07-12-2003 12:36									#391
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Skywalker, there's a difference. If you call the tailgater a stupid... as he does it, I agree with MtG, it's in the heat of the moment (plus it does you blood pressure no good ). However, if you state before going out that whatever happens to the next stupid... that tailgates me will be their fault, brake hard and cause a collision, killinig someone, and it turns out a prosecuting attorney hears about your statement, you can get prosecuted for negligent homicide. It's not likely, but that is the law.

In civilian terms (I don't know the ins and outs of military law) if Oerdin after seeing a buddy killed at an ambush beats the crap out of an Iraqi prisoner (we already have some marines up on charges for beating prisoners) who subsequently dies, he could be brought up on first degree murder charges if his comments on this site were discovered. If MtG had done the exact same thing, the most he would get charged with is second degree murder, maybe even manslaghter. Semantic games show what a person was thinking, and Oerdin's comments outside of an immediate threat show a dangerous mind set. It's also why road rage has become more common, as our society apparently tolerates this mind set now (IMO).


Ned, nice reply, it's nice having someone read my post, not read into it! Reference turning the policing over to the Iraqis, yes I favor it, but not in that sense.

Iraq, like many of the so-called nations created out of the colonial regimes (read nasty empires, colonial regimes sounds so, well, academic) and the fall of the Ottomans, does not have any natural demographic cohesion (as in the three main ethno-religious groups don't play well together). It should probably be three countries, with a Kurdistan, Babylon for the Sunni triangle, and probably the Shia South as part of Iran. It's not going to happen.

Our solutions now are thin, as the nations we should have had policing Iraq, various surrounding Moslem nations, instead are becoming prime recruiting grounds for Al Quaeda, if they weren't all ready (do not get me started on Saudi Arabia and their funding of Wahabe fundamentalists and religious schools that preach hate and intolerance). A force of Turks in the south, with Pakistani and Indonesian troops in other parts of the country, could have worked. Again, this is why I opposed the way the Bush administration did the lead-up to the war.

The problem is that the Kurds are now armed quite nicely. I followed the stories during the disintegration of the Saddam regime, and news reporters in the north commented that the Kurds were removing much of the abandoned heavy weaponry. The Kurds are not going to settle for a tyranny of the majority without strong minority rights. Turkey will not permit them to declare independence.

The only way to get our tail out of the meat grinder is to make recruiting a new, and quite large, Iraqi security force a priority. It will have to be multi-ethnic/religious drawing from all three groups (Shia, Sunni, and Kurds), and well equipped for counter-insurgency missions. It will be expensive, and the US will get almost no return. The current security force that keeps getting nailed by car bombers and guerillas is under-equipped and under-trained.

I don't see it happening. First of all, the only money being sunk into Iraq (versus spent to support current military ops) is in contracts to connected companies. Please note these are non-competitive contracts that are for all intents and purposes secret, with the Cheney-Bush administration refusing to disclose details. Secondly, looking at the US record in Afghanistan, this administation is trying to do a Marshall plan on the cheap. You get what you pay for.

My worst nightmare is in the rush to get out, we let the tyranny of the majority plus one shove their religious views - Shia - down the throats of the other two minorities, and we end up with a guerilla war that simmers on for decades. Plus I am truly curious how Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will resond to another Shia religious state on their borders.

Ned, I agree completely. I wish the politicians would learn from history (nice succinct overview of US occupation efforts, IMO). The problem is, at this point we have laid such a miserable foundation, I cannot see how we can build anything healthy on the jury-rigged foobar in place. Can you give any examples of a country successfully reconstructing a conquered area, maybe even just a territorial section that revolted, rapidly, from such a deficit? I can't, and I cannot see the American people tolerating a long, bleeding occupation. Which leaves a rapid cobbled together rebuild, which by it's nature will be all f****d up.

By the way (response to the various posts), the KKK was a white Southerner resistance movement. I'd never considered it that, but it is a legitemate point. Resistance in no way implies good guys. Some of the nastiest resistance movements imposed brutal conditions on the minorities they didn't like, once they got in power. Africa and Central America are full of examples of this. It actually plays very nicely into my scenario for post-war Iraq, with a Shia majority shoving their interpetation of the Koran down the Sunni and Kurds throats. Causing another guerilla war, ad infinitum. I seriously hope I'm wrong.

	07-12-2003 13:06									#392
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove The KKK arose to make sure that blacks would know better than to believe that their status had actually changed. Your statement is correct only to the extent that the occupation of the South gave blacks hope that emancipation might really mean something.

Actually, the Ku Klux Klan conducted political terrorism in conjunction with suppression of blacks -- the Ku Klux Klan was the guerrilla force for the Democratic party.

