Why we can’t leave Iraq

Filed in National by Donviti on January 31, 2008

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jason330 says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:05 am

Didn’t you watch the debate last night? Iraq is a beacon of freedom in the middle east. AQ is on the run. The surge worked.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:22 am

The caption should be- “Why we have to leave Iraq.”
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:26 am

So — are we looking at the NRO or the FSP bootcamp here?
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:27 am

If you have ever been to the first week of U.S. basic training you’d find the same thing.

Once some of our guys get rid of blue hair, earrings, extra pounds and put their skateboards down, it usually takes a few weeks to get them in synch.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:28 am

Difference between us and you –

we see the need to train them so we can leave and they can fend for themselves against Iran

You say Fuck em…let em die
liberalgeek says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:32 am

Actually, JF, there were plenty of trained soldiers in Iraq when we invaded. We told them we weren’t interested in having them back. I think Bush’s actual quote was “Fuck ’em…Let ’em die” and then he gave a little smirk.
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:34 am

You say Fuck em…let em die

Bullshit. Although I will acknowledge that it does make you feel better.

We’ve been training these guys for two or three times the duration that it takes us to train up and entry level serviceman or police officer. We’ve been arming these guys (altho not as well as they would like). We’ve been backing up these guys for how long now? Just when do they get to step up? There have been multiple training efforts and how many are ready?

Please. They have to do this work themselves, we cannot afford to do it for them forever.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:39 am

Cassandra

You obviously have no concept of training. You have no concept of military integration and unit cohesiveness, equipment and operational requirements and on and on.

Our biggest failure was to not allow the Saddam’s army to reconstitute under the new government, by labeling the leadership outlaws, we messed up. that’s the past.

You have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to standing up a brand new army.
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:40 am

You say Fuck em…let em die

that’s pretty funny Giovanna. I think your party has that line copywritten
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:40 am

Geek

you’re right.

So now what?
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:50 am

giovanni

I don’t think you can say with a straight face that what we have done in Iraq proves that we have a concept of training either
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:54 am

DV – I can say with a straight face “it takes years” to train a new military from scratch
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:00 am

so then you can say with a straight face we were lied too
Pandora says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:01 am

“That’s the past” JF

I am so sick of hearing this lame excuse.

We shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. Forget about it. That’s the past.

We should have reconstituted Saddam’s army. Forget that too. It’s in the the past.

We should have counted the votes in Florida eight years ago. Geez, get over it. It’s in the past.

Consult FISA on wire tapping? Haliburton? National Guard service? Who shaped our energy policy? Scooter Libby?

For republicans it’s always in the past, move on, get over yourselves, and it’s NOW that counts.
As in: What are “we” going to do about it NOW.

Oops… unless they’re talking about Bill Clinton’s sex life. Then it’s all about the past.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:07 am

Let’s understand what needs to be accomplished here. I have below material that should provide guidance on when we should leave if we truly care about the Iraqi people. This is based in a state after one has already engaged in war.

Military Strategist John Boyd, in his “Patterns of Conflict,” argues that every individual or every collective human institution lives within a hierarchy of three existence conditions. These conditions also serve as what he calls “War Aims.”

1. Increase Capacity for Independent Action
– Develop and advance
– Stable and best case
2. Survive on Own Terms
– Preserve status quo welfare, freedom, security
– Marginally stable
3. Survive
– Exist with diminished satisfaction and freedom
– Unstable

Observe that these three states are three different degrees of freedom of action.
– Number 1 is the most desirable state and describes a healthy and growing nation.
– Number 2 describes the minimum state at which national security can be said to be preserved.
– Number 3 describes a diminished state of restricted existence.
– Obviously there is a fourth state–extinction.

I don’t want to leave the Iraqi people with option three. That’s what would happen if you left tomorrow.
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:09 am

You obviously have no concept of training.

