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Remembering Michael Hastings
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks
Monday, October 24, 2011 - 6:23 AM
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President Obama looks pretty serious about U.S. troops leaving Iraq in just 10 weeks. This means not that the war is over, but that we are leaving the war, which goes on. And on. And so on.
The next six months in Iraq will indeed be interesting. Secretary of State Clinton said on Meet the Press yesterday, "Now, are the Iraqis all going to get along with each other for the foreseeable future? Well, let's find out." I saw that movie! Feeling lucky, Iraq? Well, do ya?
Here is the worried assessment of retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who in 2006 played a major role in fixing U.S. strategy in the war. I suspect various factions and external actors have been keeping their powder dry while U.S. troops were still on the scene. No one wanted to mess much with "the biggest tribe," especially because those fighters and weapons might be handy once that tribe left. It's like the Jets and the Sharks making nice while waiting for Office Krupke to move along. With Uncle Sam out of the way, it will be interesting to see which players -- internal and external -- seek to fill the vacuum. Why am I such a "pestamist"? -- to borrow a term my daughter invented as a child. Because none of the basic questions that led to the civil war of 2006-07 have been resolved-how to share oil revenues, what the role of the Kurds will be, and basically how to govern the country. (On the other hand, supporting the Clinton view, I have heard the argument that the U.S. presence is the factor that had enables Iraqi politicians to keep questions hanging fire.)
Think I'm being paranoid? OK, here is Yochi Dreazen's account in National Journal of a recent visit in Basra:
The Iranian consulate here dominates a section of this oil-rich city's skyline. An enormous Iranian flag can be seen from half a mile away, ringed by a welter of radio towers and satellite dishes. The walled compound houses three large villas and six smaller buildings. It's protected by well-trained Iranian and Iraqi troops. On a recent visit, I stopped my car and stepped out to take a few photos. Within seconds, a dozen men in tracksuits rushed out of adjacent houses and stores and surrounded me, handguns drawn. My translator assured them that we were journalists. The men, unsmiling, ordered me to hand over my camera and then methodically erased every picture I had taken since arriving in Basra four days earlier. They shoved us back toward our car and slammed the doors. Leaning into an open window, one of the guards told us to leave the area and not return. He was speaking Farsi.
When I read that, I thought of three things. First, someone telling me years ago that Iran doesn't want to control Baghdad, which is uncontrollable, it wants Basra, which is oil exports. Also, of two things Ambassador Ryan Crocker said about Iraq a couple of years ago:That the events for which the war will be remembered have not yet happened and that he kind of expected Iraq to wind up looking like Lebanon. I think he is still right on both counts.
A CNAS colleague recently asked what she should assign her students to read about Iraq since the surge -- which after all began more than four years ago. I was surprised that I couldn't think of a book that captured the post-surge era. What I came up with was the writings of Toby Dodge. Another CNAS colleague suggested also the work of Joost Hilterman, especially this article. I'd be interested in any other suggestions from all of youse. (Maybe for the West Point faculty, we could compile a list of the 10 best articles and books on Iraq since the surge.)
I also really liked the overview provided by a recent article by Safa Rasul al-Sheikh and Professor the Lady Emma Sky in Survival. (She's slumming at Oxford now.) It provided a pretty good overview of what has happened in Iraq since 2006, especially from the perspective of Iraqis. A couple of their conclusions:
The Sunni insurgents were driven to negotiate because they came to the realisation that they could not overthrow the new regime, that they were losing Baghdad to the Shia militias, and that Iran was a bigger threat to them than the United States.
(p. 127)
Iran eventually succeeded in making a second-term Maliki premiership inevitable by putting huge pressure on the Sadrists to support him.
(p. 138)
Tom again: Meanwhile, over the weekend I read a pretty new book, The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant's Regime, which consists of edited transcripts of captured recordings of Saddam Hussein's official meetings. No major Nixonian revelations, but a useful addition to the historical record. Among other things, it appears to confirm what some people have written, that he really believed he had prevailed in the 1991 war, because the Americans unilaterally had given him a ceasefire. As he tells aides on one tape made after the 1992 election, "Bush fell and Iraq lasted." And in an aside Saddam confirms that the Iraqi military really was shaken by the battle of al Khafji early in the 1991 war-a crucial development that Norman Schwarzkopf didn't grasp.
In your "No books to read" thread a couple weeks back, you had mentioned a "new Iraq book" that had just arrived.
Was that "The Saddam Tapes," or something else?
