Saturday, August 06, 2005
Hit the 'Undo' button on 1920.
Still thinking about symmetrical vs asymmetrical. Concluded that the ant model is not a bad idea; trouble is, we haven't really implemented it. We've kicked over some piles of dirt, and flushed out the upper layers of one nest, but we've made it crystal clear that we won't kill the queen.
Our original strategic reason for doing Iraq was (1) To show Iran, Syria and Arabia that we can exert force in their back yard. (2) To rig up a base of operations in their back yard.
Iraq was the best choice for such a base because it was central to those three countries, we were already operating in the North, and we had plenty of reasons to revoke Saddam's probation. So okay, now we have the base, but because we didn't have enough sense to kill Saddam when we captured him, we're dealing with constant irritation by Arab ants, which prevents us from exerting the force that was the original reason for the whole business.
I never understood why we didn't explain the operation along those lines, instead of the nonsense about WMD and women's rights, but that's irrelevant now.
Fall back to the original idea. Separate Iraq into its three natural parts, since the 1920 British 'welding' of those parts was a major source of the problem.
Let the Brits have a protectorate on the Shia South, extended over to cover the Syrian border.
Let Kurdistan be a US protectorate. The supposed "reason" for not separating Kurdistan was a bunch of Kissingerian bullshit about stability and Turkey, which never made sense; and Turkey gave up any right to consideration when it refused to help in this war. On top of all that, we owe the Kurds a big one, after Bush Senior's betrayal of their help in 1991.
Fence in the area around Baghdad, cut the pipelines, and let the Sunnis return to their primitive ways. Fill the North and South with tactical nukes, ready to throw outward or inward. Any time we hear a rumor that Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, or Baghdad is funding, supporting, or thinking positively about terrorist activity in the civilized world, we give the appropriate city a U-235 beauty treatment. Remove unsightly blemishes, leave an attractive glow. After three such makeovers are necessary, we toss in a free bonus: transform the queen (Mecca) into a lovely mirror-like pool of glass. ¶ 11:47 AM
Our original strategic reason for doing Iraq was (1) To show Iran, Syria and Arabia that we can exert force in their back yard. (2) To rig up a base of operations in their back yard.
Iraq was the best choice for such a base because it was central to those three countries, we were already operating in the North, and we had plenty of reasons to revoke Saddam's probation. So okay, now we have the base, but because we didn't have enough sense to kill Saddam when we captured him, we're dealing with constant irritation by Arab ants, which prevents us from exerting the force that was the original reason for the whole business.
I never understood why we didn't explain the operation along those lines, instead of the nonsense about WMD and women's rights, but that's irrelevant now.
Fall back to the original idea. Separate Iraq into its three natural parts, since the 1920 British 'welding' of those parts was a major source of the problem.
Let the Brits have a protectorate on the Shia South, extended over to cover the Syrian border.
Let Kurdistan be a US protectorate. The supposed "reason" for not separating Kurdistan was a bunch of Kissingerian bullshit about stability and Turkey, which never made sense; and Turkey gave up any right to consideration when it refused to help in this war. On top of all that, we owe the Kurds a big one, after Bush Senior's betrayal of their help in 1991.
Fence in the area around Baghdad, cut the pipelines, and let the Sunnis return to their primitive ways. Fill the North and South with tactical nukes, ready to throw outward or inward. Any time we hear a rumor that Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, or Baghdad is funding, supporting, or thinking positively about terrorist activity in the civilized world, we give the appropriate city a U-235 beauty treatment. Remove unsightly blemishes, leave an attractive glow. After three such makeovers are necessary, we toss in a free bonus: transform the queen (Mecca) into a lovely mirror-like pool of glass. ¶ 11:47 AM
