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MoEnzyme
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Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« on: 2008-11-30 13:59:38 » |
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Bush Accepts Timeline for Withdrawing Troops from Iraq
by Votemaster http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/Nov30.html
After years of saying he would never accept a timeline for withdrawing U.S.troops from Iraq because that would help the enemy, President Bush has accepted a timeline for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq: Dec.31, 2011. Nobody noticed. After the U.S. leaves, Iraq will be run by a pro-Iranian government that opposes everything Bush wanted to achieve in Iraq. There has been no political solution about dividing up the oil revenue, so civil war remains an option for the future as well. However, since the agreement will be signed on Bush's watch, if Iraq devolves into chaos later on, the question: "Who lost Iraq?" will have a clear answer: George W. Bush. While this doesn't get Barack Obama off the hook entirely, for him an easy course of events is to carry out Bush's agreement and keep Robert Gates on as secretary of defense to see it through. As long as Obama doesn't have to make an executive decisions about Iraq but just carries out existing policy, he probably won't be blamed if things go wrong.
Bush's Final Defeat in Iraq Is Finalized
By David Corn | November 26, 2008 8:36 AM
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2008/11/bushs-final-defeat-in-iraq.html
Quote:| Given that Bush had repeatedly vowed that he would not agree to any timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq--claiming that making such a commitment would endanger the United States and its soldiers--his decision to do so is the equivalent of raising a white flag. |
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #1 on: 2008-11-30 19:04:37 » |
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press release from the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation:
Quote:Peter Galbraith, a top Iraq expert and former ambassador to Croatia, issued a statement today on the status of forces agreement recently signed by the United States and Iraq...."The agreement represents a stunning and humiliating reversal of course by the Bush administration, which had vehemently opposed any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq," said Galbraith.
Iraqi and American negotiators have been working on the security agreement for over a year. The Iraqi parliament is expected to vote on the pact on Wednesday. To pass, the agreement needs to get 138 votes out of 275 Iraqi lawmakers and also must be ratified by the Iraqi presidential council.
"For the last two years, President Bush has pretended that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki is a democrat and an American ally. In fact, Maliki is a sectarian Shiite politician who heads a government dominated by pro-Iranian religious parties," remarked Galbraith. "The U.S. presence now no longer serves the interests of Iraq's ruling Shiite religious parties or their Iranian allies, so we are now being asked to leave."
The agreement mandates that "all U.S. combat forces" withdraw from urban areas in Iraq by June 30, 2009, and that "all U.S. forces" withdraw from the country by December 31, 2011. The agreement upholds Iraq's "sovereign right" to demand the departure of U.S. forces anytime and recognizes the United States' "sovereign right" to remove its forces earlier than the end of 2011.
....The agreement also bars permanent American bases in Iraq, prohibits the United States from using Iraqi territory to launch attacks against other nations, and bars any residual U.S. forces in Iraq beyond the end of 2011.
Galbraith concluded: "While U.S. withdrawal is made easier by the fact that both the Iraqi government and the new U.S. administration want American troops out, the confluence of events leading to the agreement underscores the folly of President Bush's lost Iraq war." |
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #2 on: 2008-11-30 21:48:48 » |
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Quote:| [Mo]<snip>Peter Galbraith, a top Iraq expert and former ambassador to Croatia, issued a statement today on the status of forces agreement recently signed by the United States and Iraq.<snip> |
[Fritz]Interesting addendum to your post .... Thx Mo
Source: KURDS.NET
Author: NA
Date: November 14, 2008
Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, says that Iraq should split into three countries, one for each of the ethnic groups in the region: Sunni, Shiite and Kurd.
The senior diplomatic fellow with the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation tells NPR's Robert Siegel that the country has already broken up in partitions along these lines and the U.S. should not be in the business of putting it back together.
Galbraith says the ethnic factions have started taking on distinct roles in Iraq. "We have, in the north Kurdistan, which is, in all regards, an independent country,www.ekurd.net with its own army and its own government. And now between the Shiites and the Sunnis there are two separate armies — there's a Shiite army — it's the Iraqi army, but it's dominated by the Shiites — and in the Sunni areas there's now the Awakening — a 100,000-man strong militia. And it is because of the Awakening, and not so much the surge of U.S. troops, that there's been this decline in attacks by al-Qaida."
