What would be the outcome of a war with Iraq?

I was saddened to see bigsoccer posters run a thread about war into some sporting event. Yea, we're 10-0-1 in war or whatever. This is a sport website, but war is more about wins and loses.

If you have to think back to recent history, Gulf War I lead to bin Laden's rise. His main gripe seems to the US "ocupation" ..errr... bases in Saudi lands.

I am no bin laden fan, but when we (US) goes to war there are many side factors that arise and we must consider them.

Never thought I would quote that bimbo Rosie Perez, but sometimes when you win, you lose. And, sometimes when you lose, you win.

Take Iraq and the points.

 

Um...that's some pretty sweet math they're using. I don't even want to think of the percentages of an Allied (heavy irony) victory that actually brings democracy to the Middle East.

 

There is no way that the Iraqis will win. But Bush the Younger has screwed this thing so much that there is no way that we will win either. This is going to end up an unimaginably horrible even in human history, the repercussions of which will felt for many decades.

 

Ahh, spejic....always with the understatement.

 

This is a no win situation. We go into Iraq with guns blazing, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and somehow the Arab world will throw off the bonds of Islamo-facism and embrace a Western-style pro-US democracy?

Only in Dubya's wildest wet dreams.

 

Why is it so unthinkable for leftists to believe that Arabs can handle a democracy? OH, Japan Germany had no history of successful democracy. Darn. OK. Darn. Let's just stop those experiments. They're obviously heading nowhere. Leftists very easily condemn any hint of racism in something a right-winger will say, but it's so darn simple and unchallenged among them that Arabs can't handle a democracy and need a strong oppressor as a leader.

As for who would win a war .... the best Iraqi tanks were seriously outclassed in the Gulf War and I don't suspect that ten years of sanctions has done much to close the gap. But it may well get ugly.

 

I disagree. 1% sounds about right. There's a chance that the Iraqis will hang tough, and Americans and the world will be outraged by the scenes of door-to-door fighting in Iraq's cities. US cities explode with protests every weekend, and Bush is forced to back down.

As I understand it, our military strategy is heavily predicated on the Iraqi army just giving up. OK, those guys have the intelligence reports on Iraqi morale, so they're probably right...but what if they're not?

If nothing else, the poll numbers tell you that the US public won't need much to turn a large majority against this war.

 

Japan and Germany both needed a long period of military occupation to make the Western imprint stick. Are the leaders prepared to make a similar (expensive) commitment with a post-Saddam Iraq?

 

I agree that it will be a challenge, but to dismiss its possibility as a "wet dream" is ridiculous. If any Arab country is a good candidate, it would be Iraq. Or at least it would have been Iraq at one time. It was the most educated populace in the Arab world with an economy comparable to Eastern Europe before Saddam came to power.

My point is that the liberals on this board seem to dismiss democracy out of hand as though it's just mind-bogglingly inconsistent with the Arab mentality, when in fact a minor democractic transformation is blossoming in the Arab world, at least in the smaller gulf states.

 

They also didnt have different ethnic groups aspiring for independence

 

At what point did anyone say Arabs can't "handle democracy?"

I'd love to see every country on the planet democratically elect their governments.

What I'm saying is that people who think the results of a war in Iraq will automagically mean that democracy will sprout from the rubble are self-delusional. We oust Sadam, next thing you know Iraq becomes a flower of pro-Western democratic thought which spreads throughout the entire Middle East, and everyone, Jews, Muslims, Christians, athiests and agnostics will be ringed around the campfire singing Kumbaya. It's not that simple.

Look at Afghanistan. We helped the Afghanis oust the Soviets. Once the Soviets were gone, we basically said "hey, good work guys. Thanks for getting rid of the Ruskies. Hope that whole democracy thing works out for you." We had a chance in 1989 to create a democracy in Afghanistan yet our foreign policy at the time was so myopic that we elected to basically leave them to their own devices.

Does anyone really think we would treat Iraq any differently if we oust Hussein's government? I don't.

I won't mention how the USA understimated the will to fight of the Vietnamese. I will mention however that the USSR understimated the will to fight of the Afghanis.

I think that the USA would "win" the war, but at best it will be a Pyrrich Victory.

 

Democracy is in no way 'foreign to the Arab character.' It's just that there are so few examples of democracy imposed by a conquering nation (Japan and Germany, so the US has a decent record). Of course, those were accomplished during the greatest economic expansion in the country's history, and the government raised marginal tax rates to pay for the expense of maintaining the occupation forces.

The danger is in finding ourselves occupying another Yugoslavia, a juryrigged nation of different ethnicities and religions that's coming apart at the seams with nothing holding it together but the US.

 

Again, where did any liberal on this board dismiss democracy "as though it's just mind-bogglingly inconsistent with the Arab mentality?"

 

I'll say it: There's no Arab country even remotely close to being able to handle democracy. Just to give you an idea -- the country with the most educated, religiously moderate general populous is Iran.

