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Meet 'new' Iraq plan, same as the old plan

nonothing

Well-known member
With midterm elections looming, President Bush wants voters to know that he has a new plan to win in Iraq. Not completely new, of course. That would force Mr. Bush to admit that the old plan was wrong, which would force all those Republicans who backed him to the hilt to admit that they also were wrong.

So what's new about the new plan? It has "benchmarks" for Iraq to start solving its own problems.


But not mandatory benchmarks. Those would imply consequences if Iraqis failed to disarm religious militias or failed to build an army that can take over security or failed to agree on sharing wealth and political power among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds now killing each other in what looks like the civil war President Bush denies that it is.

In fact, the major consequence if Iraqis fail to meet their "benchmarks" is that American troops will have to stay longer.

President Bush admitted Wednesday that Americans "are not satisfied" with the way things are going in Iraq. In fact, most Americans hate the way things are going in Iraq, and they won't be satisfied with "benchmarks." The only goal this "plan" fulfills is the Republican Party's desperate need to appear to have a better plan than "stay the course."

A remark in Mr. Bush's news conference hinted at how badly what passes for a plan has gone. Noting that this month's violence had killed more than 90 U.S. troops and 300 Iraqi troops, he said, "Iraqi civilians have suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of the terrorists, insurgents, illegal militias, armed groups and criminals." In 2003, President Bush had to sell Americans only on the need for a plan to defeat Saddam Hussein. Now, he needs a plan to defeat "terrorists, insurgents, illegal militias, armed groups and criminals." His own description of the chaos in Iraq debunks the White House claim that October's spike in violence is a coordinated effort to influence U.S. elections.

The old plan, decorated with unenforceable "benchmarks," won't bring victory. If, as the president repeated this week, the struggle for Iraq will "set the course for this new century" and is "the challenge of our time," why has he refused to send enough troops to win?

So much of what the Bush administration says doesn't make sense because it is a distortion of the truth. The president repeated the "good news" that 90 percent of violence is confined to just five of Iraq's 18 provinces and that most of that is within 30 miles of Baghdad. But if the sphere of violence is so small, why is it so hard to contain?

And it isn't Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's fault, President Bush said, because he's only been in charge for five months. Yes, but the United States has been in charge for 3 1/2 years. In any case, Mr. Bush's praise for Mr. Maliki is starting to sound strained. Though he won U.S. backing with a promise to unite Shiites and Sunnis, the Shiite Mr. Maliki refuses to crack down on Shiite militias - or let the U.S. do it - because the Shiite majority would not let him stay in power if he did.

Mr. Maliki himself added to the impression that the administration is out of touch with reality. On Tuesday, Gen. George Casey and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad predicted that the new "benchmarks" plan would allow Iraq to take "primary" responsibility for security in 12 to 18 months. But Mr. Maliki rejected the benchmarks as grandstanding and a political ploy tied to the coming U.S. elections.

Even if Mr. Maliki had not scoffed, The New York Times noted that Gen. Casey previously made a similar promise of a yearlong transition to Iraqi responsibility - and that was 20 months ago.

President Bush says Americans will support the Iraq War "as long as they see a path to victory." He and unquestioning supporters in Congress have lost public support because every "new" path President Bush has followed has led to the same dead end.



Meet 'new' Iraq plan, same as the old plan
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I supported going to war and I still support the US and the troops efforts in Iraq...But I think the US political leadership is going to have to keep a flexibility in the months and years to come...

I don't believe you can make a unified state of a country that has been ruled by generations of religious/tribal split/oppressions on each other- unless you rule by force like Saddam did...

I'm one that agrees with Bill O'Reilly- that we can never make another US type democracy in Iraq- that we can not try to mirror their political makeup after ours...I also agree with him that we need to look at dividing Iraq into 3 countries- one for each the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds (which already have a semi-government/state area)....Something along the lines of what was done when Pakistan(Muslims) was created from India(Hindu), when India received their Independence....

I don't think this will be the miracle cure that some expect either- because it would probably take generations of outside interests policing borders to prevent a full scale civil type war...Generations of religous differences, hatred, oppression, and atrocities won't disappear overnight...But the alternative- just walking away and allowing full blown civil war with the likelihood of another Muslim Dictatorship State being born is worse....
 

Steve

Well-known member
.I also agree with him that we need to look at dividing Iraq into 3 countries

as squables are prevelant in the area, further splitting each of the provences into three regions would in effect reduce conflicts to smaller areas and more manageable.....

by making three provences, under a central govermant, and three regions in each provence it would also reduce the ability of out side influence from Iran and Syria, while increaseing the influence from Jordan and Kuwait.....

I have always advocated breaking Iraq into "much" smaller bits.....infact Rhode Island size pieces would be better then Texas size headaches....

Glad to see they are coming around to my "conservative" way of Nation building.....



As Britain?s colonial secretary in the 1920s, Winston Churchill made a mistake with calamitous consequences and unseen repercussions extending into the twenty-first century.,....Reveals the history behind Winston Churchill's greatest mistake as an international statesman, the formation of Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.,....Churchill's creation of the artificial monarchy of Iraq after World War One, forcing together unfriendly peoples?Sunni Muslim Kurds and Arabs, and Shiite Muslims?under a single ruler. Defying a global wave of nationalistic sentiment and the desire of subjugated peoples to rule themselves, Churchill put together the broken pieces of the Ottoman Empire and unwittingly created a Middle Eastern powder keg. Inducing Arabs under the thumb of the Ottoman Turks to rebel against rule from Constantinople, the British during WWI convinced the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. However, Britain had already promised the territory to the French. To make amends after the Great War, Churchill created the nation called Iraq and made the Hashemite leader, Feisel, king of a land to which he had no connections. Catherwood examines Churchill?s decision, which resulted in a 1958 military coup against the Iraqi Hashemite government and a series of increasingly bloody regimes until the ultimate nightmare of Ba'athist party rule under Saddam Hussein.

""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." from Reason in Common Sense,",....
 

Steve

Well-known member
The Balkans were split up and it seems to have worked there, N. and S. Korea as well.

well the Balkans is a ok example, but North Korea.....I wouldn't quite say that has worked out to well.........
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Steve said:
The Balkans were split up and it seems to have worked there, N. and S. Korea as well.

well the Balkans is a ok example, but North Korea.....I wouldn't quite say that has worked out to well.........

It is only because China uses them as a buffer state.
 

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