Did conservatives ever say mea culpa re:nationbuilding?

Tsk Tsk, outlaw. You did read the reports, didn't you? Saddam was working our war beliefs against us. ieutting his weapons and what not in hospitals and hotels, rather than barracks.

Can't say I blame him, but you can't say we were wrong in trying to get this war over with as quickly as possible.

Hell, for Bill Maher to go on Jay Leno and admit he was wrong should at least have some weight with the liberals on this board, but who knows?

It all depends on your hatred of all right-wing views, huh?

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...1,501416.story?coll=la-headlines-world-manual

NEWS ANALYSIS
U.S. Struggles in Quicksand of Iraq
Continuing disorder is fueling skepticism and allowing competing political forces to fill the void.


By Alissa J. Rubin, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — Nearly a month after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, the reconstruction effort is struggling to gain visibility and credibility, crime is a continuing problem, Iraqis desperate for jobs and security are becoming angry and the transition to democracy promised by President Bush seems rife with risk.

The continuing disorder in a country accustomed to the repressive but absolute stability provided by Saddam Hussein is fueling at least a deep skepticism about U.S. intentions and at worst a dangerous anti-Americanism. As competing religious, tribal and territorial political forces move to fill the void, they threaten to divide the country rather than unite it.

Interviews with political analysts, exile figures and ordinary Iraqis throughout the country, coupled with developments on the ground, indicate that the United States' power to control Iraq and shape its future is increasingly threatened by the pervasive uncertainty.

On many fronts, U.S. officials appear to have been unprepared for what awaited them in Iraq, from mundane concerns such as how to cope with the lack of telephones to philosophical questions such as how to respond to the desire of many Iraqis for an Islamic state.

"The Americans and the British became obsessed with getting rid of Saddam; they thought he was responsible for all the catastrophes in Iraq," said Wamid Nadmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "But they have opened a Pandora's box."

U.S. officials say they are aware that time is of the essence.

"We're moving as fast as we can," said Lewis Lucke, reconstruction chief for retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the interim administrator. "I don't ever think it's fast enough."

U.S. officials point out that electricity is on again in much of the country; oil is being pumped in the southern fields; and many police, fire and emergency workers have been given a $20 stipend and are returning to their jobs. There have been numerous local success stories as well, with individual U.S. military commanders helping to reopen schools and protecting public facilities from looters.

But often, U.S. officials seem stymied by the competing imperatives to get the country running while not appearing to be a dictatorial occupying force. Efforts to restore security, revive services, begin reconstruction and set up a new government are encountering difficulty.

For instance:

• The looting that began the day after Hussein's regime fell has yet to end. On Sunday, a crowd stormed into one of the palaces recently left unprotected by U.S. soldiers. Without a true police force in place, the wide-scale stealing has spawned a culture of lawlessness. Gun markets flourish on Baghdad's back streets, and armed robberies and carjackings have become common.

• Garner's Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, responsible for running the country, has yet to make its presence felt. With mass media in the capital limited to two radio stations, the office hasn't figured out how to communicate with the Iraqi people. There is no U.S. government office accessible to ordinary Iraqis.

• Many key contracts for rebuilding Iraq were not awarded until after the war started, and many contractors are waiting in hotels in Kuwait for the green light from the U.S. military that it is safe to enter the country.

• As the U.S. tries to help set up a new Iraqi government, the exile groups that many U.S. officials hoped Iraqis would rally around have won little popular support. Meanwhile, the organizations that are showing political strength — including some Shiite Muslim groups backed by Iran — are potentially hostile to U.S. aims.

Although the reconstruction effort is only weeks old, the Bush administration is already stressing that it would like to shift to an Iraqi-led government as soon as possible. At the same time, the lack of a visible American presence has sown doubts about U.S. intentions and frustrated ordinary Iraqis.

Few if any people here have even heard of Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, who has kept such a low profile as to be almost invisible. Last week he issued a proclamation saying he was the lead authority and forbidding looting, reprisals and criminal activity. But it was never widely distributed, and few people even know about it.

