Posted on 09/23/2005 4:57:06 PM PDT by Fzob
No. Iraq will stabilize like any post-dictatorship democracy does.
Prediction ... Iraq will be more stable politically in the 21st century than France was in the 20th century.
A low hurdle to jump over, so they will easily make it.
I could sleep very well, rationalizing the US as being an instrument of G_d by visiting Biblical cleansing upon SA.
Back when Enduring Freedom was launched over the protests of France and Germany, I predicted that Iraq would have a viable constitution before the EU did. Looks like I'm close to scoring on that one.
"Back when Enduring Freedom was launched over the protests of France and Germany, I predicted that Iraq would have a viable constitution before the EU did. Looks like I'm close to scoring on that one."
LOL!!! Iraq may yet vote 'no' on the first attempt at a Constitution, but I'd guess they'll be back at another crack even before Germany gets their Government sorted out (which could take years).
BTW the hung parliament in Germany, due to many smaller parties, and the similar problems in New Zealand, proves to me that proportional representation is a big mistake.
Prediction: the Muslim terrorists will continue to pour into Iraq in spite of high casualties, and the war of attrition will wear out the American political will.
US forces will be drawn out sufficiently to minimize US casualties, but will remain sufficiently to prevent the capital from falling to the terrorists.
Result: Iraq will be like Israel has been, trapped in an endless guerilla, with neither side able to win or withdraw.
Building a wall in Iraq is a bigger project than in Israel, and to do it effectively would require a lot more troops than the US sent in. The US is no longer politically capable of reinforcing Iraq, so the tide can only run out.
Iraq will have a government and a permanent insurrection.
Like Israel.
Quite unlike France in the 20th Century, really.
The worst case scenario of these jackels fighting amongst themselves is still better than a Nuke armed terror supporter like Saddam remaining in charge of Iraq.
Thus this warning must be placed in some perspective and it is not permissible to ignore the potential for instability Saddam not only possessed but actualized repeatedly. Ask the millions of dead Iranians, Kuwaitis and Iraqis about the "stability" in the region.
That was a period when these statesmen either looked away or down at the floor in fear of that lunatic.
You pose the Leftist argument and no one of any real intelligence believes the Bush family would act against the National interest. Mikie MOOer pushes the argument you imply though.
You need to go cold turkey on that Treason Media junk.
Absolutely correct.
Recent evidence not only indicates that suicide bombers are not pouring into Iraq and that they are being forcibily recruited. Can't believe the Treason Media's tales.
Wasn't Jimmy Carter right about the Shah of Iran?
Wasn't it an upright thing to tsk-tsk the Shah about human rights violations and turn our back on him when the Iranian revolution occurred?
Aren't we all better off since the Ayatollas took over Iran?
RE: post 66
I generally only bet on sure things, and I have never lost a bet at FR.
This is the first bet I'm going to make that has a possibility of being lost, but I do bet that you are wrong about U.S. and Iraq.
Let me know what stakes you want.
I don't care about the stakes.
But the terms of the bet are difficult to imagine.
Will there be elections in Iraq?
Yes.
Will the government and constitution win?
Most probably yes.
No argument thus far.
Will the insurrection end?
No.
And that is the tough part. How do we define the end of the insurrection?
I would say that in Ulster, for example, the violence has truly ended...for now anyway. Bombs are not going off anymore at all.
Do things have to stabilize THAT much for Iraq to be peaceful?
No. That's going too far. Iraq is a vast country in a dangerous part of the world. Hell, even in America there are 30,000 murders a year.
So, what do we use as the measure of success, to know who has one the bet?
Not that some government declares "Mission Accomplished".
That obviously is not reliable.
We can't use the complete withdrawal of American forces as the benchmark, because the Americans will never completely withdraw from the very useful bases that their new Iraqi ally gives them.
We could use as a test whether the Americans could withdraw and the Iraqi regime be certainly capable of handling any attacks internal or external by a neighbor (to wit: Iran) itself, but since the US is never going to be out of there, we won't be able to test the factual.
The test that I am going to use, then, is whether or not the continued US presence in Iraq acts as a net political negative on the US in US domestic elections. If the party in power maintains forces in Iraq, and the US electorate expresses ongoing displeasure with that policy by reducing its support for the party that maintains the forces in Iraq, this will tell me that overall, Americans do not believe that Iraq is stable.
If the Iraqi deployment is a political liability to the ruling party in the US, this will be the best empirical indication that things in Iraq are going badly, no matter what the spin is on any side. If, by contrast, a continued US presence in Iraq is not a political liability in the US as, for example, the continuing US presence in Bahrain or Yemen is not a political liability in the US, then I will consider that I have lost and the American policy in Iraq has been a success.
