IMPEACHMENT IS OFF THE TABLE...
BUT NOT FAR OFF IT
By: John Bender
The nut job, defeated congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, in what is mercifully her last act as a member of Congress, filed a bill to impeach Bush. As is generally the case with McKinney, the charges in the bill, for the most part, show a complete disconnect from reality.
Charges like: “George Walker Bush … in preparing the invasion of Iraq, did withhold intelligence from the Congress, by refusing to provide Congress with the full intelligence picture that he was being given, by redacting information …” and, “failed to take responsibility for, investigate or discipline those responsible for an ongoing pattern of negligence, incompetence and malfeasance to the detriment of the American people.”, are not impeachable offences. If negligence, incompetence and malfeasance were impeachable offences, about 90% of both houses of Congress (higher in the Senate) would be impeachable.
However, McKinney finally stumbles on an impeachable offence in Article III. The bill states in part: “… by circumventing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts established by Congress, whose express purpose is to check such abuses of executive power, provoking the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to file a complaint and another judge to resign in protest, the said program having been subsequently ruled illegal; he has also concealed the existence of this unlawful program of spying on American citizens from the people and all but a few of their representatives in Congress, even resorting to outright public deceit.” Most legal scholars agree that Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program is not just an impeachable offence, but a felony as well.
Republican bloggers, and Bush apologists in the press, made fun of McKinney’s bill and trumpeted Speaker of the House Elect Nancy Pelosi’s statement that impeachment was “off the table”. But inside the administration and among their supporters on Capital Hill there is concern because S. 2453, a bill drafted by Senator Specter and Vice President Cheney, did not get passed in the final session of the Republican controlled congress.
Specter’s bill would give Bush immunity from impeachment based on the illegal NSA surveillance program and provide retroactive amnesty from criminal prosecution to Bush, administration officials, Telecom corporate executives, and others who participated in the illegal NSA spying. Had the bill become law, there would be no chance of impeaching Bush for the warrantless eavesdropping. It is not likely to pass after the Democrats take control of Congress in January, leaving Bush and others at risk.
Bush and his political operatives understand this, and understand that impeachment is only off the table until the Democrats are ready to make their move. They also realize that it will temporarily remain off the table only if Bush cooperates by supporting most of the Democrats’ radical and unpopular laws, such as tax increases. The real kicker, and worry in Republican circles, is that even if Bush cooperates impeachment is only off the table until he is so unpopular that impeachment is a political winner for Democrats.
In fact, there is talk in Washington that Democrat staffers are quietly preparing a case for prosecuting Bush and others for violating the FIAS law AFTER he leaves office. Their thought here is, they will signal this is coming before his term ends thereby forcing him to pardon himself or risk a trial (at worst) or a lengthy legal battle over whether or not they can do that (at best). Either way they have him and Republicans in an embarrassing position during the 08 campaign.
Watch the Senate. They are going to lay the groundwork for the House with hearings into Bush’s FISA violations. Senate staffers are already making a list of legal scholars who think Bush committed federal crimes when he authorized the warrantless eavesdropping to testify in the hearings.
The scheduling of these hearings will depend on how much Bush alienates Republican members of Congress and when. And to a lesser extent, it will depend on how low his standing is among the American people. If the Senate’s Democrat leaders think they have the juice they’ll schedule them early next year. If not it will be in 2008.
Once the hearings are announced, the Democrat bloggers will swing into action, as will the leftists in the press. Staffers will work the bloggs and message boards fanning the flames and encouraging people to call and write Congress demanding action. Democrat operatives will be on every television show they can on fanning the flames. Democrat elected officials will be all over the media expressing shock and sadness that this came up, while telling everyone they wanted to investigate this in ‘06 but were “stonewalled” by the administration and the Republican Congress.
Impeachment has to come in the House, but many Democrats believe the Senate hearings will make the House leaders put it back “on the table”. They believe that once the public is sufficiently stirred up about the issue, Nancy Pelosi will claim she has no choice but to hold hearings on the subject.
It’s all about ‘08 now. The Democrats are looking at the warrantless eavesdropping program as their ticket to a landslide in both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They believe they don’t have to actually impeach Bush to do that. They think that all they have to do is convince a large portion of the public that he is a criminal and that Republicans protected him.
