In both the USA and UK, much of the debate about how to react to the military situation in Iraq really strikes me as really odd. If a person thinks the available facts indicate we are not doing well against the insurgents, surely the choices should be either:
- Conclude the enemy will inevitably win and no military and political victory is feasible, therefore accept being defeated and get out completely as soon as possible
- Conclude the enemy can be beaten, but not at an acceptable cost, so accept being defeated and get out completely as soon as possible
- Conclude the enemy can be beaten and therefore reinforce to improve the military force levels (i.e. the ‘Surge’) in order to actually win
What does not make any sense to me is any talk of reducing force levels by a person who does not think we have either already won or already been irretrievably defeated… and the stated position of most politicos on both sides of the Atlantic is neither of those things.
Yet surely to argue for any reduction in military force levels in Iraq by anything less that 100% and to argue that things are not going well, is tantamount to saying you support a policy to make the allied military situation even worse.
Agreed Perry, totally. And this ‘discussion’ is basically the same starting not long after we went in. No WMD, so we should get out. No Saddam, so we should get out. They’ll never have an election; we’ll leave after the election; civil war will be inevitable; the Iraqis will never accept us… and on and on and by the same people claiming any one of the ‘choices’ you’ve mentioned here. They want failure and have no answer but failure. American power and its possible success is what they resent, more than the consequences of their choice: genocide and terrorist bases like never before.
The bottom line is they have no discussion for an alternative plan. Its a complete facade and absurdity.
Where do you get more troops from though? The troops in Iraq are already serving extended tours. You could say they could take them from US deployments in Europe and East Asia, but that is never going to happen. And conscription would is a non-starter. I think Bush is just going to dump the mess onto his successor. The political reconciliation in Iraq that Washington is banking on just doesn’t seem likely to happen, at least not any time soon. They can shout ‘support the troops’ and ‘support Petraeus’ all they like, but it isn’t going to get people who have hated each other for years and years to kiss and make up.
Excuse me but this topic pisses me. I should’ve said the same people stating or implying one of the first 2 choices you’ve stated. That’s really what they want. The 3rd is simply not acceptable to them, simply because they don’t want it.
‘The 3rd is simply not acceptable to them, simply because they don’t want it.’
Explain how you’d achieve no.3 then Mr smartie-pants, and please explain who will have to pay to do so.
What do you mean? What is there to explain? The surge is working so lets get behind it. Or, get behind utter intolerable disaster.
I don’t know where you get your info from Cynic because it doesn’t mesh with what I read by those in the red zone, on the ground, for a very long time. Those relative handful who are indeed reporters risking their lives surviving off donations with first-hand knowledge far exceeding any of the major media. What Perry is pointing out is the complete lack of any coherent understanding and conclusion.
What is your purpose? That’s what this discussion here is about.
“Mr smartie-pants” LOL. Look if your upset about taxes we all can gripe.
Well I do think people who support the war should pay the bill. A lot of them are forever moaning anyway that we need to make more ‘sacrifices’.
But this is the same administration that has been promising that success is always around the corner. ‘Mission accomplished’, the deaths of Saddam’s sons, capturing Saddam, the transfer of nominal sovereignty to Iraqis, Fallujah, the constitution, the elections, Zarqawi’s death, and so on have all been touted as ‘turning points’. There is no reason to believe this surge ‘success’ is anything different.
And I have a tendency to resist the collectivist urge ‘to get behind’ government schemes.
The last couple years of any successful 8 year (or so) administration nearly always look awful. From 1957 till 1960 Ike’s administration looked like a failure, so did Reagan’s, For that matter so did Truman’s.
War is a matter of willpower, Bush no matter what else you can say about him has it and his enemies in Congress and the media do not. I suspect that we are going to win this thing, its going to take a long time and will cost a lot, there is no such thing as a cheap war.
The big question for the Brits is “Will Gordon Brown match Bush’s willpower, I’m flabbergasted to write this, but he just might.
This war has been fought bureaucratically, even from the start – from the time they had Saddam directly in their sights and lawyers waived them off. As with all things bureaucratic, nothing is solved, boatloads of money is spent, and power is concentrated.
If there is rationale for the West to be in the East to fight any or all of the various autocrats, and it really does profile to an “us or them”, then bureaucratic wars fought with an eye and half toward polls and election cycles and the Network News aren’t the way to go. It will only make matters worse. But all the while we’ve gotten “there are good muslims and there are bad muslims” and while we were dropping bombs in Afghanistan we were dropping food packets too.
If we are fighting the viperous East, then a small war in Iraq squeezing a few thousand in, then a few thousand out, and doing even less in Afghanistan, is a waste of time. Let’s do it, or let’s not, and live with the consequences. Letting Bureaucrats and Politicians profile themselves and grab photo-ops etc etc ultimately picking choice 3 because that’s the only one that is feasible for these types, does us more harm than good.
If the matter is not enough voluntary forces to fight, then we deserve to be swallowed under. Your culture, even a libertarianesque model, is only as good as your willingness to fight for it. Unfortunately if there is a clear and present threat, it certainly hasn’t been communicated properly to the people, and has now been so confused and garbled that it won’t likely be until 9/11 is made to like small by comparison.
I really thought 9/11 was the spark that would finally settle any East/West issues. We got Afghanistan and Iraq, fought by public relations artists, instead.
This war has been fought bureaucratically, even from the start – from the time they had Saddam directly in their sights and lawyers waived them off. As with all things bureaucratic, nothing is solved, boatloads of money is spent, and power is concentrated.
If there is rationale for the West to be in the East to fight any or all of the various autocrats, and it really does profile to an “us or them”, then bureaucratic wars fought with an eye and half toward polls and election cycles and the Network News aren’t the way to go. It will only make matters worse. But all the while we’ve gotten “there are good muslims and there are bad muslims” and while we were dropping bombs in Afghanistan we were dropping food packets too.
