Having blown so much blood and treasure conquering the place with all the oil, why would we now want to leave? This is just a shell game- those bases are being built for long-term occupation.
Having blown so much blood and treasure conquering the place with all the oil, why would we now want to leave?
Because our business model sucks. It's a lot cheaper to just buy the oil rather than pay for security against the trouble that our presence is creating. The Chinese have been playing this game smart, staying out of military disputes, and just buying the oil cheap and they've been kicking our asses at this game.
those bases are being built for long-term occupation.
How many ICBMs have we built? How many have we launched? How much money did we dump into the Osprey project, or Star Wars?
Never underestimate the military's ability to spend mountains of money on stuff they'll never end up using use due to incompetence and poor planning.
Heck, read the accounts of the government's response to 9/11 or Katrina. Even when we *do* have a massive amount of planning, preparation, and infrastructure in place we fuck it up.
They also suggested asking our two worst enemies - Iran and Syria - for help. I didn't think to suggest this because I didn't want to appear naive or insane.
That's not naive or insane; that's diplomacy. No, they're not going to help us out of the goodness of their hearts, but if we can produce an option wherein they believe it's in their best interests to help us, they will. Enemies cooperate on all kinds of things all the time.
Not an either-or situation. It's naive *and* it's diplomacy.
We can ask, and I suppose there's no harm in asking, but I have absolutely no idea what we could offer them, I have no idea what kind of assurances they could offer us, and I have no idea what sort of punitive actions we could take if things didn't work out.
I guess if they said "we're going to mitigate the humanitarian crisis by turning over the Iraqi government and population to Iranians who are better able to deal with this disaster than we are" I suppose that's a realistic way to address certain aspects of the problem, but there are some very significant down-sides to that solution and I don't think it's acceptable from our end.
Basically in the venn diagram of "what's acceptable to us" and "what's acceptable to Iran" I don't see a lot of overlap.
No, it's really not. On the contrary, it's naive to think we can improve the situation there without engaging all of the significant regional players. Iran has a lot more political influence in Iraq than we do, and if we continue to try to ignore them, we're going to continue to get our asses kicked, politically speaking.
It's not a matter of buying them off, or trying to lock them into a course of action backed by some threat of punitive response, though that might be a part of it. It's about figuring out where our interests converge--or where we can make them converge--and taking advantage of that. Iran, for example, has even less interest in Iraq collapsing into a failed state than we do. The US and Iran have very different ideas about what Iraq should be, but theres a lot of room for cooperating on keeping Iraq from becoming something both think it shouldn't be
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On the contrary, it's naive to think we can improve the situation there without engaging all of the significant regional players.
To be clear: I don't think we can improve the situation PERIOD. Engaging the regional players or otherwise.
Also to be clear: I'm not saying that we shouldn't engage them, I'm just dubious that this will be end up actually being productive in practical terms.
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Because our business model sucks. It's a lot cheaper to just buy the oil rather than pay for security against the trouble that our presence is creating. The Chinese have been playing this game smart, staying out of military disputes, and just buying the oil cheap and they've been kicking our asses at this game.
those bases are being built for long-term occupation.
How many ICBMs have we built? How many have we launched? How much money did we dump into the Osprey project, or Star Wars?
Never underestimate the military's ability to spend mountains of money on stuff they'll never end up using use due to incompetence and poor planning.
Heck, read the accounts of the government's response to 9/11 or Katrina. Even when we *do* have a massive amount of planning, preparation, and infrastructure in place we fuck it up.
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Never underestimate the military's ability to spend mountains of money on stuff they'll never end up using use due to incompetence and poor planning.
Not to mention the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
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That's not naive or insane; that's diplomacy. No, they're not going to help us out of the goodness of their hearts, but if we can produce an option wherein they believe it's in their best interests to help us, they will. Enemies cooperate on all kinds of things all the time.
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Not an either-or situation. It's naive *and* it's diplomacy.
We can ask, and I suppose there's no harm in asking, but I have absolutely no idea what we could offer them, I have no idea what kind of assurances they could offer us, and I have no idea what sort of punitive actions we could take if things didn't work out.
I guess if they said "we're going to mitigate the humanitarian crisis by turning over the Iraqi government and population to Iranians who are better able to deal with this disaster than we are" I suppose that's a realistic way to address certain aspects of the problem, but there are some very significant down-sides to that solution and I don't think it's acceptable from our end.
Basically in the venn diagram of "what's acceptable to us" and "what's acceptable to Iran" I don't see a lot of overlap.
Reply
No, it's really not. On the contrary, it's naive to think we can improve the situation there without engaging all of the significant regional players. Iran has a lot more political influence in Iraq than we do, and if we continue to try to ignore them, we're going to continue to get our asses kicked, politically speaking.
It's not a matter of buying them off, or trying to lock them into a course of action backed by some threat of punitive response, though that might be a part of it. It's about figuring out where our interests converge--or where we can make them converge--and taking advantage of that. Iran, for example, has even less interest in Iraq collapsing into a failed state than we do. The US and Iran have very different ideas about what Iraq should be, but theres a lot of room for cooperating on keeping Iraq from becoming something both think it shouldn't be ( ... )
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To be clear: I don't think we can improve the situation PERIOD. Engaging the regional players or otherwise.
Also to be clear: I'm not saying that we shouldn't engage them, I'm just dubious that this will be end up actually being productive in practical terms.
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