Who owns the mode of production in a post-Saddam Iraq? Does self-determination involve determining whether one wants a nationalised economy?

Further...you note that we are there at the behest of the new government.

Did we come AFTER they took over the country?

It is clear to me that Bush represents the greatest threat to freedom and liberty in the free and developing world than any I have seen as a family man. And there are a number of ways in which I can show this with data.

The central reason to vote for Bush is rooted in faith.

I understand faith. But I make decisions based on knowledge.

So here's another way of making that same speech.

"I believe in making decisions based on knowledge and data. My opponent believes in making decisions based on his gut. If you believe like I do, vote for me. If you believe otherwise, vote for Bush."

I don't know if Kerry wins making that speech.

But I don't know if he loses either.

Kerry won't make the speech because he knows that the solution is military and that there are no two ways about it. So unless and until you talk about military strategy, then you're talking about backbiting. 3/4 of Kerry's candidacy is "Im against what Bush already did". Where I come from that's called lacking in the vision department.

So while it's clear that Bush relied on the Neocon vision to get deep into Iraq, I think we can all agree that what is going on there now depends on the generals who are getting all the assistance they need from the White House.

I don't see what purpose Kerry's coulda shoulda diplomacy plays at this point vis a vis ground zero in Iraq.

"The roots of Iraqi terrorism stems from dictatorship, lack of democracy, free markets and self-determination"

According to Ayad Allawi:

"There were no international terrorists in Iraq until we went in," ... "It was we who gave the perfect conditions in which al Qaeda could thrive."

The roots are more likely as S-train made clear in his comment.

Iraq is a nation with thousands of years of history. It has never had a democratic tradition. For Democracy to occur in Iraq it's going to take a very long time, if only to build the very moral and physical infrastructure that a democracy requires.

Bush’s Iraq venture was supposed to free a people from an oppressive dictator (or something about Weapons of Mass Destruction). Bush and his team lacked the vision to realize that as a result of the war, fundamentalism, and extremism would spring forth throughout Iraq and make life very difficult for all involved.

That's partly what Kerry meant when he said "Bush made a mistake" in invading Iraq.

We're now fighting an unseen and brutal enemy that is using guerilla tactics and coming out of woodwork daily. Sure we need to stay the course but we need a new strategy, new leadership and new direction. Bush had his chance and seems to have lead us deeper into a quagmire.

I understand that all the cranks in the mideast are drawn to this conflict. I'm not particularly impressed. These are third rate militias, kidnappers, rock throwers and mad bombers. Sure they're pervasive, but are there a million of them?

Let's assume it. Let's assume that fully 4% of the Iraqi population is in armed rebellion against coalition forces. Is that a reason to quit the country, simply because there are a million terrorists there who hate the West?

I don't think anybody here read David Brooks from last week. Let me dig it up...

David Brooks from 9/28

Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the National Palace, staged highway assaults that cut the nation in two and blew up schools that were to be polling places.

Yet voters came out in the hundreds of thousands. In some towns, they had to duck beneath sniper fire to get to the polls. In San Salvador, a bomb went off near a line of people waiting outside a polling station. The people scattered, then the line reformed. "This nation may be falling apart," one voter told The Christian Science Monitor, "but by voting we may help to hold it together."

Conditions were scarcely better in 1984, when Salvadorans got to vote again. Nearly a fifth of the municipalities were not able to participate in the elections because they were under guerrilla control. The insurgents mined the roads to cut off bus service to 40 percent of the country. Twenty bombs were planted around the town of San Miguel. Once again, people voted with the sound of howitzers in the background.

Yet these elections proved how resilient democracy is, how even in the most chaotic circumstances, meaningful elections can be held.

They produced a National Assembly, and a president, José Napoleón Duarte. They gave the decent majority a chance to display their own courage and dignity. War, tyranny and occupation sap dignity, but voting restores it.

