US General Complains Maliki Won't Fund Anbar Sunnis
Yet another from the over-stuffed cabinet of Iraq invasion and occupation "nobody could have anticipated" files. And another sign that all is not the rosy victory that the right would wish us to believe it is. (h/t Kat)
Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly told The Associated Press that his greatest "mission failure" was his inability to bring together the government in Baghdad and the Sunnis in Anbar to take advantage of the steep decline in violence.
"What the Iraqi government in Baghdad should have done is said Anbar is getting peaceful, let's commit," Kelly told the AP in a telephone interview from his headquarters southwest of Baghdad, as he begins to make preparations to hand over command of 23,000 Marines next month to Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tyron.
"It drives me to distraction," he said. "I would count it as a mission failure."
Reconciliation? Meh, not so much. The many faction feuds and sectarian rivalries which helped make Iraq so bloody are still there, just tamped down for a while - hopefully long enough for the US to declare victory and (pretend to) withdraw. I'm mostly OK with that, since it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative to break it more or mend it as they see fit. I just wish the US government, politicians, militrary and mainstream media would be honest about it.
By the time it flares up again, US leaders appear to be hoping, those troops left in Iraq will be rebranded as trainers and securely inside fortified bases where they can get on with their original primary mission, as conceived by neo-whatevers from left and right, of being the US dog in the Gulf manger.
And I fully expect the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan to be doing exactly the same thing there.
Just the opposite of Viet Nam, where we snuck in as advisers. Now we hope to sneak out as such?
And why are the generals decrying their inability to make diplomatic gains? Wht aren't the diplomats and politicians doing their own jobs?
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
It really pains me in the ass each time I read about the suposedly succes in Iraq because of the decline in violence... Well if the violence is down it's becaus ethere is no one left to kill. Baghdad, who used to have a Sunni majority is now 90% Shiite.
It's liek we would define WW2 a succes, because violence would have gone down if we had waited for Hitler to kill all the jews and the russians. Talk about a great succes. But then the founding of the USA is considered a big succes on the genocide and marginalization of the locals.
Go explain our definition of succces to the million sunni refugees in Syria and Jordan who have to prostitue their children to feed their family.
Please stop calling the shortage of people to slaughter a succes... Or then one must consider the Tibet 'liberation' by China a succes also, where now a majority of Chinese make out the population.
Women under Saddam had many rights, now they get murdered if they dare have a job, go to school or walk around without a muslim scarf hiding their face. Do right-wingnuts consider the establishment of a Taliban-like society a succes? Christians under Saddam could live their faith without oppresion , most of them have now fled Iraq, and those still in Iraq practice their faith in secret because otherwise they are the targets of Shiite Deathsquads.
Genocide is NEVER a success. Please stop using that phrase it makes me puke even more than 'we sent our boys to liberate Iraq'.
Succes is a word I only see used in USA, funny how news and propaganda are impossible to discern in that joke of democracy the US has become.
i was totally against invading iraq when the us did it. i think it's been managed poorly (stemming from political leadership, mostly, that has handpicked its military leadership) for the most part. i'm still against this occupation. however, there is one lingering question that maybe someone can fill me in on regarding this statement: "it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative [sic] to break it more or mend it as they see fit." many people, including myself, are mortified when the u.s. and other strong countries sit on their hands and watch "genocide like events" occur but do nothing to prevent them. granted, the u.s. is responsible for the iraq of the past 5-6 years but if the u.s. left and all hell broke loose, would we simply say, "oh well, it's their pottery barn."? i'm not saying this violence would necessarily happen after a u.s. departure, as i believe a lot of the trouble their is caused by our presence, but it seems like a lot of the trouble in iraq is also not caused by u.s. presence. i don't understand the disconnect i observe. why is it ok if iraq tears itself apart while the u.s. watches but it's horrible if it's an african or eastern european country? am i missing something? how do you guys reconcile this?
i'm not trying to be a smart ass, it's just these 2 ends don't seem to meet from my perspective.
I am still trying to balance my sense that the US broke Iraq and should help fix it with...
Everything we do there makes things worse.
We have unleashed centuries of the fatal enmities Sadam Hussein kept in check through means as vile as can be imagined.
There was only one good solution to the problem and that was to not to invade Iraq in the first place. Since it can not be undone there are no really good ways to proceed.
I just believe that thje most pragmatic and least evil solution is to withdraw.
None of the disasters that people thought would come from a communist Viet Nam came about. Perhaps the worst of what we now forsee for Iraq (and the rest of the region) will not occur.
What we in America often ignore is that we do not have all of the answers. Nor do we need to. We are not God.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Nothing the United States, or any other nation for that matter does is going to change the centuries of bloodshed brought about by those three main factions. If those factions want to fight each other they will fight and all the U.S. can really do is stand in between them and hope to dodge the crossfire. The U.S. can continue to pay off the Sunnis or cut political deals with one faction or the other but that is merely superficial and will accomplish nothing. The problem is the U.S. can never make enemies like each other or quell the deep seeded revenge that some individuals eventually will extract from another ethnic group.
The best thing for the U.S. to do is to withdraw because whatever is going to happen will happen in any regard just as it has for centuries.
The big difference, imo, is that we didn't directly cause those problems in Africa and Eastern Europe. But I look at our current relation of Iraq as a matter of parental responsibility. Say you and your significant other have a teenage kid- 16 or 17 years old- and you leave the kid at home, alone, for a weekend. You both know that your kid isn't perfect, but its time to give the kid some responsibility, maybe. One of you convinces the significant other, against their better judgement, to leave the kid at home, with a stern warning not to have a party...a friend or two maybe, but nothing big. You leave, the kid's get-together turns into a raging bacchanal...and a kid is killed leaving the party, driving drunkenly into a tree. Who's responsible? Your kid? No, it's you and your SO, even if one of you thought it was wrong to leave the kid home, unattended.
The government is our kid. It fucked up. We can't just walk away from the mess the kid created.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
I wonder if it has ever occured to General Kelly that the reason why the Shia and Sunni leadership have not come together is because they are enemies and that has not changed even with a foreign force there. True there is a lull in the violence but that has more to do with each ethnic group's own desires than anything else and can easily intensify if they so choose. I don't care how many foreign troops you put in Iraq the Shia will never forget what the Sunni lead Saddam Hussein regime did to them and nor will the Sunnis forget who actually backs the Shia.
That thing we ‘broke’ is irreplaceable and therefore can never be ‘fixed’. I believe that a more correct analogy would not be a pottery barn but a Ming Dynasty China Shop and we are the bull.
Before our current adventure in Iraq I said that we would eventually learn why there was a ruthless dictator there in the first place.
Americans are beginning to understand the violence in Israel/Gaza, and that has been going on for little more than 50 years. The Shia/Sunni rivalry is more than a thousand years old and will not end because we are trying to set up a democracy.
Our involvement in Iraq was a colossal miscalculation. Americans will not solve any problems there, and by all accounts we have only made it worse.
"The surge is working" mantra is a joke.Why would anyone think that staying in Iraq for another six months or six years will make any real difference. All we will do by staying is drain more resources from the USA and get more of our young people killed in a fruitless and ill advised exercise in trying to contain Iran.
What a disaster.
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