[theolein]

Last night I was watching TV5, a Francophone TV channel (every day from a different French speaking country), and in the news they had a piece about the bombings of Iraqi police stations.

There's been quite a lot of attacks on Iraqi police stations, although they seem to get less press than attacks on International organisations or Coalition troops. They showed footage taken from the scene and the crater where the bomb went off was friggin huge, to put it mildly. It was around three to four meters (yards) deep and around 10 meters (yards) wide. They reporter said it had been a suicide bomber dressed in an Iraqi police uniform.

They went to the hospital where one of the policemen who survived the attack was being treated to interview him, and while they were there two other Iraqi policemen, friends of his, arrived. In typical fashion (they seem to be real hotheads down there and enjoy screaming and shouting at the top of there lungs, but perhaps I would do the same if I had just survived a bomb blast) they started shouting about being left to do their own cleaning up by the Americans (Apparently American armoured vehicles just stood by and watched afterwards and there was footage of the American compound which is about 100 meters(yards) away).

What I found disturbing was that the survivor was so angry about this that he had just quit his job and threatened, in front of the camera, to join the Iraqi resistance and attack the US troops after this. One of his policemen friends claimed that the attack was in fact done by a US missile (he said he saw the missile) in spite of the statement that it was done by a suicide bomber. I found it also strange that the crater was so big as other footage of car bombs that I've seen haven't left such huge craters, although I fail to see why the US would use a missile on their own allies.

After watching this, I had the feeling that Iraq is lost. I have no idea whether such reactions are just local isolated phenomena or whether I'm just pessimistically influenced by a standard news report, which often tend to focus on negative things. I just had the feeling then that the effort is useless and will eventually result in a type of Vietnam, where the Coalition has little or no trust or friends amongst the local population.

I'm not trying to troll or flamebait, as I personally would like to see Iraq become a peaceful democracy and I hate the idea of anybody dying violently, but I somehow just can't see it happening.

What is your take? What do you think of the situation in Iraq given the events happening there? (And yes, I realise that this will probably degenerate into the usual flamewar within one or two posts, sadly)

[kvm_mkdb]

After all that has happened in the last months, I've come to believe that the aims of the war were never to make Iraq a peaceful, democratic country.
Bush might be a fool - but Perle, Wolfowitz, etc. are not. I don't think they sincerely believed Iraqis would welcome the occupiers open-armed. I am highly suspicious of the so widely trumpeted lack of post-war strategy.

I really don't like the neocons and despise their actions, but don't think they're idiots.

[spacefreak]

All reports show that these attacks are carried out by an extreme minority. We've committed to maintaining the peace, so that is what we have to do.

It would be nice if the UN helped out. I don't care if Bush "ruffled their feathers". This reconstruction is of ultimate importance to the people who live in Iraq.

If the UN was truly interested in helping people, they'd have been there by now. They'd have released a statement saying "Although we disagreed with the call to war, we do emphathize with the plight of the Iraqi people and are hereby coming in to bail out the Coaliton", and then deployed tens of thousands of peacekeepers.

The UN's not interested, so the Coalition must do it alone. The failure to establish peace, order, and prosperity in Iraq has long-term, worldwide implications - mostly with the War on Terror.

[eklipse]

Prior to the invasion, a friend of mine predicted that after a couple of months of US occupation, the Iraqis would be crying out for Saddam to come back. At the time, I laughed it off - after all - it sounds ridiculous.

Now I'm not so sure.

[theolein]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
All reports show that these attacks are carried out by an extreme minority. We've committed to maintaining the peace, so that is what we have to do.

It would be nice if the UN helped out. I don't care if Bush "ruffled their feathers". This reconstruction is of ultimate importance to the people who live in Iraq.

If the UN was truly interested in helping people, they'd have been there by now. They'd have released a statement saying "Although we disagreed with the call to war, we do emphathize with the plight of the Iraqi people and are hereby coming in to bail out the Coaliton", and then deployed tens of thousands of peacekeepers.

The UN's not interested, so the Coalition must do it alone. The failure to establish peace, order, and prosperity in Iraq has long-term, worldwide implications - mostly with the War on Terror.

I'm not so sure of that. I realise that a lot of Americans feel somehow betrayed by the the UN, French etc opposing the war, but I think that that blame is perhaps a bit misplaced here. Remember that the UN was the target and victim of the biggest bombing yet in Iraq (The head of the mission was killed as well as 82 other people IIRC), and as a consequence pulled out most of it's staff.

