Ben Bateman writes on conflict in general and points out that peace isn't the natural state of humanity. There are always people willing to commit violence to get what they want, just like we see in Iraq, and the only reason they aren't seen more commonly in America is that they realize they can't win. The fighting in Iraq, likewise, will end when the terrorists realize they can't win. Media outlets and politicians that advocate American surrender and claim we're losing give the terrorists the impression they they can win and are winning, and thereby do in fact aid and abet the terrorist cause.
Talking about “resolving conflicts” implies that conflicts just sort of happen, like the weather. On this view, the world is normally at peace, and then these tensions arise inexplicably, so we should try to soothe the tension and return the world to its usual peaceful state.I see it very differently. In a world of infinite desires and finite resources, people are always in conflict. Everyone wants more: more power, more wealth, more affection, more fame, more whatever. Each of us would like to receive as much as possible while giving as little as possible, so conflict is eternal and ubiquitous. ...
I want to pay less money, the shopkeeper wants to receive more, and so we haggle. Each congressman wants more money for his state or district and less for everyone else’s, and so we have the many complex deals at the heart of American politics. Each country wants to be more powerful, rich, and influential than the others, so they struggle against each other in various ways. And within each country there are out-of-power parties that yearn to rule; they scheme constantly against the dominant party or coalition.
There won't be peace until the terrorists realize they can't win. The media and the opposition politicians could be playing a constructive role and helping America, if they chose to.
MW: The reasons for relatively little terrorism in America and significant "terrorism" in Iraq aren't as one-dimensional as you make them to be. Less here and more there isn't simply a function of the terrorists' estimate of their chances for success in either venue. We're also talking about two different things. Al Qaeda, and what we've commonly identified as "terrorism" in the post-9/11 lexicon isn't the issue in Iraq. The people who attacked us on 9/11 aren't the people (or associates of the people) who are creating the consummate mess that is present-day Iraq.
Iraq is what it is today, predominantly, because of the fact that Iraq is really 3 countries tenuously cobbled together by the British. Maybe it was never meant to be one country.
It is also a mess because of the many failures and mistakes made by the Bush administration. Chief among them is the total lack of planning for what would happen after the removal of Saddam. If any thought had gone into post-Saddam Iraq from the outset, there would have been probably double the number of troops deployed.
Your post also would seem a bit naive of what I distinctly recall being a facet of Bush's "strategy" that you heralded: fight them there so they don't attack us over here.
Mark: When I wrote "the only reason they aren't seen more commonly in America" I wasn't just referring to Islamofascist terrorists. There are plenty of others who would be willing and eager to overthrow the American government by force if they thought they could win. However, our government, populace, and institutions are so stable that currently only lunatics think they have a hope of succeeding. So very few people try. Our job is to make the Iraqi government so well-situated that the terrorists realize they have no hope of overturning it.
It's absurd to trace the various messes in the Middle East to the Bush Administration or even to the British occupation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The Middle East has been in turmoil for all known history.
MW said: "Our job is to make the Iraqi government so well-situated that the terrorists realize they have no hope of overturning it."
If that's true..
MW said: "The Middle East has been in turmoil for all known history."
.. and that's true..
MW said: "It's absurd to trace the various messes in the Middle East to the Bush Administration"
.. and that is true, then there's no good explanation for why we didn't send enough troops and accompanying people/equipment to do "our job". That speaks directly to my point that Iraq is what it is today for many reasons *one of which being* our poor post-war performance.
Were it not for the British after the fall of the Ottoman empire and our invasion in 2003 Iraq would undoubtedly be a considerably different (and possibly better) place than it is now. Like it or not, we've had our hands in Middle Eastern affairs for a *long* time and are as responsible for what happens (and has happened) there as any other influence, either internal or external.
Mark, what does it mean to say that the planning was "poor", or that our forces "failed", or that we didn't send "enough" forces to do the job? Compared to what?
It's an old trick to just invent a standard out of thin air, and then castigate people for not meeting it. It's an old trick, but a silly one. The US forces in Iraq have done far better than the liberals ever expected. Remember how they predicted tens of thousands of casualties in the invasion? How we would be bogged down in another Vietnam? Now those same people want to complain that thing haven't gone smoothly enough.
The basic facts are:
---There have been no terrorist attacks onn US soil since 9/11.
---Iraq now has a democratic government.
---The casualties in the invasion and subssequent peacekeeping have been the lowest in history, by any measurement.
