U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq

[PUGalicious]

From a story in The Washington Post:

U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says

By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 14, 2005; A01


The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
…

The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.

But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.

"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
…

On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.

Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.

Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.

Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.

"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."

Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.

"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.

Pressed by the cost of fighting an escalating insurgency, U.S. expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have fallen the farthest, current and former officials say.
…

"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.


> Read entire article.

What more can be said?

[MadMonk]

Yeah, rebuilding a nation is tough. Things don't always go your way. All you can do is try your best and know that you are doing the right thing.

[PUGalicious]

I think it's the last part more people are struggling with. If you go in to "fix" a place, you can't leave it worse off than when you went in.

True, a ruthless dictator is out of power. However, the new "democracy" is shaping up to be another Islamic state, not too dissimiliar to Iran. Women's rights are in jeopardy. A more fundamentalist form of Islam expands to control another Middle East country. In the end, how does this help our security?

[MadMonk]

You sound like Mad Howie Dean. Worse off than before? You must be joking. How many mass graves need to be found to blow that idea out of the water?

[PUGalicious]

How many have to die (both U.S. soldiers and Iraq civilians) since the start of OUR war before we blow the idea out of the water that we've made it all better?

[MadMonk]

Great sense of proportion there bud.

[PUGalicious]

I believe history will judge this preemptive war harshly, not just in the ethics of it, but in it's ultimate effect.


For the record, I'm not a Howard Dean fan, but much of what he said early on has proven to be correct more often than not. Furthermore, a growing number of Americans are waking up to the truth about this war. It's was wrong to go in, it's been mismanaged from the git go and it's becoming a self-defeating quagmire.

[MadMonk]

It was not wrong to go into Iraq (or Afghanistan) and the war has gone better than Vietnam and WWII did in the same timespan. You could have made the same arguments back in '42 or '43 and would have been equally as wrong. I don't call elections and a new government in less than two years a quagmire.

[PUGalicious]

Please explain why you think going into Iraq was the right decision, even if the original reasons were proven unfounded.

Since you've drawn the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq, here's some helpful information:

[MadMonk]

Please explain why you think going into Iraq was the right decision, even if the original reasons were

proven unfounded.

1. The removal of Hussein was justified due to his repeated violations of the '91 cease-fire. For 12 years he

refused to cooperate fully with the the U.N. resolutions that spelled out the terms of the cease-fire. Firing on U.S.

planes patrolling the no-fly zone, playing cat & mouse with the U.N. inspectors and expelling them altogether.

2. Hussein was manifestly supporting terrorism by rewarding the families of suicide bombers in Israel.

3. Hussein was a merciless dictatorship that terrorized his own people in unimaginatively brutal ways. Men, women, and

children alike were ruthlessly exterminated by the hundred of thousands, in both conventional and unconventional ways.

I'm sure you've heard the stories of people being placed feet first into a schredder, people being boiled alive in

acid, and the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds. We have done the Iraqis (and indeed the world) a huge service in

removing his regime.

Since you've drawn the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq, here's some helpful information: ...

Your chart is not only not helpful, but quite misleading. The Vietnam conflict didn't really get off the ground until after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed in Aug '64. Hell, in July of '64 we barely had 21,000 "advisors" in-country. In Vietnam in 1964, we had only 206 deaths but, in 1965 alone, we had 1,863 deaths. Here is a quick & dirty breakdown:

-------------1964/2003 --------------- 1965/2004 ---------------- 1966/2005
Vietnam-------- 202 ------------------- 1863 --------------------- 6144
Iraq -------------486 -------------------- 848 ----------------------520 (to-date)

You'll have to make your own chart.

[PUGalicious]

1. The removal of Hussein was justified due to his repeated violations of the '91 cease-fire. For 12 years he refused to cooperate fully with the the U.N. resolutions that spelled out the terms of the cease-fire. Firing on U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone, playing cat & mouse with the U.N. inspectors and expelling them altogether.

