First You Toss A Grenade Into The Pottery Barn, Then You Cut And Run

by hilzoy

From Newsweek:

"The Bush administration insists Iraq is a long way from civil war, but the contingency planning has already begun inside the White House and the Pentagon. President Bush will move U.S. troops out of Iraq if the country descends into civil war, according to one senior Bush aide who declined to be named while talking about internal strategy. "If there's a full-blown civil war, the president isn't going to allow our forces to be caught in the crossfire," the aide said. "But institutionally, the government of Iraq isn't breaking down. It's still a unity government." (...) But the senior Bush aide said the White House would need no prompting from Congress to get troops out "if the Iraqi government broke down completely along sectarian lines."

In fact, the U.S. military in Iraq has completed several elements of contingency planning in case of civil war, based on lessons learned from Bosnia and Kosovo. The military's approach revolves around three principles. The first is to stop massacres by physically separating communities, moving minorities out of harm's way if necessary. The second is to stop the flow of paramilitary gangs across the country. And the third is to halt any incitement to violence on Iraqi TV and radio. Baghdad would pose the biggest problem, [note from hilzoy: Hahahahahahaha! Newsweek: master of understatement. Who knew?] requiring a strict curfew and a ban on road traffic. The security measures would include widespread checkpoints and a ban on carrying firearms or explosives.

The administration hasn't made its definition of full-blown civil war explicit. But in March, when Iraq's former prime minister Ayad Allawi said the country was already fighting a civil war, Bush disagreed, noting the existence of Iraq's nonsectarian Army and government. If the country did someday meet the definition of civil war and the U.S. pulled out, military officials warn, the consequences would be disastrous. "All the neighboring powers would be drawn in," said one senior military official who has examined the scenarios and is not authorized to speak on the record. "It would become a regional war.""

I think I am one of the few liberal bloggers who has not yet called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. This is because I think that all our options are horrible. Since it's pretty obvious that my views will have no impact whatsoever on our policy, I don't feel compelled to decide which option is least horrible. I still accept the basic outline of our interests and the situation that I outlined a year ago in this post: namely, that without our troops' presence things would probably be even worse, but that if they remain, their numbers should be drastically scaled back, and their mission limited. And don't say that things could not get any worse: they could. A lot worse. There could, after all, actually be a regional war.

If there were, it would be a complete catastrophe for the people of the region, and also for our interests. We would confront it with limits on our options that I find breathtaking. -- One way to see just how destructive to our interests this administration's policies have been is to consider the ways in which it has sacrificed our freedom of action as a nation. Our army is fully occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is badly stretched. Moreover, they are pinned down right next to Iran, which could cause them a lot more trouble than it has to date. We have wasted six years during which we might have reduced our dependence on oil imports, and as a result any disruption of the world's oil supplies would hit us harder than it needs to. We have made ourselves reliant on Asian, and especially Chinese, funding for our trade and government deficits. We have allowed North Korea to become a nuclear power, and Iran to take steps in that direction, even though Iran offered to negotiate, with all issues on the table, back in 2003. (And isn't Cheney's statement that "we don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it" looking clever now.) We can see the results of our Iran policy in the current crisis in Lebanon: the more pressure we put on them to rein in Hezbollah, the less we have to use to persuade them not to go nuclear. We have alienated our allies, and created anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East. We have, as a result, much less room to maneuver than we would have had otherwise. And that is very bad news.

Personally, I will never forgive this administration for doing something so important with such breathtaking negligence. And I will have a hard time forgiving those Democrats who voted for the war. It was not that hard to look at Afghanistan and see just how seriously this administration took the task of reconstructing a country. And it was not that hard to consider the history of the Middle East and realize that the costs of screwing up Iraq would be absolutely enormous. Costs to the Iraqis, to our troops, to the world, and to our interests, all incurred because, in a moment of national hysteria, we decided to trust someone who had never once given the slightest evidence that he was trustworthy; and to do so when the stakes were huge.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

"I think I am one of the few liberal bloggers who has not yet called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq."

I'm one of the others. (Which Nell has been known to scold me about.)

I saw this piece this afternoon, but figured it was too vague to blog (my preference; not a prescription to others), and besides, everyone else will, anyway.

