Repeat after me: ‘failure is not an option’. Say it three times, real sloooooow. Bush said it, Reid said it, McCain said it, Warner said it, Biden said it. Guess who else said it…and when:
– David Manning, Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser, March 14th, 2002.
Okay. What will happen if we ‘fail’. What do we define as a failure? The level of discourse on this most important issue is pathetic. If failure means that we don’t get to keep military bases in Iraq, I don’t consider that a failure. We can come up with alternative ways to assure an uninterrupted flow of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf.
If failure means that there is a prolonged civil war in Iraq, what are the risks to the world economy, what are the risks to the Kurdish population? Is Juan Cole right that it could cause a world depression?
There are a lot of questions to ask, and to attempt to answer. But no one wants to discuss them.
One price of failure that we’re already seeing: Our military is stressed and stretched so far that it can’t cope. Recruitment is way down.
It will take a long time — and the extrication of the U.S. military from Iraq — before our military can recover.
Balkanization in Iraq – Kurds, Shias and Sunnis all taking their own junk in their own defense. Even though Iraq is a small country and has very little other than oil as assets. So how will they divide the spoils? The Kurds and the Shias have a coalition of sorts now because they both hate, fear and distrust the Sunnis. And they are trying very hard to make nice nice to the Sunnis because our little puppet was told to do so. But when we go or when our influence is diluted by elections what then?
It is possible that we rattle sabers at Iran, but we can only finish a war there if we have a draft. But notice that Bush isn’t very keen on finishing things. Nor is he one to look back and say “well we still have more to do in Afghanistan – guess we need less drugs coming out of there” Or “guess we can nab OBL now”. Nope, nothing gets finished by Bush (except for our bill of rights, the environment and Big Bird!) So all of our weary soldiers will be billeted to Iran next leaving the turmoil in Iraq while he brags about what he has accomplished.
Who wrote this?
This evening, President George Bush will present his own view of the ongoing Iraqi insurgency in a televised address to the nation–during which he will reportedly encourage the American public to be patient in expecting further progress and an eventual withdrawal of U.S. military forces.
This message comes on the heels of the stunningly obtuse assessment offered by Vice President Dick Cheney last week that the very same Iraqi insurgency is actually in its “last throes.” Though Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has tried to be more conservative in his own comments vis-a-vis the insurgents, Pentagon briefings on Iraq are also beginning to take on a fanciful character regrettably reminiscent of Soviet propaganda during the Afghan war of the 1980s.
The BBC even aired an interview this morning with an American military representative who attempted to draw a ridiculous comparison between the security situation in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and that of major Western cities like New York or London. By professing such faulty logic, we are only successful in deluding ourselves–not the insurgents, nor the vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East.
If President Bush wants the American people to understand why a continued military presence is necessary in Iraq, he must level with them openly and honestly. Unfortunately, the truth today is that Iraq is a catastrophe of immense proportions. For months, we have desperately sought to avoid adjectives like “quagmire”, fearing the consequences of such pejorative language.
But that is exactly what Iraq has become–a quagmire and a lose-lose scenario that is gradually overshadowing the larger international war on terrorism. Though perhaps in 2003 there was no pressing threat necessitating an invasion of Iraq, in the meantime, we have unwittingly unleashed a Pandora’s Box of ethnic and religious conflict in Iraq and we are left with few palatable options.
Nowadays, the U.S. military can no longer safely withdraw from Iraq without causing the near certain collapse of the nascent Iraqi democratic government and the transformation of Iraq into the next Afghanistan.
It should be noted that both native and foreign-born terrorists hiding in Iraq have openly boasted of their intentions to carry out attacks in Europe and North America if our forces are drained clean from the Sunni Triangle. Indeed, whether or not President Bush admits as much during his expected address this evening, the reality is that we are stuck in Iraq and we aren’t going anywhere soon.
— Evan Kohlmann at the Counterterrorism blog. Kohlmann is an expert on terrorism and heads up Global Terror Alert.
and we cannot pull out. Intact failed states can only exist on the periphery, in a power vacuum. Somalia and Afghanistan could escape dismemberment because their neighbors are weak and they have nothing anybody wants. These conditions do not hold in Iraq.
