Tag: Nation Building

The Problem With Regime Change

The end result of this conflict in Syria os two-fold….one to rid the landscape of ISIS and two to rid the country of Assad, a regime change…..

I understand the urgency of the defeat of ISIS but then there is the regime thing that takes me aback…….why?

If you will recall that was what we set out to do in Iraq….to put an end to Saddam and bring democracy to the country for a better world…..a regime change.

Let me ask….how has that worked out for Iraq?

I am dubious when politicos start talking about regime change for it is seldom thought out from all scenarios …..it is more a knee jerk reaction to a situation which has been the program for American foreign policy for 50+ years…..

I have read a good article on the problem of regime change in the American Conservative……

A few weeks ago, more than 50 State Department officials signed an internal memo calling for U.S. airstrikes against the Assad regime in Syria. They claimed this would foment regime change and was the only way to defeat ISIS.

The proposal reflected foreign-policy elite conventional wisdom, and was echoed by a Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report: “Defeating the Islamic State: A Bottom-Up Approach.” Although the report did not explicitly call for regime change, it’s hard not to interpret its recommendation to “reestablish legitimate and acceptable governance and negotiate a political end-state for the conflicts in Iraq and Syria” as anything but. And it is worth noting that the CNAS study group that produced the report is chaired by former Obama administration official Michèle Flournoy—who many consider to the frontrunner for secretary of defense if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

Source: The Problem With Regime Change | The American Conservative

America has been mistaken on so many levels over the years….I am not opposed to a regime change but that decision should be made by the people that such a change would effect.

For too long the decision has been made by people that the change will not effect to any great extent…..the people of said country are the ONLY deciders for this change,,,,not a bunch of money hungry tools of the M-IC.

What Of Iraq?

Inkwell Institute

Subject:  Middle East

There is so much insanity now in the media with the candidates sniping at each other and so far we know that each one thinks the other one sucks……and that seems to be what the unpaid surrogates in the blogs are echoing…..but as we Americans sloganize our selves into a stupor…….there is much happening in the middle east that could impact this country…..for that reason I will dedicate the next several days on posts about the ME and the problems brewing…….

I know that Americans right now are focused on whether a stay at home mom really works or if women that take the pill are sluts or …..I am sure if we wait a little longer another made up controversy will pop up……..but until then…..

Iraq!  Remember that one?  It was the hub of AQ activity in the world…..Saddam was in cahoots with them and there were WMDs lying undisturbed in the streets waiting for the moment to be used against the US.  Remember those days?

Let me share a few thoughts on Iraq from the days before the first war……the streets were virtually spotless, the people had total healthcare from cradle to grave, education was free and gas cost about 15 cents a gallon….the first gulf war made a mess of Baghdad….after the ceasefire and cleanup after wards returned Baghdad to the clean thriving city it was before the massive bombing and such…..

Then came the 2nd war and the total destruction of Baghdad and the rest of the country….and the US decided to re-build the country in the democratic image that is the United States….then came the fun (at least for the contractors like KBR, etc that would be making 10s of billions of dollars)……

But now we Americans are all but gone from the country (we will NEVER be gone as long as we are permitting contractors  to game their way to billions upon billions)…….and now the Iraqi people can get on with their lives as a free people and a birth of a Middle East democracy….and that is what the media and the administration would have us believe…….and so the saga continues, right?

My question was….will Iraq ever return to the days when the country’s people were well off and prosperous?  I found my answer in a copy of the magazine Foreign Policy………

Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people is rapidly fading away.

The Iraqi state cannot provide basic services, including regular electricity in summer, clean water, and decent health care; meanwhile, unemployment among young men hovers close to 30 percent, making them easy recruits for criminal gangs and militant factions. Although the level of violence is down from the worst days of the civil war in 2006 and 2007, the current pace of bombings and shootings is more than enough to leave most Iraqis on edge and deeply uncertain about their futures. They have lost any hope that the bloodshed will go away and simply live with their dread. Acrimony in the political realm and the violence in the cities create a destabilizing feedback loop, whereby the bloodshed sows mistrust in the halls of power and politicians are inclined to settle scores with their proxies in the streets.

