One Response to “You Can’t Get There From Here”

1. CerberusS
   April 11th, 2008 @ 7:39 pm

   Here’s an honest outline of the war in iraq strategy as I see it…
   1) we invaded for two main reasons
   – to finish the job military hawks wanted to finish with the first gulf war
   – keep democrats on the run by scoring as easy a victory as in Afghanistan, thereby pushing them further up the wall and continue to push the republican agenda

   It had nothing to do with terrorists, something saddam murdered regularly, or even making money. It was only after we invaded that we realized that large sums of cash could easily be poured down the drain and democrats couldn’t call bullshit without being called traitors. We were also given overly positive propaganda (they’ll greet us as liberators) from the iraqi exiles that wanted to get back to power (Iyad Alawi being the main one).

   2) after the invasion succeeded and we took over the country, things immediately went down the crap chute. It began with the massive looting by people suddenly being “free”. Secondly, similar to what we did in Germany, we removed all Baathist people from power. Since under saddam they were the ones running the country (and the military), there was a sudden massive vacuum that was mostly filled with Shi-ite people (those exiles from step 1) who weren’t in the country for years/decades and didn’t know how to run anything. This is one of the main reasons why we have so many contractors in the country – all the people that knew how to run a country were either Baathist that were removed, didn’t want to share power with Shi-ite’s, or were being hunted in the card deck.

   3) insurgency began not with the terrorists but the now out-of-work and disbanded Sunni army, which wasn’t paid any retirement. They were being threatened (and killed) by the newly empowered Shi-ite groups (that now had guns and badges), so they had nothing to lose. There were revenge killings mainly done by Shi-ite death squads (i.e. uniformed government murdurers). Kurds in the meanwhile saw this as a great opportunity to break off from Iraq to form their own northern block. They milked saddam’s crimes against them (even though they rebelled and were put down in a manner not too unlike the american civil war).

   4) terrorists eventually got in on the act, mainly because price of explosives were cheaper than price of milk (still is). They drove the UN out of the country (which hasn’t returned). Alawi and other former exiles were too incompetent and greedy to run the country properly and they left ship after stealing as much money as they could.

   5) Muqtada Al Sadr was consolidating his forces and had a friendly relationship with Americans at the time. Shi-ites were popular and everyone supported them against the bad Sunni’s – we supported the schism that formed

   6) after the insurgency didn’t die down, the next step was to bring everyone together to reconcile differences. It won’t work due to decades (centuries?) of hatred and revenge killings. Kurds got the best deal of all three groups and their northern province is its own country in all but name (though Kurdistan is making its rounds).

   7) The surge was initialled tried to be shot down by mainly democrats saying it won’t fix the violence. Once it has (which will always work if you put an armed gun with itchy fingers at every door – see Berlin in early 1940’s: almost no crime), the next problem was no political reconciliation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Meanwhile, Al Sadr is gaining popularity and no high ranking Shi-ite clerics are standing up to him

   8) While all of this is happening, Saudi Arabia is trying to consolidate power in the region, trying even to fix Israeli-Palestinian relations (to no avail). It’s pressuring the US to contain Iran (its religious enemy). It’s often funny to find reports saying Iran is feeding the insurgency along with Syria, but nobody mentions Turkey (feeding Kurds) or Saudi Arabia (feeding Sunni’s).

   So we’re stuck. The politicians in Iraq don’t have the power needed to control the whole country (which is why saddam was useful, it was BECAUSE he had absolute power instead of brokering century-old squabbles between tribes). We don’t want to leave since it’ll signal failure like we had in Vietnam even though it turned out well in the long run. We don’t want to stay because of the whole wasting money and lives (in that order) thing. We also invested many billions building large military bases there.

   This is a secret plan and I believe it may even have been there in the beginning. There are only two major military areas in the region: Germany (Rammstein) and Japan (Okinawa I think). Since North Korea, Iran, and China are our biggest enemies right now (ranked from small to large), we need an “expendable” base. We can’t risk hurting our friends in Germany and Japan and our current military bases in nearby Arab countries (UAE) aren’t reliable if their political situation changes, we need a solid base that’s close to China. Bonus since Russia is there as well, which is why those missle plans aren’t working out too well. Extra bonus that oil is there as well. Super extra bonus that we can protect Israel by effectively surrounding most muslim countries in the region. Oh and Pakistan is also near by, our next enemy (since we’re sure as hell supporting India over Pakistan partly to counter-balance China).

   So good luck to us all.

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