That’s not going to satisfy the most extreme elements of the Democrat party. Nothing short of impeachment will do that. But, the party elites don’t care. They want the White House and both houses of Congress and many of them think that Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping is their new Watergate and ticket to accomplishing that goal.
This isn’t going to be pretty. It’s going to make the fight to impeach Clinton look like bean-bag compared to the knife fight this will be.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
IRAQ: IT'S ABOUT OIL ... Ypu Bet It Is!
IRAQ: IT'S ABOUT OIL
YOU BET IT IS!
By: John Bender
Friday’s Los Angeles Times published a piece by Antonia Juhasz titled “It’s still about oil in Iraq”. Mr. Juhasz whined that the war with Iraq is about oil.
Well, welcome to the real world Mr. Juhasz. Wars are fought over natural resources and territory. Iraq invaded Kuwait to get the oil. We drove them out of Kuwait to protect the oil.
Nobody in their right mind would spend American lives and treasure protecting a piss ant kingdom in a desert cesspool. We went in to protect the oil, because we need the oil.
Oil is the life blood of the industrialized world. It was British and American oil companies that discovered and developed the oil reserves in the Arab world. A British company first discovered oil in Iran and by 1911 a British/Iranian concern called Anglo-Persian Oil Company, was pumping oil. In 1932 Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) discovered oil in commercial quantities in Bahrain. SOCAL then obtained a concession in Saudi Arabia in 1933 and discovered oil in commercial quantities in 1938. Were it not for the Brits and the Americans, most of the Arab world would still be desert waste lands and their “kings” would still be gathering camel dung to cook their food.
As the rulers of the Gulf countries got rich from the payments the Americans and British companies were shelling out for the oil, they started demanding larger and larger shares of the profits. They also started using oil as a political weapon against the West.
On October 16, 1973, the Arab countries announced they were cutting production and placing an embargo on shipments of crude oil to Western countries. The US and the Netherlands in particular were singled out as targets because of their close ties with and support of Israel.
From October 1973 to March of 1974 the economies of the industrialized countries across the globe were damaged by this embargo. By the first quarter of 1974 most of the world was hit by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression of 1932-1940. The raise in oil prices set off the inflation of the late 1970s that affected everything from home loans to the price of bread.
Had Saddam been able to gain control of Kuwait’s oil coupled with its own reserves, it would have been in a position to cripple the U.S. and the other industrialized nations. Mr. Juhasz and the rest of us in America would be looking at the potential of an economic catastrophe capable of being launched by a thug on his whim.
This threat of an economic attack on such a scale as would have make the threat posed by Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction look puny, was not just theory. It was a very real possibility. Saddam could have inflicted gas lines, inflation at rates at least as high as what we experienced under Carter’s inept administration, business failures, unemployment, 401Ks all but wiped out, and a host of other economic and social ills, on us at any time he wanted.
So we went to war against Saddam and his government. We drove him out of Kuwait but didn’t totally defeat him and remove him from power. Instead, we agreed to a cease fire agreement, signed by both Saddam’s government and ours.
Under that agreement Saddam agreed to obey certain rules. Almost immediately after our withdrawal from Iraq he violated the agreement. He continued to violate that cease fire agreement right up to the time we resumed the war and invaded his country again in March of 2003.
It’s important to understand that in March of 2003 we were still at war with Iraq. They never surrendered and never signed a peace treaty. All there was in place was a cease fire that was contingent upon Iraq’s actions.
So if it makes Mr. Juhasz, and others who live in down a rabbit hole Wonderland, feel better, we went to war to save a tiny kingdom from a dictator who invaded them. When we were nice enough to give the dictator a chance to save his government and his hold on power, he broke the agreement and we went back and finished the job.
I’m sure that makes Mr. Juhasz and the editors of the Los Angeles Times feel better. I’m sure they would rather spill American blood to protect some king of a tiny country in a wasteland than spill American blood to protect our economic stability and our way of life.
Had they been around during Jefferson’s administration I’m sure they would have been all upset that we went to war to protect trade routes against the Barbary Pirates. Blood for trade, Mr. Juhasz? Is that better than blood for oil?
