Congress the unloved
Congress’s approval rating with the American public is currently at a cool 24%.
But that’s probably high compared to the contempt with which the Iraqi government and the US Embassy in Iraq seem to hold them. Congress’ latest foray into micromanaging the Iraqi government, a nonbinding resolution that it be partitioned into separate regions, isn’t too popular with anyone. Perhaps Congress should stick to managing itself.
In related news, I don’t think the anti-surge faction of Congress has yet reacted to the announcement that killings of civilians and US forces in Iraq are substantially down. It’s difficult to attribute the downturn to anything other than the effects of General Petraeus’ approach and the surge.
Did I say deaths are down? Not all of them:
Over the weekend, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 insurgent and militia fighters in intense battles, with most of the casualties believed to have been al-Qaida militants, officials said.
Harry Reid, where are you? Back in April, Reid said, “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week.” Strangely, I haven’t heard much from him about the latest statistics. If he’s so reactive to figures on violence in Iraq as a measure of how successful the surge is, one would think…
But neo, smart people know that all positive statistics are generated by the Bush propaganda machine. Don’t be such a sheep.
/sarcasm
Perhaps their reaction is castigating Rush Limbaugh: http://tinyurl.com/yrojag
“…it could look like a tit-for-tat reso in retaliation for the measure condemning MoveOn.”
Gee, ya think?
Buncha freakin’ juveniles…
It’s not the sort of thing the “mainstream” media is eager to report…
An English center-left magazine, Prospect, just published this piece entitled “Mission Accomplished,”by writer, Bartle Bull. (ht: LGF, here)
It begins:
Hmmmm . . . looks like the “blockquote” was eaten in cyberspace — I’ll try again:
“The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition’s current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq’s other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution. The UN approved the coalition’s role in May 2003, and the mandate has been renewed annually since then, most recently this August. Meanwhile, the other side in this war are among the worst people in global politics: Baathists, the Nazis of the middle east; Sunni fundamentalists, the chief opponents of progress in Islam’s struggle with modernity; and the government of Iran. Ethically, causes do not come much clearer than this one.
Some just wars, however, are not worth fighting. There are countries that do not matter very much to the rest of the world. Rwanda is one tragic example; and its case illustrates the immorality of a completely pragmatic foreign policy. But Iraq, the world’s axial country since the beginning of history and all the more important in the current era for probably possessing the world’s largest reserves of oil, is no Rwanda. Nor do two or three improvised explosive devices a day, for all the personal tragedy involved in each casualty, make a Vietnam.
The great question in deciding whether to keep fighting in Iraq is not about the morality and self-interest of supporting a struggling democracy that is also one of the most important countries in the world. The question is whether the war is winnable and whether we can help the winning of it. The answer is made much easier by the fact that three and a half years after the start of the insurgency, most of the big questions in Iraq have been resolved. Moreover, they have been resolved in ways that are mostly towards the positive end of the range of outcomes imagined at the start of the project. The country is whole. It has embraced the ballot box. It has created a fair and popular constitution. It has avoided all-out civil war. It has not been taken over by Iran. It has put an end to Kurdish and marsh Arab genocide, and anti-Shia apartheid. It has rejected mass revenge against the Sunnis. As shown in the great national votes of 2005 and the noisy celebrations of the Iraq football team’s success in July, Iraq survived the Saddam Hussein era with a sense of national unity; even the Kurds–whose reluctant commitment to autonomy rather than full independence is in no danger of changing–celebrated. Iraq’s condition has not caused a sectarian apocalypse across the region. The country has ceased to be a threat to the world or its region. The only neighbours threatened by its status today are the leaders in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran.
“
Yes, Neo, Reid talks about the endless spiral of violence. Am I to deduct that because a few times “we” may kill more of them than they kill of “us” this is to be considered a move toward nonviolence?
Jimmy: Nonviolence is not possible in a place such as Iraq. Anyone who thinks our departure will create nonviolence there is living in a dream world.
The world is an “endless spiral of violence,” Isaiah 2:4 notwithstanding. Killing bad guys is better than being killed by them, or allowing innocent people to be killed by them. That’s what war is about. But it’s about a great deal more. Read some of Michael Totten and get an idea of what’s going on with the non-killing part of the Iraq war.
Jimmy may benefit from reading Tim Larkin of Target Focus infamy, Neo. Thus we are reminded of the difference between classical liberals and those non-violent advocates that only call themselves liberals.
There are two schools, basically, of philosophy. One says that liberty, dignity, and human progress is furthered and maintained by violence, threats of violence, and capability to do violence. This view is shared by Special Forces folks like JB, Jimbo (a pacifist he calls himself, him a former SF Weapons sergeant), and classical liberals like Victor Davis Hanson, also Book and you Neo.
The other school says that violence can be countered by the void of… an absence of mass and energy so to speak. SO long as people don’t try and they don’t compete, violence and conflict disapears. But in order to prevent people from fighting and competing, the Left has to institute totalitarian and secret police institutions. You can’t stop inertial by doing nothing or simply making a vacuum where no energy and matter exists. Violence is a force and like all forces in the universe, it may only be countered, modified, harnessed, focused, and nullified through more force.
Neo,
If the war in Iraq was simply the case of bad guys v. good guys, I might concur. But the fact remains that the majority of victims in this kind of protracted civil war are innocent citizens of Iraq. Of course our departure will not mean a nonviolent solution to the problem. But we brought this bloodshed to Iraq and we are responsible for the deaths of these civilians.
Jimmy: how is it that we are responsible for the deaths of innocents at the hands of terrorists? Are the perpetrators themselves not responsible? Are they not free agents? And were not Saddam Hussein’s actions an important cause of the war? Is not the so-called “civil war” in Iraq the product of removing a tyrant who kept the lid on strife there through Draconian means and alternate types of violence? Apparently you would prefer the tyrant.
You choose an arbitrary starting point—our invasion of Iraq, which was not when the history of conflict in Iraq began—and decide to consider that to be the first and only cause of all that follows. But that’s not the way the world works.
And how about the responsibility we have for our inaction? During the years between the first Gulf War and the Iraq War, were we not also responsible for the deaths caused by Saddam when we failed to take him out after the Gulf War?
Neo,
One could make a very logical argument that we were responsible for much of the violence of Saddam, considering we armed him against Iran in the ’80s. As for the terrorists, well, most would not be there today had the US not initiated war. And are you still denying what even most Republicans admit is a civil war? I thought you were a new kind of conservative.
Jimmy: one could make an argument, but it would not be a “very logical” one. You’re exhibiting the same fallacies as before in your reasoning.
And re civil war in Iraq, see this.
Logic isn’t your strong suit Jimmy.
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