[Jimbo]

Just a thought. What percentage of the hearts and minds of Iraqis do we need to have in the program in order to define success. We are dealing with 10 percenters. The violence is a tactic strictly intended to keep us involved moreso than to achieve political realignment or a strategic objectives.

[stickler]

Just a thought. What percentage of the hearts and minds of Iraqis do we need to have in the program in order to define success. We are dealing with 10 percenters.

Link?

My simple suggestion would be that we need to "have" the "hearts and minds" of a very much larger number of Iraqis "in the program" than we do today. If we've lost the Shia, as it seems we almost have, then that doesn't leave many Iraqis on our side.

Or, in other words, as legions of others have been warning since 2003, it is quite possible for the USA to lose a war. And we've lost this one.

[hilzoy]

jimbo: I do not think that the violence is just a tactic to keep us involved. I think it's a combination of a very serious power struggle and a lot of revenge.

Success requires a lot of hearts and minds, under these conditions. Even if a large majority of Iraqis don't want a civil war, a small but determined minority could produce one. As best I can tell, Baghdad is nearly unlivable now; I see no particular reason to assume that the majority of Baghdadis support the violence. But that doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

Noah Feldman has given a brilliant analysis of how Israel’s strategy in Lebanon and Gaza meshes with US moves to foster democracy in the Middle East. As part of their schooling in democracy, the Arabs must learn that their electoral choices have real world consequences. If they vote for Hamas, Hizbollah or similar terrorist groups, then they bear full responsibility for any outrages that these groups commit. Thus they forfeit any right to complain about any retaliatory bombing raids, e.g. Qana.

[lily]

I have a hard time forgiving Democrats who voted for the war too, especially since I think some of them knew very well that the Bush administration was not being accurate in the information presented to Congress. Kerry is a Viet Nam vet; he knew about Tonkin Gulf; he knows how Republicans operate. He must have known that Congress was being fed cherrypicked nonsense.
So I think that some Democrats are as bad if not worse that Republicans on this. It's a choice between politicians who caved into war fever and those who sincerely had the war fever. Neither is admirable. Cynicism vs stupidity.
But what I really really really cannot stand is the people who STILL think the invasion was justified. Get a life! It isn't that hard to admit a mistake!
The terror from Beltway Dems about the Lamont/Lieberman race is that Democratic leaders don't want to be blamed for losing Iraq. If the Democrats, through a vote of Congress, (perhaps cutting off funds, I don't know) force a pull out, the Repubicans will claim that "We could have won". So Hilary-types want to sit on their hands until the Republicans are forced to pull out. They want the chickhens to come home and shit on Republicans heads.
On an emotional level I agree. I'm sick of the rightwingers who go on about losing Viet Nam--how many millions of Vietnamese civilians would they have been willing to kill for the vanity of winning?--and I don't want to spend the rest of my life listening to rightwing crap about how if only the Demos hadn't interfered we could have won in Iraq.
On the other hand If I could have a pony of my very own it would be that our government tried to do the right thing for Iraq, not the right thing for the Deomcrats or Republicans.
Whatever the right thing is.

[Jon (S)]

Kerry is a Viet Nam vet; he knew about Tonkin Gulf; he knows how Republicans operate. He must have known that Congress was being fed cherrypicked nonsense.

Kerry, April 22, 1971:

The intelligence missions themselves are based on very, very flimsy information... It is not reliable; everybody is feeding each other double intelligence, and I think that is what comes back to this country.

I think that the intelligence which finally reaches the White House does have serious problems with it... I have seen exactly what the response is up the echelon, the chain of command, and how things get distorted and people say to the man above him what is needed to be said, to keep everybody happy, and so I don't -- I think the entire thing is distorted.

I guess he just forgot.

[hilzoy]

Kerry's vote for the war was one of the main reasons I opposed him in the primaries. I believed, based on no evidence other than my sense of him (but I am from MA and still have lots of friends and relations there, so I had followed his career pretty closely), that he voted for the war for political reasons. I have a very, very hard time with that -- I think that it's fine to be ambitious, but that there ought to be some point at which you say: this is more important than my career. And sending people to war has got to qualify.