The problem isn’t that Bush the Elder and Bush the younger used the military to protect the oil. The problem is they didn’t say that’s what they were doing.
They were worried about what the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and CNN would say. They were worried about whiners like Mr. Juhasz, Jane Fonda, and others of that ilk would say rather than making the case that they weren’t going to let a scumbag like Saddam have the means to hold our economy hostage.
Did we go into Iraq for oil? You bet we did! We went for oil, jobs, food, housing, our retirement plans, our way of life. If the leftists at the Los Angeles Times don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
YOU BET IT IS!
By: John Bender
Friday’s Los Angeles Times published a piece by Antonia Juhasz titled “It’s still about oil in Iraq”. Mr. Juhasz whined that the war with Iraq is about oil.
Well, welcome to the real world Mr. Juhasz. Wars are fought over natural resources and territory. Iraq invaded Kuwait to get the oil. We drove them out of Kuwait to protect the oil.
Nobody in their right mind would spend American lives and treasure protecting a piss ant kingdom in a desert cesspool. We went in to protect the oil, because we need the oil.
Oil is the life blood of the industrialized world. It was British and American oil companies that discovered and developed the oil reserves in the Arab world. A British company first discovered oil in Iran and by 1911 a British/Iranian concern called Anglo-Persian Oil Company, was pumping oil. In 1932 Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) discovered oil in commercial quantities in Bahrain. SOCAL then obtained a concession in Saudi Arabia in 1933 and discovered oil in commercial quantities in 1938. Were it not for the Brits and the Americans, most of the Arab world would still be desert waste lands and their “kings” would still be gathering camel dung to cook their food.
As the rulers of the Gulf countries got rich from the payments the Americans and British companies were shelling out for the oil, they started demanding larger and larger shares of the profits. They also started using oil as a political weapon against the West.
On October 16, 1973, the Arab countries announced they were cutting production and placing an embargo on shipments of crude oil to Western countries. The US and the Netherlands in particular were singled out as targets because of their close ties with and support of Israel.
From October 1973 to March of 1974 the economies of the industrialized countries across the globe were damaged by this embargo. By the first quarter of 1974 most of the world was hit by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression of 1932-1940. The raise in oil prices set off the inflation of the late 1970s that affected everything from home loans to the price of bread.
Had Saddam been able to gain control of Kuwait’s oil coupled with its own reserves, it would have been in a position to cripple the U.S. and the other industrialized nations. Mr. Juhasz and the rest of us in America would be looking at the potential of an economic catastrophe capable of being launched by a thug on his whim.
This threat of an economic attack on such a scale as would have make the threat posed by Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction look puny, was not just theory. It was a very real possibility. Saddam could have inflicted gas lines, inflation at rates at least as high as what we experienced under Carter’s inept administration, business failures, unemployment, 401Ks all but wiped out, and a host of other economic and social ills, on us at any time he wanted.
So we went to war against Saddam and his government. We drove him out of Kuwait but didn’t totally defeat him and remove him from power. Instead, we agreed to a cease fire agreement, signed by both Saddam’s government and ours.
Under that agreement Saddam agreed to obey certain rules. Almost immediately after our withdrawal from Iraq he violated the agreement. He continued to violate that cease fire agreement right up to the time we resumed the war and invaded his country again in March of 2003.
It’s important to understand that in March of 2003 we were still at war with Iraq. They never surrendered and never signed a peace treaty. All there was in place was a cease fire that was contingent upon Iraq’s actions.
So if it makes Mr. Juhasz, and others who live in down a rabbit hole Wonderland, feel better, we went to war to save a tiny kingdom from a dictator who invaded them. When we were nice enough to give the dictator a chance to save his government and his hold on power, he broke the agreement and we went back and finished the job.
I’m sure that makes Mr. Juhasz and the editors of the Los Angeles Times feel better. I’m sure they would rather spill American blood to protect some king of a tiny country in a wasteland than spill American blood to protect our economic stability and our way of life.
Had they been around during Jefferson’s administration I’m sure they would have been all upset that we went to war to protect trade routes against the Barbary Pirates. Blood for trade, Mr. Juhasz? Is that better than blood for oil?
