More than five months after they were presented, the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations are finally finding favor in the Bush administration. Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and others are developing plans that would emphasize political rather than military progress in Iraq, as the group urged. As it also recommended, the new approach would focus on regional diplomacy and training Iraqi security forces. About time.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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37 Comments
What change?
Sorry, but after 4+ years of “stay the course” “months not years” “dead-enders” “last throes” etc etc etc I am just a bit skeptical.
Too little. Too late. Pull the funding after September dem’s. This idiotic policy has failed and its time to end it. They had their chance to implement what the ISG recommended. Their answer was troop surge. You got what you wanted and the money to go with it. Now make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t and hurry up about it.
“A Change to Politics?”
The only “change” taking place is the new approach to propaganda. If the “new approach” meant less Iraqis would be slaughtered, then a reduction of the troops which are murdering Iraqis would be standing down and coming home.
The increase in the pompous strutting of Bush indicates that no such reduction of murdering is in the offering.
The new tactic of setting Palestinians against Palestinians and Lebanese against Lebanese and Iraqis against Iraqis and now Iranians against Iranians gives good cover for Bush and his Zionist buddies, and obviously a rooting section is forming around this well-concocted lie.
I’ve been reading about the history of “war” and it seems to me that clearly no such situation between Israel and the United States and the Arab world exists that necessitates the murdering of Arab men, women, and children to reconcile respectfully the needs of each group.
Bush feels as though he should be murdering, the congress will not hold back the money for the bloodletting and the Israelis are consumed by their collective greed.
On each page of the history of war, the names of the participants are different, but the similarities are the same.
At what point does someone grow out of this….insanity called “war?”
Ed Friedemann
You Libs are a little slow aren’t you? That has always been the plan. Petraeus even gave testimony before Congress about the plan.
Sure Rep – and we have been on that ‘plan’ for over 4 years. Seems to me the ‘dead-enders in their last throes’ are sure hanging in there a bit ponger than ‘months not years’
Question: who kills more Iraqis every day? Iraqis or Americans?
And today the Worst. President. Ever. said he wants to rachet up the pressure on Iran.
Man, I hope we can survive until that, uh, person, is out of office.
So the Mossad is just sitting on their hands? Yeah, right…Even the Iraqi VP asked that they stop and get out…
Yeah Ben, there appears to be a precedent on setting up a Democracy. One was started in 1776 and took until the Constitution was ratified in 1787.
Oh and Ben, the War itself it took from 1776-1783.
Those guys were a bit slow don’t you think? :)
So, who are “we” the British?
People like Republican think its our soldiers duty to patrol another country’s civil war. He has the gall to compare our self-made revolution to a situation of anarchy created by us. Not that you had any credibility before, but comparing our nation’s Revolutionary War to Iraq takes you to negative credibility, if that’s even possible. Utterly ludicrous.
Republican,
How can you compare speed of logistics, communications, and maneuver in 1776 to that of 2007? How can you compare the lethality of force now to that of 231 years ago?
It’s a ridiculous comparison to make, and only shows how desperate the warmongers are to keep in place a failed policy and a failed war plan.
But let’s follow Repulbican’s logic. It took a long time for the “insurgents” (colonials) better-armed “occupiers” (British).
So, I guess Republican is comparing the Iraqi insurgents to Washington’s forces and the US military to the British.
Tom, I wasn’t comparing logistics, communications and lethality.
I was comparing how long it takes to establish a Democracy and get the people accustomed to it.
The only thing ridiculous here Tom, is your inability to identify the issue I was addressing to Ben.
Republican, in U.S. Revolutionary War terms, believes that Americans who believe humans are causing global warming are “God belittling British Loyalists”.
I’d hate to guess what he thinks should be done to the almost 200 U.S.A. scientists who wrote IPCC’s WG1 report!
cosmos, the one trick pony.
Republican,
“Tom, I wasn’t comparing logistics, communications and lethality”
Duuuhh… that’s the obvious point!
Republican, the liar who cannot defend his opinion.
the War itself it took from 1776-1783.Those guys were a bit slow don’t you think? :)Posted by: Republican | May 24, 2007 at 02:10 PM
I was comparing how long it takes to establish a Democracy and get the people accustomed to it.Posted by: Republican | May 24, 2007 at 03:07 PM
Time elapsed from idiotic statement to retraction wrapped in personal attack, 53 minutes. That’s a new record, even for you, Republican.
The only retraction I noticed Capn, was Tom backing up off of you.
SnotPuke–
Ah, ha, I see what you meant. You funny, funny guy you!
