Maybe, Just Maybe, Good Was Done?

[Pop N Wood]

An overstatement to be sure. But slave owners is established fact. As for their moral attitudes towards women, well I guess I was drawing off the recent admissions concerning Jefferson's extended family.

[johnc]

Less then half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were slave owners and many states had already abolished slavery. It was one of the big issues that almost led to failure of the Convention and later ratification. Most delegates recognized that the slavery compromises agreed to in the Constitution (especially the 3/5 compromise) would lead to internal conflict. And all (except a few extremists) knew slavery in this country would come to an end, with many feeling they would see this in their lifetimes.

 

Also, the slavery issue led to strange confrontations. New England and British ship owners wanted the importation of slaves continued while Virginia slave owners wanted the importation of slaves stopped. Virginia had a large slave population and wanted to increase its sale of its domestic slaves to other southern states.

[johnc]

Some more good news from Iraq:

 

http://iraqilibe.blogspot.com/2005/02/iraqi-citizens-kill-5-terrorists.html

[Heavy Z]

And in other news...

 

 

Iraq Army 'Severely

Intimidated' By Resistance

BBC News

2-5-5

 

Iraqi security forces are losing men because of "severe intimidation" by rebels, a top US general has said.

 

Lt Gen David Petraeus, in charge of training Iraqi troops, said few of the 90 battalions were at full strength.

 

He referred to incidents where soldiers returning from leave had been killed by rebels, but he did not say how many troops had deserted because of threats.

 

In the latest violence, four Iraqi soldiers were killed on Saturday when their patrol was attacked in Basra.

 

A booby-trapped motorcycle exploded near their vehicle in the southern city, an army spokesman said.

 

The US general said 136,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were now trained and equipped.

 

The US is helping to train Iraqi forces so they can eventually take over security and allow US troops to leave.

 

Privately, officials say everything depends on just how tenacious rebels turn out to be - but the American public ought to be ready for their troops to stay in Iraq for years, reports the BBC's Adam Brookes at the Pentagon.

 

But the US casualties continue to rise as well. Two US soldiers were killed and four injured in a roadside bomb near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji on Friday night, the US military said.

 

'Real challenge'

 

Gen Petraeus said 88 Iraqi battalions were conducting operations. But he conceded that few of those units were at full strength.

 

"Not all have every vehicle or piece of unit equipment," Gen Petraeus told Pentagon reporters via video link from Baghdad.

 

Insurgents were actually cutting the heads off soldiers as they were trying to come back from leave

 

 

"And some are still receiving replacements from combat casualties and losses suffered due to severe intimidation."

 

He highlighted the particular challenge for US and Iraq forces in insurgent strongholds north and west of Baghdad.

 

"This is an area where the insurgents were actually cutting the heads off soldiers that were trying to come back from leave and so forth," Gen Petraeus said.

 

"It was a real challenge during that time but we've turned a corner with that and as I said, a substantial number of soldiers are heading to those units."

 

Doubts

 

But some independent analysts in Washington question the general's numbers, our correspondent reports.

 

The Center for Strategic and International Studies says it has found that only handful of Iraqi police and military battalions are able to fight independently.

 

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress on Thursday that Iraqi units, on average, had absentee rates of about 40%.

 

The Bush administration has not given a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops.

 

Following last weekend's election in Iraq, the US has announced it will reduce troop levels by 15,000. It expects to keep 135,000 troops in Iraq throughout the year.

[johnc]

We want to play now...

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1477-2005Feb5.html

 

The leading Shiite candidate to become Iraq's next prime minister welcomed overtures on Saturday by groups that boycotted national elections and declared that he and others were willing to offer "the maximum" to bring those largely Sunni Arab groups into the drafting of the constitution and participation in the new government....

 

Abdel-Mehdi's comments were the latest to suggest a departure from the escalating political tension, much of it assuming a sectarian cast, that mirrored the insurgency and preceded Iraq's parliamentary elections. Many Sunni Arabs stayed away from the polls, crystallizing the divide between groups that engaged in the U.S.-backed process and those opposed to it while U.S. troops occupy the country.

 

Beginning this week, however, influential figures among Sunni and anti-occupation factions signaled their willingness to take part in the process that has followed the election, a recognition by some that the vote may have created a new dynamic. The Association of Muslim Scholars, one of the most powerful groups, has said it would abide by the results of the ballot, even if it viewed the government as lacking legitimacy. Thirteen parties, including a representative of the association and other parties that boycotted the vote, agreed Thursday to take part in the drafting of the constitution, which will be the parliament's main task.

