This is a quote from an iraqi Blogger that was used by Vampiel in the What to do about Iraq thread, the post is #85
this is the link to the blogger
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

this is in reference to the shiite/shia tensions


What to do about Iraq


Debate question:

Is the presence the only buffer preventing all out civil war in Iraq?

Regardless of whether or not you agreed with Bush on pre-emption, considering we did indeed open Pandora's Box in Iraq can we leave before we know they are secure enough as a country to stand on their own? Not from a "the terrorists will win if we leave perspective" but more along the lines of we marched in and busted a country wide open, are we now not obligated now to help anchor Iraq until she is reasonably clear of being plunged into civil war?

I believe our troops are the only thing keeping Iraq from a civil war.

I think we should leave right now. The terrorists are in no position to inade this country. If we took a month's worth of money from fighting in Iraq and spent it on securing our borders, inspecting freight at our ports, etc., we could make this country much more secure than the war in Iraq is ever going to make us. Even George W. Bush no longer claims "progress" in Iraq. We're coming out of there, sooner or later. If you believe we'll leave a "free and democratic" country in our wake, I think you're wrong. So what are we fighting for? They have a constitution, they have an elected government, they have thousands of trained police and military. What else do you expect our troops to do? Make them love each other? That's not a military objective. I think the Iraqis must work this out among themselves and as long as we're there taking sides, it won't happen.

Sadam husein was the buffer
America's biggest blunder in history was to attack in the first place that being said and now that it is ongoing
I would have to say the best thing America could do right now In terms of World opinion is to leave and put sadam back in charge

My reasoning for this stark statement is that America can not stay in Iraq for the long run
currently in Iraq it is only a minority of Iraq's people that rebell against the troops mostly made up of sunis
the vast majorty of IRAQ is silent the reason for this is that they are the shi "ite majority who know they will govern Iraq as they make up 80% of the population
what going into Iraq effectively did was to put in charge the shi"ite majority the very people that make up iran, syria, and lebonon effectively forming the dreaded shite cresent that all the smart nations knew would happen and as such refused to open that can of worms
to stay the course in a long protracted war in Iraq is only made possible if you keep the shi"ite happy
the 10 or so brigades already in Iraq are effectively tied down by only approxinmately 27% of the population of IRAQ
the majority stay silent in their knowing that AMerica will ordain them as the leaders
this also makes it very unlikely America can do much if anything about Iran
the biggest blunder Of this is that it did exactly what the generals or atleast the smart ones said it would do before they got fired by washinton
that is to pander the very people that makes it impossible to do anything else to bring about any kind of serious reforms or any further actions in the middle east America simply went in blind as a bat with about as much knowledge on the situation as the british had when they utterly failed when they went in all those years ago
the outcome now is that all is lost there is no actions americans can do in the middle east without
making it clear that the days that 10 brigades can hold down 27% of the population of IRAQ isnt going to be nearly enough to hold back the 80% that will be joining the jihad if they attack Iran and thats not counting the fact that Iran has 2.7 times the population Of Iraq most of which will sign on to the jihad should they bomb Iran
and syria too would join the song of jihadists at the very least it will cause the over throwing of all the moderate govts in the muslim countries IE egypt ,jordan,etc...
can anyone say 400$ gas and the wrath of the rest of the world would not join in the jihad

