Cm, you say the West (Britain and France especially) screwed up borders by creating artificial nation-states after WWI via the Sykes-Picot Treaty (at least I think you know that much.) I agree. Europe also fucked up Africa the same way. All I advocated was getting out of the way and letting all the primitive tribe folk sort it out themselves. After a while you will have borders that fit reality.
I fail to see how your metaphor is relevant. The Kurds, Sunni and Shia all seem fairly adamant on their own about involving themselves with each other outside of killing. It isn’t the US dictating that or dictating new borders.
As far as the insinuation about Israel and Gaza/West Bank...well we already saw how the Pallies managed themselves when left alone in Gaza, did we not?
A far as I can tell, their “two-state” solution is to have sovereign areas where they can launch rockets and stage infiltration of suicide bombers and never be retaliated against while having total access to Israel for jobs and infrastructure their own government cant manage nor business people create. Then add in unfettered travel between the West Bank and Gaza (across Israel) which belonged to Egypt and Jordan before anyway. Sounds like a fair deal!
Well, I guess also the Balfour Declaration as well as the Sykes-Picot-Sazanov Agreement.
It was a poor metaphor - the main thing I wanted to get across is the thought of America having to fundamentally alter a part of what makes it America (pick what you want), on the basis that another country has decided ‘what’s best’. Does that not sound ridiculous to you? Would you accept it? Would you have accepted it during the civil war? Or would you fiercely defend your right to sort out your own problems?
Then add in unfettered travel between the West Bank and Gaza (across Israel) which belonged to Egypt and Jordan before anyway. Sounds like a fair deal!
Fortunately there are signs suggesting that the ‘fair deal’ you are talking about might become true. Olmert and Abbas have been talking for some time now, and rumors suggest that a two state solution is closer than one might think…
There are now many fewer mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, so that faction-fighting and death squad activity at that level has declined, because it was aimed at ethnically cleansing the neighborhoods. Baghdad was about half Sunni and half Shiite in 2003. By January of 2007, it was 65 percent Shiite. It is now 75 percent Shiite. A lot of the violence was committed in the subterranean War for Baghdad, which the Sunni Arabs decisively lost in the past eight months. The American troop escalation does not appear to have interfered with the displacement of tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs. It may have unwittingly abetted it, since the Americans disarmed or chased away the Sunni Arab militiamen who defended their neighborhoods from the Shiite onslaught. When the Americans weren’t looking, the Shiites took advantage of this weakening of their foe to push Sunni Arab families out of mixed neighborhoods.
That, or they possibly just left fearing reprisals. The effect was the same though. I wonder why it is only 75%?
Why didn’t the 25% left go if they are being chased away? To me, it is more likely Sunni’s no longer feel they will get a fair deal in Iraq.
Let them kill each other for a decade or so and the borders will naturally coalesce. That way the Evil West isn’t interfering or drawing borders. Problem solved!
I understand that because the US States disagree on so many things, Bahrain is going to suggest that the Idaho/Montana border to shifted about 137 miles north-east.
Actually, they get along famously.
New Hampshire can be a bit grumpy at times, and Montana and Wyoming are a bit wild, but all borders are open.
But here’s the most curious thing in this strange exercise in counting to three—simply that it happened in the United States. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that the Iraqi Parliament had voted a non-binding resolution to grant congressional representation to Washington DC or to allow California’s electoral votes to be divided up by district. Or what if the Iranian parliament had just passed a non-binding resolution to divide the United States into semi-autonomous bio-regions?
Such acts would, of course, be considered not just outrageous and insulting, but quite mad and, on our one-way planet, they are indeed little short of unimaginable. But no one I noticed in the mainstream of political Washington or the media that covers it—whether agreeing with the proposal or not—seemed to find it even faintly odd for the U.S. Senate to count to three in support of a plan that, at best, would put an American stamp of approval on the continuing ethnic cleansing of Iraq.
The rub about the New Yorker is that their attention span for writing is way-the-frick longer than my attention span for reading. I have to think they love the sound of their keyboards clicking. Perhaps a quoted excerpt is in order? If not now, when? If not you, who? (cuz...not me.)