My prediction, just to be clear, is that the Iraqis will continue to create their government, that the US will remain in Iraq to support that government, and that the US will HAVE to remain in Iraq, because the level of violent insurrection will render the place an Israel or Northern Ireland for the foreseeable future. I think that eventually the American electorate will tire of the losses and will reward the party that says that it is time to "Iraquize" the war and pull out of trying to police the country. US bases will remain in Iraq, looking outward, even at that point, but they will be peripheral.
Once we've determined what the benchmarks for determining a winner of the bet are, we can bet a steak dinner on it.
The only thing impacting America's will are the at-home defeatists who spin absurd scenarios, as you do.
If "the Muslim terrorists will continue to pour into Iraq in spite of high casualties", then we are successfully draining the swamp of Al Qaeda terrorism. We've killed and captured thousands.
There is no 'wall' in Iraq, there is a functioning Government and a soon-to-be Constitution, and an army and police forces. It would be news to Israel to find that they are
"trapped in an endless guerilla (war)", it's called "terrorism". Isreal manages to be the most successful country in the region despite such problems as terrorism to surmount. Just compare Jordan's and Syria's economy to Israel's.
"Iraq will have a government and a permanent insurrection. "
A government, yes, and an insurrection that in 3-5 years will be history. (I'd say even shorter timeframe like 18 months, but I'll be cautious and conservative here). In the last 8 months, we went from having serious problems in Mosul and the north, to basically draining the swamp up there and removing every single 'emir' in Mosul that pops up. The spring 'offensive' by Zarqawi has been blunted and attacks are going down. We are also cutting off the entry routes from Syria, by taking down Qaim. We've handed over Najaf and other key cities to let the Iraqis run them. that has freed up our forces to focus on the 3-4 worst provinces out of Iraq's 18 provinces. Fallujah and Ramadi are better than before, and each day the Iraqi forces grow stronger.
The way we took out hundreds of terrorists in Tal Afar without the terrorists being able to respond at all is a case in point. Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians did most of the anti-terrorist work there.
Yet you ignorantly and arrogantly predict a "permanent insurrection" despite 8 months that have dealt more setbacks to the anti-Iraqi terrorist groups than Hitler's Germany got in 1944 in WWII. Actually worse: The terrorists had a safe haven 1 year ago - Fallujah - and numerous cities were barely controllable, and the Iraqi forces were unable to do much. Now, there are dozens on operational Iraqi battalions, there is no safe haven for the terrorists, and many terrorist cells have been 'rolled up'.
What an arrogant defeatist you are, predicting the Al Qaeda
terrorists would outlive American and Iraqi government efforts.
Nonsense. The only thing that can defeat us is defeatism itself. Do your part and quit being a defeatist. Learn the facts.
See:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200509230813.asp
"What an arrogant defeatist you are, predicting the Al Qaeda terrorists would outlive American and Iraqi government efforts."
You are happy talking yourself into high moral dudgeon.
But it's not going to turn out as you suggest.
Unfortunately.
And when it doesn't, it is not going to be because of people like me. People like me advocated a different strategy from day one. We can't test the counterfactual and see if it will work. But we can look back over time and see that the things we said would be a problem and wouldn't work, have indeed become a problem and don't work.
So, now we have to gut it out in a war of attrition...our soldiers, educated for 18 years and trained for years and shipped over there one by one, versus the semi-civilized throw-offs of a backwards desert of 300 million all around. That's a war of attrition that will not ultimately be winnable. We can kill a million. They kill 4000. And we still lose, because public support in the US gradually ebbs away.
Israel is a military success and has some economic success, but Israel is also maintained by endless supports and assistance of every sort from the West, especially the United States. Alone, Israel would dry up and be blown away by its enemies. The Israelis cannot end the war of the enemy around them, and cannot win it, and are forced, therefore, to be in a perpetually state of armed readiness they cannot afford, supported, therefore, by the American taxpayer. The American taxpayer will indeed continue to support that enterprise, because of the way political power and support are distributed for it in the USA.
But Iraq? Different story.
People do not have the confidence in the organizational capabilities of this Administration they once did. Not abroad, and not at home either. The Republican coalition is fraying and falling apart as well.
And the primary reason for that is because at the center there are arrogant blowhards like yourself shouting insults at your allies, like me, because we are not buying the happy talk any more.
The Administration was wrong about troop levels going into the war. They shouted down the criticism then, but time is proving the critics right.
They had bad leadership after Katrina.