Conversely, one of the (many) reasons I supported Clark was that he had already shown that there was such a point for him. Having watched the Rwandan genocide and concluded that we did the wrong thing by not intervening, he went to the mat for Kosovo, and as I understand it that basically ended his career in the Army, which by all accounts he absolutely loved. That really impressed me.

[Gary Farber]

"It's a choice between politicians who caved into war fever and those who sincerely had the war fever."

Kerry and Hillary Clinton and quite a few other Democratic Senators (I definitely don't have a full list), if not most of them, said that they voted "aye" to allow Bush to plausibly threaten war so as to get the UN inspectors back in, and were assured that that's all Bush was going to do (at least at that time).

Naturally, one can then critique them for believing Bush on this, but I'm not sure it's fair to say they all had "war fever," implying that they were knowingly voting for war and favored it as the next option. At the very least, one has to be aware that one is calling them all liars if one is taking that stance.

Discuss.

[lily]

The irony is that cowards like Kerry could have done the right thing with no cost. Sen. Patty Murray voted against the authorization and she kicked her opponent's butt in 04. It helped that she fought back against his smears: she ran ads calling her opponent a liar and saying he should be ashamed of himself. If Kerry had been less of a wuss about the Swiftboat Liars he might have won.
But the wussiness about the Liars is part of the same package as the wussiness about the authorization vote and it's the same wussiness about not criticizing the mismanagement or calling for resignations until after even the Republicans are doing it. God I hope Lamont wins!

[lily]

Gary, I don't know what went on in the minds of those that voted
Yes" on the authorization, but I can suspect. I suspect that many Republicans sincerely had war fever and that many Democrats were afraid of being called unpatriotic or weak or whatever for not going along with the war fever. Of course it is unprovable. But I can suspect.

[Jeff Eaton]

As part of their schooling in democracy, the Arabs must learn that their electoral choices have real world consequences. If they vote for Hamas, Hizbollah or similar terrorist groups, then they bear full responsibility for any outrages that these groups commit. Thus they forfeit any right to complain about any retaliatory bombing raids, e.g. Qana.

Can't the argument be made that the citizens of the US, by voting for leaders who fund wars in other countries to further our political goals, forfeit any right to complain about retaliatory military attacks against, say, downtown Chicago?

It strikes me as not unlike the problem of libertarian 'Just War' -- everyone agrees that it's only acceptable to act in self defense, so the debate simply morphs into a semantic argument about who really started the fight.

[Gary Farber]

"The irony is that cowards like Kerry could have done the right thing with no cost. Sen. Patty Murray voted against the authorization and she kicked her opponent's butt in 04."

First off, I thought it was the Republicans who were into the whole thing of calling Kerry a "coward" and claiming that he didn't deserve his Purple Hearts, faked the reports, shot a Vietnamese kid in the back, etc. Plus that we weren't down with the whole calling-war-heros-"cowards"-thing.

Secondly, even if we're just calling Kerry a "coward" as regards accusing him of voting for the war authorization for political reasons, comparing him to Patty Murray seems fairly apples and oranges; maybe one has grounds for accusing Kerry of making a political calculation when he voted for that authorization, but if so, it's on the basis that he felt it was necessary giving that he was planning to run for President; given that Senator Murray was not, her stance is neither here nor there: it's obviously not a relevant comparison. Obviously, neither Murray nor Kerry's Senate seat retention would have been affected by their stance on that vote. The argument that they were in comparable situations makes no sense that I can see.

[bob mcmanus]

"At the very least, one has to be aware that one is calling them all liars if one is taking that stance."

Consider it done. They are all liars. We did not have thousands of troops in Kuwait simply to turn around and bring them home when Saddam acted nice. The war was going to happen, for a whole variety of reasons, and anybody who says they thought otherwise is at best deluding themselves or underinformed.

Note what I just said. The invasion was going to happen...I won't repeat the words to those on left who have comparable delusions that Bush could be stopped. I never considered my personal judgement on whether allowing Bush to invade Iraq was a good call at all interesting or important.

Weren't gonna stop Katrina either. What was and is important, is doing what is and was necessary and/or useful, no matter how painful, to try and mitigate the damage from the catastrophe. And that is how I judge Democratic Senators and people like Friedman and Pollack. They were wrong, Bush doesn't listen to anybody about anything, and no real influence was possible, but they were, IMO, doing the right, the best possible thing.
...
I liked lily's comments above.