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"Today's Washington Post's lead editorial mourns the passing of the US/Iraqi "Strategic Alliance." What rot! There is no such alliance. There never was such an alliance. All else is neocon delusion. The elected Iraqi gocvernment asked us to leave. We are leaving. The war was a stupid mistake, stupidly fought until internal Iraqi forces were harnessed to bring the present Shia dominated Iranian inclined government to power. Brave men and women fought, died and some will live with their mutilations forever. The Washington Post is a miserable rag that serves egregious and foreign interests."
"Ironically, the Post did a poll on this today. At 1000 90% of the respondents were in favor of total withdrawal by 1 January, 2012. "
"Afghanistan would support Pakistan in case of military conflict between Pakistan and the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to a private Pakistani TV channel broadcast on Saturday." MSNBC
"Yet another triumph for the neocons. Bush, Obama, the COINistas, (especially you, (Nagl), Petraeus, etc. Laughable in a horrid way. I suppose I will be forced to resurrect my decade long critique of all this."
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/
What Mr. Ricks says about such grand affairs seems to always turn out the opposite. Has anyone ever been so wrong about so much? LOL.
Admiral is back. Sigh.
Yep, you have to stand amazed at the capacity for self-delusion and/or flatulent b.s. inside neocon bunkers like the Washington Post.
The onanistic fantasy of the Bushites -- creating an Arab New Hampshire squat in the center of a region where we and our Israeli humanist friends are so deeply and widely hated -- passes all previous records for craven stupidity.
Unfortunately, our nation spend trillions on this absurdity and continues to leak money in Afghanistan where -- yes -- our "ally" Karzai has just offered to fight American troops if we get into a scrape with Pakistan.
You ca't make this stuff up.
Tom,
Here's an interesting article by Reidar Visser on the religious allegiances of the 'special groups' - perhaps a bit niche, but it might be useful for the reading list idea you suggested:
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/religious-allegiances-among-pro-iranian-special-groups-in-iraq
Regards,
Prashant
Can someone clarify what reads to me like a contradiction in a paragraph written above?
Mr. Ricks writes that Gen. Keane "played a major role in fixing U.S. strategy in the war," from which I infer that he (Ricks) thinks the strategy was fixed.
He then goes on to write that he is a "pestamist" "Because none of the basic questions that led to the civil war of 2006-07 have been resolved."
It seems to me like the mark of a broken strategy would be failing to resolve basic questions which led to a civil war. What am I missing?
The strategy was indeed better. Violence is much lower now than it was during 2006-07, and that's a good thing. Also, the strategy created an opening for the Iraqi political system. For whatever reason, that opening didn't lead to a resolution of those big vexing questions about oil and governance.
As I've written before, since writing 'The Gamble,' I also have come to think that an unstated part of the surge strategy was to get the U.S. out of Iraq, one way or another. In that sense, the strategy appears to be succeeding.
Best,
Tom
I think we have seen the first meaningful use of the Friedman Unit* in the history of the Iraq War. I agree that this time around, the six months after the January 2012 withdrawl will tell us something meaningful about Iraq. Hopefully, its good news.
(Friedman Unit: six months into the future. See Wikipedia page for more background).
Indeed!
Ruh roh. This won’t work out well.
Muqtada Al Sadr said that he now considers all US Embassy employees in Baghdad as “occupiers”, and stressed that resisting them after 2011 is an “obligation.”
In between all that, just because the US has been slowly walking away from Iraq's "issues," they will still need to resolve themselves, remaining like loose water running to ground:
Sunni-Shia
Arab-Kurd
Oil Revenue Sharing
Northern Borders with Turkey and Iran
Iranian intentions for Iraq
An Iraqi central government with very weak power outside Bagdhad
Crushing need for basic services throughout most of the country
Internally displaced persons
That said, the next phase of Iraq's sad history is happening now, a slow motion car wreck, as the steady hum of daily violence continues. Yes, yes, today's violence is at a lower level than (pick your favorite post-invasion year) but that isn't much help.
A lot more to come. Hopefully between the 12/31/2011 images of happy homecomings and whenever the first car bombing of the Embassy is, the media will continue to report on Iraq for us.
Peter
wemeantwell
Mr. Sadr is not taken seriously on TBD. He is basically seen here as a second rate punk deserving mackery, and that should have been liquidated long ago. Patrick Cockburn had stated in an interview sometime back that once US forces leave Iraq, Mr. Sadr will attack the contractors. When it comes to Mr. Sadr and Iraq, Patrick Cockburn knows what he is talking about.