 

I've been hearing "another Vietnam" all my life, and I haven't seen it. I don't see it here. I don't think a population fed up by Hussein's reign is going to die in the street for him. In fact I expect this ends in a Mussolini moment.

Anyway, one person is arguing that there's notenough national identity to start a democracy and someone else is arguing that we will be opposed Vietnam-style out of a nationalistic fervor.Which is it?

Democracy is spreading in the Arab world and will continue to spread .Iraq is irrelevant as an obstacle to that process but might well be a major step forward.if successfully transformed.

Furthermore, why so much emphasis on the aftermath of the war, as though if we can't get a perfect outcome then we shouldn't engage at all? The simple fact of the matter is that the tide of power in that region is turning as this regime continues to seek weapons of mass destruction. No one here can say what the future holds if we act, but we can say where the current situation is leading, and it's not good.

 

Winning the war is the easy part, the real question is who will win the peace? That is my biggest concern.

 

Possibly my biggest problem with Team Bush is that they combine bellicosity with an aversion to nation-building and follow through that is just a Petri dish for blowback. There's this arrogance that they can control events that's just delusional.

 

We have already accomplished the central objective of a US invasion of Iraq--to prevent an Iraqi attack on the US. At this point, with inspectors back in the country, Saddam backed into a corner and the world refocused on disarming Saddam, his ability to develop a WMD and give it to a terrorist group is basically non-existant.

At this point, we maintain our buildup and work the inspection angle. Opponents will say he'll play hide and seek with the inspectors--sure, I agree with that. But the energy necessary in hiding his programs will mean his programs don't continue to work and develop.

The inspections destroyed more weapons than our attacks in Iraq. I say we let the inspections continue, keep pressure on Iraq. A war inflames tensions, increases Al Qaeda's ability to recruit, gives them another front to use against the United States (they have deployed terrorist to other conflicts to counter US interests--India-Pakistan for example). Further a war increases the likelihood that Saddam will try to use whatever weapons he has right now against the US.

And at some point, we might get intel into where Saddam is sleeping. When they fire at one of our planes, maybe our return fire happens to hit that location.

I think we can keep a slower pace here.

 

Here's an example of the Bushies' cavalier approach to this:

We're going to war, Wolfowitz thinks this is the first step to remaking the entire Arab world, and it gets third billing to Medicaid reform and new tax cuts?

Except, each area will be defending its own community. I think there's consistency here, without bringing up the (remote, IMHO) possibility that an invasion might help create that nationalism. It's unlikely to me, even given the multitude or real-life examples, just because those real-life examples involved long wars. The US public will have long since forced Bush to get out before our invasion could create Iraqi nationalism.

The CIA-fostered coup that put the Shah on the throne looked like a success for a quarter century. Since then, it's been revealed to have been a disaster of the first order. That's probably the most extreme example of blowback, but there are others. Speaking for myself, I don't sense any commitment by the Bushies to avoiding blowback.

I don't think there are any simple facts in this matter.

Do you think Iraq could do anything along those lines with the current inspection regime? Because if you don't think they could, then the cost of a thousand years of inspections is dwarfed by the potential cost of this war.

 

Indeed

"WHEN THE STOCK market falls for a record 10 consecutive days, as it just has done, you take notice...The US's economic position is far too vulnerable to allow it to go war without cast-iron multilateral support that could underpin it economically as well as diplomatically and militarily."

 

I don't know if the current inspection regime would prevent the creation of nuclear weapons in Iraq Obviously the presence of inspectors in North Korea hasn't exactly stopped them. my gut is that it likely will not. In any event, it is a huge risk, and obviously Kim Jong-Il has given Iraq a model. And Saddam did a pretty good job lat time around. The inspectors were about ready to declare victory and leave the country in the mid-90s before they got a tip and found out , oh wait, they've restarted the nuclear program.

Either way, the thing is that the current inspections regime will break down. I don't think the United States can with credibility perpetually rattle the saber. Iraq will become less cooperative and sooner or later Hans Blix will be on the next flight to Stockholm. The US will make noise, but nothing more than a few cruise missiles will happen The result --- rogue states will realize that if they can just enlist the Europeans and create a rift with the US, if they can just outlast the will of the American public for confrontation, they can get away with murder.

Meanwhile, the sanctions regime breaks down, IRaq re-arms more quickly and the pace of their nuclear program accelerates. Tye get the bomb. A nuclear arms race ensues in Arabia. The Saud buy a nuclear bomb in an American-hating, terrorist linked unstable autocracy. Rogue states around the world get more aggressive and US allies get more passive.

 

I haven't seen this "aversion to nation-building" in Afghanistan. I think the difference is that, whereas Clinton was all for nation-building whenever he felt like it, Bush is against it when it has absolutely no effect on our national interest or security (Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia), but for it when it does (Afghanistan, Iraq).


Alex

 

Re: Re: What would be the outcome of a war with Iraq?

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Alex