[bob mcmanus]

PS: At the time, knowing Dick Cheney's views on Presidential perogatives and the War Powers Act, there is not a doubt in my mind about what would have happened if the Senate Resolution had been voted down. It was a "Make My Day" moment intentionally in close proximity to an election an I am certain all the Senators understood the dangers of a Constitutional Crisis in the immediate vicinity of a dangerous military action with profound foreign policy implications.

It was one of the more dangerous moments in American history. Underestimate it at your risk, cause the monster remains in the closet.

[bob mcmanus]

But that is off topic. Concerning a full sectarian breakdown, and reading hilzoy's post, it looks obvious to me that the very first move in the civil war from any player would be an attempt to disable and degrade the largest most effective military asset or impediment in town. Maybe all the players at once.

Now the first thing a smart dude does, and there is no lack of brains in Iraq, is to hit the logistics. The Baghdad to Kuwait road, carrying thousands of pound a day. I expect to hear that this is not a vulnerability. Right. The supply warehouses and docks would take months to build in Jordan, and you might just barely airlift in adequate water and bullets.

Bush could lose the whole army. Inchon. Or Khartoum. Or wait. The British in Baghdad.

[bob mcmanus]

Wasn't British in Baghdad in the twenties. Maybe Basra. I should go look it up, but I have had enough horror stories this weekend. Cannibalism was involved when the logistics got cut.

[bob mcmanus]

After three years, Bush still has to use special procedures to land in Iraq, out of fear of anti-aircraft weapons. And we have not yet faced an Iranian-supplied insurgency.
Airlift may not be at all possible.

I am outahere.

[Jesurgislac]

In November 2004, it was clear (to me) that the US could no longer hope to win in Iraq. Because while it was just conceivable that a new administration might be allowed to start fresh, and certain that any different administration would at least be likely to make smarter decisions than the Bush administation, once the Bush administration had achieved power again, there was nothing to hope for.

I think that the US military's actions in Iraq have most likely been making things worse for the Iraqis, and since - if troop strength on the ground is withdrawn, it will likely be replaced by airstrikes - things will go on getting worse.

Eventually, I suppose some Saddam Hussein will rise and take over the country, and if the new man is someone the US can accept as "on our side" (that is, a pragmatic dictator rather than a devout religionist), that will at least mean the US attacks on Iraqis will end.

Either that, or Iraq will fragment completely, in which case things will get even more interesting in the Middle East for some decades.

[Been there]

Stickler,

It is not just revenge but hatred of all that we are! The largest problem is our lack of understanding of how deep the Muslims hate. You also can not win any type of contest if the opponents play by different rules. Yes, we will loss this one and the next one and the next one until we are fighting for something more dear to use then Iraqis. War is no won with Marques of Queensbury rules. Go and smell the smoke. The sickly sweet smoke that hits you like an oily slap. The one that comes from burning human flesh. Taste the adrenaline in your mouth as you fight to stay alive. Then you may know what it will take to win. it's not politics anymore at that point...

[CharleyCarp]

lily, I don't think Dems are afraid that they'll be accused of losing Iraq after successfully voting to cut off funds. It's more like being accused of being a coward and a weakling for unsuccessfully seeking an end. I don't call 'coward' on people who won't sign up for a suicide mission that isn't even going to work.

I've thought since the constitutional ratification at least that it was time to declare victory and get out of Iraq. I understand, though, that a great many decent and thoughtful people (hilzoy, for example) do not agree with me. Their (her) position isn't insane, and I don't think any real purpose is served by condemning the decent and thoughtful people who hold it.

As for the 2002 vote, my senators both voted against the war, I think. But they did so knowing that the resolution would pass, which in some sense makes the vote easier. I don't know what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way, but I can imagine consequences that would not have been good at all. Bush was (as always) deeply irresponsible for putting us all in that position, but that doesn't mean we weren't actually in it.

[CharleyCarp]

Been There, Shiites and Sunnis are not killing eachother in Iraq because they hate us. The war in Iraq isn't about us -- we're a convenient party there, because anyone can score points with their own folks by taking a whack at us, but the real game is, and has been for 18 months at least, intramural.

