One other thing that has bothered me about this topic is the glibness with which you present the idea of civil war. All of those civil wars you describe were horribly bloody and it took decades if not generations, for positive results to come from it if anything ever did. The English civil war brought in Oliver Cromwell which is generally regarded as a very dark chapter of English history and shortly after led to the return of the Monarhy. The French Revolution brought in a period of such blood and chaos that the despotism of Louis XVI paled in comparison ended up leading to a even more ruthless despot, terribly destructive wars and the return of the Monarchy. The Russian Revolution ushered in a 70 year long period of Communism and the Soviet Union with all of the horrors of collective farms, Stalin and oppression ranging from Siberia to East Berlin. The Spanish Civil War ended up installing a despotic Fascist. Even the US Civil War was fought on a vastly brutal scale (Sherman and Grant even by the standards of then were considered excessively brutal and if they existed today would be likely be charged with crimes against humanity) and during Reconstruction the South was put under the boot of the North and that humilation still resonates among many today. In the meantime the many of the issues that the US Civil War was fought over didn't get resolved until 100 years later. So your own examples don't even measure up to your assertion since in most of them they end up in despotism often worse than what they previously lived under. If your standards are those civil war then I definately stand by my assertion that civil war for the Iraqis is worse than living under a despot.
hayes, I get your point now war is always better than peace bring it on! is civil war better for america than living under bush? i'm curious what was saddam's approval rating pre invasion..
It’s key to the question of self-determination for starters. If the US left tomorrow you couldn’t just pretend that the first part of this war didn’t happen. The Iraqis didn’t choose this. The US started it and nothing is going to change that. Further, even if the US left I strongly doubt that Iran would leave as well. Al Qaeda might leave, but they might also stick around and try to turn Iraq into an Islamic theocracy. It’s very had to say how the rest of it would fall out. Turkey definitely does not want an independent Kurdish state on its boarder. What would they do to try to stop that from happening, either overtly or covertly? I could easily see Iran moving in to “stabilize” the country. They wouldn’t need to invade exactly but they could say they are “supporting” the pro Shiite government that was elected, and which they could claim has the right to rule. How far would other countries in the region go to try to keep Iran from gaining effective control of Iraq? Maybe they would just keep blowing up facilities to keep the country from stabilising. One thing is sure, though. It wouldn’t be just an internal civil war. They supported the war against him so I don’t think they wanted him kept in power just because he is an Arab. Removing him would have been a logical conclusion to the war ... on first thought. On second thought, however, after considering what would be left if you removed him from power, they decided he was better left in place and restrained. Cheney himself admitted that if they would have removed him the US would have had to stay and try to govern the country themselves, and that might not have worked out much differently than the situation that exists today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_war That’s not the question you asked. You asked whether they would be better off with a dictator or a civil war. If that was a hypothetical question then you’d be fine, but you went on to say you wanted the question to address the real world situation. At that point it became a false question because the scenario you present doesn’t reflect the real world situation. You can’t have it both ways. You can make up a scenario and ask a hypothetical question about it, but you can’t ask a question about a real situation that doesn’t fit the facts. You’d be asking people a question and telling them that they can’t choose the correct answer. It just doesn’t make sense. Are you using your daddy’s account perhaps? I remember the old Hayestreet being much more intelligent and mature than this. Whoever you are, you’re the one making up the silly scenarios here. You’re clearly trying to find an angle that will excuse Bush, and it’s just not there. Diplomacy and negotiated tradeoffs are real world solutions. Simplistic and unrealistic two option solutions are the way a child thinks. Of course neocons tend to think this way too and that tells you a lot about why they come up with some of the ideas they do. They tend to be mentally and emotionally immature people who have a great deal of difficulty seeing a the world or a given problem from the standpoint of the others involved, from second and third person perspectives in other words. They have difficulty seeing the secondary consequences of actions more than one or two steps removed. This is an issue of mental maturity. There is a lot of developmental psychology research that explains it. Neocons tend to be at a quite low level of development, not unlike a young teenager in many ways, which doesn’t mean they don’t have good memories and even high IQs and are able to get good degrees and have some poor sucker hire them. Here’s an interesting paper on this. See in particular Diplomat Action Logic - Stage 3 and see if it doesn’t describe neocons pretty well bang on. http://www.harthillusa.com/Detailed descrip. of ego develop stages.pdf Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying that the simplistic scenarios and solutions neocons come up with will be simplistic to many people, and other peoples’ more complex responses will seem like gibber to neocons because they come from a level of analysis that is beyond where the neocons are at. Think back to when you had the a-ha! moment were you came to understand a more complex view of the world. Neocons just haven’t had a lot of the a-ha moments that a lot of the rest of us have had. This isn’t necessarily their fault, I should add. It’s just where they’re at. To get them to expand their view of the world you need to speak to them from the level they’re at and from the one immediately above that they may be just beginning to catch glimpses of. So typically for a neocon you need to refer to expert opinions. Powel was against the war. That will get their attention because Powel is an expert. They may deny what he says but they’ll have some internal conflict about doing that because in their understanding of the world he’s an expert so his opinion carries a lot of weight. The logic of an argument from a non expert will be dismissed, however, because neocons generally aren’t at a stage where they can evaluate a lot of more complex concepts independently. So the best way to respond to Hayes in this tread would probably be to dig up a bunch of quotes from military experts. That’s probably about all he would genuinely listen to to the extent that it could change his mind. I don’t think Basso would even listen to experts, but Hayes I think would. I won’t be digging any up tonight, however.