Mr Ricks, brilliantly, avoids an obvious trap
He doesn't follow the usual journalistic line that the return of the troops will be a withdrawal. It's an eviction. The Iraqi government has long and publicly taken the line that American (or any other foreign) soldiers who stay in Iraq while not being subject to Iraqi law are ... simply ... outlaws. Who the hell wants 39,000 heavily armed outlaws in their nation?
Elsewhere in Foreign Policy today, Josh Rogin takes the fairly silly line that the troops will come home because of some bungle by president Obama. He presents no evidence to support this view. Possibly the president could have left the troops in Iraq had he agreed to make them subject to Iraqi law, an option simply not open to American presidents.
The Rogin claim is based on the mutterings of sundry unnamed Washington figures, many of them on the public payroll, saying they would have handled this business differently, and better. There's no reason to believe they could have overcome that central issue. Every muttering Rogin presents does make clear, however, that much of Washington officialdom is a rabble, and a disloyal one. No surprise there.
General coverage of the eviction story also makes clear that to many observers, Iraq isn't really a sovereign nation, and shouldn't be regarded as one. This makes a good match for the frequently displayed thinking that the real point of events in Afghanistan is helping the military learn better how to handle such matters. It's like a playground.
That Afghanistan is something other than that became clear during the weekend when Hamid Karzai, America's favorite to take his nation's presidency, told a visiting journalist that in the event of conflict between America and Pakistan, Afghanistan would side with its neighbor. The general response has been that an American toy has bitten its owner. It's betrayal.
President Karzai's reasoning is simple and respectable: he knows that at some point, the Americans will go home. Pakistan ain't moving, and is much more powerful than Afghanistan. The president also knows that the American people for years have not been eager to leave the military in Afghanistan. US presidents speaking about the continuing occupation there do so pallidly, and the main reason the troops remain in that part of the world seems to be military ambition. Afghanistan is as entitled to be Afghanistan, as Iraq is entitled to be Iraq.
I respect ex-general Keane's concerns about what might happen in Iraq after the boys come home. Even if he's 100 per cent right, this would not justify leaving the boys in Iraq. Especially since it seemingly would involve war between the American soldiers there -- suitably surged, perhaps -- and the current Iraqi government. Shades of that famous remark about Ben Tre in 1968.
Tykwood and Kunino nailed it.
Looking at this from my admittedly myopic geo-political-military view, were I Tehran, I'd have lobbied to allow a limited U.S. military footprint to stay.
Why? Because the last thing I would want would be a neighbor on my border that has the potential for sectarian violence. . .violence that might see the Saudis funnel increased aid and support to their selected Sunni brethren, along with the further possibility of a refugee spill-over onto my my side of the border.
Or perhaps Iran views it more straightforward and doesn't want Iraq's central geographic location and infrastructure available for U.S. aircraft and rapid troop building-up were we so inclined? After all, the closest U.S. military presence to Iran after we exit Iraq, will be the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and that could become politically iffy in the future?
Incidentally, a side bar note: the actual ground action during the Battle of al-Khafji, saw elements of the Saudi Arabian Nation Guard (SANG) do well in the fight, and the overall commander of the 2nd SANG was Prince Sultan bin ‘Abd Al-’Aziz, whom you may have read recently croaked (the SANG is now commanded by King Abdullah’s son, Prince Muqran bin 'Abd al-'Aziz).
CAT I interpreters will probably be the first ones murdered.
Most likely tortured first to give up the identities and locations of those who collaborated with US Forces while we were in the neighborhood (I always found it funny explaining to idiot Infantry Platoon Leaders why it's a bad idea for them to run their informant networks without at least letting me help him out.)
Those low level collaborators will probably yield identities of some higher level US intelligence sources
and so on and so forth. But this is just my lowly concern as a former HUMINT guy.
What's actually worrisome is this:
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/10/20/Oil-blitz-Iraqs-most-dangerous-moment/UPI-65661319129306/?spt=hs&or=er
Those seeking to destabilize Iraq are already going for the jugular. Doura, Zubair, Bayji. Kirkuk is indeed a powder-keg waiting to happen, especially Since Malaki really hasn't done anything about that whole "Iranians shelling our farms" thing.
Also, it doesn't help reading the paper and finding out that Turkey, Iraq and Iran are teaming up to fight the "PKK". (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-21/turkey-to-work-with-iran-amid-attack-against-pkk-in-north-iraq.html).
