Delftsman

Iraq Debate

This is the longest post I've ever put up. Get a cup of your favorite beverage, relax, and I hope you enjoy.

One of my best Blogging compatriots, RightWingRocker, has a friend identified as "ArmyBryan" who just returned from the MidEast Sandbox Tour™, otherwise known as the Iraqi war. RWR asked AB if he could interview him as a post for his blog, and AB graciously acceded to the request. This Left RWR in a bit of a quandry; WHAT to ask?

Well, he came across a mock debate contrived by Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia talk radio host; asking several prominent people to comment on fourteen of his personal opinions regarding Iraq. Mr. Smerconish simply played each of their recorded answers one right after the other in a debate form. The questions are succinct, and cut right to the heart of the basic disagreements in the body politic, so he decided to use them as the basis of his interview.

Go here for ArmyBryans's responses.

I thought it might be good to get a greater sample to add to the debate, so
I asked two men that I greatly admire and respect to do the same. They are both midlevel officers that recently served in Iraq. They seldom agree on matters of politics, so I thought it might be interesting to compare what they had to say. Then I decided, why limit it to two? I decided to have the two "active" duty soldiers in this first installment; two "seasoned" veterans (Ret) in the second; and two civilians chipping in on the third. that way we would have 6 sets of opinions, coming from different political perspectives and different levels of personal involvement.

First up is StreetGang 6. He's a bit more to the left than I am, certainly, but I've always found him to be capable of debating in a well reasoned manner, so why I may not always agree with him, I have to respect his arguments.

ON WITH THE SHOW:

Do you agree or disagree; are you willing to admit or deny these statements?

1. 9/11 was the work of radical Islam.

Without a doubt! We've seen what a 15th century mind-set armed with 21st century technology can now do. On a personal note, I find the canard making the rounds in the umma that the Isrealis were responsible for the attacks and that the Jews that worked in the WTC were warned not to go to work that day viscerally and personally offensive. I say this as I lost a friend of over 10 years in the South Tower, and she was a Jew. A LOT of families I know sat shiva that week....

2. Post-9/11 there was a consensus in the country to be forward-leaning, meaning to be pre-emptive if necessary to protect against further attack.

Yep. If anyone disagrees, a quick archive search of pretty much every op-ed page in the nation, including most unlikeliest of all publications the Village Voice, will quickly tell you otherwise. At the time, I had queasy feeling that our quest for pay-back would take us down a rabbit hole. Unfortunately, I'm seeing some of my worst fears being realized.

3. Iraq played no role in the events of September 11.

Agreed. This was largely the work of a band of islamo-fascist fanatics that had little affiliation with any nation-state. What little affliation it did have was more with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, whom ironically we now claim as "allies" in the GWOT.

4. Iraq was nevertheless perceived by American and foreign military and intelligence operations to pose a threat, based principally upon the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs.

Agreed. EVERY credible intel service in the world had made that estimate. However, even then, there was considerable dispute within the intel communities to the full extent and nature of the threat posed by Sadadm Hussein's Iraq.

5. Saddam Hussein\'s perceived possession of WMDs was the primary reason advanced by the Bush administration in support of the invasion of Iraq.

Yes. And at the time I thought GWB was making the wrong argument. The correct argument for taking out Hussein was the same one that was, corectly, made against Serbia's Milosevic, i.e., he's a genocidial, meglomaniacal sociopath that the civilized world should eliminate. America has a noble history of going to war on behalf of freedom and individual dignity. Americans respond to those reasons best.

6. It is now apparent that Saddam had no WMDs, meaning the Administration\'s predicate for going to war was faulty.

Yes. Which is precisely why I wished GEB didn't use that as the reason for going to war. I've heard the counter-argument that he shipped his WMD's to Syria, as indicated by the huge amount of trucks moving overland to Syria before the war. From what Although that possibility cannot be 100% dismissed, the more likely explanation is that this traffic was the result of Iraqi citizens (largely Sunnis and Baathist) getting themselves and their stuff out before the hammer fell.

7. There can\'t be any disagreement about this. With or without WMDs, Saddam Hussein is nevertheless an SOB.

Absolutely. Good riddance!

8. The fact that the Administration was wrong about WMDs does not mean that the President lied on that subject.

No, he was merely "wrong." But still accountable. We've now had 3 intel failures (this, 9/11, and our post invasion Iraqi forecast) at the national decision making level in as many years. We need to know why and people need to be held accountable.

