When the same people who were part of the silly-minded move to “stop Dean” advocate some sort of mythical sticking it out so our soldiers can keep getting killed strategy (”like the Republicans, only slightly less dumb”), it may be time for us to do the right thing.
RELATED:
The Gut Primary: Dec. 31, 2006
We are in too deep to leave right now. Awol George has created such a mess there that we can’t leave until the newly trained Iraqi army is ready to defend their country. That means that we do not have enough troops to invade Iran, Syria, and send additional troops to Afghanistan to tack down Bin Laden and root out all the terrorists. We need additional troops here in this country to protect our borders and cities. How do we do that? Either bring back the military draft or pay $50,000 bonuses to enlistees who last more than the first year.
I think what Kevin Drum was requesting was a serious look at how we can best address the issue of withdrawal. I doubt he was hoping to get a bunch of nonsense.
I’ve actually come full circle on this….
While I initially thought this war was a terrible idea, I now think it’s imperative that the US stay in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein did have a weapon of mass destruction, but it wasn’t nuclear, chemical, or biological. Saddam’s WMD was his oil supply.
The world oil supply is razor thin. In the past, the oil market did not obey the normal laws of supply and demand because the price was largely fixed by Saudi Arabia. If anyone threatened the US or world oil supply, either intentionally or accidentally, Saudi Arabia could just open the spigot, and make up any shortfall. Also, if anyone didn’t comply with Saudi Arabia’s wishes on the fixed price of oil, the Saudi Arabia could just really open the spigot and crash the price of crude. In recent history, Saudi Arabia has successfully used both of these tactics.
Saudi Arabia now lacks the ability to increase capacity to hold down the price of oil. As a result, as demand increases, and supply at best stays flat, any country that is a major oil producer will be able to shock the world oil market by cutting supply. Within a few years, the price of oil will pass even historical inflation adjusted peaks. When oil is trading at $90 per barrel during a summer driving season, do you really want Saddam’s hand on the valve?
I don’t. And I also do not want some Iraqi warlord controlling that valve either. A stable supply of oil from Iraq, and other nations, will be critical to a functioning world economy, as there are no quick alternatives for the amount of energy that oil provides. The fact that 2/3s of the worlds oil is under the feet of populations that hate us should make us stop and think. Those populations are not going to suddenly forgive and forget if we pull out of Iraq. Decades of anti-arab foreign policy has dug a hole that we won’t soon climb out of. These populations will gleefully bring us to our knees, and extract their ton of SUV from each of us.
That China is rapidly acquiring rights to vast quantities of oil should also concern us. An energy strapped future doesn’t bode well for a country like ours that isn’t used to moving pianos with bicycles.
We have to stay. If our unlikely goals for peace and democracy ultimately fail, then we have to pull back and just secure the oil fields. It’s really come down to that. In the end, this isn’t Gulf War II, it’s Oil War I.
Essentially, we’re screwed, and trying to undo what we’ve done will only make it worse. Unfortunately, we do have to see this through, or implode trying.
The accepted theme from most of the leading democrats including Biden, Kerry and Clinton, agree that we must stay the course come hell or high water. However it just may be that we are doing more harm than good by staying. Removing the US occupation forces which now have to protect the current government from being attacked would eventualy remove the foreign image off of the government which will be solely accountable to the people of Iraq. And just like here only the people who participate in the elections will have a say in what their government will look like. Only when Iraqis are forced to realize that their future is their responsibility will democracy ever have a chance of success.
Its always possible that a civil war will occur after occupation forces leave. But an honest examination off the wide differences between the Sunnis, Shiite and Kurds, makes one wonder if staying longer would make a difference or just delay the outcome and worse result in more and more American casualities.
This is idea is being portrayed as “cut and run” but why not at least take a serious look at what just may be the best choice?
“Essentially, we re screwed, and trying to undo what we ve done will only make it worse. Unfortunately, we do have to see this through, or implode trying.”
While I see your point, it somehow begs asking the questions:
How many barrels of oil are worth one American sodlier?
How many gallons of cheaper (not cheap) gas are worth one American soldier?
We have got to step up and solve our energy problem ourselves. As long as we are held hostage to another country for most of all our oil supply, be it Saudi Arabia, Iraq or anywhere else, the less safer we will be. That’s because we will be using the majority our military forces trying to keep the supply open instead of pursuing those who would try to attack us.
Why not do what we should have started long ago before its too late – develop alternative resources and higher effeciency vehicles. It can be done, just get the politicians the hell out of the way.
the bad guys immediately set their clock radios to wake up right after we leave
This old chestnut belongs with ‘compassionate conservatism’ on the dungheap of history.
Insurgencies–even belligerent nation-states–don’t have the luxury of waiting and biding their time in anticipation of an opposing force’s withdrawal. It’s not as if insurgents merely go on leave or R&R, waiting for the US to pull out.
The reason we need a timetable is to place some measure of oversight on this incompetent administration. Otherwise, you’re merely giving AWOL George and his buffoons a blank check to continue screwing up.
