And that’s precisely why realism is a flawed. Predicting the decision making process of your enemy is not a zero sum equation based on their rational pursuit of power and survivability. Humans are not always rational actors and things like morale, ideology, theology and psychology need to be taken into account.
[quote]BPCorso wrote:
That fact complicates splitting the country up in three ways. It might make it impossible.
[/quote]
The reality is that this whole second unilateral US invasion of Iraq was doomed from the start. You need the UN, including Russian and China, to admit that the Middle East is a significant security concern to the entire World. You’d probably have a lot of support from this in the EU given that the people are fighting back against the socialists and reverting to more nationalistic attitudes. You could even use Ukraine as a bargaining chip to get Russian support, as this is by far deserves the priority. This needs to a world effort.
You have another joint invasion or build up of forces, where the UN shares the bill/job equally, and you split them up. Using the current IMF/World Bank model the resources are privatized and bid off. Part of the cash flow of those operations goes to fund each of the governments and allows them to build infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. You also keep training their security forces, start weeding out those corrupt, or unable to wield the responsibility.
If one party gets out of line, or doesn’t like it, they get hurt and violently.
This is a large plan and you probably need to get the media to tell the people that WMDs are in extremist hands as well as some man portable air defense systems that managed to make it into the US. Scare tactics, but given the current state of American politics, probably necessary to get this situation under control. Obama’s presidency is already not doing so well, so he might as well take one for the team here, and start breaching the subject.
Either way, if you do nothing here, you are double fucked. You could cut your losses, but as soon as there is another significant terrorist incident on US soil, we will be right back over there and I’m a guy who thinks the terrorism threat was way over blown to begin with. Any occupations needs to be for the long term and transition to sovereign governments very slowly, think generations and not years until these extremists start dieing out.
There’s a quote from James Stockdale, who was the lead pilot in the Gulf of Tonkin incident and ended up being a Vietnam POW for a long time. He was also a philosopher and they tried to run him for vice president with Ross Perot I think.
He said that you have to be in the morally correct position when you make decisions like this because sooner or later times will get very difficult and you will not be able make the necessary sacrifices to win, if you aren’t in the right. I don’t think the neocons in the Bush administration really understood the hornet’s nest they were kicking and weren’t committed to seeing things through which is augmented by the shortsightedness of American politics and the short attention spans of the American people.
[quote]BPCorso wrote:
Tell me where Obama said he was going to help Iran in fighting ISIS? Or did you just make that up because someone on the radio said it was so? All administrations since the hostage crisis has shared/received communication with Iran and other unfriendly countries at one point or another when shared interests merited that action. That includes Reagan and W. That is much different than military cooperation or official dialogue. [/quote]
They’ve been talking about it all week:
Kerry has to say about it:
The funny thing is many of these ideas/solutions require that the Islamists would be rational. That’s the mistake. These fanatics want it their way, or they would gladly be willing to die defending their ideology. You can’t reason with people like this. They understand one thing: brutal force.
The only solution is a brutal secular dictator. Oh, and we had that…! But we disposed him. The only solution is to reduce them to rubble via air strikes, drones and ICBMs.
[quote]BPCorso wrote:
since you support ISIS because it’s an “Iraqi Taliban” from your point of view. The Taliban is a huge reason 9/11 happened.
[/quote]
I don’t support Isis. I just don’t think we should help Iran. I understand The Taliban is a huge reason 9/11 happened, and if you read my other posts you would see I pointed out the parallels between the rise of the Taliban following the Russian retreat in Afghanistan to the current Iraqi situation.
Bottom line is I think we should stay out of it and let Sunni and Shia fight it out for themselves.
And why waste billions more arming the inept Iraqi forces with tanks, mraps, howitzers, ect and have them retreat at the sight of some guys with machine guns mounted on pick up trucks?
