Transterrestrial Musings

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Is he really saying that the reason we need to stay in Iraq is so that we can confront Iran?

That is completely ridiculous.

If I have a problem with country X, I should invade and occupy country Y, which happens to be next door, and stay there.

Aha. Aha. Brilliant.

Posted by Offside at September 7, 2007 11:52 AM

Is he really saying that the reason we need to stay in Iraq is so that we can confront Iran?

He is saying that it is a reason. Just as we remained in Germany so that we could confront the Soviet Union.

That is completely ridiculous.

No, it makes good strategic sense. I hope that it was one of the reasons that we removed Saddam.

If I have a problem with country X, I should invade and occupy country Y, which happens to be next door, and stay there.

That's not even a good straw man.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 7, 2007 12:02 PM

Offside,

Your grasp of strategic thinking exceeds that of my cats.

Barely.

Yours truly, etc.

Posted by MG at September 7, 2007 12:17 PM

I have always believed this was the strategy.

A domino theory approach where we do the tipping (unlike Vietnam) rather than a defensive stopping of the Commies from tipping our dominoes (Vietnam).

Baghdad? Real men go to Tehran was a popular saying amongst some on the Right back in 2002/2003.

McCarthy is exactly right. The GOP POTUS, Senate & House candidates should endorse this strategy explicitly and let the voters decide.

Posted by Bill White at September 7, 2007 12:19 PM

Got any links to such claims, Mr. White?

Because what I remember in 2002 / 03 were Democratic senators claiming that Saddam had WMD's, WMD programs, and WMD capabilities.

And that a popular refrain amongst the Left was (and remains), "The US government did this to us".

Posted by MG at September 7, 2007 12:25 PM

Your cats have taken strategic thinking to a higher level. They've clearly enslaved you and you don't even know it. I'm in good company.

MG, how many different arguments have we had for going into Iraq and staying there? Have you counted?

Is it really that impossible to confront Iran if we were not in Iraq?

Can you think of at least one very good reason why it would be easier to confront Iran if we were not in Iraq.

You should talk more to your cats. They'd set you straight.

Posted by Offside at September 7, 2007 12:25 PM

When that happens, it would be much better if we were heavily present in Iraq

It would also "help" if Iran and Iraq weren't allies. Which is why it won't happen under this president.

You need to let this picture sink in. This picture and a ton of other completely obvious evidence.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.image?id=8165

I hope that it was one of the reasons that we removed Saddam.

It undoubtedly was one of the reasons. But not because it makes sense. It makes about as much sense as overthrowing Stalin to confront Hitler.

Posted by at September 7, 2007 12:42 PM

Baghdad? Real men go to Tehran was a popular saying amongst some on the Right back in 2002/2003.

No one ever said that, you are making that stuff up Bill. Just like this:

McCarthy is exactly right. The GOP POTUS, Senate & House candidates should endorse this strategy explicitly and let the voters decide.

Andrew McCarthy didn't suggest that, you did. Here

It was another example of your debate tactic of flooding the topic with non-sequitor discussion, and now you bring it here as a strawman argument.

But for your strawman: Do you remember this: Axis of Evil. Maybe you were too busy claiming the "16 words" were a lie and missed that President Bush first pitch for going into the "Global War on Terror" included Iran and North Korea. When President Bush used such arguments, he got so much support for the war that even John Kerry voted with him.

Posted by Leland at September 7, 2007 12:53 PM

MG, how many different arguments have we had for going into Iraq and staying there?

I've never understood the notion that having more than one reason to take a decisive action is somehow a bad thing. Can someone explain it to me?

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 7, 2007 12:54 PM

I've never understood the notion that having more than one reason to take a decisive action is somehow a bad thing.

Incongruous reasons are a bad thing. They are more a grab bag of excuses than they are viable justifications.

Like the one about invading Iraq to confront Iran. We might as well also invade Colombia to confront Venezuela.

Posted by at September 7, 2007 01:10 PM

Rand,
you have to consider the idea that there is never any reason to go to war within the ranks of the hand wringers. So having more than one reason is very confusing to them.

