perfidy

You mean the war's not over? I thought that what the whole landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier was supposed to announce. Since we're turning Iraq over to its leaders on June 30th, anyone care to pick a year?

FWIW, the smirking may not be evidence POTUS isn't taking this catastrophe seriously. It might be just a nervous response to his realization this shit is real, Americans are dying and more will surely die, and as COC he's in charge of the whole mess he's made.

We need a serious appraisal, one that underscores for the American people what the importance of Iraq is and why prevailing over the uprising and restoring order to the country needs to be our sober national duty right now.

He can't. Since he lowballed the cost of winning initially, coming back now with a full and frank explanation of what's required to win will only result in a backlash in the other direction. As a result, he'll lose the election (if he's not impeached) and we'll cut and run.

This all begs the question whether we can "win the peace" in the long term. Do we have the will and the resources to continue for ten years? We're already spending over $1 billion a week. To really remake the country, we'd need to quadruple that. More troops, more civilians, more money, more everything - for the foreseeable future. Frankly, I see zero chance of that happening, even if Bush suddenly and totally changes his character and starts talking about real sacrifice.

Much more likely is that we simply withdraw to our military bases after turning the reigns over to a military-backed government. Let them fight it out on their own for a while; we'll intervene just enough to prevent our puppet from being overthrown.

Sorry doomsayers, but it's been about a year since the fall of Saddam. After WWII, it took over four years for Germany to be 'pacified'.

As for this "popular" uprising, the total bad-guy count is what, maybe 30k? That's out of a population of 5 million. Not trivial, but far from the rhetoric we've been hearing.

The cleric Sadr has been agitating since day 1. We let him, because we're supposed to be about free speach. Now that he's crossed the line into illegal action, he's learning the hard way that letting someone rant isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of belief in our system. He's losing a lot of followers, and more are relearning the lesson that we're not the same America that tucked tail in Somalia.

Maybe more importantly, people are taking notice that we don't just talk the talk, we walk the walk.

As long as the American public doesn't freak out, Sadr and other vermin have given us a wonderful opportunity. By coming out and challenging the US military to a stand up fight, they are allowing us to easily destroy them. They are playing to our strength, not theirs.

I can see the argument you guys are making, but I'm still not sanguine about it. Opportunity or not, Iraq is on a knife's edge, and hopefully things will get better over there PDQ.

Still, it would be idiocy to turn power over on June 30th, especially since the President's people still haven't said anything about who they're thinking of turning things over to. Seems like a big detail to me, at least.

I've always thought that that handover date was more than a little premature. The current offensive from the scumbags is an opportunity. The army has never been as good at pacification as the Marines. However, they are always good in a stand-up fight. Those sorry bastards are doomed, doomed. Starting a land war in asia comes in second to trying to go toe to toe with the US Army.

But, the real question, as with Tet, is whether this affects the American electorate. If the public thinks that we're making progress, they'll accept casualties. Tet was a strategic loss (despite the fact that after it was all over, the Vietcong had utterly ceased to exist) because LBJ had been doing the Kevin Bacon, "All is well" shtick for months before the offensive.

While Bush has not been duplicitous, I think the administration has been a little too optimistic in its pronouncements. This is dangerous - although Bush can always point to the numerous times that he has said it will be a long fight.

Pacification campaigns take time. Usually years, and they involve small patrols, living in the towns and hamlets. Winning hearts and minds, and training local constabularies - not creating a retarded younger brother of the US Army. The Marines had long experience with this, codified in the small wars manual. They tried to do it in Vietnam, but were stiffarmed by Westmoreland and the Army brass. The result was the large unit search and destroy missions that could never pin down a slippery enemy.

When that policy was finally realized to be ineffective, they did start a Marine style pacification campaign, and it worked. The South (with American supplies, and intelligence and air support) fought off a huge NVA invasion in '72. There was no general uprising in the south. In '75, after we cut off all aid, then the Northern invasion worked.

Here, we don't have to worry about the invasion from without. We just need to put troops everywhere, in small units, and have them live in the neighborhoods and villages. (Of course, you have larger reaction forces available for serious work.) Then, the troops can provide security for the common people so that they are not afraid of the VC, I mean jihadis, and can live a normal life. This cuts the insurgents off from their base of support, which usually is extorted from people who just want to live their lives.

That's how you do a successful occupation.