2. Hussein was manifestly supporting terrorism by rewarding the families of suicide bombers in Israel.

3. Hussein was a merciless dictatorship that terrorized his own people in unimaginatively brutal ways. Men, women, and children alike were ruthlessly exterminated by the hundred of thousands, in both conventional and unconventional ways.

I'm sure you've heard the stories of people being placed feet first into a schredder, people being boiled alive in acid, and the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds. We have done the Iraqis (and indeed the world) a huge service in removing his regime.

On point 1: It was violation of U.N. resolutions, not U.S. resolutions. The U.N. has the moral and legal authority to enforce its own resolutions. No single country (or narrow coalition of countries) can act on its own to enforce U.N. resolutions. We acted unilaterally without the official support of the U.N. For that alone, we were wrong.

On point 2: I don't dispute the fact you mention. However, that does not justify the Iraq War for two reasons — first, it was a threat to Israel, not a direct threat to us; second, this was not one of the original justifications for the immediacy of our attack on Iraq.

On point 3: I don't dispute the fact that Saddam was an evil man doing unimaginably horribly things to people. But, many of the most aggregious of his acts were perpetrated BEFORE the FIRST Gulf War. Why didn't we handle it then? Because we had no legal authority to do so. Secondly, there are other countries where far worse atrocities haven taken place and are taking place where our country does nothing to come to the aid of the people. Rhwanda was one, Sudan (specifically the Darfur region) is another. What's the difference? There's no economic interest to our country there — i.e. no oil. There are many brutal dictators around the world, even now. Are we going to apply the same standard to all of them? If we don't, by what criteria do we pick and choose? We have an even more imminent threat from a madman in North Korea. That man's actions have resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of his country's people directly due to starvation. Why no action there? Because he actually DOES have WMDs.

Your chart is not only not helpful, but quite misleading. The Vietnam conflict didn't really get off the ground until after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed in Aug '64. Hell, in July of '64 we barely had 21,000 "advisors" in-country. In Vietnam in 1964, we had only 206 deaths but, in 1965 alone, we had 1,863 deaths. Here is a quick & dirty breakdown:

-------------1964/2003 --------------- 1965/2004 ---------------- 1966/2005
Vietnam-------- 202 ------------------- 1863 --------------------- 6144
Iraq -------------486 -------------------- 848 ----------------------520 (to-date)

You'll have to make your own chart.

Fair point, but also goes to the point that we can't draw direct parallels between the two wars because the situations are different. More soldiers have been killed and injured since "Mission Accomplished" than during the "major combat operations."

This war is being mismanaged by an arrogant, self-indulgent, self-righteous administration that cares more for its own ideology than on what's best for the soldiers and the citizens of this country. I still believe it was wrong because it lacked moral and legal justification and it was initiated based off misinformed and/or unfounded reasons.

[Karried]

I'm still torn on how I feel about the war. I agree that there were horrible & evil atrocities happening to the civilians and that needed to be stopped. I personally wish they could have just assassinated Saddam. But I don't know what proven threat he was to our country.

The cost has been astronomical - in dollars, and loss of human life.

I want to support the troops though, because that is all they have left when they come home - they lost their friends, their lives will never be the same - many are maimed and injured, scarred physchologically for life. So, to not support them after fighting for our country would be insult added to injury. So, if I can separate supporting them and what they have sacrificed from supporting the war, I can better accept the situation. The troops are only following orders. I don't think that I'm not being patriotic for not agreeing with the war. I know a lot of people think that if you don't agree with the war that you are not supportive of the military - I don't think that 's true in all cases. Certainly not for me.

I often wonder, if the reasons above justifying war are enough for all of the mother's who buried their children? The wives/husbands who lost their spouses? Children who lost their parents?

I also wonder for those who feel the war was a good idea, if your child was sent over and died - would you want more justification than what is given above? I know I would.

