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Oy...
My great hope for Iraq had been that the Sistani List would win the elections next week and promptly ask our troops to leave the country. Now it looks like that won't happen, so it's more war either way. I'd also like to go on the record now with my contrarian prediction that Iyad Allawi's list will actually come out on top once the votes are counted.
January 26, 2005 | Permalink
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I'm hoping that this prediction falls in with the "Howard Dean is the nominee" prediction (which I of course made too), but with Allawi's willingness to work with Negroponte and the CIA, he's the perfect guy to get the Iraqi death squads trained an in motion so we can finally bring the troops home.
Posted by: dstein | Jan 26, 2005 1:19:08 PM
So much for the lefties' erroneous belief that most Iraqis don't really want us there; it gets more and more obvious that most Iraqis really, in fact, DO want us there, at least for the indefinite future.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 1:20:47 PM
My hope was that Sistani would immediately ask our troops to leave, too ... via Syria.
Posted by: MYGoodness | Jan 26, 2005 1:31:00 PM
I think Howard Dean will actually become Iraq's PM and reform their corrupt campaign finance system once and for all.
Posted by: praktike | Jan 26, 2005 1:38:13 PM
Actually, Al, they don't want us there. That's why US withdrawal is a major campaign plank.
What many have realized, however, is that however chaotic the situation is with us there, it will be worse without us there. I happen to agree with that (barely, but i do), but that doesn't change the facts on the ground.
We weren't welcomed as liberators, we aren't seen as friends, and we are regarded as an occupying force....
Posted by: howard | Jan 26, 2005 1:40:01 PM
Well, sure they don't want us there. And I don't want to take out the garbage, either. The real question is whether they want us gone enough to accept the consequences of our leaving before their military is up to speed, and able to handle the insurgency by itself. And the answer to that is a big "NO".
If they're going to ask us to leave, it's only going to be when they're ready for our absence. Probably two-three years yet, as we're training their new military for them, and it will take that long to get it properly running.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Jan 26, 2005 2:07:16 PM
Allawi is the one COUNTING the votes, isn't he?
Posted by: fasteddie | Jan 26, 2005 2:08:48 PM
You do realize that wishing us to leave immediately, is rather like somebody who advised against an opperation wanting the surgeon to walk out half-way through, just so that he could say "I told you so!" to the greiving widow when the patient dies on the operating table. You'd have us cut and run, and THEN blame the resulting disaster on the people who wanted to stay.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Jan 26, 2005 2:10:50 PM
it's very encouraging, Brett, that you are so convinced that: a.) the american people (who already, by a majority, think the war wasn't worth the cost) are going to support being there years more; b.) 2-3 years will do the trick; c.) the "insurgency" isn't capable of doing mammoth additional harm, especially if they can continue to position themselves as the anti-americans.
And no, comparing any of this to taking out the garbage isn't a comment that adds to our understanding of the situation, for what should be obvious reasons....
Posted by: howard | Jan 26, 2005 2:12:17 PM
Allawi is the one COUNTING the votes, isn't he?
No, he's not. The independent election commission (that is, it is independent of Allawi's government) will be counting the votes.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 2:14:05 PM
Brett, at least your 2:07 comment made general sense, with a lousy analogy.
Your 2:10 comments makes no sense at all.
The "operation" has been going on for nearly 2 years now, when it was promised to last until September, '03. That's a pretty legitimate basis to doubt the surgeon.
The question to be answered is whether our staying indefinitely makes the endgame better or worse. By a very slight margin, i think it's better, but that margin is very slight, and many days, i'm convinced that our presence makes the endgame worse.
None of this has to do with having been right in the first place, although me and millions of others were; it has to do with ignoring sunk costs and asking ourselves whether we are going to end up, thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars later, any better off than we are now....
Posted by: howard | Jan 26, 2005 2:16:07 PM
Actually, Al, they don't want us there. That's why US withdrawal is a major campaign plank.
What many have realized, however, is that however chaotic the situation is with us there, it will be worse without us there.
In other words, they DO want us there for the time being. As I said...
We weren't welcomed as liberators
Yes, actually, we were.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 2:19:45 PM
when it was promised to last until September, '03
Where, exactly, was this "promise"?
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 2:20:27 PM
Sistani's supporters don't get counted in the polls because they use cell phones.
Posted by: digamma | Jan 26, 2005 2:22:47 PM
we'll start, Al, with the "promise."
Congressional testimony, by Zev what's his name, then in the Pentagon, revealed that Pentagon planning was to be down to 30K troops by september, '03, after the cakeewalk and the welcome as liberators. This is, of course, consistent with the major combat operations photo op and with bush's overall failure to prepare the american public for a prolonged occupation.
Welcomed as liberators? no, we weren't. Do you have nay idea what being welcomed as liberators means? It certainly doesn't mean that there was happiness that Saddam was gone. good heavens, Al, face reality.
Now, as for the most important point: if i'm making the best of a bad situation, that's not the same as "wanting" the choice i make.
Posted by: howard | Jan 26, 2005 2:33:09 PM
We all know what will happen on the 30th. The Shiite and Kurdish areas will vote in high numbers, giving Bush and war supporters ammunition to claim (fairly) that the election was a success. The inusrgent-controlled areas will be a disaster, providing fodder for the NYT, the liberal blogs, and all the critics of the war.
And we'll all just keep talking past each other. I write about this for extensively on my own blog.
Posted by: R.C. (www.voicesofreason.info) | Jan 26, 2005 2:38:31 PM
RC, without intending to talk past you, can you please point to where the war objectives consisted of "hold a constitutional election in which one major ethnic group doesn't participate to create an interim government to write a draft constitution that the ethnic group that didn't particpate can veto?"
See, when i see the word "success," i usually expect it to have a context, like in meeting an objective that was defined in advance....
Posted by: howard | Jan 26, 2005 2:45:56 PM
As they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Jan 26, 2005 2:49:50 PM
This suggests to me that the Shiites consider the insurgency to be formidable, potentially capable of destabilizing or even overthrowing the new government in the absence of US military support.
From a recent post by Zeyad at Healing Iraq:
I had another conversation some months ago with a retired Ba'athist old-timer who claimed that Ba'athists have the means to stage a third coup d'etat and return to power within 10 hours of an American withdrawal. On sensing my incredulity to his statement he asserted that Ba'athist cells exist in all parts of the country and that they do have a central command, even though many have formed seperate cells (often under Islamic labels) with their own leaderships. He said that they have the training and the funding as well as the support of neighbouring and regional governments.
I concur that Ba'athists and former security forces are capable of immediately controlling at least 5 out of 18 governorates, along with the capital, if Americans are to be removed from the picture entirely. But I also see that as a fatal misconception, which is doing Sunnis harm, because I don't believe the US is going anywhere so soon. Any government that assumes power after the elections also realises this, so not even Sistani is going to call the US to withdraw its troops, despite what he is saying now, not until they are ensured the insurgency is out of the picture, or that they have an alternative foreign power (in this case Iran) to back them up.
Posted by: JakeV | Jan 26, 2005 3:02:41 PM
The problem with Sistani asking us to stay, despite our immediate removal being a top plank on the platform, is that it will re-energize the Sadr movement. Nobody really knows what Sadr will do in these elections but he clearly taps into a well of discontent in the Shi'ite slums of East Baghdad and can draw significant resources away from US counterinsurgency efforts elsewhere. And unlike in the past, Sadr can actually point to a concrete reversal on the part of Sistani to whip up support. In the past Sadr's contentions met up against the vague wordings of Sistani's edicts, which preserved Sistani's legitimacy so he could resolve the Najaf standoff in April somewhat peacefully. A LOT of Shia want the US gone, for many diffferent reasons. If Sadr raises his voice about it, then more Shia will pressure the new government as well. If the Sistani-backed government fails to heed these calls then Sadr will gain the widespread support he never had in April.
Posted by: Elrod | Jan 26, 2005 3:08:21 PM
Congressional testimony, by Zev what's his name, then in the Pentagon,
I dunno, Zev who?
revealed that Pentagon planning was to be down to 30K troops by september, '03
I see. The Pentagon had a plan to be down to 30,000. Hence we were all "promised" to be down to 30,000!
Hey, the Pentagon has a plan for global thermonuclear war, too! Guess that means those evil Bushies have been promising us global thermonuclear war. OMG!!!!
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 3:10:05 PM
Oh, and I also think Allawi's list will do very well. I also think the Communists will do very well too. A lot of secular Iraqis distrust Allawi because of his Ba'athist roots. They may want a strong man to crack down on the insurgency so they'll ignore the other lesser secular parties for the oldest party in Iraq - the Communists.
Posted by: Elrod | Jan 26, 2005 3:10:30 PM
Nobody really knows what Sadr will do in these elections but he clearly taps into a well of discontent in the Shi'ite slums of East Baghdad
He used to. Before he was crushed by us and humiliated by Sistani at Najaf. Is he still an important force? Maybe. But I think doubtful.
Posted by: Al | Jan 26, 2005 3:31:24 PM
I see. The Pentagon had a plan to be down to 30,000. Hence we were all "promised" to be down to 30,000!
Al, the proof of the "promise" (explicit or not) is that the Pentagon ignored all of the State Dept's analysis of the post-war situation. Why? Because the neocon death cult's fundamental assumption was that we would be greeted as liberators and bringing the troops down to 30K in a year. Who needs to contemplate gloomy scenarios when you have Ahmed Chalabi's word that nothing will go wrong. You need to stop listening to pointy-headed intellectuals like Wolfowitz and wake up.
Posted by: ScrewyRabbit | Jan 26, 2005 3:45:16 PM
"so not even Sistani is going to call the US to withdraw its troops, despite what he is saying now, not until they are ensured the insurgency is out of the picture, or that they have an alternative foreign power (in this case Iran) to back them up."
Or until they've built their OWN army up to the point where it can handle the job, of course. We're helping them train the recruits.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Jan 26, 2005 4:08:11 PM
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