Alex at Yorkshire Ranter has a fantastic post on the MRAP. A taste: Essentially, they are six-wheeled buses surrounded by huge amounts of armour protection of various kinds, intended to be safer for the occupants than the Humvees and trucks they have so far been using. But the enemy is already countering them, by the […]
Category: Iraq war
Progress! The portion of Baghdad in which Iraqi security forces are in control with minimal help from the American military has grown only slightly in recent months, to just over 8 percent, despite an
The Hashemite dynasty traces its lineage to the prophet Muhammed’s grandfather, and in particular to Muhammed’s daughter Fatima. The Hashemite played a prominent role in early Islamic poli
I saw Charles Ferguson‘s documentary “No End in Sight” last night. Here’s a clip: The film, unlike many other documentaries that have been made about Iraq, focuses not on the days between 9/11 and the decision to send troops to Afghanistan, nor on the day-to-day experience of soldiers and civilians on the ground in Iraq, […]
Speaking of disciples of Ayn Rand: AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil. In his long-awaite
I certainly expected Bush’s speech to contain an element of Disney-esue fantasy, but I must admit that I’m somewhat surprised to see that The Decider apparently can’t count: Oddly, h
NYT: When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to “find common ground” on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to “start doing some redeployment,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off. “No you’re not, Mr. President,” Ms. Pelosi interjected. “You’re just […]
Matt hits the nail on the head: And reading Pollack & Pascual write about it, on some level I agree with them. As they say, probably if we made a big push for a UN-sponsored diplomatic settlement
Kenneth Waltz, via Travis Sharp: To say that militarily strong states are feeble because they cannot easily bring order to minor states is like saying that a pneumatic hammer is weak because it is not
Reading this Michael Gordon piece, I’m struck by the extent to which the strategy of allying with Sunni tribes amounts to a renunciation of US state-building aims in Iraq. Put simply, enhancing the prestige and capabilities of multiple non-state actors in Iraq is directly contradictory to the aim of constructing a viable nation-state. Indeed, I’m […]
There was a high powered panel this morning at APSA on strategic withdrawal from Iraq. It included James Wirtz of the Naval War College, John Mearsheimer, Juan Cole, and Stephen Biddle, and unlike man
Dan Drezner (cursed be his name) aptly sums up my thinking on international law and Iraq. First, I think he’s quite right to call out John Quiggin on the latter’s implication that internat