Chris Barrus sagely noted before the invasion happened that what would be telling would be what happened after the war rather than during it. The Stratfor elves, as usual keeping track of things in their own way, have posted
this analysis of the current situation and the potential military and political costs. As per usual it's an educated guess and projection rather than a conviction, but the many points raised are sound. Your thoughts?
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 21 June 2003 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)
This seems to me to be a fairly sound analysis of the military situation, but it says very little about the all-important political situation in the USA. At present, we in the USA have been told that it is unimportant whether Saddam and his sons are alive or dead, since they are no longer in control of Iraq.
Unlike in Britain, the administration has been fairly successful at limiting the political damage caused by finding no WMD, based on the idea that it was sound policy to depose Saddam and 'liberate' Iraq. This is because they have, so far, been successful at portraying the cost of the war as small, the aims limited, and time horizon brief. Their great hope is to keep the lid on the true costs until the 2004 election is over. They are counting on the usual tactics of misdirecting the public's attention -- a proved and effective tactic in the USA, as there is very little attention to misdirect.
If the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld team has a grand strategy, it is based on the idea that Iraqi resistance can be successfully contained, isolated and limited to a powerless irritant, while they build a regime that is able to control Iraq while cooperating with US policy - effectively replacing the much-missed Shah of Iran with an Iraqi version of the same. They will be prepared to flood this new regime with weapons and military advice, whatever it takes to prop it up and control the oil.
I very much doubt they can achieve this goal, but the real question in my mind is will they fail so spectacularly that the usual public relations fog can't hide their failure from the American public. What I fear most is that, to misdirect attention from their own failures, the Bush crowd will increasingly turn to anti-Arab racism as an irrational force they can use to cloud the public's judgement. If Saddam's "pockets of resistance" begin to embarass Bush in a meaningful way, then look for the demonizing of the now "insignificant, unimportant" Saddam to heat back up, big time.
Behind this rhetorical facade, the real political action will all be on the Shiite front. If Bush tries to block Iranian influence completely out of the new Iraqi regime, it will be as weak as any of the puppet governments we created in Vietnam, and as embattled.
Iran will interfere. They must. The hard right elements of the Bush gang will simply envision this as a new causus belli to go after Iran. They just don't see the catastrophe that awaits us as an occupying force. The same forces that drove the British out of their colonies and the US out of Vietnam will predictably, inevitably drive the USA out of Iraq and Iran. Look at Rumsfeld. He is a blind, blind, arrogant man. Worse than Robert MacNamara ever was on his worst day.
― Aimless, Saturday, 21 June 2003 20:07 (twenty-two years ago)
Recommending once again James Bill's book
The Eagle And The Lion which details US-Iran relations since the mid-19th century. Well worth the time reading, and a great source of background information. If only Bush II Corp. would read the damn thing.
Key point: The US has long misunderstood Middle East power structures and desperately need a bonk on the head with a clue-by-four. We meddle and then wonder what happened when it all goes to shit.
― Chris Barrus (Chris Barrus), Sunday, 22 June 2003 04:05 (twenty-two years ago)
Aimless otm
us empire building will i think fall in on itself much faster also than brit empire building did, bcz
a. communications and transport are hundreds if not thousands of time accelerated
b. us power elite is ideologically hostile to the element of non-capitalist state centralisation that actually in the end effected the real *building* of all previous empires
(actually hostile isn't really the word: intellectually immunised is closer to it — it doesn't even feature as a flicker of doubt that the existing system might have, um, problems achieve its own nice-nice version of its own aims, economic, political, moral, whatever)
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 22 June 2003 10:43 (twenty-two years ago)
(I'm going to make an even wilder prediction here. Anybody remember Cuba? Fidel will die soon. The US will not be able to resist doing something. Everybody in the world will wake up and decide they've had enough of this bullshit. Poland '39, anyone?)
― dave q, Sunday, 22 June 2003 12:39 (twenty-two years ago)
i'd like to see if stuarts opinion is any more thought out than 3 words.
as for cuba vs. '39 poland there's a world of difference. germany certainly was not the empire the u.s. is. i don't think any country will do much about it if the u.s. did anything. to anyone.
― dyson (dyson), Sunday, 22 June 2003 19:26 (twenty-two years ago)