Cross-posted at dailyKos.com
Recently the noted historian, middle east expert, and blogger opined that a pullout of US troops from Iraq could be accomplished by way of a UN Option. This marks somewhat of a shift from his email response to me a month ago, in which he said that the US would be in Iraq for many years, and I welcome his new thinking.
There has been criticism of this plan, However, or at least the following aspect:
Yesterday I emailed Prof. Cole to ask his perspective on this. He was kind enough to reply and our email exchange is quoted below.
My email to Prof. Cole:
I’d like to thank you again for responding to my (and others) request for your views concerning the possibility of the US pulling out of Iraq (my email of 5/22/2005 and the dailyKos diary ).
There are now comments at dailyKos and BMT concerning your comments today regarding third-world militaries shouldering the burden in Iraq (under UN auspices) in return for financial rewards. I think this is an interesting approach, however many seem to believe that you were seriously advocating this approach rather than simply mentioning the possibility (the latter is my take).
Which is it? I and many others rely on your expertise regarding the middle east and I don’t want to see your credibility damaged by internecine warfare, at which we on the left seem to be very accomplished.
Please let us know, either in your blog or as an email response, which I will post on the blogs mentioned above.
Many thanks for your hard work. You have my vote for Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs (or at least a fat consulting contract) in the next administration.
MarkInSanFran
Prof. Cole’s reply:
Dear Mark:
I have been unable to convince many of my readers of what I know. A US withdrawal could well throw Iraq into civil war. Civil war in Iraq would bring in the Iranians, the Saudis and the Turks. The success of petroleum pipeline sabotage and refinery sabotage in Iraq will suggest it as a tactic to the guerrillas fighting in this Fourth Gulf War.
If Saudi and Iranian petroleum production is sabotaged, gas in this country will go to $20 a gallon and the US will be plunged into the Second Great Depression. The unemployment rate will skyrocket to some 25%. Not only will you and I likely end up unemployed, but the global South will be de-industrialized. Countries making progress like India and Pakistan will be thrown back 30 years.
We already saw petroleum spike to $40 a barrel in the early 80s, in 1980 dollars, which is probably $80 a barrel in our money. Cause? Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War. Only a kind of MAD prevented Saddam and Khomeini from destroying each others’ oil fields; at that, they were sometimes attacked. Guerrillas do not give a rat’s ass about MAD. The oil shock in the 1970s virtually de-industrialized Turkey for a while, and very badly hurt the Caribbean (islands depend on boat transport even for basic foodstuffs). I have seen this kind of scenario. It is not inevitable but it is entirely plausible.
Since the US military seems incapable of winning the guerrilla war in Iraq either militarily or politically, someone else will have to do it if we are to avoid Gulf War III and its consequences. The Europeans cannot do it. They only have a surplus capacity of about 10,000 troops for deployment outside the continent, and they are already in Afghanistan. You could argue that they should reform their militaries so that they did have more troops for external deployment, but that would take time we don’t have.
That leaves a United Nations command leading troops from the global South, with perhaps, one or two remaining US divisions. The Southerners are culturally better suited to negotiating an end to the Iraq hostilities anyway, and some of them have excellent militaries. Gulf War III and Very High Oil Prices would hurt them more than it would hurt the US and Europe, so they have every interest in intervening. Moreover, they will be richly rewarded with billions in future Iraq contracts, which they need more than Texas does.
Some are construing this proposal as me having the poor people in the global South suffer for Bush’s mistakes. But at $60 a barrel they are already suffering for Bush’s mistakes. Do you know how many factories will have to close over this, or will never open in the first place, in Pakistan and India? Factories are very sensitive to energy costs, which have tripled, and could go even higher. Iraq is adding $10 to $15 a barrel to the current price because of uncertainty and speculation, and the removal through sabotage of about 1.5 million barrels a day also contributes to the problem.
I am saying that the UN and the global South can solve the problem, that they have every incentive to solve the problem, and that they will be richly rewarded for solving the problem.