[quote]Bismark wrote:
Actually, a closer reading of Herman Kahn’s “On Thermonuclear War” demonstrates that the “Doomsday Machine” he presents is a rhetorical device intended to show the limits of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, of which he was a vocal critic.[/quote]
Are you sure it was a rhetorical device? I think it’s a great idea. But the Iranians may be working on a doomsday machine themselves. We need to stop them. I propose the United States develop its own doomsday machine and use it pre-emptively against Iran. The Iranians are dangerous. If we need to destroy mankind to stop the Iranians then that’s what we should do.
Edit: a rhetorical device of my own to demonstrate the flaws of realism in international relations.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
Actually, a closer reading of Herman Kahn’s “On Thermonuclear War” demonstrates that the “Doomsday Machine” he presents is a rhetorical device intended to show the limits of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, of which he was a vocal critic.[/quote]
Are you sure it was a rhetorical device? I think it’s a great idea. But the Iranians may be working on a doomsday machine themselves. We need to stop them. I propose the United States develop its own doomsday machine and use it pre-emptively against Iran. The Iranians are dangerous. If we need to destroy mankind to stop the Iranians then that’s what we should do.
Edit: a rhetorical device of my own to demonstrate the flaws of realism in international relations.[/quote]
It’s absolutely a rhetorical device, a fact which is made explicitly clear in the text.
What flaws of Realism did you demonstrate? Be specific. Your post was little more than a slippery slope to nuclear Armageddon
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Although I’m not familiar with the conditions on the ground it would surprise me if ISIS can actually take Baghdad. There must be an incredible amount of security in the green zone. Sure, they can create chaos in the capital with suicide attacks etc. but can they actually take and hold Baghdad? I’m not so sure.[/quote]
Hell must have froze over. A sensible post from SexMachine ends the thread on the first page.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
It’s absolutely a rhetorical device, a fact which is made explicitly clear in the text.
[/quote]
I know. I was engaging in satire to illustrate my point.
[quote]
What flaws of Realism did you demonstrate? Be specific. Your post was little more than a slippery slope to nuclear Armageddon [/quote]
I thought I’d made it pretty clear. The underlying assumption of realism in international relations, as you have said yourself, is that all actors are driven by two motivations:
1). The pursuit of power
2). Survival
It further postulates that any courses of action an adversary takes will always be rational attempts to fulfil these two goals. So far I have been unable to convince you that this is not always the case. I tried to explain that the Iranian regime is not a rational actor. It would seem I have not succeeded in doing so. My rhetorical exercise above was to demonstrate that the same is true of some actors on our side. The doomsday machine was my attempt to satirise the John McCain school of foreign policy.
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
(And I’ll take a “strawman hit” or whatever on this one… because I can’t get past Cheney’s arrogance…)
Let’s also try 40 BILLION plus for IRAQ ALONE for Halliburton (…and counting…and not counting Afghanistan…)
Millions of dollars for him in the War “effort”…
And most importantly, the death and sacrifice of thousands of Americans.
Cheney just needs to retire on his millions and shoot some more of his friends…
Mufasa[/quote]
This is a great example of the hypocrisy of the left. They try to act like Cheney and Halliburton is some awful boogeyman while completely ignoring the fact that it was President Clinton who got Halliburton started in the military support business. Then he attacked Serbia, a country that really wasn’t a threat to us and we still have troops in Bosnia today because of that war.
[/quote]
By using the term “hypocrisy,” you are suggesting an equivalence. Mufasa explicitly invoked two points: The amount of money that Halliburton made in Iraq, and the number of Americans who died in Iraq.
How much money did Halliburton make in Serbia? And, much more importantly, how many Americans died in Serbia?[/quote]
No. Mufasa first invoked a strawman of the left that the Iraq war was started so Cheney could set up his cronies at Halliburton with a lucrative contract.
The hypocrisy is ignoring the fact that it was during the Clinton presidency that Halliburton was given their contract to provide support services to the military. It was also during the Clinton presidency that Halliburton was first used when Clinton took us to war against Serbia.
