Maybe the first place to start in answering that question is to ask what the definition of quagmire is.
I say a ‘quagmire’ is an elective military campaign which turns out to be unexpectedly costly in terms of lives and treasure but whose alternative – withdrawal – turns out to be prohibitively costly to the point of anarchy and chaos.
Assuming this is a legitimate approximation of the definition of (geopolitical) quagmire, does the present situation in Iraq fit this definition?
Given that we were expecting 90K at this point but we have 140K, I would say no quagmire. That is not to underestimate the lasting power of these various insurgencies however and they are more intractable and more extensive than we envisioned.
Elections in December should be another nail in the coffin of the insurgency but if not, we will learn to adjust and deal with it. So far so good.
Iran and Syria could be dealt with and I disagree that we should not have gone into Fallujah. Still time to rectify that.
Well, we planned to have 90K at this point so we were expecting to be there for a while. We didn’t expect to have 140K and I will admit to that, but overall, what’s the big deal? AND just so you know, we will be leaving 35K to 50K there for the long term. Remember 50 years at least. Is that a quagmire? Then I guess Japan, Germany and Korea were quagmires too? Hard to say really. Just remember we have already won Spook. No threats to its neighbors, no Saddam, no sons, no wmds. Have some faith. Be of good cheer. haha The Iraqis might surprise you yet.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt… it’s alive and well in Fredville, a place in which “Mission Accomplished” means something when it’s on a banner hanging behind a man dressed up in a flight suit costume.
"Two months after sovereignty was handed over to Iraqis, large swaths of the country are controlled by a flourishing assortment of insurgents. U.S. forces have abdicated power in Fallujah, been chased out of Ramadi and Samarra, and are scrambling to keep hold of Baqubah, Tikrit and Mosul. Even in Baghdad, gunmen have turned areas of the capital into deadly no-go zones. . .
Allawi, widely regarded among Iraqis as little more than a puppet of the U.S. . .
“We’re really good at combat operations, killing and breaking things,” says Major General Pete Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry, the Army division responsible for policing Baghdad. “But if all I am doing is this, I will make more enemies than I kill.”
It’s a vicious circle, he says, and the worst-case scenario, if inconclusive battles like Najaf repeat themselves, is a nationwide popular uprising.
it is a war. it never was going to be a walk in the park. rushing to put the label quagmire on it may seem satisfying, but it doesn’t really say anything at all.
The parallels to the Vietnam War grow stronger by the day. Time is not a friend of the US. If al-Sadr the junior isn’t dealt with by end the month a lot of soldiers won’t be spending X-mas home unless in a body bag.
Neocons planned for a lot of things by now Fred. That none of them have resulted, except perhaps a very shaky and quasi-legitimate transfer of power, is a big deal.
When will you start being honest about the neocon plan? It has been discreditted beyond redemption. Remember, it was not based on reality (literally) but on the distortions of the intelligence community and the lies of Chalabi and friends. It has no bearing on the present situation in Iraq and the fact that troop levels are close (if you accept a 50%margin of error) to the figures touted for this time, is completely and utterly meaningless.
As for leaving troops in for the next 50 years, I said in the other thread this depends on the willingness of the democratically elected government in January (which will doubtless comprise a great deal of anti-US legislators).
Well, that is comforting. “We’ve got a plan. If it doesn’t work, and so far we’ve shown a pretty poor track record when it comes to our plans working, we’ll just come up with another one.”
I sure hope you invest your money a little smarter than that Fred.
The fact remains that all these negatives are true. That is ONE side of what is happening in Iraq. There is another side. That is very little reported on.
I see nothing yet to convince me this is a lost effort. And as to all the failures, that is what the MEDIA says about the plan.
I see Saddam and his sons gone. I see the end of the no fly zones. I see the end of sanctions. I see no more Iraqi women and children dying (500,000) due to political corruptiion involving the UN, Russia and France, I see the end to the wars (Iran and Kuwait), I see the end of the pay outs to terrorists who attacked Israel, I see an end to the political mass murders (500,000), I see an end to Iraq’s threats to the Persian Gulf, I see an end once and for all to questions about Saddam’s wmd programs, I see Libya reversing itself, Pakistan ending support for al Qaeda and nuclear blackmarkets, Saudi Arabia engaging in serious introspection, I see an economy growing 40% to 60% this year, I see a steady stream of satellite dishes and mobile phones and air conditioners and tvs and washing machines and microwave ovens flooding into the country, I see the power, water and oil industry essentially functioning uninterrupted and exceeding prewar levels, I see schools open, I see freedom of the press, I see women voting and holding important offices, I see a functioning bank and judicial system, I see hope.
