What’s so civil about war anyway….

November 25, 2006

By any reasonable measure, Iraq is now out of control. It’s reached a point in which the LA Times has stopped the semantics game news outlets have been toying with for months and started using the appropriate phrase.

Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before. A main Shiite political faction threatened to quit the government, a move that probably would cause its collapse and plunge the nation deeper into disarray. (emphasis added)

The massacre Thursday in Sadr City — a stronghold of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Al Mahdi militia — sparked attacks around the country, reinforced doubts about the effectiveness of the Iraqi government and U.S. military and emboldened Shiite vigilantes.

The NYT quotes Bush administration officials saying they don’t “believe” it’s a civil war, but at this point, what the folks who create their own reality believe or not is largely irrelevant. As Time noted yesterday, Iraq’s violence has spun “beyond anyone’s control.”

If this week’s announcement that President Bush is to meet Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in the capital of neighboring Jordan raised eyebrows, by Friday it was abundantly clear why the meeting couldn’t be held in Baghdad — the Iraqi capital is under siege. After a day of open sectarian warfare on the streets had claimed more than 200 lives, the city’s airport is closed and its residents are forced to remain indoors under a curfew.

Bush is due to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki this week, presumably to pressure him to act against the Shi’ite militias. Now, however, Maliki is facing intense pressure not to see Bush at all.

The White House expects Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to show up in Jordan for a meeting next week with President Bush, despite threats by militant Shiites to quit the government unless he snubs Bush.

Choosing to meet with Bush could put Maliki on a collision course with Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shiites’ powerful Madhi Army militia.

Sadr said yesterday that he and 30 followers would “suspend” their involvement in Maliki’s shaky coalition government if Maliki goes to the Jordan summit with Bush.

It’s reached a point that has led Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a conservative Republican and decorated veteran, to give up hope.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there…. The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq.

I’m wondering, what more will it take for the supporters of this war to break with their position? This is not a rhetorical question. In recent weeks, we’ve heard about “one more push,” and the need to “go long.” The only way we’ll lose, the president insists, is if we leave. It’s a position embraced by misguided White House allies like Joe Lieberman, John McCain, most congressional Republicans, and the vast majority of the conservative base.

What, exactly, would the conditions have to look like for them to change their mind? How long are they willing to tolerate the status quo — or, more accurately, the deteriorating status quo — before they recognize this war as folly?

We hear a lot about six-month increments. How many “Friedman units” are they willing to tolerate? What happens when these intervals pass with no improvements? Is there ever a point in their minds in which it’s acceptable to acknowledge reality and get the hell out of hell?

Well Christians have been repeatedly disappointed in the return of Jesus, but they keep on giving him another Yeshua unit.

In the schoolyard machismo that this Bush bunch speaks, this sure makes Bush look like a coward. Won’t even go to Iraq! Stands outside and motions for al-Maliki to come out where it’s safe.

Why do so many foreigners have to die for us to learn what Hagel called a “hard lesson in foreign affairs”? And why do we keep learning the same ones over and over. drpdtri units I guess (don’t remember past doomed to repeat it)

So this is another war Bush stayed out of?

  • Bush is the ultimate chickenhawk — not only a coward who cheerleads for a war he won’t fight, but a coward who actually started a war he won’t fight.

    With two years to go, the Bush administration is unravelling fast. And with a new Democratic Congress coming in January, White House panic is rising because there’s a real possibility of light being shined on the hidden lies and incompetence that got us into this debacle. That panic, while pleasing to partisans like me, may well cause some very bad decisions to be made on Iraq. A retreat that is too hurried and poorly considered could leave Iraq, the Middle East, and us in worse shape than ever. Far more care should go into the extraction than was shown before the invasion.

    Again, that’s why the ill-considered invasion was such a magnificent mistake — nearly a Perfect Storm of political failure.

  • Noble words from Chuck Hagel, and absolutely true.

    Too bad his voting record doesn’t reflect the same passions in putting his convictions on the line when it came to the crunch.

    Nice to hear from you, Chuck. Don’t expect that place on Mt. Rushmore anytime soon, though.

  • I noticed the LAT change of diction as well, it stunned me. The nice thing about hearing from Hagel is that it signals a willingness from a defeated GOP member to tell the truth about what needs to happen, and not pawn off any withdrawal as the “fault” of a newly elected Congress with Democratic leadership. Well done, Senator.

