Converging with Gerecht on (aspects of) Iraq
Jim Lobe of Inter Press Services did a phone interview with me Friday, about Iraq, and got this story on the topic up onto the wires on Saturday. It quotes me fairly extensively.
In the phone interview, as in the resulting article, Lobe noted that in many respects my analysis on current developments in Iraq is the same as that of conservative commentator (and Wall Street Journal columnist) Reuel Marc Gerecht. So be it. I call things as I see them, on the basis that if we don't understand the world how on earth can we hope to change it?
Jim said he'd send me the URL for the piece when it came out. I guess my spam filter ate it? Oh well, I'm glad I caught it over there at Antiwar.com.
Interesting. I found myself converging to some extent with Gerecht, too. Or he with me (both unwitting).
Helena,
There appears to have been some problem with getting jim's story to the wire over at IPS.
Here's the local link to the story, which ran back on Saturday I believe:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32803
Glad to see one of my colleagues at IPS recognizing your insight on this topic.
Too bad he quotes Gerecht saying Mehdi is not equal to SCIRI.
I was talking to some knowledgeable friends in Iraq last night and they all feel that if Mehdi/Mahdi is Prime Minister Hakim, and thus Iran, will be waiting in the wings.
One thing I was curious about, where do you get your information regarding Talabani's connection to Iran?
I know Talibani's faction of the Kurdish rebels was close to Syria in the late 70s, and before that the Ba'ath Party generally, but I haven't yet come across thsi connection with Iran...
thanks!
Brian
Oh, definitely it's RMG who's converging with us, Nicholas! (I should change my headline there.)
Oh, definitely it's RMG who's converging with us, Nicholas!
I doubt your positions are very similar Helena.
And what is most likely to curtail the violence is the U.S. military--not political dialogue among the Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds.. Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts..But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008178
This is from last week.
& Gerecht's views on Iraq's Shiite clerics haven't changed at all as far as I can tell.
Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts..But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place.
vadim, surprisingly enough, I find myself forced to agree with you here.
However I disagree that the United States military must be involved to curtail the violence. Certainly it seems difficult to argue that any particular military force curbed the violence in Lebanon more than the force of time's passage.
To quite Iraq it seems there are only three options:
Bloody Mogadishu style siege conflict
Systematic demilitarization and disarmament of militias backed by an international committee dedicated to the will of Iraqis, perhaps the non-aligned movement nations?
Ten-thirty years of internecine conflict between groups, and likely the eventual break-up of Iraq.
Brian,
Has "Systematic demilitarization and disarmament of militias backed by an international committee" ever been attempted before? And if so what was the result? I'm having a hard time comprehending a non-military approach to disarming militias, at least without some sort of political compromise.
It has worked in a number of places, Dudley, in the context of an internationally backed peace agreement and with a commitment of international (usually UN) peacekeeping forces to supervise and facilitate the DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) efforts. It's a good model-- probably the best there is for these circumstances. But it depends on a real commitment to the peace making both from the concerned parties and from the UN-- including all Security Council permanent members...
It has worked in a number of places, Dudley, in the context of an internationally backed peace agreement and with a commitment of international (usually UN) peacekeeping forces to supervise and facilitate the DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) efforts.
Any of them nearly as large as Iraq? I read somewhere that the UN did a study on whether it could manage the reconstruction of Iraq in the same way it did Cambodia, and concluded the job was too big for the UN's resources.
It's hard to see how the UN could put together a big enough stabilization force without using many of the same American troops that have made themselves distrusted and hated in Iraq.