[PUGalicious]

I too support our troops. Although I'm not there physically myself, I feel like a part of me is there because of friends and family. Perhaps that's why I take it so seriously and so personally.

It's because of this support for our troops that I want to make sure of the following:
1) when we ask them to sacrifice their life or limb, we are doing it for a just, righteous and legally justifable reason
2) when we decide to enter a war, the troops must be properly equipped and trained
3) once they are put in harm's way, there is competent, thoughtful and careful management of the war, and that leadership's actions or rhetoric does nothing to compound the problem

There are many discussions on "Just War" tradition. It's my belief that we fell short of the threshold for "Just War" on at least a couple of points. Here are a couple of resources for review:

• Pew Forum: "Just War Tradition

• Vincent Ferraro: Principles of Just War

[MadMonk]

On point 1: It was violation of U.N. resolutions, not U.S. resolutions. The U.N. has the moral and legal authority to enforce its own resolutions. No single country (or narrow coalition of countries) can act on its own to enforce U.N. resolutions. We acted unilaterally without the official support of the U.N. For that alone, we were wrong.

The U.N. itself is a corrupt, mismanaged joke of an institution. If the U.N. can't do the job then someone will have to step up and to the dirty work. BTW, the U.S. didn't go in alone. The U.K., Spain, Australia, and many others participated. We all now know that France and Germany didn't paticipate because of their financial interests in keeping Hussein in power rather than any moral or legal objections.

On point 2: I don't dispute the fact you mention. However, that does not justify the Iraq War for two reasons — first, it was a threat to Israel, not a direct threat to us; second, this was not one of the original justifications for the immediacy of our attack on Iraq.

I think the "war on terror" includes and covers our allies and interests. Just as we should assist Britain with thier problems with terrorism, so should we with Israel.

On point 3: I don't dispute the fact that Saddam was an evil man doing unimaginably horribly things to people. But, many of the most aggregious of his acts were perpetrated BEFORE the FIRST Gulf War. Why didn't we handle it then? Because we had no legal authority to do so.

So, we should just leave him alone and give him time to get back up to speed? I don't think so. In the first Gulf War, in order to bring the area's other Arab nations ob-board with us, we had promised to limit our job to removing him from Kuait. We honored those promises.

Secondly, there are other countries where far worse atrocities haven taken place and are taking place where our country does nothing to come to the aid of the people. Rhwanda was one, Sudan (specifically the Darfur region) is another. What's the difference? There's no economic interest to our country there — i.e. no oil. There are many brutal dictators around the world, even now. Are we going to apply the same standard to all of them? If we don't, by what criteria do we pick and choose? We have an even more imminent threat from a madman in North Korea. That man's actions have resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of his country's people directly due to starvation. Why no action there? Because he actually DOES have WMDs.

All you are arguing about here is target selection. Apparently you advocate invading Sudan and N. Korea, but not Iraq. Its a pointless argument.

Why do you think its a bad thing to try to protect our national interests in Iraq? If you want to argue that the war is about oil (which is wrong) then you realize that in the U.S. the price of oil has a sizable effect on our economy. Isn't a war to preserve our way of life more legitemate than attacking a country that has no sway in our economy like the Sudan or N. Korea.

BTW, where was the U.N. with its moral and legal authority when it came to Sudan and Rwanda? *crickets chirping*

Fair point, but also goes to the point that we can't draw direct parallels between the two wars because the situations are different. ...

Amen to that. Tell that to Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean. Can expect not to see the term "quagmire" again?

This war is being mismanaged by an arrogant, self-indulgent, self-righteous administration that cares more for its own ideology than on what's best for the soldiers and the citizens of this country. I still believe it was wrong because it lacked moral and legal justification and it was initiated based off misinformed and/or unfounded reasons.