Peter Galbrait, former State Department Official and former U.S. ambassador to Croatia
Galbraith says that the Sunni Awakening still remains very hostile to the Iraqi government, and the government sees the Awakening as a bigger threat than al-Qaida.
The incoming Obama administration will bring Vice President-elect Joe Biden into the fray, which Galbraith calls "very encouraging."
Biden "has been the prime proponent of a decentralized Iraq, and although in the campaign Sen. McCain described [Biden's] plan as a 'cockamamie' idea," Galbraith says, "it is in fact what the Bush administration has done."
In 2007, the Bush administration financed a Sunni army — the Awakening — and Galbraith says this is responsible for the success so far in Iraq. Biden would take this to the next step and encourage the Sunnis to form their own region, which would control that army, just as the Kurdistan region controls the Peshmerga, or the Kurdistan army, Galbraith says.
A decentralized, loosely federalized partitioned Iraq might eventually be capable of defending its own interests against its larger neighbors of Iran and Turkey, but right now, Galbraith says, that's not happening.
"Iraq is not, today, defending its interests," he says. "The Iranians wield enormous influence because the United States actually paved the way for Iran's allies to become the government of Iraq."
"With regard to the Kurds, actually there's been a change in attitude on the part of Turkey," Galbraith says. "There was a time when they thought the idea of an independent Kurdistan was an almost existential threat to Turkey. But increasingly,www.ekurd.net Turks recognize, first, that this is an accomplished fact — it's already happened; and second, that there are opportunities — after all, they share in common that they're secular, they're pro-Western, and, like the Turks, they aspire to be democratic and they're not Arabs."
Galbraith says there are two things the U.S. can do to enhance stability in Iraq as it leaves.
"First, try and solve the territorial dispute over Kirkuk and other disputed areas between the Kurds and the Arabs. Secondly, to work out a modus vivendi between the Iraqi government and the Shiite-led army and the Sunni Awakening as to who will control what territory," he says.
"If we can minimize the kinds of things that Sunnis and Shiites are going to fight over, it may be, over time, that they will find it in their interests to have much greater cooperation and that voluntarily they'll build a stronger Iraqi state," Galbraith says. "I think it's unlikely the Kurds would ever join that, but I think it's quite possible between the Sunnis and Shiites."
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #3 on: 2008-12-01 05:39:24 » |
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Thanks Fritz,
I've long thought that Biden's "cockamamie" idea for Iraq (a three-way partition) is actually the only stable solution. Indeed it doesn't need any special effort - other than a US exit - to come to fruition. If anything the US is the last remaining obstacle toward fulfilling this almost already achieved breakdown; we seem to be the only party remaining actively committed to an Iraqi nation. Indeed the native groups have already performed much of their own ethnic cleansing, possibly making further civil war an afterthought, although I bet there will be some further fighting over access to resources once the US leaves. Along with agreeing to an exit date, which Bush-McCain swore was tantamount to dangerous surrender, the breakdown of Iraq would represent a failure of every plan and major goal the Bush administration had for post "mission-accomplished" Iraq. Certainly conceding more than a third of the former nation to a pro-Iranian sectarian Shiite state has done nothing to improve US interests in the region or to contain the "axis of evil".
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #4 on: 2008-12-02 10:24:41 » |
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Mo
There were reasons why Turkey and Saudi Arabia demanded undertakings from the US that this would not happen before supporting their invasion of Iraq. The principle reasons are that it will create three national groups, two that loath one another to the point of fighting to the death as they die of dehydration (The Iranian allied Center and Saudi allied South), which will almost certainly drag Iran and Saudi Arabia into the fray; and one with all the most valuable assets (the Kurdish North) and chock-a-block full of Kurds who Turkey (and Iran) have been fighting wars against for 30 years. If it happens, the Kurds will align with Israel (North Iraq is already full of Israeli military hardware and mercenaries), and a long destabilizing proxy war with the strong potential to drag in the Middle East's two definite nuclear states (Israel and Saudi Arabia (which funded Pakistan's bomb and retains a number of cores)) and the Middle East's only secular state (now that Iraq has been destroyed), most stable US ally in the region and most credible nuclear newcomer (Turkey which has been provided nuclear knowhow and materiels by the US, Israel and Pakistan) into the bloodbath.
