The Parable of the Three I's: Iraq, Iran & Israel (Part I)
It's a Friday night rant.
I've had a cluster-fooked up day and I can say any damned thing I want to. While the Silver Bullets in the fridge last, anyways.
So here's the deal.
This fookingwar occupation is costing us Americans 10 erased or ruined lives and $177,000,000 each day it goes on. Bush has no surge strategy. It's just a urge & splurge gimmick to deliver the mess to a Democrat president. It's no plan; it's just an attitude. That's why it's so mercurial and changing. But the principle is always the same: hold the slo-bleed course until December 2008.
Enough is enough. It is time to leave Iraq-Nam. Past time.
What are we defending? The puppet Maliki (government) we had them Iraqis elect at the point of our guns? Who won the contests of the purple thumbs? the Shiites? Okay: turn everything over to the Shiites. They're sufficiently armed and trained. They may have poorly regulated militias but they're more regulated than 90% of the N.R.A. in our country. (And we know the N.R.A. is the fountainhead of American Liberty.)
And fook the Sunnis. Let Allah sort them out. They're the ones we're always find sleeping with the al Qaeda, right?
Them Shia are too closely aligned with Iranians? Well, deal with the Iranians then: talk, negotiate and collaborate with the Persians. After all, there were no Persians on the 9-11 attacks, right? As a matter of fact, thousands of Iranians publicly demonstrated sympathy for us after 9-11. As a matter of fact, Iranian government assisted us in Afghanistan and offered assistance to us immediately after Bush's invasion of Iraq. So, what's stopping us from detente with Iran?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........
I've had a cluster-fooked up day and I can say any damned thing I want to. While the Silver Bullets in the fridge last, anyways.
So here's the deal.
This fooking
Enough is enough. It is time to leave Iraq-Nam. Past time.
What are we defending? The puppet Maliki (government) we had them Iraqis elect at the point of our guns? Who won the contests of the purple thumbs? the Shiites? Okay: turn everything over to the Shiites. They're sufficiently armed and trained. They may have poorly regulated militias but they're more regulated than 90% of the N.R.A. in our country. (And we know the N.R.A. is the fountainhead of American Liberty.)
And fook the Sunnis. Let Allah sort them out. They're the ones we're always find sleeping with the al Qaeda, right?
Them Shia are too closely aligned with Iranians? Well, deal with the Iranians then: talk, negotiate and collaborate with the Persians. After all, there were no Persians on the 9-11 attacks, right? As a matter of fact, thousands of Iranians publicly demonstrated sympathy for us after 9-11. As a matter of fact, Iranian government assisted us in Afghanistan and offered assistance to us immediately after Bush's invasion of Iraq. So, what's stopping us from detente with Iran?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........
It's Israel, isn't it?
posted by Vigilante at 4/20/2007 07:39:00 PM
25 Moderated Comments:
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You should invite Adolph Coors in to become a regular contributor to the Vigil.
And on top of everything, we are now in the ghetto-building business.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/for-their-own-good.html
Skip, Can you help me understand your comment? I'm not sure how to interpret it.
Thanks.
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Israel can stand up for itself:
Top Ten By Combat Power
1. United States
2. China
3. Israel
4. India
5. Russia
6. Korea, South
7. Korea, North
8. United Kingdom
9. Turkey
10. Pakistan
Note to Skip Sievert: This is moderated weblog. The expression of diverse opinions is celebrated. Since Blogger's software unfortunately does not permit editing comments as to length, spam will be deleted in its entirety.
fuck you
Israel should invest as much in regional diplomacy as it has in its regional defense. Israel has a right to exist. But it is not a good neighbor.
It has been dysfunctional for its West Bank colonies to control Israeli policies, just as it has been dysfunctional for AIPAC to frame U.S. policy in the M.E.
One has to ask what the difference is between India joining the nuclear club and Iran membership. The answer is Israel.
