2014 in Iraq

it was meant as "well we ruined iraq by invading so we have to go back to fix it now"

"we need to fix what we broke, we owe it to these ppl" was basically the favorite liberal excuse for supporting the invasion in 2003.

More justifiable when Iraq is facing an actual crisis rather than a fictional one though.

Let's fix what we broke... by bombing the shit out of what's left of it.

barack obama -> iraq obama -> iraq obombya. where's my award.

If we could just turn back time and never have had any foreign involvement anywhere, life would be peachy.

if only we had never become a nation, then this would just be david cameron's problem

yeah, but we do bear responsibility for this particular set of circumstances, and i don't think we should just casually fling that out the window.

The circumstances in Iraq today are not entirely a consequence of US policy. Iraq had a long past before we arrived and tossed in our own poorly thought out contributions, such as backing Saddam, then fighting Saddam (but not overthrowing him), then overthrowing him and replacing him with our total (but predictable) incompetence for the job of occupation, then leaving after we realized we'd botched the job so badly there was no hope of fixing it (plus they threw us out).

We bear much responsibility for our many sins, but we didn't take a perfectly functional country and ruin it. Iraq was always an unstable nation since the day the modern borders were drawn after WWI.

ISIS seems like a regional threat though. They are openly expansionist, not just trying to take cities in Iraq and Syria.

My only feeble reason for supporting a toppling of Saddam in 2003 was to Do Right For the Kurds after Kissinger fucked them over in the Ford years and Poppy Bush, in a horrible moment, encouraged them to rebel against Saddam without either troop or air cover. Surprisingly, the normally clear-eyed Charles Pierce today supported this 'limited' incursion on similar grounds. Me, I'm tired of this shit.

You will be more tired of this shit in a year or two if it's not contained now.

If we could just turn back time and never have had any foreign involvement anywhere, life would be peachy.

― 'arry Goldman (Hurting 2), Friday, August 8, 2014 7:22 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe not so great in western europe

in a horrible moment, encouraged them to rebel against Saddam without either troop or air cover

was this the Kurds or the "Marsh Arabs" (ie. the Shiites)?

The rebellions were north and south. Bush said the following:

"There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations"

yeah, thanks

I thought that encouraging the Kurds would lead to problems with Turkey so the Shiites in the south were just forlorn hope.

::attempts to balance 6 spinning dishes::

You will be more tired of this shit in a year or two if it's not contained now.

What amount of resources do you think would be required for this?

The Cheney-Rumsfeld plan was just pump a bunch of oil and make the Iraqis pay the piper. You recall how well that turned out. What exactly is going on here that would be worth a couple trillion bucks to 'contain'? Not to mention all the deaths and casualties we'd inflict, and also suffer on our side. And how does it ever end?

what if more deaths and more casualties would happen if we did nothing, and the suffering too. inaction won't improve the situation.

Casualties and deaths we inflict are not the same as those that are inflicted without our participation. The suffering does not change, but the responsibility for it does.

"we"

Well, quite a lot of the responsibility is already yours, so...

"our"

oops sorry, i meant
"without our involvement"

participation, whatever. party on, wayne.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gu4i-k7VF9U/UwEwEmr15BI/AAAAAAAArVM/nXgKY3a_0vU/s1600/1961+Barabbas+4.jpg

You will be more tired of this shit in a year or two if it's not contained now.

What amount of resources do you think would be required for this?

The Cheney-Rumsfeld plan was just pump a bunch of oil and make the Iraqis pay the piper. You recall how well that turned out. What exactly is going on here that would be worth a couple trillion bucks to 'contain'? Not to mention all the deaths and casualties we'd inflict, and also suffer on our side. And how does it ever end?

― dustups delivered to your door (Aimless), Saturday, 9 August 2014 01:28 (1 hour ago) Permalink

I don't think it necessarily requires a new ground invasion, another ten years of trying to build a new Iraq, etc. Iran will probably provide considerable resistance against IS. I think we proved "nation building" to be a pretty impossible task or at least that we were incompetent at it. Iraq may break up, and I actually don't think that's the end of the world. But ISIS wants to establish an empire in the entire middle east and then beyond. I'm still skeptical of their chances of doing that, but they seem to have a better shot than anyone in a long time and considering how totalitarian and awful they are, I'd rather weaken them early.

BTW, the hands-off approach got an endorsement from Walt today. It's an interesting and appealing theory:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/07/let_it_bleed_iraq_isis_syria_airstrikes_israel_palestine_gaza_iran

I don't think it necessarily requires a new ground invasion, another ten years of trying to build a new Iraq, etc.

So, basically you are saying that a sort of cheap half-assed effort is good enough for your purposes. But in my view, the way to wage war is almost the opposite. If there is a national interest at stake big enough to justify making war, then there is a clear goal that can be achieved through military force and ample motivation to use every means available to achieve it. This is the standard that is normal among nations that do not view themselves as world empires.

If you truly believe a Mideast empire assembled under ISIS is a massive threat to our country or our allies and that ISIS has proved its ability to create and run an empire of such power, then you should be arguing for all-out war to extinguish that threat. I get heartily sick of the "splendid little wars" of imperial management of everyone's affairs through superior firepower. They stink to high heaven, imo, no matter what humanitarian justifications are offered up for them.