And when you have Delay saying that there's no fat to be cut out of a ballooning budget, you have signs of very serious hardening of the arteries.
No amount of hurling insults at people like me as DEFEATIST is going to change the ugly dynamics here.
We are losing all of these battles because of numbskulls who cannot take advice, won't change course, and alienate all of their allies in the process.
Shouting at me and insulting me isn't going to make the problems in Iraq go away, nor domestically. It will, perhaps, make you feel better when it all falls down primarily because of poor leadership, incompetence and stubbornness in the leadership on your side of the conservative camp. You will be able, then, to shift blame over to people like me and say that its OUR fault, because we criticized you and your leadership.
Anyway, there's no point in getting any deeper into a shouting match. What will happen, will happen, and neither you nor I will be driving the ship when it happens.
You say we're riding high and heading to triumph.
I see that we're shipping a lot of water and persisting on driving right into the shoals.
One of us is right, and one of us is wrong.
You've already prepared the argument, though, that when the ship sinks, it's MY fault because I said, quite truthfully, that you guys don't know how to drive.
I do not believe that as long as Bush-Cheney are in power that we will prematurely pull out forces from Iraq before Iraq's own developing military and police and government can handle the terrorists.
India is being attacked by terrorists. We don't have armed forces there because India manages this problem by itself.
The main criterion for the bet cannot spin around whether terrorists or old line Baathists or wannabe sheiks stir up violence. All countries deal with these internal problems, including our own government.
My criterion for success in Iraq is that we get to a point where Iraqi forces deal with these problems by themselves, and a midpoint in the journey to that success will be when our help becomes peripheral (military advisers/trainers and air support) decreasing our boots on the ground exposure to casualties.
Afghanistan is not midpoint yet in the journey. We still are hunting for bin Laden on the Pakistani border there with boots on the ground, and the government is not in full control of the whole country and still needs our boots on the ground. Their army is still being trained. Regions aligned with warloads are still stirring up violence that Karsai cannot control by himself. Talibani are still a major threat to the continued existence of the new national government. We have had no drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, rather over the last years our troop commitments have increase.
Iraq is behind Afghanistan's curve now, but my prediction is that it is gaining on Afghanistan and will sail by it on its way to national independence and integration. There are more educated, more modern, more world aware people in Iraq than in Afghanistan that make this possible. And Iraq, despite its deep sectarian divisions, was once united politically in a way that Afghanistan hasn't been.
A draw down of U.S. troops in Iraq can signal failure or success. At midpoint on the journey when we become peripheral (advise/training and air support, but few boots of the ground), draw down is a success marker.
Such a drawdown in an environment of progress toward success may later be considered a failure if a successive administration or Congress does not support the peripheral role phase of the war.
This happened in Vietnam. North Vietnam had given up supporting the violence in South Vietnam and a peace accord with North Vietnam was signed by Nixon. The South Vietnamese were in control of South Vietnam. Our troops were withdrawn, and our role became peripheral-- money and weapons and air support.
Then Nixon was threatened with impeachment and the one who would have guaranteed the continued support of South Vietnam on its journey was forced to resign. Congress then stopped the funding of our support of South Vietnam, and North Vietnam saw this and began a new offensive (which we could have readily stopped with air support of the South Vietnamese army) and overran the country.
In the fuzzy memory of American media folk lore, the drawdown was done in an environment of failure, while the country was being overrun, but that is a big media lie.
Yes, a Democrat Congress can undo everything we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, a Democrat Presidency in 2008 can undo everything we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is why this bet is the first one I am undertaking at FR that has a chance of being lost.
We will have to specify a couple markers.
I lose the bet if fefore the end of the Bush-Cheney administration, Congress refuses to fund our continued military operations in Iraq that are necessary to support the developing Iraqi government and military. This would mean a Congressional take over by the Democrats with enough RINO votes to block actions of Bush-Cheney in 2006. Or it would mean a decapitation of the current administration before January, 2009, with succession going to someone who doesn't hold their position on this policy.
When we get out to 2008 election and actions of the President and Congress after then, it becomes problematical. I agree with the possibility that after January, 2009, we could find ourselves back at square one in the War on Terror.
I believe by January, 2009, we will definitely be at the midway point in Iraq, with significant ground troop reductions that are due to success, not failure, with this exception.
However, we may still have major ground troop deployments in the area at that time if we are are war with Iran and/or Syria. That would be due to aggressive hostile action on their part, and these troop deployments will be fighting overt Iranian and Syrian aggression, not covert aggression as is the case now.
