[url=Baghdad or Bust from Baghdad or Bust[/url]
Well, let’s see:
[quote=“Gavin Januarus”]The big event in our lives next year is going to be the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I’m thinking we’re all going down the tubes:
The occupation by a Western power of an oil-rich Muslim country will radicalize the Islamic world and doom its moderate governments.[/quote]
Looks funny now, huh?
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121800664.html]Amid all the noise of suicide bombings, talk of a quagmire for U.S. troops and a sectarian conflict that could lead to Iraq’s disintegration, most people haven’t noticed that in the rest of the Arab Middle East, the political momentum of the past year has been . . . distinctly democratic…
The most obvious element of the liberalizing drift has been the elections of 2005: in the Palestinian Authority, in Lebanon, in Egypt, even in Saudi Arabia…
Another revealing index is the number of the Arab world’s authoritarian rulers who have felt obliged to spell out plans for a democratic transition. In the past two months Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah have unveiled platforms to introduce a free press, an independent judiciary and liberalized election laws during the next several years. By some accounts, Saudi Arabia’s then-Crown Prince Abdullah privately promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in June that democracy would reach his country in a decade. …
For the first time, too, the Arab world is getting a peek at what political accountability looks like. Four senior Lebanese generals are in prison for their role in the car-bomb assassination last February of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and Syrian President Bashar Assad is under growing pressure from a U.N. investigation; never before have the region’s thugs been collared for their political killing. In Morocco, an official truth commission has spent the past 12 months listening, in public, to the accounts of citizens who were tortured or persecuted by the government; reparations are being paid to thousands.
Most intriguing of all has been the shift by Islamic movements during 2005 from terrorism to democratic participation. Despite some lapses, both Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have mostly refrained from violence this year while focusing on elections. While neither has disarmed, both are under pressure from public opinion in their own countries to do so. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which swore off violence decades ago, has embraced the agenda of parliamentary democracy and free press put forward by the secular opposition coalition that appeared in Cairo this year. The most commonly cited obstacle to Arab democratization – Islamic fundamentalism – looks far less formidable than it did a year ago…
Yet any honest examination of the Arab world shows that the transformation Bush called for on the eve of the war in 2003 got closer in 2005.[/url]
I stand by that statement which I made in August of 2002 as my former persona, Gavin Januarus.
I was certain at that point that the Bush administration had already made up its mind to invade Iraq in early 2003, despite its public pronouncements otherwise. I loudly and regularly mocked its so-called evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction throughout 2002 and early 2003 as so much concocted propaganda.
I maintained that U.S. troops and Iraq’s oil infrastructure would become magnets for terrorists from around the Middle East.
And I still believe that the long-term effect of a U.S. military occupation of an oil-rich Muslim country will be to inflame and radicalize Islamic moderates, driving surrounding countries further and further towards radical Islamic fundamentalism.
Lastly, I continue to believe that the U.S. is trapped in Iraq because it has created a power vacuum in the heart of the strategic, oil-rich Middle East which can only be filled by it or Islamic fundamentalism.
Table 9. Change in Attitude Towards USA – 2005
Egypt: better, 5%; worse, 84%
Jordan: better, 13%; worse, 62%
Lebanon: better, 21%; worse, 49%
Morocco: better, 6%; worse, 72%
Saudi Arabia: better, 8%; worse, 82%
UAE: better, 8%; worse, 58%
Table 10. Most Important Factor in Determining Attitude Towards US – 2005
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, UAE: War in Iraq
In this year’s election in Iran reformists were swept into oblivion and an Islamic extremist, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came to power. In elections recently concluded in Egypt, the big winner was the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Likewise in this year’s municipal elections in Saudi Arabia in which Islamic fundamentalists were the main winners.
In recent elections in the Occupied Territories, radical Hamas candidates have been doing so well the the U.S. congress is considering banning them from participating in Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006.
Last but not least, voices from Americans on the ground in Iraq as to how things are really looking there:
"Cheney Fields Tough Questions From Troops
12.18.2005
“From our perspective, we don’t see much as far as gains,” said Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. “We’re looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain - how Iraq’s looking.”
Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half. . . .
The skepticism that Cheney faced reflects opinions back home, where most Americans say they do not approve of President Bush’s handling of the war. It was unique coming from a military audience, which typically receives administration officials more enthusiastically. . . .
Shouts of “hooah!” from the audience interrupted Cheney a few times, but mostly the service members listened intently. When he delivered the applause line, “We’re in this fight to win. These colors don’t run,” the only sound was a lone whistle."
