Chirac got Iraq right. (Full Version)

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meatcleaver -> Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 1:18:49 AM)

There is an interesting documentary on Channel 4 for Brits on Saturday about Tony Blair with some interesting insider interviews. The part about Iraq promises to be the most interesting, Blair was preparing to go to war a full year before the start of the war, something he has denighed for years and Chirac was on the button in regard to Iraq. As most Brits have guessed, British influence in Washington was nil, which has those opposed to the war still wondering why we are there.

Very shortly before the war, in early 2003, there was an Anglo-French summit. Over lunch, Jacques Chirac warned the Prime Minister that he knew what to expect because the French President had been a young soldier in Algeria. Sir Stephen Wall, a former ambassador and one of Blair's senior advisers, was privy to this conversation. He recalls Chirac telling Blair that there would be a civil war in Iraq. 'We came out and Tony Blair rolled his eyes and said, "Poor old Jacques, he doesn't get it, does he?"' Wall remarks: 'We now know Jacques "got it" rather better than we did.'
 
 
Richard Haass, who was a senior member of the American State Department, puts it this way: 'When you first win a battlefield victory, there's several weeks where you have an aura of invincibility, where you've got to lock it down, you've got to get it right. That's when the moment was lost.'
 
 
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was persuaded by Blair to become his special envoy in Baghdad, depicts a Prime Minister plunged into despair by the ensuing carnage and chaos. He tells us that Blair would cry: 'What on earth are the Americans up to?' as Iraq descended into carnage. 'There were moments of throwing his hands in the air, "What can we do?" He was tearing his hair.'


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2104881,00.html



LadyEllen -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 2:48:04 AM)

I think we've done this one to death, but I think its fairly clear that anyone with more than half a brain saw how this would all pan out.

I recall the first Gulf War, at which time I was working with a guy in the reserves who was dead set on going and on removing Saddam. He looked at me puzzled when I told him that if he were to go, he wouldnt be doing that since Saddam was a requisite pawn in the region who not only kept the Iranians under control but much of the rest of the area too, as well as his own volatile nation of mixed peoples. The best this guy made was corporal.

Meanwhile, Bush Snr seemed to be aware of the same situational dangers of invading Iraq and removing Saddam in that this was not done, despite apparent undertakings to certain Iraqis who rose up in expectation only to suffer dreadful consequences under Saddam.

Just over a decade or so later, Bush Jnr did invade and topple Saddam, with no significant change in the situational dangers of doing so. One wonders whether he might only have made Corporal too?

But Blair - this is an abiding puzzle to me and I suspect to many; how it was that a man so obviously intelligent, educated and aware, could possibly have gone along with all this? The answers I think are both simple and less easy to discern. The simpler reasons are the "Falklands effect" by which one of his heroes maintained her popularity through a military victory, and Blair's view, which I am confident in ascribing to him, that removing Saddam was right - it was right, but it wasnt wise of course.

The more complex background I think has to do with the interactions between Bush and Blair. I suspect Bush found that the support of a man like Blair, so obviously more intelligent and educated, a very real permission to act on his aims. Whilst Blair found in Bush a man with the courage and means to act on what Blair thought was right. Feeding one another's need, the rest of the situation became less important. Only in the poorly managed aftermath of the invasion did it become clear to either that neither had a clue as to what to do next, nor the means of doing it.

E



FemMiss -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 3:21:50 AM)

Not only Chirac.. Many many more esp here in the middle east predicted the failure of the coalition in Iraq...

For ur knowledge, the Iraqis are the toughiest arab nation!



caitlyn -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 6:17:41 AM)

To me, many are over-thinking this whole mess.
 
Chirac was right, but he has been wrong so many times, that credibility comes into question. Lets not forget his warnings that intervention in the Balkens, would widen the conflict. Lets not forget that the French refused to send troops, but wanted oversite on targets and strategy, and got down right pissy when they didn't get it. Lets not forget the political capital used by Chirac, when the French were not invited to participate in Afghanistan.
 