9. I know we\'ve got controversy on this one, the war in Iraq is going poorly.

Not poor, just tougher than it needed to be. It could have gone a lot better if SecDef had actually listened to his green suiters about stability and reconstruction ops. It would have gone a lot easier if the State Dept wasn't frozen out by the Pentagon immediately after the fall of Hussein. And it would have had a lot more "legitimacy," if the arrogance of the adminstration hadn't alienated our natural allies. I mean we even had the FRENCH on-board in late 2001 for pete's sake.

10. It\'s entirely possible that when all is said and done, we will have facilitated the replacement of Saddam Hussein with a leadership regime in Iraq that is beholden to Iran and unfriendly to the U.S., albeit one that does not equal the evil of Saddam nor the type of threat he could have become.

Possible, but not probable. Worse case, Iraq breaks down into Kurdish/Sunni/Shia geographical factions and we see a mid-level civil war akin to Lebanon. Most likely, we'll see some sort of federal system that comes into being that more or less addresses the core concerns of all factions. They will continue to look warily upon each other, but they won't descend into a fight-to-the-death struggle.

11. I hardly expect disagreement. Leaving Iraq now, meaning immediately, would embolden insurgents and terrorists.

It would be the worst thing we could do right now. Failure is not an option.

12. Our presence in Iraq provides a rallying point for the insurgency and the radical Islamists.

Absolutely. Large portions of the umma see us as Crusaders incarnate. I've always said the quickest way to piss off another nation is for us to ship over in large quantities our 19 yrs olds, either as soldiers armed with weapons, peace corps volunteers armed with good intentions, or spring-breakers armed with utterly unspeakable boorishness.

13. Leaving Iraq as soon as possible must be our goal.

Absolutely not. In fact I expect we'll have a sizable presence there for at least the next 2 generations. Think Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

14. Final statement, last but certainly not least, and I know we\'ve got disagreement about this one: It\'s time for the administration to set a timetable to leave Iraq.

LOL, um, no. We leave when the greater Mid-East region has achieved the stability of say France/Luxembourg/Belgium/Holland/Germany.

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Next up we have Odysseus. He tends to lean more toward my political viewpoint than SG6, although we do disagree on many social outlooks.(So much for the "Monolithic Neo-con Conspiracy" touted by the "Progressive" set!)

Do you agree or disagree; are you willing to admit or deny these statements?

1. 9/11 was the work of radical Islam.

It sure wasn’t the League of Women Voters. Osama claimed credit for the attacks. All 19 highjackers were affiliated with Al Qaeda. This is a slam dunk.

2. Post-9/11 there was a consensus in the country to be forward-leaning, meaning to be pre-emptive if necessary to protect against further attack.

Sort of. It’s not so much that there was a consensus to be forward leaning, it’s that there was a consensus to be tracking with the right poll numbers. The vast majority of Americans wanted to see the government take a more effective strategic stance toward terrorism, but many of the elites did not. Anyone who would have answered yes to question 1 realized that we could no longer count on geography, reciprocity or treaties to protect us. However, there were those who, even after 9/11, continued to act as though the calculus hadn’t changed. International A.N.S.W.E.R. held rallies against the invasion of Afghanistan even after it was obvious that they would continue to harbor the murderers of 3,000 Americans. Some took the attacks as an opportunity to blame America for others’ hatred of us, which had the effect of trying to impugn the military and intelligence roles for which 9/11 explicitly demonstrated the need. There were some who continued to see terrorism as a law-enforcement problem and had the same issue with military options.

3. Iraq played no role in the events of September 11.

Not entirely. The 9/11 Commission’s inexplicable refusal to examine the role of Ahmad Hikmat Shakir has left this individual’s actions out of the public eye, but they bear scrutiny. An Iraqi national, Shakir was involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and facilitated a 2000 meeting in Malaysia of Al Qaeda leaders which included several of the 9/11 highjackers. He was also implicated in the Bojinka plot, a previous Al Qaeda plan to use aircraft as flying bombs in Asia, which was never carried out. Shakir’s employment at the Kuala Lumpur airport prior to the meeting was arranged through the Iraqi embassy in Malaysia. In addition, there is the Czech intelligence agency’s assertion that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague just prior to 9/11. In addition, the Salman Pak training area provided Ansar Al Islam, the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, with a training site (which included a fuselage from a commercial airliner which was used in training highjackers). None of this proves that Iraq played a role, but it certainly implies Iraqi knowledge of Al Qaeda operations and provision of logistical support to the same.

