I would like to add one point to my Iraq exit plan in /m4494

The U.S. should maintain control over all border crossings that have roads capable of carrying tanker trucks and maintain control over the oil port at Mina al-Bakr. Don't allow oil to leave the country anywhere else than Mina al-Bakr, and distribute the proceeds from oil sales to the leader of each Iraqi fiefdom, based on a per-capita distribution. Make sure every Iraqi citizen knows how much oil money their leader is getting to spend on their behalf. Let each fiefdom control the contracts for oil production or transportation inside their borders, but cut off revenue if a particular fiefdom becomes uncooperative.

I realize that my suggested Balkanization of Iraq is not ideal, or democratic, but it becomes more obvious every day that there is no longer any possibility left of an ideal exit for the U.S.

TM Lutas advised:
 "I suggest you read up on the Thirty Years War which ended up creating the system."

 I have a good clasical education. The system which losely stems from the council of Westphalia only works when there are clear boundaries and common goals (security, prosperity etc). That would be Europe and America.

 The mess that was Persia and is Palestine was created by Europeans and Americans for their own benifit. To expect peoples who have had their futures and boarders imposed for these reasons to respect European historical norms is ludicrous.

 I am not a starry eyed child. There are good reasons to unite the peoples of the world under one government.

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

PenGun:

"There are good reasons to unite the peoples of the world under one government."

That would make you a "Transnational Progressive", therefore a true enemy of the United States of America. If you are American, that makes you a domestic enemy. If not, then you are a foreign enemy.

In either case, it is the first duty of the US government--as set out in the Constitution--to defend the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I REALLY have to get off this board while there are hard leftists--Marxists--around. Classical education or not, you seem to have virtually no perspicuity, and there are Marine lives at stake right now.

As are your buildings, trains, buses--ultimately entire cities--also at stake.

The UN is a travesty, and will not survive long if I am reading the mood of the American people correctly (not the chattering classes in the media).

We shall see, my leftist friend, we shall see.

That last post was a tad harsh. But Transnational Progressivism, along with radical Islamism, are world-historical threats.

I don't know PenGun from Adam, and don't really give a shit what he/she thinks.

I just care about turning this war around, and getting as many comrades home safe as possible.

BruceR /m4593 - Rapists exist inside the military and out. You might want to check out the rape controversies in Okinawa (no contractors, just uniformed men). What exactly is different about soldier and contractor rapes that offends you so badly?

PenGun /m4600 - I think you mistake my point. The reason Westphalian norms were kept for hundreds of years has little to do with clear boundaries and common goals. National sovereignty was respected because everybody knew that if they themselves started messing around in other people's business, the same would be done to them and we would end up right back in the exhausting, horrible, many sided warfighting style that characterized the Thirty Years War.

The common goal, if there is one, is to avoid the horror of unpredictable, vicious warfare. This is what is being violated by the islamist intellectual framework. They do this because they think that rolling the dice this way is their only shot at winning and that we won't dare follow through on the implicit threat of Westphalia. If you violate sovereignty, your sovereignty will be violated. They're betting that we won't have the guts for it.

They bet very badly.

They believe that we are unwilling to engage in non-Westphalian warfare and that any leadership that tries will be thrown out in elections. They believe that once political elites understand that the door to non-Westphalian war is closed to them, they will look down the road and realize that they will inevitably lose. This is when they will start signing dhimma pacts.

Sorry, I think we won't willingly enslave ourselves in such a fashion.

Minigun /m4601 - You figured out that he's a trannie just now? You haven't been paying attention. I thought it wasn't worth mentioning, it was so obvious.

TM: At least you are correct in seeing that the forces attacking Western countries aren't paying much attention to a treaty between a bunch of European monarchies signed in the seventeenth century. The world is a bit different today. When you try to project a Western world-view on the globe, that cultural image is reflected back to you in a metamorphised form, transforming the initial sender as well as the recipient. Islam is not a monolithic statist force that can be engaged in a battle conducted according to rules that have probably been ignored since Napoleon. I wish I was as optimistic as you are, right now it looks to me like the U.S. has lost its sense of direction, and is reverting back to the same kind of predictable reactions that have been missing the point since the Shah was deposed. The Islamic world is in a state of tremendous flux, it is the Western world that seems to be stuck in the seventies.