My money is on an interesting 6 months ahead of us. Iran targeting Sunni refineries (Bayji Area) 1920's will respond in kind by teaming up with Ansar Al-Islam and start hitting Basra. The Asayish will set up everything they need to claim the massive fields near Kirkuk. Heck we might even see the country breaking apart!
it's okay though, for all the uniformed troops leaving, the State Department will have command of a 5,500 man paramilitary Merc army (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/5500-mercs-to-protect-u-s-fortresses-in-iraq/). Which is nice, because I'm of the personal opinion that on whole the incompetence of the US Army negated any progress the State Department's PRTs did....this way the State Department can work and tell their own private army to just shut up and shoot back.
There's no reason for Iran to destabilize Iraq's economy. Afterall, Iran is Iraq's second largest trade partner.
The fight against the Kurdish rebels like the PKK and PJAK is nothing new. Almost every single year the Kurdish border gets bombed and shelled. Every couple years Turkey sends in troops. When winter comes it will end just as it always does.
It's Al-Qaida that's doing the bombing right now, but when Sunni Insurgent groups see that the US is gone and Iran is encroaching they'll take up arms again. JRTN is already pulling Ba'athist Intelligence Officers from the new Iraqi Military back in their ranks and I doubt they'll take any further incursions from Iran or any more embarrassment from their "puppets" sitting in power in Baghdad.
Izzat Al-Duri is a resourceful man. He's played the long game and soon with the US's withdrawal he'll have one less thing to worry about. He's already shifted JRTN's message from that of an anti US to an Anti Iranian one, and it's been 8 long years of prosecution of Ba'athists since Ayad Allawi got snuffed in 2010. As Iranian ties increase he can easily cite valid reasoning for a new campaign. If he can pick up old fragments of homebrew Ansar Al Islam and get the 1920's under his flag, JRTN would have everything from Kirkuk to Balad.
All he really needs is the Promised Day Brigade or another special group to activate, which will happen if AQI keeps bombing Shia neighborhoods.
Also: Yes, there's nothing new about Iranians killing PJAK or Turks killing PKK. What IS new is about 12,000 deployed peshmerga on the border of Iran, I think that's a very clear statement from Irbil. Add in the fact that the KRG will have 12 consulates again next year also tells you what Kurdistan's aims are.
1) The insurgency is spent. Whether it be Al Qaeda in Iraq or Naqshibandi they have been so devastated that they are only able to launch a major operation every couple months. This is not biding their time, but rather a sign of their steady erosion.
2) The militant message has been played out within the Sunni community. They are simply not buying it anymore and are far more concerned about political power and economic development today, than fighting the Shiites, Iranians, or Baghdad. They know taking up the gun failed already, and aren't going to go back to that.
3) If you haven't noticed almost every single Shiite religious holiday or pilgrimage gets bombed since the end of the civil war in 2007, and there has been no retaliation. Somehow, the Shiites are suddenly going to retaliate after four years???
4) Irbil is all talk and no action when it comes to cross border incursions or shelling. They do the same thing every year. Blame Baghdad, while doing nothing about the PKK or PJAK. It's all for show. Next year when the summer hits, the PKK will start up operations again, and the border will get shelled. This is much ado about nothing.
"Iran targeting Sunni refineries (Bayji Area) "
Joel:
Right. The Kurdish issues in Turkey, Syria and Iran are deep and interwoven. Turkey's PKK pursuits are part and parcel of internal Turkish anti-Kurd activities, not driven by any greedy desires for Iraqi occupation. They currently are one of Iraq's largest trading partners. Why give up a good thing?
Noise aside, watch oil and gas progress. It is unlikely that, as Iraq's production tops 4 or 5 million, that Iraqi Shia relations with Iran will not cool in favor of protecting their own emerging wealth and prosperity.
Having said that, Iranian Shia tradition is, and always was, inherently expansionist, which has, over history, resulted in brutal conflicts which dissipated their power afterwards. The question remains for Iran whether actual Iraqi occupation and dominance would be in its real interests given that Iraqis in general do not support it. SAnd will support it even less once their oil prosperity begins to emerge.
2012 Iraq will look much the same as 2011.
Politics will be deadlocked because the current leaders hold grudges and rivalries against each other dating back o the 1980s and 90s. Until they pass that will be the status quo.
Economically, the state still runs everything, and Iraq is the most oil dependent country in the region. There will be a constant struggle between increasing oil production and the capacity of the infrastructure to export it all. Investment will also continue to increase, although the completion rate on projects is very poor, and the red tape is horrible. In the end, the government still has not been able to effectively develop the country nor provide services and that will not change soon either.