it is the blunder of the century at the very least
it is why Canada did not join the Iraq war only the Afghan war and only then because they had clearly violated the world with terrorist camps and a few other reasons
When germany france and Canda said no red flags should of been popping up but none did in washington that is sad that Washington was so silent and that is why they have all failed America as leaders they utterly said nothing to stop the war in Iraq
the reason no red flags went up was because of the mob mentality they were misled and also because
Mr Bush is an effective speaker HE made it sound so clear and concise
that Iraq had bombs of mass distruction
understand this well
Canada france and germany said no
and there is only one reason this could of been and that was their inteligence on the matter said no this is not right and it is certainly the case as we can now see in retrospect
for anyone to assume in hindsight that it was ok because husein was a tyrant would be another mistake of major proportion because it is not the place nor the right of america to wage war on an independent country and especially not when they are not invited to do so and especially not in a fashion of pre-emptive nature using the harshest methods available and armed with DU tip munitions as if ready for WW3
there is no concession on this matter
the reverberations now going through the international comunity is one that speaks of madness , of trials in nuremburg
there is a talk of war crimes and they can not be simply scrubbed under the mat and left to the anals of history no matter how hard it is for the American mind to accept
for to do so would only allow others to do so and that can not be allowed to happen lest we all succomb to preemptive wars and ww3
it may well be that even a c student can be president but I dont think a C student can be a president and be expected to win wars too
i am not even a military man and can tell you that it will not be possible
The loss of this war is evident to all but those that think with a c student brain
this isnt a question about the omni potent american military no it is a question of the will of the poeple of the middle east that is more omni potent than bombs as they know that the will of the poeple govern the use of those bombs
in the end there will be a block of islam much stronger than ever
it will sweep the govts, of all the moderate islamic countries in the area and perhaps that C student in Washington was well aware of this and indeed wants this how else do you get islam into a NWO
that leaves only one question the one that has haunted the Isrealites since the days of old
sadly this may well be the case I say sadly only because israel will have to be made aware one day that their dreams of an expanded israel is over for good
if this Is G.W. Bush's plan concerning the nwo Then he has made it utterly clear he is no C student and since his days of university he has indeed become an A +++ student with honors

Is the presence the only buffer preventing all out civil war in Iraq?

Interesting question Christopher. Depends on what faction comes out with the most members of parliament.

From the start the emphasis was to dislodge the baath party and marginalize the Sunni population. The contradiction begins if we have a fallout out with the Shia majority. They are the ones most closely allied with Iran and they are the ones who will be receptive to Khatami's speeches. Bear in mind they may revolt if Iran does get attacked. So again which side do we want in power? To marginalize the large Shia population may be a mistake at this point.

I think there is another buffer out there. An Iraqi engineer told me last year, "We have been living together for hundreds of years and we will continue to live together." If the violence subsides than we know the animousity was directed at the coalition. Either way, we won't know until the soldiers pull out.

It's rather apparent that not all of the animosity is directed at the coalition. Read this quote from Jill Carroll who was kidnapped and subsequently released in Iraq.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0823/p01s01-woiq.html



Right now it's more of a low intensive battle with sporadic incidents. ANY incident could escalate into full all out civil war. The security forces are making progress and some districs are being handed over command to Iraqi's but are not yet ready.

The Americans are the deterrent.

Indeed the outcome will be a shi"ite muslim brotherhood all over the middle east
and israel will be left with its 1967 borders
which is a good thing

it remains to be seen how many bombs iran will recieve or russia or china for that matter
what is certain all those war ships now in place and on the way isnt to bomb Iran into the stone age
no they could do that with only a few I am afraid it is for much worse than that

My own opinion is that conressman Ron Paul was right when he said
I am para phrasing here

they are stark raven mad they plan to go to war with iran russia china and north korea

if this is the case and it looks to be if you know the facts
I suggest they have made up their mind that only the elite few will be allowed to live albeit in under ground bases

Is the presence the only buffer preventing all out civil war in Iraq?

Yes and to leave would be to throw away all our efforts and allow chaos to reign in Iraq. IMO we have vital interests in the area that prelude doing this. We can easily see that the UN will never ever really deal with the developing nukes in Iran esp. with China, France and Russia reluctant to vote for sanctions of any kind.

So do we really want the Sheiits in Iran to control all or most of Iraq? We still refuse to develop our own sources of oil and we are dependant on this area. To leave now IMO would be unwise.

I don't believe that what we have now is in any way, a semblance of order. A new study has Iraqi deaths due to the direct effects of the invasion at 655,000. On top of that, "sectarian"(i.e.-civil) violence between groups is hardly contained.