I already told you, I’m not good looking enough to be gay.
And let’s heed what Kelly said not too long ago about laying off the sex references . . . otherwise, I’d have to talk about YOUR sex life and that would be . . . well, let’s just say you’ve taken the matter in hand very very well . . . or at least often.
Thank Al Gore for inventing internet chat rooms, right, ExMilitaryStud69?
And now for something on topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/politics/25cnd-poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the war began, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Six in 10 Americans surveyed say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, and more than three in four say that things are going badly there — including nearly half who say things are going very badly, the poll found.
President Bush’s approval ratings remain near the lowest point of his more than six years in office. Majorities of those polled disapprove of Mr. Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq, of foreign policy, of immigration, of the economy and of the campaign against terrorism.
At a news conference in the Rose Garden this morning, President Bush seemed to acknowledge the erosion of public support for his administration’s policy in Iraq, even as he defended the policy. “Failure in Iraq affects the security of this country,” he said. “And it’s hard for some Americans to see that. I fully understand it. I see it clearly.”
*****
He thinks if he acknowledges the problem, he will seem reasonable and thoughtful.
Instead he remains theWorst.President.Ever.
I see Capn…so you’re physical appearance gives a whole new meaning to “butt ugly.”
Gore inventing chat rooms? LMAO!!!!!
There were chat rooms online in services like Compuserve, Prodigy and etc. long before the GORACLE thought about such things.
I was even a Sysop on one of the Early Compuserve chat rooms.
SnotPuke–
Only you would be stupid enough to take that literally.
Obviously, what I was doing was ridiculing you people who keep saying that “Gore said that he invented the internet.”
I see your problem now: stupidity.
BTW, you never answered Clark’s question:
As a Christian, are you a present or former fornicator or a virgin?
Because as an unmarried male, you can’t be both . . .
That capn, would be none of your business, now would it? :)
So, you want to claim to follow Christian precepts but you won’t proudly declare your celibate status?
Or you live a hypocritical lie?
Since you bring up everyone else’s sex life (see the truly hateful “outing” of Ken), you owe us an explanation.
CapnA – This is the part that I found the most interesting in this article. Thanks for the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/us/politics/25cnd-poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
“For the first time, more than half of those polled — 51 percent — said the Democratic party is more likely than the Republican party to make the right decisions about the war.”
I stole this from another blog.
“Congratulations Congress on a job well doneYou did it so well you get to have a long weekend. Kick back, relax, and enjoy your holiday. By the time you get back to your cushy unaccountable jobs on Tuesday or so, 40-50 soldiers will have been killed, countless will have been injured, and who knows how many Iraqi’s will have died.
Hope you sleep well and enjoy those barbeque’s you are planning to attend…because I read a report yesterday that said our troops may not have enough to eat.
Again, have a nice holiday. Don’t forget to leave your pride behind because Georgie hasn’t finished wiping his ass yet.”
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c28_1180051991
Republican’s statement that the American Revolution took 7 years is extremely important. This is correct.
The problem is Republican turns history upside down. Our attempt to invade an oveseas land, in order to reestablish colonial resource-extracting hegemony is what the British did in America. To wit, the Brits lost a 7 year war. The “native inhabitants” won. We aren’t the native inhabitants in Iraq.
The Brits, who had to send men overseas to fight people who lived in America lost. America was legally the property of the British Crown. Colonists who had been sent to America, and their children and grandchildren, resented orders to mine and extract America’s natural resources, and produce commodity cotton–which was not optimally remunurative to the colonists–and sent it to Great Britain so that British industries could perform much more remunerative “value added” work. Moreover, the Mother Country prohibited the colonists from trading freely with other European nations, which artificially held down the amount of money the colonists could earn even selling raw materials. For example, France and Germany were often willing to pay more than the British, but the British blocked this free market.
Understand the British capitalists’ perspective. They paid for America’s colonization. They supplied the ships and tools without which America could not have been settled, and developed, under contracts that required the colonists to work for them. So they argued that the uppity colonists were contract-renegers and thieves. Not surprisingly, British courts found for British capitalist plaintiffs, when ambitious colonists tried to create their own international-trade businessses, selling British-owned resources.
The late-18th century colonists, in looked at the matter as, “Our fathers and grandfathers fulfilled their contracts. They worked hard. You received multiple-times your investment back. We’re not interested in being your servants.”
Great Britain couldn’t send enough troops, and maintain logistics lines sufficiently to defeat the insurgents. The effort was draining the British treasury. So, they gave up. They schemed to come back in 1812, but that failed.
