The Next Iraq Offensive: By WESLEY K. CLARK (NYT)

The Next Iraq Offensive
By WESLEY K. CLARK
Published: December 6, 2005
Doha, Qatar



WHILE the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America's friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.

While American troops have been fighting, and dying, against the Sunni rebels and foreign jihadists, the Shiite clerics in Iraq have achieved fundamental political goals: capturing oil revenues, strengthening the role of Islam in the state, and building up formidable militias that will defend their gains and advance their causes as the Americans draw down and leave. Iraq's neighbors, then, see it evolving into a Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's power in the Persian Gulf just as it is seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel.

What a disaster it would be if the real winner in Iraq turned out to be Iran, a country that supports terrorism and opposes most of what we stand for. Surely, we can summon the wisdom, resources and bipartisan leadership to change the American course before it is too late.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/opinion/06clark.html?hp

the Pukes out!

That's all I have to say. Damn. Just damn. :(

:( Not good for anyone. Not us and not the Iraqi's. Major changes coming to their lives. Those who still live there that is.

would lead to something like this. God, sometimes I hate looking at the truth being able to say "I told you so". It almost makes it harder, because this was so avoidable.

My greatest concern is what this administration will do to try to "fix" it's monumental blunder.

There really are no words to describe this idiotic, clumsey, ham-handed, devastating, brutal, mismanaged, arrogant, foolish, childish, misadventure...

God... I don't think we can describe it with all the nuance of all the languages on Earth.

I don't mean to belittle Clark, but this is old news. We've always known that the price for failure in Iraq has been the ascendancy of Iran.

The radical Shiite factions have been strengthened immeasurably by Bush's knuckleheaded military impulsiveness. Between that and the complete bungling of civil preparedness demonstrated by FEMA this past summer and the 9-11 commission yesterday, we might as well have Kevin Federline for president (and at this point, Bit-Bit might be a better choice)*.

Of course, it might not be that bad. There might "only" be a series of Coups d'Etat in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan. The new rulers might "only" turn off all the oil to the USA and Israel and demand an oath of fealty of Europe and China.

--p!
* Yes, it's come to that. I have been forced to keep up with the details of Britney's life to keep my brain from totally rotting out of my head from all this news. As a wiser man than I once proclaimed, "The Drugs Don't Work". But neither do any of Bush's initiatives. Or cronies. Or brains -- mammalian, reptilian, or Republican.

warned against it back then when this could have been avoided. He wasn't alone but he was always clear.

hey Pigwidgeon, where did your byline originate? Did you pen it? May I use it elsewhere, and how do I give credit?

I just thought it up. "Pigwidgeon at DU" or something like it will provide due credit.

The name "Pigwidgeon" is an old word (predating 1500 CE) meaning "a person of no particular importance" i.e., a John Doe.

However, about a month after I chose the name for DU -- and more than TWELVE YEARS after I started using it on the Internet -- a member of the Internet Copyright Police informed me that the name was now OWNED by J.K. Rowling who named a Harry Potter® character by that name and that I was liable to be sued.

The character is, predictably, a pig.

The morpheme "pig" in the word is certainly from the Latin word for "small", filtered through Anglo-Norman. And now appropriated by a publishing company.

I invented a new, similar name just to replace P*gw*dg**n, but you can't change user names here without wiping out all your user data, so Pigwidgeon it remains.

Your own use is unrestricted -- except for JKR's.

--p!
"Sucks to Harry's ass-mar."
(Ralph to Piggy, Lord of the Intellectual Property Attorneys)

remember that detail as she hasn't made it important, at least not yet.

It could have been an owl. The source told me it was a pig, but Internet Cops are only precise on the details of the offen{s|c}e, not the actual offended object/person/product/word.

I'll have to illegally download the Harry Potter corpus and check it out. :)

May you use it in good luck -- and your lawyer, too. :) :)

--p!
:) :) :)

my first instinct is to want to get the hell out of Iraq years ago.

But for one thing, I and the billions of people around the world who opposed the war didn't get our way, and now an entire country is completely f*cked up. Saying "whoops, sorry" and waving bye-bye is maybe a little too simplistic.

And for another, I acknowledge that I am not a military or political science expert, so I have no problems conceding my ignorance--I just look for information from someone I trust, like a sick person goes to a doctor for advice. I trust General Clark to Iraq and back again--it's my own personal bias, but he's also a passionately liberal general (like an increasing number of other military leaders who are speaking out against the administration), so I'd be favorably inclined towards him anyway, whatever my preferences were in 2004.

