... is actually whorth listening to:


MORE...

We listened to Petreaus and his testimony which was heralded as proof that things are getting better in Iraq. We were told to listen to him because due to his distinguished military career his word was unimpeachable.

I think this man and his assessment are whorth just as much.

You mean this Affirmative Action General?

"Dirty" Sanchez?

*preemptive strike in case the right wing doodlebugs are busy smearing other soldiers*

I don't think it's any secret mistakes were made. I don't think General Petraeus was saying otherwise.

There is an underlying theme to these stories.....NO ONE has any appreciation of the history of this region...and COMPREHENSIVE UNDERSTANDING of the history of the region and the people CLEARLY demonstrates how and why we fail at OUR goals.

I had written this on IAP 1.0: edited

...............Those with a fairly good foundation on the history of the region will have no problem deciphering the sublties of what is being said.

Excerpts from Face The Nation:

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., dismissed the argument that a military push on the part of the United States could by itself ensure the political success of the Iraqi government. "Look, the idea there's going to be a strong, central government in Iraq is not going to happen in your lifetime, it's not going to happen in mine,"....

"It is true things are better where our military is physically sitting. But it's like putting your fist in the water - the minute you take the fist out of the water, you can't even tell it was ever there. That's why there's a need for a political settlement.....

Seems like a brash and subjective statement...I will get to the history in a moment.

The counter to Sen. Biden was Sen. Lyndsey Graham...some things he had to say:

Well, the surge has worked," Graham said. "It's provided a level of security I haven't seen [in Iraq before]. We're finally getting the formula right. Anbar is just not about more troops; Anbar is about the local people, the Sunni Arabs in Anbar rejecting al Qaeda."

Graham pointed to a jump in recruits for the police force in Anbar and a diminishing of al Qaeda's influence in the same area because of the surge. "We can hold areas now because the Iraqi people are getting involved," he said.

I can not overemphasize the highlighted parts above, and I am not sure even Sen. Graham understands the true nature of what he said...taken in a historical perspective...one the Ottomans knew, and one the British knew in trying to govern this region.

The best resource for this I have is "A Peace To End All Peace"

What the U.S. tries to establish in Iraq has been tried by a European Imperial power already...a powerful Empire which spanned the globe governed by some of the most influential political figures in modern history...Winston Churchill among others.

The British, like Sen. Biden, understood the nature and history of the region, but made mistakes...however they did have a grasp on the nature of the population:

The British thought that Sunnis should lead the Iraqi nation, because the Shi'ite majority was regarded as too volatile to govern due to its largely tribal and nomadic base in Iraq, and hard to assimilate because of an unyielding religious bias for the "Ali" faction of the Muslim schism. "I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority," Bell once said. "Otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil."

The rivalries and differing religious attitudes continue to cause friction within Iraq.

Gertrude Bell

Also, from the British occupation:

The inhabitants of these provinces defined themselves as they had done immemorially, by their various tribal and religious and ethnic affiliations. The central schism in Islam between Sunnis and Shia had particular importance in the Mesopotamian provinces. Sunni themselves, the Ottomans had made sure to promote the Sunni Arab minority as a ruling class at the expense of the Shia majority. Shia ayatollahs had long wanted to have a state of their own, but had never been able to break through the Sunni oppression and stranglehold on power. In their holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the downtrodden Shia masses consoled themselves with religious demonstrations that verged on violence. In the northern province of Mosul, the Kurds also aspired to a state of their own. They are Muslims but not Arabs, and their further division into feuding tribes and clans remains an obstacle to political compromise to this day.

What Britain learned: and how America can build, in Iraq

There are more instances of historical significance that I will share later...but this information has been known for decades and anyone with an appreciation of the history would know that invading and the EXPECTING a central government to form among clans and tribes that have fought for centuries is at best remote, and at worst, a wasted exercise in futility.

What I don't understand is the utter lack of appreciation of the regional history with our current government, and the current crop of those running for President.

Sen. Biden at least has an inkling.

EDIT:

I cannot recommend the book I cite above any higher...I am on my third re-read...When you finish it, you will have, IMHO, the equivalant of a Minor in Modern Middle Eastern History, and will at least be able to intelligently discuss issues that have led to the debacle of the Middle East today.

Excerpt of my post taken from here:1920 and 2007 and the problems we face...IAP 1.0

Another good read for the bigger picture on "democracy exportation" is Stephen Kinzer's  'Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq'. 

"Kinzer’s Overthrow provides detailed accounts of, as the author states, “the most direct form of American intervention, the overthrow of foreign governments,” covering the roughly hundred years from the U.S.-backed toppling of Hawaii’s monarchy in 1893 to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The conclusion that Kinzer arrives at is that “almost every American overthrow of a foreign government has left in its wake a bitter residue of pain and anger.” __ Jason Snart - Z Magazine Online

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2007/snart0507.html