There was also a donors conference in Madrid a while ago where some $13 billion was collected. That pales in comparison to the $87 billion from the US, but remember that most of that goes to the US military.

I think that many are simply frightened off by the security situation and feel that they would be targets in Iraq. I'm sure that the number of actual resistance fighters in Iraq is an extreme minority, but I think that they are having a huge effect out of proportion to their actual military strength.

The thing that would really interest me is to know how the Iraqi people themselves feel. I know that a lot of the media focuses on bombings and counter-insurgency operations, and that there are some news outlets that go the other way and paint things in a rosy light that ignores the negatives, but I would wonder what the real feelings on the ground are.

I wonder how the Coalition troops get on with the locals, for instance (I don't mean Tikrit or Fallujah, where it is pretty obvious that they're practically still at war). Is it true that troops are mostly only safe within armoured compounds, or do soldiers actually have time and interest in communicating with the locals? Does the majority of the Iraqi population support the Coalition or do they see them only as occupiers? How big is the support for the resistance amongst Iraqis themselves?

One would think that since far more Iraqis have been killed in attacks and bombings that the Iraqis would despise the resistance, but on the other hand it seems that very many Iraqis have been killed by Coalition forces in crossfire or otherwise.

Keep in mind that I am not against the overthrow of Saddam by the US/UK. I just don't see the situation as improving.

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by theolein:
I think that many are simply frightened off by the security situation and feel that they would be targets in Iraq. I'm sure that the number of actual resistance fighters in Iraq is an extreme minority, but I think that they are having a huge effect out of proportion to their actual military strength.

Is this the kind of UN you want - one that gets scared away by acts of terror carried out by an extreme minority? Not me.

[theolein]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
Is this the kind of UN you want - one that gets scared away by acts of terror carried out by an extreme minority? Not me.

No, of course it isn't. I won't defend the UN's decision to pull out it's staff, although I sympathise with both points of view (that the UN should have stayed on principle but that no one wanted to endanger their lives without a mandate).

But that isn't really the original question though, is it?

[lil'babykitten]

I don't believe that these attacks are being carried out by a minority-If that were the case then why are they so successful in stalling all efforts to put in place a legitimate government and get on with the so-called rebuilding?

Right now we have a US appointed Council with virtually no powers and no legitimacy from the Iraqi people. If the US were to leave tomorrow every member of that council would be shot and Iraq would collapse further in to Civil War. If the Coalition stays, (which it appears to be doing-for now) then the focus remains on defending themselves against daily attacks from people who (rightly) regard them as occupiers.
So what to do? At one time I would have said get the US and UK troops out and get the UN peacekeepers in. But I don't see that as a viable option now because a) America still has it's own interests in the region to fulfil and b) The Iraqis do not want any body occupying their country for any length of time. There are far too many different groups of people to be represented and no strong leader has emerged from any of them.

The solution? there is no easy one. The best thing they could do is to put a concerted effort in to building up a government full of people who have the legitimate authority to govern Iraq. That means they have to be chosen by Iraqis in elections. If the larger population accepts the government, only then will the situation calm down.

[The Ayatollah]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I don't believe that these attacks are being carried out by a minority

If you had studied this stuff, you'd know that a very small group (and 'small' in Iraq could be 5000) can cause a lot of trouble. Simply dismissing it as 'I don't believe' without being informed on the subject is a lame position.

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by The Ayatollah:
If you had studied this stuff, you'd know that a very small group (and 'small' in Iraq could be 5000) can cause a lot of trouble.

You have expert knowledge? lets hear it then.

There are enough of them to completely stall the process. That's quite a problem.

[Ayelbourne]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
They'd (the UN)have released a statement saying "Although we disagreed with the call to war, we do emphathize with the plight of the Iraqi people and are hereby coming in to bail out the Coaliton", and then deployed tens of thousands of peacekeepers.

To quote the police officer in Scarface:
"It's your tree, Frank. You're sittin' in it."

The situation that the US/UK find themselves in with Iraq is unquestionably of their own making. Truly, nobody wants to see civilian or Coalition casualties (and that is one of the reasons unilateral action was opposed by so many), but on the other hand I can't imagine anyone being very enthusiastic about being dropped into the middle of the ongoing firefight the Coalition started. The US administration swore up one side of the street and down the other that it knew exactly what it was doing and that it could do it alone if need be - so what's changed? Now it needs to be "bailed out"?