However happy in the short term I would be to see the troops leave--and I would be ecstatic--I also believe that the sequelae would be disastrous. A few psychopaths started this war, but that doesn't mean that an abrupt pullout by the reality-based community would provide the happiest ending. This war is rotten and gangrenous to the core, but if there's a plan for ending it as responsibly as possible--most importantly, minimizing Iraqi as well as American suffering--I think it's something that really ought to be considered.

Maybe General Clark can get the USAID billion-dollar grant Keith was talking about tonight.

and many people of both parties believed it. Read his testimoy to the House and to the Senate. He said EXACTLY this would happen. It wouldn't have with a President Clark.

Clark is right.... and 5 steps ahead of everyone else. He always has been..... every step. He's tried to school the Bush administration on how to make the best of this rotten situation.

We all claim to want the truth.

Here it is. It's not pretty, but it's the truth.

And I'll take an ugly truth over a pretty lie any day.

Sums up my feelings nicely renate (if nicely is an appropriate word under the horrendous circumstances.) I trust his competence and his honesty.

I know General Clark isn't offering this advice because he likes a continuing war. This is, after all, the very General Richard Perle accused of not wanting to fight when he recommended against the Iraq invasion originally.

And he certainly isn't offering this advice because it will make him popular. Obviously the increasing number of "get out now proponents" -- who I also have enormous sympathy with -- are going to decry this advice. But I've read enough of Wes Clark's work to know one of his career specialities was writing reports evaluating military/diplomatic situations intelligently, pragmatically and without factoring in what people want to hear.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to hear this. God knows there seems little chance anyone with the power to do anything will listen. But when Clark says this is the state of play and offers specifics about what to do next I think it's simply because, when faced with a problem, it's his instinct to solve it. When he sees impending damage, he wants to minimise it.

I just hope people who disagree with his advice give him the credit for offering it sincerely based on a high-level understanding of what's involved.

He's got the strategy to safely end this war and to limit Iran's power.

Wish we could circulate petitions and recall the Idiot Son. I really wish we could.

endless killing of innocent iraqis and americans soldiers and the destruction of the american economy in pursuit of such a nefarious goal. thanks for clearing that up, wes.

For what it is worth Clark knew we "lost" when we invaded Iraq. It is about assessing the situation and reading the likely outcome of prevailing dynamics if left unchecked. Almost everyone is "innocent" on the most fundamental level. Innocents die in the world where the U.S. is not directly involved also, like in Rwanda and during the Iran Iraq war (yes I know that the U.S. "sided" with Iraq then, but the ambitions of the rulers of Iraq and Iran were the driving force to that war).

It is about determining what will happen if the United States does X instead of Y, versus what will happen if the United States does nothing at all. The choices aren't pretty. What do you think will happen if Israel bombs the sites of Iran's supposed nuclear program? What do you think will happen if the Palestinians in Jordon attempt to overthrow the King there as a result? What do you think will happen to women in Iraq if strict fundamentalist Shiite clergy impose their "faith" onto all of them? What do you think Turkey, a U.S. N.A.T.O. ally, will do if Iraq comes apart at the seems and the Kurds take over the Northern Oil reserves and start strengthening their own militias?

None of us like thinking about these things. Notice I haven't even used the words, Al Quada yet. Don't have to. They are just one of many players in a rapidly destabilizing region. Clark knows a lot of important players in Europe and the Mid East personally. He was just in the Gulf States last week meeting with many of them. He is not making up these threats or imposing a cold war driven ideology onto otherwise peaceful peoples. He is telling us what they are telling him.

The neocons wanted permanent bases all along, a large and permanent force in control of the ME oil fields was always their goal. Surely they must have foreseen this possibility and quite simply ignored it.

So what are the real possibilities now? The US withdraws, Iraq falls into civil war and the shiites gain control. Iran gets closer to making it's first nuke (IAEA says it's a matter of months away) and Israel launches air strikes to take out the facility? What happens then?

If the US builds permanent bases against the wishes of the Iraqi people frustrations grow, casualties increase, the war can't be won without completely destroying the country.

Yep, Bush and Blair have got us into a right fucking pickle whichever way you look at it, and they both need to be removed from power ASAP before they get their hands on anything else

Clark is quoted: "...both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses..."
&
"...if the real winner in Iraq turned out to be Iran..."

One: * has no 'new' strategy, & Two: who the hell are we to decide who the winner is? What, is Iran the new enemy? Is Iran the next country we invade?

