Gyroscopic Investing

Colin Powell famously told President George W. Bush before the Iraq invasion, "If you break it, you own it." Well, it's safe to say we broke Iraq.

That's the story I heard last week from two people who live there. I met with the Rev. Canon Andrew White — "The Vicar of Baghdad" — who serves as the chaplain to St. George's Anglican Church in the heart of Baghdad. We were joined by Sarah Ahmed, a director at White's Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East. Ahmed was born and raised in Iraq. White has lived there for 15 years.

"I was in favor of the U.S. invasion," White told me. "But we are literally 5,000 times worse than before. If you look at it, you can see it was wrong. We have gained nothing. Literally nothing. We may have had an evil dictator, but now we have total terrorism. We used to have one Saddam. Now we have thousands."

Read the rest here...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /16116071/

That we broke Iraq seems to me to be indisputable. The question that this begs is, do we now own that miserable pile of sand? By which I mean are we morally responsible for the calamity that we have inflicted upon those people to the extent that we need to send troops there and more or less colonize the damned place until it becomes semi-civilized enough to be left alone?

That is the only reasonably compelling argument I have heard in favor of intervention (yet again).

I think we broke it when we left prematurely.  And that wasn't on Bush's watch.

You beat me to that answer, WAH!

WildAboutHarry wrote: I think we broke it when we left prematurely.  And that wasn't on Bush's watch.

That's very dependent on how staying would have improved the situation vs how many lives and dollars it would cost.

[quote=moda0306]That's very dependent on how staying would have improved the situation vs how many lives and dollars it would cost.[/quote]

Very true.  But we traded a relatively known quantity for an unknown quantity.  Kind of like market timing.  When it works one looks brilliant.  When it doesn't...

We traded a known entity with Sadam for an unknown with trying to fight a war and build a democracy in the middle east. This was the first mistake, at the very least.

Just when you thought Bush had cornered the market on ill-timed and bone-headed moves in the Middle East, along comes Obama and takes it up a notch.

This should remind the US that there are many areas of the world that are destined to be ruled, by brutal dictators.  And in most cases, that may be better for everyone (including the people of those countries), than what ensues if you remove said dictator.

clacy wrote: This should remind the US that there are many areas of the world that are destined to be ruled, by brutal dictators.  And in most cases, that may be better for everyone (including the people of those countries), than what ensues if you remove said dictator.

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing … but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
reference from Pournelle:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmano ... r-liberty/

I will grant that the original Bush II Iraq invasion was a mistake.  But we have compounded that mistake by simply giving up, in the intermediate term.  We have set ourselves up for either tolerating that hell hole and what it has spawned forever (which we will not do) or fixing an acute problem caused by premature withdrawal that would have likely been easier to manage as a long-term chronic problem.

If we were to go back, it should be as part of a coalition including Arab states, like the one that's currently melting ISIS.

TennPaGa wrote:If there is evidence that the U.S. can directly exercise control over the state of affairs in the ME by pre-emptive war, I certainly haven't seen it.

The "Shores of Tripoli" line in the Marine Corps Hymn would seem to indicate a long-standing and intractable problem.

Wikipedia wrote:The Battle of Derne was the decisive victory of a mercenary army led by a detachment of United States Marines and United States Army soldiers against the forces of Ottoman Tripolitania during the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded land battle the United States fought overseas. U.S. forces and mercenaries marched for 600 miles (970 km) through the desert to attack Derne.[1]

Circa 1805.

In Vietnam we dropped more bombs than were dropped in all of WWII and still they kept coming (I was there, BTW). As General Westmoreland famously said the reason they kept coming and we had to blow them up is because they didn't have the same respect for human life that we did.

So the question is, many years later, did we learn the lessons of Vietnam?

The lesson in the modern age is, I think, do we really have the guts to destroy the whole planet to achieve our objectives?

PP4me2 wrote: In Vietnam we dropped more bombs than were dropped in all of WWII and still they kept coming (I was there, BTW). As General Westmoreland famously said the reason they kept coming and we had to blow them up is because they didn't have the same respect for human life that we did.

So the question is, many years later, did we learn the lessons of Vietnam?

Carpet bombing doesn't work?

AdO: Yes, we are morally responsible for the state of affairs in Iraq. But I can't bring myself to think that means we have to continue to police the place.  All the king's horses, and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again. 

Further to other comments, people in the west need to realize that democracy is not for everyone.  It many nations it proves the quip, "democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner".  I can't advocate for the alternative of the likes of Saddam Hussein, either.  But in any event, it's certainly not our job to bear some modern "white man's burden" of establishing democracies by hook or crook.
 

Simonjester wrote: since the country/borders of Iraq are largely a western fiction, and the different religious sects and ethnic groups don't actually get along without a strong man to force them to behave, i think it would be the easiest, and possibly the best solution to let the country split into the three country's, that it seems to naturally be splitting itself in to anyway. Kurd in the north and Sunni and Shea in the other two areas...