I DO have a concept as to what training progress looks like and even a new army can stand up some real units after, what, 5 years? Standing up a real army should not require a blank check from us and nor should it require as many do-overs as we have done. Our Army certainly is more efficient than that AND they are attempting to pass it on. Heck our police departments are more efficient at training and deployments than that. And THEY have to do it with definitively limited budgets and (oh no!) timelines and accountability for all of that.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:15 am

Cassandra

Do me a favor and ride up 95 and ask the folks at Fort Dix if the training schedule might be altered if they were getting rained on with mortars, lost 10 troops to a road side bomb a couple of weeks ago that they just signed up or had the training commander murdered by insurgents this morning over breakfast.

I don’t want to be adversarial, but please…
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:15 am

if we truly care about the Iraqi people

let me finish that thought for you a little better if I may….

We wouldn’t be killing them
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:17 am

DV, is this going to come full circle?

If you’re suggesting we kill Iraqis on purpose….well you…actually, let me give you a chance to clarify yourself
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:27 am

I’m working with guys in green suits (and some of them with alot of stars on their shoulders) every day and have for most of my career.

There is a training mission and a defensive mission in Iraq and these two intersect at about the point it would for American Army recruits or police recruits. Their “real world” is particularly brutal, nonetheless, that does not abrograte the need for the Iraqis themselves to show some real progress (after 5 years of training) towards stepping up on their own.

Perhaps it is you who ought to seek out some of the trainers at Ft. Dix or where ever to tell you why it is that no one wants to fix a number of troops and police who are ready to operate on their own.
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:28 am

gee John are you implying that the us military doesn’t have an unwritten rule that we are willing to have X number of civilian casualties based on the level of the target we are trying to take out?
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:32 am

Cassandra

There is huge progress. You talk as if Iraq is a town not a Country. There are Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic issues that have to all be addressed.

Our mission addresses all of these with limited resources outside of the military support, thus it will take much longer.

No offense, but I’m not having this conversation with you, my experience is on another plateau, and I don’t have time.

I would like to inform, but you obviously have a predisposition and will only say “why not”.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:34 am

“gee John are you implying that the us military doesn’t have an unwritten rule that we are willing to have X number of civilian casualties based on the level of the target we are trying to take out?”

Not at all. It is called collateral damage and is part of the approved ROE depending on the level of target.

We don’t target civilians DV period! We target terrorist. Don’t go there.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:51 am

Hi John,

Let me try to translate your ideas of collateral damage and “the approved ROE target level” into why I am voting for John McCain…

I am voting for McCain because he will abolish political parties and make it much more difficult for citizens and special interest groups to interfere with the important work of Congress by constantly interrupting their duty to defend our nation with petty, divisive elections. This is war time. People need to put their needs aside and think of the greater good.

I’m also voting for McCain because I think he would probably be the most likely to use nuclear weapons on large numbers of people in places no one cares about. Given our education system, no one can find these places on a map so they might as well not exist anyway. But John McCain, he has maps. (So who cares?)

He would probably be more likely to invade oil-rich states like Iraq than our current president is. Quite frankly, I don’t think casualty
rates in Iraq are high enough. This is a sign of weakness on the part of the current administration.

I trust that John McCain has the experience and leadership abilities to bring home many more flag draped caskets. I support the troops. Don’t you? The only way to really live is to die for the glory of the state.

In this sense, war is peace. Isn’t that what we all want? Peace! The clearest path to it I believe is genocide on a massive scale. Like my grandmother used to say when I was a boy, “Utopia is just one more pile of emaciated bodies away.” War is what gives this nation cohesion and meaning. And I want more of it.

Its the only way. There are no other choices.

I think, over time, he would come around to using what I call enhanced interrogation techniques on enemies foreign and domestic– which others incorrectly call torture. I mean, what’s the difference between getting your penis caught in your zipper and having a car battery have its electrical current transferred to your testicles for 5 or 10 minutes at a time? I know he has been a luke-warm supporter of these techniques, give his history, but he’s got a glint in his eye that just tells me that when push comes to shove, he’d make Jack Bauer look like a Girl Scout.

