Posted on 12/04/2005 2:44:57 PM PST by Jean S
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Iraq is holding talks with Iraqi nationalist insurgents and the Sunnis they represent, Time magazine reported on Sunday.
Time quoted U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as saying "We will intensify the engagement, interaction and discussion with them." He said reaching out to Sunnis regarding their "legitimate concerns" makes sense because of rifts between the nationalist and al Qaeda camps in the insurgency.
Asked about the report on CNN's "Late Edition," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said U.S. officials are "not going to have contact with people who have blood on their hands." But he said the officials have had contacts with Sunni groups for some time.
Hadley said the ambassador was trying to convince Sunnis that democratization will succeed and that "the Sunnis have a place in a democratic Iraq and they need to step forward now, to take that place by participating in the elections."
Hadley said Khalilzad is also authorized to have "very low level" talks with Iranian officials in Baghdad "for the very limited purpose of making clear to the Iranians that we are seeing Iranian equipment and technology showing up, in Iraq, in the hands of people that are attacking the coalition, and that this is unacceptable." He is not dealing with the full range of U.S.-Iranian issues, Hadley said.
Why "cut and run" when we can surrender?
Asked about the report on CNN's "Late Edition," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said U.S. officials are "not going to have contact with people who have blood on their hands." But he said the officials have had contacts with Sunni groups for some time.
Biography of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad
United States Ambassador to Iraq
United States Ambassador to Iraq, Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad
Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad was nominated Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Iraq by President Bush on April 5, 2005. Dr. Khalilzad was sworn in on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 in Baghdad and presented his credentials to President Talabani the same day.
Dr. Khalilzad served as Ambassador to Afghanistan from November 2003 to June 2005, during which time he continued as the Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan. For his service in Afghanistan Secretary Rumsfeld awarded Dr. Khalilzad the Defense Department medal for outstanding public service. President Karzai award him the King Ghazi Ammanullah Medal, Afghanistan’s highest medal. Earlier he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Islamic Outreach and Southwest Asia Initiatives at the National Security Council. Prior to that, Dr. Khalilzad was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Southwest Asia, Near East, and North African Affairs at the National Security Council. He was also a Special Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large for the Free Iraqis. Dr. Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Department of Defense and has been a Counselor to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
Between 1993 and 1999, Dr. Khalilzad was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for RAND's Project Air Force. While with RAND, he founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Between 1991 and 1992, Dr. Khalilzad served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. Secretary Cheney awarded Dr. Khalilzad's the Department of Defense medal for outstanding public service. He also served as a senior political scientist at RAND and an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego in 1989 and 1991. From 1985 to 1989 at the Department of State, Dr. Khalilzad served as Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs working policy issues, advising on the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. From 1979 to 1986, Dr. Khalilzad was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
Dr. Khalilzad received his bachelor's and master's degree from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Khalilzad is the author of more than 200 books, articles, studies and reports. His work has been translated in many languages including Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese and Turkish. He is married and has two sons.
It used to be that we only met with the enemy to discuss issues after we beat them. Now we're bargaining away every advantage we have to appease our attackers.
This idiocy has gotta stop.
"War is politics by other means" - Clausewitch
"Taking a state whole is superior.
Destroying it is inferior to this.
Taking an army whole is superior.
Destroying it is inferior to this.
Therefore, one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful.
Subduing the other´s military without battle is the most skillful." - Sun Tzu
Ask every succesful Captain and every great strategist - what is the best way to win a fight?
By not fighting it.
Napolean commented that he often "marched his way to victory".
If you can win the war - that is end the insurgency and establish a democratic state - by peaceful means, then you've won the war. And it also means you've won the war with less casualties than anyother way.
This is one part of the US Grand Strategy in Iraq as laid out in that paper published on Wednesday.
Makes perfectly good sense to me and I hope there is a possibility of turning Iraqi nationalists against Al Qaeda.
That's what we do when the other side decides to give up. Then we tell them what the terms are.
And Sun Tzu dealt with an irrational force like the Islamofascists when precisely?
"If you're not with us, you're against us... unless you're really against us, then you're with us, at least for meetings, unless you didn't wear a mask when sawing off an Americans head, as that might posslibly be a disqualification...at least for now"
I agree. They have to live there, not us. If Iraqi Sunnis want to talk about how things are going to be in the long-term, we should talk to them. Wars can come to an end in a lot of ways. Victory comes in a lot of forms.
If we can turn some of them against our true enemies which are Al Qaeda (and other internationalist Muslims) and Iran, then it has to be a plus for the war. I don't know enough about all the tribes there to say that they are all barbarians, but suppose they are? If that is the case there is no hope for the war without dealing with Iraq as it is given the political realitiy that we do not have the will to occupy Iraq in the same way we occupied Japan. If we were willing to actually fight this as total war (and I wouldn't be against that) then we could impose our will on all of Iraq rather than dealing with Iraq as it is instead of as we wish they were.
Exploiting a rift in the enemy's ranks makes perfect sense to me. We'd be idiots NOT to.
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