The problem isn’t that Bush the Elder and Bush the younger used the military to protect the oil. The problem is they didn’t say that’s what they were doing.
They were worried about what the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and CNN would say. They were worried about whiners like Mr. Juhasz, Jane Fonda, and others of that ilk would say rather than making the case that they weren’t going to let a scumbag like Saddam have the means to hold our economy hostage.
Did we go into Iraq for oil? You bet we did! We went for oil, jobs, food, housing, our retirement plans, our way of life. If the leftists at the Los Angeles Times don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
IRAQ: WHAT WENT WRONG
IRAQ:
WHAT WENT WRONG
By: John Bender
What went wrong in Iraq? We are about to start withdrawing our troops from the country and turn the fighting over to Nuri al-Maliki's government even though nobody but Bush, and a few of his die-hard worshipers, believe that the Iraqi military can control the country.
Although, Bush isn’t calling it “Iraqization”, it is, none the less, the equivalent of “Vietnamization” and will produce the same result.
But, how did we get to this point? How did, what should have been a relatively easy victory go so very wrong?
To answer that question one must look at the planning for the war and at the execution of the military conquest of Iraq. The planning for the war did not include any realistic planning for the occupation after the Iraqi government and military were defeated.
Bush and his neo-con advisors made no plans to deal with a resistance movement after Iraq fell. They didn’t believe there would be any resistance once Saddam’s government fell. Just weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Vice President Cheney appeared on “Meet the Press” and wouldn’t even entertain the idea that there might be a resistance.
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
The administration’s refusal to even consider the possibility of a resistance in Iraq and failure to realistically plan for the occupation is the reason we have the current mess in Iraq. Bush made the same mistake Hitler made when he invaded France. Hitler didn’t expect a resistance movement after defeating the government and setting up a new “independent” government. Nor did he want to destroy enough of the country to break the will of the people to resist. Bush expected to be greeted as a savior and didn’t think there would be any resistance movement. Like Hitler, Bush didn’t let the military destroy the cities, food supplies, utilities, their industries, etc. Both of them thought they could win without destroying the infrastructure of the enemy.
Hitler ordered his army to do as little damage as possible to the country and still conquer it. As a result, the French mounted a resistance movement that killed Germans and French collaborators during the whole time the Germans occupied the country as the “guests” of the Vichy Government.
Bush did the same thing in Iraq. He ordered the military to do as little damage as possible while taking Iraq. In both cases the “victor” didn’t break the will of the conquered people to resist and paid a high price for that mistake in blood and treasure.
Contrast that with how we prosecuted WW II against the Germans and Japanese. We fire bombed German and Japan cities. Napalm was created in WW II to bomb German cities. We bombed their factories, utilities; water, sewer, electric plants and their roads and rail lines. We also bombed their dams flooding their farm lands destroying their food supply.
By the time we conquered their government the people had no will to resist. V.E. Day was May 8, 1945 and V.J Day was September 2, 1945. There was no resistance in either country. By January 1946 battle casualties had all but totally ended.
In 1946 we occupied Germany, Japan, North Africa and Italy and we had just 6 battle causalities world wide that whole year. Contrast that with our occupation of Iraq. We’ve had U.S. 2,756 dead in Iraq since Baghdad fell. That means 95.8% of our battle deaths occurred during the occupation rather than during the war.
Bush apologists like to compare the country’s attitude about the Iraq war to the country’s attitude about WW II, but never want to compare how we fought WW II with how Bush and the neo-cons fought the Iraq war. They want to pretend the war is still going on, but don’t want to say we are fighting the Iraqi people.
Well, Saddam’s Iraqi government is gone. We sure as hell aren’t fighting the new Iraqi government we set up there. We are fighting an Iraqi resistance that shouldn’t have been there, and wouldn’t have been there had we fought this war like we fought WW II.
During the occupation of Germany and Japan the people depended on the army of occupation for their daily survival. The occupation forces had the food, water, clothing, oil and coal, controlled shelter for those whose homes were destroyed, and all money. People were worried about getting a drink of water and a meal rather than who was running the government. They no longer had the will, or the popular support, to mount a resistance movement.