If we are fighting the viperous East, then a small war in Iraq squeezing a few thousand in, then a few thousand out, and doing even less in Afghanistan, is a waste of time. Let’s do it, or let’s not, and live with the consequences. Letting Bureaucrats and Politicians profile themselves and grab photo-ops etc etc ultimately picking choice 3 because that’s the only one that is feasible for these types, does us more harm than good.
If the matter is not enough voluntary forces to fight, then we deserve to be swallowed under. Your culture, even a libertarianesque model, is only as good as your willingness to fight for it. Unfortunately if there is a clear and present threat, it certainly hasn’t been communicated properly to the people, and has now been so confused and garbled that it won’t likely be until 9/11 is made to look small by comparison.
I really thought 9/11 was the spark that would finally settle any East/West issues. We got Afghanistan and Iraq, fought by public relations artists, instead.
‘If the matter is not enough voluntary forces to fight, then we deserve to be swallowed under.’
I take it that you’ve joined the forces?
Of course that is what needs to happen! South Korea clearly does not really want US troops defending them and they have proven themselves a worthless ally, so that is one source of assets… it is preposterous to have more than a tiny token US HQ defending wealthy Germany from, well, no one… frankly it is hard to see what sense most US overseas garrison deployments make now (although places like Diego Garcia make sense).
It is an unconscionable to tolerate such wasteful deployments when there are two real wars going on. There is no excuse not to rationalise and clear up these expensive and largely pointless Cold War legacy deployments and use the forces where they are actually needed.
That may all be true, but you damn well know its not going to change. Bush is obsessed with Nato expansion and has no desire to leave east Asia. But you have your own people to blame (interventionists)- any talk of pulling US troops out of Europe and east Asia would be denounced as ‘isolationism’.
What Brad said.
Perry
Since 9/11 the US has drawn down its forces in Germany by about 3/4 by the end of 2008 there will only be one Stryker brigade left. In South Korea the draw down has been of a similar magnitude and the US now has no more than a small token force on the DMZ.
We are also cutting deployments in Okinawa, the only place outisde of the Muslim world where we are building up a base in in Northern Italy and even there the size of the unit based there will not increase (or at least not by much.
The next President may just turn out the lights at NATO HQ and go home.
12 years as a Royal Marine if you must know but been out for almost a decade (blimey!) and so too much married life and beer belly to be much direct use for the current set of fun and frolics.
What Perry says is just common sense (and how uncommon that is). Either use whatever you have to do the job or get the fuck out (or better yet, don’t get involved at all if you aren’t willing to do what it takes when things get a bit red at the sharp end). It’s wacko to talk about pulling some forces OUT because the going is getting tough, completely arse-about-face in fact. Either get us out altogether or reinforce the guys already there. Those are the only rational options from a military point of view, anything else is politically motivated bullshit.
Our host has pegged the situation correctly. What seems amazing to me on my visits to the US is the absence of that “war weariness” Guardian writers love to talk about. War is never “popular” — thank goodness, or there would be a lot more of them! — but there is a huge disconnect between the noisy anti-any-war fringe influencing too many US politicians and normal Americans, who recognize that sometimes you have to fight back.
In the meantime, try to think like Osama. From his cave, it looks like Democrats are winning his battle for him. Smart option is to lie low for the next 15 months — time is on his side, Allah has assured him — and then it will be time to continue the war and hit President Mrs Rodham-Clinton hard. She will fold like a pack of cards, Osama probably assumes.
The tragedy of posturing Democrats in Congress is that they are creating a situation where many more human beings will die; those politicians are about to have blood on their hands.
If the war was so popular in the US, Bush would not have Truman level approval ratings, the GOP would still control Congress, and the democrat 2008 candidates would not be polling higher than the GOP ones.
And what has Osama got do with Iraq? He’s safe and sound in Waziristan. America could stay in Iraq for the next 20 years and it wouldn’t change that.
The neocons and their shills are planning a ‘stabbed in the back’ theory to peddle in case they lose their influence after 2009, just like the Nazis created such a theory in Germany after 1918 to explain defeat in WW1.
Stay on topic.
I do not give a shit if you supported the war to overthrow Saddam Hussain or you get warm fuzzy glows when you think about Ba’athist Socialism. This article and associated comments are supposed to be discussing what you think about the thrust of my argument regarding the logic of calling for troops to be withdrawn because they are taking casualties and having to do some hard fighting but yet not calling for declaring the war a defeat and pulling out and therefore in fact asking that hard pressed troops become even more hard pressed. If you have nothing to say about that, stop wasting our pixels and save your assertions for a different article in which they might be relevant.
There are some other options.
Conclude you are going to lose, but you have a choice between losing badly in a messy bloodbath, or losing more subtly with some new goon taking over, depending on how fast you do it. You might think you can get a less bad outcome by withdrawing more gradually.
Conclude that you could win if the Iraqis pulled their fingers out, and that they’re only going to do that if you scare them and put them under some pressure. Partial withdrawal makes things bad enough that they want to fix it, and makes them step up to the plate, but not so bad that they immediately collapse into a heap.
Conclude that you could win if the troops stay there at high levels, but know that demanding a complete withdrawal would mean that it was you who was seen to have caused their failure rather than them and their leader. Partial withdrawal makes sure they lose, but also ensures the blame cannot be pinned on you. Admittedly that would be making the military situation worse, but you would not, of course, say this.
The problem with your argument is that option 3 doesn’t quite work if you’re engaged in a guerrila war and you have zero popular support among the people you’re “liberating”. This isn’t a conventional military exercise where you fight pitched battles in a field, take control of your enemy’s major population centers/military installations, and force your enemy to sign a surrender of some kind. Unless we’re willing to commit genocide (which I hope we’re not), we’re in an untenable situation where our enemies have only to keep Iraq just destabilized enough that we can’t leave, and then wait until our position becomes politically and/or fiscally unsustainable. Your argument ignores the fact that victory for the insurgency is very easily defined and attained (i.e., waiting until the U.S. leaves), while victory for the U.S. is very difficult to define or obtain.