The amounts of money involved are irrelevant. Also we lost an F117 over Serbia that allowed the Chinese to gain access to stealth technology. So there is no telling how many Americans might eventually die because of Clinton’s war.
When Clinton hired and then used Halliburton he was a good guy. When Bush merely used what Clinton had started, Halliburton suddenly became the boogeyman. That’s the hypocrisy. [/quote]
- I never wrote, nor implied, that the War was started to "set up his (Cheney’s) cronies. (The amount of money is irrelevant??? If you say so…)
I will concede that I had no idea about Halliburton’s history…I didn’t check on “Wiki”.
-
I pointed out how many HAVE died…not “might” die.
-
You, not me, placed “good” or “bad” on Halliburton based on who was President. I merely pointed out how this “champion” of “American Strength and prestige” not only was enriched by War…but also, at the very least, was part of making us neither.
THERE is the hypocrisy.
Mufasa
[/quote]
1)No. If you were expressing an original thought you would have a point with “I never wrote, nor implied”. But you weren’t expressing an original thought. You brought up portions of a leftist whining point that has been repeated ad nauseum for well over a decade and now you are trying to be coy and walk it back.
Halliburton made money off of Clinton’s war on Serbia just the same as they made money off of Iraq. Just because one war might have made more money than the other is totally irrelevant to the fact that Clinton is the one who gave Halliburton their start in the business and because he is a Democrat he gets a pass.
Yes Wiki and a good memory can be quite helpful here.
- My point is we still don’t know the full consequences of Clinton’s war on Serbia. Just as we still don’t know the full consequences of Clinton backing down against North Korea and agreeing to allow them to produce nuclear fuel which they used to make nuclear weapons. We probably would have lost thousands then, but now we are faced with losing millions.
3)No I’m not making a good or bad distinction about Halliburton based upon the President. They are merely providing a service, that I believe should have been kept in-house by the military even if it did cost more. It is the left who are making the good or bad distinction based upon who the president is.
Your hypocrisy is whining about Halliburton and Cheney while ignoring it was President Clinton who turned an important function of the military over Halliburton.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
"SOFAs are peacetime documents and therefore do not address the
rules of war, the Law of Armed Conflict, or the Law of the Sea. In the event of armed conflict
between parties to a SOFA, and because the agreement is a contract between the parties and may
be canceled at the will of either, the terms of the agreement would no longer be applicable. "[/quote]
Not remotely relevant. What this is saying is that if the U.S. were to go to war with Iraq, the SOFA would dissolve. Which is painfully obvious.
[quote]
“Even though the term of the agreement is three years,
and either party may cancel the agreement with one-year notice, both countries retain the right to
remove U.S. forces independent of the agreement”[/quote]
And, again, why did the U.S. not want to cancel an agreement without a new one in place? Why would a president want to not, under any circumstances, allow the SOFA to dissolve?[/quote]
And if you did not read it, then you don’t know that obama takes full credit for removing the troops from Iraq, not as an adherence to any SOFA’s but as a campaign promise kept. Further he details that he planned and over saw the withdrawal. Read it. It’s not long, there is no reason not to read it. It’s not rhetoric. It’s a complete and total ownership of the withdrawal of all military personnel. [/quote]
I did read it. I said “no” as a general denial of your argument. But I can see that this was ambiguous of me, and that it seemed like I was saying I didn’t read it.
Again–none of this matters. If Obama takes credit for inventing blowjobs, does that make it so? No. This line of argument has failed you and I have addressed it in full. When Obama took credit for the withdrawal, he was taking credit for something that had been negotiated, designed, and signed before he had an ounce of executive power in American government. This is not arguable. This is not controversial. There is nothing more to add with regard to whether or not Obama blew his own horn on the Iraq draw-down. You are relying on the political rhetoric of a politician as he takes credit for something that was designed and established before he came to office; I am relying on signed and dated documentary evidence. Your only play is to prove that the SOFA was not actually signed on the date it says it was signed on. Barring that, this line of discussion should not continue.