None of this can be referred to, even remotely, as a good thing.
Next, while the US is a powerful destabilizing force, its partner Israel is even worse. We need to get out of the Middle East, but we also need to tell Israel to get out of Iraq or we will stop our $ 6.5 billion or more hemorrhage into their pockets. Unfortunately the US politician that can do this hasn't yet been born. We need to get out, but we also need to tell our most reliable Middle East oil supplier, Saudi Arabia, they need to stay out of this fight. The fact that they pwn the US economy means this isn't going to happen. We need to get out, but we also need to tell the only competent military body in the Middle East that they need to ignore what we have done for the last 18 years, swallow our hypocrisies and broken commitments and observe International borders while taking what the "terrorists" across the border dish out to them without triggering a meltdown. Given the fact we couldn't even do this with half our military assets embedded up to their collective asses in the sands of Iraq means this isn't going to happen. Finally and most significantly, we have to offer Iran, our most steadfast, and in many ways successful enemy, for the previous 50 years, significant inducements to keep them out of this fight. The fact that we aren't even talking to Iran, apparently haven't a clue how to speak an appropriate language, and our future administration is already stacking our future international team with Israeli allied hawks, means that this probably is not going to happen either. The fact that Iran almost certainly has the technical means and political will to destroy the global oil infrastructure only complicates the issue, as this is a sword aimed squarely into the heart of all modern economies - and the stomaches of 5.5 to 6 billion people, including perhaps 200 million or so Americans.
The fact that this was all highly predictable before we marched into Iraq and destroyed the fulcrum on which the balance of power in the region rested doesn't solve any of the problems. It was why the US military saw any involvement in Iraq as a long term operation. The fact that we are no longer able to control the tiger is apparent. Obama however, is going to be tied to its back in just a few days. Perhaps you have forgotten the fact that the Clinton international relations crew was as Likud dominated, corrupt and incompetent an administration as had ever existed - before Bush put them to shame - in the devastating 8 years now about to be passed. The Clintonites haven't forgotten it, and seem to be back with a vengeance, ranks swollen with Zionist neoliberals who seem to share the neocon's lust for endless "intervention".
This just as the world prepares to learn that the next multiplier after Trillion is Quadrillion and that while the visible (via BIS) derivative swap market is 510 Billion or so, that this represents only 1/3 to 1/2 of the 1 to 1.5 Quadrillion market, and thus, assuming the private bad debt ratio is the same as the public (likely optimistic), a 120 Trillion to 180 Trillion uncovered and uncoverable loss. This can be best seen in comparison to total global wealth of the order of $350 to $450 Trillion. Which is why European bankers still are not sleeping nights and why any options Obama might have are going to appear vanishingly limited.
Let us hope, for the sake of everyone, that he succeeds in threading the camel through the eye of the needle.
Kind Regards
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #5 on: 2008-12-02 15:05:04 » |
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[Blunderov] Yes I think Mo called it right. This is totally an admission of defeat.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=13840
2008-12-02
Get Out Now,
or Get Out Later
Philip Giraldi
Either way, we'll be leaving. Thanksgiving week was remarkable because it may have witnessed the last nails being driven into the coffin of America's ongoing colonial enterprise. On Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai angrily denounced the creation of a parallel carpetbagger government to be run by the United States and NATO in his country. He demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign soldiers, noting that his countrymen no longer understand what the fighting is all about, particularly as they hear of wedding parties and school outings being blasted by the helicopters and warplanes of their ostensible allies. Karzai asked rhetorically how the insurgency can keep getting stronger when most of the world is united in an attempt to defeat it, and he reiterated his intention to negotiate with the Taliban leaders to bring peace.
