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| SFReader Forums > The Real World > World Events > Victory in Iraq | Forum Quick Jump
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Specfiction
Neophyte
      
Date Joined Dec 2006
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 2/16/2007 12:30 PM (GMT -5) |   |
nathan said...
Just caught a glimpse of Murtha's brilliant plan to block the troop surge and it occurred to me that this question exists on a couple of different levels. That is; is more American troops better for American global interests or for the Iraq stradegy? I concede not the argument on these two points, but rather the point is that there can indeed be a legitimate argument back and forth and I think all those arguments should be listened to.
However there is another level to this argument and here I think Jeff maybe spot on. The other level could be the differences in how the same people answer the question differently depending on the way its considered or phrased.
Level #1: "Dear Mr. Combat Serviceman: Do you think a troop surge is the answer for Iraq?" Now "The Answer for Iraq" may get you a host of answers depending on the personal variables.
BUT...
Level #2: "Mr. Serviceman: For the next two years at least, regardless of Congress or the Senate, the president is keeping you in Iraq. The Commander-in-Chief has decided to take the battle to the militias in Baghdad and An Bar. Now, would you rather have a Marine or Army unit on your 3' or 6' o-clock or a possibly militia infiltrated Hajj unit?"
The answer--except for some very limited cases with specific units (e.g. Iraq 36 Commando)--you will of course hear is service members say they would rather have American units backing them up or fighting beside them than Iraqi.
If you can't stop Bush from going after the militias and you can't force him to pull out now then it comes down to this fact: blocking a troop surge leaves Mike's son and my service days buddies with allies of dubious ability. Our troops are safer surrounded by more of our troops--even if a start of offensive operations (as oppossed to training and security ops) means more soldiers become casualities than in the months prior to the surge.
I can understand Supporting The Troops: Pull Them Out. I can't understand Support The Troops: Deny Them Dependable Help While They're Stuck There.
This is exactly the reason this war has almost no chance of succeeding. Latest news from the surge--several thousand American soldiers on the street in ambush ally--a couple of hundred Iraqis show up.
On the Vietnam memorial, half the names represent soldiers killed "after" the so-called leaders had secretly decided the war was unwinnable.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2172
| Posted 2/16/2007 12:41 PM (GMT -5) | | I agree. At this point it does not seem that the Baghdad Iraqis in particular and those Iraqi troops from quiet zones in general are standing up to the task. If the Iraqis don't stand up we are left with two options.
One, really have a troop surge. Like 100k in troops, denuding Europe, locking Baghdad down in a manner that has yet to be done and sitting on the Iraqis while we nursemaid the government toward reconciliation--much as we do on Voting Dates when massive troops surges quell all resistance.
Or...we get the hell out and let them kill each other and let this become an Iran v Saudia Arabia mess.
I see no popular support for the first option, meaning no '08 canidate is going to run on that platform and win. The leaves 'til about the end of summer to see if Bush's brilliant "the Iraqis will help plan" is somehow going to pull through.
I hope for the best but rather expect the worse from the Iraqis.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2172
| Posted 2/16/2007 1:34 PM (GMT -5) | | |
I'd like to see massive funding for dissident groups in Iran, of which their are plenty, tied in to pro-American propaganda by a successful Hollywood PR firm, lol. Use a sniper not sledge hammer approach to sanctions like we did in N Korea where the elites are targeted and not populous.
Combine that with some dirty tricks like starting rumors the Iranian president is a pedophile and the top Imman's drink pig blood in secret rituals all while erroding their gas infrastructor to stifle profits.
Let them spend all their energy fighting asymetrical bush fires so they're less concerned about nuking Israel or expanding into Iraq.
Hilary Clinton seems like a woman who could appreciate the subtilties of such actions though Guiliani might think along those lines as well.
Obama seems a little pie-eyed by comparison and McCain doesn't seem like a likely canidate for below the surface dirty war either.