What others see is ongoing terrorist violence, the insurgency and 950 dead Americans. These are all facts as well, but compare them with what existed in Iraq before.
For the naysayers now, I would like to ask just how the sanctions and what existed before were a solution and what we were going to do with Saddam? Think that would never have arisen again? That somehow the problems we are facing now means that there were no problems to be faced before? I am satisfied. More work to be done. Let’s get there faster. Time to ensure that Syria and Iran reform and stop supporting insurgents like Sadr and let’s take Fallujah out once and for all and let it serve as a lesson one akin to Dresden and Nagasaki if need be but ultimately useful and less bloody than continuing this farce of a one-sided truce. We need to focus less on being popular and more on winning and then leaving (except for our bases with 35K to 50K which will maintain regional stability for the next 50 years). Let’s all hope we succeed. Stop the sniping and join the effort to win.
It’s no coincidence that thousands of American parents also have their sons gone. Thousands more American parents also have children with permanent blindness and serious brain injuries owing to the types of wounds suffered from roadside bombs, which blast upwards.
Well, no-fly zones, sanctions, etc. were pretty cheap. Rummy likes to fight “war on the cheap”, which evidently means not giving soldiers the food, night-vision goggles, or ceramic armor plates that they’re supposed to have. Perhaps if the Bush Administration could have thought this through a bit better, they would have realized that flying a few airplanes around the no-fly zone would have been a lot cheaper than years of occupation.
Saddam used to cook the numbers on deaths in order to build international sympathy, saving up bodies of children over several months to hold mass burials that purported to be the death toll of just a single month.
Those wars were already over. Did anybody think Saddam’s tanks were ever going to roll forth again? In Republican election-year logic, W. gets to lay claim to events that happend during previous administrations…
Be careful there… aren’t you talking about the payments made to families of suicide bombers who had already blown themselves up? There’s a difference between Saddam sending money to terrorists to assist with their operations before they happen, and Saddam sending money, after the fact, to families of those who blew themselves up.
… and a start to the piecemeal killings of U.S. troops in a completely irrelevant place
Again with the fakey Republican-style fearmongering. What threat? What tangible threat?
Great. Perhaps the Bush administration can now use 140,000 troops to satisfy Bush’s long-standing curiosity about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin… Not a smart use of U.S. resources.
Pakistan, our main “ally” in the war on terror, turns out to have been hiding from us its activities until we found out on our own. No accountability whatsoever. It’s a bit as if during World War II we were to find out the Brits had been selling tanks and petrol to the Nazis. Of course, given that the Bush Administration has no internal accountability whatsoever, this isn’t much of a surprise. No matter how much the cabinet or our allies keep screwing up, the Republicans inhabit a weird flower-bedecked “feel good” la-la land. It’s time that the American people demanded and got results from their government.
You don’t read much, do you? However, you will probably get Tigerman to find a 1913 dictionary edition in which “serious” is defined as including “not serious”.
Oh great! Let’s invade more countries so we can sell them stuff. Are they buying American brands??
Uninterrupted except for that part about regular interuptions… going to get Tigerman’s dictionary again for that one? Perhaps it also defines “pipeline explosion” as also including “pipeline repaired and functioning”.
Except for the papers that the U.S. provisional authority shut down…
When did they vote? Allawi was appointed. He was also formerly on the CIA payroll. We did a pretty stinky job of not making this look like a puppet government.
Any facts by which you can back this up? What do you mean by “functioning”. Violence against other citizens is a regular part of Iraqi violence in which the people still do not trust the police or the courts. It will likely be years before the system has the training adequate to even start coping with the criminal and civil needs of Iraqi society.
Let’s see… in comparison with what was there before? We had an Iraq that had no WMDs and an emasculated military that was kept under constant observation. We also had no dead soldiers in Iraq and 140,000 troops that were available for deployment in places where there was an actual threat to U.S. security. Considering this is the half the total number of U.S. combat troops, that amount is quite significant because it ensures a lot of pretty tough questions before we commit any of our remaining troops to any ventures. We also had pretty good relations with our allies before we invaded Iraq. Iraq also wasn’t a major recruiting station for terrorists…
There were plenty of naysayers then. Pretending he was a threat doesn’t validate a bunch of mistakes made by the Bush administration.
