56% of Americans: Iraq War not Worth it
Lockdown Continues amid Shiite Pilgrimage
and more Violence
US troops found weaponry in an office affiliated with Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The US sweep of Baghdad is aimed at reducing militia and guerrilla activity in the city. Of course, this can be accomplished while there is heavy US presence, the question is whether, once the US troops withdraw, it just pops up again.
Reuters gives the details of civil war violence in Iraq on Saturday. The deadliest incident occurred in Baqubah, where nine persons were shot down, including two university lecturers and a human rights worker.
George W. Bush has managed to cut the Christian population of Iraq in half. The insecurity has led some 600,000 to flee to Syria and Lebanon. As for the ones who fled to Lebanon, they recently faced a further disaster . . .
Some 56 percent of Americans think that Iraq has not been worth the loss of our US GIs' lives.
The Muslim world would just as soon we didn't intrevene so much in their affairs, either. Esposito: It's the Policy Stupid. On the US and the Muslim world in polling.
Is a serious diplomatic engagement with Iran Washington's next step. Well, I shouldn't have thought so. But the aftermath of wars is a time when the unexpected happens.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/20/2006 12:21:00 AM
|
Facebook
5 Comments:
The Catholic New Service reports the abduction of another priest after the Mass of the Assumption earlier this month.
When talking about the Christians of the Middle East and America’s inability or unwillingness to defend them, it is important to notice some differences. First, the Christians of the Middle East are not from the American line of Protestantism. They are from the most part Orthodox, Catholic, or Anglican. If you listen closely to shows, like Bob Dutko on WMUZ, who was the National Press Secretary for the Christian Coalition in 2000, you will understand that the Christian Right does not recognize these faiths as “Christian”. That is, being Christian has a very specific meaning to this group of the ruling elite. So too, the other religions have little recognition of groups like the Evangelicals, except where public alliances help push legislation (abortion and gay marriage). Since the older sects control most of the Holy Sites of the Middle East, and can barely get along with one another let alone add another group, I see a little bit of a power play happening in the Middle East.
According to the Franciscan Fathers of the Holy Land, the worst attrition of Christians from the Holy Land has been under this administration, since the siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The Christian presence was near 20% at the founding of Israel, and it now less than 2%. One story that I caught was that after Pat Robinson’s insensitive remarks regarding Arial Sharon’s stroke, the Israeli’s threatened to stop construction of Christian Heritage site in Northern Israel. Yes, we can barely keep together the tradition Holy Sites, but if you pay homage to Israel and ignore your brethren of suffering Christians, you may build a new site of your own.
This speaks to what is happening to the Christians of the Holy Land. Our administration views them as heretics and therefore, despite being the Great Christian President sent by God, the Bush Administration does not defend them. In Diaspora, Christians can hold out several generations, but the reality is that this is genocide. Palestinian Christians, like the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians will start intermarrying with other Christians in the new lands they inhabit. Where as eventually, the Chaldeans and Assyrians will be able to return, the Palestinians have lost that right in the agreement between Bush and Sharon on the Gaza withdrawal, and the Christians of the Holy Land will disappear in any meaningful way from this earth.
My private poll is running 3-1 that Dumbya will make his usual wrong choice and bomb Iran. Le Moineau's article on engaging Iran and the analysis is brilliant and makes perfect sense.
It however overlooks one big stumbling block- the elephant in the room. There is an ignoramus in the white house.
He is no Nixon. He will not make that proverial "trip to China." He is a NeoKon after all.
Best Wishes
@ "Is a serious diplomatic engagement with Iran Washington's next step. Well, I shouldn't have thought so. But the aftermath of wars is a time when the unexpected happens."
I played a small game with great gamer Le Moineau at "Legal Alien @ New York".
Proliferating Piles of Penance on the Potomac
As the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US History (aka War on Iraq) inexorably evolves into a a clusterEFF of Catastrophe throughout the Middle East, I don't whether to be heartened or distressed at the flood of penitential moments now flowing from the Potomac ThinkTankers.
The latest from none other than Brookings's Ken Pollack (with Daniel Bryman of Georgetown)in today's WaPo is a must read.
From its title, "What Next?" I fully expected an answer by the end of the 8 or so pages of prose and was relieved to find none. Instead, Pollack and Bryman expand on a theme Juan has been urging here for quite sometime IE the manifold dangers of an Iraq which is in civil war and steadily disintegrating.
Is day late and a dollar short good enough anymore?
"We cannot leave Iraq before it is stabilized," declared a former CIA officer. But to maintain a prolonged foreign occupation of Iraq is to destabilize it only further. Once the invader departs, there will no doubt be a civil war, which will accelerate the dismemberment of the nation, giving rise to a fundamentalist regime, which will make at least some people miss the era of Saddam.
On the other hand, if the occupation persists, one can foresee a multifaceted terrorist escalation eating away at U.S. forces and aggravating ethnic and religious divisions. The Americans will bring in reinforcements, including Fijians and Norwegians. They'll talk of the final fifteen minutes and of last gasps. A coup d'etat or uprising will be inspired in Teheran (terrain more favorable to the West than Iraq is) but with irritating repercussions in Najaf, which will be transformed into a base of retreat for vengeful ayatollahs. The Americans will cling to Iraq as "useful" and ensconce themselves inside supposedly unbreachable bastions. Then, as the death toll mounts by the hundreds, the "bring the boys home" movement will spread like an oil slick across the United States, and a new, Democratic administration will make the prudent decision to stop the hemorrhaging when the vital interests of the United States are not at stake. But how many lives will be ruined in the meantime?
Regis Debray
Le Figaro
Sept 03
Le Moineau's article presents an unassailably well-reasoned case for engagement with Iran. Vasil Nasr does too, as did James Baker in the footnoted Washington Monthly article, as have numerous experts and line policy makers.
THe trouble is, none of it matters. The Bush Administration is irrevocably committed to a policy of confrontation with Iran and that, I am afraid, it the name of that tune.
Chances are, the US recognizes and will fully pursue its larger strategic interests, and so far, all indications suggest the Bush administration seems to be heeding saner voices this time.[17]
As support for the contention, Le Moineau footnotes a Washington Monthly article on James Baker's Congressional Commission of Inquiry. This is a slender reed indeed upon which to ground confidence that the Bush administration will execute a 180 degree about face in its policies.
1. The Baker Commission's work will not formally surface for consideration in this Congress.
2. Every policy deicsion - be it a decision of action or inaction - points in the opposite direction toward confrontation with Iran (note well that experts have urged engagement with Syria and Iran in the Lebanon crisis to no avail though Israel appears ready to do so)
3. If anything the failure of Israel in Lebanon and accompanying Jerusalem-DC propaganda lines have remdered an improbable policy change, impossible.
4. Bush's diplomatic prelude to demarche with Iran will have played itself out long before the political conditions inside and outside the Bush administration have any possibilty of ripening sufficiently to support such a volte face.
What is most likely to happen given the rapidly deteriorating conditions in Iraq and throughout the Middle East and the growing Revolt of the Generals is
Nothing at all.
Post a Comment
<< Home