Meanwhile...
... how's that political process in Iraq going? "Iraq's biggest Sunni political party called on Sunnis on Tuesday to use all 'appropriate means' to defend themselves after police stirred up sectarian tensions with a raid on a Baghdad neighborhood." I think we're basically past the point in this burgeoning civil war that it makes sense to blame the Bush administration for handling the situation. Events have passed the point where the American government can really control them and the thing to do is face up to that and start moving toward un-involving ourselves from an ugly dynamic.
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somewhat out of left field, Matt, but I think relevent to your pessimism/optimist comments about what can be done, what woudl you think if instead of invading Iraq in the manner in which we did we:
1. Organized a group of functioning Democracies, including, I guess Turkey.
2. Convinced them to issue an ultimatum to Sadaam. Allow weapons inspectors in, AND allow a group of advisors to help navigate the country toward democracy. Failing that, he would be assasinated.
3. Allowed Sadaam to choose his fate. If he failed to allow our Functioning Democracies to properly steer his country away from egregiously bad governing, he would be killed, hopefully at a cost lower than 1 Trillion, but probably with a Sunni strong man retaining power, albeit a Sunni strongman with incentive to be less terrible than his predecessor.
January 24, 2006 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
The prospects for peaceful accomodations between the Sunni, Shiites, Kurds and others in Iraq remain vastly better than those for peaceful accomodation between the Israelis and Palestinians -- should we, therefore, "face up to that and start moving toward un-involving ourselves from an ugly dynamic"?
January 24, 2006 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm, unless I am mistaken we don't actually have 138,000 boots on the ground in Israel/Palestine.
I don't think your comment makes any sense - you are comparing two entirely dissimilar situations. Please try again.January 24, 2006 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
We didn't invade Israel, and our occupation is not the cause of the problems there.
January 24, 2006 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like your question, mw, I think it strikes at the heart of yglesias' big general ponderings on the issue.
I myself would love to see us do more of the face up to that and start moving toward un-involving ourselves from an ugly dynamic? thing, but it isn't going to happen in the lifetime of my oil-soaked world, because if you aren't meddling, someone else will be and will drag ya back in.
BTW, others speak of boots on the ground. Anyone know if Lieut. Gen. William Ward is still at the position of new security coordinator for the Palestinians?
January 24, 2006 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmm, unless I am mistaken we don't actually have 138,000 boots on the ground in Israel/Palestine. I don't think your comment makes any sense - you are comparing two entirely dissimilar situations. Please try again.
The point is that it is taken as a given that hands-on American involvement is critically necessary to bring about a solution between Israel and the Palestinians despite not just multiple years of warfare between the two sides, but running gun battles in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas. But can you imagine MY reacting to a suicide bombing in Israel followed by an Israeli assasination in retaliation by saying, "oh, well, that's it -- there's no hope of a peaceful resolution"? No way.
In Iraq, MY is assuming either that American involvement is the main cause of the disputes between the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds. (Which is absurd--their disputes have to do with how Iraq is to be ruled and power is to be shared--or not shared). Or, not so implausibly, he is assuming that the U.S. can play no constructive role in mediating the disputes, or more critically, helping to keep sectarian tensions from erupting into large-scale open warfare. These are debatable -- especially the second of those two. With the U.S. in the country, there can be assassinations, small scale attacks and suicide bombings, but with the U.S. gone, there's every prospect for the situation to degenerate into a real civil war between the main Iraqi groops with an eventual body count many times higher than even the most pessimistic estimates to date. Doesn't the U.S. have a responsibility to make sure this doesn't happen? With the U.S. guarantee that the elected government won't be deposed by force, the Sunnis have a strong incentive to play along. If that guarantee is removed, look out.
January 24, 2006 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Events have passed the point where the American government can really control them and the thing to do is face up to that and start moving toward un-involving ourselves from an ugly dynamic."
It's increasingly difficult to disagree with this point, but people should also be aware what withdrawal could mean not only for Iraqis but for Americans.
In 2002 and 2004, the Ameican people had a choice between the GOP's hopeful message of democracy and liberty in the Arab-Muslim world, and a message of containment; they chose the former. I see little reason to believe that if the war in Iraq becomes a full fledged civil war they will become comfortable with the prospect of being blown to pieces in their respective places of work, and choose containment; this is not the Cold War.
I fear that the great military historian Martin Van Creveld may be right. He not only predicted failure in Iraq, but the possibility that it could do to America what Afghanistan did to the Soviet Union, which is to say lead to a general crisis of the state. We are a deeply fragmented country at the moment, and those fissures have in some sense been held in abeyance by the prospect of a unifying project abroad (even if Mr. Bush failed to unify the American people around that project).
No one should wholly underestimate the possibility that American may not exist in its current form twenty years from now.