[quote]
The SOFA protects, primarily the military personnel from detention and prosecution from the host country.[/quote]
The SOFA does a bunch of things. Each article and section has a purpose. It does exactly what it does.
[quote]
You wouldn’t want to dissolve it in order to protect the troops.[/quote]
Correct. And thus this…
…is nonsense. Tell me what happens to the SOFA if Article 24 Section 1 is violated.
SOFA’s can be renegotiated, reneged, changed altered, etc. It’s not binding on the current president to abide by. He can choose to abide by it, or he can choose to create a new one, or he can do what ever he wants. He is not bound by it in terms that he can make different decisions. He chose to follow it, but that was his decision. Drawing out the troops was his decision, the only person who can make decisions with regards to current troop deployment is the sitting president and no one else. He could have renegotiated. He could have simply said the that situation on the ground does not warrant a complete withdrawal. He was not bound to that SOFA.
He needed to renegotiate it, he was advised to do so and did not. So it was his decision.
And either way it doesn’t look good for obama. Because if he did not make the decision to withdraw, if it was Bush’s decision alone then he is a liar.
So he either case, he either made the decision for a complete withdrawal or he told a titanic lie to the Congress and to the American public. Neither is good. You can lie about who blew whom in the oval office, but you cannot tell lies about national security.
[quote]bigflamer wrote:
One Marine’s perspective on why we shouldn’t be doubling down on failed policies.
I served in Iraq, we shouldn’t go back.
I don’t think anybody wants to go back, but we have to have an effective end game to where we don’t have to. Everybody is war weary. We’re all worn out by it. But you cannot let Iraq go to hell at the same time. Allowing terrorists to settle in gives them time to plan, and they pledge to hit us. Considering their track record of doing so successfully in the past, I have no reason to doubt they will.
I prefer to bitch about politics and war from the safety of my computer in a house not surrounded by the scars of war. If we want to keep the turmoil off of our soil, we have to engage them where they are.
[quote]BPCorso wrote:
[quote]theuofh wrote:
The last couple article I’ve read, albeit of dubious credibility, state that the new goal is to split Iraq into 3 separate entities: a kurdish, shiia, and sunni.
Given their millenia old differences, I don’t think anyboy thinks a unified government will work, especially with the Gulf States all rooting for their own personal teams. Forcing Maliki in favor of a unified government out won’t really do anything, except create a bigger power vacuum, and instead of the different insurgencies/factions shooting each other in the streets, they will be shooting each other in government offices. Although, you still have the EU and their influence in the UN trying to make the model work for economic reasons which time will tell, I don’t think you are dealing with the same situation in the Middle East.
I haven’t researched it much, but considering the resources spent “liberating” Iraq, the US and it’s oil industry didn’t benefit much from the Iraqi resources. Re-engineering the country will likely null and void those contracts, given the US a second shot, although this is me speculating as I’m not really all that informed of how all this played out.
[/quote]
In an ideal world the country would be split into three so that the different groups can all govern themselves to their liking. The problem is ISIS is a jihadist movement. ISIS does not represent the average Iraqi Sunni or their interests, it represents terrorism and a sharia law state in the same vein as the Taliban (e.g.; girls get burned for learning how to read). If there were some way for the peacefully split the country into three and have ISIS eliminated we’d have a more stable middle east. History and recent history show it’s unlikely democracy is going to unify all of the disparate Iraqi people.
There are a lot of problems with this ideal scenario, however. One is ISIS should not be viewed as the Sunni side and ISIS having a stronghold would be bad for the world. So any split would have to be in combination with ensuring that the Sunni slice would not be overrun by ISIS. The second problem is that Iraq is a country of great natural resources. That fact complicates splitting the country up in three ways. It might make it impossible.
