The cross-community demonstration of support for Fallujah had been organized by Baghdad clerics both Sunni and Shiite amid reports that the death toll in the town had reached 105 since late Tuesday.

it's terrible.

we shouldn't have disbanded the army. and we should have had limited local elections already. and the june 30 date was a mistake. and i wish we had more troops there.

and i know you guys opposed this from day one, and predicted, accurately, that just this kind of opposition would be the inevitable result.

but now that we're here, where do we go?

a few options i can think of...

option 1: more troops, more violence, move the transition date, impose muscular martial law (the Sharon strategy).

option 2: hand over to interim governing council as scheduled, withdraw US troops from cities, allow local militias to take over (the Karzai strategy).

Neither one's very appetizing.

I think the key issue is NOT the june 30 handover - that's an artificial, Bush-created date. The key issue is the timing of national elections. That's what the Shia want and have continually pressed for - national, democratic, one man one vote elections.

Until there's a hard date on the table and a firm UN pledge to administer elections, there's no reason for the Shia _not_ to be in open revolt.

If we made Sistani happy on elections, OTOH, he could probably broker a deal for peace with the Sadr-ites.

thoughts?
- big jimmy 4-09-2004 12:22 am [add a comment]

Immediately sack Bremmer. Bring in someone new to run things - and here's the key - this person has to be somehow independent of the Bush administration (so I guess they'd have to have bipartisan congressional approval.) Have this person publicly apologize to all the Iraqi people. Admit we fucked up. Admit we were completely wrong, and most likely afoul of international law. Back a UN commission to look into possible coalition war crimes.

After these admissions of guilt, lay out a plan for *immediate* withdrawal of all coalition troops.

Pay huge reparations to the Iraq people.

There is no other way.

But yes, I realize this plan would never be put into action.

How do you feel about one empire stretching from Iraq through Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan? That's quite an army. With nukes. Time for the U.S. to take this seriously.
- jim 4-09-2004 12:35 am [add a comment]

• immediate withdrawal?
  
  let's forget about what this would mean for the US - what would it mean for Iraq?
  
  No army capable of defending Iraq's borders, no legitimate government, no internal police force --? Immediate civil war and anarchy will result. MUCH worse than what we're seeing now. Kurds make a grab for Kirkuk and Mosul. Shia and Sunni battle for Baghdad. Etc. Chaos.
  
  Predictable result? Iraq's neighbors act to "stabilize the region". How'd you like Turkish, Iranian, and Syrian troops in-country in about 2 weeks after we pull out?
  do you really think this is a good option? seriously?
  
  Meanwhile, do you think Al-Sadr would really think "bipartisan congressional approval" would make a new viceroy more palatable than Bremer? FWIW, John Burns was saying today on Charlie Rose that most Iraqis seem to respect Bremer, even though they hate the occupation...I'm not too sanguine about Robert Blackwill, the likely replacement (and nominally the guy in charge of this whole mess right now, reporting to Condi).
  - big jimmy 4-09-2004 8:46 am [add a comment]




• Well we agree, at least, that things are a mess.
  
  There is chaos in Iraq now, and there will be for the foreseeable future, so I'm not sure that saying my plan will lead to chaos is really a significant point. What plan on the table does not lead to chaos?
  
  But stepping back a little, I think the U.S. is creating a monster, and it is almost - but not quite - too late to stop it. If the U.S. pulls out there will be a vacuum, and the different regional factions will fight it out to fill this vacuum. But if the U.S. does not pull out then it looks like there is a real chance these different factions will unite against the U.S. This is the big danger I think.
  
  For example, the Shi'a and Sunni working together. Or the reports of Sunni groups working with Al Qaeda in the north. Who would have thought this possible? These are long time enemies.
  
  I don't particularly want Iran and Turkey and Syria in Iraq. But I'll take that (with them and the various local militias all fighting each other,) over the muslim world uniting in one giant nuclear equipped global jihad against the U.S. I don't think my fear is close to being realized, but do we really want to push it? And for what? So that we can impose democracy like we are doing in Falluja right now?
  
  Some might want to argue here "well, be patient, it takes time." But how much time? Another 6 months? Another year? We can't keep moving the line.
  
  I love this David Brooks op-ed which to me is representative of the ridiculously flawed thinking coming from our leaders. "Everything is fine", "No problems", "The sky is not falling", blah, blah, blah, and then in the second to last paragraph he slips in this one little reservation: "If people like Sistani are forced to declare war on the U.S., the gates of hell will open up." But despite his strong language, it's a complete afterthought in the article. He spends 99% of the article explaining that things really aren't that bad and we shouldn't be worried. And then, oh yeah, except maybe it could be super duper bad. Except don't worry it's not.
  
  What I'm saying is let's get our heads out of the sand make sure the fucking gates of hell do not open up. That is priority number one. And it is rather urgent at the moment. Pulling U.S. troops out will have the negative short term consequences for Iraq that you outline, but I think those are far better than the worst case scenario if we keep pushing.
  - jim 4-10-2004 8:26 pm [add a comment]

What happens if the airport falls?

That would leave us with zero supply routes (at the moment we don't control any roads from friendly ports into Baghdad.) What if Sistani could put 100,000 armed men around the airport? Think that would give him an okay bargaining position?
- jim 4-09-2004 12:56 am [add a comment]

"we shouldn't have disbanded the army. and we should have had limited local elections already. and the june 30 date was a mistake. and i wish we had more troops there."