As for Garner and his staff, they are just beginning to communicate with the public. Their few reconstruction steps — including giving out money to returning workers — have yet to be applied evenly throughout Iraq.

In Nasiriyah on Sunday, teachers demanded to be paid, and the newly constituted city council threatened to quit unless salaries were distributed to all government workers.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell predicted Sunday that progress would accelerate. "As stability is gained throughout the country and security is obtained, and as the various ministries come back up online, more and more other sorts of organizations will come in," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "U.N. organizations, nongovernmental organizations, lots of our friends and allies will be sending in peacekeeping forces So there is a transition taking place."

But Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed frustration Sunday over reconstruction in general and reports of infighting between the State Department and the Pentagon over rebuilding plans.

"This has had to proceed perhaps sort of on the run, but long ago in our committee we asked for people to give us some idea of how the organization might proceed, and the ideas were fairly sketchy," Lugar said on CNN's "Late Edition." "They are far too sketchy now."

More than anywhere, it is on the political front that the U.S. faces problems. The country is a barely intact jigsaw puzzle of competing groups divided by religion, tribal affiliation and ethnicity.

Washington's main entry to Iraq was via the exile groups it had sponsored in Britain and the United States. While those groups are organized and speak in the American idiom of democracy and governance, they have little support among the Iraqi public.

"They are the worst gamble the Americans could make," said Maher Abdullah, an anchor for the Al Jazeera satellite television channel who has followed Iraq for years. "Everybody's image here is that they are CIA agents. Whether that's true or false, it's what people believe. Secondly, most of these guys have been away for years. They don't know anything about the country, about people's day-to-day priorities."

That skepticism was on display at Friday prayers in the heavily Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad formerly known as Saddam City. As more than 20,000 men prepared their prayer mats for services, Gaylan Tayr, a writer, stood with several friends and rattled off the names of the exile political groups supported by U.S. officials.

"These parties are all new, and we don't know anything about them. They may be set up by the Americans, so how can we trust them? How can we vote for them?" he said.

As exile groups have sought to create power bases, some have sent signals that they make their own law. They have been traveling with heavily armed bodyguards and in some cases have appropriated homes and buildings for their own use.

A recent meeting of five exile leaders at a downtown Baghdad hotel looked like a scene out of "The Godfather, Part II." Snipers leaned out windows, and the pavement outside was lined with bodyguards who bristled with automatic weapons. A small group of U.S. troops, who escorted the heavily armed exiles to the hotel, was also on hand.

While U.S. officials have spoken repeatedly about the importance of indigenous Iraqi leaders, those who have broad recognition are primarily religious figures who, to varying degrees, support an Islamic government for Iraq. One of the first arrests made by U.S. forces in Baghdad was that of Sheik Mohammed Fartusi, a rising religious figure who is backed by the powerful Al Hawza movement, a Shiite Muslim group. It was unclear why he was detained.

Although the troops let him go within a few hours, the incident appalled many Shiites and raised Fartusi's profile.

With the U.S. giving limited attention to any indigenous figures, exiles are increasingly confident that they will dominate the next phase of government in Iraq.

"The Americans have realized that the much-talked-about Iraqi leadership who was to emerge from within is largely mythical," said Zaab Sethna, a spokesman for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that has strong backing among some Pentagon officials and has received funding from the State Department. "That's led them back to the Iraqi opposition, and they do see the Iraqi opposition as the nucleus for a new transitional government."

The Kurdish political parties, who have ruled northern Iraq as a de facto independent area outside of Hussein's control since the early 1990s, also see little role for indigenous leaders. They have proposed that half the delegates at the National Assembly scheduled for the end of May to choose a transitional government be from exile organizations.

While U.S. attention is focused on this kind of political maneuvering, other groups with little if any allegiance to Washington are quietly gaining ground in Baghdad's slums, the Shiite Muslim south of the country and Sunni Muslim tribal areas.

Rather than attempting to form political parties, these groups have made the strategic political decision to make themselves indispensable to their people.