The reality is there isn’t a person in the world that knows how to properly deal with this situation because there is no perfect solution. That time has long passed. I have the opinion that Iraq can’t work as it currently stands because there is clearly a lack of shared identity between the three separate groups. As far as solving that, I’m not so delusional to think I have the answer.[/quote]
Splitting the country sounds good in theory but the distribution or resources makes that scenario impossible. The south has the majority of the oil.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
Did you read it? Because if you did, it’s all she wrote on this issue. Nothing more to be said, it was obama’s baby, he claims it and owns it. His decision.[/quote]
Nope. (Already addressed.)
[quote]
Everything is rhetoric if you want to boil it down.[/quote]
Nope. I already posted something that isn’t rhetoric. It’s a document. With a date. And a signature. And it disassembles your argument, all by itself.
[quote]
Obama made the decision to pull out the troops. Nobody else but Obama could make that decision he’s the only one with the legal right to do so.[/quote]
Nope. Already proved incorrect with documentary, inarguable evidence.
[quote]
It doesn’t matter what Bush did in 2008, it’s not binding, at all.[/quote]
Nope. But where did you get that idea? Are you literally making this up? Do you understand what would have happened if this “non-binding” agreement had been violated? If so, why don’t you tell me? [Underlined because this is the important part. Please answer it. The rest are points are just re-hashes of sub-arguments I’ve already won on hard evidentiary grounds.]
It’s non-binding in the sense that different decisions could have been made and implemented. It was the rule of law, but the law was changeable. It wasn’t carved in stone.
[quote]
So, we find ourselves here: You have distanced yourself from your original claim, which was nonsense and has proved so. Now you’re arguing that the SOFA was “non-binding,” which carries the implication that your new, much-watered-down criticism of Obama is that “he should have ignored the SOFA!”
Please tell me why he wouldn’t have done that, and no American president would have done that.[/quote]
I never distanced myself from my original claim. Obama made the decision to withdraw the troops and leave none behind which was a major disaster. That’s my original claim, obama says it himself. Obama fucked this up. It’s his fault, period. I don’t need anything else, the man himself bares out this claim. Only sitting presidents can make decisions on troop deployments and whether to end or begin wars. No body else can make that decision. The fact that he followed a SOFA that he vehemently disagreed with in the first place was a decision, he had other options. It was his baby, his problem and his fault.
There’s no way around it because of the concrete fact that only sitting president can make these decisions.
But sure I can provide more references that it was obama’s decision and hence his fault:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/02/98493/obama-takes-credit-for-ending.html
I can provide a list references that would crash the server. It was, is and will continue to be obama’s fault and even he said so. If the president himself says “I did this”, he did it.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
If the US had violated its SOFA treaty obligations, Iraq would have had legal and moral grounds to withdraw from a plethora of diplomatic and economic agreements with the United States. Further, such a gross breach of diplomatic norms and international law would have widely damaged US foreign relations. [/quote]
Ding ding ding. Thank you.
Plus, U.S. soldiers would have begun seeing their day in Iraqi courts.
This is what I mean when I say that I try to stay away from IR discussion hereabouts. You find yourself rehashing the most basic points about diplomacy.[/quote]
Care to address the above Pat?
interesting article:
"There is plenty of blame to go around for a crisis that is splintering Iraq along its sectarian divides between majority Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish areas. The George W. Bush administration disastrously disbanded the regular, secular Iraqi army in 2003 and vastly underestimated the sectarian tensions that would be unleashed with the toppling of Hussein?s Sunni regime in Shiite-majority Iraq. The U.S. military underestimated the mammoth, time-consuming job of building Iraqi security forces virtually from scratch, beginning a serious effort only after years of occupation had worn out America?s welcome.
For its part, the Obama administration ignored warnings from senior U.S. military leaders, failing to successfully negotiate a status-of-forces agreement that would have left residual U.S. trainers and mentors there to enable Iraqi forces and to buffer them from Baghdad?s sectarian politics. President Obama?s decision to ignore the advice of his top national security leaders to arm the Syrian rebels and bring that conflict to a speedier resolution also helped breathe new life into ISIS."
