Iraqi blogger explains what the Neocon vision really means

[beachmom]

Mohammed at Iraq the Model just made a stunning post, with his criticism of America. It was "hesitation in keeping up the strategy of preemptive war."

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/2006/10/americas-sinhesitation.html

America too had her share of mistakes that made things go in the wrong direction instead of helping out. Perhaps America's biggest mistake was the hesitation in keeping up the strategy of preemptive war.

Yes, America used that strategy in Iraq but failed to go on, and instead of chasing terrorists, America stopped at Iraq and sat waiting for terrorists to come in.

The insurgents, terrorists and militias operating in Iraq depend on foreign support for money, training, technology and in some cases men. Moreover the influence of foreign interference is clear even in the political arena in Iraq through the numerous political crises the country had faced.

Thus, this war will not see an end unless America revives the preemptive war strategy and start chasing the enemies and striking their bases in the region, especially in Syria and Iran.

snip

Some might ask…Do we have to do all of this? Go through all these battles and change those regimes?

My answer is Yes. For one reason; terrorists and terror-supporting regimes have chosen war and America, and the values it stands for, is the target and they will not stop shooting at America until they are dead or arrested.



I commented basically that his ideas were insane, that there's no support for this in America, and that maybe he should talk to people other than right wingers. Notice how it's all about America? America has to do EVERYTHING!! But this guy won't join the Iraqi Army. We've got a major problem in the Middle East with radicalism; but we've also got a problem with complacency -- "hey, let's have America do it for us". Somebody needs to stop catering to these people, and tell them to get off their asses.

Damn, that post pissed me off.

Edited to add: these guys were invited to the WH. These were the Iraqis Bush met. Meanwhile, 6 in 10 Iraqis think it's okay to blow up Americans . . .

[TayTay]

1. This is completely insane.

We have neither the money (armaments) or manpower to do this. We cannot sustain this on many, many levels, especially not in the global competitive climate that we are in. We simply cannot afford this at all. (America cannot be the policeman of the world. We cannot afford it, we can't do it and we can supply the forces for this.)

The drain on treasury sounds like the basest of reasons but it isn't. We put an enormous amount of our money into defense (weapons, upkeep of a standing army, defense industry, etc.) Other nations are freed of that burden and can put that money into things like health care for their citizens, infrastructure and so forth. We are neglecting those things in our country and they are hurting our ability to be competitive in the world. We need to dial back on these things as it is, not add to the crushing burden.

In short, Iraq the Model can only have these things if he is willing to pay for them. We cannot. We have Medicare and Social Security funding issues to solve, we have to negotiate health care costs in the next few years (which will happen, critical mass in the business community is being reached) and we have massive infrastructure problems at home. Unless we want to go into bankruptcy ourselves, we cannot do what he says. There is neither the will, nor the money to do this.

[beachmom]

3. And after 19 of our guys died since Saturday, I'm sorry

You start getting into wanting to protect your own first. Unlike most of the neocons, the two writers at Iraq the Model have paid in blood -- Omar's brother in law was assasinated in the spring. And their own government is incompetent, and the Iraqi Army and policemen are lacking and sometimes part of the problem. So he looks to America for help. There are parallels for this in Vietnam, where there were those who collaborated with the Americans and paid dearly when they pulled out. So basically, if we pull out and it remains a civil war, they could be killed. For the longest time I felt horrible about this, but then I realized that Bush created this problem, and he's damn well not going to solve it. So I am now comfortable with us leaving -- BUT, I do want to do everything Kerry says to try to make it all less bad.

The right wingers are on me over in the comment section -- that I'm in some fantasyland where the enemy doesn't exist. They are so dumb; they think that if you don't support the Iraq War, a country that had NOTHING to do with 9/11, then you don't understand your enemy. One idiot even brought up Kerry "seeing the same intelligence about WMD". I smacked them down, but I'm sorely outnumbered. It is a little weird to have this partisan fight on an Iraqi blog, but these people need to be called out on their B.S. no matter where it shows up.

