Sunnis Hit After Shiite Shrine Blast

[alva]

Ah good...I was starting to worry.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Our "invasion" is hardly the same as Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, for example.

Apples aren't the same as oranges either, yet they're both fruit.

[Arrian]

By the way I was appalled at the American Embassador to Iraq's remarks this week how he said, (paraprhased) "we're not going to waste American taxpayer money trying to fix this place until you people get your act together!"

WTF was that? We've spent over 15 years blowing the place to hell and then blame the victim?

Actually, it's not quite like that, Ted.

The fact is that the various factions (other than the Kurds) are not playing nice. Given the end goal (relatively stable, at least quasi-democratic Iraq), we must discourage the sort of infighting that is now going on. The only real carrot we have to encourage the behavior we want is our money. Threatening to withhold that money is part of trying to get the Shia and Sunni political leaders to work out a deal.

Do you really want us to fund a Shia-dominated government that goes on a rampage of revenge against the Sunnis? Then you (and many others) will yell about how we're complicit in genocide or somesuch.

-Arrian

[BeBMan]

Corrected pic:

[Arrian]

Yep, that looks right.

Sloww,

You still haven't offered a coherent response to this:

Um, no. You miss the point. Our government chose to pursue a policy of "regime change" in Iraq. The Coalition (of the willing!), as the occupying power, became responsible for that change. It's not "regime removal" Sloww. It's regime change. They had elections, which is great, but they've yet to properly form the new government. Even once they form the government, if we pull out and the country collapses, how the in the **** does that serve our interests?

How does a "failed state" in Iraq improve U.S. national security, Sloww?

-Arrian

[Lawrence of Arabia]

nah you shoulda put the logos of Halliburton, Bechtel, and Enron instead!

[Arrian]

He did.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

Arrian you are wasting your time waiting for a coherent answer to a very good question. The neo-cons and their supporters never had that answer and they never will. They spoke a good game at the beginning but when it came to executing the actual regime change and nation building phase they didn't have a plan or a will to do what it would take. To this day 75%-80% of the money Bush claimed was for reconstruction actually went to the US military operations in Iraq. That last 20%-25% was way to little, way to late.

Bush has always talked big but utterly failed in execution. New Orleans, post 9/11 New York, reconstruction in Afghanistan, reconstruction in Iraq... the list goes on and on. Now even die hard conservatives are turning against him as a failed President. His father's secretary of state spoke out against invasion in 2003 and then publically noted that there wasn't a meaningful reconstruction effort, the founder of the neo-con ideology as publically come forward to say it was a failure which has harmed the country, and now the paleo-cons of the Reagan and Bush Sr. White Houses have turned on Bush for his failed policies.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385518277/103-3824013-0138250?v=glance&n=283155

[Dinner]

The Bush plan has always been to do the following. Promise big things, wait for the public's attention to go some where else, then quietly kill the program. If anyone asks what happened then blame it on someone else (Democrats who don't control squat, Talaban rebels that didn't actually run any military campaigns until years after reconstruction never happened, mythical ba'athists, whatever comes to mind).

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
You forgot the 10 years that preceded the 2003 invasion where we first destroyed the infrastructure then evaporated it with stupid sanctions.

So yeah we ruined it.

Saddam wasn't a cool guy but Iraqi living standards were alot better until we got involved.

If I were a Shi'ite or a Kurd, I'd probably say something *really* undiplomatic WRT to your post.

That said, you do remember how Saddam Hussein ended up in the mess he was in during the 1990s, right? It involved that invasion of Kuwait, circa 1990, and Iraq's subsequent expulsion from its "19th province" in early 1991. All of his woes in the 1990s can be traced back to that disastrous decision.

Ideally, Saddam should have been ousted during the first Gulf War, but Bush Sr.'s Arab allies *didn't* want that, precisely because they were afraid of the reactionary forces that would be unleashed with his fall (i.e. Shi'ites vs. Sunnis, at the very least, not to mention the impact on the most valuable prize of all, i.e., regional stability). So the cork remained in the bottle, a bottle, need I remind you, that far predated the West's involvement in the Middle East.

