Bring them back!

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Kicking, Jun 26, 2003.

  1. Are ya sayin' ya don't believe the Hero Bush? How very unpatriotic of ya :mad:

    The Hero Bush is a True Brother...
     
    #21     Jun 27, 2003
  2. msfe

    msfe

    Our troops are paying the price for a quick-win war

    Bad planning and over-confidence have left a dangerous legacy

    Martin Woollacott
    Friday June 27, 2003

    Donald Rumsfeld said in a speech before the Iraq war that nation building was like setting bones: if you got it wrong, the result would be crooked. The US defence secretary now risks seeing his own axiom come true, thanks to the startling inadequacies of the preparations for administering Iraq, inadequacies for which he and his department were largely responsible. And, as is the way with these things, failures in the civil sphere rebound in the military one, so that ordinary American and now British soldiers are having to pay for the insouciance, the spurning of good advice, and the over-confidence about governing Iraq that was evident in Washington before and during the war.

    That over-confidence was compounded after victory when the generals in Iraq failed to understand, or were not so instructed, that their job was to support the interim administration rather than to act as if Iraq was a bivouac which most of them would soon depart.

    Some of the difficulties faced by troops arise from the fact that the war was so speedily prosecuted. The armed forces of the enemy were shattered, but armed force - as had been predicted by those who knew Iraq - survived in many forms, from the purely criminal to the political and quasi-political. Whatever is finally established about what happened in Majar al-Kabir, it is likely that our armed men were trying to disarm their armed men. This is always the most delicate of procedures. It is easiest, but still not easy, when a general atmosphere has been created in which arms are perceived as not being of much use or, in other words, when people sense they will not lose when they put down their weapons and that they will lose if they try to keep them.

    Students of Iraqi society under Saddam understood that he ruled, particularly in his later years, by sub-contracting power to many groups outside the formal armed forces, police and security services. They sustained Saddam and in return were armed and had privileges which, in some cases, included permission to smuggle, steal and extort, activities which now, with him gone, they can pursue more vigorously.

    Asked during the war what would be the main problems facing the occupation authorities afterwards, one expert in Washington presciently replied: "Crime, crime and crime." Should he also have replied "armed resistance", of which there is certainly some limited evidence, particularly in areas which the British and Americans had until now left largely alone?

    The answer may be that there is no clear division between the maintenance of what might be called a criminal autonomy and political violence proper. Certainly individuals can inhabit both worlds, as a story by Jon Swain in the Sunday Times suggested. He interviewed a man who claimed he was paid on a mercenary basis by political taskmasters to shoot at Americans - a worrying Iraqi example of a gun for hire.

    The Pentagon was warned by advisers and would-be advisers about these problems, notably by the US Institute for Peace, which wanted them to learn the lesson from the failure to pay sufficient attention to policing, law and order, and justice in Afghanistan. They got a hearing, but made no impression. Other organisations could not even get in the door, or could only reach the state department, whose influence at that stage was limited.

    It is fair to say that Pentagon staff were warned of many disasters that did not come to pass. They ignored, for instance, suggestions that preparations be made to protect Iraqi civilians from the effects of chemical weapons, famously refusing to send gas masks to the Kurds.

    George Ward of the Institute for Peace wrote that there had been expectations of "up to a million refugees, widespread food shortages, epidemics, acute homelessness, a shutdown of the oil industry and general lawlessness. In the end, only the last became reality." But it is an important reality, as the distinguished American diplomat Tim Carney underlined yesterday, because without security the big reconstruction work cannot begin and, until it does, the jobs and quality of lifeimprovement it will bring must wait, increasing anger and alienation among the people.

    Carney also spoke of a lack of "doctrine" on how to conduct such nation- building operations; a lack of resources; and a failure, presumably by the Pentagon and the generals on the ground, to prioritise the efforts of the first provisional administration. Bonesetters, it might be said, but without a bonesetter's manual.

    The danger which Majar al-Kabir illustrates, and even more the confrontations in which American troops have been involved further north, is obviously that of a deterioration in the relations between American and British soldiers and the population at large. The attitude of the occupying troops is critical. Some American soldiers betray an attitude hovering between self-pity and self-romanticisation, with a touch of anti-Arab racism.