Going to war with Iran is a done deal. It started in 1979, they started it by taking American hostages and this is just a flare up. And unless we stop the cycle, it will repeat for another 28 years. Stopping that cycle may get started with cruise missiles and stealth bombers, but it will have to end with boots on the ground. There simply is no way to subdue a military adversary from the air.

Boots on the ground in Iran will tie up a chunk of the insurgents and some of the arms flowing into Iraq and Afghanistan. Plus those three countries moving toward democracy can't be a bad thing. And I don't believe running a democracy and learning to live in a democracy is beyond the people either.

I'm not a liberal, so I see peoples abilities, not their supposed failings.

Posted by Steve at September 7, 2007 01:32 PM

Another McCarthy paragraph from the same link:

We certainly don't want American troops in Iraq forever. But how long we tolerate them there depends on what they are doing there. If the case is compellingly made that it's a regional war, Iraq is only a part of it, Afghanistan could still be lost, operations are being launched against the West from northwest Pakistan, and the Iranians and their subsidiary, the Syrians, have to be dealt with, I think Americans would not only tolerate but demand that American forces stay in the region and do what has to be done.

It sure seems to me that McCarthy is saying that the Administration (and those seeking election in 2008) should tell the American people that the Iraq gives us bases to stage from to confront enemies elsewhere in the region.

And in countless debates before we removed Saddam a great many people told me that the reverse domino strategy was one of the many good reasons for removing Saddam.

But that is water under the bridge. Going forward we can see:

(1) Saddam is dead;
(2) Iraq's WMD program (if any) has been terminated;
(3) AQI is not far from eradication due to fallings out with the Sunni in Anbar;
(4) Sunni - Shia reconciliation is not going well (per General Petreaus own letter)

Okay, what is the mission, going forward?

A perfectly legitimate answer is "Bases to confront Syria and Iran"

Explain that to the American people and it can be a campaign issue in 2008.

What's wrong with that?

Posted by Bill White at September 7, 2007 01:32 PM

We might as well also invade Colombia to confront Venezuela.

You've gotta love it when anonymous idiots make moronic analogies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 7, 2007 01:51 PM

A perfectly legitimate answer is "Bases to confront Syria and Iran" Explain that to the American people and it can be a campaign issue in 2008.

What's wrong with that?

Heh, Heh, Heh! Hahaaa! Excellent strategy as far as I'm concerned. I mean, why not the truth for a change?

Very funny, Bill.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at September 7, 2007 04:18 PM

"Like the one about invading Iraq to confront Iran. We might as well also invade Colombia to confront Venezuela."

We may well end up invading Venezuela to save Columbia. Columbia is an allied nation.

Posted by Mike Puckett at September 7, 2007 04:31 PM

Andy McCarthy said it first and Rand even quoted him:

[M]ilitary operations [against Iran] are going to be necessary. When that happens, it would be much better if we were heavily present in Iraq and capable of quickly using it as a platform.

Posted by Bill White at September 7, 2007 04:32 PM

I'd be all for announcing it from the rooftops, except that,

a) Iran would immediately counter with murder, mayhem, and propoganda to prevent us from pulling it off, and

b) YOU would be the first person on this site to start posting about how stupid and evil Bush is to be gosh-golly planning to invade Iran, when we were already losing Iraq, and what were we doing there anyways to begin with, and conservatives (i.e., those who disagree with you) are all fools.

Posted by Big D at September 7, 2007 08:59 PM

"MG, how many different arguments have we had for going into Iraq and staying there?"

Umm... eleventy-seven?

Who is the "we" to which you refer? Does it include all of humanity? Democrats? Republicans only? Republicans, only in the Office of the President? The President?

Seriously, there were over twenty "arguments" included in the Congress's 2003 authorization for going into Iraq. I recall some Democrats complaining that the President was "changing the reason", but that was sour grapes. Very few legislative acts have only a single "Whereas".