On diplomacy addressing Palestine. It's overloading the fragile circuitry in the Middle East to let the burden of providing 'the good offices' and brokering communication to and from Israel to Jordan. Condi Rice should be allowed to be aggressive on this front. Is she being restrained from doing so?
Vigil's simplistic Friday night rant omits any reference or consideration of the Kurdish-Turkey question.
While I think we need to get out of Iraq, I think we need to pursue a diplomatic solution while we're on the way out.
Bush wouldn't know diplomacy if it spit at him, unfortuneately.
Tom, Diplomacy?
That's the whole point. With whom do we negotiate? Until we announce a date-certain, and start a withdrawal, the REAL political entities and power brokers within Iraq will not emerge.
Vigil, on "ruined lives" of U.S. military, Reuters reports that according to the General Accounting Office, of the nearly 24,000 wounded soldiers returning from Iraq about a third suffer from some degree of traumatic brain injury (TBI). That's 8,000 lives.
Well, messenger, I don't think we should stop looking for diplomatic solutions. Rep. Henry Waxman was among Pelosi's delegates and gave a brief overview of the situation (vigilante, pardon me for repeating myself). I couldn't agree more with your comment about the complexity of this situation.
...
Olmert is very unpopular in Israel: his popularity is estimated at 3% with a 5% margin of error because he didn’t defeat Hezbollah. The air strikes were insufficient, and the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia actually cheered the Shiite Hezbollah for standing up to Israel. Olmert is worried about the Syrian buildup in the Golan Heights, which he feels Israel must counter with its own military buildup, and that Syria would in turn misread this as an act of aggression and start a war, as happened in the Six Day War [1967].
The delegation met with Mahmoud Abbas, whom everyone hoped would lead Palestine. He’s willing to work with Israel, but he’s too afraid of Hamas to clamp down. He said that it was Bush who insisted on the Palestinian elections. Why? Because Bush is “bringing democracy to the Middle East.” This short-sightedness brought about the rise of Hamas [in the leadership of the Palestinian Authority], leading to a Palestinian civil war. The “unity government” [between Hamas and Fatah] is very unstable.
The leaders of Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine are all very weak. Hezbollah has its own army that is stronger than the that of the Lebanese government. Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese leader who stood up to the Syrians, was killed. Lebanon [not Syria or any other country] must call for the tribunal to investigate his assassination, but the leader in the position to do so, Nabi Beri, a pro-Syrian Lebanese Christian, is blocking it.
Bashir Assad is the secular Shiite leader of mostly Sunni Syria, which is a fascist police state: one that is more amenable to Christians than an Islamic fundamentalist state. The Syrian economy has not been working since the fall of the Soviet Union. Syria has replaced the USSR with Saudi Arabia as its trading partner, but the Saudis are angry about the Hariri killing. [Syria backs the most radical elements of Hamas and Hezbollah.] The country then turned to Iran when no one else was available, but Syria’s not happy about “belonging to Iran.”
...
The convoluted problems that chracterize the Middle East makes us all wonder how we can begin to make diplomatic overtures, but America is under obligation to work with other countries and try to heal the confusion.
With the mess we've created in Iraq, and the British dividing the Middle East in the early 20th Century, the West must perservere towards peace, no matter how difficult.
First, however, I think we all agree that America must redeploy our troops to prove to the Muslim world we are making an effort. Thanks to Shrub & Co., we have well earned the world's distrust.
I knew as soon as I looked at my completed post that I would draw demerits for my sins of omission. I'm just relieved that I was graded by Stella, someone with judicious and complete standards.
She is quite correct in pointing out that the resolution of Bush's blunderfest in Iraq is a regional diplomatic solution. (A military contribution is not likely to make a significant contribution - at least from our side - because Anglo-American ground forces are currently ground up and will be for a foreseeable future.) But this was all laid out in the Iraq Study Group (ISG) white paper which president Cheney has chosen to ignore.