Great, you’re idea is that if what we’ve done so far has not worked then we need to have a lot more of the same. Sounds more like the thinking of Japanese generals during World War II than what a U.S. administration ought to be thinking of in the 21st century. Let’s keep up with activities that ensure that we are the most reviled terrorist target in the world – feeding the terrorists lots of recruiting material by running a campaign that involves us flattening every town in the world that opposes us. How long do you really think we can keep that up. Considering that a full half of our combat capabilities are stuck in Iraq for the foreseeable future, perhaps it is worthwhile asking: You and what army??
That was a long diatribe of what exactly? Why not also use your cynical and pessimistic talents to read all of that same crap into every other country on earth? Careful your moral relativism is showing. Now, on to your communist internationale meeting. You know communism was never really implemented therefore no one can say that it was not successful. Right?
Isn’t the U.S. stuck in Iraq now whether it wanted to withdraw (a la South Korea) or not? Isn’t that what a quagmire is? Getting yourself into a situation you can’t get out of because the alternatives you’ve created are far worse?
If that’s not a quagmire, then, pray tell, what is?
Maybe what we’re talking here is ‘quagmires you want to be stuck in’ versus ‘quagmires you don’t want to be stuck in.’
Could that be the logic and I’m just not tuned into it because I’m not in that high an ideological orbit?
The paradox in my mind is that it was easier for the U.S. to get out of Vietnam – the supposed mother of all quagmires – than it would be for the U.S. to get out of Iraq if it wanted to.
Well then Europe is a quagmire and we have been stuck there since 1942. Then East Asia is a quagmire and we have been stuck there since 1942. Isn’t the Middle East already a quagmire given the number of bases and troops that we have had there since World War II? All this pissing and moaning about Iraq. Hell, Korea was a quagmire for three years and that was a draw in the end. I think we could have won in Vietnam but that is irrelevant to this discussion. Gee. Too bad we cannot run and hide Spook. Isolationism is just avoiding responsibilities. You cannot hide from the world. Even back in the colonial days we could not. Keep repeating Washington’s quote but remember that “consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds”
I take your point but it is hysterical and overwrought. The troop levels will have to come down sooner or later but they are never going to be drawn down to less than 50K for quite some time. Get over it. We are in for the long haul. Sorry this is something that you were not for but I knew that this was going to be another “marriage.”
Fred, I’m not a moral relativist … I’m a realist. It is intellectually dishonest for the Bush administration to pretend that that without WMDs it is fine to invade a country just because it is ruled by a tyrant. If so, then the world has far more tyrants and countries than we have troops with which to subdue them. In case you forgot, we are in a “war against terror” not a “war against bad corrupt authoritarian leaders”. Bush diverted military resources and dumped them into the middle of the desert when the fight against terror lies elsewhere.
If I were a communist, perhaps I might believe it was up to us to spread our wonderful ways. However, since I am quite clearly not one, I tend to think freedom has to be earned. I love the American Revolution precisely for the fact that our forefathers put their necks on the line for their own freedom.
Frankly, it sounds a lot more “communistic” that you want to share freedom as if it were a commodity like rice or pig iron. What have you to say, Chairman Fred? “Freedom grows from the barrel of a gun”?
I’ll second that. And what’s more, Fred, if we’re in a marriage of any sort in the Middle East it’s with Israel and not with Iraq. Maybe broken marriage would be a better description of our relationship as we seem to be paying alimony and getting royally fucked at the same time.
We also seem to be under some kind of restraining order not to talk about the whole mess openly. I didn’t get the memo on that one that though so I’m playing catchup here.
Our relationship with Iraq is more like the relationship between an alcoholic stepfather and a red-headed stepchild that we inherited from our failed marriage. The wife has left us to take care of the stepchild from hell alone and it’s just a matter of time before one of us kills the other.
[quote=“spook”]The U.S. has occupied Iraq for a year-and-a-half now. It’s an appropriate time to ask the question:
“If we have the political will and stamina to stay, I could see this going on for 10 years,” says Randolph Gangle, a retired officer who heads the Marine Corps’ Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities in Quantico, Va."
[/quote]
No offense, being one myself, but what a typical American you are! Maybe we should have got it from the takeout window at McDonalds, that would have been much faster.
I don’t see anything surprising in the officer’s statement above. This was never going to be a piece of cake. Instead of asking, Is Iraq a quagmire? which is sensationalist and really adds nothing to discussion of the issue, how about “should we be in Iraq now” “should we pull out” “should we stay”–these are questions that matter. that a war has turned into a quagmire would hardly be a shocking development