“The problem with your argument is that option 3 doesn’t quite work if you’re engaged in a guerrila war and you have zero popular support among the people you’re “liberating”.
And where is this taking place Nick? I’d like to know. The increasing majority of our soldiers and Iraqis would like to know too if just for a laugh.
You don’t know what is taking place on the ground. You’re ignorant of the realities. Read those on the ground, in the red zone amongst the Iraqi citizens, army, police, men, women, children and… US forces. Read what is taking place first-hand. Every day!
“This isn’t a conventional military exercise where you fight pitched battles in a field, take control of your enemy’s major population centers/military installations, and force your enemy to sign a surrender of some kind.”
Again, total ignorance. You should know better. That is the farthest notion from the strategy and tactics being undertaken. You have no clue of Petraeus’ counter-insurgency and all of what it involves.
My goodness if people wanna talk about what has to be done, should be done, could be done you have the responsibility to be up on what the heck is taking place in the first place to even begin. Its very tempting here to directly refute this foolishness with hard facts but its too time consuming to do it justice. Is it even necessary to explain who to go to and find out on your own what’s going down? Figure it out. Statements like these prove your only kidding yourself, big time.
I made a statement when I first posted here weeks ago that it surprised me when concerning this war how many people in here have bought the MSM’s take. I wasn’t wrong.
Nick, you make it sound like guerillas are guaranteed to win. History says — Not So! Britain in Northern Ireland; Britain in Malaya: US in Philippines; etc.
You are right that sometimes winning simply means not losing. If Democrats in the US are determined to lose, then the smart guerilla strategy is to hang on & let the Democrats lose.
However, it is also easy for the guerillas to lose the support of the local population; even in much-touted Vietnam, the Viet Cong domestic insurgents essentially lost local support & failed — they were replaced by North Vietnamese invaders. losing support is especially a risk for guerillas in a place like Iraq, where ethnic, tribal, & religious divisions make life just as hard for the “insurgents” as they do for the “occupiers”.
It is not easy to predict how the element of time will play out. Recent events seem to suggest that time is not on the “insurgents” side in Iraq. That is why Democrats need to lose in a hurry.
Back to our host’s question — if Democrats want to lose, then why not simply declare defeat & come home to await the next Islamofascist attack? I think we all know why — Democrats want someone else to lose, while they maintain their elevated position above the fight.
“If the war was so popular in the US, Bush would not have Truman level approval ratings, the GOP would still control Congress, and the democrat 2008 candidates would not be polling higher than the GOP ones.”
And the Democrat Congress is polling half the support of Bush. And your point is … ?
Personally, I think this war has sweeping ramifications for our future. We either face down the medieval tinpot dictators now or we deal with them ten years from now when they’ve got nukes and start funneling them to their terror offshoots like Hezbollah.
I wouldn’t have voted for Bush in 2000 but he got the big thing right. If the US has the will — it certainly has the ability — it can trigger reform in the Arab world by modernizing Iraq.
The question is can we rouse a Western world that’s getting anesthetized by the nanny state (Europe) and paralyzed by political infighting (the US)?
On Monday I leave Iraq for the second time. I’ve been in Baghdad for the last 2 months of my tour. I don’t ever remember it being this quiet. Victory base rarely gets hit anymore. I’m sure you can guess why. Regardless of who the next Commander-in-Chief is, that person will continue the fight here. That decision was made the moment the Democrats won the House and the Senate and then refused to enforce their promises to their supporters to get the troops out.
And as far as “war weariness” reported by anybody, what a complete crock. America isn’t weary of this war. Most of my fellow citizens don’t have a family member fighting, or even know anybody in the military. To quote a photo I saw in the papers a while ago, “America’s not at war, it’s at the mall”.
Swede… thanks. May your efforts be rewarded and you live long.
I’m sure you know there has been quite a pool of reenlistments.
Your experience in Baghdad reminds me of what Mat Sanchez recently wrote. I may bore some members here but I’d like to post it.
Nick E,
How about you go to http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ and enlighten yourself?
Pa Annoyed offers some alternatives, though the last is far too conspiracy-theoretical to apply to significant US politicians. (The anti-American nutters who want the US to be defeated more than they care about anyone’s life, pretty much say so. They aren’t calling for gradual reductions.) There are three additional possibilities that would be consistent with proposals for gradual force-reductions:
7. The forces just cannot be maintained at the current levels indefinitely, but the commanders are happy to ‘win’ slower;
8. The situation is totally under control and it is a waste of money and military power to continue at present levels, when the campaign can be won easily at lower levels; and
9. The campaign is lost but it is politically impossible to admit it, so politicians wish to withdraw on other pretexts.
My money is on 9, with the Brown government and Democrats pretending it is 7, and the Bushies sticking to 8 – despite its being almost as implausible as the “wicked lefties want us to lose” theory.
Look out for force reductions predicated on the last 3 months having turned round all the mistakes of the last 3 years.
What Alisa said!
Has nobody considered the other option, where you train up local troops and police so that you can reduce your prescence to a level of advisor and spot reinforcement, kind of like a ‘reverse Vietnam’? As for the ‘situation not going well’ argument the answer to that one is that it always takes time to change people’s views. At present people in Iraq are beginning to fight back against Al Queda‘s randomly horrific acts of barbarism and abduction, so just maybe we should be helping them to help themselves a bit more in that respect.
I often get the feeling that people in the UK perceive the insurgent war in Iraq as some kind of bizarre reality TV programme, where when viewer ratings drop below a certain figure then it must be time to cancel the show.