	07-12-2003 14:27									#393
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Exactly - look how the religious police are working in Iran. That is why a Shia fundamentalist state in Iraq scares me.

	07-12-2003 22:39									#394
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quote: Originally posted by MrFun Actually, the Ku Klux Klan conducted political terrorism in conjunction with suppression of blacks -- the Ku Klux Klan was the guerrilla force for the Democratic party.

I think Lincoln would have pardoned everyone in the South and restored civil government to the Southerners ASAP. The ONLY thing the Radicals did right was to condition readmission to the Senate and House on ratification of the 14th Amendment.

Look back in history. What did Caesar do when he won the civil war? He pardoned everyone on the condition of loyalty. He didn't go on a reign of terror as he could have. He healed the wounds promptly.


The Radicals wanted to raise the blacks to full equality immediately against the wishes of the white majority. The only way they could have done so was to leave an army of occuppation in the South for perhaps fifty years - and all that time we would have been facing guerilla warfare from the KKK.

"Reconstruction" as conducted by the Radicals is a prime example of what not to do. What Lincoln and his successor Johnson tried to do was heal the wounds and move on.

We should learn from Caesar and Lincoln. The Iraqi people are not the enemy. The Army of Iraq was not the enemy as they are the people. The enemy was Saddam and his top leadership.

Dismissing the Army of Iraq to fuel the resisitance rather than prevent it was almost madness, IMHO. We are repeating the mistakes of Reconstruction and Vietnam.

	07-12-2003 23:27									#395
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The union occupation of the South was brief and extremely undermanned. They were unable to exert control throughout the vast majority of the confederate countryside, and that is why the KKK was able to operate with impunity. If the radicals had had their way they would have left sufficient troops in the south to ensure that the blacks got the freedom they were promised. Instead union troops were so thinly stretched that they had to resort to requesting assistance from quickly reconstituted state militias, mostly composed of confederate veterans, to suppress the Klan. The deal made required that the union accelerate the completion of reconstruction, so in the end the Klan won, the occupation was ended and the southerners went back to business as usual with the blacks remaning in a terror enforced de facto enslavement.

The Iraqi army was shot through and through with die hard Baathists, especially in the officer corps. Virtually nothing remains of the pre-Hussein Iraqi army. If the US had left the Iraqi army intact there might be fewer terrorist attacks now, but when the US packed up and left you can bet that the old palaces would have been quickly reclaimed by their former master. In Germany OTOH there actually was a substantial part of the officer corp that pre-dated Hitler's rise to power. You also have to consider that in 1945 we were determined to occupy Germany indefinitely, thus pre-empting any possible return of facsist power. We essentially governed Germany for 9 years. If we resurrected the Iraqi army would we be determnined to remain in occupation long enough to ensure that Hussein never creeps back to power, a stay of perhaps a full decade? I don't think it would work. After all, we have enemies outside of Iraq prepared to assist Hussein loyalists. This problem didn't exist in 1945. The Soviet Union would never have assisted an ODESSA bid for power in Germany.

	08-12-2003 01:50									#396
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh No, you characterized a young man in a BMW who was speeding and ran into a checkpoint as a "stupid sack of ****". This is pretty common behaviour for privileged young men around the world, including in the US. If there was an Iraqi checkpoint in Cleveland, for example, and they shot and killed someone for doing that, you can imagine how Americans might feel about it. Especially if some Iraqi hothead called him a "stupid sack of ****" for getting killed.

	08-12-2003 02:09									#397
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Dr. Strangelove, we seem to have, in effect, the same problem with the Iraqi Army as we had with German police. They were both riddled with national socialists. But, were all of these people criminals? Patton was roundly accused of leaving Nazi's in place to keep things running. I think Patton was right. Being a member of the Nazi party was not inherently evil. Being a leader of the Nazi party was.

In the case of the South, we excluded from future politics only Lt. Col. and above. We could have do the same thing with the Iraqi army. Sure, some Ba'athist officers would still be there. But would this fact necessarily lead them to revolt against a new regime down the road? I doubt it.

As we saw in Germany, it took a long time to rebuild the police force and national army from scratch. The approach we are taking in Iraq probably will take less time, but it should still take years. In the final analysis, is all this extra time, expense, US casualties and bad will generated in the populace worth it simply to exclude a few low rank Ba'athist party officers from service?

	08-12-2003 11:57									#398
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Dr. Stranglove and Ned - I'm really enjoying this! A considered set of analogies, based on historical fact with a discussion versus an argument.