Moreover, this way of proceeding would deeply hurt the whole American nationalist war party. It would be a victory for cosmopolitan multi-lateralism. It would dampen down US militarism by creating an Iraq Complex. It would put two US divisions under a United Nations command, setting a precedent. It would strengthen the United Nations so that the US Right can’t just order around or ignore it the way the Bushes do their kitchen help. It is progressive in every way. And it is a perfect reply to the Right’s insistence that the US has to remain in control until ‘the job is done.’ No, it doesn’t. This is a job for the world.
In other words, it isn’t all about us, in the sense of US. It is about what would be good for the world.
Cheers Juan
I wrote back to him:
Thank you so much for writing back to us. After reading and thinking about your words I have to say that you have convinced me. The regional destabilization that would be risked by a US pullout would indeed be an economic disaster for the world as well as a potential (increased) humanitarian disaster in the middle east.
Offering other nations the possibility of securing Iraq as well as its borders under UN auspices is clearly an excellent approach to legitimizing a foreign security force in Iraq, a force that is currently seen by the vast majority of Iraqis as illegitimate. The internal US political effects that you mention are, of course, additional advantages, both for the administration’s opponents as well as the country in general.
I will argue this on BoomanTribune and dailyKos in diaries that I will post Wednesday morning so as to ensure wide visibility (I got home a bit late to post this tonight).
Cheers to you too!
MarkInSanFran
What do you think?
this so that more people can see what Prof. Cole has to say.
What a wonderful exchange, Mark. Now that I see his thinking, and his concerns, spelled out, I too concur with him.
Do you think there’s a possibility of this at least somewhat hopeful solution?
Honestly I don’t think there is much chance of this happening anytime soon, due to the republican stranglehold on Washington. However the UN Option serves another purpose, as Prof. Cole said. It gives the opposition (us) a direction to rally around without sounding (to some) like far-left peaceniks.
After November 2006, however, this may be doable, in which case now is the right time to start the campaign.
Bush’s petrofaction will all still be in business and expecting ownership of the Iraq oil. They’ll still operate the media, the economy, and they’ll control the White House and probably the Senate.
I don’t see how the United States can become capable of making this kind of policy shif soon enough to help, unless there is some kind of profound shock that breaks away important factions or support of the military-petro-media-conservative complex.
Moreover, this way of proceeding would deeply hurt the whole American nationalist war party. It would be a victory for cosmopolitan multi-lateralism.
I think this war party complex is prepared to accept serious harm to the United States rather than lose its influence. I don’t think we’ll ever see this become a viable topic for public discourse.
So let’s get this straight, Susan. First you repeatedly accuse me of misrepresenting Cole, implying that he is cautioning against the very view for which he so clearly argues in that blogpost.
Now, when he personally confirms that he does in fact defend exactly the view I criticized, you ‘concur with’ said view.
Am I missing something?
As I posted in several diaries yesterday, I actually trust Turkey, Iran, Syria, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia to behave more responsibly than the U.S.
There WILL be an Iraqi civil war (indeed I believe it is already underway). I also believe that Iraq’s neighbors will get deeply involved in funding and arming their favorite factions.
However, I don’t believe that a spreading war of sabotage will engulf Iraq’s neighbors.
First, all of Iraq’s neighbors have strong central governments with strong security apparatuses. They are capable of protecting their infrastructure the same way that Saddam Hussein did. Remember that one of the reasons the Iraqi sabotage is so effective is that it is being done with the help of people who used to operate and protect the oil infrastructure.
Second, I see no incentive among Iraq’s neighbors to let the violence spread out of Iraq. Each country wants to improve its security environment and they can each do that without encouraging attacks inside the territory of the other players.
