The fall of post invasion Iraq

[Anomalocaris]

Actually, he was an idealist. He convinced Florence to equip a citizen militia on the ancient Roman model and when the French invaded they ran like rabbits. Sounds like shi'ites, no?

And what did Charles VIII use to scatter the redoubtable army of citizen militia? Oh, right, Swiss mercenaries.



When french monarchy was later brought low during the revolution, of all his armies which units fought to the last man to defend the king? Oh, right, Swiss mercenaries.

Not that I have any high opinion of mercenaries, but there is market segmentation even for the race of soldiers of fortune, and some trade on their reputation for reliability, while others are good only for taking bullets in the back, provided they didn't stab you there first.

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"private contractors"

That's odd. When I was in the military we called them 'mercenaries'.

They should be called canon fodder.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Well, I blame Bush for making one of the stupidest foreign-policy decisions in American history, and I don't give a shit who started the fighting.

The fact is, the Iraq invasion weakened our forces in Afghanistan at a critical moment, meaning that that front would have six more years of meat-grinder going for it. Bush's decision weakened both forces; by invading a country 3 times the size of California with little more than 100,000 troops, he guaranteed that they would not win a lasting peace, while at the same time weakening the forces in Afghanistan just as they were about to get everything settled there.

The Japanese have a proverb: he who chases two hares catches neither. That sort of wisdom ain't, ahem, rocket surgery.

I think our error in Iraq was not the invasion part. The invasion was the easy part. Where we screwed up is in disbanding the Iraqi army and marginalizing the Sunni's.

You're right, those were greivous errors. I think Maliki was more instrumental than we were in the anti-Sunni stance (remember, we fought against the Shi'ite Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, and were especially concerned about Shi'ite Iran's involvement).

I'd still say that we wouldn't have made those mistakes had not not been there, and that's what to my mind makes the invasion itself our greatest blinder since at least Vietnam.

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I think his point, that American intervention is for us lose-lose, still stands.

Not really. We could win if we ally with Iran. But it requires a major eating of our own words as well as a political determination to shatter the influence of Israel lobby.

We won't be able to ally with Iran, on a long-term basis, without withdrawing our objection to their nuclear program, and I don't see that happening, myself.

"Politics is the art of the possible," and all that.

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We could win if we ally with Iran.

It might be worth it, Chuck. Think of all the republicunt assholes who would literally shit themselves to death if that happened.

It's worth considering.

Having spent four years of my youth in the Shah's Iran, I would love to see it happen. But I'm not optimistic.

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Looks as if Turkey is thinking this over.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17...04309.html

ERBIL, Iraq -- In a statement that could have a dramatic impact on regional politics in the Middle East, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling party recently told a Kurdish media outlet that the Kurds in Iraq have the right to self-determination. The statement has been relatively overlooked so far, but could signal a shift in policy as Turkey has long been a principal opponent of Kurdish independence, which would mean a partitioning of Iraq.

"The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in," Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, told the Kurdish online news outlet Rudaw last week.

If that is correct, it could be huge. The question is, can they drag Iran (which also has a sizeable and somewhat persecuted Kurdush minority) along?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

My guess the reaction from the American public and political leaders is going to be...

At least in Iraq there is Iran to help keep the whole mess from turning into a Sunni terrorist state. What do you suppose will be the reaction when Taliban takes over Afghanistan?

Which will almost certainly happen.

I'm not sure how much oil the US buys from Iraq, but I can tell you there's speculation over in Europe that crude oil prices are going to hit the roof following the almost complete take over of ISIS. My bet is that the yanks are not going to like seeing their gas prices rise.

[Ryantology]

Dubya's administration thought the middle east was a computer game, inhabited by sims that aspire to become paler versions of neoconservatives, and to which they have the cheat codes.

I think you're right, because W's method of actually financing this enormous fuckup amounted to typing "motherlode" over and over again on a keyboard.

[Creed of Heresy]

At least in Iraq there is Iran to help keep the whole mess from turning into a Sunni terrorist state. What do you suppose will be the reaction when Taliban takes over Afghanistan?

To be honest, I supported the withdrawal of troops from Iraq because the entire thing was done in the pursuit of oil. There was never any valid, America-serving agenda for the invasion of Iraq. There just wasn't. As we all know; it was just for oil.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/ir...il-juhasz/

But Afghanistan is a country we more or less had to invade. Our invasion was in pursuit of an individual who had just committed an unforgivable and direct attack against the US. We decided to take him and his supporters out. So we did. More or less. We actually could have done the job properly if Bush hadn't been semi-secretly holding back a sizable number of our armed forces to pursue his puppetmasters' pet project not long after. Our invasion directly resulted in the Afghan government being overthrown...and, frankly, not a moment too soon. But we had to accept responsibility for our actions. We have been, and honestly, if the Afghani president asked us to, I would say we should continue to do so. Not with the CIA drone strikes which are unforgivably flippant and apathetic to the civilian death toll they inflict, but with a continue military presence as advisers and rapid-response detachments to deal with any particularly overt and organized attacks, such as the ones that are guaranteed to overthrow the pitiful ghost of a government that Iraq thought was a towering inferno of presence.

But. Karzai wants us out. It remains to be seen if his successor will want us to as well.

If he does...the question becomes, if he requests our assistance after the fact for whatever reason...should we lend it?

[Minimalist]

So we did. More or less.

Two years or less after we leave Afghanistan - whenever that is - the whole country goes down the shitter. The only difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that for the Afghans going down the shitter is a shorter trip.

[Dragonetti]

The culture of Afghanistan breeds corruption.

Every level of the Afghani Government is corrupt. You can not move a load of supplies without paying someone off in the government.

They expect to get paid for anything and everything. The tribes do not like each other at all. If you do not convert, then you must die, and you are less the garbage in their eyes.

Who are we trying to save? Because these fucking retards just want glory and death. They want a fucking battle glorious death, and I am not sure what is glorious about war? I have been there and done that.... it is not fun nor glorious.

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They give war a romantic outlook.

[Minimalist]

We like our drug dealer better than their drug dealer.

[Mudhammam]

Message to countries that wish to minimize corruption in the development of their nations: DO NOT seek the U.S. to fund your project.

[Minimalist]

Borowitz:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bo...20%2885%29

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Congressional leaders left the White House on Wednesday “deeply frustrated” that President Obama had not found a swift resolution to the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that began in the seventh century A.D.

After meeting for more than an hour with the President in the Oval Office, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed disappointment that Mr. Obama “came up empty” when asked for a plan to heal the rift between the two religious groups, which began in the year 632.