The elections achieved something else: They undermined the insurgency. El Salvador wasn't transformed overnight. But with each succeeding election into the early 90's, the rebels on the left and the death squads on the right grew weaker, and finally peace was achieved, and the entire hemisphere felt the effects.

I mention this case study because we are approaching election day in Afghanistan on Oct. 9. Six days later, voter registration begins in Iraq. Conditions in both places will be tense and chaotic. And in Washington, a mood of bogus tough-mindedness has swept the political class. As William Raspberry wrote yesterday in The Washington Post, "the new consensus seems to be that bringing American-style democracy to Iraq is no longer an achievable goal." We should just settle for what John Kerry calls "stability." We should be satisfied if some strongman comes in who can restore order.

The people who make this argument pat themselves on the back for being hard-headed, but the fact is they are naïve. They've got things exactly backward. The reason we should work for full democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not just because it's noble, but because it's practical. It is easier to defeat an insurgency and restore order with elections than without.

As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

It's hard to beat an illegitimate insurgency with an illegitimate dictatorship. Strongmen have to whip up ethnic nationalism to lure soldiers to their side. They end up inciting blood feuds and reaping the whirlwind.

A democratically elected leader, on the other hand, can do what Duarte did. He can negotiate with rebels, invite them into the political process and co-opt any legitimate grievances. He can rally people on all sides of the political spectrum, who are united by their attachment to the democratic idea. In Iraq, he can exploit the insurgents' greatest weakness: they have no positive agenda.

Of course the situation in El Salvador is not easily comparable to the situations in Afghanistan or Iraq. On the other hand, over the past 30-odd years, democracy has spread at the rate of one and a half nations per year. It has spread among violence-racked nations and to 18 that are desperately poor. And it has spread not only because it inspires, but also because it works.

It's simply astounding that in the United States, the home of the greatest and most effective democratic revolution, so many people have come to regard democracy as a luxury-brand vehicle, suited only for the culturally upscale, when it's really a sturdy truck, effective in conditions both rough and smooth.

The vapors from Mt. St. Helens have certainly impaired your judgement, Cobb. To begin, no candidate in their right mind would make such a pledge because the situation in Iraq is so severely problematic a) any 'magic bullet' proposition will be recognized as blatant pandering and, b) an immediate withdrawal confirms we're a nation of bee-aches conceding the so-called WOT to the terrorists.

But this,

"Americans feel that we belong in Iraq, that we have a right and proper mission, and that is the mission of liberation"

is as absurd as it is arrogant. Perhaps there was a time when the majority felt invading Iraq was 'right and proper', but that critical mass disappeared once all the former justifications were exposed as canards. Most Americans have since resigned ourselves to the position of establishing some basic facade of Iraqi sovereignty as the measure of success and desperately await any cogent, pragmatic plan for achieving such. The current Administration's suggestion for staying the course (whichever direction) is not convincing, especially as advocated by an incoherent and fatally incurious Commander-in-Chief.

A 'right thinking' American might disagree with this observation, but not an American thinking correctly.

It's simply astounding that in the United States, the home of the greatest and most effective democratic revolution, so many people have come to regard democracy as a luxury-brand vehicle, suited only for the culturally upscale, when it's really a sturdy truck, effective in conditions both rough and smooth.

That's a noble statement but it won't fly in Iraq. So basically, when Saddam was in power, there was no widespread terrorism in his country due to his stranglehold. But now, our presence to ease democracy into Iraq in the midst of widespread terrorism well make it all better in the long run? Man, that's the Middle East. They roll with different colors. And one of the colors don't belong in many Arab eyes over there: the USA. We won't stabilize nothing in Iraq since we are not the Iraqi Police Force. We rolled in, kicked ass, and basically said (in hip-hop terms) "WHAT!" and beat our chests. That's all the fools had to see and it was on. We are the catalyst for the terrorist attacks and we can't fix it by "smokin' fools". Not even with 8 million troops. We visitors in another person home where the home owners are fighting among themselves and fighting you. Domestic disputes are nasty and never really yield a winner.

