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Actually that's what the guys blowing themselves up want. Otherwise they would have a chance at winning an election and would get to rule Iraq.
I'm not saying that the Iraqis really desperately want a liberal democracy or even understand liberal democracy (in my personal experience with Arabs from Syria and Iraq, they don't really understand liberal democracy because their nations don't like to teach them about it), but that certainly doesn't mean they'd rather live under someone like Saddam.
The Iraqi shiities seem to want a shia theocracy that will protect them from the sunni minority. The Iraqi sunnis seem to want a sunni theocracy to protect them from the shia majority.
So far, the experiment in Iraqi "democracy" hasn't worked well to anyone's advantage except the Saudis next door who are selling lots and lots of their oil at record prices, while Iraq's oil industry continues to founder.
Keep in mind that there is no islamic democracy anywhere that has ever survived its infancy. I think most muslims are taught from childhood that democracy is something that "the enemy" does. The Iraqi public seems to me to be unwilling to compromise and unable to modernize. That's not a scenario for founding a functional democratic republic.
I didn't say they were losing ground. I meant that the US forces are now involved in the conflict. I thought the Iraqi forces were handling it on their own....My mistake.
they are the ones pulling the shots. We have been asked to assist. Therefore the Iraqi government is doing the dirty work at the moment, with support from us. In the past, it was us doing the dirty work, and them assisting
Despite the lies that Dubya tosses out to us on a daily basis, the reality isn't difficult to see. As long as there's a large US occupying force, Iraq will remain the unstable quagmire that it's been for the past five years. As soon as we leave, it will devolve into even more violent chaos and then stabilize as another theocracy, similar to Iran. That's what the Iraqis want, apparently.
I'd call that a loss. Even Saddam would have been preferable to another radical islamist state. Thank you very much Bush/Cheney.
I had read old articles with the same sentiment you have posted, these were written 60+ years ago, but change the country names to Germany, and Japan.
Either way, when this is all over, we're going to end up with some pseudo theocratic mess in Iraq, err that's if we're lucky. The various ethnic/sectarian groups in Iraq aren't about to start getting along after centuries of hatred.
I had read old articles with the same sentiment you have posted, these were written 60+ years ago, but change the country names to Germany, and Japan.
Postwar Germany and Japan are interesting cases, but one aspect of their experience seems to be forgotten - those were both extremely ethnically homogeneous countries, and in fact served as ethnic homelands for Germans and Japanese, respectively, after the war.
Imagine if postwar "Germany" instead included ethnic Germans, but also large groups of various other ethnic factions, like Poles and Czechs and Russians. That probably would have led to chaos. The war didn't exactly end in postwar Europe on V-E day. Between 1945 and 1947, millions of ethnic Germans were violently expelled from their homes in other countries like Russia or Czechoslovakia, and sent packing back to Germany. This massive ethnic cleansing probably helped keep the postwar peace stable.
The same effect happened with the Japanese. Virtually all resident Japanese of places like China, the Philippines, Korea, and other countries fled back to their homeland of Japan, and those who wavered were often killed.
Based on history, and especially the regional history of nearby countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iran, we can predict that Iraq as it is currently constituted will probably not stand.
What that means is that when the US can no longer act as a 100,000+ thousand person peacekeeping force, Iraq's various factions will "sort themselves out." They have done that to some extent already with great bloodshed, but based on an ethnic map of Iraq, that process is not complete yet.
The idea that these tensions can be defused through some kind of "political reconciliation" seems terribly hopeful.
The thing is, a temporary reduction in the level of violence is not the same thing as a reduction in the potential for future violence. Think of it this way - if you brake a car, it slows down. But merely applying the brake for a few moments does nothing to the car's underlying ability to start moving again. That would require much bigger changes.
If we look back to Lebanon's civil war of roughly 1975-1991, we see several "lulls" where the country's war slowed down or almost stopped altogether, or when the factions seemed to settle into stable patterns - but then things would spark back up again. It took 16 exhausting years for the various factions to grind themselves down to a point where real concessions were possible, and even that has been a tenuous peace.
But of course, I'm basing my predictions from the standpoint of foreign policy realism, which seems to be out of favor in certain quarters of our government, in favor of more fanciful things.
I had read old articles with the same sentiment you have posted, these were written 60+ years ago, but change the country names to Germany, and Japan.
Just because you seem to think that Iraq is similar to 1940's Germany and Japan doesn't make it a good comparison. They're vastly different on any number of levels.
BTW, I'd like to see those articles you read that said Germany and Japan were likely to devolve into radical theocracies. Can you provide a link? Thanks!
Until our Commander In Chief defines what victory would be, that question is impossible to answer.
"Our Commander in Chief"???
He ain't mine and most people would agree with me.
Commander....................................Shees h. That clown could not command a GI Joe doll house.
Hail to the Theif
Now that he claims to have conquered Iraq, why dont all his *******s move there
The courts re-elected/appointed bush because we have waited for armegeddon long enough
One nation, under surveillance
There is no way to win.....how does bushy define win? Those people over there have been killing eachother since the beginning of time. They like it and they enjoy it. Killing is part of their culture that we will never understand. So why are we trying to change their customs that they adore so much?
It blows me away.........................................
But anyway Mark S, good point about defining "win".
How does a person win at rock, paper, scissors when the person you are playing with says, 2 out of 3, then 3 out of 5, then 4 out of 7, and so on.
In order to win you have to first have a goal, in Iraq we have now settled for a "safe and democratic Iraq", which folks will never happen. Then again, it isn't really about winning as much as it is about continuing the game.
How does a person win at rock, paper, scissors when the person you are playing with says, 2 out of 3, then 3 out of 5, then 4 out of 7, and so on.
In order to win you have to first have a goal, in Iraq we have now settled for a "safe and democratic Iraq", which folks will never happen. Then again, it isn't really about winning as much as it is about continuing the game.
Soooooooo why is it that we the peons....oops I mean we the people see this but the govt you all chant for and elect do not?
Does anyone here really really really think your govt is doing the right thing for this country as a whole?
Ok so we leave and let Iraq collapse. So what. I dont care. Most of us dont care either. But bushy the Dictator "The Decider" cares. Look how this fake phony illegal undeclared war that was labled "mission accomplished" back in 2003 lined bushy and all his cronies pockets so wealthy.
Some one won the war. But it was not we the peons.
But the same could be said for Los Angeles and Detroit.
Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!
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