I normally don't wager for anything that will accrue to me if I win the bet. I wager for specific amounts that will be given by the loser either to FreeRepublic or an agreed upon charity.
I am wagering that until January, 2009, we will continue to support Iraq in its journey toward self sufficiency, that Congress will not make it illegal for the current administration to continue that support (as Congress did with Reagan's support of the Contras in Nicaragua), and that the President of the United States up until that time will continue that support.
Would you like the loser to contribute to FR or to a specific charity?
It is my hope that by then--3 years and 4 months from now-- that Iraq will be able to survive a regime change in Washington, D.C. that reverses our present course of support for Iraq. But I also believe that Bush-Cheney will fire all barrels to prevent such a course reversal...like information on al Qaeda and Saddam ties to 9/11 etc., like information on where the WMD went, etc.
Our support for South Korea has held for a half century despite major commitments of money and troops there and despite changes in Congress and the Presidency.
Hillary is nominally in favor of continued support for Iraq. She may want to prove that a woman can be a commander-in-chief and hold firm military positions. If she, like Gov. Blanco did, blows an opportunity to be a strong leader who can manage troops, she will blow away any chance that another woman will be considered for the post for many decades to come, and blow away her chances for reelection.
Thus winning power may be enough for her. She may not be an ideolog about the war in Iraq, the way Dean and Gore are, just an opportunist denouncing how Iraq has been handled, not our continued commitment. If Iraq is on a denouement path, with few casualties, at the time she assumes office (G-d forbid) she may hold the status quo there like Dems did for Korea (maybe because Harry Truman made the original commitment).
This all may be too fuzzy for a good bet. Your thoughts?
"You are happy talking yourself into high moral dudgeon."
You refer to yourself with that comment...
What a pile of cr*p you spew ... we lost more people in 9/11 in 90 minutes than we lost in 2.5 years in Iraq and yet you lie and call it a 'war of attrition'. This is at this point a failed insurrection that is in the process of getting liquidated via counterinsugency means that have worked many times before (eg like in El Salvador 1980s). ... yet you spew non-factual claims of a 'permanent insurrection' with no facts to back it up. what BS, as is your anti-Israel BS, your BS about Bush and katrina, your BS about Bush overall, yadda yadda yadda. Your 'facts' are just the phony recycled spin from the MSM and folks that never wanted us to win in the first place.
Nothing you say hasn't already been said this weekend at the anti-American rally in DC. Same BS.
You are the one insulting our military, falsely denigrating their capabilities. I'm only exposing your defeatist BS to the air.
"No amount of hurling insults at people like me as DEFEATIST is going to change the ugly dynamics here."
The ugly dynamic is that USA faces a two-front war here, the defeatists at home and the terrorists abroad.
Clearly, the home-grown enemies are the more difficult to overcome.
For you to falsely claim that defeatism doesnt impact our chance of success only proves you dont understand the basics of warfare as understood since the time of SunTzu's "Art of War", when he mentioned that victory was defeating your enemies' will. Thanks again for doing your part to undermine America's will to Win the War on Terror. (/sarcasm)
I suppose, for a stable government, we should model Saudi Arabia? Ha ha.
Good for you, calling him on his BS predictions point-by-point. Well done.
Frankly, we have made so much progress this year in cleaning up various parts of Iraq, the insurgency will pretty much be out of business well before the next administration.
Comments from Rep Frank Wolf:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092400523.html
"I have now visited all but the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq and have seen improvement with each trip I have made. Schools are being renovated. Hospitals and health clinics are being built. Safe drinking water is available in places that it never was before. The new Iraqi army is being constituted. While we still have a long way to go, positive things are happening. Regrettably, they are often overshadowed by the suicide attacks carried out by foreign fighters who have poured into Iraq in hopes of undermining our progress and turning the Iraqi people against us. Yes, security remains our biggest challenge. It also limits where reporters can safely go, leaving them with little option but to focus on the bloodshed and bombings. But in truth, all across Iraq, in regions rarely visited by the media, there are heartening, albeit less riveting, stories of measurable progress."
...
"The Bush administration needs to face the reality that a growing number of Americans are becoming skeptical of our efforts, partly because they do not have the benefit of seeing the entire picture. No one I talked to during my recent trip believes we will lose the war on the ground in Iraq; it's here at home that they are concerned about. One general told me point-blank that the "center of gravity" for our success in Iraq is the American public.
For the United States to stay the course in Iraq the public needs to fully appreciate the progress that has been made, be able to trust that those directing the war have made an honest assessment of what has gone right and what has gone wrong, and understand the potentially cataclysmic consequences of walking away from Iraq before the job is done."
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