Asymmetrical Information

The violence will go on for a while. Up, down, it does not matter, there will be significant violence.
The new Iraqi government is irrelevant: it has no power base, no divisions who will loyally fight for it.
What will happen further along ? Will the Iraqi gvmnt, with US help, be able to build a credible armed force, capable of taking on the terrorists? Will the neighbors stop fomenting terror with the aim of driving the US out ? Will the US run away ?
Hard to tell.
The June 30 ceremony isn't a relevant variable in the equation.

I don't have any real insight...

But I believe the violence will get worse as certain groups try to gain the power that they want.

Who knows? I may as well be guessing what the temperature will be in Topeka in 23 days at 12 noon.

About 95°. The Iraq prediction is a lot harder.

I predict chronic instability in Iraq.
terrorism, coup d'etat, civil war, etc.

Oh come on Will - In a different thread you had a crystal ball and "knew" that they economy wouldn't have done better without the 93 tax increase and were calling someone who understands a principle "wrong". :)

I think it will go down. The Iraqi government will be able to do things the US can't. Such as declaring a death penalty and starting trials.

I don't think it makes a bit of difference in the long run. The Iraqi government probably won't even be a real one with any reak authority, especially in places like Mosul. The big problem with Iraq is that is has been so unpredictable with respect to U.S. casualties. March was tame and some optimists thought we were turning a corner. Then April came and we had our worst month. As long as U.S and/or foreign troops are present, you can't expect too much improvement in the violence, as their presence serves as a magnet for foreign fighters and remnants of the ex-regime.

Will: It's easier in Austin. 99. I don't even know why TV stations employ weatherpeople during July and August.

As for Iraq, I have a feeling that recent developments (U.S. won't let new "sovereign" government delcare martial law, may keep troops there for 3-5 years) are probably convincing the person on the street that the date isn't all that important, if they didn't agree with Jacob already.

The foreign Jihadists and the less than one thenth of one percent of Iraqis who support them will try to continue the violence, but if the new government is perceived by the other 25 million people living in Iraq as Iraqi rather than foreign, then they will start turning in the Jihadists - telling Iraqi police where they hide, etc. The key is the belief that they have a stake in the success of the new government.

Republicans, God love'em. Where else can you find a group of people who have such a dystopian world view that they see the end of our civilization in a one-off outlier that kills .00001% of our population, yet who remain sunny enough to look at the recent clusterf*ck in Iraq and decide that, whatever the Bush policy-of-the-day is, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"?

Over the long-term, the violence will almost certainly go up. We just threw a huge pile of money (Iraq with its oil, location, and historical importance) in a street filled with poor people. How could you not expect a fight to break out? (This is essentially the Bush I analysis). Aside from the various factions in the cobbled-together country of Iraq, the Iranians and the Turks have obvious interests, and the rest of the ME states have only slightly more murky ones.

So fights break out because we put Iraq in play. June 30 is a minor inflection point - a time when the chaos of the situation is manifest, and small increases in effort might have major effects in the direction of the country. I'm sure there will be higher violence around that date than otherwise, but I'm equally sure that there will be even more violence around the times that the real government is elected or installed. In the end, probably after a bloody civil war, a new strongman will take control and Iraq will be roughly the same as prior to our invasion. (Or at least that's the good scenario).

The only reason I can think of that violence may go down is because we may take an essentially passive role after June 30. We're a lot better at killing people than anyone else in Iraq. If we're off the field, I bet the number of dead go down. Also, given our obvious strength, I think the other side may believe they need lots of dead bodies to drive home their point. But comparing the situation of us in the game and us out of the game is an apples 'n oranges situation; I think you were referring to something else.

Oh come on Will - In a different thread you had a crystal ball and "knew" that they economy wouldn't have done better without the 93 tax increase and were calling someone who understands a principle "wrong". :)

My dear Pat, that bit of devilry is not fooling anyone who actually read the thread. Mr. Allen stayed the course of logical reasoning while you huffed, and puffed, and blew your own house in by trying to dismiss specific charges with wandering generalizations. In brief, you got your boxer shorts handed to you along with the rearward fifty percent of their contents.

Megan, I agree with you, the violence should decline after June 30. A further argument is that, why ever terrorists are keen to stop the June 30th handover, there won't be much point in continuing maximal car bombings of passers-by after June 30.

