"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

from Fareed Zakaria in Time

"Those urging the U.S. to intervene in Syria are certain of one thing: If we had intervened sooner, things would be better in that war-torn country. Had the Obama Administration gotten involved earlier, there would be less instability and fewer killings. We would not be seeing, in John McCain's words of April 28, "atrocities that are on a scale that we have not seen in a long, long time."

In fact, we have seen atrocities much worse than those in Syria very recently, in Iraq under U.S. occupation only few years ago. From 2003 to 2012, despite there being as many as 180,000 American and allied troops in Iraq, somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 Iraqi civilians died and about 1.5 million fled the country. Jihadi groups flourished in Iraq, and al-Qaeda had a huge presence there. The U.S. was about as actively engaged in Iraq as is possible, and yet more terrible things happened there than in Syria. Why?

The point here is not to make comparisons among atrocities. The situation in Syria is much like that in Iraq--and bears little resemblance to that in Libya--so we can learn a lot from our experience there. Joshua Landis, the leading scholar on Syria, points out that it is the last of the three countries of the Levant where minority regimes have been challenged by the majority. In Lebanon, the Christian elite were displaced through a bloody civil war that started in the 1970s and lasted 15 years. In Iraq in 2003, the U.S. military quickly displaced the Sunni elite, handing the country over to the Shi'ites--but the Sunnis have fought back ferociously for almost a decade. Sectarian killings persist in Iraq to this day."

In between naps, I've been rewatching the DS9 series.
( Read more... )

Despite the reading for class, I managed to get through a few more titles recently ( Read more... )

23/50: Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq by Patrick Cockburn. ( Read more... )

I'm trying to avoid posting all the maundering blah that's going through my mind, as I don't want to increase the worldwide incidence of depression and suicide. :-)

Instead I'll yammer about books, my bike, my new doctor, and the ever-present little metal men.( Read more... )

The problem with the Bush Administration, in one sentence:

from the Washington Post's excellent series on the White House's change of Iraq War strategy

[After a description of the way Bush browbeat a reluctant, almost rebellious Joint Chiefs of Staff into accepting the surge.] Still, Bush fully understood the power of his office.

"Generally," he said, "when the commander-in-chief walks in and says, done deal, they say, 'Yes sir, Mr. President.' "

Yes, of course. You don't listen to trained professionals, the top men in their field, when they tell you that what you are doing is dangerous, irresponsible, or unlikely to succeed. You jsut overrule them.

I think someone else did this too. And, as Bush will undoubtedly do (given that, within narrow parameters,t eh surge *did* work), drew the wrong lessons from some lucky guesses on his part early in his career of second-guessing.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article about "that other news story" that has been losing out in the public's concern about gas prices and politics...

from the International Herald Tribune:

"Using old fashioned behind the scenes politicking, Iraq's parliamentary leaders pushed through three divisive laws that had been held up for months by bitter maneuvering between factions and, recently, threats to dissolve the legislative body. ...

Passage of the measures represent a significant achievement for the Iraqi Parliament, which on many days could not muster a quorum. The approach of voting on the three laws together broke the logjam because it allowed every group to boast that they had a win. Leaders of the blocs - Shiite, Sunni and Kurd - realized that while no one of the laws could pass on its own, together, they offered something for each political constituency. So factions would swallow the measures they liked less in order to get the one they wanted."

But,

"However, embedded in each of the measures are the same problems that created the controversy in the first place. For instance, on the budget, the size of the Kurdish share has merely been deferred for a year. The 17 percent agreement is only for this year; next year it will be renegotiated and there is a strong push to reduce their share.

On the provincial powers law, which includes a requirement that elections be held next fall, there are serious problems with the election commission both at the national and provincial level, raising questions about whether a vote will be viewed as fair or merely deepen divisions among and within sects. Worries about that could end up delaying the elections.

And still left out of the political bargain are the newly formed Awakening Councils, which are predominantly Sunni and in many cases represent powerful tribes. They have taken the lead in fighting extremist Sunni groups, and now their leaders are clambering for a place at the table. They are outraged that the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Sunni but has limited grass-roots support, dominates the provincial council in Anbar."

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on our losses in Iraq.

“I won't tell you everything is great in Iraq; it is not. But we want to keep a steady flow of funds so that we don't disrupt the military,” said McConnell. “Unfortunately, most of our friends on the other [side of the a]isle are having a hard time admitting things are getting better; some days I almost think the critics of this war don't want us to win. Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."

So, I guess if you volunteered (even if it was for the National Guard or Reserve, not the active-duty military), then it doesn't matter so much if you die...

(I've added my own edit to see if I can repair his broken English; unless he really *meant* to refer tot he UK...)