The whole problem is one devolved from military minds and military might. Until we do away with that military mentallity, in totallity, the US is nothing more than a drunken sailor with a nasty chip on his shoulder.

While Clark may have some ideas of how we exit the mess I see nothing here postulating such a scenario. I only see more war.

The only way to get out of a fight is to be diplomatic or to walk away. Our diplomacy is in the toilet: all we can do is walk away, or fight. I say we walk. Screw war.

The day we overran Baghdad was the day the Iranians won Gulf Farce II. There is no way to salvage the outcome that Gen. Clark bemoans, short of a permanent murderous bloody presence in Iraq. The analysis by Powell and others during Gulf Farce I - that Saddam had to be left in place to keep Iraq as a buffer against Iran - was correct from the point of view that Clark is now espousing. Too late for that. Old Saddam is being slowly executed by a kangaroo court in Baghdad. The sunni region is not going to suddenly decide to make nice with either the americans or the shiites. The kurds are doing their thing, preparing for the inevitable intervention that the final breakdown of our occupation will visit upon their de facto free kurdistan. Sorry Wes, but there is no victory here, only disgrace, and guilt for the horror we have visited upon this region.

anytime soon. He is more hardcore about staying and fixing it than I originally thought. geesh. 20,000 more troops needed for this, 30,000 for that, he seems to assume that the Iraqi's are going to be compliant enough to accept our micro-managing every little thing aspect of it all. I see nothing but much more death and destruction ahead with this lofty pie-in-the-sky plan. Is Clark aware the Iraqi's want us the fuck out of there NOW? I would assume that in order for this plan to work we need their co-operation. I just don't see it. Of course I am no expert , this is just my humble opinion. :shrug:

And reassign others. The thing is Clark is nothing if not honest. He will look at a situation and tell you how he honestly thinks, based on his expertise, it is likely to develop. In politics our "leaders" always seem to "get away with" fuzzy math and wishful thinking. Sure we can cut taxes for the rich and blow a few hundred billion in Iraq at the same time, no problem. Hey, why don't we give away Social Security too while we are at it? But in war if you allow yourself to become captive to your own wished for outcome to the exclusion of facts that say otherwise, you are defeated and your forces die as a result.

Clark does not want us in Iraq any more than you or I want us in Iraq. This is a war he fought against. Clark does not want to see the situation in the Mid East destabilize still further and he is giving his honest opinion of what the U.S. can still do to help prevent that. Clark travels to the Middle East a lot, he has high level contacts there as well as in N.A.T.O. The message he brought back from his trip there last week is what we are reading today. He was in the Gulf States. These concerns come from that region they are not being imposed onto that region. If you read what Clark said carefully you will find him echoing many of the specific concerns stated by Iraq's insurgents. The looming creation of mini states inside of Iraq is fueling the insurgency. The growing influence of strict Shiite Islamic mandates on secular elements of society is fueling the insurgency. The building of independent militias outside of the Government with strong ties to Iran is fueling the insurgency, etc.

The plan for dominance will die like all others before it. America will not be stronger, respected, or more economically advantaged, but less so.

The real state sponsors of the 9-11 Terrorists is Iran, and Bush's war strengthens their regional power.

I think the order of business was to be: Iraq, Syria, Iran then Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Iraq was supposed to be easy. We thought that Iraq would be easy because Ahmed Chalabi sent his agents to deceive us (by telling us where the WMD was and that the populace would welcome us as liberators). Chalabi sent four different fake defectors to us with these lines. We fell for it.

as soon as possible but without leaving total chaos. They must be used properly in the meantime....part of the bigger strategy....

This is an excellent interview...Schultz lays out many of the questions on people's minds.....

http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/2900

even after knowing who he was playing for!

Iraq, to me, was the single biggest issue that we faced at that time, whether we liked it or not. I know that the left hates the idea of a military man having power and I have always found myself in that camp as well. But, Clark is a different kind of military man.

I am so pleased to do what I can to help him because we need his perspective so very badly.

I stay so confused by the news about Iraq. Just heard the Senator on Ed Schultz today who just got back from Iraq, and it seemed like he wanted to say the same feel-good platitudes and yet wanted to bash Bush at the same time. What is it really like there? It seems that Wes Clark at least has spoken to the fundamental problem that we've created in Iraq...providing Iran with a base of support. George Packer certainly addressed this problem in ASSASSIN'S GATE....and yet we all talk of winning and losing as if such a clean answer were possible. I would love to be able to spend a couple of hours with Clark and let him tell us what he heard while he was there.

in Congress