Ever since Cynic gave his cynical defence of the status quo in Iraq under Saddam, I haven’t quite been able to take this person seriously, nor his claim to be a libertarian. I recall he also said that Russia, as a state, had “rights” to do what it liked to the likes of the Ukraine, for instance.
Back on the actual topic, Perry is dead right: either we do this thing properly, or not at all. Faffing around damages our credibility and ability to deter future thugs.
Isn’t “Do it properly or not at all” a basic rule for everything?
Doesn’t it apply equally to wars, brain surgery or putting up a shelf?
Bush is doing now what politicians always do, what he himself has done a lot – try to compromise, and be loved by everybody. The Dems want to reduce troops, well – “we’ll bring back some” says Bush.
He never was a superman, doing always what is right.
He did “no child left behind”, prescription drugs for the old, etc.
Perry, you look for his logic in the wrong place, he works by politic logic (he is mistaken, politically too, but that is his logic). It’s not straight military logic.
Kissinger was smarter than Bush, he got himself a Noble peace prize out of the Vietnam mess, poor Bush, I think he’s doomed, no way he can get to be loved by the Dems or anybody else.
No it isn’t and no it doesn’t! Everything is a trade-off. Cheap good or fast, pick any two. You can set an arbitrary threshold and say ‘Better than that counts as properly’ but it clearly arbitrary. An excellent appendectomy of 50 years ago would be malpractice today.
There’s no such thing as victory and defeat. You can say ‘withdrawing your forces behind your pre-war borders’ counts as defeat. You can say that ‘setting up a more or less democratic government and getting crime below this or that level’ counts as victory.
Do we want to pour in thousands of troops, followed by thousands of civilian beaurocrats, and spend 10 years turning Iraq into a stable capitalist democracy with a Western system of jurisprudence? That would be victory, perhaps.
Or do we want to maintain enough troops for enough time that the corrupt quasi-democratic government and semi-autonomous paramilitary police can basically establish law and order to the extent where those who might pose a threat to the West can no longer use the country as a useful base? Is that victory?
Or do we simply want to withdraw in an apparently organised and purposeful fashion, leaving behind enough friends in high places and enough CIA informers that we can keep an eye on the place and ensure any terrorists starting to get big ideas wake up to a truck bomb in their back garden? Is that good enough?
‘Death or glory’ is a useful pair of choices for an individual warrior, but it’s no way to use an army.
With all due respect, Perry, I think you’re presenting a false choice here.The options are all based on the dichotomy of either A) the Enemy (who?) Wins or B) We Win.
There are also the choices C)Nobody Wins or D) both We and the Enemy (al-Qaeda?) lose, but a Third Party (Iran?) wins.
At this point, it seems to me that outcome D is exactly what is happening.The Sunni nationalists, al-Qaeda and the West are all losing,the Iranians and their allies are winning (in Iraq).
The recent rapprochement between the Sunnis and the Americans in the Anbar province needs to be seen in this light.The Sunni minority is starting to fear the Persians more than the Americans.
The problem here is that, in order to win,the West needs to be a part of an alliance that is larger than the Sunnis and the Kurds can put together.The Shia,after all, are the majority in Iraq.If at least a substantial number of them can’t be persuaded to stick with us ,the Surge will have been for naught.
End.
Wordly: Not really because I am asking a very specific question: how does reducing military forces because they are under pressure make sense? Whatever the broader political question, what some people (of both parties in both the US and UK) seem to be saying is they want to respond to military pressure by making our forces weaker.
J: But no one is suggesting that. With regard to your broader point, I think victory is really quite easy to define, even if not so easy to achieve. Saddam is gone, so in order to secure the victory that has already gained, we just have to not lose… and that, militarily, is eminently doable.
It is actually the other side who has to ‘win’. Anything that does not end with US helicopters lifting people off the roof of the US embassy as Jihadi forces roll up Baghdad can be quite reasonably be said to be a ‘victory’ if the following boxes are checked: Saddam gone, Totalitarian Ba’athism ended and no Islamofascist pro-Jihadi government in Baghdad… anything that ends with all those things is a victory. Democracy? Irrelevant.
Oh sure, I can think of all manner of ideal outcomes that I would like to see, but frankly that is just grading the final score… but what divides ‘victory’ from ‘defeat’ is really not too hard to figure out.
Nick M – Isn’t “Do it properly or not at all” a basic rule for everything?
But not nookie, thankfully it does not apply to nookie.
Which could be proof of a merciful God perhaps, eh Walter? That and beer, of course.
‘Ever since Cynic gave his cynical defence of the status quo in Iraq under Saddam, I haven’t quite been able to take this person seriously, nor his claim to be a libertarian.’
Oh please, this is about the only pro-war ‘libertarian’ website I’ve really come across. The vast, vast majority of libertarians opposed this war, and although I can’t speak for them, I suspect that most of them long feel vindicated by their refusal to be browbeaten into cheering for an authoritarian conservative (Bush) and an authoritarian leftist (Blair).
‘I recall he also said that Russia, as a state, had “rights” to do what it liked to the likes of the Ukraine, for instance.”
Does Israel, as a ‘state’, have the ‘right’ to exist? By your thinking, it doesn’t.
I think of others that supported the overthrow of Saddam; we are not “pro-war” any more than being in favour of other unpleasant things; the support that some contributors to this site gave to the Coalition venture in 2003 was based on an assessment made of the problems at the time. You might be surprised to learn that I am pretty skeptical about the whole “nation building” aspect of what happened
Your conflating two different issues here. I was challenging your preposterous notion that Russia, a former communist state now run by an ex-KGB thug, has a “right” to intimidate its neighbours to do its bidding (it was about gas supplies, if I recall); that’s rather different from the idea that a state, such as a democratic one, has a right to exist in the face of overwhelming hostility from neighbours such as Syria, etc.