I can probably think of many other reasons to support John McCain. And if I could summarize it all, I’d say that the most important thing about him is that he recognizes that we live in a post-911 world where antiquated notions of the rule-of-law, separation of powers, due process, and so-called “civil rights” will be placed where they need to be given security concerns in the 21st century — the dustbin of history. We need more military expenditures and less of that pesky social spending so that we can cut the corporate tax rates.

If you like big government conservatism, accelerated Bush policies backed by more brains, and better public relations supported by a broader base of government control of the media and restriction on the movement and activity of liberals, democrats and hell anyone who does not agree with you in whole, then John McCain is your guy!

Vote for peace!

Vote for John McCain!

The funny thing is that all these arguments were used in every war since Korea. So let’s all vote for peace in the warfare state and send our kids to the grinder. Some would say national suicide, I would say it is the right thing to do.
disbelief says:

January 31, 2008 at 11:59 am

I love these guys who did 8 weeks of basic training and then think they’re Clausewitz.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:02 pm

“Let me try to translate your ideas of collateral damage and “the approved ROE target level” into why I am voting for John McCain…”

What’s that have to do with John McCain? Establishing ROE is necessary regardless of who is in charge.

As far as the remainder of your post, it should be for someone else. He’s not my first choice.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:03 pm

“I love these guys who did 8 weeks of basic training and then think they’re Clausewitz.”

can you clarify these guys?
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:04 pm

No offense, but I’m not having this conversation with you, my experience is on another plateau, and I don’t have time.

Awesome! Way to concede that you can’t defend it.

We are talking about standing up an organization and no matter the bobbing and weaving, progress ought to be more evident after 5 or more years that we have now. And pouring money and blood into a situation where the citizens themselves are not as motivated as our own guys are to take care of their own country is a losing proposition.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:16 pm

“Difference between us and you –

we see the need to train them so we can leave and they can fend for themselves against Iran

You say Fuck em…let em die”

John, Again these Vietnam era agruments are falling on my deaf ears. OBL and AQ said “we want them to come to our land so they can die on our sand” it is part of an old war strategy called “bleed-them-to-bankruptcy” it has been used effectively in Asian warfare for oh, 2,000 years. If you had me as a military advisor- first we would not be in a psoition where this is necessary and second, we would have won already and our kids would be home. Because 99% of the American people would be behind the war and involved in it in one way or another. So wars could be of short duration and would not become these amorphous conflcits fought under the UN rather than under the power of our congress.

John we won world war II in 3 years. We removed Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini and we had sabetouers and terrorists then that the FBI was responsible for. We also made mistakes. But when it was over, it was over. Then we introdcued the Marshall Plan. You cannot reach the level of “over,” in any meaningful sense until begin to draw down and give people the chance to take responsiblity for themselves. The longer we stay the more likely it is attacks will increase in the region.

In North Korea we never effectively understood this principle and instead created a two state solution mandated by the UN. At the 38th parallel in the same place Japan had established it before.

In Vietnam we failed to understand that the possibility of taking over the role the French had palyed was basically one of constant warfare for about 15 years.

We should mind our own business. We do not need to try to save the world. We are a country, we are not supermen. Every country that overextends itself gets in trouble. This is a fact of history, you can look at Britain, you can look at every European country that has done this, the justifications they used and the fears they played on and it isthe same. I can’t even say it is similar, becuase it is not, it is the same. And again it goes back to our current use of Military Keynesism in the hope that things will work out for us when they did not work out for other countries like the USSR or Britain.