Third, such spreading terrorism was expected during the 1980s and 1990s but it never materialized. Everyone expected Iran to foment a Shia rebellion in the Saudi oil provinces during the 1980s, but Iran couldn’t pull it off. Even when Iran was attacking oil tankers in the Gulf in an effort to cut off oil money going to Iraq, the Iranians didn’t resort to a sabotage campaign in Saudi Arabia. Within Iran, the ethnic Arabs refused to help Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. Despite some limited violence recently (which could be CIA sponsored for all I know), there is no reason to believe that the ethnic Arabs of Khuzestan will suddenly rise up and destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure. They’ve been proud Iranians for a long time – why would they change?
At the end of the day, Iraq’s neighbors have too much to lose by letting violence spread and I trust them to contain an Iraqi Civil War far better than the U.S. The U.S. is already far too tempted to carry the war to Iran or Syria. With the U.S. gone, the major destabilizing element in the region will be taken care of.
however, for example, I think Turkey has made it clear that any sign of seperatism on the part of the Kurds, which would be likely in case of an unmitigated civil war, would provoke a military response.
If I were personally charged with making the decision then I would take the risks that Prof. Cole describes very seriously.
But that’s not the same as the regional war Prof. Cole is speculating on.
To take the example of Turkey, there have been Turkish military operations inside Iraq dating back to 1991. Usually, these involve wiping out PKK camps on the Iraqi side of the border, but they’ve always remained limited. If the Kurds do try to push for an independent state, Turkey and Iran will likely cooperate to put pressure on the Kurds to back off. In the worst case scenario, Turkey ends up with the more active Kurdish separatist problem it had in the 1990s. Turkish military action does not equal sudden regional convulsion.
My main point is that the internal divisions in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia are not anywhere close to a tipping point. An Iraqi civil war will be bloody and create new tensions in the region, but my assessment of Iraq’s neighbors is that they know their own limits and avoid overreaching. The same was never true of Saddam Hussein and is not true of the U.S.
Didn’t stop the players from getting into the civil war action in Afghanistan. They’ve had decades of experience in covert guerilla warfare.
Mainly, I’m quibbling with Cole’s assertion that the Iraqi civil war could lead to massive disruption in the oil coming from Saudi Arabia and Iran. He asserts that the guerilla war in Iraq could spread to those countries and result in attacks on their oil infrastructure.
I don’t buy it. Every argument I hear about an Iraqi civil war leading to a wider conflagration generally stops with something like “the Turks will invade Iraq” or “Iran will take over Iraq” or some other general statement. No one ever tries to analyze exactly why those countries would invade or what they’d want to accomplish.
Cole’s assertion on a spreading war of sabotage at least offers a specific consequence to look at. I just don’t agree with him that the violence would spread. None of the nations in the region have a strong incentive to try to cripple each others infrastructure the way Cole describes. They are far more likely to conduct a brutal and bloody proxy war INSIDE Iraq.
Where I place my trust is in the ability of countries like Iran, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, and Syria to keep any conflict confined to Iraq. They have no interest in seeing the violence spread. More to the point, there is no evidence that ethnic minorities in Iran and Saudi Arabia are likely to rise up and attack the local oil infrastructure. Iran and Iraq both expected that to happen during the Iran-Iraq War and both were wrong. Saddam was wrong about ethnic Arabs in Iran, the vast majority of whom fought to defend Iran. Iran was wrong about the Shi’a in Eastern Saudi Arabia, who for the most part stayed quiet and never threatened the oil infrastructure.
If Iraq fell into a civil war, in my opinion Turkey is guaranteed to join the fray…….and once again just my opinion but Saudi Arabia is a ticking time bomb of oppressed people who could easily explode in all directions. Since oil is what funds the Saudi Royal Family, that will be attacked HARD if such an outbreak were to happen. Egypt is becoming somewhat venomous lately too with a very unhappy populace being kept in line militarily.
Toots to you, Mark… and toots to Professor Cole for taking the time for such a wonderful response.
I have to say that I am completley sold on Professor Cole’s solution. If we pull out lock stock and barrel, the resulting vacuum in Iraq would be absolutely irresistible to Iran, Turkey, and the Saudis… maybe even the Syrians. I can see the resulting conflagration reaching Saudi oilfields easily. I don’t think the gloom and doom is overstated at all.
