Posted on 01/18/2007 7:50:55 AM PST by jveritas
Partition doesn't solve the problem.
Kurdistan is already effectively autonomous, and largely peaceful.
The rest of Iraq is in a civil war, and Sunnis are concentrated in Baghdad as well as Anbar Province, in the West.
You could partition Anbar off (although NOBODY will accept that: the Shi'ites hate their Sunni former tormentors, and even the Kurds aren't willing to just let the Ba'athists who gassed them go. No, those people need to die.), but you can't partition Baghdad itself. That's where the death squads are, and will remain, until we firmly take one side and drive the other out.
But you needn't worry too much.
We won't do that.
The President has been given the advice I am repeating here.
He's been given it at least three times. He firmly rejects it on the same grounds you do: immorality. He thinks it's immoral to take sides and doom the Sunni Arabs to subjugation and death.
So we're not going to do it.
We're going to follow Bush's strategy to the bitter end.
The Clinton/Obama team will order the general pullout.
One other little matter. Your policy might cause a regime change in Saudi Arabia, and cause it to become a fanatical anti American state, and a host of terrorist perps. I guess we would need to send in the troops there. How large an increase are you proposing for the American army, and how will we secure the "surge" of additional bodies? Doubling or tripling the pay, or the draft, or what? The military other than the airplane and boat services, can barely meet their quotas now. Not to put too fine a point on it, it (your policy) is all quite insane. In any event, insane or not, it won't happen, so maybe getting real, do you have an opinion about the Plan B issue that I posed to jervitas, who has taken a break, apparently?
You said -- "Count me out. Your policy is immoral. I cannot support it. It is not in accord with anything that remotely resembles the rationale for America to intervene via a just war."
There is only one just war, and that's the one that you won. I'll guarantee you that the Islamists have no qualms in asserting their will over you. So, your response to them will be to say, "Well, I won't do this to you -- but you can do whatever you want to me..."
Stupid policy and guaranteed to get you another 100 years worth of fighting. The Islamists are not going to give up. They've got the oil, the countries and all the people they need to throw into this kind of war -- forever. So, you won't be getting out of this war the way you are thinking...
Regards,
Star Traveler
Bagdad or course, would become the New Jerusalem, prior to the 1967 war, in any US underwritten partition.
Sunnis dominate more than just Anbar province; I think it is at least three provinces, including those around Tikrit (sp).
We need to stand strong, support our President and our brave troops. They need our support now more than ever. We are fortunate that our President does not go by the public opinion polls but he is a true leader who does what is required to win this war.
It "might" cause a regime change in Saudi Arabia, but that would depend on the willingness of the Saudi Royal family and their detainers to die rather than fight to the death in a civil war.
Far more likely would be that Islamists within Saudi Arabia would go ballistic as the Sunni Arabs were systematically driven out of Iraq, and try to move against the government, provoking a very violent crackdown by the monarchy against the insurgents. This makes things miserable for the Saudis, but also makes it damned hard for the Saudis to sit back and use their money to export terrorism.
In any case, we have very little leverage over there now, and once our surge has wilted and the insurgency in Iraq renews, the very thing you're wondering about will come to pass. Already the Sunni Arab population in Iraq has dwindled from a pre-war 10% of the population to about 9% of the population. Sunni Arabs are leaving the country. The Shi'ites hate them and are going to fight this civil war.
The difference is that my "insane" plan (it's not just my plan, you know, I'm not just making this all up out of my hat) has the Shi'ites doing it armed and controlled by the government, which is distinctly Arabist and focused on its own position in Iraq. They would be OUR bad guys. Instead, if we do nothing and refuse to support that faction, the Iranian armed and organized Shi'ite faction will do the fighting and dirty work, and dominate the country.
Either way you get the Sunni subjugation. The difference is that if it's OUR guys doing it, you get a government that is relatively allied with us at the end. If it's not (and under our current strategy, it won't be), you get a pro-Iranian Shi'ite government. The Sunnis get creamed, in time, no matter what, and the very problem you're worried about in Saudi Arabia arises no matter which path we take.