My whole point was, in addition to the above, Iraqi problems have to be resolved by Iraqis. All or most of the governments in the region may be considered as in varying degrees weak or dislikeable governments, as Stella lays out. But of all of these, by far the weakest is the quisling Maliki government. "Quisling", in the sense of its collaboration with the uninvited occupier. Maliki's government has no mandate of representing Iraq; it has an outside chance of expanding its constituency only as it openly defies the wishes of the occupying Anglo-American coalition. Look upon it as nothing more than a gaggle of life-boats cobbled together in a network of moorings we call the Green Zone. Under it and all around it are sub-surface Shiite and Sunni militia and war lords who are the true political brokers of power. Together they constitute a 24-7 presence. They are not spending summer vacations from March to November in Europe. They will not emerge, and make their demands and form their alliances until or unless a date certain is announced. They are the ultimate arbiters of this situation, and they will ultimately have to be dealt with, no matter how long the bitter enders of the Bush slow-bleeders hold out.
That's really nice of you, messenger. Actually, I can't take credit for the breakdown on the Middle East: I went to see Rep. Henry Waxman speak, and he explained the entire situation.
Of course, Cheney ignored the ISG, considering his stock in the military contractor, Hallburton, rose approximately 3000% since 2003. I don't have the facts for KBR, the subsidiary.
But of all of these, by far the weakest is the quisling Maliki government. "Quisling", in the sense of its collaboration with the uninvited occupier. That's the exact point. The only solution I see is that America must engage in diplomacy with the Shiite and Sunni militia while we slowly withdraw our troops.
You captured this aspect of the Iraq mess perfectly, messenger. Thanks for the education.
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I saw a report on the ghetto building wall that m.d. mentioned the army wants to build around some Iraqi neighborhoods and got a really sick feeling in my stomach. Could not help but remember what the Poles did in similar walled off areas in WW2. Hearing that our little hamster Maliki took issue with it only made it worse. In what has been a long series of really stupid decisions in this entire war this one could be the one that may actually solve the sectarian divide in Iraq uniting everyone there in throwing us out. And given the vote of confidence the Ferret gave Gonzo after his nonsensical testimony in Congress Bush might be stupid enough to claim our being thrown out by everyone in Iraq as progress.
What's the matter with all you people?! We have had several really marvelous examples of Our Mighty Leader's mightiness in the past few days.
For one thing, he has comforted us by assuring us that he not only was proud of Gonzales's appearance before the Senate committee; he is even more impressed with the AG's grasp of what he was asked and what he was answering as examples of the stellar manner in which he has run his department.
At the same time, his good friend Woolfowitz continues to grow in the Master's regard through the way in which he is defending his personal life at the expense of others, even now struggling heroically to keep from being ousted by others at the World Bank.
As far as diplomacy is concerned, if you are the Leader, you don't diplome. Malaki was chosen by the Leader to set up the Leader's choice as a government. That is why the Leader is essentially still running the government of Iraq.
On a VERY SERIOUS NOTE, however, if Our Master vetoes the bill presented by Congress, as he will, I have sent messages to both leaders urging that if there is to be no date certain for getting out, THEY SHOULD INSIST THAT A DRAFT BE INSTITUTED IMMEDIATELY, AND THAT THAT SHOULD BE THEIR FINAL OFFER.
My cousin's in the unit that got hit today. Word won't come for 24 hours. This is a very scary time.
Nothing in this war is good. Nothing in this war has a purpose. No one has answered ny questions about what we're doing there. Our E being wasted, and I won't be taking back that term like Obama did. Just because we have a volunteer army doesn't mean we can use them indescriminantly. I don't know how close any of you are to DC, but there's a Mopther's March against the war on May 14th, starting at Lafayette Park at noon.
UWL, Bush will see to it that this meat grinder will not run out of cannon fodder until 2009. Expect more hamburger.
I agree with Stella. We should never give up on diplomatic solutions. War should only be a last resort.
Vigilante,
You reckon it's Israel? Agree.
To be more specific, it's the hardline Israelis that's 'vaguely' the root cof US' non-detente with the Iranians.
Paul Wolfowitz and some of his close friends may not be entirely foreign to all the shenanigans.
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