Iraqis Not The Problem

Iraq is a temporary solution

 

for whom and to what?

 

If the so-called insurgents are really mostly foreign terrorists, why are the Iraqi people putting up with it? It's the Iraqi civilians and police who are getting killed the most. It seems to me that a terrorist network needs certain supports to survive and thrive. They need places to meet and places to hide, they need weapons, they need ways to communicate with each other. How could they have what they need, and continue to function, without the support of a good segement of the Iraqi population?

 

I suppose. But I'm not just talking about active support. This is purely speculative, but it strikes me that if the majority of the Iraqi population really wanted the terrorism to stop, there is more that they could do to help American forces - mostly by providing information.

 

Your forgetting one word - fear. They are used to being oppressed, and are probably being told what will happen if they help the US/UK.

 

'U.S. military estimates cited by security analysts put the number of active jihadists at about 1,000, or less than 10 percent of the number of fighters in a mostly Iraqi-dominated insurgency.'

 

I agree with Coach. Since Saudis blew up WTC on 9/11, they are the problem. However, too many Americans support W, and W is in the pocket of the Saudis, so we are left sucking their hind tits.

Iraq was simply the most flagrant bait'n'switch episode, ever.

PS. I like calling a post-detonated Saudi Arabia Loneystan.

 

I quite simply do not believe that it is a few hundred guys wandering around the desert the nall of a sudden producing coordinated attacks. Insurgents need food, water, payrolls, arms, first aid, shelter, schedules, orders, logistics, supplies, alternate identities, motivational speeches, etc. a few hundred guy all alone in the desert can't produce this crap...

Bottom line: ******** whatever we think: the military HNIC, Gen. Myers, tells us as late as April 27th that the number of insurgent attack averaged - averaged - 40 a day, and has gone up to between 50 and 60 a day, and that the insurgeny is "about where it was a year ago." There is no way that that insurgency operates without substantive support from people in the population. www.globalsecurity.org offers the following list of insurgent groups:

Insurgent Groups:

-Active Religious Seminary
-Al-Faruq Brigades
-Al-Mahdi Army
-Al-Sadr's Group
-Ansar al-Islam
-Armed Vanguards of Mohammad's Second Army
-Black Banner Organization
-Hasad al-Muqawamah al-'Iraqiyah
[Harvest of the Iraqi Resistance]
-Iraqi National Islamic Resistance
-Iraqi Resistance Brigades
-Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front (JAMI)
Iraq's Revolutionaries
-Islamic Armed Group of al-Qaida, Fallujah branch
-Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad
-Jaysh Muhammad
-Jihad Cells
-Liberating Iraq's Army
-Mujahideen Battalions of the Salafi Group of Iraq
-Muslim Fighters of the Victorious Sect (aka, Mujaheddin of the Victorious Sect)
-Muslim Youth
-Nasserites
-National Iraqi Commandos Front
-Salafist Jihad Group
-Snake Party
-Sons of Islam
-Unity and Jihad Group
-Wakefulness and Holy War
-White Flags

then offers the following groups as "Ba'athist or probable Ba'athist":

-General Command of the Armed Forces, Resistance and Liberation in Iraq
-New Return
-Patriotic Front
-Political Media Organ of the Ba‘ath Party (Jihaz al-Iilam al-Siasi lil hizb al-Baath)
-Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Iraq
-Return
-Saddam's Fedayeen

while submitting:

(Mod note: rest of the article here: GlobalSecurity.org story)

So we don't know how many guys are foreign fighters, but we're sure that some are. Fine; but we'd best understand and get fvcking real about the fact that the insurcency has decent popular support, probably everywhere that we don't find reporters (i.e. the entire nation other than Baghdad's green zone). I absolutely believe that the same thing that was true before we started to invade nations is the same thing that's true now (and required to defeat the insurgency), which will be the same thing that will be true in five or seven or even ten years if we don't get it: we need to offer a better Idea, a progressive Isalmic empowerment idea that is fundamentally tied to us with our hands off of everything Iraqi. The COMBINATION of the better Idea (do as well as be SEEN to do) AND hadns off/out of Iraq is the only way to win. Everything else is just fulfillment of defense contracts, and filling of body bags.