Not very good Cynic, not very good at all.
What I said was that Russia had been selling Ukraine gas for years at subsidised rates for years, and I couldn’t really see any problem with Russia no longer subsidising the gas they sold to the Ukraine. You could only really see it as bullying if you actually believe in a god-given right to subsidies. I also said that I didn’t agree with Russian influence over certain Ukrainian socialist political parties, and that the US were no better in that regard since the National Endowment for Democracy, a taxpayer funded operation ran by an ex-commie (Carl Gershman) bankrolls other Ukrainian socialist political parties.
And Israel may be a democracy, but it is also a socialist state with a conscript army subsidised at the expense of the American taxpayer. And I find it really unconvincing that it is under threat. They have 200-300 nuclear weapons. Syria and Iran are not a major threat to Israel. Don’t give me the hokum about Iran’s leaders being really crazy and will use nukes suicidally. Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin were crazy and they never used nukes despite having them. Suicide bombers, as bad as they are, are not going to destroy Israel. If anything will destroy Israel, its the socialist economy the US continues to feed with aid.
‘I think of others that supported the overthrow of Saddam; we are not “pro-war” any more than being in favour of other unpleasant things’
Saddam’s six feet under. The pro-war lot still want to be in Iraq though.
‘the support that some contributors to this site gave to the Coalition venture in 2003 was based on an assessment made of the problems at the time.’
Still made them a tiny minority amongst libertarians.
But the gas was controlled and sold by the Russian state – something that a libertarian should not be very keen on, Cynic. A coherent position would be for the gas to be operated and sold by the private sector. The example you give is of the Russian state-run companies setting prices. For someone who makes so much of how “socialist” Israel is – debateable point – I find your argument not very compelling.
I agree that Israel should be able to pay for its own defence. No argument there. As Perry has said on this thread, the same applies to South Korea. I think prosperous countries should pay their way and grow up. There is a moral hazard problem in propping up the defences of prosperous countries – the latter act ungratefully, take foolish risks, etc.
Keep the jokes, Cynic – its Friday. I assume that all those speeches by the loony who is head of Iran are just so much joshing, no? If Iran gets the bomb – a pretty likely outcome – I’d be extremely worried if I were living in Israel.
Your confidence is a tonic.
I’d like to see some facts about just how “socialist” Israel really is these days, Cynic; it has changed quite a bit since the days of the Kibbutzes.
Amongst the ones you know that is.
Actually Israel does not have a ‘right’ to exist. No state does. However people in Israel have a right not to be exterminated because they are Jews and the way they avoid that happening is via a state-run military.
Yes that is a problem. But I didn’t think the Orange folk in Ukraine would object to that. The first Orange PM, Yulia Tymoshenko had this to say on state control of industry:
Putin and the Orange gang think alike. Let the socialists swindle themselves.
Was Khrushchev joking when he shouted ‘We will bury you’? Did he ever launch nukes at us though?
Even if Ahmadinejad really means what he’s saying, it doesn’t follow that he can or will actually wipe Israel out. Iran’s clerics, despite their theology, are a clever, Machiavellian bunch. They have kept themselves in power for 28 years. It seems unlikely that they would throw it all away by nuking Israel. If Israel is quaking in its boots, then why the fuck did they every build nukes themselves? If I had 300 nukes I wouldn’t be terrified by a bunch of 3rd world states regardless of how much hifalutin rhetoric come out of their mouths.
Several years ago, Zev Golan of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies In Jerusalem said this:
The same institute also released this too
http://www.israeleconomy.org/nbn/nbn462e.htm
I’m aware that Israel is becoming less socialist, but according to the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, it fell 5 places in its 2007 World Economic Freedom report to 44th. They say:
Goodness gracious! I knew that things in Old Blighty had gone done fast since my last visit, but what must life be like in Bradford if dodging daily incoming unguided missiles does not constitute being “under threat”?
One of the issues for Libertarianism is how to deal with those issues where we have to hang together lest we hang separately. External organized attack is one of those issues. And it is not satisfactory (either intellectually or practically) to pretend that the problem does not exist since we live in the best of all possible worlds where there are none who wish us ill. That is simply self-delusion.
Oh yes those crazy Palestinians with no functioning economy, no real army, no nuclear bombs are going to come and hang us all unless we keep enriching the Israeli elite will billions in aid. Bullshit.
Israel has indeed changed in the last 10-15 years. I would say it’s about as socialist now as the UK, more or less.
Steady on old chap, Israel is not quite THAT bad yet I think.
Julian: no, it isn’t, but we are working on it.
Cynic: I expect you to be cynical, but not dishonest. I would have understood if you said that you don’t care whether we in Israel live or die, but to say that we are under no threat shows either ignorance or unwillingness to face the facts. I am not sure which is worse.
I have no truck with Israel doing what it wants to defend itself, providing it doesn’t drag the west into its own conflicts, and providing not a single penny of aid is used to prop up the Israeli military.
If we have a fight, it is against Al-Qaeda. Not with Hamas, not with Hezbollah, not with Syria, not with Iran, not with Iraq, not with Russia, not with China, not with North Korea.
And a lot of the war crowd are totally ignorant of a much dire threat than what any pissed off Muslim can do, and that is homegrown state authoritarianism that has been growing rapidly since 9/11. Either that, or they actively cheer it on. Who needs the bogeyman islamofascists to impose tyranny when you have Bush-Blair to do that job for you?
‘Amongst the ones you know that is.’
Please. The Cato institute, the Mises Institute, the Independent Institute, Future of Freedom Foundation, and the US libertarian party all opposed the Iraq War.
I know the vast, vast majority of conservatives did and still support this war. But they are conservatives. I’m aware of the so-called neolibertarians, but from what I have read, they are just basically conservatives. And the Randians are just headcases. Thankfully they divorced themselves from libertarianism years ago.