The Iraqi government probably won't even be a real one with any reak authority, especially in places like Mosul.

Eamon, you may be right (tho IMO you're too pessimistic), but there are lots of non-"real" governments around the world with much less violence than Iraq.

SCM Tim, I find your "We just threw a huge pile of money" analogy extremely murky. Iraq has a preferred location? And I don't see the Turks, at least, advancing their interests with car bombs. For that matter, a campaign of individual assassination makes more sense for someone trying to grab power than the random car bombs we've been seeing.

I see what you mean by "we put Iraq in play", but surely things could not have been any better when Saddam died. (Imagine Uday and Qusay fighting it out with a semi-intact Iraqi army, and no Western army of any size in the area.)

In one sentence you imply that we're the ones killing the civilians, and two sentences later that the "other side" needs to counter us with more bodies. Could you pick a set of facts and stick with them?

If your "good scenario" is a bloody civil war followed by a strongman just as bad as Saddam, I guess I'll stick to the dystopian Republican scenarios...

Another point no one has mentioned is the Western media. Certainly some of the violence exists to get the media's attention. If journalists see the June 30 handover as having any real significance, subsequent attacks will receive less publicity (due to the provincialism of the American media, at least). This in turn should lead to a decline in the violence.

Even if the media doesn't think the handover means anything, coverage of Iraq may decline due to the political conventions and the Olympics.

I'm not sure if average level of violence will go down after June 30. As far as I understand it the disruptive forces will regard the new government as illegitimate, an agent for the occupiers. They refer to those in the Iraqi forces now as "collaborators". Will this even change when elections are held next year? Not necessarily. A connection to the U.S. will long be perceived in the Iraqi government. The U.S. continues to make itself look unjust to many in the Middle East. Furthermore the overall level of law and order has been drastically decreased in Iraq since last year, which tends to encourage factions to form and fight for power. Sure, the majority of Iraqis will continue to just want peace, but it only takes a minority to disrupt this. Frustration builds, and others, previously moderate, join in the fray.

In general the boundary between secular and religious law is murky in Islamic nations, hence the high incidence of disagreements over how to run things around the Middle East. When religion is involved, tempers tend to get hot. Do we understand why religious nations like Israel or India are able to keep most of these arguments nonviolent most of the time? No. Well, maybe our anthropologists and sociologists have their ideas, but they aren't listened to by our politicians. Even if they were, would we be able to impose the same conditions in Iraq? Who knows. Intervening in Iraq without this knowledge was unwise, but now we have the mess.

We might not like it, but perhaps Pakistan is the best model we have for a way out. At least, right from the formation of the country out of a colonially-imposed division, they have had to contend with disorganization and multiple factions, and the Islamic factor..

Two cents: no perceptible change at first but a slow decline over time. By next year this time I suspect the small percentage of those using violence will be smaller, more isolated, discouraged, and maybe even a little bit scared.

I find Tim's predictions of a return to a pre-invasion state of affairs in future Iraq to be quite humorous. I think we will all find them humorous five, ten, twenty years in the future. Just my opinion of course but I find a return to Saddam-esque thugery to be the least likely scenario of those bandied about.

Leftist Reasoning Fairy

Funny. While I may have been rude in some of my posts. Rudeness was returned and originated by others. I should always stay on the high ground though and not do what leftists do with their "attacks" and "putting people on the defense". I should stick to the subject matter instead of returning in kind.

And sticking to the subject matter... Not one leftist could actually explain how a tax increase helps the economy. Yes. Spending can help the economy but that's a separate action. To help an economy during a recession it actually may be good government policy to lower tax rates and separately increase government spending and then you can pay off that debt during a GOOD economy.

No matter how much a leftist tries, they cannot explain how a tax increase helps the economy because it doesn't.

Rhetoric about boxer shorts doesn't do it either. Just shows the leftist pattern continues... :)

Pat, everybody who disagrees with you is not a "leftist". You need to grow up a little. People can read the thread themselves, and draw their own conclusions as to what assertions were made, so there really isn't any need to draw that dispute into this thread. In fact, it's a little bit rude.

Boy you continue your pattern.... Your whole post was "rude".