There is an old saying in poker that if you can't identify the fish, that you are the fish. Likewise, we are not a force for order, but rather, for disorder. Once we leave, Iraqi neighborhoods will organize and citizens will no longer tolerate trouble-making foreigners among them. The only reason why they tolerate them is due to our presence. How is this the case? Tribal chiefs in the western Anbar region have joined together to fight insurgents. Once we leave, more of these groups will form and the insurgents stay will be short-circuited as their continued presence will no longer be justified by our presence. The civil war is already occuring. The violence has already escalated. We are the fish in this card game of Iraqi politics.

I disagree. Alot of the groups in Iraq want the US to leave because we are ruining there plans for power, especially Iran/Baath backed groups. All of the different militia's have been fighting for generations, it's not anything that just happened after we invaded... it's a power struggle, most of the fighting is not from foreigners . That's why most of the attacks are directed at each other not at the US military.

I don't see what's stopping them from doing this now. As your link shows, these are Sunni chiefs going after al-Qa'eda in Iraq. Considering that aQiI has billed itself as a pro-Sunnite anti-Shi'ite organization, this is rather significant. And considering that it's also effectively declared war against nearly the entire Iraqi population, I don't see how they can have much public support left anyway. If the Iraqis want to do something about these pests, they have the best opportunity right now, when they have help from coalition forces. They won't be better able to do anything about them after we depart.

If we stop and consider it, they shouldn't have to take matters into their own hands in the first place if we were truly a viable buffer. We are more of a permeable membrane than a buffer when it comes to Iraq. They are taking action due to the fact that our presence is fueling the insurgency in the first place.



Actually, Gen. Casey and other brass feel that the opposite trend will do the trick.


Seattle Post-Intelligencer Article.

A leading U.K. General has also chimed in as well noting that western presence exacerbates the problem.

Once again, foreign born leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq such as Zarqawi won't have a leg to stand on if we are no longer there. The native population won't tolerate the likes of him around and he will no longer be able to justify his attacks. Especially since they are perceived as being a foreign enterprise. The IHT article contains references from the tribal chiefs referring to Zarqawi and others as "infidels."


IHT article.



They certainly couldn't do any worse. Civilian deaths for september reached 2,660. On top of that, 1,000 civilians a day are forced to flee their homes. This is not a state that has a stable buffer ensuring security. In the Anbar province, tribal chiefs who can muster 20,000 men will have a greater chance of bringing security to the region than will the paper tiger Iraqi army whose competence is called into question by U.S. troops. If the Iraqi parliament had faith in the army, they also wouldn't have voted to create a loose federal-autonomy governing plan. The writing is on the wall and this is clearly something the tribal chiefs, in an uneasy partnership with the government will have to settle on their own.

Possibly the use of spotters by shia militias would curb Sunni activity through the use of air strikes? Add to this reports of uniformed policeman attacking Sunni men and this may be enough to disuade Sunnis from fighting back.

Here is a 3 year timeline detailing the increasing reliance to replace manpower with air power. In 2004 a study of violence to civilians in Iraq by a British medical journal, the Lancet, released in October, 2004, estimated that 85% of all violent deaths in Iraq are generated by coalition forces and claimed that many of these are due to U.S. air strikes. What is of note is the strikes increased in 2005. For 2006 Dahr Jamail reports the number of air strikes are up from this time last year. Jamail's claims correspond with Seymour Hersh's projection that 2006 would see a heavy shift towards increased air power.



None of this inspires confidence for Sunnis to participate within the system. At best this isolates and pushes them out to the fringe.

That information is over a year old. This might be a little more up-to-date. It's a Qa'eda document found in Zarqawi's hideout after he was taken out:


He goes on to list, among other things, reinforcing Iraqi forces, arresting insurgents on a massive scale, having a good PR campaign in Iraq (although Zarqawi's declared war on "democracy" probably did that job pretty well for us), causing the insurgency to lose support internationally, and "taking advantage of the resistance's mistakes and magnifying them in order to misinform" (snicker). I heartily recommend reading the whole thing.