Security wise there will still be daily violence, but at the same low levels that the country has experienced since 2009. The insurgency doesn't have the wherewithal to do anything more, yet isn't going to disappear in the near term.
In terms of foreign influence, the U.S. has very little and that's been true for a while now. Iran's influence is often overblown. Yes, they have a big say, but they can't do anything they want in Iraq. Look at Camp Asharaf. Turkey is often ignored, but it is the biggest investor in the country and largest trade partner. They are trying to play a bigger role in the country, and could be a counter to Iran, but they have not developed their political ties as much as Tehran has yet.
Overall, Iraq will continue to be a struggling developing country with terrorism, corruption, etc. Think Nigeria.
I am taking Emma Sky's postgraduate class this spring on 'The New Iraq' in the War Studies department at King's College London. I'm looking forward to it, and you are on the reading list of course!
What to read about post-Surge Iraq
No good books out there. Unfortunately, American writers like to write about Americans, not Iraqis, and after the Surge, Iraq lost a lot of luster for the U.S. What i would recommend is reports by the International Crisis Group. You could learn a ton by just reading their footnotes. They issue a couple a year about Iraq.
holy shit, you have all forgotten about the only book to read on this subject:
Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World-
http://aftermathbook.com/?p=2
Before someone can prescribe, they have to predict
Before they can predict, they have to explain
Before they can explain, they have to describe
The USG did not get any of this right. Everything flowed from wretched understanding of what Iraq was and what it could be. The USG leaves Iraq with almost no understanding of what worked or what it should have done after blundering into Iraq.
Tying together The Surge with Iraqi reconciliation is the height of folly. That assumption was as flawed as anything that came before and after. The key development in 2006/07 was not increasing and shifting US forces, but the Awakening Movement/s. The Surge rode the wave of The Sunni Shift from AQI/Honorable Resistance to US ally. The Surge would not have worked without the Sunnis, even if US commanders make the claim that living among the people made all of the difference. Iraqi Sunnis were telling US commanders what they wanted to hear. Lots of American soldiers would have been smoked, even if they were living around the corner, since the Resistance could have adapted to those tactics. The Iraqis could have blamed outsiders, or used indirect fire, or whatever.
Poor Iraq is doomed. Ayatollah Khameinei shall soon hold sway. Iraqi Army and Pasdaran shall shortly be on parade together, lustily bellowing 'Death to America. Death to Israel.' And so on and so forth.
The accent initially appears to be on stroking the US military ('the toughest tribe') The idea is, presumably, to suggest that the men with guns have done their duty and are now returning homewards, Conquering Heroes. Interestingly, the Brits said much the same thing before their shame-faced retreat. Well, one takes consolation from where one can. The Imperial Dream of a UN-sanctioned Mandate for the US was the initial intention, for as long as CIA Iyad was in power. That didn't last for long. However, the US did come close to fixing the last election where Mr al-Maliki appeared for some time to be a gone goose. Going back a little, it's clear that much as with the German army at the end of the Great War at some time, probably not far from right now, the chant of the stab in the back, the Great Betrayal shall be bruited about. Only this time this won't be attributed to Jewish manipulation.
The basic question is and has always been: who has power. In that Iraq isn't as far politically from the US as all that. As is usual with competing blocks vying for control, at least in Iraq, politics iscut-throat, literally and figuratively. The Young Saddam would readily recognise the state of contemporary Iraqi politics; of course, he was consistently on the literal part of the equation. At some point, equilibrium shall be attained. This largely appears to already have been achieved. Political violence is as Iraqi as falafel and kebabs , so no change there.
Iran. The Threat. We are informed that Iraqi politicians tremble at the mere mention of the supposed head of the al-Quds Force, if that is its name. It is perfectly normal for Iranian-manufactured goods to be found in Basra as it is for Turkish produce to be found in portions of Iraqi Kurdistan. On the question of political support for factions goes, it makes sense for Tehran to cultivate a broad spectrum of interests in a location by its own restive Khuzestan that has a good manyArabs.A potential problem well beyond that presented by Camp Ashraf. If it comes to that, Iran has relations with Iraqi Kurds as well. And so far as military operations on Iraqi territory are concerned, Iran has indeed carried them out. As has, and is, Turkey.
Khuzestan province. Camp Ashraf. Trade and the flag. The Shatt-al-Arab.These come first. Or ought to.
