Publius on the counterproductivity of staying in Iraq:
Here, the overriding risk is all-out civil war – whether inter-or-intra ethnic group – or regional war, or both. Our presence mitigates these risks [to the government] – at least in the short term. Thus, Maliki can take risky actions like raiding Basra or openly turning the army into a wing of Badr, knowing that he and his allies won’t be exposed to the full risk of those actions (civil war) because of the American presence. Similarly, other countries (like Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) feel less urgency to engage diplomatically (which is itself a “risky” omission) because of the American presence.
Question – if we are basically acting like a wing of Maliki’s Badr brigades, and the Badr brigades are so closely tied with Iran that its fighters draw pensions from the IRGC, can we get Iran to pitch in for the mental health care of our troops? After all of the blood that America has shed on Iran’s behalf it seems like the least they could do.
TenguPhule
It’s not like they could do a worse job then the Bush Boobs in Charge now.
mikesdak
Here’s another thought…what if Al-Sadr’s people win the upcoming election? Do we support him the way we support the current government?
SnarkyShark
Do we support him the way we support the current government?
You mean arming and paying the opposition? You betcha.
Of course we will bomb Iran for playing the same game.
American exceptionalism demands no less!
Tim F.
Sure. Just like Hamas.
jake
Do you perhaps mean Saudi Arabia?
BJ
The idea has come up before.
mikesdak
I apologize….I forgot about that basic principle….only support democracy we like.
Dennis - SGMM
Al-Maliki Halts Raids on Shiite Militants
Gee, it seems like only yesterday that Bush was referring to al-Maliki’s abortive attack on Basra as “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.”
Looks like al-Maliki has been defined as a loser who couldn’t take Basra from a relatively weak Mehdi army garrison. A loser who has neither the support of his people or his cronies in the putative government of Iraq.
And we’re there fighting for this guy because…
SnarkyShark
Real manly men(tm)don’t need no stinkin plan B!
Obviously you are a communist fascist as explained by doughy pantload.
Or something
Dennis - SGMM
I was until the current election cycle when I was informed that I’m also a Birkenstock-wearing, latte-sipping, trust fund collecting, limousine Liberal. I am working to resolve the many contradictions.
SnarkyShark
I’m willing to bet my Bear-Stearns stock that that limousine was made by Volvo.
The horror
jake
Maybe you meant KBR or Haliburton or Parsons …
Dennis - SGMM
Waiting while Volvo matched the leather interior to my Birkenstocks was unbelievably trying.
The Other Steve
Screw this…
Hugh Hewitt watch.
I’m telling you the fonts and kerning were all wrong.
Tax Analyst
Didn’t you know Hillary invented them?
I remember doing a lot of “hurling” during my brief days in college in the 60’s…but never into my bookbag.
Dennis - SGMM
This is so much bullshit. Black armbands were accepted as a formal sign of mourning for someone not a relative in the nineteenth century. People have been carrying things in bags since forever. I’m definitely not a Clinton fan but, I’ll accept her story on this one, even if it’s allegorical.
SnarkyShark
Hey…..Hugh don’t get to talk about Hillary that way!
Only us MUPpits can talk about her that way.
Besides the story Hillary is lying about now is way juicer.
http://www.americablog.com/2008/04/clintons-dramatic-health-care-story-is.html
Hugh is behind the curve
TenguPhule
Deep thought for the day
Very Serious People seem to always cause very serious problems.
stickler
Wait, maybe we can still square this circle:
As it happens, most of the bigwigs in the former East Germany drove Volvo limousines. The suburb of East Berlin where they had their
palaceshumble homes was jokingly referred to as “Volvograd.”So, if the Communists from East Germany drove Volvo limousines, and most latte-sipping American Liberal Fascists drive Volvos, then …
Wait. That still doesn’t quite work. Maybe the Doughy Pantload can figure this out.
tBone
You should have found a project to take your mind off it, like polishing your marble countertops. With all the abortions and gay marriages I perform on mine, they need frequent applications of elbow grease to keep them in tip-top shape.
jake
I’m sorry, but the only two words I can find to describe HH are “pathetic twat.” He knows better, and when people call him a pathetic twat he’ll say that he only repeated what people wrote in their e-mails and why is everyone so meeean?