Does this sound like Iraq? It’s one of the last colonial wars. Iraq was invented by Great Britain in the aftermath of the breakup of the Ottoman Turk empire, and its oil resources were divided to enrich European and American capitalists.
Iraq, or whatever nations arise from it, belongs to the people who live there. Native Iraqis will deal with non-native al Quaeda troublemakers.
Nice try Mark, but the purpose was to demonstrate that Democracies are not created overnight.
I mentioned nothing of the conflict analogy.
I could have used the Democratization of almost any Democratic Country. It’s a slow progressive action. It takes commitment and it’s not for the faint of heart.
If it were 1776 today, I fear we would all be speaking with a British accent as I see no solidarity of country, honor and duty.
Republican,”I see no solidarity of country, honor and duty.”
Of course not. You spend too much time looking in the mirror.
Democratization certainly does not occur overnight. In Iraq, democratization is probably not going to occur in our lifetime.
The American Revolution did not establish democracy in 7 years.
America was the child of England. England’s march to democracy began 507 years before Jamestown was settled, and 675 years before the American Revolution. In 1100, England established a Charter of Liberties which techically bound the king to obey certain laws, principally protecting barons and high church officers.
This was followed by the Magna Carta of 1215, in which the king renounced some “Divine Right of Kings” powers, and agreed to honor the law-binding provisions of the Charter of Liberties. The MC also protected all Englishmen from arbitrary imprisonment without legally-founded cause.
In 1295, a bi-chamber Parliament, with a House of Commons was created, the latter allowing non-nobles to represent the interests of all Englishmen, with each city sending 2 knights, 2 burgers and 2 citizens to London.
In 1515 a Speaker was designated. (Our House of Representatives was strongly modeled after the House of Commons, including the leader’s title.)
In 1523, the speaker requested the granting of free speech to members of parliament.
In the 1640’s, Parliament, led by General Oliver Cromwell, waged a civil war, and in 1649 captured and executed King Charles I for “treason”. (Charles thought this a monstrously perverse charge, since he professed the divine right of kings, which is to say, whatever actions he took were under God’s direction.) Charles II then took the monarchial initiative to continue the battle, but lost in 1651 and fled to France, where he lived in exile for 9 years.
Cromwell was encouraged to become king, but declined, taking the title “Lord Protector”. He wanted the monarchy to be permanently abolished. After his death from chronic illness, his son tried to succeed him, but failed. The monarchy was restored and Charles II returned.
Ca. 1679, John Locke published “Two Treatises of Government”, whose ideas nearly a century later constituted the Declaration of Independence’s main principles. Locke was warned that his life was in danger, so he fled to the Netherlands. Charles II was not ready to embrace enlightened thoughts on the nature of governance as a contract between governors and the governed, in which the latter held ultimate rights and power to choose their governors, as their forefathers had done in originally chosing kings.
Charles II contended with Parliament, dissolved it and asserted absolute dictatorship. His son, James II succeeded him. However, James II was a Catholic, which did not sit well with a nation that was by then largely Protestant. He was deposed in The Glorious Revolution in 1688. In his place, Parliament elected Protestant William II and his wife Mary II, of the Netherlands, as monarchs. At this time John Locke returned to England.
In subsequent years, Great Britain contended with insurgent uprisings in Scotland twice in the 18th century, and Ireland in the 20th, the Irish Civil War leading to most of that island’s becoming an independent nation. The northern part, that did not, was subjected to decades of insurgency, only recently resolved.
Because America was separated by an ocean from England, and because England had centuries of parliamentary government, colonies were allowed to establish houses of representatives. As contentions developed, England’s king and Parliament attempted to dissolve the more troublesome ones, and assign all powers to Crown-appointed governors. This was rejected by the colonists, but it took a 7-year war to establish their rights.
We are still in a march to democracy. Women did not get to vote nationally, or in many states, until early in the 20th century. African-American men were guaranteed the right to vote, and be elected to office at the end of the Civil War, but it wasn’t until our own lifetime that these rights were really established. If charges of “caging” are true, and other illegal measures to impede the African-American vote in the last two presidential elections, are true, then we still have quite a ways to go to establish a true democracy, or more accurately, a democratic republic, here.
So, if anyone thinks that 7 years or even 20 will be sufficient to establish democracy to a people who have never had it, and whose deeply-ingrained ancient religious convictions do not in any way coincide with it, that’s a complete misconception.
We are not in Iraq to establish democracy. We are in Iraq to enable American colonial-ideology capitalists to maintain a hold, increasingly slipping, on the world’s second most important resource (after water), oil that fueled the Second Industrial Revolution, of the 20th century.