Honestly, I think the best thing we could do at this point to salvage the awful situation we created would be to partition Iraq into three new countries: Sunniraq, Shiaraq, and Iraqurdistan (names subject to change). There is simply no possible way to have a stable and effective democratically-ruled government that controls a geographic area that is home to three major religious or ethnic groups that hate one another. It's just not gonna happen. Such a powderkeg of a country could only be ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who oppressed some of them to keep order--such as, for example, Saddam Hussein.

[quote=Pointedstick]Such a powderkeg of a country could only be ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who oppressed some of them to keep order[/quote]

You mean like grouping Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont with North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, in a single country?

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:Such a powderkeg of a country could only be ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who oppressed some of them to keep order

You mean like grouping Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont with North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, in a single country?

To a far, far lesser extent... yes. Differences always seem to strain democratic governance. The greater the differences, the less it works. Thankfully, I can't recall the last time someone from Rhode Island tried to kill a Montanan simply for being a Montanan, so I think we're at least safer than the Iraqi Shias are. For better or worse, we've had more than 200 years together, which counts for something, at least.

Not to mention, those states all voluntarily joined together.

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:Such a powderkeg of a country could only be ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who oppressed some of them to keep order

You mean like grouping Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont with North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, in a single country?

There is no real comparison. The people of those states for the most part share a common ethnicity, culture, heritage and religious background. The people of Montana do not view those in Vermont as heretics who need to be killed.

Ad Orientem wrote:

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:Such a powderkeg of a country could only be ruled by an iron-fisted dictator who oppressed some of them to keep order

You mean like grouping Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont with North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, in a single country?

There is no real comparison. The people of those states for the most part share a common ethnicity, culture, heritage and religious background. The people of Montana do not view those in Vermont as heretics who need to be killed.

Yeah those states were added to the U.S., it was on favorable terms with the (non-aboriginal) population. It's not like the federal government came in and absorbed an already functioning modern economy. They purchased the land, encouraged people to move west to it, and created a state out of it.

But if the "usual secession subjects" want to secede, I say let them.  Most of them are parasitic to our federal government (take more money than they pay in). ND is probably an exception due to their economic explosion.

Let's be clear.  In your terms Moda, the federal government is the parasite.  It doesn't have anything it hasn't taken from the states.  States with a lot of federal employees, military, or social security recipients are going to get a lot of federal money.  Beyond that it's all interest group politics as to how its spent.  Presumably money paid to farmers for example, benefits food consumers in other states. 

I can't prove it but I suspect the red states would be more easily self-sufficient than the blue ones. 

I Shrugged wrote: Let's be clear.  In your terms Moda, the federal government is the parasite.  It doesn't have anything it hasn't taken from the states.

And the states don't have anything they haven't taken from their own residents, no?

I Shrugged wrote: Let's be clear.  In your terms Moda, the federal government is the parasite.  It doesn't have anything it hasn't taken from the states.  States with a lot of federal employees, military, or social security recipients are going to get a lot of federal money.  Beyond that it's all interest group politics as to how its spent.  Presumably money paid to farmers for example, benefits food consumers in other states. 

I can't prove it but I suspect the red states would be more easily self-sufficient than the blue ones. 

I,

Not to hijack a thread (mods can move it if they wish), but if we're looking at this from a "functional" point of view, putting aside the morality around individualism and such, while many of the original states could be considered "sovereign states first, and US states second," that isn't really true of the western states.  The march west wasn't just a bunch of rugged individualists moving out to form a state that reflected their priorities.  It was largely purchased and encouraged by the federal government.  States like "Idaho" were more manifestations of the federal government than some sort of grass-roots benefit.

On a purely moral basis, though, using individual sovereignty as the core, there is no such thing as "states rights."  Nothing can be "taken from the states."  It's a big myth, IMO, propped up by wannabe libertarians who want to sit on a moral pedestal of individualism when it suits them, but they're good little statists just like the rest of us when it comes to trying to argue for secession and what the "states rights" should be, all based on how THEY would like force applied... I know that sounds more than a bit arrogant and harsh.  But once you unwind the logic, it's pretty accurate, IMO.

Oh, and as for which states would survive the best.  Currently, all states have their own individual economies and state governments, selling goods (for payment) both within and outside the state.  Texas has lots of oil!! But I pay for gas when I fill up the tank in MN.  I don't get it for free.  Where the feds get involved is (mainly) regulation, spending, and taxation.  If we can set aside the effect of regs for a second (as these are a bit tougher to nail down the winners/losers), we can very easily look at net federal tax revenue from/to each state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_ta ... g_by_state

If you go down to the table and sort the states by net tax revenue, or net tax revenue per GSP, you'll see that there is a pretty clear trend of "blue states" paying most of the money into the federal government, and "red states" getting the most back from it.

If you cut off the net effect of the federal government, many red states would take an absolutely massive economic hit. 

Personally, I'd love to see a Secession Movement within my state of MN just to make this fact more public .

If you refer to my Wiki link on federal spending/revenue by state, it appears North Dakota is a taker.

Devil's advocacy:

Given that the purpose of government is to take from group A and give to group B, doesn't this suggest that Red states are better at government, and the Blue states are inhabited by a bunch of rubes who are letting themselves be taken for a ride?