No one on the Left expected any of that to be true today. Yet somehow you think that this is a total disaster? That line is pure politics, utterly divorced from fact.
BB: Consider this recent article by George Will before you continue with your dream of an Iraq that is in such a positive position.
If we had enough forces in Iraq, this insurgency would've been contained and Rumsfeld wouldn't have looked so foolish when he talked about cleaning up "a few dead-enders".
Of course our forces have done an excellent job, but that was never the problem. The problem is that there aren't enough of them.
See, I read stuff like that, but I can never find many objective facts that actually indicate big problems in Iraq. Sure, there are lots of gloomy conservatives out there. But it's gloom based on nothing, and it leads nowhere.
You speak of gloom based on nothing, but what do you have to say about all the rosy predictions that were made at every milestone we've had along the way? Every crucial step was heralded by the Bush administration and its legion of talking heads as the development that will break the back of the insurgency. None of the developments in Iraq have done that so far, and there's more going on here than just what MW talked about earlier; the belief that they can win.
The definition of "victory" in Iraq has changed considerably over the past 3 years. The Bush administration has moved the goal posts quite a few times. Typically you don't change what "victory" initially means when things are going well.
Hard facts, Mark. That's all I'm asking. Before they invaded, the gloomy predictions were that it would take months and produce a stream of body bags. Then it was going to take years to write a constitution and organize a government. Those are all facts, both the making and the failing of those predictions.
These days, the gloomsters don't even have a solid prediction of the terrible thing that's supposed to happen. An Iraqi civil war? For most wars, you need two armies. A regional war in the Middle East as dictatorships try to crush democracy. Great! Bring it on! That's the fight we want.
When you boil it down, all the gloomsters are really saying is that it's not worth it. Sure, we liberated 24 million people. Sure, we put a democracy smack-dab in the center of the Middle East. But we had to endure all these ugly pictures and hear all these horrible stories. So let's run home and hide under our pillows, and maybe the bad guys will leave us alone.
I really start to get angry when I think about how these gloomsters are spreading doom and despair from a position of total comfort and security, while US soldiers on the other side of the world are risking their lives trying to achieve---and achieving---what the gloomsters say can't be done.
Okay Ben.. here are a couple "hard facts":
- Most Iraqis are loyal to their tribe, noot the new Iraqi government.
- Availability of electricity in Iraq remaains below pre-war levels.
Your rosy statements about how we've "liberated" 24 million people and put a "democracy" in the middle of the Middle East and how our casualties are the lowest in history strike me as facts about as significant and relevant as another fact: 1+1=2. The people we've "liberated" don't appear to be as ready for a unified democratic Iraq as we expected them to be. This "democracy" we've created doesn't even have the power to control its citizens. Leaders without followers are just people going for a walk. Sadly, tribal leaders bent on settling scores with other tribes have a lot more leaders than does the Iraqi government. Casualties are okay if they're for an engagement that can be won and an engagement that is for a good purpose. The purpose is good, but there are plenty of reasons to question whether it can be won; whether the purpose can be fully realized. Bush says he thinks we can win. I'm not particularly impressed with Bush's ability to determine our chances in matters this nuanced and this complex. I'm not convinced we'll fail, but neither am I convinced that we'll win.
"There were many mistakes made, but my feeling is that if this fails, as I have to say, on the balance of the odds, it seems now likely to do, it's probably not going to be because of American mistakes, but because the mission was impossible in the first place." – John Burns
I said: "Sadly, tribal leaders bent on settling scores with other tribes have a lot more leaders than does the Iraqi government."
I meant to say "followers" instead in the latter part of that sentence.
"Availability of electricity in Iraq remains below pre-war levels."--According to USAID (http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/accomplishments/electricity.html), Iraq reached pre-war levels of electricity generatation of approx. 4,000 MW/day in October 2003 and by July 2004 was running over 4,500 MW/day. They expect to top 5000 MW/day buy October 2006. The difference is in electricity distribution. Prior to the war, Baghdad had electricity 24 hours/day, while the rest of Iraq had electricity from 3-6 hours/day. Now that distribution is more equitable.
ucfengr said: "Prior to the war, Baghdad had electricity 24 hours/day, while the rest of Iraq had electricity from 3-6 hours/day. Now that distribution is more equitable."
Not quite. According to this article:
"Still, the plant gets only 60 percent of the power it needs, according to Mahdi Hassan, a 43-year-old technician."
".. a new 40-megawatt power plant opened here recently but that much of the electricity it generates goes to Baghdad, where insurgent attacks wreck infrastructure, meaning much of what gets sent north is wasted."