Our capitalist leaders don’t give a whit about democracy, as anyone who has ever worked for a business owner, or corporation can attest. Has anyone ever had a boss who said, “Workers, you can vote on any policy you want, and I’ll accept your judgment, because I believe in democracy? That’s the best way to run a business.”
It took unionization and the power of strikes to get corporations to become somewhat democratic, in ceding some partnership power to workers. But alas, industrial unionization is dying, and a return to old fashioned corporate dictatorship is occurring.
This doesn’t mean that businesses don’t solicit worker input and suggestions—any smart organization does this—but ultimate decision-making is in the hands of executives, and that’s exactly where they want it. Why? The principle of the Divine Right of Kings has simply been renamed “The Dictates of the Marketplace,” or “Good Social Order” which holds that things work better if a relatively small number of wise men design and rule institutions that govern the vast majority of other people’s lives. An ancient idea. The oppositional construct is that the “collective wisdom” of the many is wiser than that of the few—any few, no matter how individually smart they are.
The latter idea requires relevant information to properly work. If the masses are entrained to get their information from television, which presents to them vapidity, such as who is going to get custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, mother kills her three children, and deranged student kills 23 students (the victims’ parents asked the media to stop the circus, to no avail), instead of presenting to people what Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, et al. are doing behind the “Wizard of Oz” curtain, of course the collective wisdom will be hampered.
Yet it will still operate in some misty realm. Many people who don’t consciously recall GWB’s 2000 debate rejections of nation-building and using the U.S. as a global police force, at least unconsciously retain this memory, and feel unease seeing the president do the exact opposite of what he said in debate.
They can unconsciously perceive a strong incongruity between GWB’s promising to mount an anti-gay-marriage amendment campaign, but never did this, while the VP’s lesbian daughter has had a baby, which will be raised by two lesbians, and the collective wisdom can understand, at a deep intuitive level, that an anti-gay-marriage amendment was never advanced by GWB because GWB was not actually against gay marriage at all, he was just selling specious propaganda to get votes, under Karl Rove’s manipulate-the-public-sentiment con artistry.
Why do we think the U.S. is enthusiastically trading with China, a nation in which there is no Bill of Rights, or anything remotely approaching one? We are living in a period of democracy’s shrinkage, not expansion. We’re being governed by self-serving sociopaths, who scream “Protect America,” while they sell off Americans’ jobs to China and India, and run up deficits that are resolved by selling huge shares of America to foreigners such as the House of Saud (arch-anti-democratic dictators), and we will shortly see, China.
Democratization certainly does not occur overnight. In Iraq, democratization is probably not going to occur in our lifetime.
The American Revolution did not establish democracy in 7 years.
America was the child of England. England’s march to democracy began 507 years before Jamestown was settled, and 675 years before the American Revolution. In 1100, England established a Charter of Liberties which techically bound the king to obey certain laws, principally protecting barons and high church officers.
This was followed by the Magna Carta of 1215, in which the king renounced some “Divine Right of Kings” powers, and agreed to honor the law-binding provisions of the Charter of Liberties. The MC also protected all Englishmen from arbitrary imprisonment without legally-founded cause.
In 1295, a bi-chamber Parliament, with a House of Commons was created, the latter allowing non-nobles to represent the interests of all Englishmen, with each city sending 2 knights, 2 burgers and 2 citizens to London.
In 1515 a Speaker was designated. (Our House of Representatives was strongly modeled after the House of Commons, including the leader’s title.)
In 1523, the speaker requested the granting of free speech to members of parliament.
In the 1640’s, Parliament, led by General Oliver Cromwell, waged a civil war, and in 1649 captured and executed King Charles I for “treason”. (Charles thought this a monstrously perverse charge, since he professed the divine right of kings, which is to say, whatever actions he took were under God’s direction.) Charles II then took the monarchial initiative to continue the battle, but lost in 1651 and fled to France, where he lived in exile for 9 years.
Cromwell was encouraged to become king, but declined, taking the title “Lord Protector”. He wanted the monarchy to be permanently abolished. After his death from chronic illness, his son tried to succeed him, but failed. The monarchy was restored and Charles II returned.
Ca. 1679, John Locke published “Two Treatises of Government”, whose ideas nearly a century later constituted the Declaration of Independence’s main principles. Locke was warned that his life was in danger, so he fled to the Netherlands. Charles II was not ready to embrace enlightened thoughts on the nature of governance as a contract between governors and the governed, in which the latter held ultimate rights and power to choose their governors, as their forefathers had done in originally chosing kings.