Within 10 days of Baghdad's fall, for instance, mosques began providing crucial services — including water distribution, garbage collection and security guards — that Americans have been unable to organize.

Religious leaders are asserting control over an increasing number of institutions. Walk into any clinic in the former Saddam City and someone will quickly introduce himself as an emissary from the Al Hawza movement. The Shiite Muslim organization, based in the holy city of Najaf, encompasses an array of well-funded charitable organizations. A number of Iraqis believe the group is funded in part by Iran. The group also has connections to a number of Muslim leaders, some with political ambitions.

So far, U.S. officials appear to have had little contact with Shiite groups inside Iraq. An exile Shiite group was added only recently to the inner circle of organizations with which the Americans are working.

Without involving Shiites, it is unlikely that the U.S. will be able to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis, analysts say. Although Shiites are hardly monolithic in their views, they make up roughly 60% of the country.

"One day, the Americans will have to hold elections, and it's clear the Shiites will sweep the polls," said Nadmi, the political scientist. "Americans are selective about the democracy they want. They want democracy that suits their interests and values."

The only potential countervailing force, analysts say, are the supporters of Hussein's Baath Party who used to run the country. They know how to organize people, they have a political base and they have concrete administrative knowledge.

For the U.S., an alliance with the Baathists would be a double-edged sword. Without them, it would be hard to get the country running, but working with them would thrust the Americans right into the arms of the people they just ousted from power. It also would feed distrust among Iraqis at large about government agencies.

For the moment, U.S. officials are trying to have it both ways with the Baathists. To get the country's electrical network, telephone system and ministries running again, U.S. officials are working with middle managers from the party. The Americans say that these bureaucrats are apolitical and that only the top Iraqi ministers were tainted by their links to Hussein.

Others, however, say the situation is not so clear-cut.

"We've made it very clear to Garner and the U.S. government that it's a bad mistake to bring Baathists back into a position of power. That's the fastest way to spawn anti-Americanism," said Sethna, the Iraqi National Congress spokesman. "The U.S. can't tell the bad guys from the good guys, and there are many, many people who are tainted by the former regime and who were corrupt. And I don't think the U.S. is even looking at that."

Compounding the problem is the fact that many contractors hired by the U.S. have yet to arrive in Iraq or are just setting up their operations.

North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute was hired April 11 by the U.S. Agency for International Development to help create 180 local and provincial governments in Iraq. Under a contract worth as much as $167 million, one of RTI's immediate tasks is to help identify "appropriate, legitimate" Iraqis to assume key government posts in villages and towns.

But the nonprofit group's first representatives arrived in Baghdad only Wednesday. In their absence, people ranging from former Baathists to pro-Iranian spiritual leaders have assumed government positions.

In another case, DynCorp, a subsidiary of El Segundo-based Computer Sciences Corp., won a $150-million contract to train a new Iraqi police force. But the contract was awarded just two weeks ago, and the firm has yet to be allowed into the country because the U.S. military considers Iraq too dangerous for DynCorp staff to set up shop.

In the meantime, crime is rife and many businesses are afraid to open. The country feels stalled, and Americans are being blamed. Many Iraqis predict it will be difficult for Americans to improve things and break the cycle of dysfunction, let alone win popular support.

"The Americans promised us jobs, security and safety and none of those have materialized," said Abid Ali Kubaisi, a silk merchant in the Euphrates River town of Fallouja, who shut down his business for fear it would be pillaged.

"People who have no jobs are going to fight, they are going loot, and everyone here has their own weapons," he said.

 

wow...i really figured the rebuilding of Iraq would go off hassle-free...clean and easy. this is so unexpected that there might be problems. i figured in less than 30 days, we'd have all of the iraqis' problems solved for them!

 

Oh yeah, and on the cooperating Iraqis and WMDs:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...7348412.story?coll=la-headlines-nation-manual

AFTER THE WAR
Iraqi Scientists Cautiously Consider Surrender
Several senior weapons experts call former U.N. inspectors, seeking guidance on whether to give themselves up.

