Civil wars have the nasty tendency to spill across borders. Whether it's the "refugee problem" or guerillas hopping around causing mayhem in its wake. The whole idea of pinning a good or bad on civil wars lies upon the belief that they can be contained (ultimately through intervention). This is the same assumption to the neocon principle of liberating and democratizing nations under its will. With that assumption of a neocon mindset, this civil war proposal is nothing more than a wreckless version of the Domino Theory, where neighboring countries are involved in power plays to assume control over Iraq hence destabilizing the regional and internal politics of the countries involved. It's also cheap for US because we would resume the role of covert influence without sacrificing our troops...until a UN or coalition-based intervention is involved if the shift isn't to our favor. The neocon principle is to "democratize nations under authoritarian regimes". Ironically, an action proposed above would be instituted by despots who shrewdly manipulate regional conflicts to pit enemy against enemy while waiting for the right moment to strike and maintain their ruthless order.
My summary: Things appear to me to be worse now than the 3-5 years prior to our invasion. But the only real answer to this question is to ask Iraqi citizens. Asking shmo BBS'rs is kinda pointless since we aren't there. We are just reacting to what we see on TV which Sean Hannity says has a liberal bias. Note: Even if you ask Iraqi's, I'm sure you won't get a 100% consensus agreement there either. So yes, it is a totally unanswerable question ...that is if you can even define "better."
As with all the current civil wars, it's safe to assume that one in Iraq would affect other countries. The 3 predominant ethnicities vying for influence, and the history of an arbitrarily drawn national border would also weigh in towards a regional conflict. The civil wars you mentioned in the original topic lasted several years and had scars tracing back to the civil war and its causes. Those countries mentioned had the outcome of unification but many other countries weren't as fortunate. Countries like India and Pakistan, the former Yugoslav Republics, or Eritrea and Ethiopia have caused more trouble within their region and for the international community after their civil wars. So asking for a stance whether a civil war in Iraq is good or bad seems ignorant (considering the history and unpredicability of civil wars), or arrogant.
OK, I got it now. Thanks for reexplaining. As with SC's post about the civil wars I mentioned, I'll point out that my comparison with those conflicts was that people had preferred conflict to living under a despot. That's about it. OK, I won't take that as a 'yes' - sorry for the misunderstanding. I'll take it as a 'I don't like the question.' Duly noted. BTW: I didn't ask if it was good or bad. I asked if it was better than living under a despot (with a nod to rimbaud that we haven't established what 'better' means yet - we seem to be going in that direction though).
I am frankly tired of people viewing Iraqis as some sort of historical setpiece to demonstrate the validity of their unfounded ideas about geopolitics. Go ask the people in the Balkans how their ethnic civil war turned out. The same people (Hayestreet is surely not the only one) who are running this "maybe a civil war isn't so bad" garbage up the flagpole are the folks who didn't see the complexity of Iraq in the first place when they were beating the war drums in 2002. Excuse of us if we don't trust your judgment this time.
good point.. saying civil war in iraq is not a bad thing is not any different to saying the iraq war will be cakewalk and we will be greeted as liberators..
Interestingly enough - pretty catastrophic until an intervention by outside powers. Hmmmm, considering that I identified this as a possibility pre-intervention I think your charge of not 'see(ing)' the complexity of Iraq is fairly unfounded. Moreover, that any number of changes in the action itself could have affected a different result belies your predetermined conclusion that an intervention would only go one way. Let's keep in mind that the situation as it currently stands is not the catastrophic envelopment of the region that some have predicted - although that could still happen so could an alternate path. But I'll take that as a 'yes' - better to have remained under Saddam than the current course. Thank you for sharing your opinion!
But again, the Iraqis didn't ask for a civil war. Only the Kurds wanted intervention. If the Iraqis preferred civil war to living under a despot, they could have initiated their own at any point in the last 10 years. They chose not to.
so what's the count now? anyone else think civil war in iraq is possibly a good thing aside from you and fox?
I like writing in shorthand (more out of laziness than brevity), so sometimes perspectives don't match. The "neocon mindset", for example, is the ideal of creating democracies through aggressive intervention policies (occupation as the most extreme) with the assumption that democracy is the self-determined endgame. The next phase of the Neocon plan, after the Iraqis rejoiced with their democracy..., was for the people in neighboring repressive countries rise up and rebel against their leaders. This would be the Domino Theory. When we intervened in Iraq, we skipped the civil war phase and assumed that democracy would be as easy as apple pie. Yet civil war in other countries would be an essential part of the neocon plan. To me, your question has deep strings attached to the neocon goal. For neocons and those who share similar principles, what we did in Iraq would be viewed as a catalyst to ultimate self-determination. A civil war in Iraq would be similarly viewed as civil wars that would've happened in neighboring countries, except for the fact that we'd be the overthrown despot. Yet there would also be positives spun by the neocon faction for eventual control of the region.... P.S. I realize that you don't claim to be a neo-conservative Hayes, but the underpinning mindset is similar.
Possibly so but you can't claim then that Saddam was an artificial impediment. For that matter given that there were many Iraqis who supported Saddam its not he was an impediment to all Iraqis either. What can be said is that we artificially removed the internationally recognized home grown leader of Iraq. So therefore we've created an artificial situation that the Iraqis find themselves in and not something that organically developed out of the Iraqis own actions.
