So much for that "Surge" (1 Viewer)

You're acknowledging one of two explanations

1) Either he's operating from a position of relative strength. In which case the cease-fire signals a desire to enter the political process

2) Or he's operating from a position of relative weakness. Which considering how much effort he's put into maintaining a truce over the past year and how quickly and, yes, desperately he tried to stamp out violence this time, suggests his strength is continuing to degrade.

Make your choice. Honestly I don't care what you believe, but you're going to have a hard time figuring out how to spin this towards increased anarchy in Iraq as opposed to real progress in terms of security.

The only question I have is how it plays out for us (the US) personally.
No, it's not one or the other, which is my point which your not understanding.

Sadr isn't militarily that strong. But he does command a degree of political and social influcence among the Shia. He's not operating from relative political strength, nor is he very weak. There's an assumption here that he either is weak or strong. He's neither, but politically savvy. He's militarily weakened, but the longer he stays on the board, the more political capital he acquires. He has no interest in reconciliation, but he'll continue to play this cat and mouse game with the central government.

He doesn't have to be strong to undermine the central government--at least militarily. He has enough influence on the street. We've seen his game before. Go back to my statement about the endless cycle. Wage guerilla war, call a "truce," go back, re-arm, re-organize. If he were really interested in political power, he'd be working within the central gov't apparatus, but frankly he knows he can still play manipulate things through violence.

Welcome to the wonderful world of dyfunctional Iraqi democracy.

I don't have to spin things fortunately, but I never claimed there was "anarchy" in Iraq, I just pointed out that more violence isn't going to lead to political reconciliation or the oil law being passed.

Again, the object of the surge was ostensibly to create a climate conducive for the various ethnic groups to come together and pass a series of important laws

Number one of which, is the oil law. In sum, I think the recent spate of violence will further set back these political benchmarks.

If the Iraqis couldn't get their **** together during that time of relative peace, I seriously doubt they'll come together and pass these essential reforms so the U.S. can think about coming home.

Unfortunately, it seems that the system which is evolving will have daily violence and something resembling feudalism, which there's a constant military and political struggle, with violence as a part of it, between the central government and local factions/leaders.
 
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And as our working relationship with the Montenyards improves this should really help us drive a wedge between opponents the central government.

But, the Russian and Chinese freighters loaded down with weapons in Haiphong Harbor are still off limits as targets. :covri:
 
If the Iraqis couldn't get their **** together during that time of relative peace, I seriously doubt they'll come together and pass these essential reforms so the U.S. can think about coming home.

Unfortunately, it seems that the system which is evolving will have daily violence and something resembling feudalism, which there's a constant military and political struggle, with violence as a part of it, between the central government and local factions/leaders.

This is called a failed state. They are all over Africa where the same built in debilitations are prevalent: artificial borders that bunch together distinct and separate tribal, ethnic, linguistic and religious groups who compete violently for central control and the right to monopolize national wealth.

Break the thing up into its natural constituent parts and let's move on.

These reforms are obviously not essential to the Iraqis, only to Americans and American interests and as such they will not happen and will not stick until the Iraqis see them as in their interests. If they were viewed as essential by Iraqis at this point, they would have happened already. More than likely the constituent groups within Iraq are playing "winner take all" here and will drag this out as long as possible.

"Iraq" as a unified political identity is still something of a myth, which is why Kurdistan is effectively independent and the Sunni and Shia shoot at each other or drive each out of the other's neighborhoods.

All this strategizing on how to get the Iraqis to see it the American way is a waste of time.

We spent over 10 years tied up in Viet Nam and unable to admit to ourselves thet basic fact that we were simply involved in a civil war and that the half baked theories of "dominoes" were as invalid as the current neoconservative ideologies that led to this war.

This time we can stay for 15 or 20 years and never admit to ourselves that Iraq has never been stable and probably never been governable because it was deliberately constructed by the British so as to be a stillborn entity that could be easily manipulated.