Originally posted by spacefreak:
The UN's not interested, so the Coalition must do it alone. The failure to establish peace, order, and prosperity in Iraq has long-term, worldwide implications - mostly with the War on Terror.

Hey, the way I remember it, the U.N. was in there, doing it their way - and without the daily attrition rate. That wasn't nearly enough for the US/UK. Nothing would do but that they had to rush in and put things on a combat basis. Time will certainly tell if that rashness was justified (although it's not looking too promising at the moment - and Moki's clock has already run out!), but since the Coalition took that responsibility onto itself - against the advice of just about everyone else - it must now own up to that responsibility. To lay the onus for a growing sense of debacle at the doorstep of the U.N. would be surrealistically hypocritical.

Violence begets violence, and you reap what you sow.

[theolein]

Originally posted by The Ayatollah:
If you had studied this stuff, you'd know that a very small group (and 'small' in Iraq could be 5000) can cause a lot of trouble. Simply dismissing it as 'I don't believe' without being informed on the subject is a lame position.

I think combining you and the term "study" is what constitutes an oxymoron.

[The Ayatollah]

Originally posted by theolein:
I think combining you and the term "study" is what constitutes an oxymoron.

and the substance of your post is...what? Nothing other than a personal attack. How intelligent and high-brow.

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by theolein:
No, of course it isn't. I won't defend the UN's decision to pull out it's staff...But that isn't really the original question though, is it?

The original question is irrelevent to the Iraqi people. What matters is their security and the result.

This is where I expect the UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

[Troll]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
This is where I expect the UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

I can't believe we STILL see this kind of post in here. People still don't understand that the UN is not an independent body. It's just a collection of states. The UN doesn't have its own disagreements with anyone and the UN is not able to do the right thing for the Iraqi people! That task is up to the nations that make up the UN. The US has dug a hole and now expects the rest of the world to jump into it. I think it'll take a bit more persuading than calling them cowards!

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by Troll:
I can't believe we STILL see this kind of post in here. People still don't understand that the UN is not an independent body. It's just a collection of states.

Whatever phrasing you desire doesn't change the point. People understand the UN just fine.

I repeat with correction for Toll's sake - this is where I expect the (members of the) UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by theolein:
In typical fashion (they seem to be real hotheads down there and enjoy screaming and shouting at the top of there lungs, but perhaps I would do the same if I had just survived a bomb blast)

There's your problem right there. Hot-head mentality ingrained into their society. People who fire AK47s to celebrate stuff, etc..

(I can tell you from personal experience that surviving an attack doesn't make you want to jump up and down).

[theolein]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
The original question is irrelevent to the Iraqi people. What matters is their security and the result.

This is where I expect the UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

Well, I actually agree on the UN helping out the Iraqi people, although I'm not so sure that sending in more soldiers would change much (there's already quite a lot of soldiers there as it is) if that's what you mean. If you mean humanitarian aid then I agree with you and it's one of things I didn't like about the UN pulling out, that there would be one less organisation helping out.

I know that the UN and the Red Cross were targeted specifically to get them to leave, and I doubt it was Al Qaida, but rather Saddam loyalists as it serves their purposes in isolating the US/UK. What struck me though is that no one mentioned demonstrations in Iraq in support of the UN after the bombing. Contrast this to the complaining and demonstrating that gets done when the US shoots an innocent bystander.

My point is then similar to what I wrote originally: Is it that the Iraqis are so scared of loyalists that they won't do anything to anger them or is it that they are misguided enough to think that the UN is partially responsible for the state that Iraq is in? I remember reading an article somewhere making this claim (BBC perhaps).

[kvm_mkdb]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
There's your problem right there. Hot-head mentality ingrained into their society. People who fire AK47s to celebrate stuff, etc..

Ah - those savages...

[Myriad]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
Whatever phrasing you desire doesn't change the point. People understand the UN just fine.

I repeat with correction for Toll's sake - this is where I expect the (members of the) UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

Since you recognize that the U.N. by itself is not capable of helping the Iraqi people out of a disaster, you must also recognize that there is no state in the world that owes anything when it comes to the reconstruction of Iraq. There are dozens of states around the world where people are suffering and in need of external assistance, some more so than Iraq, but there is no cry for the international community to help them.

