Gotta love these quotes:

It's every man's fear that their girlfriend will go for Mike Tyson."

I don't care what any man says, it's every man's dream to please every woman - and get paid for it.

Shouldn't the title of this post be 'In briefs'?

Gives a whole new meaning to the Ford Pinto.

And what Blair actually said was,

"It has [been a disaster], but you see, what I say to people is, 'why is it difficult in Iraq?' It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al-Qaida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

Yep. It's kind of like if your kid builds a sand castle on the beach and some other kids come over and kick it down, and then you say to your kid, "That was really stupid of you, building that sand castle."

there's a deliberate strategy

...that anybody with even the slightest understanding of the region could have seen was inevitable. Unless, of course, you didn't bother to do any planning.

So really more like building a sand castle at the edge of the water at low tide, then cursing the ocean.

Note that Blair wasn't referring to the Sunni-Shi'ite divisions in Iraq per se, but to Al-Qaeda and Iran trying to exploit those divisions. So, according to Blair, at least, not inevitable at all.

Also, you lose big PC points for implying that teh brown people turn to suicide bombing and head-chopping as inevitably as the tide washes ashore.

BTW, I will pre-emptively concede that the last sentence of my last comment was cheap and unwarranted.

I've heard so many liberal bloggers talk about Bush's war on "brown people", though, that it seemed like some turnabout was called for.

Eh, I don't so much worry with PC points. You've probably noticed. But really, if what Blair is saying is that nobody could have foreseen other regional powers and players trying to influence the civil war that was bound to arise in the event of a sudden power vacuum, then Blair is retarded.

Did I just lose more PC points?

Bush's plan was to build the sandcastle in the middle of the ocean. And the sand would be greeted by the seawater with candy and flowers.

Bush's plan was to build the sandcastle in the middle of the ocean.

There were, and are, plenty of people in Iraq who would like to live in a stable, peaceful democratic society. Unfortunately, it only takes a relatively few despeople to destroy the chances of that happening.

Clearly, not enough was done to shut down these destructive elements early on. But to characterize all of Iraq as "the ocean" — i.e., a place where the sand castle of democracy cannot possibly exist — is airily dismissive.

plenty of people in Iraq who would like to live

Sure, but how useful an observation is that? Plenty of people everywhere would like to live in a stable, peaceful democratic society. Also plenty of people would like to be rich and good-looking. But a stable, peaceful democratic society is not something you can just vote into office, nor is it something you can invade and impose. If the necessary underlying social/economic/cultural structures haven't been sufficiently developed, it won't be sustained.

Y'know, Middle Eastern wars are nasty affairs. It was unbelievably hubristic for the neo-cons to decide they were going to "shake up" or "remake" the Middle East. There are a million possible outcomes from that sort of creative destruction, but only a very few are better than the status quo ante, and most of those highly unlikely.

You know that every country in the region will try to influence the situation to their advantage, and that few of them much like us—and would like us less if we invaded and occupied a country in the region. The basic difference in what Blair and Bush (and their rump of support) are saying is that the problems have arisen because of issues of execution; everybody else in the world can see that it having been executed at all is the problem.

I used to be surprised by Blair's support for the war. I know a lot of liberals were - there was a collective reaction of "but he's smart!!" - and this caused a lot of head scratching.

I'm quite far from having expert knowledge of british politics, but i've been learning bits. And what I've learned has led me to believe that Blair is actually an all-around wanker. I'm sure we agree on a lot of issues, but I still dislike him. Also, there's the rather beta-male interactions with Bush, in which he does everything but give Bush's scrotum a thorough tongue-washing.

To actually add something substantive: Surely this is wrong: if what Blair is saying is that nobody could have foreseen other regional powers and players trying to influence the civil war

It's worse than that, Apo, as I'm sure you remember. They counted on these people coming in to try and influence events ("flypaper" theory). It appears they still couldn't be bothered to plan for them.

Oh, one other substantive point: Any analogy of the Iraq war to kids, water and sandcastles possess no illuminating value. Sorry, it just can't be simplified like that.

If the necessary underlying social/economic/cultural structures haven't been sufficiently developed, it won't be sustained.

This leads us to the contradiction that a democracy can only come to exist in places where the things that democracy makes possible already exist.

The problem is not that Iraq lacked the appropriate "structures" for democracy, but that a few self-interested groups were determined to prevent democracy from taking root, and a few outside actors decided to help them.

It's easy to say that success in Iraq was impossible, but all we know is that Bush's approach didn't work. More US troops (perhaps combined with the former Iraqi army; i.e., no "de-Baathification") imposing order internally and repelling outside interference immediately after the invasion, together with more skillful efforts to placate or satisfy the demands and concerns of the Sunni and Shiite factions, might have yielded success.

I agree we can't prove it would have worked, and it certainly is much simpler to say the whole thing never could have worked. Simpler, but not necessarily so.

This leads us to the contradiction that a democracy can only come to exist in places where the things that democracy makes possible already exist.

I'd say it leads to the logical conclusion that it takes a hell of a lot more than knocking out the government in power for a peaceful, stable democracy to emerge. Governments have been overthrown time and again there.

a few self-interested groups

60% of Iraqis support attacks on US troops, according to a poll last month. I know that Americans see ourselves as the embodiment of democracy and good-guyism, but desiring a democratic society and opposing the United States' invasion and occupation of one's country are not mutually exclusive beliefs.