On Thanksgiving Day itself, by a narrow margin, the Iraqi parliament voted for a new status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the United States that will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2009. The neoconservatives have predictably declared that the SOFA represents victory, even though they have not read the document itself, which no one outside of the administration has seen in its English version. Leaks of the Arabic version and the horse-trading that preceded the ratification suggest that the final agreement was something less than a triumph for the Bush White House. Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against a continued American presence, and there was virtually no interest in permitting either the open-ended U.S. military commitment or the immunity for American forces Washington demanded. U.S. forces reportedly can no longer detain Iraqi citizens, and both soldiers and contractors will be subject to Iraqi courts for serious crimes. American troops will be gone from Iraq's cities by June 2009 and completely gone from the country by the end of 2011. The four major military bases envisioned to maintain a long-term American presence will never materialize, and the huge embassy on the banks of the Tigris will serve more as a mausoleum to American ambitions than as a seat of power for a U.S. viceroy.
Intelligence sources are also gloomy in their predictions, with some assessments indicating that deeply rooted antipathy toward the U.S. presence could drive American forces out of Iraq sooner rather than later, the SOFA notwithstanding. Iraq will eventually find its own way forward, though probably with much blood and suffering, but if there is one thing for sure it is that the United States will in all likelihood be neither a friend nor an ally to whatever type of government emerges. Dislike of Washington runs deep in all the political groups that make up the country, with the exception of the Kurds, who are seeking to leverage American support into their own independence, an objective strongly resisted by both Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs. Likewise in Afghanistan the United States will almost certainly be eventually viewed as just one more in a long series of invaders, all of whom were eventually defeated and left the country.
That the Afghans are demanding a timetable for Washington to leave and that the Iraqis have already set a deadline is remarkable, and it speaks to the declining role and possible irrelevance of the United States to what is going on in the Near East. If the United States has retained a shred of decency, then it will hopefully be willing to go when it is asked to do so. Apart from shoring up the unpopular regimes in place in both Afghanistan and Iraq to permit some sort of political settlement, Washington is no longer the essential nation in a region that it had set out to dominate by force of arms seven years ago. In a regional context, the removal of Saddam Hussein coupled with a blundering occupation and a failed reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan has reinvigorated the terrorist threat and has empowered only Iran.
So what does the turn of events in Iraq and Afghanistan mean vis-à-vis Barack Obama's foreign policy? Obama is only a "peace" candidate in relative terms, having committed himself to negotiating before he bombs. He has said that he will stay in Iraq as long as the generals recommend it, and he has not explicitly disowned the current U.S. policies of preemptive warfare and nation-building. He appears willing to consider regime change if it is applied selectively. Ever resolute in his AIPAC-fueled pledge to stop the Iranian nuclear program, he has also supported intervention in new regions like Darfur where the United States has no conceivable national interest. He has even out-Republicaned the Republicans in his pledge to use U.S. troops to aggressively pursue terrorists inside nuclear-armed Pakistan, an act of war that would further destabilize that unhappy land.
Wanting to draw down in Iraq and increase troop strength in Afghanistan, Obama is embracing taking one failed policy and transferring it somewhere else in hopes that it will succeed. He is also ignoring sage advice. The British and French have already indicated that the Afghan conflict cannot be won in any conventional sense, making the NATO commitment to the war questionable, to say the least. Even Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated that the United States cannot kill its way to victory in Afghanistan, indicating somewhat obliquely that he does not believe any surge in troop levels will provide a long-term solution.
The fact is that Barack Obama's foreign policy is just Bush-lite: it embraces the principle that the judicious use of force is a good thing and that Washington should properly be the world's policeman. Many Democratic stalwarts, including party leaders Steny Hoyer, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi, are at heart interventionists. Obama's foreign policy team is troubling, most particularly in the choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff and of Hillary "Obliterate Iran" Clinton as his secretary of state. There has been some speculation that Obama is preempting criticism by AIPAC in naming two of the most pro-Israeli hawks in Congress to key positions, providing him with the political cover that he needs to pursue a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. The analogy of Nixon going to China is sometimes cited, suggesting that only someone with a sustained record of criticism of an adversary would have the political credibility to take the bold steps necessary to shift the political playing field. But that analysis ignores a critical element, which is that changing China policy did not lead to confrontation with a major domestic constituency seeking to block any agreement. AIPAC would oppose giving anything to the Palestinians at the expense of Israel, and it has demonstrated that it has a de facto veto over Washington's Middle East policy. Can anyone truly believe that Hillary Clinton will take a hard line with Israel, demanding that Tel Aviv stop and even roll back its settlement activity? Without such a bold step, no viable peace agreement is possible.
