A million blogs
At least a month ago I saw up on some web logs a banner for a blogs for peace effort
One Million Blogs for Peace - To End the Iraq War . Citizen Mir had a post on this for her Dim Sum Diaries
One Million Blogs For Peace Wednesday, April 04, 2007. I was intrigued enough that I went and looked at their site and the pledge they wanted people to affirm. I never put it up,though. I just can't support an abrupt pullout. And so far I've seen nothing in the dizzying assortment of legislative proposals, postures and vetoes, timetables and benchmarks, that makes me think there is a real way out, a solution. An end to the feeling of drowning in the boundless cynicism of this administration. It does not mean I agree with the war. The Iraq war. It does not mean I think that things will get worse if we leave
General Says Iraq Pullback Would Increase Violence - New York Times. That there will be "a bloodbath". Given the dynamics of the situation, I don't believe it could get much worse
ARMED FORCES JOURNAL - A failure in generalship - May 2007. It does not mean I think that benchmarks are unnecessary, that they would be tying anyone's hands. Without some form of measure you can not say you are accomplishing anything, and probably are not
G.O.P. Moderates Warn Bush Iraq Must Show Gains - New York Times. It is just that I believe things will never get better if we leave now, and we have a responsibility for our actions
Swoop - Iraq: The Worst Lies Ahead. One thing I am extremely dubious about is the current movement to settle on an examination of the war's mismanagement. This is no more than changing the frame of the debate. Deliberately pointing beyond the reasons for the war, to achieve a false consciousness consensus on a "way forward." A prominent feature of David Broder's criticism of Sen. Reid
Time says 'Embrace the Curve.' Why be ahead of it? - By Mickey Kaus - Slate Magazine. So what was this war about? Democracy? I suppose some may have thought so - as long as it didn't get in the way. Even there you can't gift democracy. If democracy ever comes about in Iraq, Iraqi's will have accomplished this themselves. The war will eventually be known to be about what all wars are about: power, wealth. Empire and its garrison. We claim a security vis our enemies, but we are also claiming a different kind of security, against change. By name access to oil. The mismanagement involved is far greater than the details of this one war. Groups like Al Qaeda can exist because they feed off the resentment of regional blowback, and the non-integrating frontiers of globalism. Blowback is a term of art referring to the diffidence caused by past even ongoing activities often undereported if not hidden entirely from the American populace designed to prejudicially shape the destinies of others to suit our own interests. Political resentment is a poison it is one of the great ills that Marxism gave history, but in its bitterness it is a powerful motivator. The theism of the Islamic extremists is inextricably bound up with it. It is in our interest to try now differentiating terrorism from non-integrating non-cooperating realities of differing national and regional interests. Globalism can never be interpreted as USism and form a viable ideology. Further, implicit in the drive to find a haven for an American garrison at any cost somewhere in or near the middle east is a privileging of oil wealth that is no less than the hijacking of the American nation by a faction. The realities of what we have brought to Iraq are chaos violence death, the inversion of social order. We have done this through sheer and thoughtless incompetence and have engendered a greater insecurity for our future. In the global war on terrorism some hoped we had not lost our innocence so much as gained a valuable enemy to have and to hold, forever. Putting it back together. In Iraq we may be forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of proximity. That a people belong to themselves, their affairs of the most concern to themselves and their neighbors. All nations particularly ones with underdeveloped institutions face centripetal forces and the old solution: rule by a despot. Saddam didn't come from nowhere (nor did any of the region's Baathists) there was a problem, he put himself forward as the solution. The US may find this model harder to escape than was thought. The key to any viable government in Iraq is a deal on the oil profit sharing agreement that is currently stalled in the Iraqi parliament. Some form of soft partition may follow behind this but except for the Kurds it is unlikely to lead to hard partition succession or general realignment, simply because there has been no general or well formed movement for the others irregardless of religion or ethnicity yet to see themselves as anything other than Iraqis.
On the back of that I would allow time for military commanders to create a situation and make an assessment in a proper interval. But then decisions have to be made
New Mideast commander off to quiet start - Yahoo! News. From my perspective the point at which we pack up the kit bag is when our presence is seen as making things worse, not making things better. The Washington Post a couple of Sundays back ran a light piece in the
Outlook section where they rounded up the usual self selecting suspects
to give a single bite quote on whether the US is winning or losing the
Iraq War
Is the Iraq War Lost?. Its worth noting in passing that Fredrick Kagan's assertion
that Maliki is "incredibly supportive" of the need to go after Shiite
militia was flatly contradicted by a front page article in the Post the
next day Maliki's Office Is Seen Behind Purge in Forces - washingtonpost.com. Victor Hanson's quote had all the order and lucidity, as
others observed, of Belushi's "did we quit when the Germans bombed
Pearl Harbor" speech in Animal house. It is not about (not) losing. Whether lost is viewed as "final score 7 to 1" or lost as in "Hey haven't we passed that same tree before?" The later is a line already crossed.
In the continually and drastically simplified definitions of a successful outcome offered by the wars apologists. I see only the desperation of the certain neoconservatives to avoid well earned reputations of disaster
The Neocon Paradox - New York Times. The plan that pressed for the current surge, written by Frederick Kagan, was titled Choosing Victory; a cynical sop to the simple-minded. Are you a losing loser, or a winner who has the courage to "Choose Victory"? It's just that simple:
Plan B? Let's Give Plan A Some Time First - New York Times. Still in all, a successful outcome for the Iraqis is a genuine return to self rule. That cannot happen with the worlds largest embassy, a nation ruling embassy in their midst, nor with a garrison of troops em-barricaded in the midst of their productive oil-fields. That is not a nation, it is a colony. For the US having decided to make a game of national security, the so called great game, the danger is that we may be beaten. A circumstance a more pragmatic foreign policy would never have entered into. This Administration's policy has been the moral equivalent of running with scissors. The security interests of the modern nation state, as legitimate as that state itself, expose a certain insatiability of such states. If oil forms a non negotiable interest desiring assurance not trust. We need to ask why we cannot trust in pecuniary interest, in markets, in innovation. In laissez faire. For conservatives this desire to command, betrays an ill belief in their own bull shit. This lot does not form a party of Wilsonian or even neo-Wilsonians ideals. Expressing the belief in a better world. Embodying that belief. It is a struggle between enlightened or managed democracy. With the downward spiraling rationalizations they offer they are becoming the problem.
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