That General later backpedaled furiously:


In other words, he was caught with his foot in his mouth bigtime. The fact that he had earlier been making comments that go well beyond his area of operations ("I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them.") shows that he may not have been entirely unbiased politically.


Their "leg to stand on" will be that the Iraqi government is allegedly just a puppet of the U.S. As for the native population, it really looks as though their tolerance for aQ is already thinning quite considerably. Yes, I've heard the polls that say Iraqis want us to leave because they fear we're provoking the insurgency. But how many of them are opposed to our presence simply because they don't like us? I don't think the number is anywhere near as large as often gets suggested or implied. And as more tribal chiefs and other Iraqis begin to turn on al-Qa'eda, the Iraqi people may find that the only thing they were fearing was fear itself.

There is also a letter where it is stated that it is in their interest to have our presence in Iraq continue as it helps in recruitment and in being popular with the people. Given the fact that civilian killings in Iraq have tripled since february and is at an all-time high, I'd say that the latter interpretation is a more accurate one and that the former one was pointing out some drawbacks that they experiencing, rather than a statement of imminent defeat and doom.



Yeah, Zarqawi is taken to task for killing Iraqi muslims, something which is making them look bad. That completely backs my assertion that when we leave, killing fellow Muslims won't win them popularity contests. As a matter of fact, it's creating problems for them that are to our benefit, though limited due to our continued presence.






So his comment our presence doesn't "exacerbate" the problem does not mesh with the NIE report, the desire of Al-Qaeda to have our continued presence, the all-time high death rate, not to mention low public opinion polls right? He was stating that as the situation currently stands, we cannot endure indefinitely. Blair is more critical of the general's insight, but what does he know? Is he on the ground? No, he's an insulated politician.



As it now stands, the average Iraqi is not safe. The tribal chiefs have an interest in providing security and protection. The average Iraqi father wants a good life for his children and family. They will not tolerate some mad Syrian or others of his ilk using bombs to kill their loved ones. We obfuscate these actions because of our presence. It will stand out even further in stark reality, when there aren't Americans there.



It's started yes, but is limited by our presence. It's like having two dogs on your porch that you don't like. Which do you get rid of first? Or do you simply watch them go at it and then do something? It's quite the quandary.



The Iraqi people know what's best for Iraq. No matter what the reason, we should let them decide the matter. Our continued presence inspite of their wishes shows a lack of regard for them and their future. We are hardly protecting them because they are afraid to fight back.

For one thing, that letter is from December '05, although admittedly, I don't know the date of the letter found in Zarqawi's hideout. More significantly, however, the letter you cite was written far from Iraq, in Pakistan. The author therefore may not have as solid an understanding of the facts on the ground as Zarqawi's associates would. The letter itself (which, by the way, can be read in its entirety here) acknowledges this, by saying "Forgive us also if our conception of your situation there and your circumstances is lacking and unclear, for this is possible and not unlikely, especially with the disruption that exists and the loss of communications."

Basically, the letter is far more pie-in-the-sky than the letter found in Zarqawi's pad. The basic gist of it all (once you've finished trudging through all the excess Islamic verbiage of the "brief" letter ) is that Zarqawi shouldn't be overzealous about going after local Sunnites. The author was trying to soothe Zarqo's apprehensions by assuring him that remaining "steadfast" would work out in the long term, but he didn't really back up his assessment in any meaningful way. It sounded much more like wishful thinking than anything else. Nothing at all like the sober, detailed assessment found in Zarqo's tent.


True the former letter wasn't a statement of imminent defeat, but it definitely had a bit of a doomful feel about it when it referred to "the current bleak situation". As for the increase in deaths, that's not an indication of things going badly from a strategic perspective. Deaths in WWII went way up following D-Day, but that didn't mean we were starting to lose. I don't mean to trivialize these deaths. But in war, they can never be viewed in isolation, but always in comparison to how things would be if we didn't fight.