We can't win it, obviously, except vicariously. And we can only lose it by announcing goals that cannot be attained. The true gift of our Decider.

[Gary Farber]

"The largest problem is our lack of understanding of how deep the Muslims hate."

This is rank biogotry, of the lowest sort, when one generalizes about "the Muslims, the Jews, the Christians," or any such about an entire religion, race, nationality, or group of people in such a way. It's quite nauseating.

"War is no won with Marques of Queensbury rules."

You also know diddly-squat about counter-insurgency. Go read the manual, and learn something.

[Gary Farber]

And speaking of how "Muslims" hate, a look at American Muslim Marines and other American Muslim soldiers.

[bob mcmanus]

"The largest problem is our lack of understanding of how deep the Muslims hate."

To whatever degree I understand this stuff, this is not my understanding. It is a thesis that sometimes people want violence for whatever reasons, and use an available ideology or religion as an abstract justification. Or keep one in reserve in case it is needed. The abstraction, the bs justification that is useful and productive is easily turned into a weapon.

There are real interests in Iraq, oil money and neighborhoods, though many areas and families are mixed and have been for years. Like European Catholics and Protestants for a century, or Roundheads and Charlites or whatever, or Hindus and Moslems in India, or Capitalists and Communists, I don't believe the Shia and Sunni are really killing each other for sectarian reasons. Humans are eaters and fornicators and excretors, not thinkers and believers.

And young men are often fighters for its own sake. Will Gary get on me for generalizing about young men? I won't mention the young women who put the garlands around the necks as the heroes march toward the trenches or jungles or mean streets. That would be sexist.

I listen to someone who says "All Muslims are X" and I hear a person owned by an ideology or abstraction. I myself would never say such things about Republicans, for instance.

[bob mcmanus]

I just really can't accept that people killed each other over monophysite vs arian, or dipped or sprinkled, or works vs faith. I just don't believe it.

This is actually a more pessimistic, negative view of human nature. People just kill each other for no reason at all, and no belief system or rational persuasion is gonna stop it.

[Jesurgislac]

bob: There are real interests in Iraq, oil money and neighborhoods, though many areas and families are mixed and have been for years. Like European Catholics and Protestants for a century, or Roundheads and Charlites or whatever, or Hindus and Moslems in India, or Capitalists and Communists, I don't believe the Shia and Sunni are really killing each other for sectarian reasons. Humans are eaters and fornicators and excretors, not thinkers and believers.

Exactly.

Or at least, there may be a handful of real pure ideologues, but not many, and they may give the rest a vocabulary of hate to use, but the mass violence would not happen without down-to-earth secular reasons for fighting.

[Ugh]

I just love this sentence:

The security measures would include widespread checkpoints and a ban on carrying firearms or explosives.

Cause carrying explosives is somehow not banned right now? "Dear, don't forget to pick up some semtex on your way home from work."

Why do I see Bush in the White House as Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House, with chaos all around him he's screaming "All is well!"

Or to paraphrase another movie quote, we will all pay the price for Bush's lack of vision.

[hilzoy]

Been there: I don't think it's about how deeply anyone hates, so much as the stunning lack, early on, of any attention by many commanders and civilians in CPA and DoD of how important it was not to give people reasons to hate us. (Exceptions, like David Petraeus, are very instructive.)

Most people, Muslim or otherwise, will hate someone who knocks down their door at 2am, tears their house apart, screams at them in a language they don't understand, and (for men) humiliates them in front of their families. Almost all people will hate someone who kills one of their family members not because that family member was e.g. planting an IED, but because he or she got too close to a checkpoint, or didn't respond in the right way to a command in a language s/he didn't understand. Most people will hate someone who keeps them locked in Abu Ghraib for no good reason and abuses them. (Recall: a lot of the people in Abu Ghraib were there as a result of sweeps, or because, being of fighting age in a given neighborhood, someone thought they might know something.) There is nothing mysterious about that.

Nor is it in any way obvious that what we needed was the ability to use even more violence, as opposed to the skill at counterinsurgency that would have allowed us to use it effectively. The idea that if we fail, the problem is not enough force is just an assumption, and in this case a very bad one.

