Democracy is a success in Iraq
According to the BBC’s Nicholas Witchell in a series of interviews in Baghdad called Voices from Inside Iraq. Watch them all. Especially the ones from the coffee shop and the female MP footage.
In other Iraq news, the US administration are now talking about troop withdrawals. In fact, the differences on Iraq between the Democrats and the Republicans are merely presentational. Republicans are talking of withdrawal, and Obama will not wish to endanger the benefits of the surge that provide hope of an honourable exit under his watch:
It has been 18 months since President Bush announced the surge. As I have said many times, our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence. General Petraeus has used new tactics to protect the Iraqi population. We have talked directly to Sunni tribes that used to be hostile to America, and supported their fight against al-Qaida. Shiite militias have generally respected a cease-fire. Those are the facts, and all Americans welcome them.
[…]
Let me be clear: we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 - one year after Iraqi Security Forces will be prepared to stand up; two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, we’ll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq: targeting any remnants of al-Qaida; protecting our service members and diplomats; and training and supporting Iraq’s Security Forces, so long as the Iraqis make political progress.
[…]
I want Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future, and to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability. That’s victory. That’s success. That’s what’s best for Iraq, that’s what’s best for America, and that’s why I will end this war as President.
Obama has decided his yardstick for success and it isn’t helicopters hurriedly leaving the roofs of buildings in the Green Zone.
At last, we have a consensus on Iraq.
It’s worth reading this again:
These poor Iraqis — ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know their names, we never saw their faces, they don’t put up photographs of their martyrs, we don’t know the names of their leaders They are the base of this society. They are the young men and young women who decided, whatever their feelings about the former regime, some are with, some are against. But they decided, when the foreign invaders came, to defend their country, to defend their honor, to defend their families, their religion, their way of life from a military superpower, which landed amongst them. And they are winning the war. American is losing the war in Iraq, and even the Americans now admit it And this will not change.
The resistance is getting stronger every day, and the will to remain as an occupier by Britain and America is getting weaker everyday. Therefore, it can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony.
Galloway speech entitled, Justice in the New World Order! delivered at the al-Assad Library in Damascus on July 30, 2005. Broadcast on Al Jazeera TV, July 31, 2005
Well, that prediction worked out didn’t it?
Gene adds: Iraq’s largest Sunni political bloc has rejoined the government after a year “in another step toward healing the sectarian rifts that once brought almost daily bloodshed.”
And Prime Minister Maliki told Der Spiegel he backs Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from the country in 16 months. Although Maliki declined to take sides between Obama’s and John McCain’s Iraq policies, he said, “Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems.”
Comments
| 19 July 2008, 2:37 am |
America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.
“That’s why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.”
-Barack Obama, announcing his candidacy for the Presidency, February 2007.
| 19 July 2008, 3:12 am |
As usual here in the US, the closer we get to the General Election in November the closer the rival candidates’ actual platforms get and the more the candidates make of the importance of the decreasing differences between them. As of now we have Obama’s 16 months to withdraw the bulk of American forces from Iraq while McCain will take 4 years. What has not yet gotten through to the American Public but probably will sometime before the Election is that the democratically elected govt. of Iraq wants a timetable of when most American troops will withdraw from Iraq as part of any agreement about long term American bases in Iraq, what is called a Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA. Figure this should help Obama since he favors the shorter time period.
Ah yes, Geroge Galloway’s & Michael Moore’s Heroic Resistance Fighters. I suppose that would include suicide bombers who drove into working class Shia neighborhoods posing as contractors offering day work and then when the laborers gathered around them blowing themsevles and the workers up. One particular bloody such atrocity killed more then 100 people in one blast. I suppose that great defender of the working class, GG, applauded that just as he applauded that child murder Kuntar.
| 19 July 2008, 3:55 am |
It is sheer nonsense to write that the “differences on Iraq between the Democrats and the Republicans are merely presentational.”
The difference—and there is only one—is that Republicans do and always have wanted to win in Iraq. Democrats, with notable exceptions, have always wanted to lose the war they authorized.