We can anticipate it, of course, and arm the Saudi government against it.
In general, it is a stupid thing for US to be fighting these Arab civil wars. Arabs need to be fighting them. There are plenty of young Arabs itching for a fight. We choose the side we need to win and arm them so that they do.
Yes.
Kurds are Sunnis too, don't forget, which is why we get some shelter by supporting Kurds in the North and Arabist Shi'ites in the South, as opposed to supporting a blanket Shi'ite solution for the nation.
But why do I speak as though what I am saying has any hope whatever of being adopted?
What will happen is that we'll surge. Spend money and lives. The Shi'ite pro-Iranian militias will quietly stand down and await our retreat, and arm, arm, arm. There will still be killings in the provinces. And once we've spent another few hundred billion dollars or in January 2009, whichever comes first, we'll retreat. Then the Shi'ites will wipe out the Sunni Arabs, but it'll be pro-Iranian Shi'ites, and they'll attack the Kurds too, something our Arabist Iraqi Shi'ites wouldn't do if we supported and armed them.
You're right about the other provinces. The Sunni total in Iraq is about 24%, with 15% Kurdish and the other 9% Arab. The Arab Sunnis are the historical masters - and butchers - of the country. They are in diehard mode. They've also been the ones killing our boys left and right.
They'll be liquidated by the Shi'ites one way or another. If it were our Shi'ites doing the liquidating, we'd get the win. Bush won't do it.
So, it'll be Iran's Shi'ites doing it, and getting the CREDIT among the Shi'ites of Iraq. And we'll take the loss.
Pity.
No thanks.
"I won't let him take credit for it, the theme has been kicked around. I won't let him take credit for it, the theme has been kicked around."
Quite a bit more than kicked around!
Bush has explicitly rejected variants of it thrice, publicly.
He hates it.
He'd rather lose.
So we will.
Pity.
The end game has to moral at least, even if some eggs are broken in the process. Liquidating the Sunnis in Iraq is not moral, and fraught with practical consequences, negative to US interests, of which I listed just a couple. I-N-S-A-N-E.
That word "our" is the disconnect. I don't want the US sponsoring sectarian killing. Period.
Some thoughts on this thread if implemented would lead to the US becoming aking to those Orwellian pigs in Animal Farm. The shining city on the hill that we strive for, would become a dead letter. The US would cease to have any moral influence, because it had none.
In the meantime, the Shia are cleansing Bagdad with the cooperation of the Iraqi government. Bush just said no, or else, I hope. I also hope that if it is else, the US hangs around to effect a "just" partition. THAT is moral. Anything other than that, is not.
Well put. Then why are we playing politics with this battle in Iraq? Why are we pussy-footing around with ROE?
I'll tell you why. It's the same reason Patton got in trouble for slapping the crap out of that coward soldier hiding in the med tent.
Image.
We are not fighting to win. We are not fighting our enemy. We are fighting politics. Why is Sadr still around? Why can't we go into mosque we know are hiding terrorist and arms? Politics. Image.
It's all about image and PC crap. Can't profile so pull granny out of the line and check her cane for explosives. Can't piss of CAIR so have them "train" the TSA in "sensitivity".
I want to win. I want to defeat the enemy. And I know we have the greatest men and women in our military to do the job. Let them do it. Stop hindering them.
Stop playing politics which, frankly, is now what Bush is doing? Too bad if you don't like that opinion. If he's not then why has it taken two years to announce "the gloves are coming off". Why only now does Tony Snow go on talk shows and state they'd get phone calls from Iraqi ministers asking us not to arrest this person, or not to go into that neighborhood? Why were we granting them those request?
Image. Politics.
Let's fight this war. Let's make our enemies fear us again.
That you use his name as a pejorative and as many a fellow traveler, pinko, and/or card carrying Commie did and still doesm says much about YOU; far more than you realize.
Spot on!
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