Iraq: Moving the Goalposts, Again
U.S. Scales Back Political Goals in Iraq, from the New York Times:
While Bush officials once said they aimed to secure “reconciliation†among Iraq’s deeply divided religious, ethnic and sectarian groups, some officials now refer to their goal as “accommodation.â€
In a discussion yesterday on CNN’s “This Week at War,” Michael Ware in Baghdad said that American commanders now say “accommodation without reconciliation” as the best we can hope for. The main political players in Iraq “don’t have it in their interest to seek reconciliation,” says Ware. Michael Gordon, co-author of Cobra II, said that in Iraq democracy is not even mentioned anymore, we’re hoping for something the commanders call “sustainable stability.”
Meanwhile, it’s beginning to look like Moqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army are coming off their unilateral cease-fire, declared last August. The Associated Press reports that
two recent bloody car bomb attacks in Baghdad may have been the work of Shiite militiamen. Also, ten mortar rounds were fired into the Green Zone from a Shiite-controlled area on Thanksgiving Day, wounding an undisclosed number of people.
If the Mahdi Army launches more attacks, it’s probably in response to American efforts to finance Sunni insurgents. CNN’s Michael Ware now gives 72,000 as the total number of “former” insurgents under arms, although he says only 45,000 are directly on the U.S. government payroll. These guys openly tell reporters that their aim is to bring down the Shiite-led Maliki government in Baghdad. Question: if we didn’t have Americans in harm’s way, would we be paying cash to Iraqi insurgents?
Presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”: “All of this talk about casualty counts going down, that is not how you measure progress… Our troops have become targets, [they are] an impediment to reaching a political solution.”
UPDATE: Nobody remembers the benchmarks anymore. They had their day in the sun. From David Kurtz on Talking Points Memo: “The White House has gone from moving the goalposts in Iraq to just quietly taking them down altogether.”
November 25th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Moving to the Galapagos? Where are the Iguanas?
This can’t be right.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Glen, I do believe they’re dying in vain.
And, when one begins to realize that bush and crowd have consented to and actively promoted the reconfiguration of our society from a seemingly rational one where the arguments may have revolved around what to do with the ‘peace dividend’ to be realized from the demise of the other great war (cold)…all the way back to the rather unimaginative continuation of what the many hawks and Haliburton had come to rely on and do so well. (These hawks really should be given props for cruelly manipulative self promotion and setting up another real test for democracies all round the globe. Namely, they so clearly defined ‘the enemy’ of peace, freedom and the vision of those who founded this country that there is now no mistake about just who that is, who is to be dethroned and held accountable. They test our will toward peace and tackling the plethora of other demanding problems. Solutions for which this war and thier mal-focus of energies are a criminal distraction). So I say. “Good going guys, now get lost! We can no longer afford, nor do we need or want you! Good bye, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”!
November 25th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Let ass hitting the door commence apace, hear yea!,! hear yea!, ass hittin’ by door, comencin’ apace! All clear then, begin…
November 27th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Talk’s cheap. I know.