As for "staying there"... I don't recall anyone arguing for "staying there" permanently. I DO recall arguments in favor of maintaining a cadre of trainers.

Heck, I even recall arguments in favor of "staying there", so long as it was done from Okinawa.

I don't mean to be flip, but methinks your question begs the question:

Who is doing the arguing, and in favor of what, and why?

Posted by MG at September 7, 2007 10:34 PM

Mr. Offside,

On the other two questions:

If we were not in Iraq, attacking Iran would be more difficult and costly, and would have less reliable evaluation of our effectiveness.

Being in Iraq hugely bumps up potential sortie rates, and makes insertion and extraction of battle damage assessment teams much easier. Do you prefer that we sacrifice these operational advantages? What do we gain by doing so?

The sole "advantage" of not being in Iraq, should we need to use kinetic means against the Persian Empre, is that there would be fewer American targets IN IRAQ for the Persian counterstrikes. This "advantage" is offset by:

1. The reality that the American targets can kill the Persian attackers, thereby degrading them. Sort of like what happened to the Viet Cong after they launched the Tet '68 "uprising".

2. The Persians will have an easier time of launching counterstrikes against Americans elsewhere, and with smaller risk of loss.

I don't think the "advantage" is useful, and the disadvantages are decisive. Your mileage may vary.

This is a moot discussion, though. American forces will not leave Iraq faster than one brigade per month, and will not start a sustained, net drawdown until at least sometime in 2008.

PS: My cats graciously accept your compliments, but they would rather have more food.

Posted by MG at September 7, 2007 10:47 PM

Again, the undeniable fact is that Iran and Iraq are now close allies. Unfortunately this fact just slips right past most people in this conversation, like water off of the back of a duck. But back in the real world, no president who cares at all about Iraqi sovereignty would use American bases there to attack Iran.

At the moment, Bush is forced to care, because he knows that the "victory is still fragile" pretense in Iraq would vanish in a flash if he bombed Iran. So he just won't do it, unless conceivably he goes berserk at the 11th hour of his term.

Posted by at September 8, 2007 07:40 AM

Anonymous,

Have you any facts to buttress your assertion?

From what I can tell, the observable, verifiable facts support the following conclusion:

Iraq's Shia leadership is hedging their bets against another US abandonment of them.

Here are some facts to support my conclusion.

1. Iraqi Shia fled to the Persian Empire for protection amongst some of the Shia Arabs within its boundaries.

2. With the downfall of Saddam, they returned.

3. The US has a disgraceful history (1975, 1991) of abandoning people. In the particular case of Iraq's Shia, this came after specifically calling for an uprising. "Realism" in international affairs, dontcha know?

4. The majority party in the US Congress can't wait to find some way to withdraw, and leave Iraq's Shia to the tender mercies of the Sunni. And an election is only 14 months away.

5. Iraq's Shia aren't dumb. They know that it is better to have the Americans as reliable friends, than to rely on Persians. However, if the Americans are NOT reliable, then it is better to rely on Persians, than on the tender mercies of the Arab Sunnah.

What have you got?

PS: In the wild speculations department.

Should Iraq develop into an effective, functioning , democratic, federal state, the Iraqi Shia may offer the Arabs of the Persian Empire an opportunity to secede. National Geographic then renames "Persian Gulf" to "Arabian Gulf". And Iran's ability to blockade the Straits of Hormuz takes a nosedive.

I'm just saying...

Posted by MG at September 8, 2007 10:16 AM

Have you any facts to buttress your assertion?

Some of the proximate facts are that both of the democratically chosen prime ministers of Iraq --- Maliki and Jaafari --- visited Iran and shmoozed with the Iranian government. And they both laid flowers on the grave of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Again, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Note the date of this meeting: September 2006, before the Democrats won the November elections.

http://www.payvand.com/news/06/sep/Iraq-PM-Tehran2.jpg

Then there is the fact that one more than one occasion, American forces have arrested Iranian "infiltrators", then released them because they turned out to be in Iraq on official business.