Further information available in this article:
"In fact, the national grid's average daily output of 4,000-4,200 megawatts falls below its prewar level of about 4,400 megawatts."
"Although current output averages 4,000 to 4,200 megawatts, the level on many days is lower because of unplanned outages or shutdowns for scheduled maintenance. During the second week in April, for example, average output was 3,517 megawatts, according to the Iraq Index, which is compiled by the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy."
""The mantra was 'megawatts on the grid,' " recalled a senior U.S. Embassy official involved in reconstruction who could not be identified under embassy ground rules. "We didn't make it.""
Mark, you gave me two lines of fact and 18 lines of unfounded gloom.
The first of your facts is unverifiable, and even if true is irrelevant. Most nations' citizens have stronger small-scale loyalties than national loyalties, and they do fine.
Your second fact, even if true, is so trivial that it underscores the Left's complete lack of perspective on Iraq. Shall we bring fascism back to Italy because Mussolini made the trains run on time? Shall we bring communism back to Russia, because Stalin was so good at maintaining public order?
The rape rooms are closed now, Mark. The plastic shredders now only shred plastic. Doesn't that affect you at all?
BB: So it was never really "facts" you were after, but "facts" that are relevant and significant *to you*. Since I don't know what you would consider "relevant" and "significant, that's a tall order.
That aside, let's get into these facts:
- Most nations don't have the violence bettween fellow citizens that Iraq has. You asked for "hard facts" about why things aren't going so well, and this sectarian violence is one of them.
- The electricity situation isn't "triviall" when measuring the status of Iraq.
- Mussolini did many things, but making thhe trains run on time was not among them.
BB said: "The rape rooms are closed now, Mark. The plastic shredders now only shred plastic. Doesn't that affect you at all?"
Of course those things affect me, but the incompetence of the Bush administration (as in the total lack of initial planning for post-war Iraq), the many mistakes we've made, the cost (made worse by Bush's deficit spending/tax cut combination), the daily violence that only adds to the growing body of evidence that the Iraqis are not as ready for democracy and national unity as we initially expected them to be.. are all things that affect me too.
So Mark, let me be sure I understand you: You're glad that Bush stopped the torture and closed the rape rooms. But you're mad that he didn't do it perfectly. You're mad that the electrical grid isn't up to our standards. You're mad that some Iraqis are still fighting each other. You're mad that it all cost too much.
Have you ever seen The Incredibles? It has a great sequence where our hero valiantly saves a trainload of passengers---all of whom were destined for certain death. The passengers then sue our hero for the injuries they suffered while being saved.
How is that different from how you see Iraq?
BB: I'm not mad that things weren't done "perfectly".. I'm mad because things were *so* grossly underestimated; that people in the administration thought Iraq would be a quick and easy job and that all we'd have to do is "clean up a few dead-enders".. and that Bush was stupid enough to fall for it and is still stupid enough to keep falling for it. There's certainly no "misunderestimating" Bush when it comes to stupidity.
I'm not mad that their electrical grid isn't up to "our standards".. I'm mad that their electrical grid isn't even quite up to *their* standards.
I'm not mad that "it all cost too much".. I'm mad that Bush is funding this war with money we as a nation don't have and that he's not being honest with us over how we're really paying for it now and later: higher gas prices (thanks in part to a weaker dollar) and more debt. Instead of sacrificing, say, the highway bill which alone would go a long way toward funding this effort in Iraq, Bush chooses to do both because Cheney tells him "deficits don't matter" and being the idiot he is, Bush agrees.
Yes I have seen The Incredibles, but the analogy is a farce. Our destiny isn't "certain death", either before or after the fall of Saddam. Our "certain death", if it is ever to be as such, will be brought about by many other situations, of which Iran, North Korea, China, and Al Qaeda are among.. and are all *way* more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq was.
Mark, you misunderstood the analogy. It was stretched a little, I'll admit. Let me try again:
Ahmed lies on the cold table. His hands are scheduled to be cut off this afternoon, while he watches his wife get raped. Suddenly, a brilliant white light fills the room, with a deafening noise. It's an American flashbang. Into the room pour US Marines, who shoot the torturers and rapists. They cut Ahmed off the table. His hands won't be cut off now. His wife won't be raped.
Ahmed blinks his eyes several times. Blood is flowing out of one of his ears from the loud noise.
"I think I've gone deaf," Ahmed complains. "And I'm seeing spots. I bet that flashbang burned my retina. Geez, you stupid Americans! Don't you know how to do anything right?"
