Exploring the opposition mind on the War in Iraq.

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Originally Posted by Pindar

Sorry, I thought the many shy members of the Backroom would be more apt to participate if they could choose from the shadows.

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Originally Posted by Blodrast

re anonymity: I don't think you needed to worry too much about that. In all honesty, we prolly all pretty much know what the others think about this - remember the "your predefined Backroom stance" thread ?

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That's true Blodrast. The backroom does resemble that old joke about the guys in prison: It's all quiet when one of them yells "53". The whole place busts up laughing. The new guy doesn't get it and asks what's going on. They explain: "We've all been here so long we just number the jokes."

We could save ourselves a lot of time by just assigning numbers to our positions and arguments. We all know who thinks what.

So I say this poll is nothing but a clever ploy by Pindar. He knows we're not shy. Each one of us is a pompous, arrogant piss so full of himself we all re-read threads just to remind ourselves again of our own brilliant contributions.

This thread is but a cunning means to lure shy, lurking members out in the open so we can then trap them in craftily spun rhetorical webs for our amusement.

:spider:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

That's true Blodrast. The backroom does resemble that old joke about the guys in prison: It's all quiet when one of them yells "53". The whole place busts up laughing. The new guy doesn't get it and asks what's going on. They explain: "We've all been here so long we just number the jokes."

...

This thread is but a cunning means to lure shy, lurking members out in the open so we can then trap them in craftily spun rhetorical webs for our amusement.

:spider:

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Hehe, so true, my friend. Although, in a way, see, I feel bad, for example, for Agent Miles, who probably got this impression literally, unfortunately. I also believe that there may be people who might take your (and mine...) post seriously, Louis. :clown:
Too bad that people don't hang around a bit more, to see that underneath our venomous snipes, harsh comebacks, and acid comments, we're all really a bunch of huggy-feely, fluffy-animal-loving, giggling friendly folks. ~:grouphug:
We just take a little getting used to.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

So I say this poll is nothing but a clever ploy by Pindar. He knows we're not shy. Each one of us is a pompous, arrogant piss so full of himself we all re-read threads just to remind ourselves again of our own brilliant contributions.

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Whew, I thought it was just me ...:sweatdrop:

Errr, sorry about the hijack, Pindar.

“Qui m’a dénoncé?” Légionnaire Légitimus in Le Bouclier Arverne. Who denounced me? Cafard... Snitch…:sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Pindar

I'm referring to the use of arms from the initial invasion through to the present.

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I still think one needs to separate the two. There is the world of difference between invading a sovereign state (Saddam's Iraq) and providing troops to maintain the internal security of a sovereign state (post-Saddam Iraq).

That said, I oppose both.

The invasion was immoral. To attack another state, you need a pretty good reason and there was not one in this case. In fact, it is hard to think of what would constitute a good reason. Only two possible come to mind.

The first is to avert a humanitarian catastrophe - a Rwanda-type situation. Saddam's Iraq did not qualify - yes, he had done nasty things to his own people but most of the mass atrocities seemed to be dated around the Iran-Iraq War or Gulf War I, and there was not evidence of ongoing genocide or anything equivalent.

The second potential justification for an attack on another state is for national security. I guess this was the official reason for the invasion, but it never seemed plausible to me. I was not convinced Iraq had significant quantities of WMDs it could use against the US and the UK. I don't think anyone - in either the UK or the US government - was convinced of that. They hid behind legalisms and technicalities. (They might have thought Iraq had a few left over WMDs, but did not think Washington or London could be hit by them.) The Blair reasoning that Iraqi WMDs might leak out to terrorists seemed tenuous and hypothetical. The case of Afghanistan was very different - given that the Taliban was harbouring the perpetrators of 9/11 and allowing them to plan further attacks. Further, Afghanistan was never really "invaded" by the US - "bought" might be a better word. The Taliban had a much more fragile grip on their country than Saddam and the US was able to operate through strong proxy forces in a way that was inconceivable in Iraq.

Ex post, it seems clear that on both counts - humanitarian and national security - the war has made things worse. Mortality estimates imply the invasion has made the humanitarian situation much worse. The invasion (and Abu Grav etc) have inspired a whole new generation of terrorists and make the terrorist threat worse (especially for the poor Iraqis). That was certainly suggested by some opponents of the war at the time, but it was not obvious to me that this would be the case, so it is not the essence of why I thought the invasion immoral. It does reaffirm that thought though.

I oppose the occupation on pragmatic grounds. The continued presence of coalition troops is opposed by the majority of the Iraqi people (and, AFAIK, the politicians - at least the ones who will come out on top). Most think removing the troops will improve the internal security situation. Many support attacks on coalition troops. I agree with the majority of Iraqis: taking the foreign troops out will reduce one reason for conflict. It may also allow a sustainable political settlement to be made, when the power of the US is not providing a temporary crutch for the incumbents. The incumbents will have more of an incentive to build up their own security forces and/or do political deals with their opponents to settle disputes.

Still think the war was justified, but mistake on mistake on mistake..... it shouldn't have been like this. Winning hearts and minds the american way, should have sticked to serving hamburgers.

Since we are

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Exploring the opposition mind

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let's explore econ21's brilliant post.

I actually don't have much dispute with the first 90%, laying out the fraudulent groundwork used to justify invading (although I think some of the proponents actually believed their reasoning, at the time; i.e. I don't think they deliberately lied).

Once those initial goals were achieved (WMD threat neutralized (ha!), Saddam captured), I don't understand the need for further occupation. OK, stick around to help out with elections. But then? Stick around at Iraq's Gov't request to help out with security? For how long?