4. Iraq was nevertheless perceived by American and foreign military and intelligence operations to pose a threat, based principally upon the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs.

Yes and no. Iraq was certainly perceived as a potential threat, but his WMD arsenal was not the sole reason. The AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARYFORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 contained 26 causus belli for the Iraq war, including terrorism, material breaches of UN resolutions, violations of the Desert Storm cease fire terms, and of course, state sponsorship of terrorism. And there is no doubt that Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism throughout the world, providing safe haven for terrorists and training sites (remember that airplane fuselage at Salman Pak?). Then there are the terrorists to whom Saddam provided a safe haven. We captured Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro highjacking, in Baghdad. Abu Nidal leader Sabri al-Banna enjoyed years of sanctuary in Iraq. Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s chief operative in Iraq, was welcomed by Saddam, as were numerous other operatives when they were driven from Afghanistan. Throw in Saddam’s payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel and his use of terrorists to attack Iraqi expatriates throughout the world, and terrorism becomes a compelling reason to eliminate him.

5. Saddam Hussein's perceived possession of WMDs was the primary reason advanced by the Bush administration in support of the invasion of Iraq.

See question 4.

6. It is now apparent that Saddam had no WMDs, meaning the Administration's predicate for going to war was faulty.

No. It’s apparent that he found a way to get rid of them, either through destruction or transfer. The recently retired Chief of Staff to the Israeli Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, told the NY Sun that Saddam transported his WMDs out of Iraq, saying, "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria. No one went to Syria to find it." This confirms my theory, which I based on the incredibly heavy convoy traffic between Baghdad and Damascus for the six months prior to the war, while we were trying to get the UN to enforce its own resolutions. It must also be pointed out that WMDs, by their very nature, are compact. Saddam’s entire anthrax arsenal, once estimated at 5,000 liters, would fit inside the average garage (imagine a stack of 2,500 2-liter Coke bottles and you get the idea of the volume, which isn’t much). 1 liter is the volume of a cube that is 10 cm on each side, so one cubic meter is 1,000 liters. That’s two truckloads, tops.

7. There can't be any disagreement about this. With or without WMDs, Saddam Hussein is nevertheless an SOB.

One would think not. However, the issue is not whether Saddam was an SOB. When people try to make the absurd claim that “George W. Bush is the real terrorist", they’re obscuring the monstrous records of Saddam, Bin Laden and Zarqawi in order to score cheap political points.

8. The fact that the Administration was wrong about WMDs does not mean that the President lied on that subject.

I’m not so sure that the administration was wrong on the subject. Saddam had to have used something to gas the Kurds. And even if the administration was wrong, it was in great company. Bill Clinton did use Saddam’s threat of WMDs as the sole reason to launch missile attacks against Iraq in 1998 (as opposed to Lewinsky’s threat of headline-creating testimony on the same day) with extensive backing from Senate Democrats two whole years before George W. Bush took office, and even then, he wasn’t alone in this assessment. Every intelligence agency in the world had the same beliefs. Britain’s MI5 broke the story (which it continues to insist is accurate) of Saddam’s attempt to buy Nigerian uranium.

9. I know we've got controversy on this one, the war in Iraq is going poorly.

The only controversy on this one is between people who’ve been there or who’ve listened to us and people who haven’t and won’t. By any measure, things are improving dramatically. The number of terror attacks during the last election was one-tenth the number that Zarqawi’s organization pulled off during the previous election. This is partly a result of his loss of a large chunk of support from Sunnis who’ve abandoned terrorism to try to work within the political process, and partly his loss of so many operatives that he’s unable to sustain the same OP-tempo. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Critics of the war like to scream about our casualty numbers (which would be more credible if they’d ever given a damn about living US troops), but they never look at terrorist casualties. In order for an insurgency to function, it has to kill ten conventional enemy soldiers for every one of its own losses. We’ve inverted that ratio. Zarqawi’s forces lost almost as many fighters in one battle, Fallujah, as we have during the entire war. Those casualties and his loss of support demonstrate that his operations are not sustainable at their current levels. We’re winning. You’d have to be blind not to see it, but there are those who remain deliberately blind to reality.

10. It's entirely possible that when all is said and done, we will have facilitated the replacement of Saddam Hussein with a leadership regime in Iraq that is beholden to Iran and unfriendly to the U.S., albeit one that does not equal the evil of Saddam nor the type of threat he could have become.