[quote=“spook”]Table 9. Change in Attitude Towards USA – 2005
Egypt: better, 5%; worse, 84%
Jordan: better, 13%; worse, 62%
Lebanon: better, 21%; worse, 49%
Morocco: better, 6%; worse, 72%
Saudi Arabia: better, 8%; worse, 82%
UAE: better, 8%; worse, 58%
Table 10. Most Important Factor in Determining Attitude Towards US – 2005
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, UAE: War in Iraq
[/quote]
spook,
I don’t care if they don’t like us. I just want them to reform their asses so they get on with their lives and leave us alone.
The fact is, the times they are a changin’.
The best way to convince somebody to leave you alone is to leave them alone also. No occupation. No forced removals. No interference in their governments and political processes.
I’ve never doubted that Muslim and Arab people had a deep yearning for self-government and the winds of change in the Middle East were clearly blowing in the direction of representative government.
My only caveat was that it was self-deceiving to believe that the people of the Middle East would necessarily choose pro-Western, pro-U.S. governments if given the chance, particularly given all the misguided U.S. attempts to shape a new american century in the Middle East:
"The first results from Iraq’s national parliamentary election showed powerful support for the leading Shiite Muslim religious alliance, and suggested that the country’s splintered politics has coalesced into a few large political groups divided along ethnic and religious lines. . . .
The results, which elections officials said were incomplete and subject to challenge, appeared to dash the hopes of secular parties that voters would reject the religious and ethnic-based groups. The party of former prime minister Ayad Allawi, which campaigned for a secular, unified Iraq, received just 14 percent of the vote in Baghdad, his stronghold.
The preliminary returns pointed toward an Iraqi government that would be led for the next four years by a conservative Shiite religious alliance that has close ties to Iran, presiding over a country hardening into three mutually suspicious political blocs.
The results showed that other small slates, including that of former U.S. confidant Ahmed Chalabi, did not appear likely to gain representation in the first round of allocating seats for the National Assembly.
. . . Moqtada Sadr, a rebellious Shiite cleric who had been coaxed to join the Shiite list, appeared to have fielded successful candidates in a separate slate as well. A list associated with his Mahdi Army militia came in fourth in Baghdad with enough votes to likely guarantee him a seat in parliament.
– Washington Post
"The front-runner among Sunni Arab voters was a religious coalition whose leaders have advocated resistance to the American military and have demanded that President Bush set a timetable for withdrawing the American military from Iraq. . . .
The results come as a blow to Mr. Allawi, a White House favorite, and his fellow candidates, who had expected to win broad support in Baghdad. In Basra Province, home to Basra, the country’s second largest city, Mr. Allawi won only 11 percent; in Sunni-dominated Salahuddin Province, he had 14 percent. . . .
– NYT
I have some degree of sympathy with the point expressed. I do. Jerks who just won’t play by the rules are a perennial political issue; more so when they bring their troubles to your door.
However, [quote=“Tigerman”]The fact is, the times they are a changin’.[/quote] I don’t think so… not all that much.
Some kind of greater governance reform (something that addresses the irresponsibility of peoples to hold their leaders to account, or to demand meaningful reforms, effective, targetted policies, ect) may open the door on a solution all can live with. Guns, imposed regimes, and democracy of the sort now practiced in Iran and Egypt, or previously in tin pot South American dictatorships aren’t going to do it. How to do that, I don’t know. But I’m sure that an evolution in governance is key to the solution.
maybe I have just woken up to this… but at lot of the critisism on Iraq is not directed against what is happening in Iraq… but more at Bush…
In other words… I think some people and governments hope Iraq falls into disorder and anarchy so as to teach Bush a lesson, and to be able to say “HA HA that’s what you get for invading Iraq”
Unfortunately Bush won’t suffer it will be the Iraqis, Bush won’t be blown up it will be the Iraqis
So Bush could be a liar, a deceiver, he may have misled the people. Nobody can prove this, but is not it gone beyond that point already?
More troops needed in Iraq? Yes
More support needed in Iraq? Yes
So why don’t other countries dig in. Why don’t the UN get in there?
Are countries content in the fact that Iraqis are getting blown up instead of them if they go into Iraq?
Would it take Bush got down on his knees, say that he lied, say he is an asshole?
Whats it going to take?
If Iraq falls to some radical faction, is this not a bigger problem for the world, than having to stablize Iraq in its current form?
Well…quite an observant member we have…
Right, I opposed Iraq invasion, but once US is in it I want a large multinational support to stabalize it. Because there is simply no alternative.
And so I hope Bush will be right in the end and that those who said it will become utter chaos will be wrong…
[absolutely not sure how it turns out, but hoping for the best]
Bob Hope
[quote=“TNT”]
So why don’t other countries dig in. Why don’t the UN get in there?[/quote]
You know you’re stuck in a quagmire when the only way out is if somebody else comes to dig you out.