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2352
| Posted 2/16/2007 1:55 PM (GMT -5) | | specfic--- I agree with Robert Heinlien that the main purpose of a military is to look so fierce that no one ever thinks of attacking you.
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Specfiction
Neophyte
Date Joined Dec 2006
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 2/16/2007 9:12 PM (GMT -5) | |
MichaelEhart said...specfic--- I agree with Robert Heinlien that the main purpose of a military is to look so fierce that no one ever thinks of attacking you.
They all love Heinlien. He had a lot of interesting and cynical takes on much of the trappings of institutions--the bizzare encounter with a billy-bob preacher in Stranger, smacking women around in a cold-war parity in Puppet Masters. I like what he tried to do with SF, although a lot of it was a bit hard boiled for my tastes. In fact his dissatisfaction with SF prompted him to coin the phase "Speculative Fiction" for his brand of SF. But he had a real dark side too. The original Day After Tomorrow was basically a racist rant about Asians.
My personal favorite Speculative Fiction is probably Stan Lem. His work is timeless and quite amazing.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2172
| Posted 2/17/2007 2:12 PM (GMT -5) | | "Your current plans remind me of act four in Julius Caesar," Tom said. "In act five, everyone falls on their swords."--Stephen King, "Cell"
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 2/24/2007 4:57 PM (GMT -5) | | Specfiction said...
Al-Queada are Sunni--but so what. Al-Queada are the self-proclaimed enemy of every Sunni state in the Gulf. To this end Bin Laden's stated goal was to cause a war between the US and a major Gulf state in hopes of turning the Gulf away from the US and enlisting more recruits for Al-Queada--we have Bin Laden exactly where he wants us. When we get smart and start playing this thing to our advantage perhaps we will make some gains in the Middle East--best strategy--back off militarily.
Al-Queada will come here if we back off in Iraq--wrong! Same nonsense given to us by that group with that sparkling record of nothing other than failure. Would you listen to a broker who had a track record like that with your investments--I wouldn't..
You need a crash course in the culutral referents we're up against. Arabic saying: "You must kiss the hand you cannot cut off." (And don't quibble about who's Arabic and who's not, because that is the basis for their religious tenets, as well.) As long as they think they can cut ours off, they will keep trying. Once they are convinced they can't cut it off, it'll be "Insh'allah" and the Dar al Islam isn't meant to take over the planet at this time.
That is their cultural and religious outlook. They respect only proven strength. Where they perceive weakness, they will attack. Back off now, and they'll be all over us like white on rice, forever, until they push us to the point we were at in WWII, where no one had a problem with "the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell." Do you really want that to turn into "the Koran will be read only in Hell"?
If you do, then by all means keep advocating for us to roll belly-up and whine for "peace." Because "peace" to them means total and complete submission to them and their religion.
Specfiction said...
All we can hope is that the majority of Americans get it this time and will not support people who have nothing but failure to show for their absolute insistence in knowing how to run foreign policy. Their track record speaks for itself.
So does the track record of the other side. The one that's been screaming "It's a quagmire!" since before the troops even got to Baghdad. The one that's been screaming "It's another Vietnam!" and doing their damnedest to turn that gutless lie into reality since before the invasion was even complete. I'll take my chances on the side that has at least some modicum of a spine, rather than the one that wants us to crawl like worms.
Iraq needs to be settled down. Whether that is possible or not, I don't know. The cultural dynamic there has been skewed by multiple factors, not the least of which is that they lived under a dictatorship for half a century after barely seeing elected govenment. Another dates back to when one Muslim faction decided to slaughter another. Another comes from the artificial construct of the national borders dating from foreign domination of the area.
Whether the Iraqis can overcome their own tribalism and actually make themselves a nation is one of the biggest questions. From what I've read on Iraq the Model and other Iraqi blogs, there are a lot of people there who want to.
Specfiction said...
As far as negotiating for oil--exploding the Middle-East in endless regional wars should bring the price down and put us in a position of strength--makes sense.
