Joe Conason's view on Iraq -

I would be interested on having your view on what he suggests.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5506291

Interesting and thought provoking.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/12/03/iraq_plans/


The only way out

suggest the moderate Sunnis, to speak up in his speech at Georgetown ? I wonder if Conason listened to the question and answer part of that. I like Conason and I would like if knew what Kerry said on this topic.

Kerry (And Murtha, btw) hve said that there is no military solution to this war. There is only a political solution. The Kurds have to acknolwedge that they will not break away into an independent state. The Shia have to share power and the Sunnis have to give up the idea that they will control the country again.

Kerry also said that the US has to come out and say that we have no desire for permanent bases in Iraq. I suspect this is what sticks in the craw of the neocons more than anything else, as they do have plans to occupy Iraq for a long time.

and also agree it hardly gets mentioned anywhere.

PERMANENT BASES.

There, I said it too. That is the huge gorilla in the room. On the NewsHour yesterday Mark Shields made the excellent point that the reason the administration freaked out completely and went nuclear on Murtha is that his words showed that the military were talking, and what they were saying (to Murtha) was in direct contradiction to their own talking points.

There is an equivalent black hole of silence on the permanent presence issue. I hope Kerry will hammer the hell out of it.

Oh, and Hillary on Iraq??? Man, is she ever the living embodiment of "too little too late."

"The real struggle in Iraq – Sunni versus Shiia – will only be settled by a political solution, and no political solution can be achieved when the antagonists can rely on the indefinite large scale presence of occupying American combat troops."

Trying to see the response if people don't know who said it.

Did anyone hear that rumor that Kerry was heard to have said one late night on the campaign plane in 2004, "What the f*** are we going to do about Iraq? What are we going to do?". I'm not questioning his sincerity in his Iraq plan, but deep down, he has to know that any plan is a long shot in working.

The Bushies have screwed up Iraq real good. There is no easy way to get out. There is no way to get out and leave a peacable country behind. There will be death whatever we do. There are no easy answers here, just ones that are less painful than others.

The one at Al Franken's with several key journalists, the one Will Pitt was invited to? Where he turned mean Kerry and said he would not have started this war and he didn't want the vote of anybody who believed he would have. There's been enough of those moments where I think this war is just eating him alive. On the one hand, he may have a clear idea of what can be accomplished. On the other, because of his book "The New War", I think he really is concerned about terrorists. And on the other, you have to bring the people to your side before you can make any change at all anyway. There's probably more hands too, not enough hands to count up all the things to consider. People who so casually toss around cliche's about the war just don't seem to have a grip on reality. What's more, alot of these people are the same ones who griped about the sanctions, and gripe about Darfur, and would be griping if we'd let a massacre happen in Iraq and did nothing about it. They can't see their own hypocrisy in requiring the US to change everything without ever appearing to be interfering where we don't belong.

Someone mentioned once, what if Saddam Hussein was gassing his own people in January 2003. Right at that moment. Would the liberal human rights types demand that we invade Iraq? It's a very interesting question, and shows how complex both the ME is, and also our own political landscape is. Maybe that's why it's hard for me to listen to the anti-war fringe Left speak, when you know they would have bitched and moaned had things happened in a different order.

I hate to quote Maher, but if your whole philosophy is "I hate George W. Bush" and then you work backwards from there, this is a major problem. Throw him out the window for a moment (okay, savor it for a moment). When is it right to invade another country? National security? Imminent threat? Human rights abuse? Disregard for other nation states? Has incredible amount of resources in something your country needs REALLY BAD? The list goes on . . . When is it right to kill others for the "greater good"?

JK is a realist a lot of the time, yet he has an incredible distaste for a Clauswitz approach to diplomacy. It wasn't just Vietnam. His father shared this distaste also. When is that aversion to war good and when does it amount to a Munich Agreement? Does the evil of Hitler continue on this planet, as we wonder aloud when is war "good" (read Studs Terkel "The 'good' war"). When is avoiding war succumbing to evil?

out and say something like that even if he did express doubts privately. He's trying to find the most workable solution with the best chance of success. But how that success is defined is limited by what we can achieve as opposed to what we'd like to achieve.

That they are minimizing this alternative, and using different lingo, because they don't want to appear as 'negotiating with terrorist"?

Though I agree...I did hear Murtha and Kerry say they needed to be a part of the political process.

step.

