Leaving Iraq

[gipper]

To my way of thinking at this point, a US Iraq withdrawal should be preceded by a comprehensive peace treaty (tolerance, not reconciliation) and a firm, enforceable non-aggression pact. For starters, who would be the necessary parties to these agreements?

[Xavier_Onassis]

To my way of thinking at this point, a US Iraq withdrawal should be preceded by a comprehensive peace treaty (tolerance, not reconciliation) and a firm, enforceable non-aggression pact. For starters, who would be the necessary parties to these agreements?

(1) All the main Shiite factions
(2) All the main Kurdish factions.
(3) All the main Sunni fractions.
(4) The Turkmen, the Christians, the other factions not included above.
(5) Iran
(6) Syria
(7) Turkey

As Charlie Chan might have said: "rotsa ruck!"

[Michael Tee]

What you are presumably thinking of is Iran and Syria will cooperate in cooling the conflict in return for U.S. promises of non-aggression, in a comprehensive treaty.

Why on earth they would be so fucking stupid as to trust American promises of non-aggression when America is in flagrant and continuing  breach of its binding legal obligations under the Charter of the United Nations is a huge mystery to me.  Iran knows that its best security lies not in American treaty obligations, which are broken with disturbing regularity, but in the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which it is proceeding to acquire with all deliberate speed. 

The September 17th New Yorker magazine has an article by George Packer about all the various proposals currently floating about for U.S withdrawal.  Including everything domer's ever thought of, and more.  None of them are any good.  None of them work.  Stay or go, you're fucked either way.  Kinda reminds me of Hitler's last days in the bunker, the desperation,  the wild lies, the fantastic plans.  There IS a God after all.

I guess the one thing that stood out in the article was that in 2008, troops will have to start coming back because all the units there will have reached their maximum 18-month extension.  Hey, soon it'll be time to start making a whole new series of "Rambo" movies in which you get to win THAT war too.

[BT]

all the units there will have reached their maximum 18-month extension.

Extensions can be extended.

Your hope for America's defeat is based on an arbitrary restraint.

[Michael Tee]

<<Extensions can be extended.>>

If the people are dumb enough to put up with it.

<<Your hope for America's defeat is based on an arbitrary restraint.>>

Well, there are limits to how many times the extension can be extended.  You don't want to get into a Nam-like situation where the only recourse of the troops was to avoid any kind of dangerous assignment and to frag any officer who didn't understand their priorities and appeared to be a little more gung-ho than those priorities would tolerate.

[BT]

If the people are dumb enough to put up with it.

The people can change course every two years.

How did that work out for you last time?

[Michael Tee]

Looks to me like they got fooled again.

[BT]

Strange how representative democracy works.

[Michael Tee]

I think it was Jefferson who said it WOULDN'T work if the educational system didn't.  (That's not an exact quote.)

[BT]

I think it was Jefferson who said it WOULDN'T work if the educational system didn't.  (That's not an exact quote.)

Think that has something to do with the rise in homeschooling?

[Amianthus]

I think it was Jefferson who said it WOULDN'T work if the educational system didn't.  (That's not an exact quote.)

Think you can dig up the exact quote?

Because the "educational system" at the time Jefferson was alive was a combination of home schooling and religious schools.

[Michael Tee]

Sure, in some cases.  Don't ask me the percentages.  In one way, unless the parents are  outright nuts, I regard every case of homeschooling as an indictment of the public school system, an evidence of failure.  There's no real explanation for homeschooling, except (1) anti-social parents (2) real failure of the public system or (3) perceived failure of the public system.

[Michael Tee]

<<Think you can dig up the exact quote?

<<Because the "educational system" at the time Jefferson was alive was a combination of home schooling and religious schools.>>

Probably "educational system" was my phraseology.  The actual quote was more likely to have referred to "education" in the general sense.  I'm gonna give myself two or three minutes to get the quote, but it might not have been a one-liner, this could have been something I picked up in a larger essay.

[BT]

According to many perception is reality.

[Michael Tee]

Here ya go.

     "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)

    ". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)