[TayTay]

4. We cannot win a civil war

It's not possible. We can only stay and die. Right now, we are the focal point of hatred for at least two sides in that civil war in Iraq. We cannot make progress, by definition, in someone else's civil war. Also, there isn't enough weaponry, troops or will to commit to the massive genocide that Iraq the Model is asking for. (And what he is asking for is genocide.) He is asking for an immense application of force to wipe out huge numbers of human beings. Hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, would die in the scenario he envisions. The survivors, unless they are wiped off the face of the earth, as happened in Armenia essentially, would hate us for the rest of their lives and pass that hatred down to succeeding generations. We would gain nothing, as nothing can be gained by an occupying army (that would have to be swelled to 500,000 at the least to be effective and many times that if we plan on taking over other territory in the Middle East like Iran and Syria.)

We cannot do this. The only possible way to do what Iraq the Model asks is by the use of limited nuclear weapons, though that is the nightmare scenario, as that is a genuine war crime and would make America the pariah nation of the earth. (Again, what he is asking for is wholesale destruction of all the areas that harbor, breed, feed or arm the factions in the area. How else are they to be permanently subdued?) Ahm, the wingnuts are not thinking this through.

Application of force stops something temporarily, but at a terrible price. America's own civil war still has not fully healed and it's been 150 years. (Ahm, did anyone here know that Massachusetts has a bad reputation from those days in some areas of the country? You might find this shocking, but I understand that in some parts of the country, calling someone a Yankee is not really high praise.)

[ProSense]

2. The $2-Trillion War

Iraq Black Hole

The $2-Trillion War

War is messy, and putting a price tag on a war that stretches over years, with consequences lasting decades longer, is a staggering task. Yet in a democratic society whose citizens expect to know what they are paying for, someone has to do it. Linda Bilmes, lecturer in public policy, began the task of toting up the fiscal outlay on the Iraq war when students in her class at the Kennedy School of Government asked about its cost and Bilmes could not find any meaningful data. “I did this because I just wanted to know,” says Bilmes, a public-finance specialist who served as assistant secretary of commerce under President Clinton. “It is very distressing that nobody came up with a good estimate. How can you weigh the benefits against costs if you don’t know what the costs are?”

Bilmes published what she found on the op-ed page of the New York Times on August 20, 2005; her article moved Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University and a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, to ask her about expanding the analysis to include the economic effect of the war on society. Their recent paper, “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,” presented this year at the Allied Social Science Associations meetings, concludes that projections to date vastly underestimate the extent to which the war will drain this country financially.

Before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-director of the Office of Management and Budget Mitchell Daniels (now governor of Indiana) put the likely costs at between $50 billion and $60 billion. Former undersecretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz (now president of the World Bank Group) claimed that increased Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. When President Bush’s economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey suggested that the actual costs might be closer to $100 billion or even $200 billion, the White House called those figures grossly exaggerated and swiftly fired him.

Those estimates now look Lilliputian. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) currently projects past and future Iraq-related expenditures to surpass $500 billion, and even that figure severely underestimates the full outlay, according to Bilmes and Stiglitz, whose paper indicates that the war will eventually cost Americans in excess of $2 trillion. (A trillion is a thousand billions.) Speaking of those in Congress who agreed early on to appropriate $87 billion to finance the war, Bilmes says, “Every time someone casts a vote, they implicitly make a cost-benefit analysis. Would they have voted the same way if they knew the costs were 10 times as much as advertised?”

more...

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short---An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.

[beachmom]

5. I checked the comments this morning, and it is just nasty

All the freepers are on this site, and they wrote highly offensive things, and then full scale blasted Kerry for "not attending 76% of the intelligence hearings" and cited factcheck.org. I responded that I give that website as much credibility as the man who mentioned it in the debates -- Dick Cheney -- ZERO.