Possible, but not likely. The Iranian and Iraqi Shia had a schism at the time of the Khomeinist revolution which is instructive. There is a doctrine in Islam which allows a “learned” man to assume responsibility for someone who is incapable of taking care of themselves. This usually applies to widows, orphans, the infirm, etc. Khomeini applied this doctrine to an entire nation, in stark departure from centuries of Shia ideology, which asserts that until the return of the Twelfth Imam, no one is qualified to rule as Caliph, or successor to Mohammed. The Iraqi Shia don’t accept Khomeini’s apostasy and it is for this reason (among others) that Ali Al Sistani has opposed any alliances with Iran. Also, the Shia, while a majority, cannot govern without the Kurds, who are Sunnis. There are Kurds in Iran, as well, who are viciously oppressed by that government. The Iraqi Kurds would resist any alliance with Iran. Finally, the Iranian Shia detest their government. The mullahs have lost their legitimacy and the vast majority in Iran wants them out. It is far more likely to see a pro-US movement in Iran develop in close ties with Iraqi Shia than the reverse.

11. I hardly expect disagreement. Leaving Iraq now, meaning immediately, would embolden insurgents and terrorists.

D-uh. Not to mention collapsing the Iraqi state that we just spent the last three years building.

12. Our presence in Iraq provides a rallying point for the insurgency and the radical Islamists.

Only in the sense that it forces them to fight in what was previously their own territory. The Iraq war has placed the terrorists on the strategic defensive. They have no choice but to fight to destabilize Iraq because they know, as our media does not, that a US victory there will be devastating to them. First, just from a logistical point of view, Iraq separates Syria and Iran, making mutual support between the two remaining terror states far more difficult. Second, Iraqi political freedom is acting as a catalyst throughout the region. Iran’s mullahs know that they are extremely unpopular (a poll that they commissioned and then tried to suppress showed over 75% want them out, and antigovernment riots are now common, although oddly unreported in our objective media) and they know that their people see Iraqi Shia having free elections and want to emulate them. Zarqawi considers democracy a violation of Islamic law and every vote is an ink stained finger in his eye, a significant issue in a shame/honor culture where unanswered acts of defiance weaken him daily. Syria was forced out of Lebanon because the Lebanese were galvanized by the sight of free elections in Iraq. Dictators throughout the world have had to reassess their options in view of our commitment to democracy and our willingness to fight for it, for they know that it only took one crack in the Berlin Wall to force the collapse of the Soviet Union. If we succeed in Iraq, the terrorists and their sponsors fail, not just there, but throughout the world. Those who govern through fear can't continue to rule if they are seen as impotent.

13. Leaving Iraq as soon as possible must be our goal.

No. Stabilizing Iraq as soon as possible must be our goal. Then we can think about leaving.

14. Final statement, last but certainly not least, and I know we've got disagreement about this one: It's time for the administration to set a timetable to leave Iraq.

“Mr. Roosevelt, now that Germany has surrendered, what is your timetable for withdrawing from Europe?” Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what this question is asking. We were unable to withdraw from Europe for years after WWII, because of the need to rebuild the crushed infrastructure and to ensure that the weakened states did not fall prey to the new totalitarian threat of the Soviets after the defeat of the Nazis. The situation in Iraq is almost identical to this. We are rebuilding critical infrastructure and getting the Iraqi economy on its feet (a major accomplishment, since Ba’athism was a socialist doctrine, guaranteeing economic as well as political horrors on the people of Iraq) while standing up security forces which will be able, in the long run, to stand up to the hostile neighboring states which have a vested interest in the failure of democracy.

Besides, we’ve already had a timetable in place, although the same people who oppose the war refuse to see it. The National Transitional Assembly election, the Constitutional Referendum and the parliamentary election were all held on a schedule that was established during the first stage of the liberation of Iraq. Each of these went off on schedule, despite the clamor to postpone each one because they were sure that the security situation wouldn’t allow them to be held. This was simply wishful thinking from those who want to see us lose. Now, it’s true that we don’t know when the Iraqi government and security forces will be able to function without our aid, but we have stood up an army, from scratch, of over 200,000 soldiers in over eighty battalions, each with a functioning headquarters, in just over two years. That’s an amazing feat. We will continue to make tremendous progress and eventually, Iraq will be able to stand by itself, but until then, we cannot let our work be destroyed by an early withdrawal, whose only motivation is the desire by some of our political opportunists to see an American defeat blamed on this president.

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Posted by Delftsman3 at December 29, 2005 01:47 AM | TrackBack