And if this be not true, then it should be easy enough to dredge up quotes from leading Defeatocrats (like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha, Barack Obama) expressing the mere hope that we do win in Iraq.
So, let’s see ‘em. Not predictions of victory. Just statements of hope for victory.
| 19 July 2008, 3:57 am |
Neil’s in happy clappy land. And what do you mean by “withdrawal”, Neil?
| 19 July 2008, 4:52 am |
But Samuel Stott, they are, Obama’s 16 months vs. McCain’s 4 years. Given that the Iraqi govt. and people think they can handle their internal affairs in 1 to 2 years and therefore want most of our troops out by end of that time before they agree to any long term agreements on US bases in Iraq. ( I see the latest euphamism for this is calling it a time horizon, whatever that means, for withdrawing the troops.) Truth is as Obama as pointed out, we need to withdraw troops from Iraq to send to Afghanistan.
| 19 July 2008, 4:53 am |
Republicans have always wanted to win in Iraq? Not at the cost of losing the election!
| 19 July 2008, 5:36 am |
David All,
You are on heavy partisan and ideological drugs. We are not discussing a difference of opinion but a question of fact. I say that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha, and Barack Obama have never expressed the hope that the US would win in Iraq.
You can easily refute my assertion by quoting chapter and verse in plenitude. You can hope to get on the score-card by coming up with a single measly quote.
| 19 July 2008, 8:07 am |
Does anyone know which bits of the resistance are still fighting, and which bits Galloway and co are supporting?
| 19 July 2008, 9:24 am |
I found the psychologist the most moving and would have liked to hear more from him. We cannot imagine what life was like under Saddam. Ann Clwyd’s site Indict tells us the horrors, but what it does not tell is the efects on normal people - the dispair, the sullenness, the mistrust of everyone, the psychological destruction of the decency of an entire nation.
Straight reportage from the BBC, whatever next? Perhaps the next time Weggie Benn is wheeled out on Question Time and rabbits on about it being “all about oil”, we might hear some long overdue derision.
| 19 July 2008, 10:39 am |
I certainly don’t see the differences as ‘merely presentational’. The underlying philosophy is fundamentally different. What has changed is that the reality has moved to a point where Obama’s stopped clock position could be seen as less dangerous. Of course the reason reality has moved in that direction is precisely because no-one took Obama’s advice in early 2007, but instead took the complete opposite course. It’s ironic if as a result some now see him as more reasonable.
ABC News had an interesting report earlier this month about US military opinion on the ground regarding withdrawal.
And as this BBC analysis points out, Obama may find the Iraqi govt not as enthusiastic about withdrawal as he would like to imagine.
The Iraqi govt seem to be trying to reassure their electorate that the US presence is finite, while at the same time making an agreement with the US that would prevent premature troop withdrawals. From the original AP story reporting those ‘withdrawal’ comments:
(Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s) national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the government was proposing a timetable that would be conditioned on the ability of Iraqi forces to provide security.
| 19 July 2008, 11:04 am |
It is surprising that Mr Galloway has not bee to Iraq on a fact finding mission.
| 19 July 2008, 11:52 am |
Democracy is a success in Iraq
Of course it is. Who wouldn’t want to live in an ultraviolent, religiously divided sectarian state created in an explosion of murderous ethnic cleansing which killed untold numbers and forced millions into exile, and where political power is based on precisely the kind of religious and ethnic zuama (warlordism, democracy geeks!) that have made Lebanon such a wonderful example of modern democracy?
The sooner we get some of that death-squaddy goodness in Britain, the better!
It’s great that the fascists, Ba’athists, head-choppers, bombers, murderers and totalitarians of yesteryear have suddenly become paragons of democratic virtue, simply because they’ve been temporarily bought off by the American taxpayer. Hopefully, now that these men of peace have exterminated their way into the US’s good books, they’ll decide that the ballot box is the way forward and not instantly return to violence the second they decide they can grab more power that way.
