Thom Truelove ([info]majormagik) wrote,
@ 2007-01-13 05:56:00
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Current mood: discontent
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The President's plan II
Yesterday, William Polk and George McGovern spoke about their book - "Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now" (http://www.amazon.com/Out-Iraq-Practical-Plan-Withdrawal/dp/1416534563). They were overwhelmingly erudite and brilliantly clear about the failures of the plan and recent past plans.

The element of their statements that most plainly stands out is that foreign troops have never once in history been able to stop the sort of war that's now going on in Iraq. Insurgents fight (and always have) to remove the foreigners. We did it here and that's now called The Revolution.

The prediction they made based on analysis of insurgent war is that after an occupying force leaves, the insurgency collapses because the people who have participated in and supported it are too tight to continue fighting. They turn their attention to building a future, which is precisely what Bush is always claiming he hopes for.

Instead, we have a plan from a demonstrably out-of-touch, delusionally power-mad, foolish martinet whose foreign policy is devoid of diplomacy and seems to be a mixture of vendetta and wanna-be war profiteering. Bush has sold our nation's future in the form of debt to China and weakened our military on a war that's daily compared to Vietnam.

And his "new" plan, in my opinion, can be summarized thusly:



"The desert has dried up more blood than you could think of."
~ Auda abu Tayi as portrayed by Anthony Quinn in "Lawrence of Arabia"




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[info]ns_kumiho
2007-01-13 11:02 am UTC (link)
Only problem is that in addition to the Anti-American insergents there are genocidal factions (in both the Sunni and Shiite camps) turning on each other and with the US removed Iraq will become a bloodbath for which the US would be blamed.

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[info]majormagik
2007-01-13 11:05 am UTC (link)
Does fear of blame truly drive this goat rodeo? I think Mr. Bush has clearly demonstrated that he has not a care nor any respect for what the rest of the world thinks.

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[info]ns_kumiho
2007-01-13 11:11 am UTC (link)
It probably drives at least part of the reason we are still in Iraq. But in any case the US needs to try and find a way to stop a genocidal civil war from growing out of control before it can leave. If that means turning Iraq into three seperate nation-states, so be it.

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[info]ns_kumiho
2007-01-13 11:06 am UTC (link)
On Iran, IMHO attacking or enraging the Iranians only stregthens the hardliners, in the last set of election the hardliners lost some vital ground now they'll make it back up. Mossad had predicted that Iran's Islamic Republic structure would fall and be reformed by the younger and very liberal generation in the next twenty years... I think we may have extended the lifespan of the hardliners with all the things that we are doing.

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[info]caias
2007-01-13 09:02 pm UTC (link)
Yes, as though we can trust the Mossad...

I'll be more comfortable with Israel when they stop practicing Apartheid in the (illegally and immorally) occupied territories.

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[info]ns_kumiho
2007-01-15 06:10 am UTC (link)
Well this was pre-9/11, Iran really wasn't much of a promblem and was slowly liberalising - their feminist movement was gaining major ground and the younger generation is very liberal (Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a liberal twinge such as his support for allowing women to attend soccer matches and the criticism fired at him by the more hardliners because he apparently isn't concerned about wether women wear hijab or not). In early 2001 the reformers were being plans to establish diplomatic relations with the US... This all stalled and backtracked after Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech and antagonisms which have given the Hardlines a renaissance.

As for the 'Apartheid' thing, it takes two sides to end that... Somehow I don't think Hamas (who's charter calls for the extermination of All Jews everywhere - See Article Seven) is going to help the situation. Israel has pulled out of Gaza several times the past few years and everytime they leave militants use it as a base to attack inside Israel - Militants who want the total destruction of Israel not a two-state solution. What is needed is for a Ghandi-like figure to rise up with popular support and for the extremists to be left powerless... But that's a long shot.

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[info]ns_kumiho
2007-01-16 02:00 pm UTC (link)
This might be interesting:

There are signs of growing opposition in Iran to the policies of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A group of reformist and moderate members of parliament have now started collecting signatures to summon him to answer questions about his policies.

Editorials in normally uncritical hardline newspapers have been criticising him for being too aggressive towards the west.

But such criticisms are unlikely to cost Mr Ahmadinejad his job.

UN sanctions

After the UN passed a resolution sanctioning Iran's nuclear programme, more criticism has been voiced inside the country of Mr Ahmadinejad.

It is thought about 50 MPs have signed a document calling for the president to come to parliament and answer questions, but to take affect at least 75 signatures are needed.

If this challenge succeeds, it would be unprecedented, but even Mr Ahmadinejad's opponents recognise it is unlikely they could ever impeach him given the support he enjoys from the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Surprisingly some hard-line newspapers have started criticising the president in recent days, asking why he has spent so much of Iran's foreign exchange and complaining about the confrontational language he uses on the nuclear issue.

There has also been criticism of the conference the president organised last month questioning the World War II holocaust which lost Iran much sympathy internationally.

Separately, 150 MPs have signed a letter urging the president to base his next budget on realistic assumptions - for example, about future oil prices which are key to Iran's economic forecasts.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6267105.stm

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