The Bush administration, under intense pressure to deal with mounting violence in Iraq and rising domestic criticism of the war there, said today that it was working “collaboratively” with Iraqi leaders to find better ways forward and had issued them no ultimatums.
But amid a ferment of speculation that the administration was considering new approaches, losing patience with the government in Baghdad and contemplating a series of deadlines for progress, one high-ranking Iraqi urged the coalition’s political leaders to avoid “panic.”
In London, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih of Iraq said that Prime Minister Tony Blair had assured him that Britain would “hold its nerve” in Iraq. But Mr. Salih also warned against British and American decision-makers giving way to “panic.”
“I’m obviously concerned about the debate both in the United States and in Europe, I have to say, because there is too much of the pessimistic tone to this debate, even I would say in certain circles a defeatist tone,” he said, according to news agencies.
What do you expect the attitude of the common Iraqi to be when he watches, hears or reads about the fairly wide anti-war movement in the west? When there are Americans who say America is wrong or say the war isn't for a just cause and when Americans say the US presence in Iraq is bad, and when that is the only side of the image the media focuses on, it becomes an invitation for Iraqis to resist this presence and there's no doubt many will answer the invitation whether with words or violent action since they will get the impression that they're legitimately resisting something bad.
We have little in our culture about compromise or working-out-our-differences-peacefully. Radical solutions often seem more tempting to the ordinary, less educated people. When everyone, and I mean everyone, keeps telling them America is their enemy, the common reaction would certainly involve violent means of expression...yes, that's our common way in showing our disagreement with others in this part of the world. It sucks, it's backward and it's savage but it's the fact and it will not change overnight, such changes happen slowly.
Bush constantly emphasises that the spread of democratic processes, pluralism and support for moderate forces will eventually work against the terrorists. So does the NIE, not just once but in several places.
It says democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations during the next five years will drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. There is a risk that such reforms could be destabilising in the transition period, but that's the case whenever countries move towards democracy.
For those who say the war in Iraq has spread terrorism, surely the October 2001 invasion of the terrorists' home base, Afghanistan, had already done that. The 2002 bombings in Bali happened before Iraq, as did the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and many other terrorist incidents.
I know these facts are quoted by Bush and John Howard, yet they are still facts and the logic that flows from them remains logical. Jihadism took off way before Iraq and there is no reason to think it needed Iraq to explode.
There is another, deeper, problem here. The NIE states: "We assess that the Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists." Well, let's assume that's correct. My question is: And? What follows from that assessment? Israel is also a cause celebre for jihadists. Does that mean we should abandon it? If the answer is: "No, that's a ridiculous proposition", then it is logically equally ridiculous in the case of Iraq.
But, still, doesn't this NIE assessment contradict Bush when he says US policy and actions have made the world safer from terrorism? Not necessarily. The US homeland has not been attacked despite obvious efforts by al-Qa'ida to do so.
Furthermore, you have to consider the consequences if no such action had been taken, if there had been no cause celebre such as the attack on Afghanistan and the attack on Iraq. Non-action has its own consequences. There is a strong case to be made, and certainly one I support, that non-action is exactly what caused the original growth and strength of jihadism in the lead-up to 9/11. Would the world have been safer if we had continued to avoid retaliatory action? I don't think so.
Fitnah, is one of these words that I find difficult to translate succinctly; perhaps there is an English synonym unknown to me. Fitnah is sawing discord that results in conflict and violent antagonism. But in Arabic the word has much stronger connotation. There is a verse in the holy Koran that contains the following expression: “Fitnah is worse than murder”. What is happening in the land of the two rivers right now is one of the worst Fitnahs in our long eventful history. We have known in the past, persecution, intimidation and murder; but that was always organized and perpetrated by the state and its repressive organs. We have never seen though, neighbor turning against neighbor and friend upon his erstwhile friend, even kin against kin; not in our recent history at any rate.