Mr. Ricks makes a great point in that the surge accomplished one thing only, a decrease in violence as 2007 progressed that could've opened the space for political reconciliation. Put simply, the Surge brought us back from the brink, it didn't save Iraq or solve the situation. Both parties deserve blame for the misconceptions, the left for believing their initial opposition to the war justified irresponsible neglect of the issue and the right for trumpeting the Surge as an election issue re Bush's improved legacy/Republican national security legitimacy.
I happened to write my thesis on post-Surge Iraq (nerdy, I know) and I think I can contribute to the discussion of good reading.
First, however, I'd like to point out two articles that show what folly this ahistorical rapid pullout is:
http://news.yahoo.com/iraqi-speaker-warns-meddling-us-pullout-114335968.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/25/cia-seeks-to-take-over-intel-programs-from-u-s-troops-leaving-iraq.html
Both articles describe other government agencies attempting to fill the void left by the military. The first describes the recent well-publicized issues with the State Dept/security issue and how that will detract funds from their work, while the second hints at the limits of the intel agencies without the USMIL basing as platforms for the projection of power. Iraq is disappearing from view.
Some valuable post-Surge reading, though I'm reading none of this is narrative and most of this conventional wisdom by now:
- most/all of Mr. Hiltermann's work at ICG
- Reidar Visser's blog - great insight into southern Iraq, shows some of the limits of that recent National Journal article
- Institute for the Study of War post-Surge pieces (Balancing Maliki, Iraq on the Eve of Elections, The Future of Iraq: A Conversation with Odierno)
- Iraq's Oil Politics: Where Agreement Might Be Found - USIP
- Machiavelli in Mesopotamia: Maliki Builds the Body Politic - World Policy Journal
Or did this story yank some of the kooks' chains?
A reuters Interview with Chris Hill explains the actual reasons for withdrawal, discusses the "discovery" of the ancient Shia/Sunni divide (that always existed), and the obvious reasons why the US had to leave when not supported by Iraqis.
Reading between those lines, it should be apparent that Iraqis have a very strong sense of a discrete national identity, and opposition to foreign domination (US, Iran, etc...).
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/24/idUS385885793520111024
Iraqis have a long and tough road, but it is their road.
Well, Steve, some of us remember . . .
. . . when America couldn't be pushed around like this.
When we said things like "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."
Just today I got an e-mail from the TeaParty.org complaining that, in Obama's America, there is "No more leading, domination and achievement."
If we really believe in American exceptionalism, why should we be shy about "domination"?
That's what we call the good ol' days!
Charlie:
My Dad was one of the "Hope and Glory" kids in England during WWII---while he was in school to learn all the things needed by residents of an empire on which the Sun never set. Need a new bridge in Burma? Open a textile factory in India? Etc...
The irony, as he always said, was that by the time he was "properly" educated for the Empire, there no longer was one. He was a part of the Brain Drain.
The 'good ole' days" should provide substantial historical evidence on the limits of Empire, including their fleeting nature. No?
That the American empire is like other empires? That we are not, in other words, exceptional?
Hmmm.
Don't run for office . . .
Charlie: Now, we are getting a little to esoteric.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump: Exceptional is as exceptional does.
Happy to avoid running for office. The challenges of elective office are, regrettably, sometimes beyond the realm of: Does this make sense.
Well, in last week's class . . .
I contrasted Operation Eagle Claw with the Mayaguez operation (and the different public reactions to each), noting that the Mayaguez event lost more Americans than we were attempting to rescue in the first place (and lost them, btw, after the Khmer Rouge had already released them).
One of my students was upset by that comment, and insisted we had to get tough and show we couldn't be pushed around, so the whole thing was worthwhile. I responded that if we kept that up, there'd eventually be no one left.
Maybe that's our role in Iraq.
. . . there was maybe one sentient being in Bush's regime that told his superiors that removing Saddam would result in iran gaining critical influence in the country? Probably got fired for saying that.
The practical effects of Iran's strong presence I think will be deep and long-lasting.
Setting up early warning site in western Iraq to guard against any Israeli moves wold be simple. And a supply line that stretches from Tehran to Syria will present the IDF with a really interesting interdiction mission.
If the US (stupidly) decides to attack Iran, who will Iraq and its people support?
Hillary's "warning" to Iran not to "interfere" -- at the same time the US is using its absurd conspiracy scam to try to increase sanctions -- was notable for its impotence and wet-noodle brandishing. Yep, Iran, watch out for our new and unlikely-to-succeed effort to ratchet up the sanctions an beware other things "on the table."
All that's missing now is the news that Iran has achieve "breakout" nuclear capability.
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