  • “There would be a generator broken. We’d have soldiers that could fix it, but they couldn’t touch it because they would void the contract. So we couldn’t fix our own stuff, would have to call and put in a work order with [Kellogg Brown & Root].” –
    Sgt. Lisa Dunphy     on Iraq.

  • We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.

    Really? I had no idea it was “honorable” to bamboozle a country with lies about a big scary weapons program so the citizens and legislators would support a fucking invasion and then, when the big piles of nukes and small pox failed to appear: “Oh no, we really did it to spread democracy. And um, Saddam was best pals with Osama…”

    This is why such maudlin reflections piss me off. They’re intentionally incomplete and insincere. Either that or UpChuck is bat-shit insane.

    Whatever. He’s still living in the reality-phobic alternate universe with his fellow ReThuglicans and I only wish there were a way to shut off all transmissions from the bizzaro world he occupies.

  • Well George, you’ve ruined Iraq. Not the Democrats; not the Army; not the Iraqi government—YOU, and YOU ALONE.

    Three things must happen, ASAP, if America is to ever recover from this embarrassment of an administration:

    1.) Get out of Iraq. Screw the damned timetables; get our kids home NOW. There is no validity in asking even just one more to die for a lost war; any more deaths beyond this moment are nothing short of premeditated murder.

    2.) Investigate the daylights out of this debacle, and hold all those responsible for the Iraq Morass accountable for their actions. Those openly seking to impede the investigations; those overtly promoting obstruction of justice and “calling for punishments against those who have interfered with this administration—should themselves be tried and imprisoned as accessories to war crimes and violations of the Geneva Conventions.

    3.) America must be prepared to asume financial responsibility for the actions of its current administration, in the form of war reparations. It must also be willing to extradite any and all found criminally liable for this most recent horror to the Hague—up to and including both the current President and Vice President.

    These three items are NOT negotiable….

  • Um…that should be openly “seeking” and “assume” financial responsibility. I hate new keyboards….

  • “That would be weird if Republicans sent law students to law schools to pose as liberals.” – Comment by Swan

    That sounds like something David Horowitz would cook up.

  • “Again, that’s why the ill-considered invasion was such a magnificent mistake — nearly a Perfect Storm of political failure.” –Alibubba

    THAT NETTED A COOL TRILLION DOLLARS.

    Tripling the price of oil made a lot of happy people richer than Croesus.

    The “Mistake Myth” is not going to wash.

    This is, and was, an entirely illegal PREPLANNED nightmare. Very profitable, indeed.

    That’s treason — not a mistake. And it’s ILLEGAL, even if Dick Cheney does it.

    Joe Biden might think that we’re doing some Monica Lewinsky investigation, but he routinely confuses his arse for his head. Major warcrimes are not mistakes.

    I would like to call your attention to the far end of the list of genocide crimes, ‘d’:

    “Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;
    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    HOW ELSE do you explain the inability, after four years, to reestablish electricity in Iraq? HOW ELSE to view the dispersing of thousands of TONS of half-strength Uranium in Iraq?

    The sudden death of the Russian emigre shows the deadly nature of this crime.

    Just as a heavy metal alone, this Uranium is an industrial POISON. Which violates the Hague Conventions:

    SECTION II. — ON HOSTILITIES
    CHAPTER I. — On means of injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and Bombardments
    Article 22
    The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.
    Article 23
    Besides the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially prohibited:– To employ poison or poisoned arms;

    —
    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. ”

    Compare to forcibly transfering them into graves to the tune of 100,000 or more.

    So let’s not hear any more of this ‘mistake’ bullpucky. We are WAY past politics and WAY past talk of how cute the warcriminals are.

    A Commitment to Peace and Justice Requires A Commitment to the Submission of Our Leaders to the Law. Talk of ‘mistakes’ is not that.

  • Ivo, it does not require a two-thirds majority of the Senate to commit the current administrative leadership of the United States of America to the International conventions of a War Crimes trial. Impeachment does.