Only a brutal dictator ever gave it a veneer of "stability" but even in his tenure the civil war was ongoing between the Sunni and the Kurds at the same time that the Shia were brutally repressed.

Rather than recognize it as the low intesity civil war it has always been, our own propagandists preferred to characterize it as the dictator "killing his own people" for our own propaganda purposes when neither the dictator nor the Kurds considered themselves to be of the same peoples, no more than Turkish Kurds consider themselves to be the same people as the Turks.

The Kurds were trying to make off with the North of Iraq and the oil that sits beneath it and Saddam was asserting his claim in his own inimitable style...
 
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But, the Russian and Chinese freighters loaded down with weapons in Haiphong Harbor are still off limits as targets. :covri:

We'll just fry them with napalm as the coolies hump that stuff down the Ho Chi Minh trail...
 
All this strategizing on how to get the Iraqis to see it the American way is a waste of time.

But the excuses are endless why we need more patience, only if we can wait and allow this [insert political leader] to do something, or [insert this military 'achievement'], the endgame, whatever it is can be achieved.

Soup sandwich personified.
 
We'll just fry them with napalm as the coolies hump that stuff down the Ho Chi Minh trail...

"There's a water buffalo jackknifed up there...it's not a very pretty picture. There's horns everywhere! I don't know what to say... we're gonna maybe drop a little napalm there, try and cook him down! Have a little barbeque!"
 
Don't worry, I'm sure that when we finally exit this quagmire and turn to events and conditions in our own hemisphere, we'll only back legitimate popular causes and not artificially cobbled-together groups of elites likely to be friendly to our business interests.

After all, we're in this to spread our way of life.

And make sure we save all these nations from the horrors of a single-payer health system.
 
And make sure we save all these nations from the horrors of a single-payer health system.


Yes. God forbid universal health care.

If they lived under such a system your daughters might grow up looking like this:

http://i.cnn.net/si/pr/subs/swimsuit/images/97_vendela_01.jpg

Flag.GIF

97_vendela_01.jpg
 
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Do a GIS for "British teeth." :covri:

Actually, British Teeth have improved markedly in the last decades. They started going to orthodontists whereas they never had before...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22429,00.html

Until the NHS started up, and before the availability of fluoride in toothpaste (or water), our British teeth were spectacularly ugly. Look at any film footage of average Britons before about 1945, and weep. The standard of living of the contemporary American probably afforded them better dental care; and, I suspect, a certain cultural austerity would have meant that corrective procedures such as braces would be regarded by us Brits as extravagance and vanity.


Simon Gilman, London U​

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792470,00.html
 
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In how many different ways can you say failure?

In August 2004, US and Iraqi forces battled Sadr's militias in Najaf, Iraq. It was billed as a crucial test of then-Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's ability to extend authority over a key city in Iraq that was controlled by armed militias. The Najaf showdown ended in much the same way this one did: a Sadr negotiated truce.

But this time, analysts say, the widespread instances of surrender among the Iraqi forces and the seizure of their equipment and vehicles by the Mahdi Army shows that despite all the funding and training from the US, Iraq's soldiers remain greatly swayed by their sectarian and party loyalties and are incapable of standing up in a fight without US backing.

Anger follows the fight with Sadr's militia | csmonitor.com
 
In how many different ways can you say failure?

In August 2004, US and Iraqi forces battled Sadr's militias in Najaf, Iraq. It was billed as a crucial test of then-Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's ability to extend authority over a key city in Iraq that was controlled by armed militias. The Najaf showdown ended in much the same way this one did: a Sadr negotiated truce.

But this time, analysts say, the widespread instances of surrender among the Iraqi forces and the seizure of their equipment and vehicles by the Mahdi Army shows that despite all the funding and training from the US, Iraq's soldiers remain greatly swayed by their sectarian and party loyalties and are incapable of standing up in a fight without US backing.

Anger follows the fight with Sadr's militia | csmonitor.com

Incapable or unwilling?
 

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