Charles II contended with Parliament, dissolved it and asserted absolute dictatorship. His son, James II succeeded him. However, James II was a Catholic, which did not sit well with a nation that was by then largely Protestant. He was deposed in The Glorious Revolution in 1688. In his place, Parliament elected Protestant William II and his wife Mary II, of the Netherlands, as monarchs. At this time John Locke returned to England.
In subsequent years, Great Britain contended with insurgent uprisings in Scotland twice in the 18th century, and Ireland in the 20th, the Irish Civil War leading to most of that island’s becoming an independent nation. The northern part, that did not, was subjected to decades of insurgency, only recently resolved.
Because America was separated by an ocean from England, and because England had centuries of parliamentary government, colonies were allowed to establish houses of representatives. As contentions developed, England’s king and Parliament attempted to dissolve the more troublesome ones, and assign all powers to Crown-appointed governors. This was rejected by the colonists, but it took a 7-year war to establish their rights.
We are still in a march to democracy. Women did not get to vote nationally, or in many states, until early in the 20th century. African-American men were guaranteed the right to vote, and be elected to office at the end of the Civil War, but it wasn’t until our own lifetime that these rights were really established. If charges of “caging” are true, and other illegal measures to impede the African-American vote in the last two presidential elections, are true, then we still have quite a ways to go to establish a true democracy, or more accurately, a democratic republic, here.
So, if anyone thinks that 7 years or even 20 will be sufficient to establish democracy to a people who have never had it, and whose deeply-ingrained ancient religious convictions do not in any way coincide with it, that’s a complete misconception.
We are not in Iraq to establish democracy. We are in Iraq to enable American colonial-ideology capitalists to maintain a hold, increasingly slipping, on the world’s second most important resource (after water), oil that fueled the Second Industrial Revolution, of the 20th century.
Our capitalist leaders don’t give a whit about democracy, as anyone who has ever worked for a business owner, or corporation can attest. Has anyone ever had a boss who said, “Workers, you can vote on any policy you want, and I’ll accept your judgment, because I believe in democracy? That’s the best way to run a business.”
It took unionization and the power of strikes to get corporations to become somewhat democratic, in ceding some partnership power to workers. But alas, industrial unionization is dying, and a return to old fashioned corporate dictatorship is occurring.
This doesn’t mean that businesses don’t solicit worker input and suggestions—any smart organization does this—but ultimate decision-making is in the hands of executives, and that’s exactly where they want it. Why? The principle of the Divine Right of Kings has simply been renamed “The Dictates of the Marketplace,” or “Good Social Order” which holds that things work better if a relatively small number of wise men design and rule institutions that govern the vast majority of other people’s lives. An ancient idea. The oppositional construct is that the “collective wisdom” of the many is wiser than that of the few—any few, no matter how individually smart they are.
The latter idea requires relevant information to properly work. If the masses are entrained to get their information from television, which presents to them vapidity, such as who is going to get custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, mother kills her three children, and deranged student kills 23 students (the victims’ parents asked the media to stop the circus, to no avail), instead of presenting to people what Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, et al. are doing behind the “Wizard of Oz” curtain, of course the collective wisdom will be hampered.
Yet it will still operate in some misty realm. Many people who don’t consciously recall GWB’s 2000 debate rejections of nation-building and using the U.S. as a global police force, at least unconsciously retain this memory, and feel unease seeing the president do the exact opposite of what he said in debate.
They can unconsciously perceive a strong incongruity between GWB’s promising to mount an anti-gay-marriage amendment campaign, but never did this, while the VP’s lesbian daughter has had a baby, which will be raised by two lesbians, and the collective wisdom can understand, at a deep intuitive level, that an anti-gay-marriage amendment was never advanced by GWB because GWB was not actually against gay marriage at all, he was just selling specious propaganda to get votes, under Karl Rove’s manipulate-the-public-sentiment con artistry.
Why do we think the U.S. is enthusiastically trading with China, a nation in which there is no Bill of Rights, or anything remotely approaching one? We are living in a period of democracy’s shrinkage, not expansion. We’re being governed by self-serving sociopaths, who scream “Protect America,” while they sell off Americans’ jobs to China and India, and run up deficits that are resolved by selling huge shares of America to foreigners such as the House of Saud (arch-anti-democratic dictators), and we will shortly see, China.
Is there truly a shift in policy? The author of the piece linked below suggests there is not, but instead a deep division within the Administration which likely cannot be managed which will result in a “drift” for the remaining 20 months of the President’s term.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opklu255228769may25,0,4165525.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Mark, my compliments on the scholarly post, in particular the reference to the work of John Locke.