That's because you were one who brought up that the US "removed an artificial impediment." which by definition means something that was imposed and not an organic outgrowth when that isn't the case. This inside outside stuff is central to why you even used the term "artificial" in the first place. You're trying to argue that Saddam blocked what you percieve to be Iraqi self determination when if you know the history of Iraq Saddam actually is a product of Iraqi self determination since the roots of the Baath party come from the resistance against the British and the imposed monarchy. Yes Saddam was an impediment to many Iraqis aspirations. He also was supported by about a third but what is undeniable is that he wasn't an artificial creation. What is artificial is our removal of them. For good (and yes I believe and hope there is good out of this) or ill we, not the Iraqis, created this situation.
Bah. I think the argument that if you want to overthrow a despot you can is hogwash. In some cases the security apparatus is so strong that it takes decades before enough room for an uprising emerges.
There is something to this and we ourselves as Americans certainly prize the idea of "Give me Liberty or give me death." That said though you continue to try to portray this as being the Iraqis grasping for self-determination while missing the point. Yes freedom and liberty are often bought with blood and lots of it. There are two problems with that though. One is how united are the people for overthrowing their despot and does it make sense to externally remove a despot under the banner of giving freedom to the oppressed? The problem with the first is that in a highly fractured society often a despot is what it takes to keep the peace and maintain stability. While the despot is an impediment to the self-determination of many there also are many who still support the despot. Once that despot is removed though there inevitably will be a fight among the competing groups for power to fill the vacuum as we saw in Yugoslavia once Tito died. The other problem is that given that many may have supported the despot their will be a strong desire to exact revenge upon those who did and for those who did to fight even harder to maintain some semblance of power. The second problem is that by artificially removing a despot potentially unleashes all of those pent up frustrations and ethnic tensions since the removal wasn't done by the people themselves or the overwhelming consensus of the people. So in the case of Iraq yes Saddam was widely hated by most Iraqis but he wasn't universally hated to the point that Iraqis across the board were willing to rise up or welcome his removal. For that matter even many of the Iraqis who hated Saddam also resent the US and other foreigners which is why Shiites like the Moqtada Al Sadr have at times taken up arms against the US. Its human nature to resent it when an outside force steps in proclaiming to solve your problems. So its easy for us externally to say that we are doing the Iraqis a favor and given them self-determination when what we've done is to externally impose a new situation on them which they are struggling to sort out. This is why I'm very leery of the neo-Wilsonian idea that we should be trying to solve others countries problems. I agree freedom and democracy are good things and that people will shed their blood for them. The current situation isn't one where all the Iraqis decided to up and fight for their freedom. Its a situation that we put them in and frankly in my opinion its an arrogant presumption to say that they are now better off fighting a civil war than under a despot when thats a choice we made for them.
People ought to be able to have a voice in their governance. Saddam prevented that except for the Sunnis that he did not kill or put in prison (yes he did that to Sunnis too). Considering that one third of the country was actually in open revolt and the second third had previously revolted but been crushed - I think its false to claim there was not an organic movement to overthrow Saddam. That outside help was needed does not matter as far as I can tell. Had the Shiites been in full uprising and not gotten crushed, the situation of having difficulties working out a coalition government would be the same so I'm not even sure what this distinction we're arguing about matters. We remove an impediment to self determination. I do not consider a despot to be the natural state of governance, I consider it to be artificial. But if you do then wahtever I'm not sure what overall difference it makes.
Yes, but the alternative is prioritizing stability over self determination. Easy to say when you're living in the first world. With one of the three groups in Iraq supporting Saddam you were NEVER going to get a united front against the despot. That is an illusion you're creating. No matter when the change happened the sunni dissatisfaction would happen, and the problems of forming a coalition between the three groups would happen. It's inevitable. It had already happened that BOTH of the two other groups had risen up at the same time - both the Kurds and Shiites in open revolt - and they were not strong enough to overcome Saddam's security and military apparatus. So your suggestion is just to let the despot rule 'until the people want to rise up.' Well, that's a pretty useless suggestion in light of the empirical evidence as to how successful that was. We didn't give them self determination or impose anything on them. We removed the impediment to self determination for the Shiites and Kurds. You think they didn't want self determination? I think the standard that if they wanted it they would have seized is shortsighted at best - it simply ignores history in Iraq. The situation now can be whatever they want it to be. Certainly there is the Sunni insurgency to deal with but that was inevitable. I don't think that Iraqis would say they would rather be under a despot than be free to decide themselves (which is not to say they don't want stability or want an all out civil war).
Hayes why couldn't the situation in pre-occupation Iraq be viewed as a way of life for the Iraqis -- Shiites and Kurds included. Considering Bush's below 30% approval rating is a strong indication of great dissatisfaction over the Bush regime by most American people, we can say that those who oppose him have no way of deposing Bush until he finishes his term. It may be a bit of stretch but not an unreasonable comparison between what was like in the pre-war Iraq and what's happening in US right now. Granted the Bush regime is not despotic, but does the lack of self-determination by American people warrant a foreign intervention?
it's everybody on one side and hayes and his primary source of info, fox news, on the other it's easy for somebody sitting on his ass to play chess with the lives of millions who live far away, but lets send him to najaf, basra, and/or fallujah for a few months and then see what he has to say