Quite obviously, using our perfect 20/20 hindsight, we can now see that a huge mistake was made, but to have expected anyone to listen the the French, is just unrealistic. Hell, why not use Nostradamus to build foreign policy ... he throws things up there to see what sticks, and is right about the same amount of time.



stella40 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 7:37:58 AM)

Of course he did, anyone with a grain of intelligence could see what was going to happen.

Pope John Paul II also spoke out against invading Iraq. Even the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski announced in 2004 that Poland was 'misled' over reasons to invade Iraq.

This whole conflict started with Margaret Thatcher persuading Bush Snr to attack. Bush Snr had the good sense to back down.

For all my anti-Catholic sentiments I found myself agreeing with what Pope John Paul II said, that negotiation was necessary and not armed conflict. I perceived Saddam Hussein very much as a modern-day Joseph Stalin, a dictator yes, an evil one too, but not quite the threat to world peace that Bush and Blair painted him as at the time. In my opinion toppling him was a major mistake, and hanging him was an even bigger mistake.

But isn't this conflict more about control of oil in the Middle East than peace in the Middle East?

What I cannot understand was how Blair could on the one hand initiate the Good Friday Agreement and get the IRA to the table but on the other hand be Bush's staunchest ally when it came to the 'war on terrorism', 'weapons of mass destruction' and military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I also wonder just how much Blair knows and just how much behind his decision to resign was the talk and consideration of a military strike on Iran.

Now I can see how the excuse of the Taliban worked to strike Afghanistan, and the excuse of toppling Saddam worked to justify the invasion of Iraq, but Iran is the only Shiite Muslim state in the world. I somehow just don't see the Muslim world being quite as accepting as they did over Iraq or Afghanistan.






caitlyn -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:03:23 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: stella40
Pope John Paul II also spoke out against invading Iraq. Even the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski announced in 2004 that Poland was 'misled' over reasons to invade Iraq. 


To me, you miss the entire point.
 
When ethnic cleansing was happening in the Balkans, the Pope was strangely quiet ... oh, he would call for prayers for the fighting to stop, and point out the horrors war, but he wasn't going to name, names, or call anyone out. The moment the Americans stepped in, he became highly vocal and highly critical.
 
When you destroy your credibility on point A, you can't expect to be listened to on point B. That just isn't realistic. 



SimplyMichael -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:23:11 AM)

Chirac was right, anyone who wasn't an idiot saw this as a disaster.  Bush's daddy wrote a book and explained he didn't replace Saddam because only a fucking moron would put the Shia in charge of Iraq.  The only thing few predicted was how completely the Republicans would fuck up Iraq, I mean we knew they were stupid but nobody realized they were this fucking dumb.

I believe the British knew how stupid Bush and the Americans were.  I believe they signed on hoping to provide some adult supervision knowing Bush would invade Iraq no matter what and they had a choice of us screwing it up for sure or perhaps signing on and keeping it from being the complete cluster fuck it has become.

Unfortunately for the world and America, nobody could keep the Republicans from fucking everything up.



cyberdude611 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:36:34 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

I think we've done this one to death, but I think its fairly clear that anyone with more than half a brain saw how this would all pan out.

I recall the first Gulf War, at which time I was working with a guy in the reserves who was dead set on going and on removing Saddam. He looked at me puzzled when I told him that if he were to go, he wouldnt be doing that since Saddam was a requisite pawn in the region who not only kept the Iranians under control but much of the rest of the area too, as well as his own volatile nation of mixed peoples. The best this guy made was corporal.

Meanwhile, Bush Snr seemed to be aware of the same situational dangers of invading Iraq and removing Saddam in that this was not done, despite apparent undertakings to certain Iraqis who rose up in expectation only to suffer dreadful consequences under Saddam.

Just over a decade or so later, Bush Jnr did invade and topple Saddam, with no significant change in the situational dangers of doing so. One wonders whether he might only have made Corporal too?

