1 Boring Old Man

Warring factions to gather in Iraq
UMass scholar sets new round of talks

After a weekend of closed-door negotiations in Helsinki, a group of rival members of Iraq’s parliament and tribal leaders are set to announce today that they will gather in Baghdad for the first time for a further round of talks that they hope will lay the foundation for peace in their troubled country. "Progress has been made," Padraig O’Malley, the UMass-Boston professor and veteran peace activist who organized the meeting, said in a phone interview from the Finnish capital.

O’Malley said the participants agreed upon all but three of 16 broad principles, which he hopes the Iraqi Parliament will eventually endorse, laying the framework for negotiations to reconcile Iraq’s warring parties and militias. He said the participants hoped that that their talks would lead to a detailed agreement on core issues that have plagued Iraq, including disarming militias associated with political parties, protecting the rights of minorities, and reducing corruption in government.

So far, the participants have declined to make details of their discussions public to avoid creating too much debate and acrimony in Iraq, O’Malley said. They are planning to announce their progress at a press conference at the Helsinki airport today before returning to Iraq…

war  /wÉ”r/ [wawr]  –noun
1.	a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air.
2.	a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations: The two nations were at war with each other.
3.	a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns: the War of 1812.

1. Iraq was an immediate danger to the United States because of ties with Terrorists [al Qaeda] andbecause they had weapons of mass destruction that they might use to attack us or give to the Terrorists who would use them. This rationale was the only public rationale when we invaded Iraq in 2003.
2. Operation Iraqi Freedom: Iraq was under the control of a despot and we were invading to free them to choose a democratic government. This rationale was only later pushed as our reason for invading – liberators.
3. The Bush Doctrine: We were pre-emptively going to unseat rogue regimes that might pose a threat to America – "Regime Change." This was a cause without reason – Iraq was our enemy.

In essence, we dismantled the government of a country with multiple ethnic and religious groups, nearly twenty million people, and had some idea that they would come together and generate some kind of government. It’s hard to imagine that such a thing is even possible. We call it the Iraq War. Many Iraqis see it as the American Occupation. I’m not even sure it deserves to be called a "War." It’s more like a great big mess.

So when I read that a UMass Professor is assembling a group of people representing the various factions in the country to talk to each other to try to establish a peaceful situation in which they can begin to try to dig their way out of this colassal mess we created in their country, I say more power to him. We bemoan our losses in Iraq, or the cost of this peculiar incident in our history, but the real issue here is how to help the people who live in the place formerly known as Iraq to sort out how to restablish some kind of collective life.

And as for the lunatic Neoconservatives who thought up this absurd experiment in anarchy and chaos, getting rid of them forever is the real War right now. Step one is to replace our own government with people who are unassociated with anything that has to do with their misguided leadership. That means beating John McCain at the polls in November. It’s not John McCain as a person that needs to be beaten. It’s the fact that he’s allied himself with the policies of the fools who came before him. Without the Neoconservatives and their Washington Representatives, there is no Iraq War. There’s only a gigantic mess in the Middle East, created by our foolhardiness, that we are obligated to help get right. Padraig O’Malley for Secretary of State! At least he’s trying to do the right thing.

How We’ll Know When We’ve Won
A definition of success in Iraq.
by Frederick W. Kagan

… let us consider in detail one of the most important of these arguments: that no one has offered any clear definition of success in Iraq.

Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over and over. Why won’t war critics hear it? Is it because they reject the notion that such success is achievable and therefore see the definition as dishonest or delusional?…