Their cartoons are quite brief, however. And I’m rarely let down.
The United Nations Security Council, with support from the British and American delegations, is poised to cut the Iraqi parliament out of one of the most significant decisions the young government will make: when foreign troops will depart. It’s an ugly and unconstitutional move, designed solely to avoid asking an Iraqi legislature for a blank check for an endless military occupation that it’s in no mood to give, and it will make a mockery of Iraq’s nascent democracy (which needs all the legitimacy it can get).
It’s an ugly and unconstitutional move, designed solely to avoid asking an Iraqi legislature for a blank check for an endless military occupation that it’s in no mood to give, and it will make a mockery of Iraq’s nascent democracy (which needs all the legitimacy it can get).
Who and what created this nascent deMockracy? Iraqis? The UN? The former took to brutally crapping on their own people and ancient noble country, whilst the UN sat around on their fat asses and waved admonishing fingers.
And where did all these big ideas for Iraqs future come from? Idle minds?
That’s the rift between nationalists—those Iraqis who, like most of their countrymen, oppose the presence of foreign troops on the ground, the wholesale privatization of Iraq’s natural resources and the division of their country into ethnic and sectarian fiefdoms, and Iraqi separatists who at least tolerate the occupation—if not support it—and favor a loose sectarian/ethnic-based federation of semiautonomous states held together by a minimal central government in Baghdad.
Pre-occupation the majority of Iraqis and the UN were firmly latched to Saddams wise, if strict, foreskin.
Twas US soldiers who died bringing nascent democracy to Iraq, so yeah, we should have a say in it. The UN needs to find another foreskin to suckle.
I don’t believe the point is that the US shouldn’t have a say in it (that’s arguable but a different debate), but that the representatives that were elected (with great fanfare) by Iraqis obviously should.
UN tries to resettle Palestinians trapped in refugee camps on Iraqi-Syrian border
9 November 2007 – The United Nations refugee agency said today that it is continuing to search for feasible resettlement options for almost 2,000 Palestinians stuck in camps on or near the Iraqi-Syrian border as recent sandstorms worsen the already-difficult living conditions inside the camps.
The situation inside the Al-Tanf camp, located in the no-man’s land between Iraq and Syria, and the Al-Waleed camp, located in the Iraqi desert near the Syrian border, “remains very precarious,” especially as winter approaches, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Ron Redmond told journalists in Geneva.
The population inside Al-Tanf has swollen to 437 in recent weeks after Syrian authorities transferred 97 Palestinians who had entered the country from Iraq with forged documents.
The numbers are Al-Waleed, which is already home to 1,560 refugees, are also expected to increase as new families keep arriving from Baghdad to escape ongoing threats and attacks. UNHCR staff report that already 30 to 40 people arrive at Al-Waleed each week.
“We continue to seek better solutions, including resettlement options, for the refugees – both within and outside the region,” Mr. Redmond said, stressing that vulnerable and sick children who do not have access to medical care in Iraq are getting priority attention.
So far, one family of eight that has several sick children has been resettled in Norway, while 11 other medical cases for resettlement are pending approval.
Mr. Redmond said Chile and Sudan are the only other countries to have given positive indications to resettling other Palestinian medical cases, such as cancer patients and children with birth defects.
So where the fuck is the noble world welcoming the poor downtrodden with free health care?
In the interim, UNHCR is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian and Syrian Red Crescent Societies to improve living conditions inside Al-Tanf and Al-Waleed.
In a related development, the last batch of Palestinian families who had been living in Ruweished camp in Jordan after fleeing in Iraq have been resettled in Brazil. The camp was once home to 1,000 refugees, who have now resettled in many countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States.
The US invited Palis in? How did that slip by the Jews behind Bushitler and 9/11?
Another 13,000 Palestinians are estimated to still live in Baghdad, where they face ongoing threats and attacks, in part because of perceptions that Palestinians received preferential treatment under the regime of Saddam
Good reminder of how I have had better things to do lately......thanks!
Asimbonanga. Busy men can only shed a tear for the Iraqis when and where it fits in their busy schedules, or the pain they share becomes unbearable. Fear not, the masses are with you every step of the way. Well, for the most part…
Black folk want to build a black nation that can specifically address their needs. Mexicans want to regain control or reclaim the land the Spanish robbed them for. Whites...well I’m not exactly sure what their issues are--maybe protecting the ozone layers. :) Sarcasm...White brothas and sista’s are in the struggle too. But what is the common thread that runs between all racial groups? We all wish we had more money to spend, more time with loved ones, better schools to send our children, and so forth. Well what prevents us from realizing these attainable and realistic goals...greed. The wealth of this country is produced by the masses yet it is concentrated in the hands of few. Resources need to be equally distributed to bring about fairness and a just and equitable society. WE MUST UNITE AS A CLASS. IF YOU DONT OWN THE INSTITUTION/ COMPANY WHERE YOU WORK, IF YOU STRESS ON HIGH GAS PRICES, IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR CHILD NOT GETTING A QUALITY EDUCATION, IF YOU FIT THIS DESCRIPTION WE HAVE A COMMON ENEMY. Once we can start to deal with this problem we can effectively address other problems. Working people must come together to fight the good fight.
The United Nations Security Council, with support from the British and American delegations, is poised to cut the Iraqi parliament out of one of the most significant decisions the young government will make: when foreign troops will depart. It’s an ugly and unconstitutional move, designed solely to avoid asking an Iraqi legislature for a blank check for an endless military occupation that it’s in no mood to give, and it will make a mockery of Iraq’s nascent democracy (which needs all the legitimacy it can get).
BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 — American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the “surge” to depart as planned.
Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of United States forces in Baghdad, also said that American troops had yet to clear some 13 percent of the city, including Sadr City and several other areas controlled by Shiite militias. But, he said, “there’s just no question” that violence had declined since a spike in June.
“Murder victims are down 80 percent from where they were at the peak,” and attacks involving improvised bombs are down 70 percent, he said.
General Fil attributed the decline to improvements in the Iraqi security forces, a cease-fire ordered by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, the disruption of financing for insurgents, and, most significant, Iraqis’ rejection of “the rule of the gun.”
His comments, in a broad interview over egg rolls and lo mein in a Green Zone conference room, were the latest in a series of upbeat assessments he and other commanders have offered in recent months. But his descriptions revealed a city still in transition: tormented by its past, struggling to find a better future.
“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” he said, while noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced families are returning to their homes, but a majority of them are still afraid to go back to neighborhoods now segregated by sect. “Clearly,” General Fil said, “it will take some time for Baghdad to restore itself to what it was.”
He and other military commanders have maintained for months that the conditions for national reconciliation have been met. They argue that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, has been weakened. They cite in particular the rise of the American-supported citizen volunteers — 67,000 nationwide, according to military figures.
And though Sunni extremist groups could revive and “reinfest very quickly,” General Fil said, Iraq’s leaders should now have the peace they need to build a trusted, cross-sectarian government. But progress toward that, he said, has been “disappointing.”
Soon, General Fil said, there will be fewer troops for the Iraqis to rely on. “Already we are at a point where we’ll see that as the surge forces depart the city, we’ll see a natural decline in numbers, and I’m very comfortable where that comes to,” he said.
With less than two months to go before his division heads home, General Fil offered a mixed vision of the military’s role for the coming year. He said that if 2007 was the year of security, 2008 would probably be “a year of reconstruction, a year of infrastructure repair, and a year of, if there’s going to be a surge, a year of the surge of the economy.”
He acknowledged that dislodging Shiite militias from control of gasoline, government ministries and other sources of power would be difficult.
The biggest threat to Baghdad’s security is now Shiite militias, he said. Infrastructure weaknesses and unemployment are also serious obstacles, which American efforts at the local level cannot fully address because “these become national-level problems,” he said. Violence, meanwhile, despite recent declines in some areas, has moved to some degree to rural villages and towns from major cities, American and Iraqi commanders said.
On Wednesday, two children were killed when a roadside bomb exploded on a farm road in Wasit Province. South of Baquba, Iraqi army patrols found 17 bodies, blindfolded, handcuffed and decayed. Four were found headless about 200 yards away. It was the second mass grave discovered in a rural area this week.
American troops have recently focused more operations on the farm towns and dusty villages of the country, with the latest coming this week outside Kirkuk in the north.
The operations are aimed at maintaining what General Fil described as vital momentum. The greatest challenge of the coming months, he said, will be satisfying the delicate hopes and expectations of Iraqis, who see security not as an end, but just as a beginning.
Stability, General Fil said, “is within sight but not yet within touch.”
“Close, but not yet within touch.”
Yet this was on page 19 of the NYT. No liberal bias here.
Yes, excellent article there about the surge/Iraq. Genius.
No worse than this tripe that you lovingly lap up:
While the Bush administration frequently invokes sunny visions of spreading democracy and “freedom” around the world, the fact remains that democracy is incompatible with its goals in Iraq.
As far back as the middle of 2004, more than nine out of 10 Iraqis said the U.S.-led forces were “occupiers,” and only 2 percent called them “liberators.”
So tell us when and where US occupation hindered, even destroyed “nascent democracies” around the world. The Soviets never offered any of their republics democracy, but that never bothered anyone.
The Iraqis’ idea of self-determination thus far has been to settle old scores by killing and maiming each other and theri occupiers. This practice seems to waning.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said suicide attacks and other bombings in the Iraqi capital had dropped dramatically since last year, calling the fall a sign of the end of sectarian violence and announcing a
push for an amnesty program for insurgents
But dont fret just yet, I already have the True Facts you already know.
As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: “Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?”
Simply put, the answer is no. The surge is not working and George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan were not right.
Without reading it any further I can almost bet it talks about how Iraqis yearn for peace and it was alone that al-Sadr dude’s call for it that silenced the acts of self-defence against the occupiers and their supporters.
After all, its the war “on” not “in” Iraq. Its not even a “war”, its a for-profit genocide.
War on Iraq
Mercenaries Working for U.S. Casually Kill Baghdad Taxi Driver
Who Exactly Is the Enemy in Iraq?
Veterans’ Suicides: a Hidden Cost of Bush’s Wars
Dems Lead in Counterattack to Stop Iran Conflict
Dissent and War: Judge Blocks Second Trial for Watada; High-School Protesters Face Expulsion
al-Sadr has toned down being a brutal asshole 24/7, who cares why. The US has enabled the Iraqis to show their culture. I’m afraid I’m not impressed.
If the “take, clear and hold” strategy of clearing guerrillas out of Baghdad neighborhoods has been successful, and if Iraqi security forces can continue the “hold” stage on their own, and if Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias don’t reemerge in the neighborhoods that the US abandons in the capital, then violence looks set to hold at some 10,000 civilian deaths a year. That level of violence is horrible, among the worst in the world. (But then we know that those who promised garlands, then democracy and secularism, then peace both in Iraq and in Israel & Palestine, have declared that an ongoing low intensity guerrilla war is a glorious victory and is turning the corner)
More Iraqis are still leaving Baghdad than returning to it.
So the piece was probably put on page 19 because it’s a claim, at a certain point in time, which may or may not turn out to be true.
If the “take, clear and hold” strategy of clearing guerrillas out of Baghdad neighborhoods has been successful, and if Iraqi security forces can continue the “hold” stage on their own, and if Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias don’t reemerge in the neighborhoods that the US abandons in the capital, then violence looks set to hold at some 10,000 civilian deaths a year. That level of violence is horrible, among the worst in the world. (But then we know that those who promised garlands, then democracy and secularism, then peace both in Iraq and in Israel & Palestine, have declared that an ongoing low intensity guerrilla war is a glorious victory and is turning the corner)
More Iraqis are still leaving Baghdad than returning to it.
So the piece was probably put on page 19 because it’s a claim, at a certain point in time, which may or may not turn out to be true.
Hmm, whats the death rate per capita compared to say places in Africa or South America?
I mean, it sucks. But not all deaths are sectarian related (some are just crime)… but the bottom line is it is not our fault that a ME country is not Switzerland. Which raises the question, good or bad relative to what? And I’m sure there was less crime in the old USSR police state th
