And they left bloody footprints in the snow

A writer who wrote a book called the Three Georges or something like that, compared the current Iraqi insurgency to George Washington's forces. That is an analogy that is superficial on many, many levels. Sunni insurgents at the very least cannot be termed freedom fighters, even if US occupation is regarded as a lack of independence, since they aren't simply aiming at removing US troops, rather they want complete removal of any Shi'ite led government, which given the fact that Shi'ites are a majority in Iraq and the fact that Sunnis no longer have the establishment or establishment-backed advantage, would require an external push.

The Shi'ite militias might fit the comparison somewhat better, but again their vision is more focused on establishing a strongly Islamist, more certainly Shi'ite state, than simply getting US troops out. George Washington's focus during the Revolutionary War was simple, get the British out. It was only after several years of the weak government of the Articles of Confederation did he try to influence the ultimate political outcome, and even there he did not really dictate the facts.

But these comparisons are largely irrelevant. If you pick and choose characteristics a lot of things can seem similiar. What they do encourage though is thought, and while a sloppy comparison such as this one, I might try to pick it apart further but I'd rather not waste time on it, does encourage sloppy thought, it occassionally brings to the surface some interesting thoughts.

Such as a memory of a fact read long ago, of when in the deep winter George Washington's forces were forced to march down long cold roads, and his poorly stocked army often had bad or even no footware, so they left bloody footprints in the snow.

Not that this image has much to do with anything, it is just an interesting one, perhaps thought-provoking (hopefully not but possibly sloppy thought provoking), and it minces nicely with the image of troops or rebels moving, even when the rebels are on the side of forces I would never endorse.

The news shows now that Iraqi insurgents are on the move, or at least that's what the statistics show, moving to areas outside of Anbar province and Bagdhad to escape in the first case the changing political environment and in the second case the US troop surge. Overall violence, has not gone down this year however. That is not to say that violence since the troop surge has not gone down, I don't know the statistics for that, but violence for Jan. to Aug. 2007 compared to the entire year of 2006 has gone up significantly.

There are reasons for why this could have happened. A large degree of the increase in violence I think has to do with the fact the insurgents moved from areas that had gotten used to them to areas largely spared, also in the case of Anbar province they've gone from an area where they largely concentrated on US troops to one where they now find civilians as targets, and civilians are easier to kill. Overall the focus has gone from US troop and Iraqi police and army targeting to targeting civilians. I hesitate to say this is desperation, it could be, but it might simply be that bombings on civilians are easier and get higher body counts. Thus the change in focus might also explain the higher death toll as well.

It could also be that the insurgency is getting better at its end, for internal or external reasons, or it could be that the US and Iraqi army are getting worse on their end, again for internal or external reason. Maybe the insurgency is getting larger, or maybe more civilians are supporting it (although that is questionable since they lost a lot of local support in Anbar province). It could simply be that matters are getting much, much worse.

Even if we use reasons that lessen the significance of the increase in violence, it makes it hard to see progress in Iraq. But the fact that insurgents are moving away from Bagdhad and the Anbar province are I think, in the long term good, even if that might be the reason for this spike in violence, which has been so monsterously deadly.

Insurgents rely on civilian support, it is one of the most important equalizing factors for insurgents who are unequal in terms of weaponry and troop numbers, it allows them to blend into the population, live off the land, establish secret logistic chains, etc. And for the Sunni insurgents this has largely been Sunni Arab support. It could have been different, if the targets had been focused on US and Iraqi army and Iraqi infrastructure, the Sunni insurgents might have been able to make an easy alliance with those who were focused on anti-Americanism in the Shi'ite community. But because of the horrific civilian bombings and especially the attacks on the Shi'ite religious community, alliance with Shi'ites is probably rare among the Sunni insurgents. So they rely on Sunni Arab civilian support. But the two largest concentrations of this have been Anbar and Bagdhad. If the insurgents are leaving those areas they are leaving the base of their strength and moving into territory less sympathetic to them, more likely to reveal their presence, less likely to give them supplies, etc.