We had no unified command governing both the CPA and the military (other than Rumsfeld, far away in DC); we paid no attention to counterinsurgency tactics; we staffed the CPA with young campaign staffers with no relevant experience and no language kills or knowledge of Iraqi culture; for a couple of years we did not so much as try to figure out what political or strategic goals our military action was supposed to serve, after the fall of Baghdad; etc., etc., etc. Given these problems, the idea that all we really needed to do was to take the gloves off is, imho, silly.

[bob mcmanus]

Jes, I am not sure I completely buy economic explanations for the English Civil War, the Thirty Years War, WWI. Especially ones of false consciousness, where the actors don't know they are economically determined. I am closest to that tho, and Marx would do away with the abstractions like God and property that justify war. Somehow I spect that ain't natural.

Many on the right think that man is a more-than-economic animal, and that there are abstractions worth dying and killing for. Even killing everybody there is and ever will be. They have thru progress in science and religion, determined the final abstractions. Down with Astarte and Zeus, up with Jesus and Allah! Down with monarchy and feudalism, up with Republics and wage-labor! We are so much improved over those who came before. Our abstractions aren't even abstractions, but empirical proven principles.

What are the final lines from "Skin of Our Teeth?" It will all be better tomorrow.

[Jesurgislac]

Bob, I don't know about the Thirty Years War, but the English Civil War was started by economics, not directly by ideology.

James VI and I believed in the divine right of kings, as did Charles I - that is, each believed that as the monarch, he had the right to overrule Parliament. And legally speaking, the Crown still does have the right to overrule Parliament, though the powers of the Crown are these days invested in the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister makes use of them against the will of Parliament at his (or her) extreme political peril. (See discussions about the legality of Tony Blair to decide to take the UK into the war with Iraq if the vote went against him in the Commons - as it very nearly did.)

Parliament was, then as now, the only body lawfully empowered to levy taxes. If Charles wanted money, he had to get it via Parliament. (He did get a certain amount of money by pure sharp practice, selling titles via the Star Chamber, but nothing like a proper system of taxation.) Arguments about religion might have gone on for a long, long time without ever leading to war. Money, on the other hand....

[Jesurgislac]

...And the relevance of the above historygeek comment is, er... look where the money is going. And not going.

[lily]

Charleycarp, I used the word "coward" to refer to Kerry for voting in favor of the authorization when he had a safe seat and nothing to risk from doing the right thing. I was not referring to Demcrats who are now calling for some kind of pullout .

I think that it is obvious that if the war is seen to be ended by an act of Demcrats, then the Republicans will spend the next fifty years insisting that we could have won if the Democrats hadn't been so weak.

Given that, the Democrats who are now speaking up for what they think is right without regard to political cost are the ones that have the moral highground on this issue. The ones who remain quiet for fear of what the Republicans might say are putting political considerations ahead of right and wrong.

What complicates the whole matter is that it is so hard to decide what to do NOW so people can come to all kinds of conclusions now with no reflection on their characters at least in my opinion (except the be-silent-for-fear-of Repubicans position), but I don't think the decision was unclear at all when the authorization came up. I think Sen. Byrd used the word "coward" to refer to his fellow Democrats at the time. He certainly used some plain language.

I voted for Kerry. I worked twenty hours a week for him. I thought the attacks on his war record were complete sleeze and a reflection on the integrity of the Repubican party as a whole since the Liars could have been shut down in an instant had there been will to do so. But my best guess is that he made a politically motivated vote which I think was the cowardly thing to do.
The difference between Kerry and Murray is that Kerry had an unquestionably safe seat and Murray's wasn't quite so certain.

[Ara]

So what about this civil war plan? It sounds like the American military is going to forcibly remove minorities from some areas, for the sake of their own protection. Does "removing minorities from harm's way" amounts to ethnically separating Baghdad or Kirkuk? On the one hand, this is deracination. On the other hand, pretty clearly it could prevent something much worse. I am picturing massive refugee lines protected by American soldiers. Horrifying. And yet what are the better alternatives, at that point?

[bob mcmanusb]

Investors Pray to the Inflation God, Ben ...Stirling Newberry.