The Middle East explodes into endless regional wars all on their own, and have for several thousand years. Regardless of their level of industrialization, they are still basically tribal societies: Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, me and my brother and our cousin against anyone not of our clan. The same goes for their religious schisms.
The Iraqi people, even under Saddam, had a much higher standard of living than many (most? all?) of their neighbors. They want that back, along with a much greater portion of self-determination than they had under a dictator. What's holding them back is the various "leaders" playing on that tribalistic background to keep them separated and fighting each other instead of kicking the terrorists' asses the hell out of their country.
If Iraq can become a true nation, it can serve as a model for the rest of the region and stabilize it from within.
If the only thing we can accomplish is giving them a functioning police and military, declaring victory, and leaving them to kill each other all on their own, it will still be better than throwing up our hands, whining "We can't win!" and coming off as easy prey for anyone who wants to take a shot at us.
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 2/24/2007 6:51 PM (GMT -5) | | Specfiction said...
Japan, Europe, The Balkans--all of these are false comparisons. Europe can't be compared--they had a history of Democracy--as far back as the Greeks.
Greek democracy hadn't existed in a couple of millenia. In the rest of Europe, some Scandinavian areas and England, through the Magna Carta, were the only places any trace existed for most of that time. Parliaments weren't even that old. Germany had been a nation, per se, for only a short time, with a long history of aristocratic rule, not of democracy.
Specfiction said...
Japan et al--bad comparison--they were a defeated, non--fundamentalist enemy when the US entered Japan.
--------------------Begin Quote http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/war.term/olympic.html ---------------------
Olympic vs Ketsu-go
....
High-spirited regular troops, supported by the fanatically patriotic citizenry in death-defying combat, would inflict fantastic losses on those invaders who managed to get ashore.
....
The main strength of the Japanese Army remained intact. All material and psychological resources could be combined to defend hearth and home, to annihilate the invaders on soil that was known and loved. The motto would truly be, "Victory or Death!"-and the spirit would be that of the special attack corps.
--------------------End Quote------------------------
--------------------Begin Quote http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html -------------------------
The next invasion, OPERATION DOWNFALL, was to be the Japanese islands.
In April 1945 there were an estimated five million Japanese military, with nearly two million on the main islands. Japan's terrain was considered good for defense and difficult to attack. The invasion would be tougher than Normandy, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima or Okinawa.
The United States forces in the Pacific had suffered 300,000 battle casualties up to July 1st. The assault on Japan was predicted to kill and wound one million more Americans. Invasion plans involved nearly five million American soldiers, sailors, marines and coast guardsmen. Convoys carrying the troops and supplies to the landings in Japan would have to cross hundreds of miles of ocean on their way from the Marianas, the Philippines and Okinawa. Japan had 9,000 aircraft and 5,000 kamikaze ready for attacks on the invasion fleet.
....
Dropping atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the signing of unconditional surrender on board the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.
After the Japanese Surrender
While action by Japanese units continued in various areas throughout the Pacific, the U.S. Merchant Marine was given the job of transporting the surrendered armies back to Japan. [emphasis added]
--------------------End Quote------------------------
Defeated is arguable on a certain level. Non-fundamentalist depends on your use of the term. Many were fanatically militaristic, and from an eyewitness account, the populace, armed with little more than farm implements and polearms, would have been driven against the invading forces by the remaining military, if they did not charge on their own. This account, passed down from a Shinto priest, included the estimate that 90% of the Japanese population would have died repelling the invasion. Even though his family was all but wiped out by the Tokyo firebombings and one of the A-bombs, he considered the A-bomb to be a great mercy for Japan, because it gave Emperor Hirohito the leverage he needed to call for surrender. (The priest survived because he was up in the hills trying to find a cave to hide his family in during the invasion, and one daughter survived because she had married a US officer before the war. My source is his great-grandson, now the clan head.)
After the surrender, Emperor Hirohito remained a potential flashpoint. MacArthur's forcing him to repudiate his family's divinity was a ploy to defuse it. Even so, had the Emperor not been treated well, the populace would have risen up and killed the occupation force. It was his word that allowed the surrender to take place, and only his compliance and continued safety allowed it to remain in force.