Both Maliki and his rivals are responsible for the slow slide toward chaos, prisoners of their own history under Saddam. Iraq today is divided between once-persecuted Shiite religious parties, such as Maliki’s Dawa Party, still hungry for revenge, and secular and Sunni parties that long for a less bloody version of Saddam’s Baath Party, with its nationalist ideology and intolerance of religious and ethnic politics. Meanwhile, the Kurds maneuver gingerly around the divisions in Baghdad. Their priority is to preserve their near autonomy in northern Iraq and ward off the resurrection of a powerful central government that could one day besiege their cities and bombard their villages, as Baghdad did throughout the twentieth century.

The country, Iraq, may NEVER return to the beautiful country I knew in my youth……..Iraq is destined to be a failed state and will be open to yet another dictator to come along…..and this cycle will most likely begin all over again….but for now…all the Iraqis have to look forward to is more misery and a failed state waiting for the next strongman to appear…..

A now it looks like he is trying to emerge from the shadows…….

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has demonstrated an increasingly authoritarian rule as he consolidates power over the country’s institutions and security forces. He has marginalized his political opponents through force and coercion, which has stoked sectarian tensions and even threatened a break-up of the nation. And Obama is supporting all of it.

Maliki, a Shiite, ordered the arrest of his Sunni Vice President Hashemi just as the last U.S. troops left Iraq. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq expressed approval in January of this quest to detain Iraq’s vice president on trumped up terrorism charges, despite a virtual consensus that it was a blatant attempt to eliminate a political rival.

Maliki also betrayed an agreement that would have limited his ability to marginalize the Sunnis and turn the military into a sectarian force and ended up arresting hundreds of former Baath Party members on charges that they were involved in a coup plot. Because of the turmoil, Sunni and Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament committed themselves to a boycott, and later threatened secession.

Alaa Mekki, a senior lawmaker with the mostly Sunni Iraqiya bloc, said of the U.S., “Their goal of a united, democratic Iraq is now under threat because of what we describe as the dictatorship attitude.” Angered Kurds and Sunnis say their disenfranchisement has never been greater.

Read More…

Just wait!  Iraq has not been stabilized and the US has done what it does best…put strong men in power….and it could eventually bite us in the ass…

There Is NO Nation Building!

College of Political Knowledge

Since the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq the US has been accused of trying to nation build….and of course this has been denied by all involved…Bush/Rumsfeld/Gates/Clinton/Cheney/Obama…..yada yada….all those in Washington have denied the accusation…..we were at war to remove AQ, destroy the Taleban, find WMDs, execute Saddam and on and on…a whole litany of reason why we dropped that first bomb…..we are assured almost daily that we are not involved in nation building……but is that the truth?

Let us look at just what nation building is…….to build a nation one needs to have 5 ingredients……these are…..identity, legitimacy,penetration, participation and distribution…..without all 5 there is NO nation to build……let me simplify this for my readers……

Identity–the people must identify themselves as one people…..that will not happen in Afghanistan….they see themselves as Pashtu, Tajik, etc……

legitimacy–a government must have the respect and willingness to go with the wishes of the people…..Afghanistan has NONE of this with thye exception of Kabul and Karzai and his cronies….

penetration–the nation must have the support of all its citizens and that includes those people in the isolated areas……Afghanistan will have NONE of this for the small villages feel that they must fend for themselves against all comers…..

participation–the residents must feel that if they take part in the system that their concerns will be addressed by whoever wins the election….Afghanistan will have NONE of this….ancient suspicions will always lead the vote……

distribution–this addresses the wants list of the people…….the villagers will always want more than they get and the ritzier people will always get what is more than they possibly deserve….and then there is the distribution of laws….will all people have the same rights?  In Afghanistan, we know this will NOT be true……

Now with the knowledge of what it takes to build a nation…..what are our chances of Afghanistan becoming a fully functioning nation?  My opinion….slim to NONE!

If NONE is the correct answer……..now ask, just what the Hell are we doing in Afghanistan?