So the Sunni insurgents have moved into areas with more targets but less support. It is possible that this could strongly weaken the long-term viability of the Sunni insurgency. However, steps must be taken to help this along. Security measures must be improved elsewhere in Iraq, that would be less difficult given a population in the Kurdish areas less antagonistic to the US, and in the Shi'ite areas less antagonistic to the Iraqi army. However, it might leave Baghdad open for the insurgents to come back. Chasing them out did disrupt their bases but unless more civilians in Bagdhad are won over to the Iraqi government, which is possible if the lull in violence is used to improve infrastructure, the insurgent bases could be re-established. So that's a tough one. It should also be made sure that the civilians in the North and the South remain with the Iraqi government. Efforts should be made to reach out to Turkamen and Assyrians in the North, and Shi'ites in the south must be charmed as well, perhaps by offering federalism but supporting non-Sadr parties.

All this said, matters are still more complex. Insurgents don't get defeated they die down slowly with spurts of blood, and Sadr still remains as a threat to his country. Most of all, even if things might get better in the long term, they are still horrible in the short term. They are very, very bloody. And that's just horrible, and I don't know if anything can be done to stop it immediately, I don't think a sudden stop is possible. So blood will come, and it will be awful. And so utterly sad.

The Good, the Bad, and the Absolutely Horrible

In much of the debate about the war in Iraq many commentators have said that going to Iraq was either a good or bad choice. Because of the nature of conversation this is perfectly natural and perfectly acceptable, but it does hide a bit of the reality of international, national, and heck all politics really, but especially international. International politics is rarely a matter of unqualified good and unqualified bad decisions, it is a matter of better decisions, worse decisions, and the constant possibility of monumentally horrible consequences even from the right choices. In the debate about Iraq we should always remember that the choice for invading Iraq was never as simple as whether to go or not, it was whether to leave Saddam in power and let his rule play out to its fulfillment or end, or to invade. Ultimately I think the choice made was wrong, but in considering the matter we must look carefully at the alternatives.

In retrospect, Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, he likely would have cooperated with terrorists if the opportunity raised itself but it was unlikely he would have become much of a leader for him given his crippled economy and weak military. He did not pose a short or medium term threat to us, only in the possibilities of the longer term did the chance of a threat arise. Given the alternative of leaving him in power, he would rail against the US, he would give support to Palestian suicide bombers and likely some other terrorist groups but not in a major way, he might attempt to rebuild his military but with a crippled economy and continuing sanctions and endemic corruption this would be very difficult, especially given his own mismangement of his military. Geopolitically he would remain a minor source of destabilizing but not a major one.

Looking between the two choices, from a threat assessment point of view leaving him in power was the better alternative given that there is an inherint risk of destabilizing a country in the democratizing process even in the best of situations (let us remember that even in the US after the Revolutionary War (a fairly bloody affair despite claims to the contrary), we had a mass exodus of loyalists and several years of pretty unstable government under the Articles of Confederation which sparked a sizable revolt, and we were in danger of subversion from several foreign powers including Spain and Britian). Especially given what we know now.

But let us look at the moral perspective. The current situation is pretty disasterous, much violence, much chaos. But like I said, it isn't a matter of good or bad but better or worse. Leaving Saddam in power wasn't good either from a moral perspective. Saddam had attempted genocide before, against the Kurds he had used chemical weapons and done a mass killing campaign which decimated the population especially the male population and especially coupled with refugees fleeing the country. But leaving him in power would he have done it again? If he could, most likely yes, especially given the pro-American bent of many of the Kurds and his need to rally Arab nationalism to secure his position within his country and internationally. He was sponsoring a highly murderous group in the Kurdistan region of Iraq that was destabilizing the area. But could he have attempted genocide again? No. In truth, our no-fly zone and support of the Kurdish parties in Iraqi Kurdistan had made it highly difficult to enforce his will there even if he was to be incredibly ruthless about it. In truth he would not be able to attempt genocide against the Shi'ites either because there are simply too many Shiite Iraqis.

