Quote Patrick Cockburn: “The British have basically been defeated in the south,” a senior US intelligence official was quoted as saying in Baghdad. The final deterioration of the British position has become evident since the end of Operation Sinbad between September 2006 and March 2007 .......the militias have reasserted their hold on the city...”

There is a strange feeling of dejavu regarding Iraq and the British - and the US occupation and the recent “surge”. Imperialistic egotism seemed to have been a factor as well. Its all happened before and its not the first time the Brits have been defeated:-

*Quote Wiki: British Mandate of Mesopotamia (1918-1932) - “The British invaded Iraq during World War I in the Mesopotamian Campaign. They invaded southern Mesopotamia in November 1914. The Battle of Ctesiphon was fought in November 1915. The undermanned and overstretched British forces were defeated by the Turks, who besieged the British in the city of Kut-al-Amara for 143 days in the Siege of Kut, ending with a British surrender, with 10,000 men becoming prisoners in April 1916. The British took the middle eastern campaign more seriously following this defeat, transferring command from India to the main British command, and General Frederick Stanley Maude was put in charge of British forces, leading the British to a series of victories. The battles of Mohammed Abdul Hassan, Hai and Dahra were won by the British in January 1917. In February they recaptured Kut. On March 11, 1917 the British occupied Baghdad after the Fall of Baghdad (1917)....... Between 1920 and 1922 the British put down an Iraqi revolt costing them 40 million pounds to do so....” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Iraq

*Quote Wiki: Fall of Baghdad (1917) - “Baghdad was the southern capital of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. While it had no strategic value to the British, its fall would be of some propaganda value. After the disasters in the Mesopotamian Campaign during 1916, a victory was needed to restore British pride. On March 11, 1917, the British army did capture Baghdad....” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Baghdad_(1917)

*Quote Wiki: Ottoman Empire - Economically, the empire had difficulty in repaying its loans to European banks. Despite the empire’s label as the “Sick man of Europe”, the empire’s actual weakness did not reside in its developing economy, but the cultural gap which separated it from the European powers....... During this time Baghdad Railway under German control became a source of international tension and played a role in the origins of the First World War........ The empire’s problems were, in fact, the result of an inability to deal with the new problems created by the conflict between external imperialism and rising internal nationalism. (See socioeconomics during the Ottoman reformation era.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

#94059 by Dale Headley on 8/11 at 3:45 pm: “...I think you can pretty much assume that, when Cheney attacks Iran, the Brits will not go along for the ride.  So I doubt that George Bush will, in Bush War Part II, utter the word “coalition.”...”

That is definitely no longer a given, DH. The reason why the British government got rid of former PM Tony Blair was to save themselves the continuing embarrassment of a leader who had more support from the conservative opposition than his own party as regards Iraq.

They, and new PM Gordon Brown, are not likely to be as stupid a second time. As it was, the main factor for their involvement was their huge armamaments manufacturing deals with S.Arabia wich they were desperate to protect from US competition as well as to protect S.Arabia as customers from attack by the USA.

Does anybody care what happens in the M.East? Not really, except for Israel and they keep distorting things for their own advantage and thus constantly creating issues and emergencies. Without that interference and manipulation, the oil would flow quite freely under the normal terms of trade. Everybody is keen just to make a living, really.

#94360 by JimBob on 8/12 at 6:51 pm

• So, that’s all I meant.  I feel sorry for the soldiers and would like to see the architects and the builders of this fiasco drawn and quartered.  Slowly.

JimBob,

I get you on this, and I didn’t mean to infer that you were shallow. And, you’re right of course. It’s always the grunts on the ground (and their loved ones) who take the heat, and there has been ZERO accountability.

An excellent documentary on the Abu Ghraib scandal is called “Road to Abu Grahib”. It’s worth seeing if you can. It’s an account from some of the soldiers involved, and their own testimony of WHY they even did what they did. Amazingly, only one of them insisted on some sort of description for the “rules of engagement”, and none were ever forthcoming. The bravery it takes to speak up in that respect, involves far more than any of the folks sending them into the chaos, have managed to accumulate in one little finger.