The vision of the enemy is to engulf the country in a quagmire of medieval bestiality that would completely abort all efforts of reconciliation and utterly thwart and bring down the elected government; and encouraged by noises coming out of the U.S. they hope to disgust and confuse the Americans out of Iraq with the help of the antiwar camp in the West, and some foolish councilors in America who think they know better when in fact, they understand nothing. With this main obstacle of the U.S. military removed, they can then unleash their full offensive and bring in all the "Jihadis" from all over the world and together with the Saddamists and local aroused Sunni tribesmen, they imagine they can overrun the country and massacre everybody and establish their Taliban style Emirate or perhaps Caliphate or whatever their sick minds are hallucinating.
This is the state that in the early 1970s jump-started the worldwide adoption of catalytic converters, the devices that neutralize most smog-forming chemicals emitted by tailpipes. This is the state whose per capita energy consumption has been almost flat for 30 years, even as per capita consumption has risen 50 percent nationally.
Perhaps the most ambitious measure California has undertaken is the newly mandated 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. If we do it right, Mr. Schwarzenegger said at a news conference, it can be an example for the rest of the world and the rest of the country to see. If not, the concept could be discredited.
Of course other nations should do more. I understand and agree with the opposition to participation in Iraq, but Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is ironic, because, during the Cold War, some Europeans questioned whether or not the US would really defend Europe and accept the casualties of a Soviet invasion. Now, in a much less costly conflict, some of these same nations are not meeting their commitments that they had agreed under the NATO founding document. Afghanistan is not Iraq!
NO. Take our troops out of there. Stop interfering with people who are different to you.
For centuries, white people have invaded other cultures, forcing our ideas onto them about what is 'civilised'. It happened with the Plain's Indians, the aboriginies, etc.
Stop interfering. Let them change on their own if they want to.
In the EU surrounded by the Human Rights legislation it is easily forgotten the suffering of women under the Taliban. Since the invasion women teachers & doctors have been able to resume their careers and schoolgirls to rerun to their education. Can the free world afford to turn its back on Afghanistan and return to the days where multiple hangings at the city football stadium were a regular occurences. Ask yourselves that from the comfort of your living room?
It's all about oil; rather, it's all about blood for oil.
Think about that every time you fill your car.
Why don't the West just buy the opium harvest in Afghanistan each year and burn it? Surely that way everyone would be happy (except the Wests drug dealers of course).
But Mr Carter told Newsnight: "I have been really disappointed in the apparent subservience of the British government's policies related to many of the serious mistakes that have been originated in Washington."
Mr Carter, an opponent of the US-led war in Iraq, added: "No matter what kind of radical or ill-advised policy was proposed from the White House, it seems to me that almost automatically the government of Great Britain would adopt the same policy without exerting its influence.
LET me be the first to offer a bold, revisionist view. George W. Bush may well be judged, ultimately, a great president, especially in foreign policy, especially in the war on terror. This consensus won't form for 20 or perhaps 30 years.
Bush understands much better than his critics the war on terror and the way the world works more broadly. Above all, he has had the courage to confront reality. The key planks of the Bush doctrine - regarding terrorists not as criminals but as a force at war with the US and its allies; holding state sponsors of terror responsible for the actions of their terrorist surrogates; seeing the root of terror in the profoundly dysfunctional political culture of the Middle East and fighting the ideas behind terror with an agenda of democracy and human rights; reserving the right to take pre-emptive military action against threats that could involve weapons of mass destruction - all these will be maintained by Bush's presidential successors.
One of Bush's key decisions, and this was truly the insight of the much derided neo-conservatives, was that the status quo ante in the Middle East did not produce stability but produced growing terrorism. I believe Bush was right to take action against Iraq and Australia was right to join this action, in part because everyone believed that Iraq possessed WMDs, but also because Saddam was the most prolific state murderer of the second half of the 20th century and threatened his neighbours. He also supported much international terrorism and rejoiced in the al-Qa'ida attacks of 9/11. The danger of his co-operating in WMDs with terrorists was great.
None of this is to diminish the Bush mistakes: the fatal disunity between the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department in the first administration, the lack of post-conflict planning and many other errors in Iraq.