It is a leftist belief to me (my opinion) that raising tax rates can be beneficial to an economy. No sound reasoning involved just a belief that is generally held by liberals. It is my right to state that opinion and ask numerous times for a sound explanation as to how raising tax rates can be beneficial to an economy. Not one leftist stood up to the plate.

In fact you continue your diversionary tactic, trying to talk about my non-personable characteristics that were mirroring the leftists at the time. :)

Try to talk about your belief instead of me. It'll set you free....

Will - I've read the posts. Both sides of the debate were rude and Pat admitted to being rude. But never was your side ever able to really explain how it is that the belief is held that tax rate increases can be good for the economy.

Can you try? It'll be interesting to see how you can explain yourself instead of attacking Pat.

Baklava, I specifically described the Democratic belief that the 93 tax increases caused the economic growth in the 90s as "silly". Of course, what Pat is talking about now has exactly nothing to do with what his original contention with me was, namely, that Pat disagreed with my assertion that Republicans say things about economic policies that are plainly, empirically, wrong. Pat refused to answer a question meant to clarify his position, clarification needed because he contradicted himself, and also engaged in deliberate misrepresentations of my views. Pat misrepresents, and changes the topic of what he and I were debating, because Pat does not wish to have an honest discussion, yet another sign of his fundamental rudeness, which, unfortunately, he felt a need to rudely drag into this thread as well. How can I explain myself, and why should I, to someone who lacks the basic honesty to engage in debate regarding what he disputed in my original post?

PJ/Maryland:

1. Huge pile of money means, at a minimum, the third largest oil reserves in the world. How is this confusing? As to location - it borders Syria, Iran, and Saudi, which (excepting Israel and maybe Egypt) are the three countries which, for example, we worry most about in the area. Iraq sits in the heart of the Middle East.

2. I'd bet Iran and Turkey are already involved. The Turks were worrying the Kurds before the war about the oil fields that border them, and (IIRC) they are worrying the Kurds now about those same oil fields. Neither Iran nor Turkey will be overt about its desires for Iraq until we wash our hands of the place (within five years). Until then, they just need to keep Iraq in play (destabilized). Fortunately, that’s cheap and easy - the place is already chaotic, and they’ll fund people to try to keep the chaos going indefinitely. IIRC, there is some evidence that this is already happening (all the “foreign terrorists” to which Faux News keeps referring).

3. I wouldn't have cared if Iraq had a bloody succession - my passport says "United States of America," what does yours say? Seriously – all sorts of bad things happen in places you don’t live; welcome to the real world. The problem now is that we've paid a price, in blood, treasure and standing, for nothing. Well, not nothing. We'll be slightly worse off because it will cost more to get others to work with us in the future. Negative ROI - its FANtastic!

(When did ‘Pubs become the multinational tree-huggers that paid for welfare abroad, but not in the U.S.? Was there a memo?)

4. I don't think I referred to civilians in my post (though some must die – someone probably has a rule of thumb about this). I'm not sure what's controversial about saying that we're significantly better at killing than the other guys - surely this is a point of militaristic pride among the 'Pubs? (FYI - I'm glad about it too). I bet we’re tougher than the other guys, too, which means that it takes more deaths (ours or incidentals) to dislodge us. So battles we’re in are bloodier than internecine battles between militias – is this really that controversial?

I actually don’t understand your confusion here, so maybe you could help me out?

5. I very purposely didn’t mention Saddam, because I think we’ll demand (for PR sake) that any ruler of Iraq be better about human rights than Saddam (how could he not) and be more discreet than Saddam apparently was. (Note that the standard for the area isn’t that high – IIRC, Syria executed 20,000 who were related by blood to internal terrorists (or "freedom-fighters" or whatever's appropriate)).

But let’s take you at your assumption – do I think we should be happy if a strongman emerges to lead a tin-pot country that is no threat to us, and that is surrounded by enemies (well, almost – I’ve never been clear about the Iraq-Syria relationship)? Hell yes. As far as I can tell, that’s the sotto voce policy of the Administration. I assumed that’s what they mean when they start saying things like “their democratic institutions might not look like ours” and generally back away from our commitment to create a democratic Iraq. What do you think that stuff meant? (Serious question).