John, I am not disparging you, I get cynical, but in matters as important as the life and death of people; I take a very storng stand. I think there are better ways to handle countries we disagree with, there are economic ways, there are trade restrictions there is diplomacy. No we can do all of that. War is only the last resort, and to wage it effectively it must be declared by congress and mandated by the people. You can look at the 1998 Iraq Liberation “regime change” resolution. And see that dominance in warfare was a goal from 1998 until 2003, why not use the same strategy that China is using on us- control production of goods, transport routes and encourage the growth of businesses.

It is a sad and painful fact that no matter how much we want stability the world over, we cannot create Utopia. The consequences of Utopian thinking are always the source of tragedy and we should examine them closely.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Norman Podhorertz argued that we would create a “beacon of democracy in a short time for about 3 billion dollars- this was in 2003. Americans bought into that. We like the idea of building nations into mirror images of ourselves. But think about it for a minute. It is like using manifest destiny to take the extreme positon that our government needs to control not only our lives from birth to death but the lives of citizens of other states as well at the point of a gun or beneath a wall of bombs. The worst tyranny in the world is one in which no evil occurs becuase the evildoers are ebing wiped out daily. These utopian ideas that we are the best and everyone else is the worst are the ideas of Trotsky and Stalin, they are not the ideas of Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison, Aaron Burr, George Washington. We are no better or worse than anybody else. We are what we are, they are what they are.

You know when we faced down the Turks and Barbary Pirates it was a horrible terroristic war. We won, becuase we fought them in the same horrible terroristic way. When the Britsh later came and burned down the White house and attackedour nation we won, becuase we fought against them as “terrorists.” It says so in their newspapers.

Please take a minute to think about this. Expediency is not as important as erudition in waging war. There are times when expediency is needed and there are times when caution is the best course of action. It is between them one develops a wise war strategy.

And whoever brought up Clausowitz, he did not live during the age of nuclear weapons or the potential for such horrendous fighting. Either way Clausowitz would have probably taken a postion closer to the one I am advocating in terms of strategy and one like John’s in terms of tactics. And that is the fundemental point to distinguish between, a strategy is not what we have been discussing, we have been discussing tactics. A surge is a tactic as much as Wolf Blitzer would like to make you think it is part of a war strategy.
John.feroce says:

January 31, 2008 at 12:52 pm

“John we won world war II in 3 years. We removed Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini and we had sabetouers and terrorists then that the FBI was responsible for.”

Brian, they were standing armies defeated in conventional warfare resulting ultimately in surrender. More importantly they transitioned according to terms.

The Muslim extremists we fight today bear little resemblance.

I’d be glad to engage some more in the next 24, but I have to get back to work.

and Cassandra, don’t flatter yourself, I haven’t conceded anything to you.

My strategic, operational and tactical experience in THIS war is unparalleled.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 1:08 pm

“1. Increase Capacity for Independent Action
– Develop and advance
– Stable and best case
2. Survive on Own Terms
– Preserve status quo welfare, freedom, security
– Marginally stable
3. Survive
– Exist with diminished satisfaction and freedom
– Unstable”

I guess we fall into category 2 or 3. Becuase the root of all capacity for warfare is a constant currency. When the currency becomes unstable you always, always see the same laws used against the people. The eyes that used to turn outward for enemies turn inward and you become the people whose freedom is dimished as a response. This has been around as long as warfare.

Socrates was killed for this kind of thinking. No, we come from a traditon of critical thinking about matters of life and death both for oursleves and for future generations. We have a strog tradition of fighting short wars and winning with a popular mandate, and a relatively poor track record when we do not do this.

I keep thinking of countries like Panama. It was virutally impossible that we would not beat Panama and subdue them in any incursion. But it meant for the region we would have a rise in socialism and general dislike for North American leading to restrictions our ability to travel in and to this countries and do business with them.