And as I said, those are the ones you know. I would venture I personally know a lot more libertarians than you do. Moreover, who cares? I certainly do not. I care nothing about whether or not a view is ‘libertarian’ or not, just “is it true”?
But just to reiterate what I said earlier, not just to the factually challenged Cynic (whose views on the realities facing Israel appear to be either delusional or deeply dishonest, I know not which) but others too, please STAY ON TOPIC.
Every post about the war in Iraq is not an excuse to vent your wider views on the subject unless it is a general article about just that.
Since we have annexed Israel as the 51st state, thus obligating ourselves to protect them, I think that we should have our Supreme Court look into their violations of the First Amendment.
Oh … wait … Israel isn’t a state at all … hmmm …
I have not read the comments (I have just found out I have a post to write – so there is no time for that) so I will confine myself to the post and to some related thoughts.
Yes there are really only two choices – win or lose.
There is no point in reducing forces a lot or moving to other parts of Iraq or just outside (trying to hide from the mighty enemy).
So it is either pull out everyone in defeat, or fight.
Whether or not the West was right to go into Iraq in 2003 is now a moot point (I had my own, negative, opinion and was called names for it), if there is defeat in Iraq there are consequences.
Forget about defeating the Sunni Taliban (and A.Q.) in Afghanistan, or containing Shia Iran – the enemy morale would be so boosted by victory over the West in general and the United States in particular that any further efforts to defeat radical Islam (whether Sunni or Shia) in the rest of the region (or some other places) would be a farce.
So Senator B.O. and the rest of the mainstream of the Democratic party with their “get out of Iraq, but fight on in other places” do not know what they are talking about.
“So what, we caused all the problems anyway – it was down to such wickedness as helping kick out the Iranian Prime Minister in 1953”.
Assuming that any of the major factions in Iran cared about this man (they do not), not helping kick him out of office in 1953 would not have meant peace with Iran in 1979.
It would have simply meant that the conflict with Iran would have started in 1953 not 1979. As the pro Soviet Prime Minister would have directed Iran against the West in general and the United States in particular.
“We could avoid all this by not messing about with the world”.
If the United States did not act in the world there is no other major power that will act for the West (the British Empire being gone), and those who think that the United States could long survive as a island of semi liberty in a sea of tyranny are mistaken.
Total noninterventionism only works if someone else is doing the fighting and thus (intentionally or not) protecting you.
Although, of course, that does not mean that one should always go in. My opinion of the 2003 choice to go into Iraq has not changed. But one must deal with the position one is in – not the position one wishes one was in.
I personally have no problem with certain Western powers supporting the Israeli military if it is believed that supporting a state’s right to exist is something worthwhile (and in the case of Israel, a tiny country surrounded by vast, populous nations full of anti-semites, it is).. Without support, it is possible that Israel would have been destroyed by the actions of its neighbours. But then I get the impression that a lot of people who get all fussed about Israel would not be upset by that outcome. I’ll be charitable and assume that you are not one of such folk.
So? Do you ever think for yourself? I greatly respect the CATO Institute and agree with a lot of what they say (the Mises Institute is another matter, their views on foreign policy are frankly barking and as for Raimondo, he is an anti-semite).
Actually, one of the great libertarian scholars, Randy Barnett(Link), has challenged the idea that isolationism is the only approach of libertarian foreign policy.
Actually, the assumptions behind non-interventionism are somewhat different. The assumption is that most people, given an area to operate in, will operate in that area. We are talking about an “enemy” which barely deserves the area, since it is entirely lacking in any ability to invade or destroy us. It’s only ability is to launch suicide attacks, which are always a desperation maneuver. They are not a means to taking and holding territory, they are not a means of imposing your political will on others. They are a means of trying to harm those who are imposing their political will on you, when you are so weak that you have no other means of fighting.
For example, I’m pretty fond of breathing. The chances of getting me to launch a suicide attack against the Soviet Union during the cold war would have been slim to none. My country never would have gained anything by it. But if we had been invaded, then of course I would have been willing to launch an attack, any attack, against the forces which had invaded us, even at the cost of my own life. I would rather die fighting than live as a slave, but I would rather live free than die fighting.
I do realize that most of you here are convinced that Arabs/Muslims are not human, that they do not think, that they drink the blood of babies, what have you. This is the same propaganda which is always used against the group one wants to destroy. It just isn’t true. Humans are human.
I wish that you guys would really advance what your theories about Islam imply. They imply that the only possible solution to the “Muslim problem” is genocide. If this is the case (I do not believe it is), then our tactics are still totally insane. We should use saturation bombing to wipe out all the population centers, followed by ground troops with orders to shoot in sight: “Nation building” is never a sane tactic.
Just to repeat, this is not my opinion of what should be done, it is just the logical solution implied by the “Muslims aren’t human/they hate us for our freedom” refrain.
Rich Paul,
I probably shouldn’t keep this line going, but felt it was important to reassure you that the general feeling here is not that Muslims are sub-human. (Our argument is with Islam, not Muslims.)
I’ll admit that we do want to impose our political will on them: we wish to impose the minimum of human rights, liberty, and to prevent them attacking us and attempting to interfere with our own freedoms. The only solution is not genocide (which is neither feasible nor moral) but wholesale reform of Islam and Arab nationalism. They need their own version of the Enlightenment. It is a cultural war, which can only be truly fought by us ordinary people standing up for our values of tolerance and liberty. All the rest is necessary, but fundamentally is only there to hold the totalitarians off for long enough for it to work. To educate and persuade.
Why do you think we (some of us) support the fight to give Iraqis power over their own destiny, if we hate Muslims? We are not fighting to defeat the Muslims, we are fighting to save them!
We’re also not much interested in propaganda. My understanding of Islam is from orthodox Islamic sources – their scriptures, their history, their own laws. Where does yours come from?