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
No. Mufasa first invoked a strawman of the left that the Iraq war was started so Cheney could set up his cronies at Halliburton with a lucrative contract.[/quote]
Did he? Please cite, using Mufasa’s own words, this claim that the war was begun by Cheney in order for his cronies to profit.
By the way, that is not a straw man. It’s an accusation. A straw man is a weak argument one makes and then puts in one’s opponent’s mouth in order to subsequently tear it apart. The claim that Cheney designed the Iraq War with Halliburton’s bottom line in mind is not a straw man; it is an accusation. This is neither here nor there, though, because nobody has made such an accusation hereabouts.
[quote]
The hypocrisy is ignoring the fact that it was during the Clinton presidency that Halliburton was given their contract to provide support services to the military.[/quote]
Mufasa made the point that Halliburton made a boatload of cash in Iraq. You’re upset that he didn’t provide a Wikipedia-style “history” section, noting Clinton’s involvement in the early days, which have nothing to do with the War in Iraq? And do you know for a fact that Mufasa voted for and supports Bill Clinton?
[quote]
The amounts of money involved are irrelevant.[/quote]
I’m sure you’d like them to be, but they aren’t.
Mufasa made a specific and explicit criticism of the absurd amount of money Cheney’s Halliburton friends made on the Iraq War (my addition: While we, the taxpayers, were spending trillions. Trillions. But I guess I’m fiscally conservative compared to the malevolent assholes who designed the clusterfuck that we’re presently discussing.) You called him a hypocrite and invoked Serbia. It should be obvious to you that it is incumbent upon you to show that Halliburton’s Serbia haul was at least on the same order of magnitude as its Iraq haul (hint: It wasn’t). This being, you know, the sine qua non of hypocrisy.
Allow me to belabor the point: Peyton and Eli Manning are having dinner together. Peyton tells Eli he threw too many interceptions in the 2013 season, and suggests that Eli work on his awareness. Eli calls Peyton a hypocrite, because “guess what Peyton, you threw interceptions too!!!” But wait–Eli threw almost three times as many interceptions as Peyton. So, although they both turned the ball over, their stats were not remotely comparable. Eli, it turns out, has his head up his ass. And Peyton is not a hypocrite.
[quote]
Also we lost an F117 over Serbia that allowed the Chinese to gain access to stealth technology. So there is no telling how many Americans might eventually die because of Clinton’s war.[/quote]
“There’s no telling,” as in, “two people died, and not in combat, but maybe someday the Chinese!!!”
You know what there is telling of? American deaths in Iraq. Very precise telling. And it’s a few more than two.
So Mufasa mentioned Cheney and Halliburton in the same sentence for no reason? And if it was for a reason it was not the one the left have been whining about for over a decade? That doesn’t pass the smell test. He mentioned Cheney and Halliburton together for a reason.
I had deleted the bit about a strawman and wrote something else, it must have come back after my browser crashed. I probably should have proofread.
Now we are back to Halliburton. Yes the money is irrelevant. Halliburton is only providing a service that they were hired to do. If there is a problem with Halliburton providing that service you need to explain why. Then you need to explain why it’s not Clinton’s fault for hiring a civilian contractor to handle a task that has always been handled by the military and for obvious reasons.
Serbia was not a threat to anyone and had no strategic value. Iraq is a strategic country and Saddam was a dangerous problem who needed to be taken care of. So I don’t see how a comparison of the loss of life can be made.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
"SOFAs are peacetime documents and therefore do not address the
rules of war, the Law of Armed Conflict, or the Law of the Sea. In the event of armed conflict
between parties to a SOFA, and because the agreement is a contract between the parties and may
be canceled at the will of either, the terms of the agreement would no longer be applicable. "[/quote]
Not remotely relevant. What this is saying is that if the U.S. were to go to war with Iraq, the SOFA would dissolve. Which is painfully obvious.