The other Obama foreign policy hypothesis, that Hillary Clinton will serve as a dutiful and obedient secretary of state carrying out the president's policies reliably and without demur, is also little more than speculation. On the contrary, Clinton's history and her thinly veiled ambitions would suggest the opposite, and her husband, a perpetual loose cannon on deck, also cannot be relied upon to be a team player. It is much more likely that Obama, recognizing that he is vulnerable on foreign policy and knowing that he will be watched closely, has decided to pursue a foreign policy that both AIPAC and Hillary will be comfortable with, which means that the Palestinians can kiss the next four years good-bye and Iran better look to its defenses.
Or maybe Obama, an intelligent man who appears to have a conscience, will quickly discover that Washington no longer has the resources to intervene by force when and where it chooses. The United States might find itself compelled to bring home the regiments and aircraft carriers as the burden of empire becomes insupportable, as in Rudyard Kipling's poem "Recessional" predicting the end of the British Empire: "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre." Iraq and Afghanistan both want the United States to leave, but on their timetable. Perhaps it would be appropriate to move that timetable up in America's own national interest and leave now before Washington truly becomes Nineveh on the Potomac.
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #6 on: 2008-12-02 23:00:08 » |
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Quote from: Blunderov on 2008-12-02 15:05:04
[Blunderov] Yes I think Mo called it right. This is totally an admission of defeat. |
Well, its somewhat interesting to me how the Mainstream media in the US has completely buried this story. If you get your news through TV, you probably don't know about this story at all. If you read the paper, its generally buried in the back if present at all. I'm not even sure if NPR got a bite on this one.
Anyway, I see the best case realistic scenario, that we leave, that the Iraqis resume some low level conflict as they divide up the remains of the psuedo-nation. At best perhaps we facilitated their ethnic cleansing so they can blame us for it, and perhaps its now one less thing they have to get ugly with each other about. Perhaps they may avoid some of the worst body count scenarios, and if they can morally discount the deaths from the US disaster, they may end up with one of the least bloody civil wars in their own history books. Of course they made no real progress on the inviolable so called "benchmarks" that the Bush administration so long dictated as a condition of US departure and to avoid setting any calendar dates. No agreement on oil, and the government only became more sectarian rather than less so. So this means that the Iraqis still have quite a lot left to fight about even as they are handing us our hat and showing us the exits. Of course anybody reasonable, like Biden on this particular issue, for example, knew it would end like this. We just didn't realize it would all get finalized under Bush. Even though it is a clear defeat of everything he ever claimed he believed in, I suppose it might be a small saving grace that he formalized the end before he left instead of hanging it around Obama's neck.
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #7 on: 2008-12-17 02:49:24 » |
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[Blunderov] If it were not already clear that the defeat of the USA in Iraq is complete then this will make it starkly obvious: the USA has realised none of its reconstruction policies in Iraq. None. Zero. Fuck all.
Helluva liberation there, Bushy!
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/pentagon_report_confirms_failu.php
Pentagon Report Confirms Failure Of Iraq Reconstruction Effort
By Zachary Roth - December 15, 2008, 11:09AM
The New York Times and Pro Publica got an advanced look at a report on the American reconstruction of Iraq -- and it's not pretty.
The report concludes, in the words of the Times and Pro Publica, that even now, "the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale."
And it quotes Colin Powell saying that, in the months after the invasion, DOD "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"
But here's our favorite detail:
When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority's abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. "To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President," wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. "His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt." With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.
There was no evidence in the story that the Times and Pro Publica had offered Korologos a chance to respond, so TPMmuckraker contacted him. He responded in an email:
They did NOT give me a chance to comment. That all came from a 3 page memo I wrote on strategy for passing that first Iraq supplemental in 2003. Some $60 (b) billion was for the military side and $20 (b) billion was for the civilian side. The next sentence said, "The quicker we succeed at CPA the quicker our 150,000 boys will come marching home again."