I saw the incredible level of reverence the common people held for him forty years later, while I was stationed on Okinawa. The Diet was behaving like a bunch of squabbling brats, and Emperor Hirohito told them to stop embarrassing Japan before the world. They stopped. (A local told me that had they not, they might have been killed by a mob before they could be thrown out of office.)
That the Emperor held that much personal power that long after the surrender strongly argues that had he not called for it, the Japanese people would likely have been defeated only when there were too few of them left to fight any longer.
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 2/24/2007 7:20 PM (GMT -5) | | nathan said...
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was meant to draw us into a war as well.
Actually, it was meant to completely destroy our Pacific fleet and keep us out of Japan's way while they finished conquering their side of the ocean. We were, at the time, not only refusing to sell them the metal they needed for their war effort (reasonable, as they were at war with China, our ally), but also blocking their oil shipments through the Malaysian straits -- arguably an act of war. Japan expected to catch our carriers in port, and that this blow would cripple us in the Pacific until they had consolidated their conquests into an unassailable fortress. Japan and the US had been allies in WWi (don't recall if this was still in effect in 1941). With this history, our traditionally isolationist stance, and the oil blockade as an arguable provocation, they expected to be able to negotiate peace before we had rebuilt our Pacific fleet enough to engage them.
Had they verified that their declaration of war was ready to be delivered before they lauched their attack, things might have turned out much differently.
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 2/24/2007 7:27 PM (GMT -5) | | Specfiction said...
Well Nathan, I appreciate your thoughtful, non-rant analysis of this issue. I don't, however, agree with you.
Democracy by the purple finger means nothing when 90% of the voters were told how to vote by their sectarian masters--this is just a charade. A pseudo democracy of people who don't have a history of democracy can not be translated into a multi-tribal, religious society held together for 30 years by a murderous strong man whose idol was Stalin. By the way, that murderous strong-man, Sadam, was our ally during the 80's while we gave him logistic support in a war that killed more than half a million Iranians--some by poison gas. I can send you a picture of Sadam hugging Rummsfeld.
The idea of democracy in many repressive societies throughout the world is ill concieved--you'd better hope it doesn't happen. The first thing they'll do is elect the most religious repressive strong men they can find, and then that will be the end of any hope for real democracy with very bad consequences in those regions for US foreign policy. Like Iran--a democracy in name only--elected officials have very little power--the Ayatollahs rule Iran.
You're off base on one thing: The Iraqis had a tradition of democractic government (of one form or another) before Saddam took power. I don't remember if there was another dictator before him that he bumped off, or if he pulled the coup himself that took that government out of power. But the Iraqis know they once had it, and want it back.
Whether they can manage that in the face of sectarian and tribal incitement is the question.
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Silverdrake
Stablehand
Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 49
| Posted 2/24/2007 7:52 PM (GMT -5) | | Specfiction said...
Let me state my personal opinion clearly. I'm for messing with no one. I'm for minding our own business. I’m not for sending gunmen anywhere.
Libertarian?
Specfiction said...
I saw a businessman interviewed on TV. He was stepping out of Morgan Stanley or something like that, on Wall Street, sporting what looked like a $2000.00 wool coat--very nice. The newsperson asked him, “what are your views on the Iraq war?” The guy thought a moment, then said; "I can't figure out what's in it for us." Bingo. Nothing at all, except a lot of pain for those with some skin in the game, a failing economy here at home, and a total collapse of our foreign policy. Let me say it again, our troops deserve better leadership than this.
The guy is ignorant, then. Saddam was the hero of the Mideastern sphere. He was claiming to be not only the descendent but the heir of Saladin. He had faced the combined might of the US and its allies and won by still being alive and in power after Desert Storm, after 12 years of cease-fire violations and thumbing his nose at the entire UN, and publicly funding suicide bombers in Palestine with not a single significant thing being done to make him stop doing any of it. This gave him tremendous sta | |
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