In any case, if you're waiting for a democratic (in a way we would recognize) Iraq, I think you're in for a cruel awakening. But I wouldn't worry too much about it - we're still orders of magnitude stronger than anyone who opposes us. It's just the wanton pissing away of blood, money, and opportunity that irritates me.

I think in the medium term (the rest of 2004) the violence will be about the same. Obviously this is a guess.

I think there's potential in the long-term for it to get better or worse (yes, really going out on a limb here).

Better if all our dreams come true and Iraq settles in to some sort of federation model government that keeps all sides reasonably content.

Worse if the complexities of power sharing between Kurds and Shi'a and Sunni Arabs breaks out into war, perhaps aided by the active intervention that Israel and Iran are now allegedly doing (not necessarily with the aim of causing war, of course).

I don't generally see June 30th as a significant date. The government will still be viewed by the insurgents as a group of collaborators; and the new government's ability to do good for the Iraqi people may not be any higher than the CPAs was--though I hope that's not the case.

I predict violence will increase. In particular that there will be more violence in the one month, 3 months and one year after June 30 than in the one month, three months and one year before June 30. I am predicting this because I don't believe the new Iraqi government will be strong enough to maintain order. Galt talked about legitimacy but too many Iraqis believe might makes right for this to matter much.

"I'd bet Iran and Turkey are already involved."

SomeCallMeTim,
In that case I hope you would post them as seperate bets with the Hypothetical Bookie because at least that way you would break even rather than lose the whole bet. It's worth noting that the names bruited about in Iraqi blogs such as "Healing Iraq" and "Iraq the Model" seem to be that of Iran and Syria rather than Iran and Turkey.

There are sound historical reasons for this. #1 is that Turkey doesn't necessarily have the connections to do this that Syria and Iran do. The way the Kurds feel about Turks might very well rival the way the Greeks do and I am not aware of any particularly strong Turkish cultural connection with any other Iraqi group. The reason the Turks were worried about Kurds in possession of oilfields was that they were afraid that this would make an independent Kurdistan viable. This would be bothersome to Turkey because of the certain incitements it would give to their own Kurds. A stable Iraqi government OTOH would not give them such incitements and is therefore to be encouraged. Conversely, an unstable Iraq OTOH would almost certainly lead to the Kurdistan they would rather not have and is therefore to be discouraged. For these reasons you may count on Turkey to be either supportive or at least neutral to any new Iraqi government.

Syria, by way of contrast, had a strong enough connection to share a Baathist ideology with Saddam. And a post-Baathist Iraq that succeeds calls this ideology into question. (If the accounts I read are correct then some stirrings among Syrian dissidents have already begun). So there is cause to suspect them of future troublemaking.

My own prediction is that the date *is* significant but whether or not "the violence" will taper off *this* year is another question. The I expect popular opinion and local knowledge by the Iraqi government to turn the tide against the terrorists but I also expect that anyone who feels threatened by the new government will come out of the woodwork in a desperate attempt to "kill it before it grows". It is when the Iraqi government survives it's first year that things will really begin to calm down if my guess is correct.

- S.P.M.

Will - I don't know what to say. You seem to engage in a lot of double-standard speak. Please look at your own actions. I've seen all the posts.

I found that he did stick to one point although he was rude at times which he admitted to.

I found that you kept trying to get him to explain himself and another certain set of people who make recession claims - and while doing so were rude yet, refuse to understand yourself as being rude.

He repeatedly tried to get someone on your side to explain how in the world a tax increase would be beneficial to the economy. It looks to me that your side was mixing in a separate action of expenditures by the government helping the economy.

Can you or someone on your side honestly engage (as you assert you wish he would've)? . . . . . . . . . . . . Tell everyone please how a tax increase helps an economy. . . . . . . I think he is correct as he makes common sense but I'd be willing to hear the other side if you would take the time.

Will ya? Please?

On the violence. I think violence will increase dramatically before the November election to influence them. But then again, I kind of have the feeling that their might be attempted violence in the United States also.

It is my humble opinion that Spain set a precedence to the terrorists... unfortunately.

It's going to get worse and it's going to spread to other countries. Every American in the Middle East and every local who works with the Americans is a target now, to say nothing of the United States itself.

The US is weaker militarily, diplomatically and strategically, and we are vastly more likely to see a repeat of 9/11.