That response doesn't do much to change the clear impression created by the IG report that Korologos cited President Bush's need to get reelected as a reason to support spending $20 billion of taxpayer money. And that OMB ultimately went along with the request.
Here are some other eyebrow-raising nuggets from the report:
In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency's reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency's plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.
And...
Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. "Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources," said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. " 'You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.'"
And here's a passage that won't exactly boost Donald Rumsfeld's already rock-bottom reputation for knowing what he was talking about:
On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few American officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several alternative rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.
"What do you think that'll cost?" Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
"I think it's going to cost billions of dollars," Mr. Garner said.
"My friend," Mr. Rumsfeld replied, "if you think we're going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken."
In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.
The report was compiled by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who serves as the special inspector general for postwar reconstruction in Iraq. The Times and Pro Publica obtained their copies from people outside Bowen's office. The report will be presented February 2nd at a Congressional hearing.
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #8 on: 2008-12-17 08:44:06 » |
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I know its completely absent from their press book, but I can't see how the current US policy points to anything other than the breakup of Iraq, probably into three parts: the Shia dominated regions which will probably fall under the patronage of Iran; Sunni dominated regions which will probably fall under the patronage of Saudi Arabia (and other Sunni arab regimes); and the Kurdish region which will probably fall under the patronage of any remaining Israeli and Nato forces, and/or Turkey if they can work out something with their own ethnic Kurds. This has been something predicted by the Obama administration via Joe Biden who has already proposed some solutions around such an inevitability. By failing to meet any of their political benchmarks the Bush administration has successfully defaulted its way through their self-defined failures into such a final game.
Helluva job there, Bushy.
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #9 on: 2008-12-17 13:26:30 » |
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Noting that Joe Biden is an infamous neoliberal chickenhawk, probably owing greater allegiance to AIPAC and the more extreme Zionists in Israel than to US voters, Mo's prediction is probably right on the mark. I think it quite probable that a suitably nudged Obama administration is indeed planning to attempt to use Israel as their oversight-free occupying army in the hope that Israeli brutality will ensure access to Iraqi oil and allow Israel to stop buying oil from Iran (currently Israel's primary supplier), as well as permitting use of Kurdistan as a refuelling area for attacks on Iran and high altitude radar emplacement allowing suppression of Iranian defenses, without demanding active American complicity.
Even if it is largely inevitable, I think that this, combined with the global depression and the USA's loss of influence over NATO, has the strong likelihood of destabilizing the Turkish-Israeli accord and I'm guessing that the surrounding nations are not going to take any more kindly to an Israeli stronghold in the heart of Asia Minor than they have to an American one. Particularly as, no matter how the US attempts to project this, the Middle East tends to see through the mask and perceives the US and Israel as a single nasty entity rather than two. As of course does Russia (see Georgia).
If I tried to find a worse end-game scenario, I doubt that I could. Indeed, this might be the only "solution" worse than continued US occupation. Do we really want to end up in a thermonuclear war, with the strong probability of it going biological over Kurdistan? If looking for a realistic solution without a "Revelations" like ending, evicting Israel from Kurdistan, and ensuring that the neighbors respect the boundaries has to be a significant component of any putative plan.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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MoEnzyme
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infidel lab animal
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #10 on: 2008-12-17 13:40:44 » |
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Hermit,
I'm guessing that the US-Israeli axis will figure out a way for the newly minted Kurdish nation to quickly join the nuclear club as a counterbalance to Iran and Pakistan. Its a bit of conjecture at this point since we aren't yet sure exactly how and when the breakup will occur, but it seems to me an inevitable consideration for all parties involved.
-Mo
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Fritz
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #11 on: 2008-12-17 17:09:36 » |
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Won't a China - Iran ticket change the dynamics of the rumble ?
And Turkey really wants the EU thing, I would think 'the Merkel' and the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys ' won't look kindly to Turkey supporting the US-Israel alliance against Iran, even the play nice with the Kurds ticket, in any form would be viewed with suspicion. How long before one of the 3 pieces of Iraq defaults to Iran ?
I agree Hermit, this is all playing out as a worst case or how to make a bad situation worse game. It feels likes the sandbox game of if I can't have it I'll break it so you can't have it either.