The fact that there is no China or North Vietnam to invade does make it different from Korea and Vietnam. My point was more about the willingness of the people to be "pacified" and our long-term goals. What's victory in this conflict? If we define it as a US-aligned, democratic, capitalist, human-rights-protecting, non-theistic nation, then I think we have neither the means nor the will to win. If we define it as a nation that can keep order, isn't promoting international terrorism, and will allow us to base troops on its terroritory, then that's do-able, given several years of effort at the current level.

What about Iran? Some pundits have been arguing that we're fighting a proxy war with Iran already. Although I don't envision the Shahs sending armies into Iraq, nor the US sending the 5th Armored into Tehran, doesn't the presence of Iranian funding and manpower behind some of the Iraqi resistance once again push this into some sick/twisted Domino Theory territory? I mean, pacifying the Iraqis is one thing, but if the flypaper thesis ends up meaning that Iran is keeping an otherwise moribund resistance going, whaddo we do?

Just theorizing here. As this has nothing to do with funk, American social history, or bread baking, I'm kind of out of my depth.

J,
Why not work up a piece on the American history of funky bread? As long as you include a colon, a minority, or a distant geography, it's a dissertation waiting to be written:

Bread: A Funky History

Baking the Funk: A Social History of "Black" Bread

White Bread and Black: Baking Symbolism into Othello

Bread on the Steppe: Desert Baking and the Private Sphere of the Yurt, 1285-1302

I like that last one. And if I can interrogate subaltern notions of race by attacking, as you put it, the social history of so-called inferior "black bread" in the gulag and put the whole deal into a comparative perspective between German Jewish ghettoes in 1930 and slaves in North Carolina in 1830, I will have the next Bancroft winner on my hands.

Something like this: "We Have Ways of Making You Eat: Interrogating the Construction of Cryptoracist Baked Goods In Gulag, Ghetto, and Plantation."

The title isn't serious enough. They'll know you're making fun of them.

Mithras, you may consider that your second option is a waypoint on the way to the first. S. Korea was not a "US-aligned, democratic, capitalist, human-rights-protecting, non-theistic nation" in 1953. (well, it was some of those) but later became so. Order is the first step toward a decent soceity. Rule of law is more important than a fetishistic obsession with elections and the external forms of democracy. The presence of American troops, in day to day intimate contact with the populace (admittedly, over a period of years) will do more to help build a new soceity than a thousand elections supervised by Jimmy Carter.

When order has been largely obtained, troop concentrations can go down. One big item that might delay (severely) the eventual drawdown is the continuing presence of hostile regimes on three sides of Iraq. While they will not be mounting full scale invasions a la North Vietnam, their continued support of terrorist/insurgent elements will be a lingering and serious problem.

Both Syria and Iran will be funding and providing sanctuary for different groups, based on their particular ideologies. But the effect is the same. Regime change needs to happen in both of those countries.

While the Saudis will likely never openly support anti-US factions in Iraq, their money will certainly end up there, and their disaffected and violent youth will be fighting the battles as well. The Saudis need either to be reined in or removed.

Eventually. We can't do it all at once. But much greater support for the democracy movement in Iran might be the quickest way to pay the mullahs back in kind, and remove the worst thorn in the side of our libervasion efforts.

S. Korea was not a "US-aligned, democratic, capitalist, human-rights-protecting, non-theistic nation" in 1953. (well, it was some of those) but later became so.

Right, but it was Korea. From what I know about that homogeneous authority-respecting society, it's relatively easy to control the populace. (That's actually a pretty good explanation for North Korea, too.) A similar analysis goes for post-WW II Japan: get the Emperor on your side, and you're pretty much gold. Neither of those things pertain to Iraq. It's very much a clan based society, so there will be no top-down solution that quickly imposes order. There will be a lot more fighting a lot longer than the Korea or Japan examples.

I think the mistake is to focus too much on what governments will do instead of what clan and religious leaders will do. For example, al Sadr and al Sistanti aren't government actors, but they are the most important players right now. Given that the national borders in the region are largely artificial post-colonial remnants, the proper analysis is not of nationalist beliefs (like constitutionalism and democracy) but of cultural beliefs (like the Arab inferiority complex, dislike of Westerners, and the desire for a strongly paternalist society.)

Thus spoke Mithras: Right, but it was Korea. From what I know about that homogeneous authority-respecting society, it's relatively easy to control the populace. [deleted]It's [Iraq] very much a clan based society, so there will be no top-down solution that quickly imposes order. There will be a lot more fighting a lot longer than the Korea or Japan examples.