One day, I suspect, the fear is if we leave Iraq will be the same as South America. Or the other option would be we continue fighting with everyone and dominate the world. But who is that going to help? How will we find a reasonable way to live in harmony with anyone else if we begin down this track? We cannot. That is serious trouble both for those of us at home and those of us abroad, military or non-military. These concept sof honor and pride all come from Thucydides Peloponnesian War; and as I remeber that one did not go to well for the Athenians. The other historian Herodotus had a signifcantly different poitn of view- he reasoned war always equals the control of resources. Be they women or grain or wine or slaves. He was not at all cautious about the mechanism that cuase war the way we are. In the popular imagination it is men who cause wars so Gulf War I was Bush v. Saddam, and Gulf War II was Bush v. Saddam 2. But in reality it is policy decisions that create the climate of war when demands and returns are in inverse proportion balanced with risk.

That being said, our government was not really designed to do that. Our nation was born as a reaction to that. All of our historial traditions argue against that, and we should be aware of that no matter what we choose to do.
Von Cracker says:

January 31, 2008 at 1:08 pm

The real reason we can’t leave Iraq?

We haven’t received our proper $return$ on our investment.

There is no other reason…and if you think there is another legitimate one, you’re done, fin, sucked in on memes that are a complete farce.

The G(OP)reat Train Robbery will continue as long Bu$hCo and their corporate leaches are in power (Our elites (hillbilly or otherwise) actually believed what was in the Treasury was belonged to them in the first place, and it took Bu$hCo no time at all to give it back….tax cuts, de-regulation, no-bids, and corporate welfare)

They use terms like Freedom, Patriot, Hero and Democracy as cover for acts such as stealing, no-bid, permanent bases, securitization of pipelines, and murder.
donviti says:

January 31, 2008 at 1:26 pm

how is collataral damage not justified murder Giovanni?
cassandra m says:

January 31, 2008 at 1:35 pm

My strategic, operational and tactical experience in THIS war is unparalleled.

So you say.

However, your ability to assess the formational progress of an organization is clearly grounded in the experience of transmitting today’s talking points.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 1:36 pm

John,

Unrestricted Warfare is the policy of today. That means anything and anyone is a target. But to think this has never happened before or that warfare was limited during the American Revolution is revisionism. The British when they came here burned our homes raped our women, attacked our ships, sloops and marinas. They bombarded out villages. it was not all that standing in line shit you see on TV. That was the conventional part, but the unconventioal part involved sending patients with TB and Smallpox into Boston, guerrila like raids up and down the coast. Burning towns. trying to attack Lewes. Occupying Trenton.

1812 was worse. Andy Jackson fought like Che Guevara on steriods in that one. But once congress declared it and the people got their mandate there was really no question about the outcome. In fact we have never, ever lost a congressionally declared war. Ever. Think about it.

Terrosim is a tactic of war that has been around for over 6000 documentable years. If you do not create the conditions where peace can be generated and equitable you cannot create the conditions where people will not want to take up arms against real or perceived violence. Never. Not now not ever.

And please do not give me the military issue lecture, becuase I know it by heart. And I know unconventional warfare from 1776-2008. I have studied and seen it and watched its operation from the Time that Mao sent us a letter saying “my guns and butter will beat your atomic weapons” to when our soliders were stuck with my Granddad on a shit hole Island in the pacific. The war of the Japanese was the most horrible crap in the world and I have pictures to prove it. To today. Every single generation of my family have studied this stuff. So that we can help this nation understand it and defend against it.

My point is, if we do not change policy on how, when and why we go to war and the way we do it the only conclusion we can draw is that it will continue indefinately. Which means our money will be eroded and we are going to be up against a wall with politcal and economic polices that prohibit expasion and foreign policies that encourage stagnation and new hostility at best, and warfare raning from limited to global.