    International investigations into the conduct of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, Libby, Gonzales, Negroponte, ad nauseum does not require—no mAtter how much Herr Bush’s “sanctum sanctorum” bubble network boasts amongst themselves to the contrary—an act of Congress, let alone a supermajority in the upper chamber of that body. They are, each and every one as senior actors on the stage of a sovereign nation’s central government, susceptible and overtly subject to International Law. Vast legions of Coulters, Hannitys, Limbaughs, and O’Reillys could not even pretend to prevent such an extradition, as the penalty for refusing compliance is complete sanction and blockade of trade with the offending nation (think Serbia here). How long, do you think, would the United States of America continue to function as an economic entity, if the vast majority of the world suddenly imposed a financial shunning upon this country?

    Wall Street crashes within the week; the dollar spirals to a pittance of its current worth; vital imports from outside US borders drop to a mere trickle of their current amount (Reagan’s ‘trickle-down” theories suddenly have a whole new meaning—yes?)—with the effect being massive unemployment, the inability to conduct financial transactions at any level, and an almost-complete shutdown of supply for such things as fresh fruit and vegetables, electronics, clothing, shoes—and the big one—OIL.

    America can choose to pass through a fire of its own making—or America can pass through the fire of global opposition. The only pertinent question is:

    Which fire will America eventually choose?

  • The Bush administration has managed to destroy American standings around the world, and our own civil rights at home

    . Invading a country posing no threat to us, destroying their infrastructure of social, political and economic stability; then turning it into a war zone is criminal. Americans finally realized the bushies are not just dangerous, but incompetent. We have lost 200 years of dignity and respect around the world.
    Breaking the Geneva convention, underwriting torture, setting up secret prison camps around the globe is akin to Nazi Germany circa 1938. The facism is terrifying. All of them should be tried in the World Court and jailed. Let them find out what it is like to be on the receiving end of the legal system.

    Here in Northern California, we have been informed a drone is flying over us so pilots can “practice” remote spying by air. I hear some talk the Democratic Congress is seeking to replace “some” of the civil rights taken by the bushies; not all of them. Which ones are in contention? Pay attention, people. Because we have a democratic congress does not mean we can relax our vigilance. Beat on your representatives the fact we want our country back, complete with habeus corpus and essential rights to privacy.

    Personally, I think it is time to get a third party going and ditch both republicans and democrats. Neither one can be trusted to serve our real needs. It is too easy for special interests to purchase their services. They need a lesson in humility.

  • “Personally, I think it is time to get a third party going and ditch both republicans and democrats. Neither one can be trusted to serve our real needs. It is too easy for special interests to purchase their services. They need a lesson in humility.” –Marilyn

    Any such third party will equally have to deal with POWER.

    NO party can be trusted to represent your real needs in the sense that mommy made the world for liberals.

    It is a fight — it is our fight — and WE, not the military-industrial complex, are responsible for Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and the 2006 win.

    Help steer what we have, and forget about illusions of leftist purity. Or get maybe more than ONE or two third party persons elected, before you start plotting your grand replacement strategy.

  • “We have lost 200 years of dignity and respect around the world.”

    We never had 200 years of dignity, ever. We’ve rarely had ten years of dignity.

    We are making progress, which is partly why the rightwing coup took place (as Tom DeLay admitted). We need to DEMAND JUSTICE, not theorize about replacing our party system, or pretend to some nobility that wasn’t contradicted five years later by some new atrocity.

    America is better than this, that’s for sure. But many Americans are not that much better, and that’s just the facts of how it is. America, or any nation, is not a dog with two eyes and a tail.

    “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” — JFK

  • I’m beginning to doubt that “civil war” is the right description for the state of affairs in Iraq. To me “civil war” implies two or more organized sides slugging it out – such as North and South Vietnam, the Union and Confederacy of the American civil war, or even the recent Balkan conflicts.

    What we have in Iraq is chaos and anarchy, the direct result of Paul Bremer’s abolishing of all existing Iraqi military and governmental institutions. (For that, Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom!) Now we see the predictable eruption of violence fueled by centuries-old religious and ethnic hatred, with no systems in place to control it.

    Tito was no saint, but he kept a lid on the Balkan ethnic hatreds for a generation. Bad as Saddam was, he kept a lid on Iraq. The morons in the Bush administration thought Iraqis wanted a Jeffersonian democracy. What they wanted much more was to blow each other up.

    And Bush still doesn’t get it.

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