Of course, we need to get rid of Bush first. We need to stop thumping our chests and pull the flag down from over our eyes as a country. Republican Conservatism has come to mean “Me, Myself, and I and screw everyone else.” That’s the attitude we need to shed as national policy before this plan could even be attempted. We would need people with real diplomatic skills, and real global vision, not ass kissers and louts. We would need to be brutally honest with ourselves… and with the rest of the world. Can we do that? Not unless Bush goes and the rest of the trash with him. I guess that’s the catch.
I for one embrace Professor Cole’s vision… and it could easily be refined and fleshed out to integrate into the Democratic Party platform for ’06 and ’08. A real solution.
The “UN Option” needs to be the new buzzword. It will also make it clear that we need Bolton like we need another middle east war.
It makes it all the more frightening that the conservatives are still beating the “UN reform” drum and threatening to withhold dues.
Another corner they’ve seemingly backed themselves into. Seriously, you would think people with no plan would at least leave themselves some open options.
that Juan Cole was on the fence regarding the war, had some pretty nasty comments on the anti-war demonstrators, and doesn’t have any problem in principle with those liberals who supported the war?
He has an eloquent explanation of his position today:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/cole-on-knowing-his-own-history-and.html
Liberal hawks who chose “justice” (i.e. removing evil bad-guy Saddam) were making the classic mistake of assuming benevolence and rationality on the part of an administration that at no point has demonstrated that it merits such trust.
Let’s see, if there was a court case about this, the court would hear evidence that
(1) The President lied about the threat to us in order to justify war
(2) The administration attempted to provoke Saddam into a military reaction that could justify an invasion, through military aggression
(3) The administration ignored Saddam’s desperate attempts to stave off the actual invasion and violence (reported in the Guardian UK):
Baghdad even proposed staging internationally-monitored elections within two years.
Saddam offered to have UN supervised elections within two years of the pre-war period, which is exactly when elections did happen in the post-war period.
Everything that an anti-Saddam Liberal Hawk could have wanted was eventually offered when the threat of gunfire was real enough to Saddam. Saber rattling worked! But Bush didn’t just want to rattle sabers and achieve capitulation. Bush evidently wanted death and destruction. And trusting the post-9/11 “we were attacked” Bush not to unleash the hell of war was, at best, depraved indifference to human life in Iraq.
I fault the hawks, and they should not be permitted to wash that blood off their hands.
Well I’ll take the blame for stupidly assuming that the Bush admin could do this competently. But as for the rest you’re missing the point. Liberal hawks who, like myself, wanted Saddam out because the Baathist government was horrific, didn’t care much about WMD’s and saw them as at best a weak rationalization for a war we supported for completely different reasons. The illegality of the war, as Cole explains, was seen by liberal hawks as a lesser evil. Iraq along with North Korea was the ugliest regime in the world. (Turkmenistan is equally totalitarian but less brutal.)
I do not remember any offer of UN supervized elections being publicly known at the time so there was no way we could have factored that into our decision making. If I’d known that I would have opposed the war or rather wanted it put on hold to see if the offer was genuine.
I’m not sure what your ‘we were attacked’ comment is about – we were, but that had nothing to do with Iraq, at least in my mind. I realize that some believed in WMD’s going to al Qaeda, and others in the democratization domino theory, but that’s not what Cole is talking about. I also remember telling my anti-war friends that I’d be happier if the target for armed intervention combined with reconstruction were Congo rather than Iraq.
You don’t want to forgive the hawks, fine, but remember just how many democrats supported this war. Most people who slam the liberal hawks complain that they haven’t admitted their mistake, yet most have. I think the problem is that us hawks have remained hawkish, albeit a lot more cautious.
The seriously flawed assumption is in assuming the United States can do something like this benevolently. After all the UN truth commissions, all the protests at the School of the Americas, after American soldiers get arrested in Colombia handing out guns to right wing death squads, assuming that our foreign policy is able to “hand out freedom” amounts to (at best) Charlie Brown assuming Lucy isn’t going to yank the football out again.