Manufacturing a casus belli is an art that has been practiced for millennia and I mistrust any cause for war that relies on the idea that a war will be small, moral, and a fountain of goodness for some designated beneficiary who is not ourselves or a formal ally. The USA already has promised to defend a good half of the world through treaty alliances. We have no such alliances at stake here, nor any direct national threat I can see.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate. If they start to show signs of being truly formidable on such a large scale, then we may reconsider our course. At this stage, they are not worth promoting to a national threat. And we shouldn't go killing large numbers of people for anything less.

Seems like we all went over these arguments when Libya was the flavor of the month.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate

women and children be damned!

i like walt often but that theory is insane esp from someone supposed to be a 'realist.'

well there are plenty of times when we don't intervene when women and children are killed. We have strategic interests in the region though.

yeah, that's the thing he glosses over. we have a lot of strategic interests in the region, as do china + russia who i'm sure would be thrilled to step into any vacuum we left

fwiw I haven't supported any of our foreign interventions in the last 12 years except that I thought we should have a limited war in Afghanistan to go after Al Qaeda. So I'm not some general fan of "splendid little wars."

the problem w/ walt is that he too often disguises moral analysis as realism

If our not bombing or sending troops creates a "power vacuum", which Russia or China is bound to fill, then I am willing to bet a substantial amount of money that Russia and China would not fill that vacuum by bombing any part of Iraq or sending troops there, either. This suggests to me they must know how to exert power and influence in some other way than bombing or sending troops. Perhaps we could learn from them how its done.

tbf walt is making a much broader case for withdrawal than just not bombing or sending troops

If you truly believe a Mideast empire assembled under ISIS is a massive threat to our country or our allies and that ISIS has proved its ability to create and run an empire of such power, then you should be arguing for all-out war to extinguish that threat. I get heartily sick of the "splendid little wars" of imperial management of everyone's affairs through superior firepower. They stink to high heaven, imo, no matter what humanitarian justifications are offered up for them.

There is an all-out war currently being fought between ISIS, the Peshmerga and the Iraqi government. The US airstrikes are an attempt to support the Peshmerga ground troops by taking out heavy weaponry currently being used against them. The Iraqi government is also attempting this but doesn't appear to have been particularly successful. The current threat posed to the US's Kurdish and Iraqi allies isn't so much that ISIS is capable of building a mighty empire, it's that they're currently capable of slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians in short order and, if they fancied it, flooding half of Iraq via the Mosul dam.

Given that a fair number (estimated at 400, including the top strategic commander) are Chechens who have been bombed by Russia already, i'm not sure their plan B would be any different. It's important to recognise that unlike Iraq in 2003, Syria, Libya or any of the US' illegal drone sorties, this is a call for support from legitimate state actors allied to the US with defined objectives in aid of people who are getting their towns taken from them. Whether it's A Good Idea is still up for debate - it could potentially cause a few more Sunnis to rally behind ISIS, it doesn't provide a solution to the crisis of government and there is always the danger of less precise targeting if the bombing expanded, but it needs to be looked at on its merits.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate.

stoked for the genocidal madness

Iran will probably provide considerable resistance against IS...

Haven't some Iranians already come and gone? I'm sure I read somewhere that they were returning home "disillusioned"? Not that they couldn't/wouldn't come back of course. Can't find the article now though.

The US airstrikes are an attempt to support the Peshmerga ground troops by taking out heavy weaponry currently being used against them.

I can live with this. In general I have not been troubled by Obama's very narrow and cautious response to the current Iraq situation.

My arguments were not aimed solely, or even largely, at the extremely limited airstrikes authorized by Obama two days ago, but rather aimed at the many ilxors who were pushing the idea that the USA has a direct responsibility for stopping ISIS, based on such arguments I would paraphrase as 'we made Iraq what it is today and therefore are obliged to fix it' or 'ISIS slaughters civilians and does terrible things and therefore we have a moral obligation to stop them'. These arguments, if accepted, would effectively put all of Iraq under our protection and are so open-ended that they could be invoked to justify every possible act of war until Iraq is stable and peaceful.

Such arguments, in my view, are myopic and despite their insistent invocation of morality, justify unlimited violence. It was precisely such pretexts that led to the "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" inversions of logic in Vietnam.

I say, let ISIS try to rebuild the caliphate.

well, they control half of iraq already

i get your point, but i don't think they should be underestimated. a fundamentalist anti-shiite government in the most centrally located country in the middle east would be really bad, to say the least.

Iran and Iraq waged a million casualty war a couple years after the Iranian revolution. Yes, it was bad. The west survived.

Some would even say the west prospered. Weren't both sides using western weapons?

"i say, let the germans have their anschluss. if they start to show signs of being truly formidable on such a large scale, then we may reconsider our course. at this stage, they are not worth promoting to a national threat."

Oh stop it

You know how many wars are analogous to wwii? 0.

it's a bullshit analogy at least 95 percent of the time, but tbh it seems like a fair response when someone says it's fine with them if radical extremists take over the middle east and justifies it by pointing out that one time when a million ppl died there and it didn't affect us.

you know how many wars are analogous to Vietnam?