But Blair - this is an abiding puzzle to me and I suspect to many; how it was that a man so obviously intelligent, educated and aware, could possibly have gone along with all this? The answers I think are both simple and less easy to discern. The simpler reasons are the "Falklands effect" by which one of his heroes maintained her popularity through a military victory, and Blair's view, which I am confident in ascribing to him, that removing Saddam was right - it was right, but it wasnt wise of course.

The more complex background I think has to do with the interactions between Bush and Blair. I suspect Bush found that the support of a man like Blair, so obviously more intelligent and educated, a very real permission to act on his aims. Whilst Blair found in Bush a man with the courage and means to act on what Blair thought was right. Feeding one another's need, the rest of the situation became less important. Only in the poorly managed aftermath of the invasion did it become clear to either that neither had a clue as to what to do next, nor the means of doing it.

E


That doesn't work completely.
Although GWB is clearly not the brightest bulb in the box, most of the people that have been in his administration are. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice for example.
The people that were behind the invasion was Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Bush didn't make the decsion to invade alone.



selfbnd411 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:42:40 AM)

I don't think this is even a remotely accurate comparison.  The French were attempting to build an actual, old school colony in Algeria.  That doesn't change the fact that the war was lost the minute we switched from toppling Saddam to trying to force the Iraqis to go through the Enlightenment, but it doesn't mean the French were right.





cyberdude611 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:51:29 AM)

The original goal in Iraq was to topple Saddam and destroy the arsenal of WMDs.
Saddam is gone and there are no WMDs.

So in really our goals were accomplished many years ago. What we are doing there right now? No one really seems to have any idea. Basically we are nation-building at this point and trying to solve an ethnic war we really have no business being involved in.



Lordandmaster -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:56:00 AM)

Great, now we just need to find some French politicians named Chiran, Chipalestine, and (dare I say it?) Chamerica.

quote:

ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

Blair was preparing to go to war a full year before the start of the war, something he has denighed for years and Chirac was on the button in regard to Iraq.



philosophy -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 8:56:07 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: cyberdude611
.... Basically we are nation-building at this point and trying to solve an ethnic war we really have no business being involved in.


..no business? You broke it, you bought it...........



Vendaval -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 9:43:52 AM)

 
Interesting insight, Lady E.  I have been very confused as to why Blair
would go along with Shrub but your analysis makes sense.


quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

But Blair - this is an abiding puzzle to me and I suspect to many; how it was that a man so obviously intelligent, educated and aware, could possibly have gone along with all this? The answers I think are both simple and less easy to discern. The simpler reasons are the "Falklands effect" by which one of his heroes maintained her popularity through a military victory, and Blair's view, which I am confident in ascribing to him, that removing Saddam was right - it was right, but it wasnt wise of course.

The more complex background I think has to do with the interactions between Bush and Blair. I suspect Bush found that the support of a man like Blair, so obviously more intelligent and educated, a very real permission to act on his aims. Whilst Blair found in Bush a man with the courage and means to act on what Blair thought was right. Feeding one another's need, the rest of the situation became less important. Only in the poorly managed aftermath of the invasion did it become clear to either that neither had a clue as to what to do next, nor the means of doing it.

E



stella40 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 1:02:45 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: caitlyn

quote:

ORIGINAL: stella40
Pope John Paul II also spoke out against invading Iraq. Even the Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski announced in 2004 that Poland was 'misled' over reasons to invade Iraq.


To me, you miss the entire point.

When ethnic cleansing was happening in the Balkans, the Pope was strangely quiet ... oh, he would call for prayers for the fighting to stop, and point out the horrors war, but he wasn't going to name, names, or call anyone out. The moment the Americans stepped in, he became highly vocal and highly critical.

When you destroy your credibility on point A, you can't expect to be listened to on point B. That just isn't realistic.


Erm, I think there's been a misunderstanding somewhere here.

I did in my previous posting in this thread make people aware of my anti-Catholic sentiments. My agreement with Pope John Paul II was on that statement he made about the invasion of Iraq, not about any other issue. I was referring to one specific statement he made.