The Kurds and the rest of the Iraqis will not be able to get along without someone making them. If the Kurds seem to be winning in their bid for independence the Turks will step in. If the Turks step in, how can the Iranians stay out? If the Iranians and the Turks and the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites are all fighting in Iraq, how can the other neighbors stay out? The Syrians and the Saudis and the Jordanians are just going to watch the oil fields get taken?
It would, of course, serve the jihadists right if we did pull out now. In no time they would be fighting for their lives against muslim troops. Unfortunately, it will not happen anytime soon.
Occupation without end?
The scenario you describe might or might not happen. It might or might not happen if we pull out next week, or it might or might not happen if we pull out ten years from now. Personally, I find these dire-scenarios-as-rationale-for-staying overused and overblown. In Vietnam, they had the same shit: if we leave, then the dominos will start to fall, and we’ll lose all of SE Asia to the commies. Same rationale, different “catastrophe”.
In Vietnam, what we got in the end is exactly what we would have gotten if we hadn’t interfered in 1954 when the French left. The commies took over, and now they are our friends. It took 58,000 American dead, and countless millions of SE Asians dead for the same result.
So, that’s what you’re proposing for Iraq? Let’s keep US soldiers there for ten or twelve years with targets on their backs (think they might be able to get them all body armor in that time?). Let’s see if we can make the Iraq war memorial bigger than the Vietnam one? Let’s go through all the bullshit nation-building machinations we went through in Vietnam, and watch each of them fail as they have failed before? Then when we finally pull out at whatever point in the future, the civil war you describe will happen or it won’t. Same result.
Sounds like a pretty stupid solution to me.
The most elegant solution was proposed by Brady Kiesling: Pick an Iraqi nationalist insurgent leader and lose to them. In other words, build up an Iraqi George Washington and let the Iraqi’s coalesce around him.
Another option would be to pull out of populated areas and simply guard the borders. Let the Iraqi’s have their civil war without allowing the neighbors to interfere.
Or we could follow Juan Cole’s proposal.
Or we could reinstate Saddam. : )
your last solution.
An appropriately bizarre ending to an utterly bizarre undertaking.
Is Success an option?
implies that it’s under their control. You are 100% right–the real question is, is there in fact any way, in the REAL world, that this venture could succeed?
I don’t think so.
Here are some questions to answer,but I don’t see them answered. President Bush? Senator Reid? Sen. Kerry? Sen. McCain?
1. Withdraw from Iraq?
Yes or no?
2. Troops.
a. Send more troops?
b. Bring back more troop?
c. Keep the same level of troops?
3. Money.
a. Spend more money on Iraq?
b. Reduce the amount of money spend on Iraq?
c. Keep the current amount of spending on Iraq?
4. Timetable.
a. Announce the timetable to witdraw?
b. Do not announce a timetable to withdraw?
5. Declare the Iraq war was:
a. For oil
b. a conspiracy by the neocons to support Israel
c. to spread democracy in the Middle East
d. a fight against the terrorists
e. a mistake
f. stupid
g. second Vietnam
h. _____(fill in your answer)
6. Support of our troops.
a. We support what our troops are doing in Iraq?
b. We do not support what our troops are doing in Iraq?
7. When an American soldier blows up a terrorist or an insurgent
a. We support him/her
b. We do not support him/her
8. When an American soldier is ordered to attack or blow up a terrorist/insurgents
a. We support him/her
b. We do not support him/her
9. Is this a moral war?
a. yes
b. no.
10. This is an immoral war, but I support our troops shooting and killing Iraqis
a. yes
b. No
11. This is an immoral war, but I support our troops being killed in this immoral war
a. yes
b. No
12. Is this a just war?
a. yes
b. no
13. Its not a just war, but I support our troops fighting/killing/being killed in the unjust war
a. Yes
b no.
14. Its better to kill the insurgents/terrorists in Iraq than in USA
a. yes
b. no
15. We will stay in Iraq until the casualties are
a. 3,000 men
b. 5,000 men
c. 10,000 men
d. _
_____ (fill in a number)
16. 2,000 American soldiers died
a. in vain
b. for the defense of our country
17. This is a moral war and the soldiers did not die in vain?
a. yes
b. no
18. This is an immoral war and President Bush bears the blame for every soldier that died in the war
a. yes
b. no
We have already failed.