Why do you find it so hard to believe that Islam might really be as totalitarian as we say? You have no problem believing the like of our our own governments, with less evidence. Can you tell me what the orthodox theological position is on the disposition of prisoners taken in Jihad? Or the rules with regard to dhimma? Was the Devshirme a tax you would oppose? Why do you think such an ideology should be allowed any foothold, allowed power over any people’s lives, anywhere?
Or is it simply a selfish position? Only threats to your liberty, like Western governments, should be fought. Your money should only be spent protecting the liberty of your nation, and let others look after themselves as they are able. You asked what your country would gain from an attack on the Soviets. A better question would be, what might the millions of prisoners suffering in the Gulags and Stalin’s torture chambers have gained from it? And then your question is answered too. Nations and nationalities are mere tools – it is the people who are important. Humans are human.
‘We are not fighting to defeat the Muslims, we are fighting to save them!’
Scoff. Scoff. Scoff.
Which has always been manifestly absurd given that the first truly global war was fought between 1754 and 1763. The notion that local problems stay local is wilfully blind wishful thinking at its worst.
Globalization… it ain’t just for iPods.
Rich Paul, smearing people is not rational argument.
No one has said that either “Muslims” or “Arabs” (these words do not mean the same thing) are “not human”.
You remind me of the people who attacked me for opposing the judgement to go into Iraq in 2003.
When I tried to explain the nature of a lot of the local population (drawing on historical knowledge of the area, and the personal knowledge of a family friend) I just had the word “racist” flung in my face.
Everyone was the same all over the world, cultural differences and historical experience were in no way relevant. Pure neocon doctrine (NOT something I think you will agree with).
As for your claim that you would have faught to the death against Soviet invasion.
So what?
They would have killed you, and then got on with other things.
A century ago the United States had an armed forces smaller than tiny Belguim.
“This proves that one can be a large nation without needing much of a military”.
Errrr what do you think would have happened had not the nasty British Empire been between you and (for example) Imperial Germany – a power that openly boasted of its desire (for example) to colonize Latin America (starting with Brazil) as part of a dream of WORLD domination.
Militia (you and your friends) would not have stopped the Imperial German armed forces, and you would not have stopped the National Socialist German armed forces either.
Nor would private “protection companies” have done so.
Nor would such voluntary efforts have stopped the Soviets in the Cold War.
It is true that the United States might not have been the first target, but America would not have been able to long survive as an island of freedom in a sea of tyranny.
As for the conflict between the West and certain interpretations of Islam (i.e. the interpretation by both radical Sunni and radical Shia that Islam should expand by conquest, killing or enslaving all who oppose it), as this conflict has being going on for more than a thousand years (please note – long before any one here said anything nasty about Islam) I see little chance of it ending any time soon.
Whatever policy the United States does or does not follow.
For better or worse the United States is now the main power of the West, without the United States the West can not long survive – and without the rest of the West the United States can not, in the end, survive either.
Seems the Arabs (or the Moslems) were the first globalizers, active from the Far East (Philippines, Indonesia) to the Atlantic. Those who deny their global aspirations don’t know their history and are also deaf to their current declarations.
The plain truth is that the US democrat party is bereft of vision, is intellectually and morally bankrupt and has pathetic candidates for 2008. In their tiny minds, they truly believe that their path to victory is to stab our troops in the back, labor for defeat and capitualtion in Iraq, and then somehow the American people will vote for their pathetic candidate in 2008.
… and they claim Bush had no strategy?????
Reminds me of “we had to burn the village to save it”. From Vietnam, IIRC, which is fitting.
There you have it, though I wouldn’t slant the language that way. The United States in on the road to bankruptcy.
The money printed for
are driving the dollar to all time lows. Note that the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, for now, which has never happened before. When gold was the currency of the world, a country could drive itself into hyperinflation, suffer, and reissue a new currency. What is going to happen when the reserve currency of the world is driven into hyperinflation? I don’t know. And since the human race has never before been mad enough to make such a thing possible, neither do you. But I’ll venture a guess that it will not be pretty.
As for what would the Soviet people have gained by our attacking their country and bringing down their government (if it had been possible without ending life on earth) — they would have gained a freedom that they
. Have a look at Russia today … the only question is whether they’ll tip to the fascist side or the communist side, and that strikes me as a difference that makes no difference. Why? Because they never figured out what was wrong with their country, and fought to correct it, and until that happens, it doesn’t matter if their government falls, it will be replaced with one that is just as bad.
Meanwhile, the net amount of freedom in the world would not have been increased, because in order to give freedom to the Russians, we would have had to give up our own freedom. It would be like “freedom socialism”, where freedom was redistributed from those who had earned it to those who had not, and then wasted by the recipients.
So yes, I’m selfish. I have no problem with people who want to go fight for freedom in some foreign land. They can do it on their own dime, and pay with their own blood. That is not the purpose of my tax money. My tax money is paid to protect the constitution of the United States of America, and nothing else. Not the foreign investments of her companies, not the freedom of people in countries I’ve never visited, not the “right” of our country to impose our way of doing things on others.
Somebody said that the Muslims needed an “enlightenment”, to come to terms with their inter-sect problems, as well as to learn to tolerate other religions. Yes, they do. But the enlightenment was not imposed on Christians from without, it came from within. If the Muslims had invaded Europe during the Thirty Years War, and tried to impose religious tolerance from without, they would have failed. The Christians needed to see for themselves that the war was destroying them, without outside scapegoats to blame. Only then could they realize that they were better served by peace and coexistence than by trying to stamp out the other cults.