Maybe this kind of thinking makes me a Transnational Progressivist too. I guess we are easily identified by our shaved heads and tattoos. Seriously, where is the evidence of a worldwide movement of radical TP's?

The Iraqi Match

Churchill - Two Team Flit – No score

1.We all know Bruce “staked his reputation” on Marine ingenuity in solving the Fallujah uprising. :)

2.Churchill, on the other hand, gassed the rats in their holes.

Result – Helicopter gun ships and slingshots. Winnie goes up one-nil.

1.Churchill, after the Shia uprising in 1920, chose the Sunnis as his pacification agent.

2.TML said, “I find it remarkably unlikely that history will repeat itself in this instance because we're not trying to hold together an empire as Churchill was.”

Result – Bremmer brings the Sunni Baathists back. Poor Mr. Lutas. :(

The administration is now fleshing out details, which it hopes to conclude this week. But a U.S. official said the United States, backed by Britain, had decided in principle to fix or soften the rigid rules that led to the automatic firing of Iraqis in the Baath Party from jobs ranging from top government positions to teachers and doctors.
The coalition is already bringing back senior officers to provide experienced leadership to the fragile new Iraqi army, with more than half a dozen generals from Hussein's military appointed to top jobs in the last week alone, U.S. officials said. Gen. John Abizaid, chief of Central Command, is working to identify other commanders to bring back in.

Game, set and match to Winston! ;)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../22/MNGHD691821.DTL

TML: I think Bruce's point is that the soldiers on Okinawa who were accused and tried for rape fall within the justice system(s) of the American military and Japan. Private Contractors in CPA controlled Iraq certainly don't come under the USMJ and is there really any legal authority to judge them in Iraq now?

Minigun and TM accuse me of:
"Transnational Progressivism"

 Damn. Well I looked it up and, no, I disagree with most of ... the transnational progressives thrust. That is if I understand it at all. This is really reaching folks.

 I don't think the nation state model will be capable of dealing with the inevitable widening of the ability of individuals to cause large amounts of damage to infrastructure and population. The "westphalian" model now has to deal with individuals and it really is lost here.

 As human knowledge increases it puts more and more power in the hands of individuals. There is nothing you can about this. As I explained earlier any trucker with a high school education can put together a "daisy cutter +" in an afternoon.

 The present debacle in Iraq and the ongoing failure in Afganistan are the result of a mindset that is frankly obselete.

 A large number of people who were ambivilant to the US now hate it and with the recent support of Isrealie west bank ambitions even Mubarak has given up. One could not have done a better job in inciting hatred if one had carefuly tried.

 Given the above ... blindingly stupid is ... kind.

 "We are going to have to come up with some new shit" Frank Zappa

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

 Uhhh ... Churchill's dead Charles. So is Frank ... hi ho.

I'm not Kos. If this whole website has a point, it's explaining soldiers to civilians and vice versa. When it comes to the deaths of fighting men, I hope no one mistakes my occasional clinical detachment for lack of feeling. But I do think it is in its own way a euphemistic disservice not to call soldiers soldiers. "Civilian contractors" is confusing, inaccurate PR garbage, put out by people that are trying to pull the wool over people's eyes; call them PMCs, or "private paramilitaries," or even, if you have to, "a new class of mercenaries," as this week's New York Times editorial did, but I think it's incumbent on us to get some version of the word "military" in there somewhere if we want to have the frank discussion you're asking for, and which I would also welcome.

You may not be fully aware of the Dyncorp situation. As I said previously, every other country in the world, when it assigns staff to UN military or paramilitary duty, seconds serving national personnel. If they screw up abroad, there is a justice system in place at home to prosecute them for their crimes.