[quote]
“Even though the term of the agreement is three years,
and either party may cancel the agreement with one-year notice, both countries retain the right to
remove U.S. forces independent of the agreement”[/quote]
And, again, why did the U.S. not want to cancel an agreement without a new one in place? Why would a president want to not, under any circumstances, allow the SOFA to dissolve?[/quote]
And if you did not read it, then you don’t know that obama takes full credit for removing the troops from Iraq, not as an adherence to any SOFA’s but as a campaign promise kept. Further he details that he planned and over saw the withdrawal. Read it. It’s not long, there is no reason not to read it. It’s not rhetoric. It’s a complete and total ownership of the withdrawal of all military personnel. [/quote]
I did read it. I said “no” as a general denial of your argument. But I can see that this was ambiguous of me, and that it seemed like I was saying I didn’t read it.
Again–none of this matters. If Obama takes credit for inventing blowjobs, does that make it so? No. This line of argument has failed you and I have addressed it in full. When Obama took credit for the withdrawal, he was taking credit for something that had been negotiated, designed, and signed before he had an ounce of executive power in American government. This is not arguable. This is not controversial. There is nothing more to add with regard to whether or not Obama blew his own horn on the Iraq draw-down. You are relying on the political rhetoric of a politician as he takes credit for something that was designed and established before he came to office; I am relying on signed and dated documentary evidence. Your only play is to prove that the SOFA was not actually signed on the date it says it was signed on. Barring that, this line of discussion should not continue.
[quote]
The SOFA protects, primarily the military personnel from detention and prosecution from the host country.[/quote]
The SOFA does a bunch of things. Each article and section has a purpose. It does exactly what it does.
[quote]
You wouldn’t want to dissolve it in order to protect the troops.[/quote]
Correct. And thus this…
…is nonsense. Tell me what happens to the SOFA if Article 24 Section 1 is violated.
SOFA’s can be renegotiated, reneged, changed altered, etc.[/quote]
Indeed they can. And both Bush and Obama tried to alter the SOFA to provide for a security contingent of American forces to remain in the country beyond December 31, 2011. Both Bush and Obama failed in that effort because of internal Iraqi politics, because of Maliki’s government’s refusal. That’s the thing with IR: the domestic politics of the government with which dealings are proceeding are beyond our control. Were you aware of these attempt? Why are you acting as though you were not? Because if I tried to buy an orange, but the only grocer in town refused to provide me with anything more than a lemon, it was most fucking definitely not my idea to come home with a lemon, and I would take laugh at any suggestion to the contrary.
So, this is where we are: You painted the complete 2011 withdrawal as “Obama’s idea,”…oh how he fucked up, oh how this blew up in his face, etc. In fact, however, the withdrawal was negotiated and signed by Obama’s predecessor, and those negotiations prescribed an exact date for the utter withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraqi territory. The said predecessor tried to push for a security force to remain behind, but the Iraqi government refused. Similarly, Obama tried to renegotiate a SOFA which would provide for a security force to remain behind, but the Iraqi government refused. Maliki would not even consent to jurisdictional immunity for a relatively small American contingent.
These are not my opinions; these are not my interpretations. These are not news write-ups of stump speeches or transcript-excerpts of shameless politicking (for the last time, is something so because Barack Obama says it’s so? I didn’t think so). These are the facts, and they are familiar to anyone who’s been following the news over the course of the last three years. The analysis you offered in your first post is plainly incompatible with this–i.e., reality.
[quote]
And either way it doesn’t look good for obama.[/quote]
Nobody is saying anything looks good for Obama. Nothing looks good for anybody with regard to the biblical fuck-up that was the War in Iraq.
[quote]
So he either case, he either… [/quote]
There is no either. The facts are available to us, and they are relatively simple. If you were not aware of them before this debate–if you were not aware that the SOFA was signed in November 2008 and that both Bush and Obama were refused a remnant security force by Maliki–then you are now.
Edit: And just to have this on record, I’m not going to re-post any of these points. They’re here and they’re not controversial.
[quote]Sifu wrote:
Iraq is a strategic country and Saddam was a dangerous problem who needed to be taken care of.