The real question is how many more lives (American and Iraqi) are we going to sacrifice before we are willing to admit our failure?
Yes, we have already failed.
Everything we have done since 9/11 has been a failure. The assumption that the Iraq war is somehow separate from this chain of failures, and still can become something OTHER than failure, is faulty. The war is merely a component of a general failure.
It’s kind of like being in the middle of a nuclear reactor meltdown, with all the other failures having already happened coolant water completely evaporated and the core starting to glow… “Failure is not an option!”
But, I suppose aliens could invade Earth and destroy the insurgents. Or a pestilence could descend upon them, one which would spare our good American soldiers. Or a mysterious finger could appear out of nowhere and write in glowing letters a warning message to al-Zarqawi. All these things could still happen.
I would put the remaining question this way:
How much damage will be done by this colossal series of blunders?
Agreed with you leftvet. And for the first time since the election I am glad Kerry didn’t win. Before you flame me folks let me explain. GWB got us into this quagmire and he is the one that has to deal with it. Kerry wasn’t left to try and clean up behind the warmongers for profit. If kerry were president right now the repugs would be screaming to get us out of Iraq. Let BushCo deal with it.
I’m with you and leftvet. I was thinking earlier today about that Saturday night live skit from shortly after the election, where George called up John and tried to get him to trade places, because it wasn’t much fun dealing with the fallout from the first four years of his own shit.
This administration has no clue what to do about the mess they’ve made…all they know how to do is campaign. Campaign against terror, against the Democrats, against Saddam. The top people can’t even get their stories straight: is the insurgency in it’s last throes, or will it take at least a decade to finsih the battle? The world realizes that the US will run out of money if they continue the battle for that long.
They have screwed up miserably, and they can’t even admit to even the slightest error of jusgement. How can they discuss fixing it?
I think with Kerry in charge there would have been more realism in dealing with the issue, which would have meant fewer dead people on all sides. So lower on the “feeling righteous” meter but higher on “results”.
However, I agree completely on letting W clean up his own mess.
Why would withdrawal from Iraq be a failure? We removed the ruthless dictator that was squandering the national treasure on palaces and WMDs and basicly leveled the playing field for a new Iraq, if they need a civil war to sort it out who are we to interfere?
Iraq has always been a giant lotto game where the most brutal thug wins. Nothings changed, and because we have always chosen dictator backing over nation building, nothing will change.
squandering the national treasure on palaces and WMDs
I call BULLSHIT! Two sins in a single paragraph!
I won’t comment on the quoted text. Talking points from Foxx I do not waste time commenting.
I won’t let the second point pass by though. What morality guides you to advocate the killing of hundreds of thousands (even millions) of Iraqis?
Let them have their civil war????
Have we hit bottom yet, or not?
Others are pointing out that we’ve already failed in our original “goal.”
It seems to me that there are any number of other degrees of failure possible.
My questions are
So, now it seems we have come to the heart of the problem. I remember how some of us were ridiculed in the not-so-distant past when we brought up the idea that perhaps oil might be a consideration as to why we were in Iraq. Of course, our governemnt is run by a bunch of oil industry refugees, Iraq has among the largest oil reserves in the world, but how can you be so tin-foil-hattish as to believe that oil might have something to do with invading Iraq?
So, let me get this straight. Are we arguing that if getting our troops out of the failed situation in Iraq might disrupt the flow of oil to us addicted Americans, then we should keep our soldiers there with targets on their backs so that we can continue to drive around our SUVs with our yellow ribbon decals on the back?
Just asking.
You have raised a crucial question. But you have answered it by the way you characterized the choice.
The real risk is to a lot of ordinary folks, all over the world, that might become unemployed, or unable to pay their heating bill, or lose a significant chunk of their retirement portfolio.
So, when we think about a disruption of energy supplies we shouldn’t think of it as just effecting the people that use too much energy. It could effect almost everyone.
