Bush admin quietly admitting that the "freedom agenda" has failed

[ProSense]

Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government’s original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17military.html

As in Vietnam, we engaged militarily in Iraq based on official deception.

As in Vietnam, we went into Iraq ostensibly to fight a larger global war under the misperception that the particular theater was just a sideshow, but we soon learned that the particular aspects of the place where we fought mattered more than anything else.

And as in Vietnam, we have stayed and fought and died even though it is time for us to go.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America’s leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can’t bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq’s leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires. -- Senator John Kerry

[babylonsister]

1. Good. Now, get every American out of there ASAP!

How many more will have to die before this is done? :grr:

[ananda]

2. Lol.. that's because..

it never was an agenda about freedom. Pah.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "I screwed up again. As usual." - George AWOL Bush

What did you expect from a connecticut preppy C-student cheerleader cocaine-sniffing National Guard deserter who pretends to be a Texan war hero?

[Botany]

7. come on, you forgot

1 year community service for coke
http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#cocaine
his bio does list that he spent 1 year (exactly) working @ an inner city
youth center in Houston, TX
running from his pee test
insider trading
failed businessman
election stealing liar
who got us into an unneeded war

[primative1]

4. Creative Exit Strategy ...

Here is my creative idea.
Lets make our next 80 billion dollar Iraq payment our last.
Instead of giving it to the miltary, give the money to Sadaam Hussein.
Who better knows how to spread the bribes and actualy get control of that pit called a country? If he succeeds fine, if not fine. I never cared about Iraq to begin with and neither should have most people.

[Atman]

5. So when does Bush 1% base pay back America for the money it wasted?

We're fucking BROKE because of this, combined with Bush's tax cuts to his base. BROKE. But these fuckers will just be able to say OOPSIE! and walk away with their loot. FUCK THAT. Time for a return of the 90% tax bracket on the super-rich!

[Iowa]

21. Yes!

--and eliminate the cap on FICA payroll taxes
--and raise the estate tax on estates exceeding ~2 million to ~90%, and estates exceeding ~5 million to 100%, so that the ill-gotten gains are not passed on to the next generation
--and the personal fortunes of corporate execs who profited big from the Iraq war (ie. Halliburton and subsidiaries) should be confiscated, and their corporate entities should have their assets sold off and the companies dismantled
--and hire a small army of IRS agents to focus exclusively upon large corp and high income returns

All those behind the evil empire need to learn the meaning of personal responsibility. We could call it the "Neocon Character Building & Rehabilitation Act".

[Xipe Totec]

6. You cannot impose democracy

Nor can you spread freedom with a jackboot.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. There's an unemployed dictator...

[beachmom]

9. Is a Kurdistan Compromise possible?

Basically, we Dems opposed to this war mostly support the Murtha and Kerry/Feingold approach of our troops withdrawing to an over the horizon position, thereby getting out of the civil war, while still being able to fight al Qaeda with special forces and air support, when necessary. Well, I have heard a lot about permanent bases in Kurdistan, which is relatively peaceful. Of course, in a perfect world I am opposed to permanent bases in Iraq, but since democracy, like the good senator from Massachusetts most eloquently said, is about making compromises, what if we withdraw our troops to an over the horizon capacity in Kurdistan? Then we're not "withdrawing from Iraq" when in reality we are. We do all the U.N. stuff and diplomacy and get the whole world involved to try to get the different parties together but get our troops OUT of the war theater where they're only getting killed and maimed while being unable to secure the capital among other cities.

We are failing in Iraq, and it is bleeding us dry. Although we are a superpower, this conflict is weakening us to fight the real war on terror, crippling our military, and destroying our finances. I do feel awful for the Iraqi people, and one would be naive not to acknowledge that there have been circumstances where our troops have indeed helped certain neighborhoods or towns, at least on a temporary basis. Our withdrawal will lead to even more violence and chaos in the short term. But it also may lead to the Iraqi people realizing that this is THEIR country and do they really want to keep killing each other for the next 30 years, or do they want to start thinking of solutions to the sectarian problems.

Kurdistan is a world away from Baghdad, and if that's the magic word that will make this executive branch that we're stuck with reconsider their insane "stay the course" policy, and thereby save lives and treasure, I am at the point that I will be willing to listen. Perhaps if we win back Congress, then this compromise can be offered.

[enigma000]

10. That's a good thought Beachmom

the 3 Kurdish provinces are far more peaceful and stable than the rest of Iraq. The Kurdish people, I'm told, are very pro-American. I'm sure that as long as independence is not officially declared, Turkey won't have a problem with it.

