Concerning negotiations: What does the SCIRI think that Sadr can offer the US ?
Unless Sadr's prepared (and able) to hand over a list of names and locations of top insurgents, or at least a bunch of weapons caches, the US is better off if Sadr resists arrest and gets killed.

Bush didn't pull out last summer because he had hoped (expected ?) to have a peaceful, productive Iraq to showcase; As it stands now, he'd probably rather have the ongoing Iraqi civil war that would have resulted from declaring victory and bugging out.
However, the latter action might well have resulted in even higher gas prices by now, as Iraqi oil production collapsed.

The notion that there a lots of "moderate" shiite civilians interspersed among the sadr radicals is a media peddled myth. Nobody expecting to live a moderate, non-theocratic life in the new Iraq is living in these enclaves.

Quietly make those enclaves devoid of the radicals who incorrectly believe they're rising up to form a new islamist wave. Any shiite casualties there are desirable shiite casualties from the American military's mission perspective.

Terminate - with extreme prejudice.

"Had we left promptly at the end of last Summer, a Shi'ite dominated government could be quite ruthlessly suppressing the Sunnis."

Then again, maybe the Shi'ites would be the ones ruthlessly supressed, at least within the Sunni triangle. Is there anything besides wishful thinking that makes OJ think the Shi'ites could successfully control places like Fallujah, even if they resort to ruthless measures? (The Sunnis are probably better armed.) If there a whole lot of evidence that the Shi'ites would even want to control Fallujah at a high cost, rather than leave it to its own devices?

"...and it seems unlikely there'd have been much motivation for a Shi'ite splinter movement." It seems possible to me that fierce Sunni resistance might win some more support Shi'ite support for Sadr -- not a lot, but enough to cause major problems for the more moderate Shi'ite leadership.

OJ is stuck on the notion that handing power over to the Shi'ites at once will produce a happy outcome for America. Things could indeed pan out that way. But another outcome, a lot more likely, is that the Sunni triangle becomes a miserable failed state, like Afghanistan after the Russian pullout, and such a breeding ground for anti-Western terrorism that America is forced to invade again later.

Peter:

I think that is a favorable outcome. Had people better understood the divide within Islam we'd have killed far more people in the Sunni Triangle before ending combat. Now we have to wait until the next war to have the cover to get away with it. Hasten the day.

OJ -

We seem to be hastening that day, all right.

Peter -

On the contrary, I believe Fallujah could be pacified quite readily with 120mm mortars if one has no interest in being discriminating about things. Worked in Hama.

OJ -- If the best you hope for in Iraq is a failed state, it's hard to see why you supported a full invasion at all. If your concern was Saddam possibly attacking America, we could have made peace with Saddam by dropping the sanctions. If your concern was eliminating possible WMDs, we could have implemented "Containment Plus", a policy of demanding access to suspected WMD sites and immediately bombing the sites when inspections were denied. If you wanted to free Shi'ites and Kurds from Saddam's tyranny, we could have invaded Iraq but have stayed out of the Sunni triangle.

I personally supported the war because I thought it was the only way to permanently destroy a long term terrorist threat to Israel. The most grevious threat -- a Ba'athist regime hoping to acquire nuclear weapons -- is now eliminated. (It had not been completely eliminated last summer, when you were already talking about an immediate pull-out.) But if central Iraq becomes either a Shi'ite tyranny or a failed state, it could become a harbor for all sorts of anti-Israeli and anti-American terrorists -- imagine an Iraqi chapter of Hezbollah opening shop.

You may argue that a Shi'ite tyranny is no bad thing because it will eventually fade away as the Iranian theocracy seems to be doing. That could happen, but in the intervening 30 years terrorists could cause massive problems and kill a lot of people.

Fortunately, we still have a decent shot at establishing a semi-normal government that most Iraqis can live with. Maybe Iraq would have a civil war eventually, but we can still affect conditions so that the civil war would be more like the Kurdish mini-war instead of a Lebanon-style disaster. The premature withdrawal you suggest would guarantee massive trouble down the road, so it's smarter to stick around while we still have a reasonable chance of solving the problem permanently.