The point is that these people are out for blood against Kerry and Edwards. Still. I'm not sure if a research assignment will be needed to wade through crapola websites like factcheck.org to debunk them one by one. I'm assuming with those intelligence hearings that it's just typical Senate reasons -- senators do NOT attend entire hearings and sometimes even have multiple hearings scheduled at the same time. Anytime I see percentages like that, I am highly suspicious. Plus, senators are given briefings of what went on.

[beachmom]

6. Okay, I am officially giving up on these people

I was insulted, laughed at, stereotyped as "moveon.org" type, was researched (they checked out my diaries on Kos, and reprinted them), and insulted a few more times for the nerve of saying there weren't terrorists in Iraq BEFORE the war. So I give up. No logic or reason going on there. Only cruelty and echo chamberness. No wonder Mohammed was stupid enough to talk about invading every country in the Middle East, when the people who comment on his blog are the most virulent, warlike, nasty right wingers I've ever seen!

Feeling a little vulnerable after the multi pronged attack against me. Hugs are welcome . . .

[TayTay]

7. These people are the backwash in the polling

and they are vastly out-of-touch with the majority opinion of the American people. They may fight you on this blog, but they are losing badly in the court of public opinion. No amount of bullying or lying about this is going to change these numbers:

NEWSWEEK POLL: Majority Of Americans-Including 29 Percent Of Republicans - Believe Dennis Hastert Tried to Cover Up Mark Foley Scandal; Fifty-Three Percent Want Democrats to Take Control of Congress in November
Saturday October 7, 1:55 pm ET


A plurality of Americans, 42 percent, now say they trust Democrats to do a better job of handling moral values; 36 percent say they trust Republicans more. This represents almost a complete reversal from an Aug. 2-Sept. 1, 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/Washington Post poll in which 31 percent of Americans said they would trust Democrats to handle moral values better while 44 percent said they would trust Republicans more. On the subject of the war on terror at home and abroad, 44 percent of Americans trust the Democrats to handle it better-a five-point increase from the Aug. 10-11, 2006 Newsweek Poll. Thirty-seven percent trust the Republicans more-a seven-point drop from the same August Newsweek Poll. When it comes to the situation in Iraq, 47 percent of Americans say the Democrats would handle it better, versus 34 percent who say the Republicans would. Fifty-three percent say the Democrats would do a better job with the economy, while only 31 percent say Republicans would. Fifty-seven percent of those polled say the Democrats would do a better job with health care; 43 percent say they would do a better job with immigration, versus 34 percent who say Republicans would. Fifty-six percent say the Democrats would do a better job managing gas and oil prices and 53 percent say the would do a better job managing federal spending and the deficit.

A majority of Americans, 53 percent, would like to see the Democrats take control of Congress in this year's elections, according to the Newsweek Poll. Only 35 percent say they would like the Republicans to keep control. And 51 percent of registered voters say that if the elections were held today they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their district, versus 38 percent who say they would vote Republican. Among likely voters, 51 percent would vote for the Democratic candidate and 39 percent for the Republican candidate.

President Bush's approval rating fell to a record low-33 percent-in the Newsweek Poll, a three-point drop from the Aug. 24-25, 2006 poll. Fifty-nine percent of Americans say they disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president. Sixty-seven percent say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States; only 25 percent say they are satisfied.

For the first time in the Newsweek Poll, a majority of Americans -- 58 percent -- believe that the Bush administration purposely misled the public about evidence that Iraq had banned weapons in order to build support for the war. Thirty-six percent say it did not. In general, 66 percent of Americans say that the Iraq war has not made Americans safer from terrorism; 29 percent say that it has. A 58-percent majority also say they are not too confident or not at all confident that the United States will successfully establish a stable democratic form of government in Iraq over the long term. Only 38 percent say they are somewhat or very confident. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's approval rating has fallen to just 30 percent, with a plurality of Americans, 48 percent, saying he should resign.

Those are dismal numbers and no amount of spin can make them better. The American people think this President is an incompetent liar and that his policies are endangering the nation. They are right.