Come Citizen Journalists, let us e-mail our skepticism about those claims that Hugh Spewitt has stopped performing sex acts on catfish.
Dennis - SGMM
We did hire some illegals to erect a larger gazebo in the back yard for our satanic rituals.
cbear
It’s lucky you got that done when you did, since its going to be hard to find an illegal to erect anything once that new border fence starts going up.
Perfect gooper plan: hire thousands of illegal immigrants to build an anti-immigration fence—from this side of the border. What could go wrong.
cbear
Better get ready to duck, Jake…..I don’t think your average pathetic twat is going to like being lumped in with Hughie Baby, and I expect a backlash when they hear of your libelous remarks.
Dennis - SGMM
Bwahahaha! Seeing as how it’s a Bushco project, I can safely predict that they’ll spend ten billion dollars, build twenty-two miles of fence, and once the first rains fall, seventeen miles of it will rust to pieces. Bushco could fuck up an anvil in a sandbox.
Soliton
Volvos ain’t it with the Birkenstock latte crowd any more..
It is now Priuses.. Or is it Priusi?
Anyway, small Toyota hybrids.
They are multiplying like Tribbles in Beserkely so I hear..
Dennis - SGMM
The truly hip are riding in battery powered Volvo limos. While some may question the ecological soundness of a car that requires 4000 flashlight batteries for power we simply cut them off with, “But, it’s electric. Electric is good.”
cbear
I’ll see your $10 billion, and raise you $90 more.
The fence will be built by divisions of KBR and Halliburton, etc.; the security elements will be provided by Bechtel and whoever Rudy brings in; and Blackwater will be needed to control, and later shoot, the poor Messicans who provide the slave labor.
J. Michael Neal
I happen to be rather fond of female genitalia. I can’t say the same about Hugh Hewitt.
Dennis - SGMM
When the cries of outrage start, Mukasey will produce a memo authorizing the shootings under the president’s war time Commander in Chief super powers.
cbear
No need for that, our wartime Preznit already has the power to do anything he wants—our patriotic congressc-nts, Dems and goopers, already gave it to him.
Frankly, I’m suprised that Neal and Marvin Bush aren’t showing up at the homes of newlyweds and demanding jus primae noctis (law of the first night).
Dennis - SGMM
They’re Bushes, the Bushes prefer jus primae livestock.
Notorious P.A.T.
Because if we bring our soldiers back home, the taxi drivers and fruit vendors and shopkeepers who are tossing IEDs at them will follow them here to America and attack us in the streets of New York and Chicago and Los Angeles.
cbear
Which may explain the bovinely stupid look we often see on Junior’s face.
Dennis - SGMM
As well as his bull-headed mulishness.
jake
But not Detroit, because no one would notice the uptick in violence.
Silver Owl
I think the Iraqi people are adults. Like any other nation when a failed government is in power there is a fight to over throw it. Let the Iraqi people handle their own nation. They know the language, culture and issues, which puts them 10,000 light years ahead of the U.S. telling them what to do.
I do not think that we Americans have the ability nor skill sets to determine Iraq’s future. Shit we can not even deal with our own nation.
We’re still fighting the same old shit going on 130 years for race issues and 100 years for women’s right on their own bodies. We can not even handle sex education in our own nation in an adult manner. Let alone our own economical issues. We’re in the middle of a religious squabble that is going to end up in a war that will make Ireland’s look like a drunken pub dust up. Our military is over stretched and America can not even address that like adults. For shit’s sake we can not even hold our own government accountable for squat.
LOL! I laugh at Americans that want to tell Iraqis how to run their own nation when ours is so fucked in so many ways. The irony just kills me. LOL!
What exactly is America’s credentials on leading in anything?