But that doesn't mean his rule would not be horrible. He would continue torturing, continue terrorizing, continue his tryanny for the forseeable future. Even though his country was weak, it was stronger than the power of its people (this isn't meant as an insult to the Iraqis but rather an assessment of Saddam's highly effective efforts to paralyze non-governmental organizations, keep his people divided and paranoid (this was actually a large cause of much of the sectarianism we are seeing today, it is possible, although this is a debatable point, if during the somewhat lighter rule and more prosperous times of the pre-First Gulf War era might have been less prone to this sectarianism and perhaps had we freed the Iraqis (and it is a matter of freeing them instead of granting them liberty, liberty is a natural right that was taken away from them, not something to be given) during the First Gulf War, perhaps the current situation could have been avoided), and maintain a strong internal security structure. He was a monsterous tyrant, one of the worst in the world (although probably in terms of monstrocity of the tryant (although perhaps not severity of the situation), North Korea has it worse off), and it seems to me, although this is a debatable point, that given his lack of care for his own population, no international pressure short of military intervention could really change matters. And so he would remain. Given that dictators who can live very luxuriously when they don't have serious opposition, this could mean another 30 or so years of tyranny. Of course then there's succession. If a dictator does not have a clear successor, a less ruthless, weaker, or less capable ruler might arise and that might lead to a collapse of the dictatorial system. However, Saddam did have two clear candidates for succession and had clearly established one as his favorite, his sons. This suggests that there would most likely not be a huge struggle for leadership after Saddam's death and even if one of his sons died, the other could still take his place.

By most accounts, one of his sons, the older one, was somewhat unstable, and might, might have been destabilizing to the government, but given the weak state of the anti-governmental forces outside Iraqi Kurdistan, even this would not have led to the end of tryanny and given the cruelty of his unstable character, things would not get better and could very well get worse. His other son, the one most likely to be next in line, was more stable, but just as if not more ruthless. His reign would be just as brutal, and he would care just as little about his people giving him a cushion against international pressure. This could lead most likely to another 30 or 40 years of tryanny, during which a rebuild of Iraq would be possible, however, matters this far in the future are conjectures for futurists must always remember that crystal balls always have a bit of haze to them.

The end result would be most likely another 50 or so years of absolute tryanny. But again 50 years is a long time things could change, however given that Saddam and his sons are for the most part, ruthless, smart and internally powerful, all the components for an indefinite tryanny are there. A possible objection to this perdiciton is that most tryannies don't last this long, but my answer to that is, most tryannies lack to some extent ruthlessness (most tryants to some degree, somewhere in their hearts care about their people and this often leads to their downfalls because then they respond to needs for economic growth or mercy), intelligence (although there are various kinds of intelligence, many tyrants while they might possess the intelligence to rise to power, they lack the intelligence to maintain it for long periods of time), or internal power (during the Cold War and immediate aftermath this was especially true since either the US or the Soviet Union almost always picked some anti-governmental force to support)). Then there must be the consideration of what would the democratization of Iraq be like after Saddam. If a good ruler emerged things might be alright. But sectarianism was not decreasing during Saddam's time it was increasing, and it would have kept increasing if Saddam remained in power, the democratization of Iraq might have ended up more brutal than even now, althoug here we must remind ourselves that this is a matter of extreme conjecture. That is the sad alternative.

Is the current situation better? In the short term and possibly medium term (depending on how long the chaos lasts), no. The current chaos is worse than Saddam's reign for many, if not most, people. In the long term, probably, the nation is not so divided that it would altogether collapse and it has a clear ethnic majority that currently and for the forseeable future has more power than the minority and so matters will eventually settle down. Will there be genocide though? It is possible, but given that there are sizable areas with Sunni majorities, and the Sunnis while weaker than the Shi'ites are still considerably powerful, furthermore divisions exist between the Shi'ite, while not numerous enough to create indefinite chaos in Iraq, although numerous to create short and possibly medium term chaos in Iraq, it is enough to make Shi'ite politicians interested in courting Sunni leaders for political support. Genocide is still possible, but highly unlikely in my view, although this is debatable.

