Monday, August 20, 2007

Expectation vs. Hope in Iraq

Assessment: that the existing Iraqi conflict is driven by foreign aggression and not by a internal based insurgency. That a tactical counterinsurgency such as that happening right now is not going to work. Indeed may be counterproductive if all it does is bring trouble to Iraqis who know themselves to be mere bystanders.

Tradition: the ways to deal with foreign aggression have been either let it happen and accept the casualties or present enough of a threat to the foreigner to scare them into stopping. The first option is not palatable to anybody, but the second I expect is unlikely to happen.

Expectation: In Iraq the American military is the most able to potentially solve the Iraq problem, but will not act. The Iraqi forces are structured to fight a counterinsurgency and are not able to provide a credible threat. The Shia militia (next strongest) in collaboration with Iranian backing could provide a credible threat thus protecting Iraq, but would likely religiously persecute the Sunnis. The Sunni backed by AQ/Saudi are not capable of gaining power if there is a large Shia/Kurdish force, which means they would need to do some "force reduction" work in country.



In an ideal world USA/UK would muscle up and tell Saudi where to stick it on human rights violations, arms sales, wahabism & terrorism (a strong policy signal that could scare most everybody into a reassessment of threat) and make a commitment of support only to the democratic states in the region (pretty much what Bush outlined 6 years ago), but this will not happen. Next best is arming the new Iraqi Army with a credible offensive capability, but the USA is rightfully scared that they will be arming people who will be less than friendly to American (American/Saudi/Gulf State) interests so will not do this.



What I (a pessimist/realist?) think will happen is that America will stay for a few more years fighting a "counterinsurgency" against something that is not an insurgency and then withdraw due to American public opinion. The Shia and Sunni Arabs will go to war with each other and kill a lot of people. A dictatorial regime will emerge and in a gesture of unification of the Iraqi nation (Shia & Sunni & Kurd alike) will blame the mass killings and mayhem they largely carried out on America. America will sell another $20billion in arms to Saudi to protect against this threat. AQ will get covert support from Iran, Iraq & Saudi and bombs will go off in major American cities. America will launch a retaliatory attack on...

Hope: that this is an internal rooted insurgency and the surge works.

Labels: , ,

Monday, August 13, 2007

Alt-Imperialists

The Guardian: Comment is Free site has published this piece by Neil Clark making the case for keeping Iraqi civilians who worked for the British occupation out of the UK. Acknowledging that this will mean their deaths, but justifying them in terms of allowing the Iraqi resistance to undertake the 'healing process' of uniting the country through the blood of collaborators.

The real reason Neil Clark is in favour of their deaths is different, it is politically expedient for his alt-imperialist* ilk to have as many Iraqi die over there as possible. Throughout history empires in retreat advised by such men have sacrificed foreign races portraying lost lands as not worth having. Natives dying bloody deaths in their far away lands is an object lesson on the dangers of involvement, the necessity of withdrawl and the utter uncivilised nature of that race. Neil Clark is like all imperialists most comfortable when killing foreigners in foreign lands - a neo-imperialist will kill on the advance for his standing in the court and an alt-imperialist will kill on retreat scorching the earth to remind the court of his sage advice on withdrawl.

Neither neo-imperialist nor alt-imperialist likes to have the races that they are killing humanised. A neo-imperialist demonises the foreign race as uncivilised requiring attention and will ignore overtures of peace. An alt-imperialist will decry the foreign race as uncivilisable requiring avoidance and the last thing he needs is any unsightly exiles turning up or news of progress in that foreign land.

Neil Clark alt-imperialistic butcher.



* commonly found working in tandem with a neo-imperialist to rip some foreign Johnny apart by brute force.

Labels: ,