Cliff LyonWhat Does Failure Look Like?
From Dailykos - Powerful stuff.
We’re finding out right now. First, from this report by Michael Ware on CNN last night. Here he discusses the violence:
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it’s easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.
This is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.
We’re having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We’re seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We’re seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.
I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don’t want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn’t one.
And the political situation:
Maliki has no popular base. He lacks the currency of political power in this country, which is an armed militia. So he’s had to beg and borrow for political capital.
He found that the U.S. military desperate to put any kind of reasonable face on this apparition that they call the Iraqi government. And meanwhile, in real political terms, he’s had to draw on Muqtada’s militia and its political faction to actually put him into place.
So this is a man in a terrible predicament, who is unable to deliver. And yet, we have Muqtada in this time of crisis just turning that screw.
He has threatened to withdraw — well, his people have threatened to withdraw participation in the parliament and the government if he meets with what they call the criminal Bush. Nonetheless, he is so acute, his political advisers and Muqtada himself. This was a statement made by his leading parliamentarian. It didn’t come from his mouth himself. So he can use this as very convenient leverage this week in the leadup to the Maliki-Bush meeting, and at the last minute, he can pull away from it. And nonetheless, he still wins.
We’re not only losing Iraq militarily and politically, but more significantly, we’re losing the larger war on terrorism in the ground on Iraq. The New York Times has obtained a classified government report completed in June on the financing of the insurgency, and the conclusions are grim:
The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many of the insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says that $25 million to $100 million of the total comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials….
The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take measures the report says will be necessary to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.
“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”
The situation is too far gone for a positive ending in Iraq itself, but it might not be too late to find a way to at least stop the flow of money to the insurgency, or out of Iraq to other terrorist groups. This war has not made us safer, and saying so doesn’t embolden the terrorists. It would seem the primary thing that has emboldened the terrorists–and strengthened their hand–since 9/11 has been the disastrous incomptenence and adventurism of the Bush administration.
November 25th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
The way the report lumps terrorists and insurgents together underscores the evident lack of intel. Let’s hope the conventional wisdom is right and the true Al Qaeda types are a tiny minority among the Sunni fighters, because Iraqi insurgents just want control of their own country– including as much oil as they can get their hands on. Despite all we have done to them, most Iraqis just want an end to occupation and don’t share the worldwide terrorist agenda.
November 25th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
hey richard: you have bought the roger ailes/fox news brain chip implant if you believe that any of the irakis are terrorists. True al queda types, good grief. F— you are stupid.
That is like saying that arizonans who come to montana to fight a foreign occupation army are “foreign fighters” and “terrorists” because the foreign occupation army says only montanans are allowed to fight. fu.
usa are the terrorists. usa are the foreign fighters. u are full of sh–.
long live mullah o.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:35 am
“Despite all we have done to them…” I believe it would only be realistic to expect a large bump in the number of Iraqi’s who, for loss of limb, family member, friend, infrastructure, lingering presence of Depleted Uranium and a host of other ails brought on by our nations leaders, (and by relationship, by ourselves), who will share no favor towards the occupiers and thier sponsors. This is an understatement. Put yourself in thier shoes. Whether any of them hop on the worldwide terrorist train and continue the struggle, is not really in doubt. The question might be, ‘What can we, as citizens of the U.S., do to mitigate this ramification?’
November 26th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Al Qaeda was created out of whole cloth by the ISI(Pakistani intelligence agency) if it exists at all anymore, with American money and sanction (Dollars for Terror, Jacques Lefevbre, 1992), as is the Muslim Brotherhood(utilising Saudi money, and the wiles of Prince Turki, Saudi ambassador and Intelligence chief of the Saudi Empire, our guy).
The ISI was created by us, after the murder of an uncooperative General Zia(blew his plane up)and the institution of the more pragmatic, but similarly defiant(these days) General Mushareff.
Empires need enemies to continue pillaging, and to keep their own people in the dark. It’s why I call Al Qaeda, Al CIA DUH. Osama is a CIA asset, at least he was until he went “bad” and our “intelligence” never knew until he TOLD them he was their enemy. The soviets let the military industrial complex down, so it had to make a new enemy and sell it to us. The towers sealed the deal. Here dumb bunnies, here.
16 of 19 hijackers named in the official 911 conspiracy theory came from Saudi Arabia, think Turki didn’t know?, and in turn think some of our own people didn’t? The put options on american airlines and united before the event, at least show that SOMEBODY KNEW!!!
Talk about not knowing what’s up, it is why there is no exit for us that is visible. Those who are our true(uh, they are domestic) enemies led us exactly where we are now, it was purposeful. There is not now, nor was there ever, anything to gain for the American people. the current attempted larceny is a bush private matter. Simple *coon trap. To escape death dumb animals, let go of the coin and escape the bludgeoning hunter.
The Iraqi people forgive, forget, would you? Worry about your own toxification from depleted uranium(worldwide lung cancer rates up 6 fold in the last 10 years, and millions have quit somking). DU is now rounding the world, on the wind. 11,000 1st gulf War soldiers are dead. Some 220,000 of the 540,000 troops are on permanent disability. 300 were killed outright in the war. Something is up, the Europeans know it already, we dumb bunnies hope the dems will make everything alright. 3 weeks in and the shiite is hitting the fan over there. Arabs know weakness when they smell it, as went Rome in Parthia, so shall America also go.
*trap(box)with a hole that will allow a coon the ability to stick his hand in grab the shiny coin the hunter has placed there within, he cannot hold the coin and remove his hand, and for some freak of nature reason ,we as a public are becoming sadly familiar with, when the hunter returns the coon cannot let go the coin due to stupidity, and the hunter quickly and mercifully bashes his head in. Really works.
November 26th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Cliff wrote:
We’re not only losing Iraq militarily and politically, but more significantly, we’re losing the larger war on terrorism in the ground on Iraq.
Sorry, but I think this statement mischaracterizes what is and has happened in Iraq. There was never any chance, after the initial invasion, of winning Iraq militarily. We had already won militarily and in its aftermath the only available avenue for success was in the political arena - any perceived military success would most likely be overshadowed by political defeat, and political success is the only thing that counts.
I think this is an important distinction, because it illustrates the pompous and vain attitudes that led us to believe we could build Iraq in whatever image we wanted.
We have failed in Iraq politically, and this made our previous military victory (in March 2003) worthless. We squandered what support we had from the Iraqi people in the first months of the occupation, and with that support went any legitimacy a U.S.-supported Iraqi government could have. We failed to draw in politically the Sunni insurgency, which soon swept up the Shi’a in the low intensity civil war we now have - one that looks like it will soon tear the country apart.
This is the best reason for the withdrawal of most, if not all, our troops from any combat operations. The conflict in Iraq has risen up around them and is now out of their reach in a sphere which really only includes the Iraqi people. The American military has absolutely zero influence over the Iraqi people and therefore has zero power to influence the war in any postive sense.