[leesa]

12. There is no real war on terror. It's a sham to invade countries and kill

people and sell arms. If you buy into that nonsense we will never progress. You cannot stop terrorism by waging war against it. Stop using that harmful rhetoric of "the real war on terrorism".

[KKKarl is an idiot]

13. Right

this so called "war on terror" is not a war. It is one that should be handled by police forces throughout the world. How many of the terrorists have come from Iraq? I strongly believe we need to defend ourselves against the terrorists but war has never been the answer for this issue.

[beachmom]

15. Tell that to the people who lost loved ones on 9/11 or

the Spanish people who lost loved ones on 3/11/04 or the Russian people whose children were murdered in Beslan or Londoners who lost people on 7/7/05. Unless you come up with something better (hell, even Rumsfeld tried to get around "war on terror" for a while with his global struggle against violent extremism but it just didn't resonate), it's the only phrase that conveys the struggle we are engaged in. I agree with you that this "war" is mostly about law enforcement and intelligence gathering, although the military option will come up with a place like Afghanistan which was basically run by terrorists. But I HATE it when people say there is no "war" when so many have died. Come up with an awesome phrase and I'll consider, but for now, it's the GWOT.

[gratuitous]

17. It's enforcement of laws against criminality

The incidents you describe were crimes. The surviving planners and perpetrators should be identified, have the evidence against them developed, they should be tried and if found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, convicted and sentenced.

As for the "roots" of terrorism, we've sown the seeds ourselves with short-sighted and selfish economic and social policies. Oddly enough, when people are treated with dignity and respect and given an opportunity to compete fairly, they don't want to blow the shit out of the symbols of the power that oppresses them. When nobody's oppressing a people, it's much harder for a violent extremist to get people to support his call for violent means and tactics. The bloodthirsty killers become more and more isolated and either turn to other means or become so marginalized that they eventually destroy themselves.

These miscreants may take some folks with them in their disillusion, but hardly the tens of thousands the United States has killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at hardly the cost of half trillion dollars we've wasted chasing chimeras in those two luckless staging areas.

But escalating violence and expecting further violence (whether physical, economic or other) to compensate for or redeem the violence of September 11 or any of the other criminal acts you cited merely perpetuates the cycle, and spurs another round of violence to avenge the present violence.

[Jacobin]

19. I like it

You make a lot of sense and politically it could be sold perhaps.

:thumbsup:

[Spearman87]

22. Those are pretty intriguing ideas

Because they offer practical courses of action with a reasonable shot at improving the situation. Hopefully we’ll start to hear them discussed more and hopefully before 2008. The status quo can’t go on until the end of this administration.

Is this war? Personally I have a hard time not viewing us as in the midst of a very real and dangerous conflict. If people recognize the seriousness of it then they can call it whatever they want, and I call it what I want. The only danger is if people won’t even recognize its seriousness*. I never particularly liked “War on Terror”, although it has a nice sloganistic ring to it, and I suppose it’s a good shorthand for convenience. There are apparently a lot of people and resources dedicated to the idea of inflicting serious attacks on our society, pushing us out of the ME region, and pushing back against the influence of Western ideas in general. A long criticism of mine was that Bush refused to acknowledge or lay out what we are fighting against. Perhaps that was the correct geopolitical decision, who knows. He tried a trial balloon last week which was to call it a war against “Islamic Fascists”. Another clumsy description. And any time a majority of the country has to pick up a dictionary to try and understand your catchphrase, you know there’s already a problem. I notice he quickly withdrew that phrase from his lexicon however, and was left fumbling for a term the next time he spoke of it a few days later.

Maybe it takes 2 sides to declare a war, or maybe one is sufficient. I’m pretty certain there is a movement that has declared war against us, even if it’s not reciprocated. They are the most extreme (at least I hope) wings of radicalized Islam. So I would think our “war” is against Radical Muslim Fundamentists. Maybe that can’t be publicly said either. But at least it would be immediately understood by almost all Americans,, unlike the phrase he chose last week. Handle it as law enforcement issue or whatever, whatever works. But hopefully* people understand that these potential law breakers would like a WMD set off in the United States as part of their rapsheet.

[peekaloo]

11. Haha. "Let's rein in Freedom" is their true goal.

[sinkingfeeling]

14. So what's the next excuse for our invasion & occupation of Iraq?

[rniel]

16. So "Live free or die"

Kinda has a new meaning to the expression.

If you don't want democracy. BOOM! DIE!

[young_at_heart]

18. Two key words......"quietly admitting"

These people never admit to ANY failing, so this is big news.

[Joanne98]

20. alternatives other than democracy, Like what , A fascist police state?

It's what they want to do anyway.