[/quote]
This is the crux of the argument, and it is logically foundational to any kind of (ludicrous) equivalency between Serbia and Iraq. It’s also arrant nonsense. But I got into it at great length very recently. There is no way I’m re-hashing the contents of that thread here.
I’ll just leave at this: A dangerous problem which needs to be dealt with is a war-torn Iraq collapsing under the weight of a web of radical terrorism. That’s a dangerous problem, and it exists because of one abject failure of a president and the piece of shit he brought with him into the White House.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
interesting article:
"There is plenty of blame to go around for a crisis that is splintering Iraq along its sectarian divides between majority Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish areas. The George W. Bush administration disastrously disbanded the regular, secular Iraqi army in 2003 and vastly underestimated the sectarian tensions that would be unleashed with the toppling of Hussein?s Sunni regime in Shiite-majority Iraq. The U.S. military underestimated the mammoth, time-consuming job of building Iraqi security forces virtually from scratch, beginning a serious effort only after years of occupation had worn out America?s welcome.
For its part, the Obama administration ignored warnings from senior U.S. military leaders, failing to successfully negotiate a status-of-forces agreement that would have left residual U.S. trainers and mentors there to enable Iraqi forces and to buffer them from Baghdad?s sectarian politics. President Obama?s decision to ignore the advice of his top national security leaders to arm the Syrian rebels and bring that conflict to a speedier resolution also helped breathe new life into ISIS."[/quote]
…and this:
"Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office.
"Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obamaâ??s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.…
"By 2009, al-Qaeda in Iraq had not just been decimated but humiliated by the U.S. surge and the Anbar Awakening…
The result? â??A sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.â?? Thatâ??s not Bush congratulating himself. Thatâ??s Obama in December 2011 describing the Iraq we were leaving behind. He called it â??an extraordinary achievement.â??
"Which Obama proceeded to throw away. David Petraeus had won the war. Obamaâ??s one task was to conclude a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to solidify the gains. By Obamaâ??s own admission â?? in the case heâ??s now making for a status-of-forces agreement with Afghanistan â?? such agreements are necessary â??because after all the sacrifices weâ??ve made, we want to preserve the gainsâ?? achieved by war.
Which is what made his failure to do so in Iraq so disastrous. His excuse was his inability to get immunity for U.S. soldiers. Nonsense. Bush had worked out a compromise in his 2008 SOFA, as we have done with allies everywhere. The real problem was Obamaâ??s determination to â??end the war.â?? He had three years to negotiate a deal and didnâ??t even begin talks until a few months before the deadline period.
He offered to leave about 3,000 to 5,000 troops, a ridiculous number. U.S. commanders said they needed nearly 20,000. (We have 28,500 in South Korea and 38,000 in Japan to this day.) Such a minuscule contingent would spend all its time just protecting itself. Iraqis know a nonserious offer when they see one. Why bear the domestic political liability of a continued U.S. presence for a mere token?
Moreover, as historian Max Boot has pointed out, Obama insisted on parliamentary ratification, which the Iraqis explained was not just impossible but unnecessary. So Obama ordered a full withdrawal. And with it disappeared U.S. influence in curbing sectarianism, mediating among factions and providing both intelligence and tactical advice to Iraqi forces now operating on their own.
"The result was predictable. And predicted. Overnight, Iran and its promotion of Shiite supremacy became the dominant influence in Iraq…
Faced with a de facto jihadi state spanning both countries, a surprised Obama now has little choice but to try to re-create overnight, from scratch and in miniature, the kind of U.S. presence â?? providing intelligence, tactical advice and perhaps even air support â?? he abjured three years ago
His announcement Thursday that he is sending 300 military advisers is the beginning of that re-creation â?? a pale substitute for what we long should have had in place but the only option Obama has left himself. The leverage and influence he forfeited with his total withdrawal will be hard to reclaim. But itâ??s our only chance to keep Iraq out of the hands of the Sunni jihadists of ISIS and the Shiite jihadists of Tehran."