However, countries should not invade each other simply because they believe that it is better for the people of that country, even if they are right. Especially given the considerable ideological component of the word "better" (some people say it is better to be poor and free, some people say it is better to be rich and oppressed, some people say it is better to be poor and oppressed but have cultural integrity, the first group is right by my book, and that's the only book that counts, but my point is that people disagree about the word), it is generally not a good idea, although this is a debatable point and I do admire the idealism of those who disagree with me on it (if you don't catch it here I'm arguing against the Cold War as well as any potential new Cold Wars). The problem is that this causes considerable international chaos by essentially creating a global war fought potentially everywhere (although some places will be "hotter" than others). Every government will have to look over its back for a potential revolt. Paranoia will spread and this will encourage even those defending liberty to resort to measures that undermine freedom. Among those less fond of liberty reprisals for even whiffs of revolt can be brutal and at times, genocidal. Military intervention, or considerable support for rebels everywhere where people are seen as oppressed, while perhaps in the long term good (after the Cold War ended freedom and even economic growth has spread immensely), in the short and medium term, a short and medium term that could last even 70 years (the approximate length of the Cold War), things can be in some cases be absolutely horrible (see the Khmer Rouge where approximately 1/3 of the population of Cambodia was slaughtered, and yet during different times the regime was supported by the US and the USSR).

So overall, the invasion of Iraq was not the right choice. Countries should only be invaded if there is an imminent danger or perhaps an imminent threat of genocide. But things would not have been good for Iraqi people by any stretch of the word if Saddam remained in power, or if a similiar tyrant takes hold. And yet things are not good now. Leaving Saddam in power was more likely the better alternative, but it was not a good one. It is still a sad one. That is the nature of so much of international politics, when even the most ethical and even correct of people must make choices involving trade-offs that cost thousands of lives or leave a people oppressed for decades. It is sad, very sad. But this world is often not kind to those who dwell in it.

Bush and the reorientation of the world

So this is not the long poem promised in my last session, but that will come, probably later tonight. But George W. Bush is a big figure in international politics and I thought I'd give him a little analysis, because I do think of international politics a lot. Let me start out by saying, I'm not going to demonize Bush and I don't think he's an idiot, but I do think he's made some serious and sometimes catastropic mistakes (as well as a few good moves) and he has in many ways led to a collossal change in the world of international politics, but on the other hand I think a lot of the changes in international politics he has made are in many ways accelerations of already beginning trends.

Let's start with what his foreign policy intended to do. I think when he was first elected Bush was honestly an isolationist. He ran on an isolationist platform and his party was highly isolaitonist except for the neo-cons who were background at most. Granted he did appoint neo-cons, but he also had a lot of old-fashioned conservatives like Dick Cheney, who really only became a neo-con after 9/11. The neo-cons I think at the time were loved by the intellectuals in some circles of the conservative movement and I think that prompted this move. But we should also remember before 9/11 the focus of the neo-cons was not on Iraq but on China. Our first big foreign policy squabble was not in the Middle East but with China. Yes, I've heard that the neo-cons prepared battle senarios with Iraq before 9/11, but remember when Bush was elected it was 2 years since we had given Iraq a bombing (under Clinton in 1998 for not allowing UN inspectors in and for suspected WMDs, when I first heard Bush's WMD claims were bogus I wondered about the 1998 claims given no evidence of the disposal of the previous supposedly huge stockpiles of WMDs, but then I started hearing that Clinton's intelligence men (led by George "slam-dunk" Tenet) were just as prone to pressure to tell Iraq had WMDs as Bush's) and heck, I'd prepare contingency plans for potential wars even if the actual chances were pretty low.

