Getting into it a little
A comment that got long enough, and hopefully good enough, to make it onto the front page...


Cyetain, I didn't mean to emphasize that you were comparing Vietnam to Iraq, rather that seems to be the gist of the articles you're linking to, with minimal commentary. The theme I'd give the links is not "the cost of war," but the "Iraq quagmire."
And just because the stuff you post doesn't come from the Op/Ed pages doesn't mean it isn't opinion or slanted. Check a couple of the Reuters pieces you've linked to lately on Yahoo. Where is the reporting in them? Just as you characterize Michael Gove as another neocon towing the line, I could call the authors, sometimes nameless, of the pieces you've linked just some more transnational progressive activist journalists promulgating their narrative of choice, with which you appear sympathetic. From your comment to my post:

Where the Afghanistan elections REALLY a smashing success? At what cost? Is the government in control of the entire country? even a majority of the country? Have the schools for women and the new rights given to them continued?

I would say yes, in that they occurred, the elections were a success. Smashing success? Too early to tell. That's not a cop-out, that's the nature of measuring progress in these matters, which after the violent revolution part can tend to be slow. I think the new government is still in a period of consolidation, and that the issue of federal control over the country is a tricky one. There's a multiethnic population with numerous flavors of Islam, many of which don't play well together, so there's a question as to how much centralized control is even desirable. Clearly, though, the country needs a strong enough central government and military/police force to encourage warlords and aspiring warlords to work within system. Whether this will succeed is for me at least a mystery at this point. But I like Afghanistan's chances better than I did under the Taliban.

As for the rights of women, I think that women were clearly worse off under the previous regime, and regardless of how retrograde the current government gets that will be true. I think it's fair to say that the trend in that country has recently been towards more rights, rather than fewer, for women. Broadly speaking, that is the trend worldwide, even if it's a slow trend, though of course Shari'a areas are a notable if not statistically speaking widespread exception to this trend. This is not to say that regressive forces arising from the cultures in Afghanistan won't reassert themselves and slacken the pace of improvement or worse. Just that this will hopefully be harder to do as the civic infrastructure improves.

Anyway the author continues to flog stories about Saddam hold outs and foreigners. Even the head of Intelligence IN IRAQ doesn't believe those myths. And the fact that they are not united is supposed to give us hope? No I think that means they want us out so they can kill each other in a massive civil war.

The disunity is supposed to give us hope that the insurgents can be defeated, I think was the author's point, as was contrasting this situation with the one in Vietnam. I also think it's fair to note that the insurgents, at least the Iraqi ones, are primarily Sunnis, who are a minority population. Their prospects in an all-out civil war are not good. I don't doubt that many Shi'a and Kurds would like to kill the Sunnis, and are thinking about doing that at the first available opportunity. For the time being, the Kurds especially but the Shi'a also, perhaps because of nothing other than self-interest arising from their majority status, seem to be behind the elections. So the people most agitated at this point are the ones who have the most to lose from a civil war, and the most to gain from the restoration of the Ba'athist regime. I think this explanation, rather than insurgents trying to chase the US out so they can be slaughtered by people they and their kin have been subjugating for decades (and now terrorizing), is the big motivator in the insurgency. Why are you so convinced that this is a myth? Your argument--that the insurgents are fighting to get us out so they can take the gloves off for the civil war--is muddled, if it hasn't yet achieved mythical status.

My favorite part of the article is when he blames Saudi Arabia for the size of the troop presence and the execution of the initial invasion... AWESOME.

I liked that one, too, the more for never having heard it before. It's a pleasing melange of boldness, vagueness, lack of attribution but with a frisson of plausibility. It's worth looking into, but I'm not accepting it at face value either. Interestingly, the author doesn't mention Turkey's last minute closing of her gates to our troops as having played any factor in our ability to secure Iraq or get a lot of troops there in a hurry. No one of note is really mentioning it, but based on things I recall reading in the aftermath of Turkey's snub and amidst the chaos following the fall of Baghdad, it seems like this might have had a real impact on subsequent events.

My post have one "meta" concern... the cost of war, this war, any war. There are reasons to bare those costs, what are yours?

Oh, the standard neocon claptrap about fighting fascism, ending tyranny, encouraging democracy and representative government, and last but certainly not least, national security in the global age. Getting a quarter of a million friendly troops on two of Iran's borders also pleases me, for the same reasons I've just mentioned.

Simon says:

Daniel fails to acknowledge the potential importance of simply recognizing the fact that these things are happening. Now, he seems to believe that Cyetain is either skewing the facts or getting his information from bad sources, and that may or not be the case, I don’t know.

I readily acknowledge the importance of gathering information, of trying to figure out what is happenning. I don't think that Cyetain's posts are telling the whole story, though that's not a criticism, since that isn't necessarily his goal nor need it be. It's fair to say that he's focusing on the bad news, which is abundant even in a war that is going well (which is not to say that this one is, though I think it's going better than someone whose introduction to the micro-facts came from this blog might think). I've taken issue with some of Cyetain's links, in which the reporting, if there is any, is minimal, and the underhanded (because it's portrayed as news) analysis is on full display. I will point out what I think is low quality information in an age when there are fewer excuses for it. Anyway, here's a link to good news about the war in Iraq, in the WSJ Op/Ed. I don't vouch for all the details, and yes, Cyetain, it does appear in an Op/Ed, but the reporting looks to be superior to some of your Yahoo News/Reuters blurbs.
- posted by Anonymous @ Tuesday, January 18, 2005