This is a longish post on Fed policy, but the opening paragraph is the kind of Snap! moment I read Newberry for, connecting several things mentioned in hilzoy's post:

"When an unexpected outage on the north slope of Alaska can drive crude oil prices to nearly $78/barrel - you know the world is awash in dollars. The effects of a dollar glut are seen in Lebanon where Hezbollah has fielded a sophisticated light infantry force capable of inflicting painful fatalities on Israel's army, while still maintaining its terror blitz of missiles - all supplied by Iran's oil money."

There is a direct connection between Hezbollah's capabilities, the Iranian nuclear program, and the Federal deficit financed by East Asia. Isn't this fun?

What seems obvious to me, that the absolute price of a commodity, oil, or the price of anything else is not determined by the marginal costs of production or the marginal demand but by the amount of dollars in circulation seems very difficult for others to grasp, so it might be wrong. The relative price of oil might be determined by marginal factors, but if there is only one dollar in the world, the last barrel of oil will cost one dollar. Relatively very valuable indeed.

Now I think Newberry is actually saying when he says there is a "dollar glut"...besides the shortage of productive investment opportunities...is that we needed a recession to work out the various bubbles. IOW, the marginal demand for oil was kept too high via cheap money.

[Gary Farber]

"And young men are often fighters for its own sake. Will Gary get on me for generalizing about young men?"

No.

[Gary Farber]

"I am picturing massive refugee lines protected by American soldiers. Horrifying."

A heck of a lot less horrifying than what happened when India and Pakistan became independent nations out of British India. (A piece of history I always have in mind, along with other population shifts in the same decade, when people discuss the what happened when Israel was created, and the resultant Palestinian refugee situation, but I digress.)

In any case, refugees protected by American soldiers, to whatever degree, woould be a lot better off than those not. Not that it would be a good thing overall; just possibly better than the alternatives.

[Anarch]

A heck of a lot less horrifying than what happened when India and Pakistan became independent nations out of British India.

Ah, Partition. So many lessons one can learn... and so few actually learned.

[Andrew]

I don't recall who said it, but I remember reading someone once point out that we tend to read history more closely only after we've fallen on our a**.

[Jesurgislac]

Andrew, I too forget who said it, but someone said that the problem at the start of a war is that the generals all want to fight the new war as if it was the last war. (It was certainly true of the British generals and the Boer War, WWI, and WWII.)

[Black and White]

It seems that the only thing that is agreed upon is that for a multitude of reasons and for not reason at all there will be fighting and dying in Iraq for the foreseeable future. I will over simplify the situation and go straight to a black and white view. If we can not win cleanly and right now, pull out. It is part of human nature that the general consensus is that we should watch from afar and hope that it will not migrate onto our shores.
Only I find it hard to breath with my head in the sand. What will work?? What actions in our 20/20/ hindsight would have actually worked? With all the parties and different agendas at play there is no possible solution that would work.
I must go now and drive my SUV a block to get milk on demand.

[Jesurgislac]

SomeOtherDude: I don't think I have ever read Jes claim to read minds, however she assumes what you mean. She seems to force a lot of folks to explain their meaning, in other words "Do you really mean that? The way I read it, it seems you mean _____."

Correct.

But, starting the fight again about Andrew's preference for free market health care (and what that means were he to have the power to impose his preference on people who cannot afford the health care they need) on this thread was a bad idea.

The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. Protect the Family. Obey. Trust the Corps. Maternis, Paternis.

[Jesurgislac]

Sod. Wrong thread. (How did that happen?) Please ignore. (Or delete.)

[Nell]

Costs to the Iraqis, to our troops, to the world, and to our interests, all incurred because, in a moment of national hysteria, we decided to trust someone who had never once given the slightest evidence that he was trustworthy; and to do so when the stakes were huge.

And then, when the evidence that he was not trustworthy was already before us, and the failure of the wholly unplanned, unaccountable, crony-ridden occupation quite clear, slightly more than half the voters in this country decided to continue to trust him.

Or maybe they saw him as more trustworthy than his opponent, who failed to renounce his own complicity in the Iraq disaster. (And who allowed totally fabricated smears about him to gain traction.)

There are a lot of enablers around. I'm not going to forgive many of them.