We are not going to achieve are maximal objectives (a free, liberal, democratic, and stable middle east), just as we were unable to achieve our maximal objectives in World War II (a disarmed Germany and a revolutionized Japan), we were unable to achieve our maximal objectives in Korea (one free peninsula), we were unable to achieve our maximal objectives in Vietnam (a stable Saigon government), etc.

Yet in six weeks we were able to smash our military opponents, in the the four years since then (but due almost entirely to L. Paul Bremer) we have permanently altered the correlation of forces in that country away from the blights of our time — the Sunni Arab philosophies of national-secularism and totalitarian Islam. [1]

Russia is desperate for cash, and is willing to shake down clients (for example, Belarus and Iran [2]) to get it. Moscow cannot stem a violentm, concentrated insurgency inside her own borders.

ElamBend,

The situation in Iraq gradually slides to the situation in Afghanistan — a typical tribal revolt interlaced with a dangerous enemy. Something to be concerned about, definitely, but not be-all-end-all either.

OD,

Thanks for your excellent comments.

Rumsfeld's contribution to the administration was as a top-notch advocate for Big War style revolutions in military affairs. Unfortunately, I think, he was overruled by Bush in matters on Iraq, so we are still there. Nonetheless, whether we would have left in October 2003 or not, the essential facts are still what they would be.

The defeat of our enemies, and the creation of an Iraq run by Iraqis, are both honorable goals.

Regarding Saudi Arabia and 9/11, I recall what Tom Friedman said when asked why we didn't attack Saudi Arabia instead. “That would have been fine.” Indeed, Shia control over eastern Arabia's oil fields would have had a greater impact. But Saddam's history of obstinace in the 1990s compounded the calculations, obviously.

And now he sleeps with Milosevic, that other thorn in our side.

There are serious critiques of US oil policy to be made — indeed, I have made them [3] — but “Is it because your high government officials are in their pockets?” is perhaps the emptiest of these.

“You attacked the wrong country. “

Why? On what grounds?

“Only a beaten, discredited movement in the last stages of dissolution could generate this kind of claptrap.”

I wish I had a movement to call my own.

PS: They share similar styles, but I prefer Ozymandias [4]over Shalmaneser.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/08/20/a-new-middle-east-part-i-our-vanquished-enemies.html
[2] http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/03/22/005.html
[3] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/04/01/a_modest_geogreen_gas_tax_proposal_5_gal_gas.html
[4] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/06/12/shrink-the-gap-support-the-gas-tax.html

…As to the sheikhs of the Chaldeans, panic from my onslaught overwhelmed them like a demon. They abandoned their tents and fled for their lives, crushing the corpses of their troops as they went…(In their terror) they passed scalding urine and voided their excrement in their chariots…

I drew nigh to Ekron and I slew the governors and princes that had transgressed, and I hung upon poles, round about the city, their dead bodies. The people of the city who had done wickedly and had committed offences, I counted as spoil, but those who had not done these things and who were not taken in inquity, I pardoned. I brought their king Padi forth and I stablished him upon the throne of dominion over them, and I laid tribute upon him.
Sennacherib, King of Assyria, 691 B.

This new America of yours could model itself on the Mongols as well as the Assyrians.

Genghis Khan never sacked Baghdad, but his grandson Hulagu did. Old Genghis said:
“Happiness lies in conquering your enemies, in driving them in front of you, in taking their property, in savouring their despair, in raping their wives and daughters.”

Of course they weren't really Genghis's enemies, were they? More his victims. But then you're willing to overlook that difference in a pinch, aren't you, Dan?

The US troops in Baghdad say that one of their main goals is to stop ethnic cleansing in the city. Part of the security plan involves evicting squatters, who are almost always Shia in abandoned Sunni homes.

So all you patriotic conservatives are actively cheering the failure of your soldiers' mission.

They are notorious for getting everything they want and then throwing it to the wind.

The Shiites' gain has the weight of demographic reality: Iraq is 65% Shia and 15% Sunni Arab. There was a brief window, immediately after Saddam's defeat, where an experienced and capable Sunni Arab military, technocratic, and bureaucratic class could have kept the country. The Japanese Empire, after World War II, managed this trick.

Fortunately (thank God), L. Paul Bremer dissolved the Sunni Arab dominated Army, and they responded with this insurgency that al Qaeda in Iraq got involved in. The Shia are now out in force, and the Sunni Arabs are overwhelmed.

Good.

Ry,

Thanks, and thanks for the link over at Castle Argghhh!

http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2007/03/hi_fires_21_mar.html

That aside, al Sadr hunkers down in Iran, the Mahdi Army stands at ease and the US forces shift their kinetic focus to the Sunni insurgency. Let me reach a bit: We ramp up pressure on Iran through UN sanctions and Russian nuclear “extortion” thereby pacifying, to some degree, the concern of Sunni states concerned with rising Shia power in both Iran and Iraq.