I’ve always thought we shouldn’t set a timetable to get out (the bad guys immediately set their clock radios to wake up right after we leave), but the open-endedness of this worries me. At some point, we have to establish workable criteria that let us leave, whether we believe the Iraqis are ready or not. Or to put it another way, if they can’t be trained to be ready in X number of years/months from now, they’ll never be ready and we’re getting out anyway. Problem is, we can’t openly say that.
But maybe, the Iraqis are getting better and will be able to take over – in a year or so. I hope. Its now looming as a potential albatross in the next election on the D left and R right.
Dugger
I’m confused again.
I thought these terrorist fanatics only wanted to blow up Americans. That we were fighting them there so we won’t have to fight them here. That they hate us for our freedom.
That would seem to suggest that announcing a pullout date would cause them to step up their terrorist activities, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t they want to try to “bring ‘em on” while they had the chance?
Jade,
“don t have the luxury of waiting and biding their time in anticipation of an opposing force s withdrawal.”
Weak. Of course they do. Many of them live there. People fanatical enought to commit suicide attacks are also fanatical enough to wait say 18 months, stockpiling arms while we pull out.
Dugger
If Tamil, or Jabal, or Saleem, et al. knows that the US is going to withdraw their troops at a specific point in time, why would they not sit on their hands and wait patiently for that point in time, as opposed to risking their Allah-fearing lives taking pot shots at US soldiers or Iraqi civilians? Is that such a difficult concept to get your head around?!
Weak. Of course they do. Many of them live there.
Insurgencies thrive on immediate and on-going action; it’s what keeps and attracts recruits. For an insurgency leader(s) to tell his subordinates to go home and come back after a certain date is to risk having them not coming back at all.
Additionally, suicide bombers are recruited by ongoing efforts; in effect, the ’shelf life’ of a suicide bomber is very, very short. One doesn’t recruit a would-be suicide bomber to carry out an attack 18 months down the road.
Stockpiling arms is an activity which would occur regardless.
JD –
This is not a pot shot: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8797271/
The bomb flipped an amphibious assault vehicle weighing 26 tons. To refer to this kind of attack as a “potshot” is to once again refuse to face the reality of the situation. Jadegold is right. Insurgencies are like sharks, they have to keep moving or they die. Way back at the beginning of this thing it was reported that the Pentagon screened The Battle of Algiers to get a sense of what the French faced and how modern insurgencies behave. I can only imagine the brass stopped the film before the last reel. After torturing an insurgent to get the where abouts of his cell, the French bust in arrest or kill everybody and declare victory. What happens in the film’s final scenes occurs some years later, a sudden resurgence of fighting and finally a popular uprising that ultimately drives the French out. Even when the French thought they had won and all was quiet, the insurgents were moving, working, making things happen out of sight.
Insurgencies follow their own very long, very protracted timetables. That’s why modern democracies, with their high deployment overheads and weekly public opion polls, haven’t really had the best track record facing them down.
Timetable or not, the insurgents won’t stop until their defeated but how do we achieve that? Got a plan to win we haven’t heard before because the one we have now isn’t getting us anywhere near that goal. The bottom line is no American president could sustain the political or economic support for the length of time it would take to put this thing down once it got going. It was over almost from the start. All that’s left is to figure out how to get out. You don’t want to announce a timetable? Fine. But timetables, announced or otherwise, won’t matter to these guys. They’ve already killed thousands of Iraqis and US soldiers with our forces at the peak. Why would an announced withdrawal or drawdown date be incentive to stop?
I did not refer to that specific incident as a potshot, despite your assertion that I did. I give up, you moonbats are insufferable.
Oh, okay JD. So which “potshots” were you referring to? Take your pick: http://icasualties.org/oif/
Hey do you know? Some of these “potshots” come with names.
http://icasualties.org/oif/Details.aspx
Look, I am going to go out on a limb and make an assumption that you have not been in Iraq, in either the first Gulf War, the current war, Bosnia, or Afghanistan. As such, you likely have only a modicum of comprehension of what these insurgents, or cowardly terrorists, are actually like, or in the alternative, what it is like to have been in their crosshairs.
Though I am no longer over there, my two younger brothers still are. The potshots that the terrorists take at our soldiers and the Iraqi civilians are just that, potshots. They do not wear a uniform, fight for a nation state, or operate under the guise of any rules of war known to man. They take potshots (there, said it again) because they know that their tactic tend to prove to be fatal when they actually engage the target.
Go wander around the streets of Basra, and let me know when you figure out what a potshot is. Better yet, put your money where your mouth is and sign up to be a human shield.
What exactly is a potshot? And why is it so controversial for JD to refer to attacks against soldiers as potshots? It seems that potshots can be mighty lethal, even if they miss most of the time.
