Hell, we could have called up the CIA guys who handled Central America in the 1970's out of retirement and sent them to Iraq.
The only reasonable response to this report is "So what?"
The goal of the war was to reduce the threat to us in the long run. But that meant increasing the risk in the short run -- that's always how it is in war.
"Are we safer now than we would have been at this time if we hadn't invaded Iraq?" That question doesn't matter. The question is, "Would we be safer fifty years from now if we hadn't invaded than we will be?"
We have to make it "happen there". We have to take Iraq and place major military forces right in the middle of all the Arab nations so that it cannot be ignored. It has to be a wire into the nerve. It has to be right in their faces. It has to weigh on their minds. It has to be a demonstration of strength so massive, so unambiguous as to prove that the only reason we didn't keep going and conquer them all is because we didn't want to. Not that we were restrained by international norms, for that's a sign of weakness. Not that we reached the limit of our abilities, because that proves the same thing. That we could have but decided not to because they weren't worth it -- but that we will if we end up changing our minds. That's what they need to believe, and to keep believing.Example 2:
That is part of what will start the process of change in the region. The government of Saudi Arabia continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year supporting Wahhabism, and it will be a lot easier to convince them to stop doing so if the First Armored Division and First Infantry Division are sitting 20 miles from their border, ready to roll at a moment's notice. (They're being wasted in Germany right now; this seems like a better way to use them, don't you think?)
Even after the disaster of the Gulf War, Iraq is still militarily stronger than any of the other Arab nations at least overtly. It's the one that they all think of that way, anyhow. If we end up crushing it like a bug (a big "if", it has to be admitted) then it becomes the object lesson which we must set so that we will be viewed by the "Arab Street" as strong which is ultimately the only real thing they actually do respect.
Why is it that the US is concerned about Iraq getting nukes when we don't seem to be as concerned about Pakistan or India or Israel? Why are we willing to invade Iraq to prevent it from getting nukes, but not Pakistan to seize the ones it developed? It's because those nations don't embrace a warrior culture where suicide in a good cause, even mass death in a good cause, is considered acceptable. (Those kinds of things are present in Pakistan but don't rule there as yet.)Example 3:
It's certainly not the case that the majority of those in the culture which is our enemy would gladly die. But many of those who make the decisions would be willing to sacrifice millions of their own in exchange for millions of ours, especially the religious zealots. If such people get their hands on nuclear weapons, then our threat of retaliation won't prevent them from using them against us, or threatening to do so. Which is why we can't let it happen. The chance of Israeli or Pakistani or Indian nukes being used against us is acceptably small. If Arabs get them, then eventually one will be used against us. It's impossible to predict who will do it, or when, or where, or what the proximate reason will be, but it's inevitable that it will happen. The only way to prevent it is to keep Arabs from getting nukes, and that is why Iraq is now critically important and why time is running out...
With the fall of Tikrit, the war in Iraq is over. Our military accomplished all the political goals we needed from it, both in terms of the local situation and in terms of more global effects, and did a superb job. From top to bottom it was a masterful performance...Example 4:
In his State of the Union address in 2002, President Bush identified three nations as what he called the "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran and North Korea. At the time this was widely dismissed as rhetoric, or as the obsession of an idiotic cowboy, or as grandstanding. But as events have shown, it's never safe to assume that Bush doesn't actually mean what he says, and with the fall of Iraq, the extremist leadership in Iran is getting distinctly nervous. They are looking at American troops to the east in Afghanistan, and to the west in Iraq, and rising discontent and resistance inside Iran itself, and they see laser dots on their own chests.
That the theocracy would rather not share Saddam's fate goes without saying. That their situation is exceedingly perilous is equally obvious. That they'd rather talk things over than to be the next target is not surprising.
That they actually think they can get rewarded, that they think they're actually morally owed things by us, shows that they're still living in a delusional world. But they're not alone in that; there's a lot of that going around right now in the world.
However, delusions have a tendency to eventually collide with reality, and when that happens the delusions get punctured, and there seems to be markedly less delusion now than there was a month ago. And the mere fact that the theocrats are clearly extremely nervous is itself a victory for us. It's yet another of the beneficial side effects bought with the blood of our soldiers in Iraq. No one out there is taking comfort any longer in America's old reputation for decadent apathy or aversion to risk...
I suspect that for most Iraqis, the single most astounding aspect of the American occupation (besides the fact that it finally happened, at long last) has been that we have not been arresting those in Iraq who have publicly criticized us. When mullahs returning from exile in Iran made speeches demanding we withdraw and that Iraq become a Khomeneiite theocracy, we left them alone.posted by y2karl at 6:04 AM on September 24, 2006 [1 favorite]
Some here feared that tolerating that would cause more and more Iraqis to flock to support such movements, and that the majority Shiites might coalesce around such a political position.
But the exact opposite has occurred: those early opposition speakers were seen by most Iraqis as being noteworthy because of their public opposition, not because their message was attractive. Many watched attentively to see how we'd respond. When the proto-theocrats were not persecuted, other Iraqis with other opinions began voicing them, too. Some were critical of the Americans, some were supportive, some were mixed. A lot of what they talked about didn't have anything to do with us at all. But the one thing most of them came to agree on was that free expression itself was a pretty neat thing, even if they didn't agree about much else. Since the would-be Iraqi theocrats wanted to take that away from them again, support for the theocrats has not materialized, and most of them have ceased advocating establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iraq.