MIB, That's probably the most cynical thing I've seen anyone admit. I wonder how many folks you speak for.

I'm one of those folks who, not only when it happened, but when I watched 'Three Kings' later at the movies, felt profoundly embarassed that we let down the Iraqis who thought we were going to remove Saddam from power the first time around, only to see them systematically massacred.

Here's the logic. Either you are in Iraq protecting the infant democracy or you're sitting on the sidelines mouthing off that, oh well Iraqi women have never voted, and ethnic groups have never shared power, so let's not change that 1000 year old culture and other such cynical nonsense.

The Bush mission is clear. Protect the Iraqi assets, crush anti-government forces, goose along the democracy, continue the reconstruction, fight jihadist terrorists who gravitate to the region, establish a permanent military presence in a friendly Iraq rather than an unfriendly Saudi Arabia, or relying on Israel.

If you think not finding WMDs doesn't justify that mission, then go ahead and whine about it.

Kerry is either going to abandon the occupation or reorganize it. But there are no political soundbites he can muster for any reorganization plan, and he refuses to talk about it. He wants to cut and run as soon as politically possible - he is hedging his bet for Iraqi democracy:

I will make a flat statement. The United States of America has no long-term designs on staying in Iraq. And our goal in my administration would be to get all of the troops out of there with the minimal amount you need for training and logistics as we do in some other countries in the world after a war to be able to sustain the peace.

I think the deal is that Bush, in creating this war of political expediency, has shown for all to see his utter lack of vision. He should not be trusted to continue this "war on terror."

There were many other pressing concerns to deal with at the time that Bush figured the best thing to spend the most money on was to launch a war on a tinpot despot. The tickertape parade and boost in approvals and wot not didn't work out like he'd hoped.

Kerry'd never make that speech cuz he's said repeatedly that the war's a ridiculous mess he's committed to cleaning up (i.e. not a flat unconditional withdrawal). You're floatin a staw kite there, Cobb.

Oh, and the coulda-shoulda stuff is lame. There were plenty of people who, before the fact, thought it was a terrible idea.

Even a buncha theoretical physicists who rarely live in the real world, knew much better:

"The undersigned oppose a preventive war against Iraq without broad international support. Military operations against Iraq may indeed lead to a relatively swift victory in the short term. But war is characterized by surprise, human loss and unintended consequences. Even with a victory, we believe that the medical, economic, environmental, moral, spiritual, political and legal consequences of an American preventive attack on Iraq would undermine, not protect, US security and standing in the world."

Nuclear physicists are either wooly or they are soldiers. Either way, they don't change the policies. It's nice to know not everyone opposed to international intervention is not a completely selfish idiot, but so what?

Political expediency eh? I'm not even going to go there.

What I will say is that, on the slim chance that Kerry actually wins this election, I look forward to your collective awareness of the positive things going on in Iraq. I suspect that they will be cast rather like this.

http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/000896.html

Of course Kerry partisans will find all manner of ways to attribute such progress to Kerry's deft abilities (as opposed to Bush's conniving idiocy), and they'll pressure NPR to stop talking about bus explosions in Iraq. Overnight.

What's the cost to us? Some hundreds billions of bucks, 1000+ US lives, 7000+ US wounded?

Not quite. This cost most be measured against something: What if all these troops, airmen, and sailors were stateside in "normal" peacetime training? How many annual deaths and injuries result from training, from accidents etc. with no war going on?

And what is the peacetime cost of such a force? These numbers are around somewhere.

The really interesting thing about your notional speech is not that probably half of the people supporting Bush believe this is exactly what Kerry would like to say, but that probably half of the people supporting Kerry also believe this is what he'd like to say.

I'm sorry I missed the thick of this thread, as I got a thing or two to say abouth those who feel invading Iraq was an act of short-sightedness.

I am so blogging that. Good job!