Council on Foreign Relations: US Should Leave Iraq

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Council on Foreign Relations: US Should Leave Iraq

By Scott Horton ⋅ February 10, 2007 ⋅

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Wow.

So does that mean I have to be for staying now?

Check out this great quote explaining why we’re beaten:

“there is no indigenous government to support on the battlefield and the rigors of combat must be borne by the outsider alone is too steep for democracies, especially in a world of globalized media. The United States does not have the same room to maneuver that Britain enjoyed in its counterinsurgency operations in Kenya or Malaya. The American public will eventually fault battlefield excesses or abuses inflicted in cellars—the ineluctable by-products of such wars—if the strategic goal is seen to be inessential.”

Darn public and their common sense of decency! Darn YouTube! How the hell can you build a foreign empire when your people are still free at home?! Something has got to give.

Discussion

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mudshark posted the following on February 10, 2007 at 7:09 pm.
if congress could only look their gift horse in the mouth…

What is especially significant, in my eyes, is that the conclusion that Congress does indeed have power to significantly restrict the Administration in its plans for war, transcends politics: Even experts who have worked for Republican administrations have come to this conclusion.
mudshark posted the following on February 10, 2007 at 7:44 pm.
America’s ‘disastrous position’

NIO: In terms of your first point, in terms of seeing an opportunity to kill Americans, if the Americans are no longer there, that opportunity would no longer exist. But on your second point, has al-Qaeda been able, in your view, to establish that contiguous territory?

Michael Scheuer: Certainly the Israelis are claiming that they’ve established themselves in Palestine and Lebanon. Al-Qaeda organizations have announced their presence in Syria, in Jordan, in Egypt, all since the beginning of the Iraq war. So it’s hard to define, or decide, whether or not these claims are legitimate. But they certainly make sense. There’s been an ambition, as I said, of al-Qaeda to be able to reach into these areas, and I think that’s probably happening.

America is in a disastrous position really, because we’re damned if we stay and we’re damned if we leave. And I think you’ll recall just on the eve of the invasion, Zawahiri said, “Praise to God for the Americans invading Iraq,” because once they get there, they won’t be able to stay, but they won’t be able to leave and they’ll just bleed.

Scheuer’s estimate

NIO: What would be your own intelligence estimate of the threat that al-Qaeda poses today?

MS: I think it’s probably worse then it was on September 11, 2001. Not necessarily because they’re stronger, simply because we’ve done nothing to defend the United States.

We didn’t have to invade Iraq, and what we’ve done is really push the transformation that bin Laden has been aiming for of al-Qaeda, from a man and a group to a philosophy and an organization. But as an American citizen what I’m just utterly appalled by are basically three things. The president - not only not the president or the vice president but no one in the Democratic Party - has yet stood up and told the American people the truth about why we’re fighting.

This is not about our liberties, our freedoms, our gender equality, it’s about what we do in the Islamic world. And until we get some politician who will stand up and say that, we’re not going to be able to even understand what the enemy is about.
Cous Cous posted the following on February 10, 2007 at 11:33 pm.
“The United States does not have the same room to maneuver that Britain enjoyed in its counterinsurgency operations”

I think they mean: The United States cannot continue to torture and murder several hundred thousand uppity dune coons in a hopeless guerrilla war without causing themselves to be seen as incompetent barbarians.
GramBorder posted the following on March 19, 2007 at 8:52 pm.
Hi all!

I want to all of you know, World is mine, and yoursite good

G’night