    Americans, it has been said, go to war in order to go home; and the combination of not being able to go home, finding themselves unpopular, and suffering casualties is making them resentful. The British may be better at trying to make it clear to ordinary people that they understand they are in Iraq on sufferance, but if relations with the people slip beyond a certain point it is hard to retrieve them.

    Nor, for two reasons, are the reinforcements which the British and American governments have said are available necessarily a solution. First, the drafting in of more armed force would send a worrying signal. Second, even the American military is stretched by its Iraqi commitment, and the British even more so. To have such significant portions of our armed strength, perhaps a fifth or more, tied down in Iraq indefinitely is not a desirable prospect. There is also a level of casualties that neither American nor British society could sustain for long.

    All of which suggests that the military victory in Iraq and the military occupation which has followed are only ultimately valuable in that they provide a finite period of opportunity to get things right in that country.

    The failure to deal more quickly with the problems of security and lawlessness has delayed both political and economic reconstruction, the pulling together of a society whose old bonds have burst, and the beginning of a progressive handover of power to Iraqis. It would be unduly pessimistic to say we are near the point where our military forces could become hostage to our political failures. But there are worrying signs, and they should be heeded.
     
    #22     Jun 27, 2003
  3. "Compassion is our vulnerability". Give me a break. I hope you are being sarcastic like our beloved brother Candle. It's not about compassion it's about respecting international laws. Lately US compassion has been seen in the form of cluster bombs. The US cannot do whatever they want in Iraq, actually you could ask why they are there in the first place.
     
    #23     Jun 27, 2003
  4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/27/wliber27.xml/
     
    #24     Jun 27, 2003
  5. it's really frightening considering what is going on in afghanistan right now with warlords -- the "northern alliance" -- the "good guys" (LOL) have been, and still are, committing war crimes against the taliban prisoners under the auspice of US military forces. it was big in the news last summer...

    in afghanistan, we did just exactly what all the world figured we'd do -- we went into afghanistan and left it FAR WORSE than it was before...i think it's a given that there are going to be tons more terrorist acts and wars in the wake of our destruction...

    to me, it's symptomatic of a sick society when the american CIA agent who was killed in the prison uprising gets far more publicity than the hundreds (and maybe thousands by now) of taliban prisoners who were cooked to death inside empty trailers in the hands of the northern alliance warlords (the "good guys") while rumsfeld and his imbecile staff stood idly by and allowed it to happen...i don't like the taliban at all either, but no human being deserves to die like a sardine regardless of what they do...

    if there's a hell, cheney, rumsfield, dubya (actually the whole bush family including nazi prescott bush) and ashcroft will be center stage. i'm an atheist, but that crowd almost makes me wish there was a hell...war criminal doesn't begin to describe them. rumsfeld and cheney et al are no better than himmler, goehring, and hitler and there's no way anyone can deny that.

    -war profiteering
    -deliberate skewing of intelligence
    -patriot act

    i would say "i'm ashamed to be an american" but i know that our administration and their stolen election don't represent the majority here....god bless the americans who will eventually stand up to our fundamentalist government and kick their sorry asses back to the holes they crawled out of...

    it was nietzsche who said that you have to be careful fighting an enemy, for you always become more like the enemy from the fight...

    peace, love, and arbitrage,
    -b
     
    #25     Jun 27, 2003
  6. Don't worry about it. We can be ashamed that you're an American for you.
     
    #26     Jun 27, 2003
  7. KymarFay!!!!!!! Go gerem boy:D :D
    Show your true colors:D :D

    permit granted :D :D
     
    #27     Jun 27, 2003
  8. In fact, I've got some extra space to be ashamed of you just for being a fellow human being, regardless of nationality.
     
    #28     Jun 27, 2003
  9. KymarFye, get the stove going, lets boil them. Teach em your lesson:cool:

    Handshake with prezzzzie waiting for ya:D :D :D
     
    #29     Jun 27, 2003
  10. I'm honored that you're ashamed of me, so thanks!
     
    #30     Jun 27, 2003