And yes, yes. You’re learning fast. Your comments are appreciated.

Iraq Extrication: The Main Necessity

To extricate one’s arm from a toilet, it may be a necessity to first let go of the large shiny object you’ve wrapped your fist around.
I’ve been laughing for a day or so now.
The source of humor was the description of the Iraq situation from one of the usual ‘inside’ narcissistic bright minds. He said that figuring out the Iraq situation was like “playing three dimensional chess in the dark while you are being shot at.”
The actuality of how to deal with and accommodate or not accommodate the various parties goals and motives in Iraq is logically inordinately simple.
A. America can neither stay in Iraq nor leave Iraq and have easy, cordial, aligned interests with any eventually arising central dominant force/government.*
B. If America semi ‘stands down’ behind a multinational force the chances for a settlement and a hopeful future for Iraq (and the region) brighten.
C. Alternatively, if America insists on a continuing presence they should henceforth implement a tri-part Iraq. Post establishment of same, the U.S. could implement massive aid to each faction and a return to the time honored foreign policy of “bribe-the-dictator.”
The metaphor I prefer for the Iraqi quagmire is that America forcefully shoved its arm into a deeply murky toilet to retrieve a bright shiny object. To extricate itself it simply needs to unclasp its rigid grasp and withdrawal will proceed unencumbered by an occupier’s interests.
This simple and logical opinion arrives at the same conclusion as that of the Iraq Study Group. Their advice was:
A. Inform the Iraqis et al that the U.S. will eventually disassemble their major bases in Iraq and leave. ("Let go of the shiny object!")
B. Form a multinational force (preferably with Arab country participation) to oversee security and policy making for Iraq. ("Take your arm out of the toilet.)
Craig Johnson

*(Should a reader want to test the underlying logic statements for A. above, the statements are:
U.S. plus sole Shia government equals non ending Sunni war.
U.S. plus dominant Shia central government equals non ending Sunni war.
U.S. plus Sunni government equals non ending Shia war and probable Iran incursion.
Shia plus Sunni government is only possible with fundamental U.S. stand down in arms and policy.)
What is the bright shiny object that the Bush/neocons hold so dear in Iraq?
Oil? Democracy? Arms for arms sake? Defeat is politically unthinkable. Israeli security?
Illumination would be helpful. No?

I neglected to indicate my first paragraph was taken from Cyrena’s prior post.

I’m learning, I’m learning…

Meantime, we have to get out of this habit we’ve adapted, of changing names and words and concepts around, in order to make them somehow more “psychologically appealing”.

I couldn’t agree more with that and everything else you said (except, of course, regarding my essential shallowness).

From the very beginning, calling this invasion a “war” gave it weight and a sense of historical inevitability which it did not deserve.  I wrote letters to newspaper and magazine editors trying to get them to stop playing the game Bush’s way, to call it an invasion or a military/police action.  No dice.  Everyone loved that word “war.”

What I meant to say, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it better, was that the grunts on the ground did their best and we should string up the guys who sent them there to fail.  Too often the Bushies have managed to deflect criticism onto the little people; think Abu Graib. 

So, that’s all I meant.  I feel sorry for the soldiers and would like to see the architects and the builders of this fiasco drawn and quartered.  Slowly.

• #94313 by JimBob on 8/12 at 3:11 pm
(1 comments total)
I hate to see the word “failure” thrown around.  When people are put in an impossible situation and asked to “succeed” where no one even knows what success is, it’s more than a bit unfair to slap the word “failed” on their hard-fought enterprise.
Jim Bob,

I get your drift, but I also perceive this sort of thinking to be very shallow in the grand scheme of things, and probably why we’re in this mess to begin with. It’s all been smoke and mirrors with the semantics of how the entire war was packaged.

I agree that these troops have been asked to succeed in a mission that was never defined, and has involved a constant motion carousel of “missions”. None were ever real, (at least not as stated by those who called for the war) and so the tragedy of the matter is that it HAS been a failed enterprise, because it should never have happened. So, it/they, were doomed to fail from the beginning.

That’s a horribly bitter pill to swallow. To simply call it what it is, which was a mistake from the beginning, even though I think it’s reasonable to say that the Brits have probably fared far better than the Americans, for a variety of reasons. Still, it may sound like some sort of trauma causing practice, to suggest this as a failure, there may in fact be something personally valuable, (to those who did fight and survive that enterprise) in recognizing it as a failure, not for THEM, but because of bad decisions on the parts of those who sent them to fight a war with no mission, and no measure of success. It may give them pause for thought about what they might do under similar circumstances in the future, if they are in a position to make these same sorts of decisions. So that they don’t make the same mistakes.

Meantime, we have to get out of this habit we’ve adapted, of changing names and words and concepts around, in order to make them somehow more “psychologically appealing”. And, war isn’t a little league baseball or soccer game. Nor should the invasion and occupation of another sovereign nation be couched in terms of an “enterprise”. But whatever we call it, it was a failure because it couldn’t have worked out any other way.

The good news, (if there is any such thing), is that at least they are finally LEAVING. Making that decision, (no matter how late, and probably regardless of the reasons) takes a tiny bit of the sting out of the ultimate failure of the entire enterprise.

I hate to see the word “failure” thrown around.  When people are put in an impossible situation and asked to “succeed” where no one even knows what success is, it’s more than a bit unfair to slap the word “failed” on their hard-fought enterprise.

Brits should leave Iraq before they’re kicked out.
To play the role of “hunting dogs” for Bush/Cheney over 3 years will be enough.

RE: by cyrena on 8/10 at 5:51 pm

In respect to the use of separate latrines, this is a common practice in Middle East countries where we are working and living. Let me tell you one of the reasons why, though it might be unsavory: the folks in that part of the world do not use toilet paper! They use their left hand and a small water hose at the left side of the place where they do their business. That place is generally a cement hole, where there are two shoe like places over the hole on which they squat to do their thing. Note that I said LEFT hand. Moslems never use the left hand for eating, handling food, preparing food, etc. And, by the way, there is a reason why the right hand is amputated for stealing...without a right hand...well you get the picture! The practice of having two latrines (hammams in Arabic) is not only accepted by folks in that region, but actually demanded. The people in charge in Iraq could have easily gotten around any implication of racism by simply painting the two latrine doors. Red for the Iraqis, often referred to as the Easter Hammam, and Blue for the Western Hammam, and the doors could be so labeled. Source of informataion: I worked in Saudi Arabia for 10 years, and that was the way our company had the latrines set up.

Run, Run, Run, Iran is falling

#93805 by ~B~ on 8/10 at 5:07 pm

..."Out come the soldiers in will go more mercenaries. Either Britain herself will hire and send more (as they have before when withdrawing troops) or we will."…

~B~

I think it will be mostly the US that continues to supply the mercenaries, just because of the primary agenda, which has been to get the oil. No way is Cheney giving up on that oil.

So, my guess would be that there are already Blackwater folks there, along with the old-faithful KBR, (now spun off from Halliburton) They were there at the beginning, (even before the troops) and I’m sure they’ll be there for the duration.

Meantime, there are STILL about 100,000 of these Blackwater, Bechtel, Halliburton, and various other private “troops” there. Until the “surge”, they were in equal numbers to our own troops. Might even still have more of them there than we know.

And yes, Schahill’s book and lectures have been eye-popping. It’s amazing what these scumbags have done.
It’s created more chaos then ever. Check out the lastest…

At US Base, Iraqis Must Use Separate Latrine
By Mike Drummond
McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080607C.shtml

“Move along folks nothing to see here....”

Out come the soldiers in will go more mercenaries. Either Britain herself will hire and send more (as they have before when withdrawing troops) or we will.

Before long it will be all “private security contractors” and the “Troops will be home”.

I strongly suggest reading Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”. This book gives a nasty lil peek into “business as usual”.

B

http://b-political.blogspot.com/