The only people who have any basis on which to complain about the war would be those few who thought that Bush wasn't going far enough or fast enough. There aren't many of those, but I'm one of them. I wish that we had troops in Teheran right now.
But to the extent that we haven't done enough, the problem isn't with anything Bush did or didn't do. The problem is that he is burdened at every step with cowardly Democrats, and a few Republicans, who want to surrender at the first opportunity.
The Democrats opposed the invasion at every turn, making everything harder for Bush. Now they have the gall to turn around and complain that he didn't do well enough in the invasion that they so strenuously opposed! In the same breath, they'll attack him politically and then criticize him for not doing a good enough job. They'll encourage our enemies and then complain about the death toll. They've loudly explained our secret surveillance techniques to the world---yet I'm sure that they'll be shameless enough to blame Bush is another attack hits us by surprise.
If you're upset that the terrorists are fighting us, then maybe you should blame the people who are encouraging them to fight us. If you're upset that Bush didn't do a good enough job, then maybe you should blame the people who worked hard to tie his hands and publicize his every secret strategy.
How can you blame Bush? He's the only one who wanted to help these people! Everyone else wanted to let 'em rot. Yet you give all of them a free pass, and blame the only guy who stood up for what's right.
BB: Bush isn't burdened at all by the Democrats, especially since his party was very solidly behind him until recently.. and since his party controls Congress, it's silly for you to conclude that the Democrats ever were any roadblock for Bush.
Our surveillance techniques are somehow secret? You've said it yourself.. terrorists aren't stupid. I'd be very surprised if they *didn't* know they were under our surveillance and how exactly we carry out that surveillance.
BB said: "If you're upset that the terrorists are fighting us, then maybe you should blame the people who are encouraging them to fight us. If you're upset that Bush didn't do a good enough job, then maybe you should blame the people who worked hard to tie his hands and publicize his every secret strategy."
Well, then I'd still have to blame Bush. He has repeatedly said, publicly, that we should fight them over there so they don't attack us over here. On the whole, though, I don't think it would take much to get the terrorists to attack us anywhere. Bush's secret strategies? Ha! I don't think we've been clued in on all the critical nuances of anything resembling a "strategy". We're given the broad details and objectives and a very generalized way of how those objectives will be accomplished, but stuff that the NSA would blacken-out or is for the President's eyes only? No, we haven't seen any of that.
BB said: "How can you blame Bush?"
He's the Commander in Chief. If he's going to claim credit for the successes, he has to accept responsibility for the failures and mistakes.
Iraq is also Bush's legacy. It is, and will continue to be, the single most important item of his presidency.. for better or worse. He approves or disapproves every choice and makes every final decision in this effort. The ultimate responsibility is his, so you're damned right I'm going to criticize Bush for the mistakes that have been made.
"you're damned right I'm going to criticize Bush for the mistakes that have been made."
Why? What do you hope to accomplish by criticizing him? Putting the Democrats in power? They never would have invaded Iraq, and the torture chambers would still run with blood.
The real world offers you only two choices, Mark: 1) Support Bush in the invasion, knowing that mistakes will be made along the way as they are in every war, or 2) support the Democrats in keeping Saddam in power while the UN dithers, knowing that he will continue to murder, rape, and torture. There is no third fantasy option of war without casualties or mistakes, and there never was.
In a year or two we'll face the same situation with Iran. Which way will you vote?
I reject your false characterization of there being only two choices here. There are never only two choices in matters this complex and far-reaching. "The real world" is not as black and white as you would suggest. You can want Saddam out of power and not support Bush's decisions in this effort. I, for one, believe that, before the invasion of Iraq, there were more pressing matters of interest to our national security; matters that we would have more options for had we not invaded Iraq.. but since we invaded Iraq, we have no choice but to stay. We broke it, we bought it.
Your dismissal of the mistakes made by Bush with the statement that there are always mistakes doesn't excuse them. Abu Ghraib, disbanding of the Iraqi army, and oh yeah.. the total lack of planning for post-war Iraq cannot so easily be dismissed or trivialized as "the mistakes that are inevitable in war".
As for Iran, I want us to have as many options as we can, but thanks to Iraq.. invasion is not likely among them. Iran is, without a doubt, a lot more formidable of a challenge in terms of an invasion.. but before Iraq we certainly wouldn't have looked so foolish for using it as a potential stick in the carrots-and-sticks game of the ambassadors and diplomats.