is this how far you have moved the goal post now? hayes, how do you define x in your statement? here's mine let x be attacking and bombing a sovereign country under false and exaggerated evidence of non-existent wmds, death of thousands of US soldiers, death of tens of thousands of Iraqis, cost of trillion US dollars, torture and rape of iraqi prisoners,birth of a new generation of terrorists, plus many more peace>war
True I can't see into your mind nor you into mine but as part of a free ranging debate we certainly have the freedom to question and speculate on each other's motives and offer opinions on those motives. Now to defend Hayes I think you (Grizzled) are being too harsh on Hayes. I too think this is all just spin but I will give him some credit that it is clever spin and one that at least recognizes the possibility that things are and could go very wrong in Iraq. Compare that to some who just keep on blaming the media rather than try to face up to the possibility that things in Iraq are far worse than what the Admin. would want people to believe. Obviously I have a lot of problems with Hayes position in this debate and don't agree with him often but I give him a lot of credit for the subtlety of his thought which is why I will even bother responding to him in detail.
You are probably right that I was a little harsh with him. I got caught responding in kind a bit I’m afraid. But although I’m sure some of what he’s saying is conscious spin, the point I was making in the last part of my last post is that he may well believe much of what he’s saying. When he says the US could leave and then this would become a war of self-determination for the Iraqis he may actually believe that. Many of us see immediately that the war and however it ends are inextricably linked to how it started. We automatically see the greater context (a greater context, I should say, because there will be many layers of them extending beyond what most of us can easily see) but he may well not. The reason we see the greater context stems from some incident in our past where we looked at a situation in isolation and were either wrong in what we expected would happen and were prepared to examine why we were wrong, or we were taught by someone we were prepared to listen to what the shortcoming in our thinking was. Either way we had an a-ha! moment that expanded our understanding of the way the world works. These a-ha!s are not random, however, they follow a continuum that developmental psychologists have studied. The paper I linked to is one admittedly fairly complex description of this continuum. Switching tracks for a moment, I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this last night but the expert opinion component could also come from the standpoint of someone who has some project management expertise, which would be me. In any project you have to identify the key stakeholders, and as part of your risk analysis you identify what impact they could have on the project. If you were building a gas plant you would want to find out if there were any environmental groups in the area who might oppose your project, for example. Do they have legitimate concerns or even concerns that aren’t legitimate? Do they have the power to shut down your project or otherwise create problems for you? Let’s say that they’re concerned about the habitat of the east Texas ditch mouse. Once you know that you can locate you plant in such a way that misses the ditches and doesn’t interfere with them in the future. You could even offer to build some new ditches and expand the habitat, a small cost to you but one that could turn a potential opponent into a proponent. By doing this you have aligned the interests of key stakeholders and you will have minimized or eliminated a major risk to the project. This is all fairly basic PM theory and practice, but astonishingly this administration appears to have done none of this in Iraq. Applying this to the question of a civil war you again need to look at outside influences. If the US left who are the major stakeholders who might have an impact on what happens in Iraq afterwards? Would Iran have an interest in how the resulting conflict turns out? Do they have the ability to intervene and what is the likelihood that they would intervene? Now look at Turkey and ask the same questions. Then look at Syria, Saudi Arabia, and even Russia and China given their interest in Iraqi oil. Since Iran is now a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation would Russia and China have an interest in having Iraq under Iranian control? Now look at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and ask the same questions. You can even ask them about the US. If they pulled their troops out would they really leave altogether, or would they continue to work covertly in Iraq? The fact that the US moved an army half way across the globe to invade Iraq tells you something about its strategic importance, and that fact alone tells you that the chance of there being a purely civil war in Iraq, without significant outside interference, is next to nil.
as i said earlier, we've taken the place of sadam as the dictatorin the scenario painted in this thread. because we don't practice his brutal methods, we are not able to quell dissent as effectively. we have thus allowed civil war to break out and hayes is trying to spin a way for us to cut and run. wow hayes, why didn't we leave immediately after we took him out?