 

"We should respect the choice of the Iraqi people," said Tariq Hashemi, the secretary general of the Sunni-led Iraqi Islamic Party, which withdrew from the election but which was still listed on the ballot.

 

The "drafting of the constitution is a very important issue for all Iraqis, and we have to be very clear on that," Hashemi said at a news conference Saturday. "We will have a role, we will play a role. That role depends on the political circumstances."

 

We want to play too!

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1511-2005Feb5.html

 

The war over the war is almost over.

 

Courtesy of the large turnout in Iraq's election a week ago, the United States and key European allies are beginning to make up after two years of bitterly strained relations over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

 

In large part because of the images of millions of Iraqis voting in defiance of insurgents, Condoleezza Rice's debut in Europe as secretary of state is being greeted with striking warmth and a rush of expectations about the healing of transatlantic ties.

 

"Irrespective of what one thought about the military intervention in Iraq in the first place," Germany is "strongly ready. . . to help Iraq to get toward this stable and hopefully democratic development," Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said at a news conference with Rice in Berlin on Friday.

 

In an editorial Saturday, the influential Warsaw newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza said that "by going to the polling stations in such large numbers, the Iraqi people helped settle the dispute between the United States and Europe over whether democracy can be reconciled with Islam. Thanks to them, the 'de-freezing' of transatlantic relations could happen earlier than even optimists expected."

[Heavy Z]

Right now Iraqi Shi'ites are cooperating - not because they like us, but because we're helping them use their majority to take over Iraq. All it proves is that Shi'ites can count. They've got 60% of the vote sewed up, and we're riding shotgun for them, absorbing all the violence the Sunnis can dish out, while the Shia go out and grab power by the ballot box.

[JKDGabe]

Remember... if you ain't muslim, you ain't shi'ite.

[Heavy Z]

What do you guys think about the results coming in?

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21679-2005Feb13?language=printer

 

"...the top two winning parties - which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president - are Iran's closest allies in Iraq."

[tannji]

How long did we occupy Germany after WWII? If we are truly committed to seeing a representative government in any form succeed in Iraq, we will have to be physically there to babysit and guide it. I dont see the current generations of Americans having the intestinal fortitude and awareness that made the occupation and rebuilding of Germany and Europe possible. If we do end up leaving on a timeline that the majority would prefer, I dont see that recent gains in Iraq can be maintained.

There are times when I think GWB is short-sighted and buys in too easily to the pie-in-the-sky rosy forecasts... and there are others where I hope he is merely taking the longview.... that his fathers generation would have, and is content to take the criticism in return for a long-term success like we had in Europe, regardless of the hammering he takes from the media and political detractors.

Personally, I think that if we could gradually pull out of the day-today running of Iraq, and just maintain the bases and forces in Iraq to remind the other players in the region that we have the means and will to exert our will, we could come out of this situation with acceptable losses, and with an apparent path towards longterm gains in the rest of the region. I think that our long-term presence there would go a long way towards dis-proving the contention that we are there in an effort to make an asset grab, and we could generally discourage further efforts by syria, Iran, and others to inflict their will both in Iraq and abroad. The question is.... will Americans have the foresight and will to pursue this? If not, we wasted every lost life there, and need to vacate immediately.

[johnc]

Counterpoint:

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/228jwcnr.asp

 

* First, contrary to the rising chorus of Democratic commentary on the Iraqi elections, Iran was the biggest loser last Sunday. The United Iraqi Alliance, which seems certain to capture the lion's share of the vote, is not at all "pro-Iranian." Neither is it any less "pro-American" than Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's al-Iraqiyya list, unless you mean that the various members of the Alliance have been and will continue to be less inclined to chat amicably with the Central Intelligence Agency, which has been a longtime backer of Allawi and his Iraqi National Accord. (This is not to suggest at all that Allawi is a CIA poodle.)

 

A better way to describe the United Iraqi Alliance, if it lasts, is as Iran's worst nightmare. It surely will cause the clerical regime enormous pain as the Iraqis within it, especially those who were once dependent on Iranian aid, continue to distance themselves ever further from Tehran. Primary point to remember: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is now certainly the most senior Shiite cleric in both Iraq and Iran, who is of Iranian birth and early education, has embraced a democratic political creed that is anathema to the ruling mullahs of Tehran.

 

Ali Khamenei, Iran's senior political cleric, is in a real pickle since he cannot openly challenge Sistani and his embrace of democracy. Iran's relations with the new Iraq would cease to exist. Also, the repercussions inside the Iranian clerical system would not be healthy. Sistani is the last of the truly great transnational Shiite clerics, and his following inside Iran, particularly since he has so publicly backed a democratic franchise, which if it were applied in Iran would shatter clerical power, should not be underestimated.