I believe that the war is being handled competently by those who make the decisions. Yes there have been setbacks and things are not happening as cleanly and as bloodlessly as one could hope. War is unpredictable like that. However, I think that what is best for this country is to be fighting against terrorists on their own soil rather than having it happen in our own back yard. Don't let your hate of this administration blind you to the good that is happening in Iraq.
http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/

[Patrick]

I don't disagree that the removal of Saddam was just under the violations of the UN inspections. I just question the president's rationale of connecting the war in Iraq with the destruction of the WTC. Instead of focusing on ousting Saddam, we should've let the UN handle that, and we should've continued to focus on capturing Bin Laden. Instead, we've allowed Bin Laden to run free.

This war is being run just like Vietnam. Everytime we capture a city, we leave, and it ends up that we have to recapture it later. We're just going in circles. Whatever happened to taking a town, and holding it? I personally think Tommy Franks made a huge mistake when he bypassed most of the towns and rushed into Baghdad.

I actually think we were safer with Saddam in power. At least he kept some sort of order. Now, Iraq is becoming a haven for terrorists.

[PUGalicious]

The U.N. itself is a corrupt, mismanaged joke of an institution. If the U.N. can't do the job then someone will have to step up and to the dirty work. BTW, the U.S. didn't go in alone. The U.K., Spain, Australia, and many others participated. We all now know that France and Germany didn't paticipate because of their financial interests in keeping Hussein in power rather than any moral or legal objections.

First of all, it's unreasonable and disingenous to discredit, de-legitimize and dismiss the U.N. as "a joke of an institution" in one breath and then in the next breath use that same institution's resolutions (and the moral or legal authority derived therefrom to enforce said resolutions) as justification for going to war.

Secondly, you also can't summarily dismiss France and Germany's opposition based on their financial interests in Iraq when the prosecutor of such military action arguably has its own financial interests in taking that action.

I think the "war on terror" includes and covers our allies and interests. Just as we should assist Britain with thier problems with terrorism, so should we with Israel.

The "War on Terror" is a nebulous concept lacking any definition, specific objectives and an end game, which in and of itself falls short of the "Just War" standard. Such an ambiguous cause can be used to justify just about anything. Such an enigma can go on indefinitely and can never be won. Are we going to attack every country that's ever supported insurgency against an ally? What about Saudi Arabia? They have supported extremist organizations against Israel and much of the resources and recruits for al-Qaeda have come from within its borders.

So, we should just leave him alone and give him time to get back up to speed? I don't think so. In the first Gulf War, in order to bring the area's other Arab nations ob-board with us, we had promised to limit our job to removing him from Kuait. We honored those promises.

I don't suggest that we allow Saddam back into power. However, the end doesn't justify the means — or at least it shouldn't. We were wrong to go in. Right or wrong, we've created a more unstable situation in Iraq and the Middle East as a result of our invasion and occupation of that country. Our justifications for going in were proved to be unfounded — there were not mass stockpiles of WMDs, there was no an imminent threat of attack by Saddam directly against the United States, and there was no evidence of a connection between Saddam and 9/11, the basis for our "War on Terror." We circumvented the diplomatic efforts to hurry up and "get Saddam."

All you are arguing about here is target selection. Apparently you advocate invading Sudan and N. Korea, but not Iraq. Its a pointless argument.

That's not the case. We should not have invaded Iraq because it is a sovereign country, we had not been attacked, there was no imminent threat and we did not have international support (except, of course, for the Coalition of the "Willing"). North Korea is a more imminent threat and we cannot invade them because we have not yet exhausted diplomatic efforts, and to do so would be disastrous. I was not proposing an invasion of Sudan (or Rhwanda), but rather a humanitarian intervention by the U.N. to save the lives of millions — had this slaughter taken place in Europe or another white country, the response would have been immediate.

Why do you think its a bad thing to try to protect our national interests in Iraq? If you want to argue that the war is about oil (which is wrong) then you realize that in the U.S. the price of oil has a sizable effect on our economy.

Our national interests should never supercede another nation's sovereignty unless the threat is truly grave and imminent. We can't just be the big bully and push around other sovereign nations just because we have a national interest in that place. Do we want China pre-emptively invading our land because our nation possesses something that's in their national interest?