I did this to show that I have a very strong anti-military action in Iraq stance and to explain my viewpoint regarding Blair's involvement in Iraq.

What Pope John Paul II said about the Balkans is neither here nor there, nor what he said about any other matter, which usually I am in strong disagreement about. I'm just writing about the one statement I agreed with him over.

I am stating an opinion, not a fact. If this destroys my credibility to give such an opinion in your eyes then I'm sorry, but I stand by my opinion and my explanation as to how I arrived at my opinion.



caitlyn -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 1:13:54 PM)

I was talking about the Pope destroying his credibility ... ditto Chirac .. not you (although I can see how you read it that way ... not my best job of posting). [;)]
 
Chirac was wrong about the Balkans ... vastly, hugely wrong. Had we listened to Chirac, there would have been genocide in the Balkans. Chirac has played the "I'm tough because I can stand up the to Americans" game, to win elections ... for years. The Pope (and I'm also Catholic) was hypocritical about the Balkans. The region was of little or no interest to him, until the Americans bacame involved.
 
This was the credibility they both destroyed on point A ... that ruined their chances to be listened to on point B.
 
Sorry for the confusion. [:D]



philosophy -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 1:22:36 PM)

Absolutely not meant as a dig Caitlyn, but can you think of any world leader whose credibility is intact? 'Cos i can't right now and there must be one somewhere........



caitlyn -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 2:34:11 PM)

Well, lets make a clear line between what we agree with, and what makes a person credible.
 
I would see Angela Merkel as credible. I would see Vladimir Putin as credible.
 
Truth be told, I think most leaders are credible. President Bush certainly isn't ... the pile of dis-and-mis-information is so high, you can't see the top. I think most Brits feel Tony Blaire lacks credibility, for many of the same reasons. As a practicing Catholic, I think our new Pope destroyed his credibility within his first few weeks. He talked about unity and bringing the church together, then pronounced that getting married again after a divorce, was a mortal sin.
 
But overall ... I think most are credible. That I don't agree with a lot of them, isn't really on point.



seeksfemslave -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 3:39:11 PM)

Other than obscure experts it is totally ,categorically, absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever, certainly, completely UNTRUE to say that  the mess that has developed in Iraq was predicted.

After the event of course, everybody claims they knew !



stella40 -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 3:39:43 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: caitlyn

I was talking about the Pope destroying his credibility ... ditto Chirac .. not you (although I can see how you read it that way ... not my best job of posting). [;)]

Chirac was wrong about the Balkans ... vastly, hugely wrong. Had we listened to Chirac, there would have been genocide in the Balkans. Chirac has played the "I'm tough because I can stand up the to Americans" game, to win elections ... for years. The Pope (and I'm also Catholic) was hypocritical about the Balkans. The region was of little or no interest to him, until the Americans bacame involved.

This was the credibility they both destroyed on point A ... that ruined their chances to be listened to on point B.

Sorry for the confusion. [:D]


No problem. I agree with you.

BTW my anti-Catholic sentiments are towards the Church and the Papacy rather than to individual Catholics.

Blair isn't credible, at least not to me, but then again we have a shortage of credible politicians in the UK right now. Bush isn't credible. Putin is credible. To me Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is credible. And... it has to be said... the current Iranian President is credible.. he may be hardline, he may be fundamentalist, but he is credible, and dangerously so.

And I strongly suspect that the possibility of a military strike on Iran could be one of the reasons why Blair resigned.



LadyEllen -> RE: Chirac got Iraq right. (6/18/2007 3:48:08 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave

Other than obscure experts it is totally ,categorically, absolutely, without any doubt whatsoever, certainly, completely UNTRUE to say that  the mess that has developed in Iraq was predicted.

After the event of course, everybody claims they knew !


Whether or not you believe me Seeks, I knew for Gulf War 1 what the situation was, and knew what the situation would be after Gulf War 2. It doesnt take a genius to work it out after all, 'cause I worked it out!

E



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