OJ -- If the best you hope for in Iraq is a failed state, it's hard to see why you supported a full invasion at all. If your concern was Saddam possibly attacking America, we could have made peace with Saddam by dropping the sanctions. If your concern was eliminating possible WMDs, we could have implemented "Containment Plus", a policy of demanding access to suspected WMD sites and immediately bombing the sites when inspections were denied. If you wanted to free Shi'ites and Kurds from Saddam's tyranny, we could have invaded Iraq but have stayed out of the Sunni triangle.

I personally supported the war because I thought it was the only way to permanently destroy a long term terrorist threat to Israel. The most grevious threat -- a Ba'athist regime hoping to acquire nuclear weapons -- is now eliminated. (It had not been completely eliminated last summer, when you were already talking about an immediate pull-out.) But if central Iraq becomes either a Shi'ite tyranny or a failed state, it could become a harbor for all sorts of anti-Israeli and anti-American terrorists -- imagine an Iraqi chapter of Hezbollah opening shop.

You may argue that a Shi'ite tyranny is no bad thing because it will eventually fade away as the Iranian theocracy seems to be doing. That could happen, but in the intervening 30 years terrorists could cause massive problems and kill a lot of people.

Fortunately, we still have a decent shot at establishing a semi-normal government that most Iraqis can live with. Maybe Iraq would have a civil war eventually, but we can still affect conditions so that the civil war would be more like the Kurdish mini-war instead of a Lebanon-style disaster. The premature withdrawal you suggest would guarantee massive trouble down the road, so it's smarter to stick around while we still have a reasonable chance of solving the problem permanently.

Peter:

I supported a two state solution: Kurdistan and Shiastan, with the Sunni killed or driven out of the country if they can't abide peacefully in a Shi'a dominated state.

WMD didn't matter and Saddam was no threat. That he was ignoring the conditions for ending the first Gulf war was unacceptable and he had to be deposed for that reason alone.

OJ -- I was not enthusiastic about defending a hereditary dictatorship from a military dictatorship, so I didn't care much for Gulf War I. (If we had had the wisdom to stay out of intra-Arab wars, then American troops would not have been permanently stationed in Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden would not have had a convenient cause around which to rally Saudi Arabians. But that's another matter.) You can make a case that having fought Gulf War I, we had to fight Gulf War II to defend American prestige, but I would not find such a case convincing. It's pretty lame to ask soldiers to die solely to defend "American prestige", especially since fears about our losing prestige inevitably outpace reality. (Did anyone care when America abandoned South Vietnam?)

As things stand in Iraq today, even the Kurds don't want complete independence, they prefer a federal system. In my opinion, most Sunnis would accept a federal democratic system as well, if they had reasonable assurances that the government wouldn't devolve into a Shi'ite tyranny. Instead of ramming a federal solution down everyone's throats, as we should be doing, you would have us flatter the aspirations of the wackiest Shi'ites while doing absolutely nothing to reassure moderate Sunnis. Is it any wonder that the Sunnis fear the Shi'ites even more than they feared Saddam?

(Please excuse any misspellings; as I type this I'm drunk.)

Iraq's oil reserves are worht a few trillion. Back in his salad days around 1979, Saddam was effectively a trillionaire. Sure, he ended up in a hole in the ground, but to a lot of ambitious men in Iraq, he still had one hell of a ride, a ride they'd love to take themselves, even if they have to kill huge numbers of people to become Iraq's next trillionaire.

This Sadr guy -- we can talk as if theology matters to him, but the salient fact is that he wants to be the trillionaire. And he's not the only one. Everybody in Iraq knows we're going to get sick of the place eventually and leave, and then the show Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire? will be on in earnest.

Eventually? They know which day.

Peter:

No the Kurds don't, but they're willing to pay it lip service until we leave out of courtesy for what we did for them.

But I agree the First Gulf War was totally unnecessary and ill-advised.

When is Der Tag?