You really thought BushCo wasn’t going to let Halliburton and Bechtel and the like loot all the reconstruction money? Really?
I agree wholeheartedly with you, tigger, anyone who thought that we would “take Saddam out” and leave at that are naive at best. All one had to do was look at the preceding 13 years of looting that had been going on, ESPECAILLY by Halliburton in Iraq — the rebubs have been shrieking about the Oil for Food ‘scandal’ for very good reason — they want to deflect attention from the actual scandals that have been taking place since 1991 in terms of the breaking of restrictions that WE put in place on Iraq.
This whole line of reasoning, when set along side our support of our good friends in Pakistan and Ubekistan, and completely ignoring hideous happenings in Africa and other parts of the world, just can’t be justified to me in any way shape or form. Was Saddam horrible? No doubt. But that will never convince me that this war was justified. Never.
This diary entry, containing original and (however one feels about them) visionary remarks by Juan Cole on the future of Iraq – material not found even on Cole’s famous blog – has 11 comments as of this writing.
Meanwhile, the diary entry now heading the reco list, called “Why DailyKos isn’t worth fighting for,” has 196 comments and counting.
Make of this observation what you will.
One of the nice things about Booman Trib and European Trib is that the diaries stick around for awhile. That way the 7 of us that actually care about this shit can debate it to our hearts content.
Consider also that Mark cross posted this at dKos and it is now on the recommended list there with 173 comments. So maybe there is some hope after all…
Yeah. I just regret that it’s on dKos, not here, the discussion has been taking off… would have preferred it to be the other way around.
BTW, I’ve posted a brief reflection on Cole’s e-mail on my blog. Might as well dump it in this comment, saving us all a little bandwidth:
The nature of the incentive – aside from the envisioned cash reward – is supposedly that either US persistence in Iraq, or its withdrawal without replacement, “could well throw Iraq into civil war [which] would bring in the Iranians, the Saudis and the Turks” and lead to a global petroleum crisis which would disproportionately harm the south. Yes, it certainly could. But so could the substitution of highy skilled and well-equipped forces with a motley of militarily inferior troops whose morale would soon deteriorate to below that of GI Joe, since they’d have an even harder time preserving the illusion of defending their own countries.
And though he is right that $60 a barrel is already a strain on third world economies, it seems to me the political strain of sending their soldiers into a meat-grinder would be appreciably worse. Which is one reason why I can’t really see `the global South’ drum up the hundreds of thousands of blue helmets that are probably needed. It won’t, insofar as it knows where its interests lie.
Needless to say, Professor Cole is incomparably more knowledgable than I on these thorny issues. And while I remain unconvinced, his proposal may merit more thought.
Lately, I’ve been chuckling as I cycle through dKos, BT, and ET. A lot of folks, including the Booman, Jerome, and Susan have been doing double (and even triple) posts across those blogs.
The reality is that most folks still gravitate to dKos and so things are more likely to take off there. There’s also the ego boost that goes with getting 100 comments and associated mojo there, rather than the smaller traffic here.
The only way we’ll see things take off here is if more people are willing to keep their great diaries exclusive to one blog or the other.
Note to Booman, Susan, and the rest – try posting a Best of Booman or Best of European Trib diary at dKos with links to the diaries here. That way the conversation can be driven here rather than chopped up among 2 or 3 blogs.
Good point. I’ve been ‘guilty’ myself of cross-posting an entry later on dKos for its 15 minutes of obscurity. (My frontpage posts on Eurotrib, though, wind up, at most, on my blog.) I have figured that when the frontpagers do it, it’s surely OK for me too. But maybe we all ought to reconsider the practice.
I did a post comment instead of a reply!!
