OK Asshole, so what would you do?
Before this blog started up, I spent more time in actual online debates on Slate. It was valuable experience, but I had to navigate through a lot of idiots before having an occasional good debate with someone who knew their stuff. It got tiresome after a while though, and I have to admit, my stress level is doing a lot better now that I'm bathed in the lefty blogosphere.
But recently, I left a comment at the Write Wing Conspiracy, a 'conservative' blog here in Seattle that also blogwhores over at the Seattle Blogs trackback site (I ping them with any of my posts of local interest). I'd read a couple of Jason's posts and left a comment for him lamenting about the absurdness of the bipartisanship in this state over a gubernatorial election between two people who were hardly that controversial. However, this was at the same time I gave a Concrete Dildo award to Dennis Prager, so I was subsequently called a hypocrite in this blog post.
Well, that's a good way to get my attention. I won't bore you with the play-by-play of the comments at the end of that post and this one with Jason and another blogger named Nick, but it ended with me daring either of them to debate me specifically about Iraq. Not surprisingly, there wasn't a taker. Two years after having no shortage of people who thought the War in Iraq was a good idea, there are few today who will take that same position, and I've become an even more insufferable asshole because of it.
But it's one thing to be an asshole, and it's another thing to actually be helpful, so I'm going to throw out my answer to the question that people on both the left and the right should be asking right now.
Iraq is broken. How do we fix it?
It's very tempting to just say that we should pick up and leave today, but that really would be a disaster. Any kind of unchecked prolonged conflict there will undoubtedly have long term consequences much worse than if we just hold up a fragile puppet government for years. But at some point, we do risk losing the ability to even do that, if we continue to gather enemies among the Iraqi people. The question becomes, how do we avoid that while still getting out of there without the government simply falling apart?
One hopeful scenario has been to get the U.N. to bail us out. The reason that this didn't happen before is because the Bush Administration wouldn't allow for this to happen without our military leaders still being in charge, and few other countries were eager to send troops into this mess that many of them advised us against. The linked article was from over a year ago though, and I'm not even sure that other countries would be willing to send troops, even if we left. This may now be a lost cause.
At around the same time that Bush was beginning to beg the U.N. to bail us out of this mess, I'd posted on Slate (deleted unfortunately) that the Iraqis won't be free unless they have full control over what our troops are doing there. And this is where I think we can cut our losses and get out of there with as little damage as possible.
Don't doubt for a second that no matter what happens on election day over there, the windbags at Fox News will proclaim it a success and a great day for democracy, even if hundreds of polling places are blown up. But whatever way we ensure that western-friendly people win that vote (and if we don't, we will simply be asked to leave, and that may actually be as bad for us as if we just left voluntarily), we should have the new government call for a referendum in several months on whether or not the coalition troops should stay there. It would allow the Iraqi people to directly vote for or against the occupation.
Is there a bad outcome to this idea? The insurgents would have no interest in disrupting the referendum, especially if it's made clear that too much violence could nullify the vote. If the Iraqis voted for us to leave, it would give Iraqis more confidence that their government is independent of ours and will not function simply as our puppet. Even if the Iraqis voted for us to stay, it would give more ammunition for our attempts to get more countries involved, seeing that there is popular support for the American occupation. Either way, we're finally looking like we support democracy and fairness, something we haven't done anywhere near enough since we undertook this misguided adventure.
But recently, I left a comment at the Write Wing Conspiracy, a 'conservative' blog here in Seattle that also blogwhores over at the Seattle Blogs trackback site (I ping them with any of my posts of local interest). I'd read a couple of Jason's posts and left a comment for him lamenting about the absurdness of the bipartisanship in this state over a gubernatorial election between two people who were hardly that controversial. However, this was at the same time I gave a Concrete Dildo award to Dennis Prager, so I was subsequently called a hypocrite in this blog post.
Well, that's a good way to get my attention. I won't bore you with the play-by-play of the comments at the end of that post and this one with Jason and another blogger named Nick, but it ended with me daring either of them to debate me specifically about Iraq. Not surprisingly, there wasn't a taker. Two years after having no shortage of people who thought the War in Iraq was a good idea, there are few today who will take that same position, and I've become an even more insufferable asshole because of it.
But it's one thing to be an asshole, and it's another thing to actually be helpful, so I'm going to throw out my answer to the question that people on both the left and the right should be asking right now.
Iraq is broken. How do we fix it?
It's very tempting to just say that we should pick up and leave today, but that really would be a disaster. Any kind of unchecked prolonged conflict there will undoubtedly have long term consequences much worse than if we just hold up a fragile puppet government for years. But at some point, we do risk losing the ability to even do that, if we continue to gather enemies among the Iraqi people. The question becomes, how do we avoid that while still getting out of there without the government simply falling apart?
One hopeful scenario has been to get the U.N. to bail us out. The reason that this didn't happen before is because the Bush Administration wouldn't allow for this to happen without our military leaders still being in charge, and few other countries were eager to send troops into this mess that many of them advised us against. The linked article was from over a year ago though, and I'm not even sure that other countries would be willing to send troops, even if we left. This may now be a lost cause.
At around the same time that Bush was beginning to beg the U.N. to bail us out of this mess, I'd posted on Slate (deleted unfortunately) that the Iraqis won't be free unless they have full control over what our troops are doing there. And this is where I think we can cut our losses and get out of there with as little damage as possible.
Don't doubt for a second that no matter what happens on election day over there, the windbags at Fox News will proclaim it a success and a great day for democracy, even if hundreds of polling places are blown up. But whatever way we ensure that western-friendly people win that vote (and if we don't, we will simply be asked to leave, and that may actually be as bad for us as if we just left voluntarily), we should have the new government call for a referendum in several months on whether or not the coalition troops should stay there. It would allow the Iraqi people to directly vote for or against the occupation.
Is there a bad outcome to this idea? The insurgents would have no interest in disrupting the referendum, especially if it's made clear that too much violence could nullify the vote. If the Iraqis voted for us to leave, it would give Iraqis more confidence that their government is independent of ours and will not function simply as our puppet. Even if the Iraqis voted for us to stay, it would give more ammunition for our attempts to get more countries involved, seeing that there is popular support for the American occupation. Either way, we're finally looking like we support democracy and fairness, something we haven't done anywhere near enough since we undertook this misguided adventure.
posted by thehim at 10:26 PM
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