I agree with both your historical points, but how does the US deal with the conundrum we are in? Fast, cheap, bloodless democratic reconstruction. Without imposing a constitution, or at least the initial framework, like we did with Japan and Germany. We've already dismissed the army, so that point is moot (I wish it wasn't!). The security forces we are training are primarily police, and are woefully underequipped for a counterinsurgency campaign, a la Columbia. The guerilla forces are definitely sabotaging the economic reconstruction, which is an excellent strategic move on their part (again, it f****s the civilians, but most guerilla movements don't mind that as long as they win).

Would the Shia majority accept a constitution guaranteeing religious freedom for Suni and Sufi, let alone non-Moslems? It seems to me Islam is where Christianity was several centuriies ago. There are foward thinking individuals espousing religious tolerance and freedom, while many of the religious leaders are pushing interlocking state and religious control, with a broad streak of intolerance.

I have heard people talk about the red herring of Muslim religious tolerance since the Middle Ages. Not exactly. The "tolerant" form of state Islam espouses second class citizenship for people of the old book. Period. Look at Spain. It was better than existed in the Christian lands of the time, but there has been some change. Sorta. Try to be a Christian Scientist in Germany, or try to get school funding for a Moslem state school in England (while Christian based schools get it more or less automatically). Try to purchase Shabbat wine on a Sunday in the American South (blue laws, still on the books and enforced in many areas - making Sunday the holy day).

However, this still is quite a bit more tolerant than occurs throughout most of the non-secular Islamic states today. Remember, and I am quoting from memory as best I can an interview with an Imam on the BBC (reference I believe it was northern Nigeria), that of course Christians and animist won't mind having Sharia (Islamic law) imposed on them because it includes their beliefs anyway, and what could be more just than Sharia?

Back agin to the point at hand. Given the background I just mentioned, how do we get a constitution past the Shia majority that guarantees the rights of the Kurds and Sunni. Rembmer, as I mentioned before, the Kurds are now relatively well armed, but they won't get independence, the Turks who are better armed will intervene. But if the Kurds don't get a constitution that protects minority rights, does anybody think they'll sit passively by?

Maybe a canton style system akin to Switzerland, some sort of federated versus federal system would probably work. Again, unless imposed I do not get any indications that the individuals coming to the fore as Shia leaders in southern Iraq are going to willingly give up that power/control. There has already been an assination campaign directed against the moderate Imams. Plus I cannot see the Bush administration recognizing that a decentralized government is the way to go. To paraphrase Bush from an interview - Musharif (as in Pakistan, forgive my spelling) overthrew a democratic governemt, but things were chaotic and he brought order, and that's a good thing.

All of this interlocks in such a way that I see this as a lose-lose-lose situation. If anybody sees any flaws in this analysis, please, I'm interested. I just wish the US adminstration had been doing this from the start.

	08-12-2003 12:26									#399
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shawnmmcc, I think we intend to have the Iraqi Council pass a basic law guaranteeing certain basic rights including religious freedom. The only way we have of forcing a constitution on the Iraqis is to deny them power until they adopt one. Since we are going to turn over power before that, all we can do is hope for the best.

If the Shi'ites become abusive of their majority position, then I think there will be a civil war.

Bush is receivng other criticism from the right other than just me. Newt Gingrich wrote or is quoted in the current Newsweek that Bush's Iraq policy dropped off the cliff as soon as the major combat ended. Essentially Gingrich is calling for more Iraqification as well.

I don't know whether it is impossible to call back units of the Iraqi army even now. There have been numerous reports that just such a move is still under active consideration.

	08-12-2003 13:12									#400
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Problem is Iraq is a ficticious creation of the British to make it easier for them to maintain economic control of the region. The more radical Shia are pushing for an elected constitutional council (controlled by the majority, contolled by guess who?), and that they can play the waiting game. If the South becomes unstable, and US casualties mount, would this administration stay to guarantee minority rights? That's why I call it lose-lose. I hadn't thought about recalling the Iraqi army. Done to address concerns like Dr. Stranglove's, it might work. Especially if elements of the Kurdish forces got incorporated. Let's see if you can teach a moribund administration new tricks. I still cannot see this adminstration, with the ideologues in it, successfully pulling it off. I see now from what you and Stranglove say that it is doable, I guess I'm just a pessimist - it's the historian in me. I wish McCain had beaten Bush in the primaries (oops, showing my ideological undershorts ).

	08-12-2003 15:39									#401
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Lonestar, check out the blood flowing from under the car just under the tank's treads. Perhaps you ought to pull that picture.

	08-12-2003 15:44									#402
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That's not blood, that's oil.

Hmm, blood and oil in the same sentence...

	08-12-2003 16:55									#403
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quote: Originally posted by Saras That's not blood, that's oil. Hmm, blood and oil in the same sentence...

Dried blood looks that way.