But your question is still the right one. We need to figure out what is really at stake, and what we can do to minimize the risks.
of how many wars, disruptions, terror attacks, etc have happened in the Middle East just during your lifetime. How many times has the oil flow been interrupted to the point of causing world-wide economic disaster? By my count, zero. As I have said in a number of other posts, I think this catastrophe-if-we-leave scenario is overblown (even if Juan Cole is one of the ones promulgating it).
And it is my fundamental judgement that whatever the consequences of our leaving, they are not nearly as dire as the consequences of our staying.
My fundamental Vietnam lesson: the point at which you understand it’s wrong to be there, you get the hell out.
your confidence. It’s not that I am saying you are wrong. I just am not sure. What I’d like is responsible analysis. But we get nothing but propaganda.
I’m not expressing this great confidence that this will not happen. I am not sure, either, what will happen when we leave. I do what anyone else does; I try to look at the facts, apply my knowledge and experience to them, and come up with a judgement.
If you read Cole’s piece on this, he also says he is not sure. He says the dire scenario may or may not happen. That’s what I’m saying.
I guess my optimism comes from the fact that, ultimately, it is not in the best interests of the majority of the players in the region for such a conflagration to take place. If we get out, they will settle it among themselves. It may be violent at some points, it probably will not be exactly what we want there. But it’s my belief that the players will come to an accomodation rather quickly, divide the spoils, and get on with business.
What I am rather confident about is what will happen if we stay. The blueprint is there from Vietnam. There is NO evidence whatsoever, that somehow our “nation-building” efforts in Iraq — which have been so mis-managed by the Bushies — are going to succeed any better than they did in Vietnam.
Finally, I am sort of assuming that your comment about propoganda was not being directed at me. I am trying to give analysis based on my experience.
comment on propaganda was directed at the CIA, Pentagon, State, Executive, politicians, and the MSM.
We just are not having an honest debate or getting straight intelligence. So, it’s really hard to know what is likely to happen, and what steps would be effective to minimize the risks as we draw down our troop levels.
I’m looking for all opinions here, but I’m also wary of arguments that are too confident in their conclusions.
I think we need to be smart about how we get out. We probably should get serious about leaving after the constitution is completed.
When the new parliament is sworn in, they need to be autonomous. And if we need to supply a praetorian guard for a while, a small footprint might be okay.
I honestly don’t know what to do, and I’m tired of thinking up advice that will just be ignored.
Bush was dishonest about getting in, and now he’s being dishonest about getting out.
First, he wants continuous war because his only popularity comes from being a ‘war president’.
Second, he wants to stay in Iraq because that was the whole point of going in. He has no intention of setting up a functioning, autonomous democracy in Iraq. He wants a puppet state and a permanent US presence. All this talk about getting out is talk, nothing more.
Bush and the jihadists have been codependent from the beginning, and remain so.
that is true, his plan is failing. At some point he will lose the support he needs and he will have to craft a fallback position. That time should be now, but it will have to wait a while longer.
If the ‘plan’ (a word to use carefully in connection with GWB) is to remain a war prez and remain in Iraq, what’s failing?
And who knows . . . a bit of anthrax or similar incident, and the poll numbers might go right up again.
Eh?
The ‘fallback position’ is already in place: the treasonous liberals sapped the will of the people with their negativism and nay-saying.
from your comment that you still have some belief in our nation-building efforts. I will not try to dissuade you, although I reserve the right to say “I told you so” when they fall apart later on.
If a praetorian guard is necessary, I would suggest UN troops, not US troops. You ought to understand that there is NO way a new government is going to establish any credibility, or be seen as autonomous, if it is protected by US troops. We are the occupier; if we are protecting the new government, then they are the occupier’s puppets. If we really want to give them the best chance available to succeed, we need to let them try to establish their identity separate from us.
That’s why I believe the sooner we get out — and maybe arrange for an interim UN force to serve as a bridge, as Cole has suggested (though perhaps not composed as he suggests) — the better chance, however small, that the new government will survive.
But you and I know that the reality of all this is that the Bush administration will accept none of these suggestions, no matter how reasonable. So if you’re tired of being ignored, it looks like that situation is not gonna change soon.
Not to try to seem to clever about it, but if we’re going to define what we mean by “failure”, it strikes me that, to do it right, we must first define what “success” entails, and also who “we” are.