The United States is unique in that, in the case of UN policing, the State Department makes the commitment to the UN in terms of funding and numbers, and then subcontracts the entire U.S. commitment to Dyncorp to fill. In Bosnia, several Americans serving with Dyncorp got involved in underage prostition, sex slavery, and rape, along with some UN-hired Bosnian locals. Those who wished justice had to reluctantly conclude that no law on earth, Bosnian, American, or international, civilian or military, applied to the Dyncorp employees, and no one could touch them.

I have a lot of respect for mercenaries. I've even known a couple. But I have no respect for a system that allows men to buy and sell 12 year-old girls with impunity, and especially when those men are contaminating an AO shared with over a thousand Canadian soldiers who get to stick around after they're repatriated to face the angry fathers, etc. etc. Every other country sent police to Bosnia and Kosovo, for better or for worse (there's no doubt there's corrupt police out there, too, I know) but only the United States sent a contingent of men with a license for thuggery.

And no, I don't blame the UN for that, really, since that was also asked earlier. I blame your State Department for putting the UN in the position of having to either use lawless private paramilitaries, or forego U.S. assistance in its international policing efforts altogether. Some choice, that.

Pengun 4595 - Gunshots to the heads of 3 women is quite an accident. 20 minutes of Googling before posting yielded no implied accidents nor did a further 20 minutes tonight. Where did you get your special insight?

RGlasel /m4604 - I wouldn't say that refusing to abide by the principle is the same as not paying attention to it. Since all muslim majority states are members of the UN, muslims, by and large, live in areas governed by regimes committed to Westphalian principles of national sovereignty. You throw out Westphalia, you also have to chuck most of the UN charter. So we're going to have to disagree on the "paying attention" issue.

I'm not projecting any world view on anyone. It's a fact that the UN is a fundamentally Westphalian institution. It's a fact that all muslim nations belong. It's a fact that the Islamist terror groups that are parasites on muslim institutions are using Westphalia's strictures very cannily to avoid retribution by the West. You can't officially subscribe to the premier Westphalian international institution and simultaneously attack Westphalia with assymetric warfare designed to walk the Westphalian fault lines.

At least in the US, there's significant opinon about withdrawing from the UN. It's not some sort of holy writ that we belong. Islamism doesn't ask muslim nations to withdraw from the UN so it supports Westphalian principles when it gives muslims an international voice. It is simply not honest to take advantage of and simultaneously assault Westphalian principles of national sovereignty.

Charles Tupper /m4605 - I stand behind my belief that the Sunnis will not reprise their role as minority overlords of a repressive Iraqi state, this time imposed by the US instead of Britain. Letting Baathists back into the halls of power is a warning sign, true, but we can figure out who was wrong after the first or second Iraqi elections.

Cynical Joe /m4606 - I believe that there are judges conducting trials and handing out sentences in Iraq and have been for some time. If the contractors cannot be judged, this is a problem but not with contracting per se but rather with the judicial arrangements thought through before this particular deployment. I can certainly see defining which tribunals criminals who are DoD contractors would come before. There is no intellectual difficulty here. When there is a ready remedy to ensure that criminals face justice, I don't see how a particular screw up (if there is one) on this front discredits the entire idea.

PenGun /m4607 - Ok, you say you are not a transnational progressive. Fair enough, you get the right to self-define your politics if you like. You certainly talk like you're on the left side of the left/right divide and your call for the end of the nation state was clear enough. What label do you subscribe to?

The idea of calling all civilians who carry self-defense arms soldiers makes about as much sense as calling the British East India Company part of the army. It was not and these contractors are not soldiers. If they were, things would be very different.

It's true that nuance is fast becoming a dirty word thanks to the Kerry campaign but there is a place for it. Soldiers and contractors are two different things and they are supposed to be doing different roles. It would be useful to sharpen that line and clarify the rules. But let's not be too surprised that when the largest military on the planet is going through a major overhaul in strategy, tactics, and contracting rules that there will be times where the rule sets haven't caught up with reality on the ground. Do you know of any war where that hasn't been the case?

Well, Bruce, having a "justice system in place at home" and seeing justice done are two different things, aren't they? How many abuses have national personnel, military and otherwise, working under the UN been responsible for, and how many have been held accountable in their own countries?