Tread lightly there Mithras. Korea is still very much a clan-based society. You haven't participated in any ancestor worship ceremonies recently to realize that, nor has anyone ever asked you 'So, exactly which kind of Mithras are you? Where are your parents from?" You haven't watched carefully how the large conglomerates in Korea are still family/clan controlled. But I digress.

I think you're just focused on the modern Korea you know post-1876. I think the fundemental point you are trying to make is that Korea's cultural roots in Confucionism make it easy to control the populace. I find that somewhat true since Confucionism still infiltrates the culture today, but the assertion is not completely true. I don't think you can leave it up to culture when there is another more compelling reason behind Korea's example of modernization.

While culturally, Koreans have been organized as a society to follow the authority of the monarch, I'm sure that a greater portion of what is different from Iraq is the Rule of Law. For centuries, there has been a definitive Rule of Law. There has been a class system that was codified from the very outset of the Three Kingdoms period. The class system still exists today, even if it's not codified. It's Rule of Law that is not based in the irrational concept of 'faith.'

To elaborate a little more on Korean history, even during the feudal periods Korea has had a strong centralized government system with a class of civil servants who could administer the law and tax systems. It's been that way for centuries. I don't know if the sheikhs of Iraq had such in the early 20th century, other than the caliphs and imams who like to fight over their interpretations of Islamic Law. Is sharia civil law or religous law? You know, I must admit my ignorance of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. I thought it was only religious law. But I digress again.

I agree with Buckethead's statement that Korea was not a '"US-aligned, democratic, capitalist, human-rights-protecting, non-theistic nation" in 1953'. Heck, it was barely democratic in the 70's and '80's, barely capitalist through the same period (try reading a 5 year plan by the Economic Ministry), and not respectful of human-rights at all. Just ask Koreans about the 1980 student uprising in Kwangju sometime. That was an embarrasment in trying to 'control the populace' AND in human-rights.

Mithras, I'm sorry to break it to you, but there's a lot of Koreans and Japanese who think the US should get out of their countries too. I completely understand the ire of the Arab world when they see US troops, armed to the teeth, in their nation's capital. I don't think the Bush Administration's exercise in nation-building is very effective and it's going to make the Arab world hate the US even more than it does already.

There is no Napoleon in Iraq who is willing to take the people living in the arbitrary geographic boundary and force them into a manufactured national culture. There's no time for that. We've lost it. We've lost that in Palestine/Israel too. Once a generation passes, it takes at least a generation to get it back, and there just isn't time now. And it sure ain't going to get here before June 30.

Mapgirl,
I'm thining that when you wrote this response you were feeling a little down.

I disagree that "we", meaning I guess the US, or the West, lost an Arab generation's support over the fallout from 9-11. It's the difference between perception and reality.

Sure, as soon as they see a film crew or a photographer, Arabs will mass as if on cue and deride America, the "Zionist Entity", call for a boycott of American products, dust off that extra effigy they've been saving for a special occasion and burn it, or perhaps run around the streets with the charred remains hacked off a dead American.

And yet....what so many of them, I daresay a majority, really want is to get the fuck out of the Arab world to someplace reasonably sane where a fella can make a buck, can watch as much porn as he can stomach, and maybe go to school. Like, say, America.

So the Arabs can piss and moan and seethe all they want about this event or that insult or what have you, it's all crap, and they've been at it since at least 1947. They are weak, and will continue to be so until they decide to be so no longer.

I don't think it's up to the US to be the world's cheerleader and marketing consultant, ensuring everyon'es health and happiness.

GL - I agree with you on a lot of points. Aren't most fights in this world truly about the Haves and HaveNots? I don't understand why in 1948 when Israel was formed and Palestine was offered a share of land why they didn't just say yes, and now they can be duking it out economically instead.

Map,
I wanted to follow up on your take on American soldiers in capitals, but don't have the time now.

Alot of Koreans and Japanese want American soldiery to go away, but there aren't many American soldiers in Tokyo. Yokasuka, yes; Okinawa, yes, but not Tokyo in a major way. Seoul of course is a different story, and even more complex- not only are there forces in those societies who just as eagerly wish for the Americans to stay, but in Korea it's weirder. When the US announced plans to withdraw fruther south, out of Seoul and closer to Pusan, people went nuts about leaving the city, not only for the economic ramifications but because such a move might encourage an attack by North Korea.

So to recap: Koreans want the US out, but not if they actually leave. It's like the coutry's run by Kerry.