Sensible suggestions for how minimize the damage in the aftermath of a fundamentally wrong decision. If Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Bush were hell bent to launch this invasion, they should have had a plan. And they had plenty of time to develop a plan. But they were in deep denial.

What's the least bad course now? Beats me.
- mark 4-09-2004 9:43 am [add a comment]

David Gergen, who has advised Republican and Democrat presidents, said: "Right now, I do not think the American people sense we have a plan for how to deal with Iraq. It is giving the country a sense that we need to prevail, but also: what the heck are we trying to accomplish here now? Who are we trying to turn this over to? Who is the enemy? If we are going to be sacrificing American soldiers, how are we going to get out of this?"
- mark 4-10-2004 1:50 pm [add a comment]

I think we deserve credit, those of us who opposed this dumb invasion, for having a little wisdom in wanting our countrymen the hell out of there. Kenneth Pollack was wrong and Scott Ritter was right and some of us knew who to listen to.

I grew up in the '60s with parents saying, about Vietnam, "we can't pull out, there'll be a bloodbath when we leave!" (Who killed millions of Vietnamese? We did! When did it stop? When we left!)

Iraq looks more and more like Nam every day. American generals blockading and bombing Fallujah because some mercenaries got killed there. The generals are mad because newly-minted Iraqi security forces are refusing to "fight Iraqis." The President is being filmed catching bass for a fishing show. What a quack operation.

If the Iraqis hadn't been crippled with sanctions and had been able to take care of Saddam themselves, the same "power vacuum" would exist, exposing the same old rivalries, etc. The boundaries of Iraq were arbitrarily drawn by colonial powers decades ago, and there may very well be some redrawing of those boundaries after colonial powers are gone. It's for the Iraqis to determine, not hamfisted fuckups of the West.

Are you saying we should care for humanitarian reasons? We've killed 10,000 Iraqis in a year! Is it because of the oil? Or Israel? If it's the latter two reasons, we should be having a national discussion about this and quit making stuff up about why we're there. In the meantime, we shoud be planning our exit strategy and looking for less volatile fuel sources.

- tom moody 4-11-2004 7:26 pm [add a comment]

I can already hear the Bush speech in October: "We removed a dangerous dictator from power, determined there were no weapons of mass destruction, and got most of our troops safely out of the country..."

Or maybe this Kerry speech, also in October: "Progress towards democracy in Iraq has been slower than we'd hoped, but we must stay the course. Unlike my opponent, who makes families reach into their savings to send Kevlar vests to their sons, I'll make sure we have the largest, strongest, and best-equipped military in the world..." (Oh, wait, that's what he's saying now.)

- tom moody 4-12-2004 10:53 pm [add a comment]

"My approach to building an American empire is more nuanced."
- mark 4-12-2004 11:51 pm [add a comment]

Every time I post about something political I vow afterwards to not post any more about political things. But we really are coming to the edge here. If this report is correct, then Sistani has layed down something of an ultimatum, and the U.S. response will decide the future of Iraq, the region, and possibly the entire world.

I realize that seeing global political issues in stark binary terms is probably a sign of naivete, but nonetheless it really does seem like the U.S. has backed itself into a corner where there really are only two options.

If the U.S. heeds Sistani's warning they will not go into Najaf to get Sadr. This will hand Sadr an obvious and powerful victory, but worse, it will also grant him a base of operations from which to build and safeguard his army. U.S. forces will have to do something like the "Karzai strategy" outlined by big jimmy above: pull back from the cities into heavily fortified bases out in the desert where U.S. troops will have to sit around waiting to get picked off by the sea of militants who will now be able to mount attacks against them and then retreat to the safety of their cities where the U.S. can not pursue them.

This sounds untenable militarily.

But, on the other hand, if the U.S. goes into Najaf to arrest or kill Sadr and crush his army (as they have vowed quite explicitly to do,) then it looks like Sistani might call on Shi'ites to "resist with their last breath". There are 140,000,000 Shi'ites in the world (for comparison, this is roughly the population of Russia.) And it seems like Iraqi Shi'ites, at the very least, will heed his call (that's 60% of 25 million people, or 15,000,000 people.) Short of flattening whole cities from the air and killing a substantial part of the population (hundreds of thousands?) I strongly doubt that 130,000 U.S. troops can hold their ground against the entire population of Iraq.

So what's the plan?

I still say immediate withdrawal is the best bet. Although my plan is different from the ones we have started to hear in the media which are all "declare victory and get out." My plan is to "admit defeat, apologize, and get out." Hardly a likely scenario. But also, it occurs to me, couldn't the U.S. hand the whole thing over to Sistani? He has said numerous times that he doesn't want political power - but maybe they could leave it up to him and allow him to choose the person to be in power (followed by a nationwide election - which Sistani wants - to be held as soon as he thinks it is possible.) In short, keep the troops there and give Sistani operational control - whatever he says goes. That might possibly work too.

My fear is that the U.S. plan is more along the lines of "let's poke a little more at this hornets nest - maybe something good will finally come out of it." ABC news is certainly making it sound like we are getting ready to attack.
- jim 4-13-2004 7:18 pm [add a comment]

Well, Jim, you know how I feel about this. Just for the record, here's Kerry's position, as stated in a Washington Post op ed.

In the past week the situation in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission.

Chalibi is still backed by Perle. Hmmm... Ambassador Perle and President Chalabi. There's a formula for success.

What people claim to be looking for is a democratic, pro-Western Iraq. At this point, they need to pick one or the other.


- mark 4-14-2004 1:09 am [add a comment]