"Civilian contractors" is a literally correct term for a phenomenon relatively new in our modern history. As the use of private security forces to cope with threats to life and property becomes more established, we may decide that some other phrase fits better. We must also recognize that some way of dealing with abuses committed by such contractors needs to be found.

It's about change and adapting to it, not dishonesty and trying to pull wool over anyone's eyes. And may I suggest that if you're going to make outrage a staple of your commentary on this subject you not be surprised or upset when people note your silence on questions like unpunished crimes by UN personnel contracted in the traditional ways, or the use of "mercenaries" by various insurgent Iraqi political groups. I can well imagine, being Canadian, you think your good intentions and moral consistency ought to be taken for granted. I myself think that you are guilty only of a momentary loss of perspective, but I am not the only one who thinks the tone you have taken on this subject is grating.

BruceR /m4608 - First of all, I know you're not Kos. My article was aimed at him, not you. I've always maintained that what he did crossed the line and what you did walked the line. There's nothing wrong with walking the line. I do it myself (remember "voting to kill canadians") and would not and have not condemned you.

I was not fully aware of the Bosnia situation in which Dyncorp plays such a prominent role. I googled the phrase "Dyncorp rape prostitution" and pulled out three articles:

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include...storyid/163052.html
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cf...ontentid=745&page=2
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug2002/bosn-a21.shtml

Would you agree that these articles provide the relevant facts and are substantially free from falsehoods? Once we agree on a baseline of facts, we can figure out whether our different interpretations on contractors stem from a different understanding of what's going on or a genuine disagreement on what should go on in a military operations zone regarding contractors.

For the record, I've talked with some Romanian church figures in the past on the need to figure out how to handle the problem of sexual slavery long before I ever heard of Dyncorp's involvement in same. I knew there was a problem and was disturbed about it long ago. I remain so.

Joseph Britt /m4611 - I think you've nailed things well in reminding us all that the end result we should be aiming for is seeing justice done in these cases. There's a broad problem of crime in war zones and private contractors, by being such small fish, can bring it to the fore by not being able to spin news the way a national information ministry can to make problems go away.

Frankly, I think that the next Ashcroft press conference on pornography should have a question regarding the child porn one dyncorp employee made of an underage rape he committed. I can't imagine the press corp staying away from "child rapist runs free in US" headlines even if the foul up seems to be from the Clinton era. Sales will very often trump partisan politics.

JB
Let me wade in to the discussion very briefly (slow day at work)
While its true that having a justice system in place and seeing justice done are 2 different things, surely not having a justice system in place adds unnecessary complications to the process, and more importantly looks very bad in situations which are always politically delicate.

"Civillian Contractors" is a term that has been used in the past to mean working civilians, it implies work of a non military nature. It is possible that the term was used used innocently, but it is certainly not accurate and I'm sure that civilian contractors building power plants would like to be distinguished from those that ride around escorting supplies.

Finally let me try your patience with one other point, the whole mentality where it is improper to criticize one party with simoultaneusly criticizing all others that perform similar actions is silly, both logically and logistically. As somebody paying US taxes clearly I have a more of a right to be outraged at the policies of the US government then any other government. Spouting indignation about the dismal foreign policies of Albania would be a complete wast of time on an internet forum reserved for short (except TML) posts who are largely of US or Canadian origin.

Wow, an "accidental" shooting that killed two and wounded eleven (one very seriously), apparently while leaving their UN-controlled compound, and took place over approximately ten minutes. That's got to be a record for an AD (Accidental Discharge).

The Jordanian police officers involved are described as being from a "special police unit", which I suspect makes them members of the Jordanian national police who are distinctly paramilitary in flavour. They're the only police force that I've ever seen with MG3's on pintle mounts in the back of some of their vehicles. I've met some of these folks, and they're definitely a product of their society, with all its attendant political (and tribal, in the literal sense) baggage -- I was left with the distinct impression that "without fear or favour" does not apply in their case. The notion that one of them would "go off" and shoot up his colleagues is entirely plausible, IMHO.