The lesson they are not teaching you guys and they should get you to do so is to say “You cannot sit on people’s head and expect them to love you for it, and you cannot sit on your own bayonet and expect to win anything other than stiches.” Think about that. That means that war even in liberation or preemptive war, we should understand clearly their origin. They did not originate with Hitler as Eisenhower said, they orignated long before that. In the 20th century that was the policy that made them possible. Military Keynesian economic policies always cause this. It is an invisible law of economics. Check it out on Wikipedia and you will see what I am talking about. It is important to understand.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 2:35 pm

John, it is also important to point out that in the scales of classical politcal economy the transition moves like this: From Monarchy or Polyarchy to Oligarchy to Republic (very rarely) to Democracy to Anarchy to Monarchy or Polyarchy. To prevent us from moving away from Republic, we have to clearly understand our laws and history. It is crucial.

Unless we have out grown being a Republic and in that case we better make the necessary changes to ensure a peaceful transition to monarchy or polyarchy and stop pretending we are a republic- it confuses people to do so and makes it harder to get used to.

But we are also in a bind. We cannot be the defenders of freedom around the world if we are something other than what we were meant to be. But right now we are on that scale appraoching one and moving away from the other. In fact you can say the scale is inverted. In a post 9-11 world we are rapidly approaching polyarchy or monarchy having moved through the “democracy” of the 1980’s to Clinton Years.

I would appreciate it if you guys would decide- will be an imperial democracy? Well look at Athens and we know the future of how we end up. If we are going to be a “new” Roman empire, let’s start disabusing oursleves of the idea that we are a Republican Democracy. But also know, whatever we decide on there is a cost and you guys have to be willing to pay and force your kids and others around the world to pay it too.

Republics only, only last in conditions that are not like this. Madison laid it out, “Constant wars are the end of republics.” Rome lasted as a republic for 500 years. We have to ask if we are sure we want to go after that kind of power now, what the consequences could likely be, and demolish the old government before we undertake that enterprise. Otherwise people will not be on a level playing field and will never understand why our government, our republic, is doing what it is doing and why the things people enjoyed in it were so important in the history of the world and the past.

At least if we do that we can be honest with ourselves, take the focus off of each other, stop the schizophrenic break and turn it all outward to attack everyone else and annouce who our king or kings and aristocracy are. And as a result become something like the Byzantine empire rather than Western Rome (which never made up its mind on this issue preseved its senate and made its emporer’s heriditary or bought for by the army, and debased their currency too much, got paluge, got a demograhpic shift for work by the Germans and Guals and collapsed into feudalism).

So questions arise, if this is the kind of state we get, is it the kind we want? And if that question is irrelavent, may I please go to the Faulkland Islands or back to England or Scotland becuase we imigrated here so we did not have to live with restrictions on our faith, on our speech, on our livelihoods, on our thinking, on our domestic lives- as chartered by William Penn in the 1600’s and later ratified in law by Tom McKean in 1782?

Then for me the question arises if the land of the free decides these ideas are irrellevent, where can I pack up my family and go?

Equal slavery is not a good thing. But I will accept it if I can leave it for some remote place and have peace. I would choose exile and a more quiet and harder life and would ask the King’s permission to find it.
liz allen says:

January 31, 2008 at 7:21 pm

The idiot son’s father claimed Iraq has the 5th most powerful military force in the world!

The idiot son wants to make the Iraqis sign a pact that will keep us there “stealing the oil” for decades!

The surge was supposed to give the Iraqi government time to train their “untrainables” so we could leave! I guess the brain drain of those who left Iraq, left the country with “uneducated” shia, and reluctant but well armed Sunnis…thanks Georgie. Its the occupation, the endless bombings even today…but with election on 24/7, who have to go overseas to get the real news…Iraqis will never give up their soverigntry to any empire, never have, never will…Get out and let them have the government they want, not the one imposed on them by the modern day pirates.
Brian says:

January 31, 2008 at 10:32 pm

“I guess the brain drain of those who left Iraq, left the country with “uneducated” shia, and reluctant but well armed Sunnis…”

Liz- one could reasonably argue that continuing the war will eventually do the same thing in America.

Why we can’t leave Iraq

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