Obviously the insurgents are enaged in firing from hidden positions at US soldiers and civilians but the insurgency has shown an ever increasing sophistication and coordination in their attacks. Suicide bombings and shaped explosive charges such as the one that killed 14 marines not so long ago are net well described by the term “potshot.” Clearly JD is deploying the term in its pejorative sense to imply that the insurgents are cowards. That kind self-satisfied thinking is what got us into this situation in the first place. Of course, the insurgents don’t attack our soldiers directly. If they did, they’d loose. It doesn’t take a military genius to figure that out. It’s an absolute utter mistake to assume then that the insurgents are cowards and to describe what they’re doing in those terms. Better the begin with the idea that behind these “potshots” is a plan. A strategy. These guys, as savage as their attacks are, have shown an ability to evolve and adapt their tactics to the US presence. This is not what cowards do. Bush, JD and the rest of the war supporters can call the insurgents whatever the hell they want to make themselves feel good but sadly, they also seem to be shaping policy on those very same sentiments. It’s time to wise up. The insurgents have.
“why would they not sit on their hands and wait patiently for that point in time, as opposed to risking their Allah-fearing lives taking pot shots at US soldiers or Iraqi civilians? Is that such a difficult concept to get your head around?!”
Or to put it another, JDs whole point about withdrawal is based on the idea that if given a choice between attacking Americans and simply waiting for the Americans to leave the insurgents will choose waiting. Why? Because they are fundamentally cowards. Only cowards take potshots. But where JD is implying that potshots are a sign of the enemy’s fundamental weakness, potshots are actually the source of their strategic strength. How can we possibly win if we don’t even understand what it is we are fighting because of the language we use to describe it? I’m sure I have no idea how to beat the insurgency but I know a good place to start is to stop suggesting that potshots are a sign of their cowardice and weakness and to start trying to figure out and understand what were really up against.
There is nothing strategic about being a cowardly terrorist. nothing. zero. nada. zilch. It is a tactic used, and over the course of time, except to move public opinion, it has proven to be 100% ineffective in winning a war.
jadegold thinks a good place to start talking nicer about them, understand them. I call BS.
They hate us. They hate our support for Israel. Not much more you need to know.
JD, isn’t it a bit early to start drinking?
Where have I suggested ‘a good place to start talking nicer about them, understand them.’?
Terrorism is a tactic. Nothing more. It is a tactic employed by various armies for probably well over a thousand years. We’ve used it. And terrorism is a tactic that’s been employed successfully (and unsuccessfully) by insurgencies.
They hate us. They hate our support for Israel. Not much more you need to know.
Are you saying we went to war in Iraq for Israel?
Great news, gentlemen: I’m back long enough to let you know we’re winning!
This comes not from the Blogosphere or right wing MSM, but Congress.
Report to Congress Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq {a .pdf file}
Sorry, Oliver, JadeGold and Quaker…
Golly, it seems like only yesterday that I was reading long-winded explanations about how it just didn’t make any sense to think we had invaded to get the oil and blah blah blah.
And now we’re back to the ‘domino theory’- let Iraq “subside into chaos” and before you know it, the mid-east will be in flames, oil prices will rise, and the world economy will collapse.
How charming it is to see so many posters talking about the ‘white man’s burden’, and how we can’t leave until the job is finished.
Say, ”Ghost Who Walks”, I think our work here is done. Time to give the horse a big sloppy kiss and mount up on Rin Tin Tin to ride off into the sunset.
Poor Rumsfeld- what he meant to say was, “They’ll give us flowers when we leave”.
Frank_D
Nice read. Now show me statistics that demonstrate how we’re actually winning, and maybe I won’t consider this report a waste of space. It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, and much of the analysis is simple subjective reasoning. Some touching examples:
-The report shows the number of Iraq police and security trained, but also says the amount of insurgent infiltration is “unknown.”
-The report was clearly written before the Aug. 15 constitution deadline was missed.
-The number of attacks is down slightly in recent months. Great. Tell that to the families of the dead servicemen and Iraqs who’ve died this month already. I’m sure it will comfort them.
-Demand for electricity seems to far exceed output.
-Oh, and I like how unemployment in Iraq has gone UP in the last year. That should quell discontent.
If you want to make a better argument, get some better evidence.
Still don’t understand what Clinton, Biden etc. thought they were signing up to when they gave Bush carte blanche to invade Iraq. Did they think if it was a success they could bask in the glow and get some credit?
They’re bloody idiots.
Dems need leaders with better political instincts.
“How many barrels of oil are worth one American sodlier?”
A global energy (oil) shortage will be followed by a global food shortage. How many people do you want to sacrifice to starvation just so we can pull out now?
World oil supplies are razor thin. Some magical “alternative energy” is not going to swoop in and rescue us any time soon. Driving around with “war is not the answer” on the back of a Ford Expedition is living in an alternate reality that rivals that of the neo-cons. People will go bankrupt when they can’t afford to drive their guzzlers, and they won’t be able to unload them either. When the bankruptcies roll in, there goes the housing bubble.
I don’t like the idea of turning the blood of American soldiers into oil either, but a global recession or depression will result in far more loss.