I understand your point, but there's also an additional consideration. If we leave, the local population will have less firepower and expertise to deal with the terrorists. I agree that it's better to get local Iraqis involved in the fight, but if that can be done without us leaving, then can you agree that that would be the best option? And it looks right now that it's being done without us leaving. Iraqis seem to be waking up to the fact that they don't have anything to fear from us.

Mostly, I suspect, what a given Iraqi fears the most with regard to us is what his neighbors would think if he was seen as being in any way on the side of the Americans. But once he begins to figure out that his neighbors have as little problem with the Americans as he does, that fear will subside. It's like when a group of people are sitting around a table discussing something, and they all have the same "taboo" thought about the matter, but nobody wants to be the first one to actually say it out loud. But then someone gets bold enough to actually do so, and everybody breathes a sigh of relief and says, "You know, I was thinking the same thing!" It looks to me like that process is going on in Iraq right now.


Nor is Dannatt on the ground "round the world". I'd say Blair does have a more global view of that situation than Dannatt does. My point is that by commenting on areas far outside his bailiwick, the General impeaches his own impartiality. As regards the place where he is on the ground, in Basra, his final "clarified" statements are that his troops' presence is not provoking problems among the locals.


Yes, we should let them decide the matter, through their elected representatives, not through polls. In the meantime, they're beginning to lose their fear of fighting back against what they know is their real enemy.


But if your only reason for not liking the first dog is an unfounded fear that he's making the second dog worse, and if you get over that fear enough to see that the first dog (who by the way, had just finished getting rid of a much meaner dog than either of them who'd been terrorizing you for years) will help get rid of the second dog, then what?

Is the presence the only buffer preventing all out civil war in Iraq?
The US military is stretched thin right now and will not be able to hold off a civil war indefinately. Many of the troops are on their 2nd or 3rd tour of duty. If the US wants to prevent a civil war in Iraq, Bush needs to do a public apology for poking America's hand into a hornets nest and quickly figure out how to get some assistance from the UN. For example, the UN could come up with a large peacekeeping force for Iraq. In exchange, the US could pay all the financial costs and pay full reperations to the Iraqi people. The financial costs can be paid for with real money and higher taxes. At this point, the American people for the most part have made very little sacrifice for this war. Most of the sacrifices have been made by a very small minority of the American population. And of course, the US will have to give Haliburton the boot and let France get some of the reconstruction contracts. The US really will have to do some serious negotiations.

I am in agreement that something needs to be done and that our present course of action is untenable. Some admission of error would be nice, not to mention a genuine appeal to the UN or NATO for help. What is most disappointing is that a good plan was created, but ended up deep-sixed by Rumsfeld. In the future, the blundering of the Iraqi operation will be the stuff of legend next to Kennedy's Bay of Pigs Operation, The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and other major screw-ups involving the military. My only contention is that we are not holding off a civil war right now. I could be misreading it, but the following statement implies that to me.



As it now stands, we are hardly holding off a civil war. As a matter of fact, it is occurring as we speak. Continuing to give time to a plan that is already failing miserably is not a good way to operate. We tried that in Vietnam and it got us nowhere fast. The Iraqis are already proposing a five man junta to replace the ineffective, moribund, and sectarian riddled Maliki regime. In supporting Maliki, we are also supporting the insurgency as government officials and police officers with sectarian ties ARE a major part of the problem. I fail to see how giving the trojan horse that is within the government creatingchaos, will eventually lead to that very horse bringing about a peaceful resolution to the conflict over there.

And what would either of them be able to do that we can't doing for ourselves? The UN especially would be worse than useless. It was when the UN got involved in Somalia that our operation began to fall apart there. And the Iraqis hate the UN for what they justifiably perceive as its role in helping prop up Saddam.

Even NATO will still be regarded as an occupying force by those who claim to be acting on behalf of Iraq's sovereignty. All we'll get by bringing them in is a less unified, and therefore less effective, leadership.


You simply can not know that without seeing what would happen if we withdraw. To argue that our presence is provoking factional strife is counterhistorical. If anything, occupying powers tend to unite quarreling factions against the outside "enemy".