 

Sistani and his men know very well that the political game they play in Iraq will have repercussions throughout the Arab world and Iran. He and his men are not rash, but there will be no tears shed on their side if Iraq's political advancement convulses those clerics in Iran who believe in theocracy...

 

...* And fifth. Continue to pray every night for the health, well-being, and influence of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Not surprisingly, there seems to be an increasing body of American liberals out there who foretell the end of a "liberal Iraq" because religious Shia now have a political voice.

 

It is a blessed thing that Sistani and his followers have a far better understanding of modern Middle Eastern history than the American and European liberals who travel to Iraq and find only fear. There are vastly worse things in this world than seeing grown Iraqi men and women arguing about the propriety and place of Islamic family law and traditional female attire in Iraqi society. Understood correctly, it will be an ennobling sight--and a cornerstone of a more liberal Iraq and the Muslim world beyond.

[tannji]

Great post.... wanna place any odds on Sistani's lifespan? I hope that they figure something out, like building him a muslim version of the forbidden city.... because Iran has a long history of quietly and not so quietly removing thorns such as he. Perhaps an address from Pres. Bush directly linking Sistani's well-being to Iran's continuing sovereignity..... would never happen, but I would support such a statement.

[johnc]

And let's see how well the EU is doing in its decades long effort to impart Democracy in Belarus:

 

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113452/

 

The critical point is that the United States and Lithuania, which joined the European Union last year and is trying to change its foreign-aid policy, believe that Belarusians want to govern themselves and that it is their government that is preventing them from doing so. The only way to achieve democracy is to circumvent Lukashenko.

 

The Western Europeans tend to believe that circumventing Lukashenko and aiding opposition leaders—say, giving them conference-room facilities in Vilnius and paying for their room and board—is tantamount to shoving democracy down the Belarusians' collective throat. Change must be "evolutionary, not revolutionary," as some put it.

 

Many Belarusian activists are perplexed by the European Union. Lukashenko's is a regime that has killed off democratic reformers, indiscriminately jailed demonstrators, and cultivated farmland in the still-radioactive Chernobyl zone despite skyrocketing cancer rates.

 

Janna Litvina, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and an attendee at the Vilnius gathering, said democracy would come only after Belarusians transcend their isolation and fear, a fear that has been sown into the national psyche by a century of war, murder, and authoritarianism. "People believe they are absolutely helpless in the face of the government machine," Litvina said.

[Heavy Z]

Tanji, comparing Iraq and Germany is tough. Their circumstances and occupation were so different as to make their comparison more folley than a historical argument. As for the good point you mention about 'sticking it out,' we lack the collective frustration today as back in the latter 'Nam years so I wouldn't think we'll be leaving anytime soon. I don't think it'll be an issue of will-power as much as spending-power. Prospertity comes to us thanks to the nearly $2 billion a day we borrow. For how long is the question.

 

Counterpoint:

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/228jwcnr.asp

 

The man who wrote that article is Reuel Marc Gerecht. Reuel Marc Gerecht is the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century, the same group that advocated an overthrow of the Iraq government in '98 whether or not Saddam was in power. He and his associates have had a bad track record when it comes to accurately predicting how Iraq would shape up. As the old saying goes, if the weatherman stinks try another channel...

 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bb316aaa-7e2c-11d9-ac22-00000e2511c8.html

 

Notice the stuff Gerecht left out?

[johnc]

HeavyZ,

 

Instead of countering with ad homeniem attacks, let's discuss the content of the articles. From your FT link:

 

The United Iraqi Alliance is dominated by two political parties formerly based in Iran, and many members of the bloc still have close ties with their Shia neighbour....

 

One of the parties is Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), whose militia, the Badr Brigades, was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Daawa, the other Islamist party to make up the bulk of the Alliance candidate list, was also based mainly in Tehran.

 

That's a simplistic view of UIA.

 

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006314.php

 

Seeing through the spin on SCIRI...

 

"Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq."

 

Not exactly, and this is why I mentioned the word "coalition" at the beginning of the post. The UIA is a coalition group of over 100 different political parties from across the ideological spectrum, 2 of which (Dawaa and SCIRI) were supported by the Iranians against Saddam Hussein to counter Saddam's own support for the MEK. The Kurdish coalition is combined power of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patrioc Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both of which are majority Sunni with strong Sufi influences here and there. But we'll talk more on the Kurds in a minute ...