I could spend lots of time musing on all of these welcome effects of the war, but as always it’s far more important to make some smarmy remarks about the George Galloway.
What a cock Galloway is, eh? I bet he smells and is stupid, too.
| 19 July 2008, 12:06 pm |
Where would you guys be without Galloway?
tim and Neil may have to get a life.
| 19 July 2008, 12:25 pm |
Sir Mixalot.
You could be describing Northern Ireland, would you prefer no settlement and the factions on the streets?
asdf.
Without Galloway you were standing outside the headquarters wondering why your keys don’t work.
The consequences for us would be more comfortable.
| 19 July 2008, 1:24 pm |
You could be describing Northern Ireland…
I could indeed, provided we were discussing a hypothetical Northern Ireland where massive bombs explode every week, central government’s grip on power is solely maintained by billions of dollars of American aid and military might and exists only as far as sectarian militias are prepared to co-operate, and where the threat of a return to horrific bloodshed is merely one assassination, bombing or political disagreement away.
…would you prefer no settlement and the factions on the streets?
That depends whether you mean the question from a moral or a political standpoint. Obviously, as a human being, I’m in favour of more politics and less violence, even if that means that anything I might’ve said in the past about the horrors of communalist politics or doing deals with killers makes my current celebrations of Iraqi democracy look a bit, well, hypocritical.
Politically speaking, it doesn’t really matter - if one’s sole interest is trash-talking non-entities like Galloway, it makes no difference whether Iraq more closely resembles Geneva or Mogadishu. There ain’t much easier than harshing on hate figures, and it’s lots more fun than casting a critical eye over the current state of Iraq, isn’t it?
| 19 July 2008, 1:52 pm |
Not a hypothetical NI.
A historical NI.
| 19 July 2008, 2:18 pm |
Wow, Nicholas Witchell says something so it must be true. He wasn’t known at the BBC as the ‘Poison Carrot’ for nothing. Even sucking up to the Windsors as their royal correspondent didn’t lower their contempt for him.
| 19 July 2008, 2:34 pm |
Wow, Nicholas Witchell says something so it must be true
Or indeed,
Wow, Samir Kuntar says something so it must be true
Try that for size.
| 19 July 2008, 2:53 pm |
Yes resistor, because Nicholas Witchell is the only person saying it.
| 21 July 2008, 12:48 am |
I was visiting the USA in 2006 and in 2007.
A stray copy of “USA today” gave me the distinct impression that the “US troop surge” was Nouri Al-Malaki’s policy, although it hadn’t started then, every bit as much as it was George W Bush’s policy.
It has worked because it is based on Iraqi realities, not on the ignorant rubbish of people who thought they could invade a country without a scenario or a plan for what was to come next.
| 21 July 2008, 2:52 am |
tim:
If there were oil vouchers waiting for him there, you could be sure Galloway would be on the next flight to Baghdad.
Alan Ji:
American reality is that it has a far smaller military capacity than it once did in the days when military service was required of all able bodied males. That little reality may have influenced the number of troops committed as much as incompetence in the Bush administration. If anyone is to be faulted, it’s those members of the UN security council who voted to leave Saddam in place because they were making favourable oil deals with him instead of committing troops to removing him and securing the peace against the Sunni and Shia Islamists who were looking to take power after Saddam.
It’s so easy to cast blame on the US, but this weekend’s Globe & Mail carried an article about an encampment on the French coast filled with Iraqis and Afghans hoping to cross over to the UK where they believe they have a chance of receiving assistance because unlike the French and German governments, the Brits are looked upon as having cared enough to get rid of Saddam.
| 21 July 2008, 11:33 am |
“Democracy is a success in Iraq”?
Who do you think you’re fooling?
| 21 July 2008, 3:19 pm |
“Time Horizon”, the latest phrase being used as a substitute for “schedule for troop withdrawl” sounds like some term from science fiction!
For example, as in “Star Trek:TNG”
Captain Piccard: “Mr. Data, how much longer before we intersect with the time horizon?”
or alternatively
The time horizon would be where the Doctor’s Tardis would appear at!
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