As I have often said, I think that the two plans are not that different, but have put the emphasis on different aspects of the same thing.

, as much as I like his plan better than other because it is more complete, he presents it in a way that makes it more easy to distort and not to see the important things in it.

For a while, his emphasis was on the 20,000 troops out of the country and this has allowed (and still does, as we can see this morning with AP) reporters to keep at that, even if it was only the phase 1 of the plan.

Now, he insists on benchmarks and this will be all that people will be talking for a while (and they will say it is the same as Biden or others who have not even articularted a plan except to say there should be benchmarks -- including Bush).

I can understand why he proceeds like that (and sometimes I dont), but unfortunately, this gives the impression that he is following rather than leading (I know he is leading, of course). I don't know why he does that, but I really wished he (and whoever wants to follow) make a better job at explaining what he is proposing in the media.

in print, because if it is I have missed it somewhere. So to me I can't compare, although I do know Murtha's plan calls for troops to redeploy in the region, that to me is not bringing the troops home, and also puts to mind what country, for how long, are we talking permenant bases. To many unanswered questions in Murtha's plan for me.

You can probably find it on Thomas.

I think that his plan calls for some troops to stay over there (Marines as he is a marine man).

I agree with your question concerning the Murtha's plan. But this was not my point here.

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/statement_051117iraq.html

Links at the bottom go to his Nov 17 statement (as prepared), and the introduced resolution.

Here's the meat of the resolution:



Not very specific, but it has the benefit of being short and clear.

I'll be watching tomorrow to see what he says on Face the Nation.

To Redeploy U.S. Forces from Iraq.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MR. MURTHA introduced the following joint resolution:


(H. J. Res._________ )-

To Redeploy U.S. Forces from Iraq.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MR. MURTHA introduced the following joint resolution, which was referred to the Committee on ____________________________

Whereas Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

Whereas additional stabilization in Iraq by U.S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

Whereas more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

Whereas, as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

Whereas U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency;

Whereas, according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want the U.S. forces out of Iraq;

Whereas polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

Whereas, due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

Therefore be it



http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr_051117_iraqres.html

Bemchmarks can be two things depending on what you do:

- a tool for accountability (this goes with the notion of a timetable for these benchmarks and of presenting a solution to reach these benchmarks - This is what Kerry is doing.

- a way to ignore the problem (you say you will leave when those benchmarks (goals) are reached, but you dont say how you will reach them - Bush's version of benchmarks, but also the version of a lot of Dems who dont have a plan except saying a few generalities).

By insisting on benchmarks rather than a timetable, you allow reporters to ignore all the rest and it is the rest that is the most important.

Now, all depends what Kerry wants: present a plan that looks the same as everybody else (even if it is a lot better) or present a plan that has fundemmentally different aspects, but therefore could be seen different as what others present and dividing the Democrats in the Senate.

I think it is not a surprise that Gary Hart endorsed Kerry's plan and not Biden's, for example. But sometimes, I cannot see the difference from the way both Kerry and Biden present their plans.

This tends to drive me crazy because I know that Kerry has the best plan in the Senate, but I also can understand why lazy reporters would not see it.

ON edit: This would not be important if we had a fair media, who took the time to read what the candidate has proposed rather than engaging in a "gotcha" game. Unfortunately, our media, on the right AND on the left, has forgotten these standards a long time ago, so sometimes it is good to have always the same words, even if it makes you look like a robot.

I think that it may be a disease of intelligent people, as I noticed Clark and Feingold seem afflicted of the same problem, which may be why I like them.

www.johnkerry.com

"All of us believe our troops are doing an extraordinary job. They believe in the mission and we believe in them."

When I think more about that, I understand what he meant, but my first reaction was WTF. "What mission?"- Does he mean this war was just? and you can be sure a lot of people will interpret it like that.

So, yes, words matter. Kerryhaters make way too much of it and criticize everything even things that are actually great, but sometimes, as every human being, he mispeasks (even Dean and Edwards mispeask :sarcasm: ).

It certainly does not deserve a story in the Post, but who knows, it could if they dont have anything else to speak about.

The mission is a better life for Iraqis and a safer world.

Many soldiers believe they are fighting to deliver a better life for Iraqis.

Many soldiers believe they are fighting to rid the world of terrorism.

The war was falsely attached to the mission.

Believing in the mission is not believing in the war, but believing in the objective, which cannot be achieved by this illegal war.