Iraqi Shia fled to the Persian Empire for protection amongst some of the Shia Arabs within its boundaries.

You're being vague about who these Shiites were, when they fled, and what Iran paid them to do afterwards. Most of what is now the Shiite leadership of Iraq, including both Maliki and Jaafari, fled to Iran around 1980, at the start of the Iran-Iraq war and just after the Iranian revolution. The US wasn't "abandoning friends" then, it was completely anti-Iran, in fact to the point of openly backing Saddam Hussein. When Rumsfeld ignominiously shmoozed with Hussein in 1983, Nouri al-Maliki was already in Damascus, via Tehran, and working as a jihadist spokesman paid by Iran.

http://www.diosa.net/art-net/RumsfeldHussein.jpg

In that same year, Maliki's terrorist group, Dawa, blew up the American embassy in Kuwait with a suicide bomber. That same Dawa is now Maliki's party in Iraq. In fact a man who was sentenced to death for Kuwait bombing was discovered to be an elected member of the Iraqi parliament.

Bombing an American embassy on behalf of Iran is not "hedging bets". These people are closer to revolutionary Iran than Tony Blair is to George Bush.

Iraq's Shia aren't dumb. They know that it is better to have the Americans as reliable friends, than to rely on Persians.

It is true that Iraqi Shiites aren't dumb, but they don't "know" any such delusion. One look at Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein tells them that the Donald Rumsfelds of the world are completely unreliable. They know that revolutionary Iran has steadily backed their interests for 27 years. They are coming to realize, although they didn't know much about America before, that the White House has a crude kiss-butt-or-kick-butt foreign policy that could be flipped on them at any time. They have also noticed that very few Americans know Arabic or anything else about Iraqi culture.

If Iraqis actually thought that America is reliable, they would have voted for American-backed leaders, like Allawi and Chalabi. Instead, they voted them out; they voted for Iranian-backed leaders like Jaafari and Maliki.

Posted by at September 8, 2007 12:57 PM

A small comment, " "

For all the sturm und drang about Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, it seems there should a lot more about Chirac celebrating Osirak with Saddam prior to that.

-----

I have no doubt that quite a few Shia who went to Iran did Iran's bidding -- it seems unlikely that Saddam's opponents could do otherwise. Compared with (say) Yasir Arafat, it appears from the data you offer (assuming it is factual), that the Shia in leadership in Iraq are far less problematic than Arafat was.

At any rate, I am unconvinced (but convinceable) that the Iraqi political leadership is a bunch of Iranian agents. Compelling evidence would include:

Documentation of current actions as Iranian agents.

Detention / arrest by Coalition authorities.

Trial and conviction of being an Iranian spy.

There may be others, but you get the idea.

Posted by MG at September 8, 2007 05:24 PM

For all the sturm und drang about Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, it seems there should a lot more about Chirac celebrating Osirak with Saddam prior to that.

You could argue that comparison, but it has nothing to do with the choice that Iraqi Shiites have now. If they want international help, they can either go with American Republicans, who kissed Saddam's butt until they kicked his butt; or they can go with Iranian revolutionaries, who always hated Saddam Hussein and always supported Iraqi Shiites.

Well, they made their choice clear at the voting booth.

I am unconvinced (but convinceable) that the Iraqi political leadership is a bunch of Iranian agents.

I didn't say that they are a bunch of Iranian agents, I said that they are allied with Iran. Canada is allied with the United States, but that does not mean that the Canadian government is a pack of American agents.

What is true is that first, Iraq's political leaders were Iranian agents until the US invited them to run post-invasion Iraq; and second, they say that they allied with Iran. That ought to be enough for you. When Maliki says that Iran and Iraq are "two brotherly neighbors", as he did a year ago, why can't you accept that as his sincere position? Every word in Maliki's biography indicates that he would think so. Granted, Bush doesn't want to believe that Maliki likes Iran, but that doesn't mean that you should stick your head in the sand too.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5E986105-EBB4-418A-8951-5E0D44DB6605

Posted by at September 8, 2007 10:27 PM

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