Seriously, I look at it this way. Self determination is good, and if it takes a civil war for them to get a stable government, then let em fight it out. Wars generally don't end until both sides are tired of dying, or one side almost whipes out the other. Give them a government, a security force, and then leave, let them handle their own problems. The USA needs to but the hell out of other people's business, unless we are part of a multinational force asked to come in and help. DD
Man I'm glad I stayed out if this thread. Hayes - your scenario, as originally stated, is illogical, incomplete, and terribly misleading.
1st bush won't win 2nd cronies and war profiteers (oil & energy co and military, defense, & security contacters and their investors) won't make money 3rd war is good for 31% people and the more people dead and more money spent is always better than peace/diplomacy/no war at all
Got to agree with Rhad. This isn't one of your better efforts Hayes It isn't 1860, and there are too many players involved. Civil war in Iraq would be bad news all around. Ain't no spinning this one pretty....
Fair enough, but that response wasn't to you - if was to someone declaring your speculation as 'proof.' Lol, well thanks for the logical, complete, and all encompassing answer. Grizzled, I'm afraid you actually do what you accuse me of doing. If your answer had been: Of all the scenarios that might happen I believe the most likely is that any such conflict would expand to include neighboring states, likely both escalating the conflict/harm and preventing self determination for the Iraqis. Then I would have said - as I did with others - 'thanks for your input, that a pretty well thought out response!' See my response to SC and FB. However that's not what you did - you declared that other possibilities, such as an insultated civil war - were not possible. Then you accuse me of one track thinking. Or at least that's the way I've perceived your response. As for the whole part of the thread about my motivation for starting the thread - its curious those of you doing it ignored my response. Previous to this thread there hasn't BEEN any discussion of what a civil war would look like - rather there has just been the presumption that it would be the worst of all scenarios including living under a despot. Hence the question - would it be better to have a civil war or live under a despot. Second, I also stated that pre-intervention I had pondered these choices and said even if a civil war were to break out IMO that is better than continuing to live under a despot for the foreseeable future. While others have pointed out how horrible civil wars have been in the past - still people have chosen that over living under a despot - chosen in essence to risk their lives for self determination. That doesn't deny the harm involved in a civil war - it is a choice made that liberty is higher than life. Yes, IMO means in my opinion. So any claims that I've all the sudden started poking around this idea to justify the present condition is Iraq don't really have any basis. The third and final answer to this line of reasoning is that I previously pointed out recent developments in Iraq that make this scenario LESS likely IMO, so I'm still firmly in the 'it will work out' camp. This wasn't a case of me setting out a thesis and then inviting attack. I asked for a comparison of two outcomes - one the status quo pre-intervention, one the scenario that many have predicted, civil war post-intervention. Some have attacked the question, some have answered it. I think the suprising thing for me is how many attacked the question - its a free shot to explain why a civil war, if one comes, will be worse than had we just stayed out of it (for the many anti-intervention crowd). Why that brings forth so much nastiness I'm not sure.
You're very welcome. It's about all your "logical, complete, and all encompassing" question deserves.
What is the point of either of your posts? If you think the thread doesn't have any worth then why not move on to the next one.
Hayes: I don't know that in todays global political environment a civil war is really practical anymore. Especially in a strategically and economically important place like Iraq. Like I said...it's not 1860 any more. And even if it were....it would have to develop from within. That didn't happen here. It's like if your kid was getting picked on at school. It might be best if he stands up to the bully -- but it's quite different if you push him into a fight - -and then walk away and say it was for his own good. This mess has to be cleaned up by the ones who created it.
I always say you can't judge people by the company they keep. I don't know about that - over 100 responses and almost 1000 views. Lots of people expressing their opinions and examining an outcome not previously explored (or at least not previously explored to this level). That's not bad for a thread, IMO. If you meant this isn't one of my better jobs convincing people of something, then maybe you're right, lol. Fair enough. Thanks for your response! I'm not really sure about that - you could say Iraq has been (in a way) in a civil war for awhile except that one of the three groups fighting has had such a huge power advantage that they've dominated. Now we've just evened the odds - so to speak. But I'm not denying you could be right.
Hrmmmm. Two possibilities: 1) Although I don't particularly want to get involved in this thread, I am having a hard time letting you get away with such an unrespectable opening "question" OR 2) I am your doppelganger - the venom to your spiderman. Hey!
F*ck it! They destroyed a peaceful Iraq just to let them to fight each other. Is Iraq a circus or what? Are Iraqi just some kind of animal which will fight for American's pleasure? Crap, I cannot believe this world can cultivate this kind of idea.