For a state to put effort into the reconstruction of Iraq, it means sacrificing efforts domestically, and putting up with the costs where there would be no perceived benefit. The United States and the U.K. started this war, and they are the only ones obligated to do anything about Iraq. No other state is morally, ethically, or legally attached to the fate of the Iraqi people.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by kvm_mkdb:
Ah - those savages...

It's looking that way, ain't it?

[Ayelbourne]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
There's your problem right there. Hot-head mentality ingrained into their society. People who fire AK47s to celebrate stuff, etc...

Perhaps this is true - and perhaps not. Personally, I have no idea. However, as far as hot-headedness goes, it should be noted that the Iraqis were not the ones who started the shooting this year.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Ayelbourne:
Perhaps this is true - and perhaps not. Personally, I have no idea. However, as far as hot-headedness goes, it should be noted that the Iraqis were not the ones who started the shooting this year.

This, of course, is true. We did start the shooting.

I believe that the allied forces completely misread the social fabric of Iraqi society though. I think we over-estimated community spirit and the probability of the people working together to form cohesive social structure.

Maybe it's how they are as a culture. Maybe it's the result of 30 years of being under Saddam. Maybe it's a reliance on external authority (obviously gained from the former regime) which makes them tend to rely on the allies to get their society back on its feet - when in fact it should be them doing it.
They're desperate to get rid of their occupiers and do things for themselves yet overly-reliant on them at the same time. They don't know what they want.

No disrespect to the Iraqis, of course. 30 years is a long time in which to forget how to do things for yourselves.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
The original question is irrelevent to the Iraqi people. What matters is their security and the result.

This is where I expect the UN to put aside disagreements and do the right thing for the Iraqi people.

u mean the UNSC.

[nas t. ho]

Originally posted by Troll:
The US has dug a hole and now expects the rest of the world to jump into it. I think it'll take a bit more persuading than calling them cowards!

the way i see it, the us and its "coalition" forces have created such a mess that its going to take decades, if not centuries, to establish any kind of "decent" relationship with "muslim" nations and their citizens.

as i stated in another thread, iraq is quickly becoming what afghanistan was in the mid to late 80s, where the soviet army screwed up in a big way.

instead of concentrating on "making" allies in the arab/muslim world, britain and especilally the us have done everything in their power to create a breeding ground for a whole new generation of radicals and soon to be terrorists.

too bad that the ones who are (going to be) suffering from the worst "campaign" in the history of mankind, are usually the ones strongly opposed to military "solutions" (i.e. the italiens in iraq, iraqi civilians, turks, people working in the wtc).

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by nas t. ho:
the way i see it, the us and its "coalition" forces have created such a mess that its going to take decades, if not centuries, to establish any kind of "decent" relationship with "muslim" nations and their citizens.

agreed. In fact, I really can't think of a credible method to reestablish a working relationship...everything I think of ultimately comes back to the eventualy inability to trust our intentions....for very good reason.

but I see no motivation for the muslim world or any other portion of the world for that matter, to trust or believe us. what have we given them to suggest trusting us would be wise?

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
All reports show that these attacks are carried out by an extreme minority. We've committed to maintaining the peace, so that is what we have to do.

It would be nice if the UN helped out. I don't care if Bush "ruffled their feathers". This reconstruction is of ultimate importance to the people who live in Iraq.

If the UN was truly interested in helping people, they'd have been there by now. They'd have released a statement saying "Although we disagreed with the call to war, we do emphathize with the plight of the Iraqi people and are hereby coming in to bail out the Coaliton", and then deployed tens of thousands of peacekeepers.

The UN's not interested, so the Coalition must do it alone. The failure to establish peace, order, and prosperity in Iraq has long-term, worldwide implications - mostly with the War on Terror.

Amazing how far you'll twist yourself into a pretzel to avoid even the appearance of criticism of the administration. Simply amazing.

Since when did UN peacekeepers get the spacefreak Seal of Conpetence? How many times have you derided the "peaceniks" who insisted that the US should hand it over to the pathologically incompetent UN?

You also seem to have completely forgotten that the men in charge keep telling us that they don't need more troops in Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld has categorically insisted for months that sending more troops would be a terrible idea and increase the resistance.

Is Rummy wrong?

Or are you arguing that 130,000 Blue Helmets are capable of doing what 130,000 US soldiers can't?

[sanity assassin]

Well, seems like that 'extreme minority' now encompasses Iraqi children.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._630&printer=1

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by sanity assassin:
Well, seems like that 'extreme minority' now encompasses Iraqi children.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._630&printer=1

Pretty gruesome.