For me, when I think of “we” the people of the US, or “we” as those concerned in what’s in the nation’s best interests, I do not include any members of the Bush regime in this collective “we”. This is because I think the Bush regime’s idea of success is perpetual war in the region for the foreseeable future, and failure for him and Cheney and the rest of the nuts would be any condition that made it impossible to keep our huge military presence there.
So, my success, (i.e. withdrawal) would be the Bush regime’s failure. And of course, I agree with leftvet above; we have failed already in many ways. Cheney’s delusional vision of global hegemony was an absurd notion from the getgo, (though he certainly doesn’t realize it yet,{just as Pinochet, even now, still thinks he did a great service for Chile, for which he should be rewarded, so Cheney’s insanity is predictable}).
Is their any reason to think there’s a realistic chance that Democracy, security, an end to the insurgency, and a thriving postwar economy can arise outof these conditions in Iraq? I would say it might be possible if there was any indication the Bush regime was working toward that end. But there is no evidence of this. Quite the contrary. The refusal to order the securing of the huge munitions dumps in the aftermath of the invasion, (guaranteeing a huge supply of ammo able to be looted to arm the insurgency); the disbanding of the Iraqi army, (creating 400,000 newly unemployed young Iraqi males in a traumatized land sorely in need of repair); actions like these, strategic decisions no conscientious commander would ever make if he was wanting to win an engagement andset about restoring order, actions like these speak to a calculated effort to make sure the conflict continued. Add to that the 14 permanent bases under construction, and there’s no way to convince a rational observer that any of this supports the theory of wanting to create democracy in Iraq and then leave.
And for those of us who knew this was a catastrophe right from the start, so much damage has been done already, and so many long term suspicions and new hatreds created that we and our ancestors will be paying for the crimes of this Bush regime for generations to come, even if we were to be able to disengage tomorrow.
is Amerika losing a war for a second time. This is not to countenanced under any circumstances including complete destruction of the US economy. Sad.
.
Orange revolt and regime change through US elections at every level, start believing it and work toward the goal. Bush | Cheney | Rumsfeld are caught in their failures and are staying the course to political defeat on the world stage. The US administration has lost world public opinion through its foreign policy, and has lost the hearts and minds in the Arab and Muslim nations throughout the Mid-East and S-E Asia.
Do not look to solutions that are not possible: UN or EU forces. NATO and the EU are engaged in Afghanistan in a steady process to unite the regions of the warlords to the city-state of Kabul run by puppet Karzai. Kosovo and the Balkans still have the attention of EU forces, the Darfur region in Sudan has a lack of UN or African Union forces to prevent genocide. The UN is also active in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Thus when the best trained Armed Forces are sent on an impossible mission by its Commander-In-Chief to Iraq and fail, there is no one who can bail you out of this quagmire. Haven’t heard much of Sharon, our staunch ally to invade Iraq and remove Saddam from power. Most likely the powerful states in the region, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran should be involved in an US pull out as soon as possible. Iraq is a nation with no borders, therefore the neighbors should be part of a negotiated settlement to protect the sovereignty of the Iraqi people as one state.
Nevertheless, when you hear Bush speak and repeat the lies used to get us into this Iraq mess, you know his time is up and will be dependent on the new majority in the US who want an end to the hostilities in Iraq. The Democrats should stand strong and united in opposition on the Hill and prepare to clean house during the next two elections. The chance to carry the presidency and the White House in 2008 is being handed on a silver platter by Bush and cohorts.
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Failure is the best policy to end the bs of NeoCon’s New American Century and Cheney’s vision of a Holy Rovian Empire.
Americans, including the Republicans, must realize one has to work to earn his/her keep, you cannot steal it through taxation or invasion of a sovereign state. In this world George, better believe it’s wise to listen to your dad’s advice on foreign policy.
History will judge Gulf War I delivered the US from its trauma of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam wise asses GWB and DC with poor leadership have gotten us in a new Iraq trauma of failure, loss of lives and loss of good will throughout the world.
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that failure should be the outcome we root for.
The Ancient Greeks believed it had catharctic properties. A way to wipe the past and make a new beginning. All good tragedies end that way.