YOu know, as a person who looks at things and then takes it to digest for awhile, I just never have a comment on things like this til I think it through for a while. Take the issue at hand. Now I do read cole and he certainly has his head together, when it comes to Iraq. I just read things here and there and think. I am not smart enough to see things in such a clear view as some do. This is why I am on in the foreign relations of matters except at my job, so to speek. NOw, If we do decided to go the UN route, then I think the administration has to be changed from what it is now, in order to get the job done otherwise, we are in a real hell of a mess and this further agitates matters. Anything with bush and his admin. attached to it will serve no purpose. I can see where the 3rd world nations will do anything for a buck. It has always been like that tho. I can see the price of oil skyrocketing to out of this world. Now I ask you kind folks here, I have had a brain fart so to speak, if given that we dispose thsi administration in a rather harsh way like impeachment or such, and the world see we are in to make this crisis better, would things really be as bad as one would say here? Just a thought to think upon.
See I told you that I do not have much to say on this and I am not into foreign relations. I always thought it was wrong to go into Iraq and not cuz SH was a bad man, he was the glue that held the whole mess in the ME together at least in Iraq. Just look at what bush has done to the whole ME and SA and Egypt and just about every other nation over across the big pond. He turns everything to shit over night. He and his cronies do not know anymore about how to do better than anyone else in this situation either and that is what the WH is counting on is others to give them the answers on how to do it differently, ie, right winged think tanks.
It is of greatest importance to reality based community that there be a third UN option available that we can point to when the GOP frames the Iraq debate as either a humiliating withdrawal or victory next year.
I have been thinking and thinking about this this afternoon and I need to think about it some more, but I need some clarification on a few things — I know ya’ll will help me out!
Is it your impression that Prof. Cole is thinking that India and Pakistan would be the countries that would do this? What exactly is he talking about when he says “the Global South”?
I am unclear about where the $$ comes from that goes to pay these armies. I may have missed that…
Who exactly is in charge? The UN?
How do the civilians get any better protected than they are now under the “UN Option”? Again, I may have missed something but it seems the focus here is on protecting oil interests…
Thanks in advance!
These are good questions that deserve to be answered. In lieu of an actual expert, I’ll offer some comments that are more on the side of decently informed.
“The Global South” is the current shorthand for what used to be known as the Third World. It’s really an imprecise term, covering African backwaters like Burkina Faso, newly-industrialized countries, and emergent powers like India and Brazil.
I have the same question. Also, does the UN have any credibility within the Arab world? Is their rancor about the selective enforcement of Security Council resolutions (with resolutions condemning Israel going unenforced)?
I made this comment (with this clarification) yesterday in another thread. I think that some other internationalized security entity must be brought in to fill in the vacuum left by a U.S. withdrawal. It’s imperative that this security force be invited in by a legitimate Iraqi leadership – I know that last part is vague, and I have no idea what would constitute a legitimate leadership. However (and this goes to your question about how does it better protect people), the biggest cause of violence is the United States. The Iraqi people do not want war. They are pleased that Saddam is gone. They want security, but they do not want to be occupied. Remove the occupier and invite in a force to provide security, and hopefully the animus behind the sectarian violence fades.
>clink, clink<
For the UN Option to work, the UN would have to be perceived as “in charge.” If there’s any suspicion that the U.S. continues to run the show, UN forces will end up being treated the way our so-called “Coalition” soldiers are.
As to who will pay, good question! Cole didn’t say, but if you ask me, it’s only fair that the American taxpayer foot the bill. S/he allowed Bush to be reelected, after all, and s/he didn’t care enough about the slaughter and torture of tens of thousands of Iraqis to protest.
Besides, Rumsfeld’s private contractor-supported military is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Fully funding U.N. operations would probably save save us money.
Thanks, wobblie and Matt in NYC!!
My head started to hurt yesterday so I quit thinking for a bit, but now I am starting up again! 😉
After considering some more:
I absolutely agree that there should be no semblence of the “US in charge” but I am not at all convinced that “UN in charge” will fare any better. I think that the ONLY thing that will work is “Iraqis in charge” and that is how it should be.