On a side note…..this just in from Newser website……..

The head of Afghanistan’s central bank resigned yesterday, and says he won’t return to the country for fear of reprisals thanks to his investigation of the Kabul Bank corruption scandal. Abdul Qadeer Fitrat is currently in the US, the New York Times reports. In a scathing resignation letter, he says Hamid Karzai’s administration constantly tried to block his inquiry, threatened him with legal action, and even “used law enforcement agencies against the staff of the central bank.” “Some known circles were plotting against me,” he said in an interview on Afghan TV, though he declined to name names. The head of Karzai’s high commission on corruption, Azizullah Ludin, shot back that they blamed Fitrat himself for Kabul Bank’s problems, while an official in the attorney general’s office said they had charges against Fitrat. But Western diplomats, the Times notes, view Ludin with skepticism; he presided over Afghanistan’s fraud-ridden 2009 election.

And my friends will be the major obstacle to Afghanistan becoming a fully functioning nation…..CORRUPTION!

Nation Building?

Daily Agitator

After the big war, WWII, the US was involved in the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, among others….but those were the biggest recipients of large injections of American cash….we help with all aspects of their respective societies…..from bridges to constitutions to actual governments….we were deeply involved….and look what that has done….those two nations became the leaders of the international economic world…all with the help of the US…..

Now, a quick trip in my magical mystery time machine port-a-let…….we skip ahead to the 21st century…..the US invaded and occupied two more countries….Afghanistan and Iraq…..and after relieving the countries of the dastardly leaders…..we set about building a nation from the ground up…..forced democracy..,…..and massive help with infrastructure as well……legislative construction all in the name of democracy……it was yet another story of nation building by the US……

There is been many to condemn our efforts to impose a political process on people that may NOT be ready or even want it….I have been one of those doing the condemning….I feel that it is NOT our place to tell others what they want or what they need, especially on how they should be governed….but beyond that I would like to say……

We DO need nation building…only the nation that we should be helping to improve is…… our own!  We need to spend all the cash that we are now pissing away in Iraq and Afghanistan to be spent right here in the good old US of A…….our infrastructure is falling down around our ears or schools are sadly inadequate…the cash would be much better spent on rebuilding our country and let others fend for themselves…..we have children right here that go to bed hungry and old people eating cat food without adequate housing…we need the nation building as much if not more than the other parts of the world that we feel are so needy….the US is as needy as anywhere else…..

Spend the money here….Nation build here……make the US as prosperous as you want other countries to be….we deserve a fighting chance from our government……

But The US Is Not Into Nation Building

Somewhere I remember a spokesperson for the present administration saying that the US was not into nation building.  Sorry, cannot remember which pea brain uttered those words.  But guess what?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice inaugurated the U.S. government’s first-ever civilian nation-building team Wednesday in a bid to learn from missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction efforts.

The “active” component, called the Civilian Response Corps, is a team of 250 federal employees from several agencies – diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others.

Their primary responsibility is to deploy to crisis spots around the world within 48 to 72 hours.

“This is a mission that requires the integration of security, diplomacy and development,” Miss Rice said at a State Department ceremony.

For the team’s active members, the response corps will be a full-time job. Another 2,000 who have other federal jobs will serve as the “standby” component, said John Herbst, the department’s coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.

About 37 percent of the active corps will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about 30 percent from the State Department and the rest from the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Treasury, Mr. Herbst said.

Members of the nation-building corps already have deployed to missions in Sudan, Chad, Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, although the numbers are much smaller than the targets of 250 active members and 2,000 standby members.

Only 100 active members have been hired so far because the $75 million appropriated by Congress is less than needed to fund the operation.

The administration later created Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan, which usually are headed by senior diplomats and include other civilian specialists working with the military.

Because of the need to help stabilize and rebuild weak, war-torn or poorly governed countries, Miss Rice has advocated “transformational diplomacy” as a part of the Foreign Service’s future.

OOPS!  The the Washington Times article pretty much punched a huge hole in the lame statement from the recent past.