Compounding his failure to destroy the people’s will to resist, Bush started nation building before the country was pacified. That never works.
Iraq is a country of 28 million people and 80% of them don’t want us there. Nation building under those circumstances is, to be charitable, not smart. It divides the military’s efforts and provides targets for the resistance without providing us with sufficient indigenous support to eliminate the resistance.
Because Bush pretended there was no indigenous resistance movement and the violence was mostly the work of foreign trouble makers rushing into Iraq to fight against the U.S. military, the resistance is no longer just a resistance to foreign occupation. It is now a civil war with a large number of factions fighting for political power. Within just the Suni and Sheite groups there are some 80 or so sub-groups fighting for political dominance. Armed militias control more neighborhoods than the police and militia members make up large portions of many police units.
Maliki's government is a joke. It can’t even control Baghdad, let alone run the whole country.
Now we have a mess that Pelosi and company are going to make worse. There is no good option at this point. The American people will not stand for the level of violence it would take to pacify Iraq now. Nor is it clear that any level of outside generated violence can really pacify the country at this point. The window of opportunity for that may well be closed.
But pulling out of Iraq will leave a power vacuum that Iran will rush in to fill. The consequences of that happening would make the current situation look desirable. That is the worst possible option.
At this point, the best we can do is maintain a force powerful enough to protect the oil production and shipping, protect the Kurds, and keep Iran from taking control of Iraq’s oil. We need to kill, or arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, disband all militias, and protect the borders.
Of course, this will take a larger force than we have in the country now which will demand increasing the size of our regular army. But we can also make better use of our military by pulling them off nation building tasks and using those troops to fight the resistance. There is no reason our military should be building schools, building power plants, and teaching farmers how to increase crop yields while the country is in violent chaos. But we will still need more troops in country for the short term.
In the best case scenario an Egyptian style dictator will come to power and will stabilize the country. It will be in this dictator’s self-interest to keep Iran out of the country so hopefully this new dictator will be nominally pro-Western on the order of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In the worst case, Iran will turn Iraq into a puppet and gain control of Iraq’s oil.
Only three things are certain today. We can’t just pull out. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. We wouldn’t be in this position today if Bush fought the war the way FRD and Churchill fought WW II.
God help us. We need a leader who understands what needs to be done and who has the spine to do it. Unfortunately, neither anyone in the administration, nor our any of our Congressional leaders, is up to the task.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
WHAT WENT WRONG
By: John Bender
What went wrong in Iraq? We are about to start withdrawing our troops from the country and turn the fighting over to Nuri al-Maliki's government even though nobody but Bush, and a few of his die-hard worshipers, believe that the Iraqi military can control the country.
Although, Bush isn’t calling it “Iraqization”, it is, none the less, the equivalent of “Vietnamization” and will produce the same result.
But, how did we get to this point? How did, what should have been a relatively easy victory go so very wrong?
To answer that question one must look at the planning for the war and at the execution of the military conquest of Iraq. The planning for the war did not include any realistic planning for the occupation after the Iraqi government and military were defeated.
Bush and his neo-con advisors made no plans to deal with a resistance movement after Iraq fell. They didn’t believe there would be any resistance once Saddam’s government fell. Just weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Vice President Cheney appeared on “Meet the Press” and wouldn’t even entertain the idea that there might be a resistance.
MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
The administration’s refusal to even consider the possibility of a resistance in Iraq and failure to realistically plan for the occupation is the reason we have the current mess in Iraq. Bush made the same mistake Hitler made when he invaded France. Hitler didn’t expect a resistance movement after defeating the government and setting up a new “independent” government. Nor did he want to destroy enough of the country to break the will of the people to resist. Bush expected to be greeted as a savior and didn’t think there would be any resistance movement. Like Hitler, Bush didn’t let the military destroy the cities, food supplies, utilities, their industries, etc. Both of them thought they could win without destroying the infrastructure of the enemy.
Hitler ordered his army to do as little damage as possible to the country and still conquer it. As a result, the French mounted a resistance movement that killed Germans and French collaborators during the whole time the Germans occupied the country as the “guests” of the Vichy Government.