They don't trust the US, they think they'll be imprisoned indefinitely without due process for some reason.

 

The official government line is months not years. They only asked for enough money in the budget for six months. They wouldn't lie, would they?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64457-2003Apr20.html

 

Interim Iraqi leaders are already being selected, vestiges of a democratic process are being established in Mosul, and Iraqis will run the Oil ministry (although a former head of Shell will chair what is essentially a corporate board, NPR speculates that vetos are unlikely to be used).

Wow. All about oil?

 

We could avoid a lot of hassle by working with the people we don't want to, which is the muslim clerics. Just fund them, keep a nice fat blackmail file, and use them to control the people. When they step out of line, expose them.

Doesn't seem that complicated to me, and I believe that installing unpopular expatriates will only do us harm.

 

do you honestly expect that within 30 days we'd have crime and the economy whipped?? hell, we don't have crime and the economy whipped here in America!

 

I think the goal is to take away some of the populust power of those muslim clerics. They have power because they offer something to the people (albeit spiritual and not physical) when no one else if offereing them anything. If the standard of living can be raised in Iraq I think you'll find that fundamentalism will not be able to maintain a very strong hold over the people. Unlike, say, the Catholic church, there is no central strong leadership among Muslims. It seems that any old cleric can issue whatever fatwah he wants and it seems that many people choose to be clerics for the power it brings them (not unlike people becoming priests in the Middle Ages or people becoming Eunichs in the Forbidden City).

If Muslim populations get firmly put into the middle class you will find far fewer extremists. And I think that is the ultimate "imperialistic" goal of the U.S. (consistant through many presidencies): to get the rest of the world's populations (or at least most of them) firmly into the middle class. You get two benifits: One is that when people are content you get little social unrest (look at the U.S. for example - no revolutions any time soon I would imagine) and the other is that you end up with lots of consumers to sell things to. It's kind of like the Matrix - make everyone content in their own little world and no one will complain that they are being used for batteries.

It's why we support NAFTA and the EU. It's why fighting AIDS in Africa is so important. It's why we have a very friendly policy towards China (as opposed to the hostile policy we had toward the Soviets). It's the ultimate way to defeat totalitarianism and communism.

 

Corrupt the muslim clerics, turn them into the kind of lackeys we installed in South America. It will help discredit theocracy, and lead to other forms of government more suitable to U.S. interests.

Either way, at this point they're going to hate any government we force on them. So you let them have what they think they want, when in fact it's just puppets.



You tell us to stop dreaming, so I propose a machiavellian plan that favors U.S. interests and now people get squeamish. I'm getting conflicting signals here.

 

We can't even get Afghanistan right, which really sucks. Thought Afghanistan would be simpler in some ways, but they don't have oil and we have to bootstrap them out of the bronze age.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...an_lat,1,4496972.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Afghan Government Workers Unpaid; Foreign Aid Lacking

WAR ON TERRORISM


By Chris Kraul and Najib Murshed, Special to The Times


KABUL, Afghanistan -- Government workers, some of whom have not been paid in three months, took to the streets of downtown Kabul today in a rare public protest against the Hamid Karzai administration, a demonstration that also spoke to the dire financial straits in which the nation is struggling.

Up to 300 workers gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture and Information to protest not having received their salaries, which in most cases amount to just $34 a month. Karzai officials acknowledged today that the country is acutely short of cash, and has not completely met its payroll in months.

"Worse than not being paid is that the government now says it will lay us off because there already are too many workers,' said Abdul Muqeem, a 43-year old employee in the transportation ministry.
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The government's main hope in getting a better grip on its finances lies in a plan to disarm the militias over the coming year and putting its new Afghan National Army and national police force in place to control of border stations and tax collections.

For the 15 months ended in March, international donors delivered $1.9 billion of the $2.1 billion in grant money they pledged at the Tokyo conference in January 2002 to map out Afghan assistance plans. At a meeting of donor countries in Brussels in March, about $1.9 billion was pledged to Afghanistan for the 12- month period that began in this March.