The Project for the New American Century's position papers — an organization whose members eventually filled Bush's administration — discussed the critical strategic importance Iraq played in our "influence" (or imperial might, depending on how you want to phrase it) in that region and our strategic economic security. Even before the attack of 9/11, it was their position that we needed to have a presence in Iraq. What's in our economic security in Iraq (and the neighboring states)? Oil. The "War on Terror" provided the "justification" they needed to put their PNAC plan into motion. There position papers are surprisingly "prophetic."

I agree that our dependence on oil has a tremendous impact on our economy. But, it's my position that we would be better served by working hard to wean us of our dependence on oil rather than invading countries to secure dwindling resources. If we took the billions of dollars we've spent to prosecute the Iraq war, combined with the $14.5 billion in tax breaks the recently signed energy bill gives oil companies, and apply that toward research and development of technology that would decrease our dependence on oil, we would be much better off. The answer, once again, is not war.

Isn't a war to preserve our way of life more legitemate than attacking a country that has no sway in our economy like the Sudan or N. Korea.

This is the saddest and most outrageous comment of all. It's truly a depraved sense of morality that would elevate our personal convenience and comfortable way of life as Americans above the very survival of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. It's reflective of an arrogant attitude that elevates our status as humans above others status as humans. And I would contend it's contrary to the fundamental, founding principles of this nation.

BTW, where was the U.N. with its moral and legal authority when it came to Sudan and Rwanda? *crickets chirping*

Simply put, the U.N. was flat wrong. It was unequivocally derelict in its duty. The American administrations (both Clinton and Bush Jr.) as well as the European nations turned a blind eye to a modern-day holocaust. It is nothing short of shameful.

Where was our American crusade to "free people from brutal oppression and senseless killing" in Rhwanda and Sudan with the same passion as Iraq? **crickets chirping**

Amen to that. Tell that to Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean. Can expect not to see the term "quagmire" again?

Not as long as it fits the definition:

quag·mire n.
1. Land with a soft muddy surface.
2. A difficult or precarious situation; a predicament.

I believe that the war is being handled competently by those who make the decisions. Yes there have been setbacks and things are not happening as cleanly and as bloodlessly as one could hope. War is unpredictable like that. However, I think that what is best for this country is to be fighting against terrorists on their own soil rather than having it happen in our own back yard.

I wonder if London agrees.

We are fools if we believe the terrorists will just all flock to Iraq to fight this "War on Terror." They're going to go where they can inflict the most fear. True, some are going into Iraq to attack the military there; however, al-Qaeda is certainly at work outside those borders. London was a testament to that. And we are equally foolish if we think that fighting the "War on Terror" in Iraq is actually preventing an attack on our soil. The incredible work of law enforcement and sheer luck has prevented another attack to this point; but it's not because we're "fighting against terrorists on their own soil." How many of the hijackers were from Iraq, Jordan or Syria? If we want to take the fight to the terrorists, perhaps we should be fighting within Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 9/11 hijackers.

Don't let your hate of this administration blind you to the good that is happening in Iraq.

I don't hate this administration. In fact, I voted for Bush in 2000, with high hopes for what he said he would do — "compassionate conservative"..."uniter, not a divider." I've been profoundly disappointed by his presidency and disgusted by his arrogant, tunnel-visioned leadership. Our nation has never been so polarized; he's been anything but a uniter. He managed to squander unprecedented international good will after the 9/11 attacks to the point America is scorned more than ever by many around the world — trips abroad will attest to that.

The president and many of his blindly loyal supporters continually emphasize all the good that is happening in Iraq. However, it would be interesting to see what would happen if each and every person who believes that things are going well to spend a week in Iraq — not in the safe zone, but among the Iraqi people. Then, they can come back and tell us how good it would be to live that way. I know that if we Americans had the same conditions, there would be a cacophony of outrage.