More US troops

This is like saying if we just had a mind control ray, it might have worked. We didn't and don't have anywhere near the force levels generally believed necessary to provide security for 27 million people. The only way to get that number was a draft, which plainly wasn't going to happen.

the demands and concerns of the Sunni and Shiite factions

Unfortunately, those demands and concerns are orthogonal. Really, we barged our way into a situation with no identifiable solutions.

60% of Iraqis support attacks on US troops, according to a poll last month.

This is after things have deteriorated for several years. It wasn't like that at the beginning. We had a window of opportunity, and we failed to use it.

We didn't and don't have anywhere near the force levels generally believed necessary to provide security for 27 million people.

Well, in hindsight, dismantling the old Iraqi army didn't help, either.

Probably not, though I suspect that keeping it intact wouldn't have remedied the situation as much as it might seem. With the central government removed and the subsequent government uncertain, I'd be surprised if the old army wouldn't have faced the same problem of infiltration and divided loyalties that the new one does, what with the officer corps being overwhelmingly Sunni and the lower ranks overwhelmingly Shi'ite.

However, that theory is pulled strictly ex recto, so weight it accordingly.

I think we're losing sight of something important here, which is that Ford named one of its cars "penis" in Portuguese.

Pinto is slang... it's like calling it the "Ford One-eyed Snake" or something. And they give them different names down there. The best is that a Nissan Sentra is called a "Tsuru", which I've never really understood.

This leads us to the contradiction that a democracy can only come to exist in places where the things that democracy makes possible already exist

Huh? How is this a contradiction? It is if anything a tautology -- it would be different if you said, "a democracy can only come to exist in a place where the things that are made possible by democracy already exist" -- still not exactly a contradiction, but a statement that democracy is impossible -- but that's not what you said.

The situation I described is one in which to establish A, you need B, but you can't have B without A. Maybe a better word would have been "impossibility" or "catch-22". It's definitely not a tautology, however.

Also, Tsuru is Japanese for "crane" (the bird).

But to characterize all of Iraq as "the ocean" — i.e., a place where the sand castle of democracy cannot possibly exist — is airily dismissive.

You know who's actually been airily dismissive? The Bush Administration and its supporters and apologists regarding the hard realities of trying to build a democracy in Iraq and those who have been pointint out these difficulties since before the invasion.

And implying that those who acknowledge the difficulties are prejudiced against brown people isn't just cheap and unwarranted, it's douchebaggery of the highest order. The idea that Bush and his supporters give a shit about Iraqis in any meaningful sense is completely belied by their airily dismissive failure to plan or even admit that there might be a need for a plan.

"pointing"

Oh come on M/M/, admit it -- the only reason you don't want to wage all-out war on the countries of the middle east is, you hate the arabs.

GB, nice try.

Isn't it clear that Blair and others are engaged in self-justification, to avoid responsibility for a disastrous and astonishingly expensive civil war that could have easily been foreseen, but was arrogantly shoved down our throats?

This is no sand castle we're talking about. The invasion has cost us roughly $500 billion, and the meter is running at about $150 million PER DAY; we've sown the seeds of hatred, hostility and terrorism that we'll be reaping for years to come (to the long-term disadvantage of Israel as well); tied ourselves down and empowered our strategic rivals; enabled all kinds of infrignments on our domestic liberties; and distracted us from other pressing domestic and international problems.

It seems that there are no adults in the Administration or its supporters, only facile buck-passers.

Apo, I see you've run into the spoof site started by Roy Spencer, the fundamentalist retired NASA climatologist who has been proven wrong on so-called inconsistencies in satellite data.

How a Global Warming Satirist Breaks the Ice

They guy's a piece of work who is now determined to be a court jester.

we've sown the seeds of hatred, hostility and terrorism that we'll be reaping for years to come

I call BS. The "seeds" were there decades ago and flowered into a thriving jungle of hatred long before Bush ever took office. Saying the Middle East loved us, but now they hate us, is just false.

Saying the Middle East loved us, but now they hate us, is just false.

I call a strawman. Did I say that, or I did I instead suggest we have been shooting ourselves in the foot right and left, and making the ME a less stable, more dangerous place and playing into the hands of demagogues and extremists?

Care to respond to the real point, about whether we achieved anything positive, whether this was foreseeable, and whether those who brought and flogged the war have any responsibility for it?

The "seeds" were there decades ago and flowered into a thriving jungle of hatred long before Bush ever took office.

With so much hard-boiled realism, GB, how could you have ever supported the Iraq adventure, brought to us by people filled with sugar-plum, cake-walk fantasies?

Saying the Middle East loved us, but now they hate us, is just false.

This is a distortion; we are less popular all over the Middle East than we were. This is just a fact. We're also less popular, in many cases drastically so, over the whole muslim world (though our work with the Pakistani earthquake and the tsunami have helped us in those regions). Again, just a fact, no BS.

Also, countries around Iraq rather tend to think that the Iraq war is making the world more dangerous. Can't imagine that. One of the myriad things which I believe demonstrates the core stupidity of Bush and his people is his repeated use of the phrase "we'll fight them [over there/in the streets of Baghdad] so that we don't have to fight them here." US Officials who have returned from Iraq have made the point that the Iraqis watch the news. And it's hard to think of a statement that could be more calculated to piss somebody off. Small wonder we have trouble retaining popularity after thick-headed, piss-for-brains statements like that.

The problem is not that Iraq lacked the appropriate "structures" for democracy, but that a few self-interested groups were determined to prevent democracy from taking root, and a few outside actors decided to help them.

You're talking about the Baathists under Saddam, and the Reagan administration, right?