At the moment, I feel like we are a visiting bouncer in a bar not our own - having just broken up a fistfight. I've got a Sunni by the scruff of the neck, a Shia in a hammer-lock, and I'm staring down a Kurd in the doorway.

I just wanna leave this joint and have a cold beer, but if I let go right now, these 3 (and others) will burn the place down, I'm quite sure. Do I let them go, anyway? What do I do?

It cannot succeed because it has the wrong focus. This in turn means that people are dying for no good reason, making it immoral, especially when coupled with the level of half-truths, misrepresentation and "honest intelliegence mistakes" that laid the case for war in the first place.

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

At the moment, I feel like we are a visiting bouncer in a bar not our own - having just broken up a fistfight. I've got a Sunni by the scruff of the neck, a Shia in a hammer-lock, and I'm staring down a Kurd in the doorway.

I just wanna leave this joint and have a cold beer, but if I let go right now, these 3 (and others) will burn the place down, I'm quite sure. Do I let them go, anyway? What do I do?

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Good analogy - it's shows that exit not an easy decision. I guess the key thing for me is the visiting bouncer point. Sooner or later, you are going to leave. And you will not be replaced by another bouncer from outside. The Sunni, Shia and Kurd will have to share the bar together, unsupervised. Your exit is a matter of timing and it is not obvious when to go.

A more brutal observation is that the Coalition have not broken up the fistfight. They've shot the leader of the regular bouncers and scared off his lackeys. The regular bouncer was a pretty vile character, so no particular regrets about his fate, but still, it's pandamonium now. As a consequence quite a few of the bottles are aimed at you, but usually they are launched behind your back so you can't see who threw them. Probably some of the regular bouncers who have crept back in to the bar, as well as their Sunni pals. But quite a few bottles seem to have come from the Shia side of the bar, where rival gangs are squaring up to take over when you leave. A neighbouring bar seems to be supplying free empty bottles for some of the Shia to lob at you.

And of course there are not one each of the Shia, Sunni and Kurds but a whole room full of them all. And only one of you. (Well, there's a slightly built Brit watching the south exit, but he's wearing glasses and trying to read his newspaper, smiling politely at the brawny Shias who bump into him.)

ROFL. Brilliant, as usual. :bow: If that isn't a Q. Tarantino scene, I'll eat my script. All we need is Samuel L. Jackson quoting the Bible before he & Travolta kill 'em all.

To stretch that analogy just one more step: It's your contention that my (bouncer's) merely being there in the bar has incited the other actors to additional violence/bottle tossing. Will emptying my hands and walking out rapidly cause the bar to be destroyed, or will the actors behave themselves, once I've gone?

Or isn't it my problem to solve anymore? If the bar brawl scenario were RL, the answer would seem to be: hold on for more legitimate authority to arrive and take over; the police (the UN? Arab League?), or the bar owner (Iraq gov't?) should sort this out.

One thing seems clear. Once dis-entangled from this middle-east barbrawl, we (US) need to re-look at presidential war powers again. Apparently we didn't get it right when we tried to fix that in the late '70's.

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

SI just wanna leave this joint and have a cold beer, but if I let go right now, these 3 (and others) will burn the place down, I'm quite sure. Do I let them go, anyway? What do I do?

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But it's their place, not yours... If they really want to burn it (and eachother) down, don't you think that's really their right to do so?

Just playing advocate. For the record I think the answer to that is yes.

Voted that the war was/is illegal and immoral to begin with, wrong focus, and completely and utterly impossible goal.

:balloon2:

To add to the analogy, it is not merely just the 3 men's bar, but other people are in the bar doing whatever, but will be harmed should the bar be burned down, but yet cannot stop the 3 men from doing so

Here's a view from the ground, rather better informed than any of us.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Insider: Missteps Soured Iraqis on U.S.

Iraq Government Official Says 'Incompetent' U.S. Management Turned Iraqis Against Americans

By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent

NEW YORK Apr 9, 2007 (AP)— In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party from government, school faculties and elsewhere left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.

In his 2006 memoir of the occupation, Bremer wrote that senior U.S. generals wanted to recall elements of the old Iraqi army in 2003, but were rebuffed by the Bush administration. Bremer complained generally that his authority was undermined by Washington's "micromanagement."

Although Allawi, a cousin of Ayad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister in 2004, is a member of a secularist Shiite Muslim political grouping, his well-researched book betrays little partisanship.

On U.S. reconstruction failures in electricity, health care and other areas documented by Washington's own auditors Allawi writes that the Americans' "insipid retelling of `success' stories" merely hid "the huge black hole that lay underneath."

For their part, U.S. officials have often largely blamed Iraq's explosive violence for the failures of reconstruction and poor governance.

The author has been instrumental since 2005 in publicizing extensive corruption within Iraq's "new order," including an $800-million Defense Ministry scandal. Under Saddam, he writes, the secret police kept would-be plunderers in check better than the U.S. occupiers have done.

As 2007 began, Allawi concludes, "America's only allies in Iraq were those who sought to manipulate the great power to their narrow advantage. It might have been otherwise."

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Originally Posted by econ21

I still think one needs to separate the two. There is the world of difference between invading a sovereign state (Saddam's Iraq) and providing troops to maintain the internal security of a sovereign state (post-Saddam Iraq).

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That is fine, you may distinguish in your reply as you wish. I'm content to go with the standard view which mixes the two given there is a continued martial exercise.