The more real control is exercised by Iraqis, the less violence we'll see. The formal transition will start that process but, obviously, our soldiers will have to stick around for a while to make sure it doesn't derail. Once Bush uses his re-election landslide as a mandate to invade Syria and Saudi Arabia, the media will lose interest in Iraq. If a car-bomb goes off when there aren't any reporters around, it doesn't kill anyone. Iraqi violence will, therefore, vanish altogether by 2006.

Baklava, apparently common courtesy is a class you missed as well. Perhaps it escaped you, but the host of this site asked for input regarding an entirely different matter that you and Pat so rudely decided to take up in this thread. Why you did this is really quite puzzling, as the other thread was still up; I can only conclude that it was out of some very odd need to grandstand in a belligerent fashion. Finally, Pat disputed my assertion. If he wishes to engage in that dispute, he can do so in the other thread, as long as he doesn't misrepresent my positions which he did again in this thread.If he wants to take up another issue, he can start his own blog.

I wanted to clarify a part of my last post regarding how the coming Iraqi governments will be perceived. The June 30th government until the first elections will be regarded by the restless minority as a puppet of the U.S. at worst, and an illegitimate imposition at best. This would be true even in the absence of the Sunni/Shiite/etc. factions and subfactions now differentiating themselves. But there is no guarantee that having elections etc. is going to clear up the illegitimacy perception, as we have already seen in the reactions to the interim constitution drafted with U.S. help. The hand of the U.S. will be seen in the Iraqi government for some time. And given that things are likely to be rough economically there for a long time, discontent is going to persist.

The example of Saudi Arabia is also relevant. There the government was not set up by the U.S., but because of the longstanding strong ties it maintains with the U.S., the part of the citizenry that does not agree with or do well under the monarchy's policies resents the U.S. which it sees as helping support it. Remember much of bin Laden's pre-2001 vitriol was directed at the Saudi government, and look at the recent upsurgence of terrorist activities there..

The United States and other western powers have two choices. One, start to understand these dynamics and learn to work within them, or two, continue what will be a long-running stalemate similar to the Israel-Palestine standoff and will kill many thousands of innocents who want no part of the conflict.

Will - Wow you keep it up.... Look in the mirror. It would help with future posts. You don't convince anyone with that pattern.

Thank you Baklava

I think over time it will get better. SA, Syria, Iran all have their own problems and are not strong enough to completely dominate. There is no competing world view as there was with the Soviet Union. Unless China steps in (which will happen soon thanks to our stupid trade policies) they have nowhere else to go, for now.

I sure would have liked to see the US take the money we spent on Iraq and have put it into a energy independence program instead. Something similiar to the moon landing or the electrification program. I think that we have been paying the price the last 10 years or so of having crummy leadership more focused on dominating the world (a project which will inevitably fail) rather than governing our own country.
I also think our economic policies suck in this country. We are heading toward the 19th century again. The 19th century produced communism due to the misery of workers worldwide. The question is-what competing philosophy will come out of this debacle? It is never wise to let business interests run your country the way we have recently. TR and FDR must be rolling in their graves.

Private investment into energy alternatives have long dwarfed the Manhattan project or moon landing or electrification program projects that the federal government spent on.

Private investment by foreign companies like Honda and Toyota and others should also be considered.

If the federal government said today that we will spend 87 Billion on energy alternatives (above and beyond what the federal government already spends on this type of topic) I don't believe it would make much difference by the end of the year as compared to the private investment by many companies all across the world trying to figure out that way to make a dollar with the new energy alternative.

Also, when we have just had the best economic growth in the last 12 months in 20 years and surveys of employees do not reflect (in this country) that the employees are "miserable" I'm not sure how it can be stated that we are headed in the wrong direction economically.

As for the topic thread....
Violence will continue in Iraq probably (I'm not an Iraq expert) until people own things and have a stake in their future with an economic system of capitalism. Capitalism = the people deciding who gets what resources. If it is the government of Iraq who decides there will probably be lot of fighting and killing as groups try to grab power. That's my sense.

It might be wise to separate out oil fields intitially to groups of "employee owned" corporations. These corporations would then have a sense of trying to operate efficiently and sell the oil and TAXES would be paid to the government of Iraq. In this way, Iraq could provide things like a security infrastructure, a safety net and a judicial system.