January 24, 2006 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The prospects for peaceful accomodations between the Sunni, Shiites, Kurds and others in Iraq remain vastly better than those for peaceful accomodation between the Israelis and Palestinians -- should we, therefore, "face up to that and start moving toward un-involving ourselves from an ugly dynamic"?
Hell, yes.
January 24, 2006 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but for this we stopped hunting Osama bin Laden 6 months after 9/11?
Who's got the pre 9/11 mindset again?
January 25, 2006 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
mw: what would happen if we ... gave ultimatum to Saddam, got inspectors in ... etc.
One of the biggest problems with this war is that Saddam got ultimatum, that he did admit inspectors, that he did comply with their requests, e.g. he destroyed rockets that were tad abovethe limit (or tad below), and THEN we issued an absurd ultimatum and invaded anyway.
Besides legality or the lack of it, it removed ultimatum as a useful policy tool in the future. Why should anyone comply if an invasion may follow anyway? The credibility of our claims is gone too. We really have no tools left to deal with possible nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
Main topic: I think it is absurd for USA to maitain a role in an intra-Iraqi conflict between two sides that are hostile to us, if in varying degree. As Algeria have shown, the locals, left to their own devices, know how to conduct a dirty war with domestic opponents using dirty tactics. Air strike capacity is next to irrelevant, and so are various high tech measures. And as Kashmir had shown, a conflict like that can drag for an untold number of years.
As it is, we do not control the political process, we do not provide a decisive conclusion, we even do not control the oil. I think that the occupasion is a case of pointless busy work that masks the fact that we lost all our initial objectives. Even Syria, that shown some salubrious signs of being intimidated (withdrawal from Lebanon etc.) seems much less so intimidated now (assasinations in Lebanon continue).
January 25, 2006 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think they voted for the guy whom they believed, rightly or wrongly, would do anything to protect them from 9/11, even if it meant invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
can you adduce any evidence of people voting for a "hopeful message of democracy and liberty?" hell, if i thought bush stood for that, i'd have considered voting fo him.
January 25, 2006 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
"we survived withdrawal from vietnam quite adequately, and then resumed winning the cold war, so i think you're a little overblown in your fears, mw, but what i'm really curious about is on what basis you believe anyone voted in 2002 (especially) or 2004 for a "hopeful message of democracy and liberty in the Arab-Muslim world.""
Sure, and the depression of the 1890s didn't radically transform our politics in the way that the Great Depression did. The French-Indian wars might have led to an American revolution, but it was several decades before British overreach ticked off my family (and any number of others) so badly cousin Sam dumped the tea in the harbor. We were on the precipice of civil war multiple times between the 1820s and 1850s, but it did not happen until the 1860s.
America is at a very different place than it was in 1975, and the failure of neoconservative policy is likely to have more far reaching consequences domestically and internationally than the failure of the Vietnam War. Republicans understand this better than many Democrats, which is part of the reason they continue to be the party of power. But in any event you don't need to believe me for it to be true.
January 25, 2006 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
but we will, in my estimation, survive them perfectly well.
but that's you and me talking. the idea that the republicans won the 2002 and 2004 elections because they "understand" the "the failure of neoconservative policy is likely to have more far reaching consequences domestically and internationally than the failure of the Vietnam War" better than "democrats" do is, to my, as baseless as the idea that the country voted in 2002 and 2004 for an optimistic policy in the Middle East.
The country voted its fears in 2002 and 2004, and the republican party is better positioned to win elections based on fear, whether they have solutions or understandings or not. (what they've got are slogans - they are just great at slogans!).
January 25, 2006 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The country voted its fears in 2002 and 2004, and the republican party is better positioned to win elections based on fear, whether they have solutions or understandings or not. (what they've got are slogans - they are just great at slogans!)."
How many presidential elections did the GOP win between 1932 and 1952, the last major period of historical crisis in American history (or at least the part between 1932 and 1945)? How many presidential elections did the Democrats win between 1860 and 1884?
You are making the mistake of judging the near future on the basis of the recent past and on your own life experience, which has been that power has tended to shift between the parties every four or eight or twelve years. There are exceptional eras in American politics, in which one party (and usually the party of big government) tends to dominate. We are entering such a period of crisis, and perhaps single party dominance (the GOP today is the party of big government conservatism, and as such the more likely party of power).
The only hopeful sign (or not, depending on how one sees things) is that the country is as divided today as it was during the Civil War, and realignments abroad have mostly been toward centrist or unity governments (as in Britain, Germany, and Israel). We could see more talk of a bipartisan unity ticket (and government) in 2008, but the divisions could harden further, and failure in Iraq could spell trouble.
The storm clouds on the horizons aren't just grey anymore; they're black. If Democrats refuse to see them what can I say? I'll be vindicated in a few more years, and the middle aged Democratic elite will be rightfully thrown out on their patards. In any event, I'm tired of talking to people who don't understand that political dynamics change in American history, and not always in unpredictable ways. Cheers.
January 25, 2006 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink