« Why Not Some Good News For A Change? | Main | Random Notes On Iraq »

December 01, 2006

Comments

As I understand it this message was likely also handed to VP Cheney, who was summoned to Saudi Arabia recently. This article is more in the nature of a followup

Though I would note that the Saudis have made an art form of financing Sunni extremism in order to put off internal political reform, which leads me to be a bit contra Clemons here. The Saudis have always had oil money, and when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Clemons promises to have something more about Saudi Arabia's relative power status, but my own knee jerk take is that the Saudis don't have a very good command and control structure (perhaps a little better than Kuwait) and Iran has a lot more military expertise, plus the fact that the Saudis seem to be enamored with expensive systems such as AWACs that were purchased as an attempt to counter balance Israel rather than Iran, which supposedly has rather strong asymmetrical capabilities, which will hit the Saudis where they live (making the Iranian decision to pursue nuclear power/weapons rather far sighted)

I also wonder why there hasn't been any more public appeals to the Saudis to help the Sunnis, though perhaps there have been and I am unaware of them.

If I am understanding what I have read in the news over the last week or so then:

1. The US is pulling out of Anbar where AQ/Islamists/who knows is in control of the streets

2. Bush just gave Maliki a 'proceed with deniability' licence to commence cleansing

3. Sadr is no longer part of the Iraqi govt and is officially not a hammer to hit nails with, or a power drill to drill holes with.

4. Iran is not acting at all scared of anyone

5. Cheney just got told the Saudis will intervene

6. Sistani has been silent

Hopefully I've read it all wrong, (I've not been drinking as much as usual so it's a distinct possibility), because that is a pretty ugly salad of events.

I don't know. On the one hand, the Saudi message comes across to me like one of those staged dramas in hockey -- the head coach says to his assistant, "Hold me back!" while he pretends to lunge at the opposing bench in fury. (Bush/Cheney being the head coach, the House of Saud being the assistant.) The regime doesn't want to withdraw from Iraq; they need someone besides themselves to insist that they not withdraw.

On the other hand, given all the talk recently about the U.S. 'picking a winner' and embracing the Shia death squads openly rather than de facto, it's hard to imagine the Sunni powers just sitting by if that seems to be happening.

Hilzoy – I just can’t reconcile these statements:

I'm not sure why this is a cap on a worsening of the situation in Iraq, rather than fuel on the fire.

I just tend to think that the broader this conflict becomes, the more horrible possibilities come into play, and the wider the potential disaster.

that's the regional war we have all been afraid of. And if the possible consequences of civil war in Iraq are horrible, the possible consequences of a regional war are much, much worse.

With this:

Personally, I would not stay in Iraq to prevent this.

I understand your point is it means being stuck there indefinitely, but I can’t believe you think that is worse than the potential carnage you point out is likely in the other scenario.

That is a civil war - one with the potential for more death and destruction than our own. I understand that you think this thing is hopeless, I get that. But I really can’t believe you would choose a real civil war spreading into a regional conflict over continued US involvement.

Hmmm...it's a tossup. House of Saud could get things done that we couldn't, but they're so corrupt that the potential for mischief is huge.

But practically everyone knows more about this sort of thing than I do, so I'm willing to sit back and listen, now that I've thrown in my tuppence.

Once again, my fears that the election of a Democratic congress would end the wonderful entertainment the Republicans have provided me these past 6 years or so are proving to be unfounded.

Regional war and mass slaugther in heart of the world's energy supply. Now that is effin' entertaining.

Is Saudi Arabia alone really able to cut the price of oil in half? I thought they (like everyone else) were getting uncomfortably close to their maximum output already.

Off Topic- This seems ripe for abuse. I do love the statement that concludes the article by the DHS guy at the end.

I wonder what my score is considering I traveled to a Muslim country this year.

I hear creative chaos in the wings, waiting for its entrance line.

OCSteve -- if the US were to maintain a presence in Iraq, and/or the Middle East generally, to try to prevent a worsening of the situation, how large a force do you think that would require?

My guess is half a million or more. That probably means a draft. It certainly means a lot -- a *lot* -- of money. It probably means a US presence in the area for 5 - 10 years, before things settle out, if they settle out. Which they may not.

All of this scaling up would have to occur in the context of a conflict that has already lasted longer than WWII, and at the request of an administration that has lost more or less all credibility regarding the nominal reasons for being there in the first place, and for their competence in waging the war we're already in the middle of.

I actually do appreciate your interest in not walking away from Iraq and just letting the situation descend into chaos. I think it's a principled position, and a good -- morally good -- one in the sense of accepting responsibility for decisions already made.

All of that said -- what do you think it will take? How long will it last? How will you convince people to pay what it will cost in money, lives, and time, when their perception is that they are being asked to pay for Bush's mistakes, and to salvage his reputation?

Thanks -

and yet, over here we have the WaPo saying the US might be "deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds".

so, the proposal suggests abandoning the Sunnis, and the Saudis say "don't you dare abandon the Sunnis".

heckofa job, Bushie

On the other hand, given all the talk recently about the U.S. 'picking a winner' and embracing the Shia death squads openly rather than de facto

Bingo, Nell. I think that's *exactly* what's going on here. The Saudis might dislike a U.S. pullout; they would go apesh*t if we actually started taking the Shiites' side.

Or "what Cleek said." More coffee ...

I wonder if Cheney had any questions for the Saudis.

Like .... what's a Sunni?

Or .... how would I know a Shi-ite if I saw one?

OCSteve: luckily, James Fallows expressed my miserable gloomy view better than I could:

"If it is not in our power to prevent these disasters, then it is better to do as little extra damage to ourselves as possible before they occur. Sure, it is theoretically in our power to do more in Iraq. It’s just not possible in the real world. To start with: we’re not going to double the size of our military to sustain an open-ended presence in Iraq.

So the choice is between a terrible decision and one that is even worse. The terrible decision is just to begin leaving, knowing that even more innocent civilians will be killed and that we’ll be dealing with agitation out of Iraq for years to come. The worse decision would be to wait another year, or two, or three and then take that terrible course. If we thought a longer commitment and presence would lead to a better outcome, then the extra commitment might be sensible. But nothing occurring in Iraq in the last year has given rise to any hope that things are getting better rather than worse. (This, by the way, is the reason I have changed my mind: the absence of evidence that the chances for a “decent” departure will improve.)"

Matt Yglesias adds:

"Right. The trendlines are vital here. Staying would make sense if there were any reason to think staying longer would create the conditions for departing in the future under less screwed-up circumstances. All the evidence, however, is the reverse. Things are worse on 1 December 2006 than they were one year ago, worse than they were two years ago, worse than they were three years ago, and there's no reason to think that pattern is going to change."

And I add: I have been saying that we had a responsibility to stay and help make things better for several years, because I really do take seriously the fact that we are responsible for the shape Iraq is in just now. However, I ask myself: suppose we had cut and run two years ago: would things have been worse now, two years later, than they are now? It's really not clear to me that they would have been, and even less clear that they wouldn't be, somehow, on a better trajectory than they are now.

Two years ago, the militias had not yet started torturing people and killing them on a daily basis; Sistani still had influence; the Shi'a were still holding their fire; and there was a lot less poisonous hatred around. It would have been better to have left then. Given that we didn't do anything to ensure security after we invaded, it would probably have been better had we left after a few months. I didn't think so at the time, but that was because I hoped we would do something to at least begin to ameliorate the damage we had caused.

But we're just making things worse.

Thullen - that's likely not too far from the truth with these MBFs. To wit:

“You can’t get rid of the Ministry of the Interior,” Garner said.

“Why not?”

“You just made a speech yesterday and told everybody how important the police force is.”

“It is important.”

“All the police are in the Ministry of the Interior,” Garner said. “If you put this out, they’ll all go home today.”

On hearing this bit of information, we are told, Bremer looked “surprised”...

Feh.

As to the Saudis flooding the market with oil, almost certainly a bluff.

Oil Drum

As to the U.S. staying or going, my own opinion is the U.S. military would never do what would be required to have any possibility of success, based on what I've read about counter-insurgency. Even with 400,000 troops. It would mean no more airstrikes, no more helicopter strikes in Baghdad, foot patrols everywhere, no more checkpoints, etc. It wouldn't get done because casualties would triple or quadruple. Not that I'd blame the military for taking a bye on what is now a long-shot.

This article is more in the nature of a followup

Or, rather, a cc: to the boss.

The comments to that post at Clemon's are very much worth reading. Deep down, Dan Kervick and several others get into a serious discussion of Arabic/Muslim culture and political propensities.

OT: at last, our long national nightmare is over: Pelosi has made her decision about the Intelligence chair. now she can get back to the business of being minority leader.

Oh, cleek, surely there's some other committee chair decision we can obsess over.

I always seem to have trouble cutting-and pasting from Clemons' comments, but toward the end Kervick discusses Saudi intentions and recent reports that the Iraqi Sunnis are confident of winning if the the US withdraws. Juan Cole and others have been speculating on this for years.

Anybody watch Jericho on CBS? I suppose wisdom via TV fiction can be considered absurd, but a recent episode had 4 trained mercenaries facing off 30 townspeople with rifles. The mercenaries stood their ground and the townspeople never got off a shot. The show ended with our hero saying:"Dad, we need some training."

There is a huge difference between Sadr's punks grabbing hairdressers off the streets of Baghdad and the Sunni insurgency blowing 6 simultaneous suicide carbombs outside a ministry.

Unless all else is close to equal, numbers don't mean squat.

Oh, cleek, surely there's some other committee chair decision we can obsess over.

There's always more where that came from.

There's always more where that came from.

so far, the Dems have been pretty good about not ultimately choosing the outright criminals.

I think they've done a great job in avoiding final selection of initially horrible choices. It's almost street theater.

Which, I must stress, is a good thing. If they keep it up, we'll all stay entertained AND undisgusted.

Saudi's oil threat is almost certainly a bluff. They don't have that much current excess production.

Funding one side of the civil war is of course well within their power.

I have mixed feelings about that. If the option is that or an anti-Sunni genocide in Iraq, I'm not particularly against letting the Sunni's fight back. Like Sudan, if we aren't going to actually do anything, we certainly shouldn't prevent people from fighting against the people who want to kill them.

Saudi's oil threat is almost certainly a bluff. They don't have that much current excess production.

they could just sell below cost for a while. they can afford to.

cleek,

"they could just sell below cost for a while"

On the one hand, the cost of extracting the oil is far under $10 per barrel, creating lots of room for the Saudis to cut their prices without even going below cost.

On the other hand, if the supply and demand curves for oil intersect in the $60 per barrel range (as they have for the past few months), all that accomplishes is transferring large amounts of profits from the Saudis to whomever they sell it to at a discounted price. While I may view it as a Good Thing, it won't affect what we pay at the pump for gas.

And on the other hand, he wears a ring.

russell: All of that said -- what do you think it will take?

I really don’t know the answer. I’ve gone around and around on troop strength in several threads of late. I do feel that more troops could be re-deployed to Iraq starting right now. Equipping them, getting them their, getting them up to speed on the ground are all valid concerns and problems. I just don’t feel they are insurmountable. I think we could surge 50,000 immediately (3-6 months) and another 50,000 over the next year.

As to what to do with them, I’d put half in Baghdad, and use the other half to completely close the border with Iran and Syria. In addition to the ground troops, put a carrier group in the Persian Gulf, just off Kuwait, and task the Navy with border over watch as well. Iran is the largest instigator right now. Remove their meddling, their support of weapons and training, and it might at least give us some breathing room to better get a handle on things.

On the diplomatic front something needs to happen with Iran as well. We’ve heard stories for some time that Iran has been providing advanced IEDs (well, they aren’t really “improvised” when they are being provided by a nation state). Now apparently we have “smoking gun” proof that weapons are going straight from Iranian manufacturers to the hands of the Shia militias. I’d say that based on that, the UNSC should be involved. Of course we can’t get them to do anything about Iran’s nuclear program – so addressing this would seem pretty hopeless.

I would hope to actually make progress in stabilizing the situation. But as an absolute minimum, if all we can do is act as a buffer and a force to keep things from breaking out into all out civil war or genocide, I think we need to continue to do that. I can’t imagine turning our back on that responsibility and just walking away.


Hil: I don’t agree that we can extrapolate any trend lines to a final inevitable conclusion. These things are not linear. There are peaks and valleys. I really don’t we can just say, “Fine then – let them kill each other. We’re out of here. We tried but it’s just too hard.” And how are we making things worse? Or rather, what possible improvement comes from our premature withdrawal?

all that accomplishes is transferring large amounts of profits from the Saudis to whomever they sell it to at a discounted price

it'll also make all the non-Saudi oil companies vewy vewy angry.

at the bottom of the article OCSteve linked to:

    U.S. intelligence officials believe the number of Al-Sadr's Mahdi army now includes 40,000 fighters, making it an especially formidable force.

40,000 ? wow.

Now apparently we have “smoking gun” proof that weapons are going straight from Iranian manufacturers to the hands of the Shia militias. I’d say that based on that, the UNSC should be involved.

This reminds me of when Rumsfeld would get up on the podium and warn Iran and Syria "not to meddle" in Iraq. I would just sit there dumbfounded looking at the teevee and want to scream out "the United States just invaded the country with 150,000 troops, toppled its government, disbanded its army and killed thousands of its citizens, and you're up there telling Iran not to 'meddle' in its affairs?!!?!??"

NB: I don't have that reaction when it comes from you OCSteve, your comment just jogged my memory.

One of the options under discussion is the "pick a winner" option--back the Shiites ourselves. Someone (pratike? Mark Schmitt? I can't recall) wrote that the Saudi Arabians' threat to get involved on behalf of the Sunnis is a warning to the Bush administration to refrain from siding with the Shia. I just reviewed the thread and I see that Nell pointed this out already. Well my point is that this is the event that pushes me firmly into the lets-leave-now camp. I don't want our military to be in the position of backing death squads and ethnic cleansing and that's exactly what picking a winner would entail. Also, getting into a proxy war with the Saudis is a very, very bad idea.
OCSteve, your plan might work, but it requires greater commitment than I believe the Bush administration would ever make. They want to win, but they want to do it with no cost to them domestically. I actually don't think the Democrats would present a united fron in opposition to your plan, should the Bush admin. take your advice, ( there would be outbreaks of disunited opposition), but the public in general would be very unhappy. So whether it would work or not, I don't believe it will happen. It's mose the Bush administration style to muddle along on a combination of hope and pseudo-craftiness, making decisons only when forced to and then making the wrong one.
So I think they'll back the Shia, that being the stupidest, most inflammatory, and least moral option.

Now I'm reminded of everyone's favorite character from law school: The Officious Intermeddler.

lily- my 1:51 was prompted by my previous comment, not your 1:50.

OCSteve, Iraq's land border with Iran and Syria (why aren't you worried about Saudi?) amounts to over 2000 km according to CIA. This is about 2/3 of US border with Mexico.

If the US cannot "completely close" its own border, how do you think the military can seal borders in hostile territory? Certainly not going to happen with 25000 troops (how many of these would be actually patrolling the border, and how many would be providing support and logistics etc?)

Oh, cleek, surely there's some other committee chair decision we can obsess over.

Well, there's always revisiting the obsession, post-assignment.

Well, there's always revisiting the obsession, post-assignment.

hmm. that's unfortunate.

i wonder, without intending to excuse anyone, if it's even possible to find powerful people who don't have some kind of sordid dealings in their past. especially now that everyone has access to decades worth of dirt and the only thing stopping it from coming to light is lack of interest...

I've been wondering the same thing, cleek.

Which brings me back to one of my favorite hypotheticals: selective service for government. Not that that would necessarily fix anything, mind you, but it would dilute those inclined to crime-by-government with more ordinary folks. In addition to, probably, introducing all manner of new problems.

And of course you'd have to disqualify some criminals.

Not seriously suggesting that, but it does seem as if government attracts a lot of folks inclined to skim, doesn't it?

cleek,

"it'll also make all the non-Saudi oil companies vewy vewy angry."

If you mean non-Saudi oil producing countries, then no, it won't affect the price they get for their oil. There still will be sufficient demand for their oil to get the same price for it, regardless of what the Saudis sell their oil for.

Off Topic - anyone know what the rules are for protesting on the sidewalk in front of the White House? Just went by a group where the Park Police made an announcement that they were in violation of regulations that govern the area and therefore their permit had been revoked. AFAICT, they were just sitting on the sidewalk.

Maybe Cheney's told the Saudis to get ready to accept a few million refugees

Cheney

OT, Question:

a lot of (far too many) right wing bloggers write with a similar style: overwrought, verbose, full of allusions to the Greeks and Romans and great battles, desperately trying to to sound inspiring in a Grand and Profound way, always trying to paint us in the most gloriously dire circumstance - where only our determined and steadfast vigilance against those who would seek to dimish us, those without and within, will save our Western Civilization from the raging Islamofascist hordes and their treacherous allies at home! to the gates!

VD Hanson, Tacitus, these clowns, the Eustonites, and sooo many others all use this same style.

but it's, a pose, an affectation. it must be a echo of something they've all read before - it's just too formulaic to be something they all thought up independently. they use the same phrases, the same grammar, the same sentence structures, the same oratorical rhythms, the same imagery. it's a template.

(frankly, i find it hillarious.)

so, what's the source ? is it Churchill ?

cleek, Ayn Rand?

A Ayn Rand-JRR Tolkien hybrid!!

kvenlander:If the US cannot "completely close" its own border, how do you think the military can seal borders in hostile territory?

Well, of course we could, if we put 25k combat troops there and used military aircraft for surveillance. I’m game…

W. Buckley? Oswald Spengler?

How many total troops do you need to have 25K combat troops?

Sure we could if:
- we had unlimited funds
- we had unlimited troops (rotation)
- we could somehow make it politically acceptable
- we could somehow make it acceptable to people on both sides of the border

The GOP had all the tools to make all this happen on the US-Mexico border in the last six years. Why didn't they? Lots of talk, no action.

cleek -- my top guesses would be either Edward Gibbon or Edmund Burke.

Gibbon, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

The memorable series of revolutions, which, in the course of about thirteen centuries, gradually undermined, and at length destroyed, the solid fabric of Roman greatness, may, with some propriety be divided into the three following periods.

I. The first of these periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the subversion of the Western Empire, by the barbarians of Germany and Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe. This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power of a Gothic conqueror, was completed about the beginning of the sixth century...


Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France:
By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearts, our sepulchres, and our altars.

There's a visible genealogy. Their opinions, ideas, and pompous tone have hardly changed in over 200 years.

OCSteve: Andrew has a post on our ability to send more troops to Iraq here. Linkingto him is vastly better than me commenting, since he actually knows what he's talking about ;)

My vote is for Bulwer-Lytton...

OCSteve -

I don't think 50K now and 50K in a year will do the trick. We can't control Baghdad now. Even with another 100K in country, how are we going to control the entire Iranian and Syrian borders?

What are we, possibly, going to bring to the table to convince the Iranians to butt out? They share a history, culture, and religion with the Iraqi Shi'a. We're 8,000 miles away, they are zero miles away. They have, to say the least, a compelling interest in how things turn out. There's nothing we can do to convince them that it's in their best interest to stay out of it, because it's not.

The best case for staying in is that, in spite of making three and half years of unbelievable blunders, we want to show good faith with the Iraqis by keeping American skin in the game. The problem with this position is that you have to sell it to the folks whose skin, or whose loved one's skin, will actually be in the game.

What I want to suggest here is that, pure and simple, the situation in Iraq may be beyond recovery. If we could put a half million American troops in country for the next 5 or 10 years, maybe we could forestall the kind of mayhem that is likely to occur if we leave. I think it's unlikely that we will do that, because not that many folks are willing to see their own particular child die purely as a gesture of good faith to the nation of Iraq.

We're not going to keep Iran out of the picture. We're not going to keep the Saudis out of the picture. We're not going to keep the Shi'a and Sunni from killing each other. We might, once, have had a shot at creating a stable state in Iraq, but as far as I can tell that moment has passed.

If we stay, we might be able to keep total, anarchic mayhem from breaking out. As I see it, that's the only contribution we can make at this point. Making that contribution will cost us hundreds to thousands of American lives, billions of dollars, and probably at least five years of time.

We have well over a 100K people there now, and we can't even prevent dozens of people in the damned capital city from showing up dead every day with power drill holes in them. The word for this is FUBAR.

I'm not unsympathetic to your point of view, but I think you will find a continued US presence in Iraq to be, increasingly, a very hard sell.

Thanks -

My vote is for Bulwer-Lytton...

Has anyone else here actually read The Last Days of Pompeii?

At the age of 12 or thereabouts??

(And no, I'm not talking about Anarch.)

hilzoy: a bad sign that this sort of communication has to occur via the editorial page of the Washington Post, rather than some more direct means

There's no reason to suppose this avenue of communication is occurring instead of a more direct means. Do you take it as a bad sign that it's occurring in addition to a more direct means? (Such as, face to face from Prince Abdullah to VP Dick Cheney.)

@ Ugh re WH sidewalk rules: It could be that the answer depends on what each demo permit permits. I can imagine that those for groups with a history of civil disobedience have different restrictions than organizations with no history of same. Not saying it's right, just a possible explanation.

I believe but am not certain that the D.C. police are the only ones who issue those permits (to narrow your research field). But it might be that the Park Police also have a role; I know they're the permit-issuing authority for Lafayette Park, across the street.

The comments to this entry are closed.