That money is low compared with past international aid efforts to crisis-stricken countries. At $64 per capita, disbursements to Afghanistan last year were one third those given to East Timor and a fourth the total given to Kosovo from 1999 to 2001. Afghan donations were one third those made to Rwanda in 1994.

Karzai's budget -- and employees like Muqeem -- has been negatively affected by the fact that much of the money promised him for operations and development budgets ended up going to emergency relief for the 2 million refugees who arrived back in Afghanistan last year, an exodus that overwhelmed relief agencies.

Moreover, even the modest customs and tax collections his government targeted were undershot.. As a result, Karzai ended up spending about $80 million less than the $460 million that his government budgeted for operations last year.

"We will tell the provinces from now on to send the money they collect to us first and they will be given what they need by the central bank," said deputy finance minister Rahimy. "Naturally they might not be happy about this but I am sure the government will solve the problem when they talk about it."

 

They actually do offer someting physical and mental as well. I heard on NPR that they have been organizing groups, removing garbage from residential neighborhoods that has been piling up for some time, bringing in supplies to people, and patrolling to stop looters. Elsewhere in the ME they have shcools for orphans and the poor. They provide these services and people respect that and thus they gain a following.

I kind of agree with Heretic, about working with them, but not corrupting them. If the U.S. got together with them went to the neighborhoods removed rubbish, repaired things, bring in the corps of engineers to make repairs to the citizens areas, and some of the ill will might disappear. If you are working with the clerics they won't preach against you so much.

Doing these things is not only good PR it lessens the resentment and makes our troops safer over there.

P.S. This all about solutions, and isn't arguing politics, so I'm still off of that kick for a bit more at least.

 

OK, a conservative says we are f'ing up. Maybe this is as close as they will come to saying mea culpa:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_05_04_dish_archive.html#200248128

CHAOS AND AMERICA: There was some excuse for the anarchy that broke out immediately upon the liberation of Iraq. We didn't want to look like an imperial power or an occupier; and some of the pent-up frustration after decades of tyranny was probably foolish to try and restrain. But a month later, those excuses are wearing thin. I'm told that new troops are arriving daily. I know that it will take time to find a credible new government able to represent all the myriad factions in the country. But chaos is still chaos; and anarchy, as Hobbes understood, is an evil that undermines even the posibility of a civil space. This quote today from the Washington Post is worrying:
"We're glad to hear what Mr. Bush is saying about the future, but the future is a long time. We want the present," said Mustafa As Badar, an executive at an oil drilling company. "We want them to handle this like Americans."
Exactly. Iraq needs order. We'll get criticized for being too heavy-handed whatever we do. So why aren't American troops in large numbers being deployed to keep the peace, restore order and exercise credible authority? If we do not show our commitment now to the country, what message are we sending a future Iraqi government about our commitment to a stable and long-lasting democracy?

 

This is worse than Compton, geez.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0516/p01s03-woiq.html

In Baghdad, a surge in homicides

The city's morgue has seen a 60 percent rise in gunshot killings over the past 10 days.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – Hamid Turki winced as the emergency-room doctor inspected a wound in his hip. Under the glare of neon lights, his face was pale.
Mr. Turki was the eighth gunshot victim Mohammed Nouri had seen by midnight Wednesday at the Al Kindi Hospital in central Baghdad. The doctor stepped back from his patient and sighed. "We don't have even 1 percent security now," he said.

Five weeks after US troops entered Iraq's capital, reconstruction has taken a backseat to security. "There are a number of problems, in particular the problem of law and order in Baghdad," L. Paul Bremer, the new chief civilian administrator for Iraq, said yesterday. He appeared to be introducing a get-tough policy, pledging the US would beef up infantry and military police forces.
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Disgusted by the looting

Like many Baghdadis, the doctors show little sympathy for the patients they believe to be looters. They try to save their lives, of course, but they are disgusted by the wave of theft that has engulfed their city.