That said, all the plans for his foreign policy that he had before 9/11 completely changed after 9/11. Afghanistan was a move that anyone would have made. Gore would have made it, Kerry would have made it, McCain would have made it. It was sheltering and helping to train a global organization that was actively at war with us, it had in short declared an alliance with someone we were at war with, this made them a fair target for invasion. I know that sounds very glib and does not perhaps treat war with the gravity it deserves. War is hell, and should only be declared in cases where we are attacked or perhaps when another country is attacked (depends on the identity of the country being invaded and the country invading, for example it would be ridiculous to defend the Khemer Rouge when it was invaded by Vietnam, yes Vietnam was a bad regime but the Khemer Rouge was one of the most monsterous governments in history, on the other hand when Iraq invaded Kuwait we were justified in defending it, Kuwait's king might have been a dictator, but he was a decent one (he has since become a relatively good dictator and has been leading important democratizing intiatives although his government is far from a democracy) while what Iraq was doing to the Kuwatis was absolutely horrible), but in this case we were attacked and thus we were justified in attacking a vital ally of our attacker. Some might link this to Iraq and say Bush only attacks countries with oil, but in addition to my point above I'd like to say 2 cases is not enough to draw conclusions.

And then Iraq was attacked. I don't think most powerful politicians are directly greedy (this is more of a case with smaller case politicians) (especially since most politicians could get far more better paying jobs with lobbyists or as corporation heads). But I think the influence of greedy friends, of old memories (like remembering your father being threatened), and of old rivalries tends to exert a big influence. I also think a lot of corruption stems from the idea to the victor belongs the spoils philosophy (government posts are distributed according how useful you were poltically and to old friends (this is how I think the FEMA director got his job)) and I think idealism can blind us. I think all of this played a role in Iraq, coupled with faulty intelligence (led by the idea that what the president wants in his intelligence he should get). (I'd like to point out although I do not think that politicians are immune to greed, I rather think their greed comes in the form of power hunger and legacy craving, after all they have taken positions of power, it makes sense that that is what they want, a lot their corruption isn't because their primary motivation is money (although occassionally in history and around the world and country and in certain offices it is different) but because they feel a certain something belongs to them because of their position of power (and occassionally because they feel that they're serving the public and not getting enough payment for it)). The current situation I think was not inevitable though even after the invasion if better steps had been taken and I think that if we had overthrown Saddam after 1991 the situation would be better but I'll save that for other sessions.

This is about international politics. The Iraq War badly polarized international politics (in addition to domestic politics), it provided a rally point for anti-Americanism. But too all those who blame Bush alone for anti-Americanism forget that anti-Americanism has been going on for a long, long, long time. Anti-Americanism in the Islamic world itself has been going on for a long, long time, remember that Bid Laden declared Jihad against the US in 1991, not in response to Palestine or in regards to George W. Bush but because US troops were on Saudi Arabian soil, which in his view tainted it. And why? Because the United States is a special sort of symbol. In many ways it is a symbol of liberalism, and by liberalism I mean it in the classical sense, free trade, capitalism and large amounts of civil rights. It doesn't matter if you consider the United States the leader in those fields, it is a symbol of those things and all the good and bad things that are associated it with those (like more sex, less religion, looser ethnic ties, etc.). To Islamic extremism liberalism is a deadly virus that is spreading throughout the world, like Communism to us it seems like something that is threatening to completely destroy all their ways of life. However, that is not to say US foreign policy hasn't played a role. But we should understand that traditionally US foreign policy has not been promoting liberalism but rather undermining it, under the belief that Muslims are too violent, fanatical and ignorant to handle freedom, and so if they want any progress they must be dragged forward by authoritarian regimes. And the Muslim world hates us for supporting these authoritarian regimes. If there's one thing that can unite Islamists (not necessarily extremists, I think it's valuable to make a distinction between moderate Islamists and extremists, an Islamist just being someone who wants Islam to play a large role in government) and liberals it is their hatred for authoritarianism. So don't think that supporting the Muslim tyrants of the world is going to win us points with Muslims, it won't.

So I didn't get to my grand thesis that I was planning to, well not yet, but I need to do other stuff (part of my problem before with posting regularly is I always wanted to complete incredibly lengthy trains of thought before ending my sessions), but I'll revisit the topic later. I think I still covered a lot of ground about Bush, and so this isn't quite a waste. Anyways, I plan to start posting stuff from my epic poem later, but for now, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks!