Iraq’s top army officer has criticised as premature the planned US troop withdrawal by the end of next year.
Lt Gen Babaker Zebari warned that the Iraqi military might not be ready to take control for another decade.
The US says it is on target to end combat operations by the end of August and meet its deadline for removing all troops by the end of 2011.
It has 64,000 soldiers in Iraq. About 50,000 will remain until 2011 to train Iraqi forces and protect US interests.
This is not a ‘good’ intelligence indicator.
What will the situation be in Iraq, or the former Iraq, five to ten years from now?
What will the ‘wise people,’ five to ten years from now, be retroactively saying about what those persons possessing political ‘authority’ and U. S. Government executive authority ‘today’ should have been doing ‘today’ to have precluded a disastrous outcome in Iraq?
In a nutshell, how will this Administration and Congress be judged five to ten years from now regarding its actions/inactions in Iraq?
Further, what price will we have to pay for today’s actions/inactions?
AnglicanFirst, I have to say — it’s time for Iraq to pull their own weight.
They’ve had years — YEARS — of our blood and our money. They need to build a country now.
My own opinion is that — as with so many other third world countries — they are unable to do it. They do not have the home-grown leadership.
But that is not the job of America — to force other countries to grow their own leadership and become mature.
Sarah,
I understand your argument and agree with it when the third world country involved is isolated and otherwise will have little impact on our national security.
However, Iraq is smack in the center ofthe geo-political dynamics of the Middle East and the Middle Eastern countries are the major players in determining the uninterrupted availability of affordably priced oil to the industrialized/industrializing world.
The key players in the geo-politics of oil are not small and poorly run third world countries. They are China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, the European nations, and the USA.
When the price and availability of Middle Eastern oil is impacted by Middle Eastern instability and ‘flat-out’ Middle Eastern ‘weirdness,’ the whole world is affected in ways that can very well lead to major military/naval confrontations between major and some not-so-major world powers.
The scenarios are not difficult to posit and some of the not-so-unlikely outcomes are ‘very scary.’ The stakes can become so high that the use of nuclear weapons on land or at-sea is not an impossibility. Particularly their use by a country that finds that it cannot otherwise ‘have its way.’
Well we can spend the billions we would spend on trying to make Iraq a civilized country [answer: not gonna happen] on finding our own oil reserves — we have plenty of those in numerous numerous places. We do not need to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
Here’s what I’m hearing.
1) Iraq cannot do it.
2) Therefore we must do it — forever.
That’s what I’m hearing.
I’m not hearing that there’s a time line or any kind of reasonable limit at all as to when Iraq will be able. The answer — as I think is obvious to all of us by now — is never. The “ten years” thing is merely a transparent, random, tossed out number, just as the former “three years” and “five years” was as well. Those are just filler to the reality — which is “never.”
Sarah, we do not need to be dependent on Middle East oil – even today we get about a quarter of our imported oil from there – but some of our allies are very dependent on the region, especially Japan.
I am not old enough to remember what happened the last time Japan tried to secure its own oil supplies, but I know people who are. I’m not suggesting that Japan is able or willing to repeat WWII, but I do think that having spent the last 65 years being the guarantor of Japan’s energy security, we can’t just cut them off now.
Especially when China, who already buys more than half of their imported oil from the Middle East, is in the equation. They are, or can be soon, in a position to use military force to guarantee their oil supplies, and I’d much rather they didn’t.
Reply to #4.
You are correct about freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign dependence on oil.
The solutions are available and reasonable. They were available and reasonable back in 1973.
The question is, “Why haven’t we acted in our own self-interest to pursue those solutions?”
The answer is that we have been mis-lead and mis-served by our elected politicians.
The solution is actually ‘in our hands,’ but we as voters need to do something about achieving those solutions.
#6, if what you say is true about available and reasonable solutions, please elaborate and cite sources. Somehow, if that is true and was true in 1973 (which I vividly remember) I can’t believe we would not have pursued those solutions – look at gasohol, solar energy, wind, etc. None are economically feasible. Coal and nuclear – maybe, but environmental problems have beset them.
Sarah and AF, you both are justified in your positions in my opinion. But I would interject that if we leave Iraq in a vulnerable position, we have to answer for being the ones who created the vulnerability. Forever, we and the rest of the world played Iraq and Iran off against each other, to keep peace in the Middle East by making the two biggest bullies there have to be wary of each other, so they had to leave the little guys alone. Iraq is no longer able to stand toe to toe with Iran, without our army being there. So, leaving Iraq too soon simply turns the ME over to Iran. Do we really want to do that? And are we really sure that this time table for withdrawal is not politically motivated? Having our troops there is not costing us anymore than having them somewhere else, as of right now. In fact, bringing them home will cost a lot more in the short term than leaving them there for a while longer. The world may regret this rigid time table this Administration has put us on.
Reply to #7.
Billy,
Sorry for the delay. I had to drive into town and back from our farm.
In my comment I was referring to further exploration and development of our domestic oil and natural gas resources, both onshore and offshore; build many more nuclear reactors, like France which currently generates most of its electric power using fission reactors; developing our oil shale resources so that they will be readily available during times of oil embargo and when the cost of crude finally shoots up and stays up; further developing our vast coal resources and the ways in which we utilize coal for energy; revamping the design of our trucks and automobiles so that they run on both gas/diesel engines and batteries through electric dive systems of a type that have been used in submarines for 100 years; etc.
Each of these approaches has its enemies and these enemies have enervated and bought off our politicians since the 1973 oil embargo.
The enemies include varius environmental groups, anti-nuclear groups, the labor unions associated with the auto/truck industry, the manufacturers of autos and trucks; the oil and coal industries; and states and municipalities that feel that they would be adversely affected; NIMBYs (not in my backyard) types in general.
As for environmental problems, they are a fact of life and we need to accept that fact while seeking to avoid and minimize the negative problems.
From my point of view, the dense clustering of human beings in cities is a major social problem, but I have taken measures to avoid and minimize the impact of cities on my life.
Thanks, AF, #8. Good thoughts.