"If the Americans would shoot two or three looters, everything would stop," says Bakr, the director of the Baghdad morgue.

He adds that few offenders have seemed worried about consequences.

"No one feels there is any punishment, and if you escape punishment, you do anything you want, especially the criminals who Saddam let out of jail" before the war, he says.

"People are asking for the old police force to return," comments Zia-Zafiri. "Even though they didn't like them, they think they would be better than nothing.

"The tragedy," he continues, "is that the insecurity creates a climate where people are clamoring for the old enforcers to be brought back."


Sounds like they want a few looters shot, though.

 

OK, this should be the beginning of the end of this thread. After a month of dawdling, they send in more troops. I am uncertain as to why it took them so long, unwillingness to prove Shinseki prophetic? Now that we have half our active duty troops in Iraq, this leaves the other half for Afghanistan and North Korea.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64012-2003May16.html

Army Division Handed Mission of Peace in Iraq
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2003; 1:00 PM


CAMP PENNSYLVANIA, Kuwait, May 16 -- The U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division missed out on the recent war in Iraq, to the disappointment of many of its troops. But this week it began an arguably more important task: helping nail down the U.S. win by reinforcing the occupation and bolstering efforts to restore order and rebuild the country.

This midway phase of the U.S. mission in Iraq -- no longer war but not yet full peace -- got underway a few days ago as the 1st Armored began sending convoys northward from this sweltering outpost in the Kuwaiti desert, where temperatures spike past 110 degrees. By today about half the division's 16,500 troops were either in Baghdad or en route in long dusty columns of Humvees and heavy equipment movers.

In contrast to the many reporters who covered the invasion of Iraq seven weeks ago, no television cameras have recorded their progress and only two reporters are "embedded" at this base. But the mission of the fresh troops is still crucial: To make sure that this war turns out better than the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Both conflicts ended with swift military successes. The task that has been handed the Germany-based 1st Armored Division is to try to secure a lasting peace by achieving a decisive change in Iraq that eluded the United States in 1991.
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Once the division is established in the capital, it will receive additional specialized units -- civil affairs units to work with local authorities, civil engineers to help re-start the Iraqi infrastructure, psychological operations specialists to persuade the populace that the Americans are a benevolent presence.

"I think we have enough troops," said Pope, the operations officer.

In contrast to the war, when some retired generals and active-duty officers maintained that the U.S. force was too small and lacked key elements, such as rear-area security, the post-combat force is big and growing. With the arrival of the 1st Armored Division, about half the combat power of the active-duty Army is in Iraq.

With the passage of time, division officials said, they expect their mission to change somewhat, although they hesitated to provide specifics. One suggested that in a year or so, U.S. forces might leave the capital and move to smaller bases outside the city, in order to make it feel more "normal."

The division has been told to expect to stay in Iraq at least six months and perhaps for as long as a year. This time, they say, the United States will prevail.

 

I call BS on this story!!!!

Saddam was killing hundreds of people of month according to Amnesty International. Those deaths were never reported, because the bodies "disappeared".

I see an incredible net gain, both in lives saved and security for the common Iraqi civilian.

 

Many, many of the deaths AI reports were considered state approved excecutions, not homicides. There was a time in US history, especially out west, when hangings were a very, very regular occurence, and with not much more of a sense of real 'justice' than any of Hussein's supposed coup discovery inspired executions en masse. Remember too that many of the supposed coups he uncovered probably were actual...and, technically, that would consistute treason, which would techinically justify hanging a man just as much as 2 guys saying that the horse you're riding was stolen.

 

I call BS on this story!!!!

Saddam was killing hundreds of people of month according to Amnesty International. Those deaths were never reported, because the bodies "disappeared".

I see an incredible net gain, both in lives saved and security for the common Iraqi civilian.


Except that this was a 60% rise over the previous 10 days, which was also after Hussein was gone. This is an incremental rise since our security took over, indicating that our security policy hasn't been all that effective.

 

John, honest question; you would condone killing to keep the peace?