Oh, by the way Allawi and Chalabi? Not the better Idea. Ibrahim Jaafari was spokesman for the Islamic Daawa Party, which is in fact theocratic, but according to the BBC "Mr Jaafari is widely seen as a unifying figure," so that's what's called for, but with a progressive vision, hopefully.

But the insurgency? Significant. They can be the demons some folks need them to be, or they can be whatever; what they are NOT is marginal. They are setting the tone and atmosphere in which folks conceive of what is possible and what is not, and we don't have the fine motor skills to speak to that with this Executive...they're all low-tone gross motor skills, all the time...

 

In fact, roughly 1,000 means that the jihadists are less than 5% of the insurgency, according to most estimates. And the idea that we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars, have lost thousands of American lives, have caused countless civilian casualties, and stretched our military to the breaking point, and still can't win a fight against a thousand religious fanatics - it's completely ridiculous. I can't imagine how any sensible person could read this article and conclude that the point is that "Iraqis aren't the problem."

If a thousand terrorists were the issue, we probably wouldn't need to be in Iraq anymore - even the weak Iraqi forces that we've put together so far would be able to take care of it. The problem is the much broader (and overwhelmingly Iraqi) insurgency, which fosters the anarchic situation in which those terrorists thrive.

 

Oh yeah, one other thing from the article that's worth noting.

This demonstrates why the "flypaper theory" is such a moronic justification for the Iraq war. A common sound bite that the Bush administration uses to defend the war is that "we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them in (random American city). This one-liner seems to have a certain appeal among the clueless- but it's total nonsense. The people going to Iraq to blow themselves up would have never had the connections or resources to involve themselves in terror attacks against the US. Instead, by offering a much more convenient target, we've created a whole new class of low-end terrorists who can now just hop on a bus across the border to attack Americans. In other words, we've lowered the barrier to entry into the jihad business.

However, enabling the existence of low-end terrorists does absolutely NOTHING to prevent or dissuade the high-end terrorist from creating plots against the United States. In fact, it makes that task easier - by giving terror groups a haven (to help replace the one they lost in Afghanistan), providing easy access to weapons and money, bolstering recruiting efforts, and providing would-be jihadists with networking and training opportunities.

 

I was speaking metaphorically about our policy style; big sweeping gestures, not nuanced...not about our Chief Executive specifically.

 

I'd prefer nuanced thought-out lines from D.C.; the above is the false either-or this board is known for, but that you usually avoid.

 

What should happen is that the US needs to go to the UN and negotiate the replacement of everything it is doing in Iraq (armed forces, base construction, infrastructure, training etc.) with multinational contingents and peacekeepers whose first goal is to empower the Iraqi [pick area here] to build and re-build their own nation and profit from international aid in ways that empower solely Iraqis...no war profiteering by the invaders, in any way.

 

Because the UN has done this so well in the past ?

 

And we have?

 

For shits and giggles, I Googled

Let's just say a lot's been written and published on the web. Surprise!

One of the things that I recalled - and it may well have been discussed here, but perhaps not - No other president was ever caught holding hands and kissing the Saudi King.



Damn, I really misss the big guy.We sure could use him right now.

 

....congrats to anyone who could read that without laughing out-loud.

"the replacement of everything....with multinational contingents and peacekeepers "

Right.

No matter what gesture the UN wants to make -- assuming they can get past their Schadenfreude -- please tell us which member nations are going to step right up and send troops to Iraq. They might as well give their domestic political opponents a loaded gun to shoot them with. Better yet, just shoot themselves; it's quicker.

 

Nobody has. But nobody tries harder than we do, even when it's stupid.