Bush did the same thing in Iraq. He ordered the military to do as little damage as possible while taking Iraq. In both cases the “victor” didn’t break the will of the conquered people to resist and paid a high price for that mistake in blood and treasure.
Contrast that with how we prosecuted WW II against the Germans and Japanese. We fire bombed German and Japan cities. Napalm was created in WW II to bomb German cities. We bombed their factories, utilities; water, sewer, electric plants and their roads and rail lines. We also bombed their dams flooding their farm lands destroying their food supply.
By the time we conquered their government the people had no will to resist. V.E. Day was May 8, 1945 and V.J Day was September 2, 1945. There was no resistance in either country. By January 1946 battle casualties had all but totally ended.
In 1946 we occupied Germany, Japan, North Africa and Italy and we had just 6 battle causalities world wide that whole year. Contrast that with our occupation of Iraq. We’ve had U.S. 2,756 dead in Iraq since Baghdad fell. That means 95.8% of our battle deaths occurred during the occupation rather than during the war.
Bush apologists like to compare the country’s attitude about the Iraq war to the country’s attitude about WW II, but never want to compare how we fought WW II with how Bush and the neo-cons fought the Iraq war. They want to pretend the war is still going on, but don’t want to say we are fighting the Iraqi people.
Well, Saddam’s Iraqi government is gone. We sure as hell aren’t fighting the new Iraqi government we set up there. We are fighting an Iraqi resistance that shouldn’t have been there, and wouldn’t have been there had we fought this war like we fought WW II.
During the occupation of Germany and Japan the people depended on the army of occupation for their daily survival. The occupation forces had the food, water, clothing, oil and coal, controlled shelter for those whose homes were destroyed, and all money. People were worried about getting a drink of water and a meal rather than who was running the government. They no longer had the will, or the popular support, to mount a resistance movement.
Compounding his failure to destroy the people’s will to resist, Bush started nation building before the country was pacified. That never works.
Iraq is a country of 28 million people and 80% of them don’t want us there. Nation building under those circumstances is, to be charitable, not smart. It divides the military’s efforts and provides targets for the resistance without providing us with sufficient indigenous support to eliminate the resistance.
Because Bush pretended there was no indigenous resistance movement and the violence was mostly the work of foreign trouble makers rushing into Iraq to fight against the U.S. military, the resistance is no longer just a resistance to foreign occupation. It is now a civil war with a large number of factions fighting for political power. Within just the Suni and Sheite groups there are some 80 or so sub-groups fighting for political dominance. Armed militias control more neighborhoods than the police and militia members make up large portions of many police units.
Maliki's government is a joke. It can’t even control Baghdad, let alone run the whole country.
Now we have a mess that Pelosi and company are going to make worse. There is no good option at this point. The American people will not stand for the level of violence it would take to pacify Iraq now. Nor is it clear that any level of outside generated violence can really pacify the country at this point. The window of opportunity for that may well be closed.
But pulling out of Iraq will leave a power vacuum that Iran will rush in to fill. The consequences of that happening would make the current situation look desirable. That is the worst possible option.
At this point, the best we can do is maintain a force powerful enough to protect the oil production and shipping, protect the Kurds, and keep Iran from taking control of Iraq’s oil. We need to kill, or arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, disband all militias, and protect the borders.
Of course, this will take a larger force than we have in the country now which will demand increasing the size of our regular army. But we can also make better use of our military by pulling them off nation building tasks and using those troops to fight the resistance. There is no reason our military should be building schools, building power plants, and teaching farmers how to increase crop yields while the country is in violent chaos. But we will still need more troops in country for the short term.
In the best case scenario an Egyptian style dictator will come to power and will stabilize the country. It will be in this dictator’s self-interest to keep Iran out of the country so hopefully this new dictator will be nominally pro-Western on the order of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In the worst case, Iran will turn Iraq into a puppet and gain control of Iraq’s oil.
Only three things are certain today. We can’t just pull out. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. We wouldn’t be in this position today if Bush fought the war the way FRD and Churchill fought WW II.
God help us. We need a leader who understands what needs to be done and who has the spine to do it. Unfortunately, neither anyone in the administration, nor our any of our Congressional leaders, is up to the task.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
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