Cheers
Fritz
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #12 on: 2008-12-17 22:09:57 » |
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Fritz, I'm hoping Mo is joking. The idea of the Kurds - an extremely nasty primitive bunch, who definitely don't have the technology to maintain nukes, let alone develop them; do not have the social structures to manage nukes, or the military to defend them; and have no delivery platforms short of putting them in a taxi and delivering them to Teheran, Istanbul (or somewhere in the Western sphere if they get pissed off with the West supporting them insufficiently against Turkey and Iran) - having nukes is nutty enough to belong to the Neonuts - of either party. Not the CoV. Except when advocated by trolls of course.
Kindest Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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MoEnzyme
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infidel lab animal
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #13 on: 2008-12-17 22:39:39 » |
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Hermit,
I'm certainly not advocating such an outcome, and I hope that Obama and company can arrange for better. I may be joking in the sense that it was a cynical comment, but it may not be entirely up to Obama especially if the US actually and completely leaves Iraq. I'm sure there are others willing to do crazy things, and of course there is always Israel. Not really a joke, but not outside the realm of concern. I don't think Obama would think its a good idea, but I could also see him not stopping other regimes from making it happen. Time will tell, I suppose. I do think the breakup of Iraq is inevitable, nukes are just dramatic flourish to illustrate one of many ways this can all end in tears.
-Mo
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Hermit
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Re:Bush accepts deadline to withdraw from Iraq.
« Reply #14 on: 2008-12-18 06:05:46 » |
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And here you have the rub.
The problem is not our enemy. The problem is US. With a little help from our friends.
Without US financial streams pouring into Israel, the wheels would come off there in very short order. But Israel so thoroughly owns the US that, irrespective of party, Israel tells the US what to do. Given the nature of the beast, this is the most destabilizing force in the world today.
I'm not the only one that can see this and in consequence, I think that Russia is going to agree to provide SA-10s (S-300s) to Iran, Syria and possibly the Lebanon before Obama takes office, and will be providing at least the Lebanon and possibly Iran with Mig 29s too. Which would somewhat more than balance Israel. That of course is going to make Obama's Neoliberals even more insane than they already are, and the collapsing financial systems will make it easier to achieve go"tterda"mmerung than any kind of accommodation. Where then insanity? Insanity, particularly religious insanity, is so damned infectious.
Meanwhile, as predicted:
Turks and Iranians join forces against Kurds in Iraq
Source: The Daily Star
Authors:Agence France Presse (AFP)
Dated: [.b]2008-12-18
[b]Dateline: Irbil, Iraq
Turkish warplanes and Iranian artillery pounded border areas of northern Iraq on Wednesday as they pressed an offensive against Kurdish rebels, an Iraqi Kurdish security forces spokesman said. "Turkish and Iranian forces are continuing to bombard the Iraqi border region on the pretext of fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK] in the Haj Omran and Qandil Mountains districts," Jabbar Yawar told AFP. "These Turkish and Iranian bombardments have caused a great deal of damage in the villages and the villagers have fled."
The Turkish military confirmed it had launched air strikes against suspected PKK bases for a second straight day.
"The planes completed their mission successfully and returned safely to their bases," a statement on the military's website said, adding that it had made every effort to avoid casualties among the region's civilian population.
The PKK has fought a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. Ankara charges that some 2,000 PKK rebels are operating out of rear bases across the border in northern Iraq where it accuses the Iraqi Kurdish authorities of turning a blind eye to their activities.
The Qandil Mountains lie where the borders of Iraq, Turkey and Iran meet and Tehran too has accused the Iraqi Kurds of harboring rear-bases for rebels operating inside their territory.
Iranian officials charge that many of the fighters of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) are in fact Turkish Kurds, not members of Iran's own Kurdish minority.
Last month, Iraq, Turkey and the United States agreed to form a joint committee to track the threat posed by the PKK and enact measures to stop the militants' activities.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin said talks were under way to outline the details of the committee's structure.
"I can say it will start working very soon," he told a news conference, adding that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari is to visit Ankara in the coming days. "We expect the Iraqi government and the regional authorities [in northern Iraq] to punctually fulfill the pledges they have made" to act against the PKK, he added.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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