But any strategy by any president in the Middle East would look messy. Much of the judgment on Bush is absurdly unrealistic in its failure to acknowledge that the enemy gets a say in what the battlefield looks like. The war on terror is an epic struggle. Any epic struggle you care to think of - the US Civil War, World War II, the Cold War - involved many mistakes and many lost battles. All war, including the war on terror, is very, very messy. It is not conducted in bow ties by well-mannered air forces, shaking hands first and then meeting for well-ordered battles off shore and far up in the sky.
Sheridan is right again; he will be roundly lashed for this, but he is right. Bush’s biggest weakness has been his inability to communicate with the broader international community. However, he is a transformational president for transformational times. He will be remembered, more likely than not, fondly, for linking political freedom and development to security outcomes. Iraq is a disaster, but it will fade, and what will be left will be a new security architecture, designed by so-called neo-cons, that will produce a more prosperous and secure world.Well done, Dubya, and don’t listen to those short-sighted nay-sayers on the left and the right.
Most leaders in the Middle East believe the United States-led invasion of Iraq and its consequences have been catastrophic for the region, Secretary General Kofi Annan said Wednesday.
Honestly, most of the leaders I spoke to felt that the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has been a real disaster for them, Mr. Annan said. They believe it has destabilized the region.
He said the officials he met were of two minds about whether the Americans should leave Iraq. Many leaders felt the Americans should stay until the situation improves and that, having created the problem, they cannot walk away, he said.
Then, you have another school of thought, particularly in Iran, that believes that the presence of the U.S. is a problem and that the U.S. should leave, he said. He added that the Iranians had offered to help the Americans leave, but, asked to elaborate, said, I didn't get into details as to how they intend to help.
The challenges in Iraq for these young men and women are overwhelming. In the past three years more than half a million American troops have been rotated through the country. They have been fighting a suicidal counter-insurgency in a battle for which they are ill-equipped and ill-trained. While barbarity cannot ever be condoned, it beggars belief to think that in these conditions, with these numbers, outrages will never occur.
You could put half a million Buddhist monks into the mantrap that is Anbar province and I guarantee you’d get an atrocity or two. With most of the painstaking nation building and counter-terrorism efforts of these Americans virtually unnoticed by a critical world, a signal victory such as the al-Zarqawi killing is critical.
Many Iraqis dismiss the possibility of civil war in their country saying the Iraqi tribal, ethnic, religious and sectarian mosaic is interconnected through blood and marriage.
Despite widespread speculation at home and abroad that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, couples from different backgrounds have been defying the theory by marriage.
Young men and women – as was the case before the US-led invasion three years ago - from different ethnic, religious and sectarian backgrounds still flock to the civil courts every morning for marriage contracts.
What caught my attention recently was a statement made by the national security advisor in the interim government Mowafaq al-Rubai'I and an response to this statement from Dhafir al-Aani the spokesman of the Accord Front.
Al-Rubai'i was speaking enthusiastically about a plan to coordinate the withdrawal of MNF from Iraq with the leaders of the coalition. He said they're working on a plan to significantly reduce the number of foreign soldiers in the course of 2006 and said he expected all foreign troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2007 since "Iraqi security forces will be ready by then".
Al-Aani didn't like this statement and apparently feels that getting Iraqi troops trained and equipped isn't the main thing we need to do before the MNF can leave. He said that "we don't want the MNF to start leaving until all militias are disbanded…".
Here I see a great change in positions from what we used to see in the past two years. And especially on the Sunni side. None of the Shia leaders-except for the Sadr-were really interested in seeing the MNF leave soon and had been only talking about asking the MNF to leave because of pressures from the Sadrists and the Sunni Arabs.
But now we hear the same government happily announce that ending the presence of foreign troops in Iraq is near at the same time that Sunni Arab politicians began to change their tone and started to view the American military presence as a balancing factor!
What I see here is that Arab Sunni leaders have rearranged their priorities; except for a year or two after 2003 the Sunni never considered America their greatest enemy. Their greatest enemy had always been Iran and whoever allies with her while America ranked 2nd or 3rd (that's if not viewed as an ally) and I think this is how they view things right now.