Bottom line, we made things much worse.

No. Bottom line is, Bush Jr. removed the cork without an adequate plan to channel and control the resulting explosion into something that could be beneficial, rather than destructive.

Gotta run. Hafta manipulate the news, after all!

Gatekeeper

[Elok]

I might be getting these mixed up, but isn't the top flag in Sloww's original pic Russia? We don't need *them* there. The crap we do to Iraqis in Abu-Ghraib and get in trouble for, they use as a recruiting technique for their own army on a regular basis. By all means, let's pick up the slack for Russia's army, and nobody better say a word about it.

And the flag on the bottom is France...I don't need to go there. We all know what I'm thinking. Everybody's thinking it. Even Frenchmen look at the suggestion that their armed forces help America's and have to suppress a giggle, much as they hate themselves for doing so.

[SlowwHand]

It's not a matter of taking Iraq to raise.
If we stayed there for the foreseeable future, you're saying you would have no complaints?
The reason we're there, again, was to remove Hussein for breaking the cease fire, and he did break it.
Now, screw it. They had their elections, and now they'll have their civil war.


You may be trying to position this into a response you want, but these are the facts.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Arrian you are wasting your time waiting for a coherent answer to a very good question. The neo-cons and their supporters never had that answer and they never will.

May I suggest that Slowwhand is not a neo-con? His approach to foreign policy sounds more naively "jacksonian" in the Walter Russel Meade typology, and isnt leavened as much with Wilsonianism as "neoconism" is.

In fact Id say that neoconservative has lost its usefulness as an analytic category. It once held meaning for a small group of intellectuals, largely followers of Irving Kristol, largely former leftists, who adopted certain distinctive positions - support for an aggressive US foreign policy, based largely on a dislike of Soviet Communism, and thus with a greater degree of "internationalism" than was common on the old right, combined with a prudential support of capitalism, that was again more pragmatic then the old rights, and a prudential support of organized religion.

Today its either a code word for Bush supporter, for Republicans who supported the Iraq war, etc (Leaving aside the worse abuses in it use) It groups together Rumsfeld, and people like Bill Kristol who want Rummy fired. Torture promoters, and folks like McCain who led the fight against torture. It adds heat to discussions, but not light.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia


bad analogy, since Saddam might have been Sunni, but he didnt rule with religious policies, he was a communist.

Now im not generally pro-communist, but this is really unfair to the communists. In fact the Baath party persecuted the Iraqi Communist Party when it came to power (some say the CIA was originally friendly to the Baath for that reason) The ICP was legalized in Iraq for the first time in decades only with the US invasion.

What I think you mean to say is that Saddam was a Baathist, and Baathism is socialist and secularist. I wont get into the complex debate on the socio-economic policies of the Baath, and the true definition of socialism. I will say that their secularism was always a little bit complex (the founder of the party, a Christian, admired Islam as an expression of Arab culture, and converted to Islam before he died) The Iraqi regime was generally secularist and gave woman rights not to be found in Islamist regimes. However after 1991 Saddam increasingly used muslim terminolgy, funded large Sunni mosques, and worked with the Sunni Ulema to control the country. The regime was never Wahabi, but it was certainly moving in the direction of working closely with the Wahabis in Anbar province. Certainly the post invasion alliance of Wahabis and Baathists was not all that unpredictable.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
the founder of the neo-con ideology as publically come forward to say it was a failure which has harmed the country, and now the paleo-cons of the Reagan and Bush Sr. White Houses have turned on Bush for his failed policies.

Has Irving Kristol done that? Irv must be pretty old now. Are you confusing him with his son William, ed of the Weekly Standard? WK has said that Rummys policies have harnmed the country, and that Rummy should resign - he said this some time ago, as a matter of fact. I dont think hes said that Iraq is a failure, and hes certainly never said it wouldnt have been a success if done write.

Im also not sure who you mean by paleocons. Any conservative who isnt a neocon? There are paleocons in the W admin by that definition.