Our enitre problem in Iraq (and in other places historically) stems from the misguided attempt to impose “democracy” (whatever we choose that to mean in any given situation) from without (i.e., externally) on systems of living and believing that we at best, do not understand, and at worst, openly scorn. Why, I often ask myself, do our foreign policy makers not see what a recipe for disaster this is?
In the first place, the realities of democracy in the US are far from ideal, we have plenty of work to do right here. In the second, who wouldn’t resist an external force, even if it had the best of intentions (which I do not for one second ascribe to the Bush admin.!!), that was imposing its will, its belief systems, and its ways of doing things? I know I would, especially if at the same time, this external force could not keep the lights on, clean water flowing or my kids from getting butchered in the streets. I mean, the average Iraqi must be thinking, “How could we possibly do any WORSE?!”
As for the ‘where does the $$ come from” question. I believe it should come from the US, the taxpayers, yes, but also from the companies who have been war profiteering for over a decade, lessee, Halliburton spring immediately to mind! I think we need to take a good long, caareful look at our defense budget as well and see where we can redirect funds from it to actually investing in things that will improve our situation vis a vis giving people reasons to want to blow us up. Prof. Cole seems to imply that these “Global South” countries will benefit/get paid through securing contracts in Iraq and I think that in the LONG term this might be ok, but if the Iraqis see merely a subsitution of one foreign army for another (or a group of others) that have basically the same intentions as the one they have now (i.e., us), I don’t think they will be laying down the rose petals for them either…
Just my thoughts on a Thursday morning — I look forward to continuing to think this through with you all!!
This sounds like something very close to a possible solution. If the US would accept it, which is iffy. And US forces will be under a UN command when hell freezes over, I suspect. But it’s nice to have a smidgen of hope.
It has been terribly painful to look at the mess we’ve created & wonder how we will manage to get out of it. I could not understand the apparent haste for going into Iraq – until I read the PNAC stuff, that was an Aha! moment (and now, sadly, the DSM and its spin offs confirm what I figured was happening all along).
Then I suffered through the obvious inevitability of it happening (Saddam caused 9/11; we know where the WMD’s are – riiight)
Throughout the lead up it was like watching a wreck in slow motion, because from the very beginning I also agreed with Powell’s Pottery Barn example – you break it, you bought it. We created this mess and we can’t just say oopsie and walk away.
I know there are many who disagree with my conclusion, but it’s mine and I’m sticking to it. If we just pull out and “bring the troops home” bad things will happen – very bad things will happen. If we stay it looks like an endless quagmire in the making. Cole at least has postulated an alternative. It’s the best one I’ve seen so far.
For as long as she did that diary, it was pretty popular and effective. The frontpagers at BT and ET could easily divide up the work and post the best diaries from the last 24 (or even 12) hours over at dKos.
I think there’s enough overlap now that you could get a feature like that recommended. Especially if it turns into a mojo fest like C&J!
Sorry bout that!!
Very promising idea. Let’s hope the frontpagers see it.
Geez, it’s nice to get to a diary where people are discussing something interesting and important. This one ought to be on the front page, rather than BooMan’s latest meta-Kos. Anyway….
I appreciate Professor Cole’s attempt to craft an “exit strategy”, since apparently, no one currently in the political leadership of this country — in either party — seems particularly interested in doing so. Republicans swear everything’s going according to plan, and Democrats wring their hands, criticize Bush for getting us in there (pointedly avoiding their own complicity in that action), and offer no solutions other than “Well, we’re there, therefore we have to stay.”
I have some problems with his strategy, but I absolutely applaud the fact that it gives us a starting point for some meaningful disucssion. Here are a few of my own random thoughts:
Excellent and thoughtful response. One of my problems, and I expressed in my diary yesterday, is that Cole is basing his solution on fear of the worse possible outcome.
Now fear is a useful tool to clue us into things we need to be aware of, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to base such important decisions on fear.
Also, what he is proposing is an expansion of this war, and he is proposing that it is a war that has to be won. Dangerous notions.
I’m with you, turn the country back to the Iraqis. Ask them. They would tell you they want us out. And they will tell us if they want the UN in.