Garrigus Carraig
Excellent thought, Tim. Yet I eagerly anticipate what Pluk & Myqx will have to say on the matter. (Is Myqx really gone?)
nabalzbbfr
Prime Minister Maliki has demonstrated bold and courageous leadership during the past two weeks, confronting Iraq’s political problems head on. He bloodied the Sadr movement and forced them to back down in Basra. In the process he also smoked out Sadr’s Iranian backers. General Petraeus is about to call Sadr’s puppetmasters in Teheran to account in his Congressional testimony in the coming week. Check out the following references:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/wiran105.xml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3690010.ece
Davebo
I’ve got one there now with only days to wait and I can’t explain how much this continues to piss me off. I went a year with another relative there and I can tell you the internet sucks in this situation.
When I served in the 80’s it was a deployment. You did letters and occasionally a phone call, but you were gone. Today these kids can IM back home on nearly a daily basis. But on those days when they can’t get to that portable building full of computers with net access you can’t help but start worrying. It also has a negative effect on the other end because you can’t get that separation, that acknowledgment that you are out and won’t be back for a while.
But I guess that Genie is out of the bottle now. It still sucks though.
Dennis - SGMM
That’s an interesting perspective. I can’t imagine what my communications from Vietnam would have been like if I had instant access. As it was, we were far enough into the hinterlands that letters were all there was. When my parents passed, I found a packet containing all of my letters from Vietnam. I sat down one day with a bottle of Bourbon and read them.
I couldn’t believe that I was ever that young. I also couldn’t believe that I would lie so freely. There is no mention of being in a small unit on a tiny base existing only because it would be more trouble to overrun us than it was worth. No mention of being deaf for three days because they got lucky with a 120mm rocket, nothing about the firefights or the fact that their tracers were green while ours were red, nothing about how the round from a sniper would thump into the sandbags before you heard the report of his weapon. War to me was, in some ways, a very private thing. I wonder how the kids (We were just kids then too) deal with being able to tell their friends and family how they are doing on a day to day basis. I’m betting that they lie. God bless them for it.
Silver Owl
Davebo and Dennis,
Are you both saying that ignorance is best? I’m not really getting it. Mainly because regardless of the fastness of communication during wartime the fallout of war still is dealt with, be it death, physical wounding or nightmares/flashbacks that are brought home.
I can understand the only being comfortable to share with other military, but man oh pete those not military pay a price too. There is no “magical” saving another person from squat even when they are civilian. Lying makes it fucking worse on the ones kept purposely blind, bound and deaf. The keep them stupid mentality sucks because nothing gets taken care of except dealing with bullshit. That’s fucked up.
Dennis - SGMM
For my part, I’m saying that these were my parents. My dad, who fought in three wars, knew better. Way better. My mom, whose eldest son was nine thousand miles away in a shitty. pointless little war, suspected worse but wasn’t certain. I wasn’t keeping them stupid (Poor choice of words, friend) I was doing at the time, as an early twenties NCO who was in a very bad place, what I thought was best. I was trying to keep them from being scared shitless. What would have been accomplished by my telling them how it really was, assuming that I would have been capable of doing so? Would the politicians have demanded that the war end one day earlier? Did I know that I would be a crazy person when I returned? Shit no. I figured that once I got home I would be okay and that everything would be normal. My mistake.
You haven’t been there so you can’t possibly know. Your comment that “That’s fucked up,” belies your lack of knowledge about the intimate betrayals of your better self that sometimes become necessary to keep you and the guy to your right and the guy to your left alive when someone is doing their best to kill you.
Notorious P.A.T.
Amen brother. Imagine you’re an Iraqi getting “advice” from an American. “Uh, thanks but no thanks, I don’t want my country to run up a trillion-dollar deficit, or have a currency less valuable than the Canadian dollar, or spend billions more for health care that is worse than any other industrialized nation’s.”
Mike D.
There it is, Dennis. You speak. Or rather, one doesn’t; one keeps it the fuck to oneself. An entire generation of online exhibitionists is growing up without the hard-won wisdom that there are some things you just never talk about, ever.
And then there’s these dipshits who think running for cover while someone specifically and methodically tries to kill you with a large-caliber rifle is the kind of thing that you misremember afterwards, like what fucking elective you took in grade 11 — especially when your only child is — No. No, too early on Sunday to want to drop people into active volcanoes. Shine it on, baby.
w vincentz
Opinion from the middle:
http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/561780.html