 

Without posting the entire article here, Darling speculates the the Iranian Mullahs sent Zarquari after some of the SCIRI leaders last year. Regardless of the vercity of the guess, the end result is the same:

 

Whatever the reasons for Zarqawi going after SCIRI (at the behest of the hardliners?), the end-result seems to have been to place the group into conflict with the more extreme elements in the IRGC [iranian Revolutionary Gaurds Council] like General Suleimani who see Zarqawi's activities of Iraq as serving the interests of Iran, a view that it's a lot easier to take when you're not one of the people he's trying to bomb. This friction between SCIRI and the IRGC may be at least part of the reason as to why only a handful of Badr Brigades members joined Sadr and even fought against the Mahdi Army in Karbala - the primary movers behind Sadr inside the Iranian government were General Suleimani, Khamenei advisor Ali Agha Mohammedi, assistant IRGC chief Bagher Zolqadr, IRGC intelligence chief Murtada Rada'i, and former assistant IRGC chief Hassan Kazemi Qomi - all senior IRGC commanders. While whatever machinations ended up separating SCIRI from the IRGC is certainly good news, the group still has ties to VEVAK that are not to be ignored or under-estimated.

 

From the FT article again:

 

The presence of an elected, Shia-dominated government in Baghdad could give Iran a key bargaining chip in its constant struggle with the US and the EU to win the right to enrich uranium, which Tehran claims is for peaceful purposes, but Washington fears is part of a covert nuclear weapons programme.

 

The UIA is a coalition of 100 different Shia political parties. It is not a cohesive, one goal, one direction group - that is a way too simplistic view of Arabian politics and is the kind of mistake we often make in the West. Plus, there are the Kurds which account for projected 25% of the total representation in the upcoming Iraqi government.

 

"And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline."

 

To tie Talabani to Iran purely on account of geography is a pretty weak argument, given that by that logic the folks in Azad Kashmir should love their counterparts on the Indian side of the border. The region of Iran that Talabani lives near is Kordestan province which, as the name might suggest, is far from homogeneous with the rest of Iran in terms of ethnicity or culture. Moreover, while it is quite true that Talabani and the PUK have sought aid from Iran to fight against Saddam Hussein over the last 20 years, much the same is true of just about every Iraqi opposition group under the sun. Iran was the avowed enemy of Iraq, they would have been extremely foolish not to seek support from them. While it's all well and good for us here in the West to take issue with the Kurds for being willing to accept assistance from the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, those kinds of arguments come up rather short if your people are being ethnically cleansed from northern Iraq and your cities subject to chemical attacks in Halabja...

 

...Ultimately, the best way to view Talabani and his KDP counterpart Massoud Barzani are as two very capable leaders who are willing to do whatever it takes to protect and defend the Kurdish people. When that meant getting help from Iran during the Iraq-Iran War, that was what they did. When that meant allying themselves with the US (and Turkey in the case of the PUK, a point that many people tend to forget) after the Gulf War and the creation of the no-fly zones, that was what they did. Both men's actions, however, are shaped by what they see as the best options for their people, which puts them quite a bit ahead of the other despots in the Middle East.

[Heavy Z]

HeavyZ' date='

 

Instead of countering with ad homeniem attacks, let's discuss the content of the articles. From your FT link:

 

 

 

That's a simplistic view of UIA.

 

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006314.php[/quote']

 

 

Your wording is a bit different but I'll assume you mean ad hominem, or (if I recall) an attack that would allow personal considerations to impede reason. If this is what you were driving at about Gerecht, how is pointing out a bad track record a departure from reason? If you had a lousy mechanic, plumber, contractor, etc would it be unreasonable to seek out another?

 

With all the links we throw back and forth it's nice to actually stop and talk about them from time to time. But 'discuss' means to weigh both articles. You did the FT piece, but then compared it to something new. The FT article is simple compared to the new 15 pager? Moot point IMO. The FT was just a short article for punching a couple holes in Gerecht's argument. I did like the new article nonetheless.

[johnc]

ad hominem

 

Eye kant spill...

 

My point about the Latin phrase that I can't spell is that the messenger became the point of discussion, not the message. Its one of my pet peeves in arguement because its a tangent. Wikipedia has a good discussion of this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

 

But your point:

 

If this is what you were driving at about Gerecht, how is pointing out a bad track record a departure from reason? If you had a lousy mechanic, plumber, contractor, etc would it be unreasonable to seek out another?

 

is correct. So, I retract my accusation of the Latin phrase that I can't spell.

[johnc]

Wow!

 

http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001902.html

[johnc]

Wow 2! It looks like we've reached the end game in Afghanistan.

 

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/22/wtal22.xml

[Guest Phil1934]

Keep in mind we are only two weeks from the second anniversary of Bush's announcement of the end of major conflicts in Iraq. "Mission Accomplished"

[johnc]

He should sell the flight jacket he was wearing on eBay.