As for Israel, they wanted to move into a neighborhood that did not want them. That was a silly thing, in my opinion, to do. But they did it, and good luck to them. But they do not have a right to take our freedom in order to stay there. Were I to set up housekeeping on the moon, and then say “it’s hard to live on the moon, those of you who don’t live on the moon should pay the excessive costs of my choosing to live here”, I suspect you guys would tell me to get the hell off the moon. That would be a good answer. Bailing me out for 50 years, however, would not be a good answer. Having bailed me out for 50 years, bailing me out for another 50 would be worse.
Well the Socialist Workers Party definitely did state that their official policy was that it was best all round for America to suffer a major military defeat in Iraq. Now, the SWP may be small and the Lib Dems, say, have been more reticent, but the “Stop the War Alliance” is, on point of fact, a front group for the SWP and they run, at the very least, the major academic and journalistic Unions in Great Britain.
Elsewhere, Bob Crow has more or less the same views, the Independent’s most famous jounalist has made clear his support for the insurgency, as has Tariq Ali and most of New Left Review commentators. Kucinich, who represents the Democratic grassroots, has stated that the insurgents are resisting neo-liberal privatisation, Naomi Klein has just published a book elucidating this thesis. A quick look at this makes it quite clear what demonstrators at mainstream rallies want.
Moving to the world of personal experience, I’ve met dozens of people who said they wanted America to receive a major beating in Iraq and I try, as hard as humanly possible, not to talk to leftwingers. Why you wish to deny this perfectly evident phenomenon is quite beyond me. Perhaps you’re thinking of re-starting the tentative moves to a Karl Hess type position you disgraced yourself with about a year ago.
Interesting you should choose that era for your gonzo example as the Ottomans were deep within Europe(Link) then and posed a considerable threat to Christian Europe.
So… I take it you think the reason the Thirty Years War ended was everyone realised that peace and tolerance was the sensible approach and so Cardinal Richelieu organised a big Europe-wide group hug to being the war to a conclusion? And having learned tolerance the hard way, and not having had it imposed from outside by the US Marine Corps (the term Pax Romana comes to mind), Europe lived happily ever after.
Oh, hang on, now that I think about it, Catholic France was actually fighting on the Protestant side in order to stick it to the Hapsburgs! Hmmm…
The Thirty Years War was long before tolerance was established in Europe. I actually lose track of when that happened there … I know when it happened in America, it was right around the time of the constitution.
Like Pax Yugoslavia under Tito or Pax Hussein in Iraq, which fell apart as soon as the dictator died, Pax Romana ended when Rome stopped, and the Dark Ages started.
Very similar to what might well happen when the rest of the world (which props up broken economies on U.S. subsidies and has little military, because they depend on America to defend them), when the American economy (and possibly government) collapses under the strain of creeping socialism, constant foreign adventures, welfare for (but not taxation of) every backward dictator on the planet, wholesale abandonment of the constitution, worthless fiat money, massive regulation, etc,etc,etc.
The US needs more territory to defend like a snake needs suspenders. I don’t care if it’s Israel or Iraq.
The treaty of Westphalia established cuius regio eius religio, within which established and state churches were free to persecute to their hearts content. This was essentially the same formula arrived at after the Schmalkaldik wars, with the added proviso that Calvinism was included. This, though, has been the case de facto anyway.
How this can be said to establish religous tolerance in Europe is quite beyond me. Evidently someone forgot to inform Louis XIV.
I would say Rich Paul shouldn’t talk about thing he knows nowt about, but that would amount to a blanket ban and I know Samizdata’s policies on this.
Rich Paul – “let the Muslims sort out their own problems”.
I can see the logic of that. I am not a kindly person, I do not burst into tears when I see people killing each other on television.
However, the radicals (among both the Sunni and the Shia) have no intention what so ever of just murdering moderate Muslims.
They are after you Rich Paul – you and your family and friends.
And they will not rest till you are all dead or enslaved.
9/11 was not about Americans being in the holy desert of Arabia (only a few hundred miles from the Holy Places) nor was it about American plots to kick out a pro Soviet Prime Minister in Iran in 1953.
9/11 was part of a struggle that has been going on for more than a thousand years.
Even in the 18th century (let alone the 17th century of the thirty years war) Holy Islamic Warriors raided as far north as Iceland (yes Iceland – although they raided Ireland and Britain to).
And raiding of Europe (and ships from North America) continued into the 19th century.
Jefferson counter attacked North Africa.
And Charles X of France finally occupied the main enemy bases.
War in the Balkans continued however (on and off) right into the 20th century.
So, you see 9/11 was simply a return to the historical norm.
As for the large Islamic population in nominally Christian nations in Europe, and the small but growing Islamic population in the United States.
Well that is interesting.
“wicked left wants us to lose theory”.
It is not a “theory” many on the left do want the West to lose in Iraq (on the basis that any defeat for a Republican Administration is a good thing, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
Sadly some of these leftists also tend to support “multiculturalism” in the West itself (following the Frankfurt Herbert Marcuse line about how supporting various groups against traditional Western society will help destroy that “capitalist” society)
The above is not all the left – for example C. Hitchins and Nick Cohen both want the West to win.
The problem with both the “moderate” tactical left (such as the mainstream of the Democrat party in the United States) and the hard line Marxist influenced left is that neither group understands that supporters of radical Islam (whether Sunni or Shia) are not tools to be used in some struggle against “the forces of conservatism” in the West.
Interpretations of Islam that hold that non Muslims or moderate Muslims must be exterminated or enslaved are a threat to the very existance of the West.
For all his other faults (which are many) Mr Blair understood that – but most of the moderate left has not followed him.
As for the hard line left: Their ideas come from Marxism (although sometimes in mutated forms, due to the influence of Gramsci and Marcuse and others), so they do not understand the threat that radical Islam poses to them – which is as much as it poses to anyone else.
A few traditional Marxists do see the threat, but most of the left that is influenced by various forms of Marxism still clings to the delusion that radical Muslims are just another group that they can use to attack the traditional West with.