There's a line we don't let them cross. The self-declared "Mayor of Baghdad" was ultimately taken into custody, mostly to get him out of circulation for a while. Eventually he was released and, having had his fifteen minutes of fame, vanished from view. Certain Islamic extremists actively preached jihad and directly advocated violent attacks against the Americans, and some of them have been informed that this is not acceptable.
`Thou seyst nat sooth,' quod he, `thou sorceresse,Democrats have become Cassandra: forever cursed with the intellect to predict the future that no one will ever believe.
With al thy false goost of prophesye!
Thou wenest been a greet devyneresse;
Now seestow not this fool of fantasye
Peyneth hir on ladyes for to lye?
Awey!' quod he. `Ther Ioves yeve thee sorwe!
Thou shalt be fals, paraunter, yet to-morwe!
'Are we safer now than we would have been at this time if we hadn't invaded Iraq?' That question doesn't matter.
It's the home page for a company that hauls hazardous wastes.
..Iraq is the pilot project of New Arabia. This war will be fought, ultimately, in the hearts and minds of the "Arab Street" and we must convince them that our way is better than the one they currently have for them.posted by y2karl at 11:06 AM on September 24, 2006
The problem in Japan in the late 1940's was different in detail but the same in gross: there were parts of the previous Japanese culture which were dangerous but much that was valuable; the new system was definitely Japanese but not the same as before.
Old Japan became new-and-better Japan; it did not become new America. Japan didn't become a clone of America as the result of American occupation and the American imposition of reform, but it did change quite radically. And it ceased to be a danger to us, and the lives of individual Japanese improved. We won, and so did they. They adopted (by coercion and persuasion) some American ideas and policies and integrated them into Japanese culture, and the new system was born.
That's what will be needed in Iraq: we must make them feel as if they've won because their lives have improved. We will force on them certain things which will replace the most diseased aspects of what they have now, and that will be integrated into their culture and create a new-and-better Iraq. They must begin to achieve, for once they do their pride will be satisfied and their resentment will subside, and they will cease to be a danger to us. Nation building in Iraq is a strategic requirement for the US for purely selfish reasons. But we cannot get what we need by placing a new friendly dictator in charge to replace the old unfriendly dictator. Iraq itself must be reformed.
This means that we are fighting this war to free the Iraqi people. We're not doing so out of altruism, but the effect for the Iraqi people will be the same as if we were. (We didn't free Eastern Europe from Soviet rule out of altruism, but they don't seem to mind.) And we need Iraq to keep being a success, because it will induce reform in the rest of the Arab world, leading to further and broader Arab success, rising pride, decreasing shame, lessening resentment and less violence aimed at us.
Arab shame at Arab failure is the "root cause" of this war. Arab reform leading to Arab success is the solution. Arab culture must liberalise, and we no longer have the luxury of waiting for that to happen on its own.
We have to embark on this effort because the only alternative is to kill them all. If we don't work to institute deep cultural reform, there will be more and more attacks against us which are progressively more and more damaging, and our reprisals will become more and more catastrophic. We have to fight now to prevent unconscionable slaughter later.
If we interfere now, we can help both the Arabs and ourselves. If we wait, both they and us will bleed and die.
This is, of course, a very high level view presented in summary form; it deliberately simplifies the issues and therefore it necessarily leaves out many nuances.
"Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, today disclosed the existence of a second classified National Intelligence Estimate 'that gives a grim assessment of the situation in Iraq, and called for it to be shared with the American public — before the November elections.'"posted by ericb at 12:54 PM on September 26, 2006
"The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush's portrayal of a world growing safer....Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight
Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration's glass-half-full declarations.
[Associated Press | September 27, 2006]
"...the intelligence report bears none of Mr. Bush’s long-range optimism. Rather it dwells on Mr. Rumsfeld’s darker question, which he put cheekily as, 'Is our current situation such that ‘the harder we work, the behinder we get?'"posted by ericb at 11:16 AM on September 27, 2006
[New York Times | September 27,2006]
National Intelligence Estimates are notorious for being watered down, partly because analysts spread across 16 different spy agencies often have difficulty settling on just the right words.posted by ericb at 7:23 PM on September 27, 2006
That’s what makes the tough language in this week’s terrorism analysis all the more striking. And it has left many puzzling over why the White House decided to release it.
To almost any reader, the assessment of trends in global terror for the next five years looks grim. It warns that most jihadist groups “will use improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks” on “soft targets.” It cautions that extremists still seek chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. And it contemplates whether other types of leftist or separatist groups, such as anti-globalism factions, could adopt terrorist methods.
One former insider sees even more. Robert Hutchings, who headed the National Intelligence Council when the estimate was launched in 2004, called the document “a very severe indictment of, not just the administration, but where we as a country have found ourselves five years after 9/11.”
“It says the jihad is spreading, expanding and intensifying,” said Hutchings, who left the council in early 2005 and is now at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
[Associated Press | September 27, 2006]
"In a second blow to the president, a new U.N. report said the Iraq war was providing al Qaeda with a training center and fresh recruits, and was inspiring a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan hundreds of miles away.posted by ericb at 8:35 PM on September 27, 2006
...The U.N. report released on Wednesday jibed with the NEI's conclusions.
'New explosive devices are now used in Afghanistan within a month of their first appearing in Iraq,' it said. 'And while the Taliban have not been found fighting outside Afghanistan/Pakistan, there have been reports of them training in both Iraq and Somalia.'
The U.N. report was prepared by terrorism experts for the Security Council."
[Reuters | September 27, 2006]
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You can't make this stuff up.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 5:50 PM on September 23, 2006