Lynne, that is a good point about the failure to address economic imbalances and poor labor conditions during the early industrial revolution providing significant impetus to comnmunist revolutions. I think most of the free-market advocates that post to this blog tend to downplay the importance of addressing economic imbalance in the U.S., or at least they denigrate government-based solutions, which they label as "entitlement", but don't propose any alternatives. There is a tendency to believe that "things are different now" and revolution could not occur in a developed country, and in addition there is the evidence of the failure of the Marxist-derived systems to point to. This belief might be right, but that doesn't make it less reasonable to try to reduce the stress in the system (and the unpleasantness experienced by many of its participants) by striving to find solutions to the inequity problem that work more efficiently than "a rising tide lifting all boats" seems to based on evidence so far.

Baklava, you are right to point out that private investment in alternative energy should be taken into account as well as the federal government's in determining the possible benefits of $87B in funding, but you might not be aware of the scales involved. The federal budget for fusion research, by far the lion's share of its alternative energy spending, was a little over $200M in the late 90s. I haven't checked, but it probably isn't much different now. Spending on all alternative energy programs including fusion in the late 90s added up to less than $1B. The largest private investments are more difficult to quantify. Toyota and Honda spending on hybrids and/or fuel cells cannot really count as "alternative" energy since these need electricity to be generated. You need to look at development work on solar, wind, and other energy sources. I don't have the research in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet an awful lot that if you added this all up over the last _decade_ it would be a heck of a lot less than $87B. Now it's a big question how you _would_ spend that much effectively if you wanted to put it into alternative energy, but it seems like even in the worst case the results as far as American energy security would be a lot better than what we will be getting for our money with the Iraq invasion.

(Sorry to post OT but these are interesting subjects as well..)

I know this is for some future thread and sorry.

I just wanted to add to clarify.

Many universities and companies have spent a lot of time and energy on creating new ways to save energy or extract energy etc. I don't discount fuel cell technology research just because it takes electricity to charge a fuel cell. Just like I don't discount the fact that a refrigerator uses 10% of the energy it did decades ago. I think all of that research is important and I'm not sure how the federal government could be more focused or efficient in spending the money than what we as the human race are already doing all across the world.

I suspect that the violence will go up sharply and then decline even more sharply.

The new Iraqi forces will not be accustomed to the restraint that the US is used to dealing with.

If only people could learn to love each other

"Republicans, God love'em. Where else can you find a group of people who have such a dystopian world view that they see the end of our civilization in a one-off outlier that kills .00001% of our population, yet who remain sunny enough to look at the recent clusterf*ck in Iraq and decide that, whatever the Bush policy-of-the-day is, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"?"

How is it that the number of Americans killed in 9/11 is insignificant, but the smaller number of Americans killed in Iraq is a cluster*ck? Either one of those opinions makes some sense, but together....

Also, I believe the correct figure is 0.001%(unless there are 30 billion people in the US)

For the record:
Violence has been pretty steady the last year, so I'm guessing it will remain steady.
In the long run: 40% good result, 50% something like Egypt, 10% something really depressing

Maor:

"Also, I believe the correct figure is 0.001%(unless there are 30 billion people in the US)." Fair point. I shouldn't have added the % - sloppy on my part.

As to the clusterfuck part - I'm not talking about the dead American soldiers alone. (NB: I think we should also include the severely wounded, which brings the number above 3000). I'm also talking about the money wasted. And, to me, worst of all - we spent our credibility and influence. For what - a new strongman (there is no way we get real elections in 6 months), a destabilized ME, and a world that thinks us a bully (or worse, a stupid bully)? Great.

Iraq wasn't a threat to us before - is anyone really arguing this point anymore? It isn't a threat to us now. So what exactly did we buy? Other than a PR victory for the terrorists? (Unless you really think Iraq will be a democracy in five years, which I think most people acknowledge is fairly unlikely). And, obviously, we put Iraq in play, so maybe Al Qaeda can get some of that oil money.

Why is accountability such a hard concept for Bush supporters?

Try accountability for what you say SoCaMeTim...

BTW, Nice cussing. Learning more words will give you the ability not to cuss. :)

Your hatred spews out still.... It doesn't convince anyone to think like you... :)

Comments are Closed.