To me Kerry is telling the administration, if you don't start doing the stuff he put foward NOW, any hope of any small type of success is loss. Kerry is sort of kicking them in the butt and saying GET WITH IT or GET OUT. JMO.

I'm more than pessimistic. And let me explain why. When I was a teenager I was inspired by a German author who wrote about the Arab world and I began to read a lot about the Arabs, their history, religion, traditions and mentality. I even bought a translated version of the Koran.

First of all there is the religious aspect. Hatred between Shiites and Sunnis is more than thousand years old and very deep and serious. Just think for a moment about the religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. We in our Western society don't have these problems today because religion became less important (and I'm talking about Europe here). And still... it's not over everywhere. Look at Northern Ireland and think about how many centuries old the struggle there between Catholics and Protestants is. It's almost unimaginable that in our modern, civilized, 21th-century-world they are still fighting and killing because of religion. Now see the Arab world. I won't say they aren't civilized (they already had a wonderful civilization when our ancestors still lived in huts). But their civilization is rooted in old traditions, and the religion - Islam - is still and will be for a long time a very important aspect of their daily lives. So, anybody who thinks that the Shiite/Sunni problem can be solved in our century lives in a fantasy world.

Now lets talk about their culture. This is a world ruled by men, let's face it. Even with changes coming slowly this will still be the reality for a long time. Compare again with our Western world. How hard was it for women to fight against men's prejudice? Even nowadays women still have to struggle to get to the highest positions in business and government. Can you imagine how much time it will take for these deeply traditional Arabs to accept women as equal partners? You see women's rights slowly emerge in countries like Saudi Arabia but even if they let women drive, work or vote, these men will never totally accept that women have the same rights. That too will take centuries as it did in our society.

And finally there is the mentality of these Arab men who rule their society. Honor and pride is more important for these people than life. They will fight and if necessary die without hesitation, and sacrifice their loved ones, if the honor of their family or their tribe was soiled. The old tradition of blood revenge is still something totally normal for these people. War is a deadly but necessary routine in their world.

This mix of religion and tradition is the deadly cocktail which makes it so easy to recruit these people as suicide bombers. Trying to enforce our "values" on these people is completely insane. Will they be ever able to have a democratic society? I think yes. Their own version of democracy. But it will take a long time (as it did for us) and everything we do to push them will only backfire on us. That's something Bush and his Noe-con cronies with their limited view of our world will never ever be able to understand.

Someone on US TV (can't remember who it was) said a few days ago: Imagine the French had stayed in America after helping to achieve America's Independence from Britain. The USA had its civil war too and it took its time to get to the democracy Americans are proud of today (or at least was, before Bush came to power).

My conclusion is that a civil war in Iraq is just not avoidable. If it doesn't happen now, it will happen later. And in the end - with all good or not so good plans - the USA will have to withdraw and let the Iraqis sort it out on their own, with all the consequences it will have on a short term, for the region and the rest of the world.

That doesn't mean that I'm not grateful to John Kerry for trying everything to find an acceptable solution to this situation and his plan is the most reasonable approach, in my opinion. He really cares for his country and the world. But I'm not really convinced that it still can be implemented. I think it's too late now. We all have to face the consequences of Bush's insane war for a long time to come.

There has always been something not quite right with America having to be the court of last resort for the world. (It's not really a role that most Americans want. For most of the USA's existence, we have been fairly isolationist.) We just might not be able to fix what we have broken. We might have to get out and let the Iraqis fix their own country.

The other problem is the loss of the American soul that this misguided and terrible war is accelerating. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave tortures people. We have erected phony legal justification so that we can torture people in the name of freedom. This is poisonous to our own nation and our sense of ourselves.

We also have to get out of Iraq before Iraq destroys this country. It is fueling this ridiculous 'red state versus blue state' thing that is so corrosive and divisive that the nation is suffering from it. We are already engaged in one of those periodic 'silent civil wars' over where the country wants to go from here. Should we be guided by the religious themes that have been present in this country since the Puritans or be guided by the Enlightenment principles that paved the way for progress and democracy. We are always fighting this stuff out. Is America the 'exceptional nation' because we are favored by God because we, in turn, favor God or is America the exceptional nation because of the drive to increase equality of opportunity to more and more citizens. What are we and how do we get to the next goal?) (American Exceptional ism actually makes me crazy. I don't really believe in it. Long story. Or I believe we have to keep earning it.)