What's in a name?

Personally I'd be quite happy to have a president named Barack Hussein Obama.

But for those of you uncomfortable with multisyllabic monikers I highly recommend Juan Cole's rant on other great Americans with funny sounding names.

Feel better?

Mission Accomplished: 4 years later

Every night as part of his sign-off, Keith Olbermann gives a count of the number of days since Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech.

Today he can give a rounder number: 4 years.

And while the president vetoes the funding bill which would set benchmarks for withdrawal from this ghastly mess, and interestingly timed reports of the death of yet another al Qaeda muckety-muck, Juan Cole gives a thorough Fisking (in links) of Bush's speech and how it compares to the present grim reality.

A quick survey of the topics gives a feel for just how well we're doing:

• -Riots, Looting? Stuff Happens
• -7 of 8 major reconstruction projects in danger of failing.
• -US has failed to reconstruct Iraq.
• -Trudy Rubin: ”Wolfowitz told me he believed that the London-based Iraqi opposition (headed by Ahmed Chalabi) would return to Baghdad and assume the reins of power . . ."
• -Al-Maliki Government uses Saddam-era law to block corruption probes.
• -The Iraq Effect: War has Increased Terrorism Seven Fold.
• -"Iraq civilian attacks send worldwide terror deaths soaring: US".
• -Toppling of Saddam statue faked.
• -Study: War Blamed for 655,000 Iraqi Deaths.
• -Bloody Iraq Uprising Rocks US.
• -One thing is certain: the Death of Saddam was About Revenge, not Justice.
• -David Kay: No Evidence Iraq Stockpiled WMD.

Prof. Cole's post must be read in full to appreciate the tragic irony of that speech, and to follow the links if you want to read further.

Happy anniversary y'all.

Iraq Parliament Bombing

You're no doubt already familiar with the story of the suicide bomber who penetrated into the cafeteria of Iraq's parliament.

But for a real feel for the events I strongly recommend Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief Sudarsan Raghavan's harrowing first hand account, In an Instant, a Junkyard of Humanity. No excerpts here, sorry, you need to go read the story in full.

No, seriously, go read it, I'll wait.

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OK.

Now I'd like to excerpt a quote from the transcript of Mr. Raghavan's live discussion (I strongly recommend you read that as well, but it's OK if you wait 'til after we're done here).

Arlington, Va.: Does this experience give you a better appreciation for what the citizens of Iraq have to put up with every day?

Sudarsan Raghavan: Hello Arlington,

Yes, it does. But only a sliver of their pain, their fears, and their loss. Take my experience and multiply it by a hundred times, and you'll know what Iraqis go through every day. They are truly among the world's most courageous and resilient people. I watched as dozens of Iraqis went back into the Parliament building after the bombing to save the wounded and bring out the dead.

Multiply it by a hundred times...every day.

Devastating, just devastating.

And as this illustration of the plight of the Iraqi people sinks in, it's only human to ask oneself, what can we do to help?

There is of course, as is plainly, painfully obvious, no easy answer.

Send in more troops?

I don't think so.

As we've just witnessed, no amount of security can be completely effective against this sort of attack, more soldiers can't help.

I suppose if we were willing commit sufficient troops to clear and hold every inch of Iraq, and disarm every Iraqi we might be able to root out every insurgent and terrorist. But how many US soldiers would that take, half a million? A full million? And how long do they stay in Iraq, forever?

Impossible without re-instating the draft, and therefore, impossible.

So what should we do? Juan Cole has a suggestion, announce we are leaving, then leave:

The key to preventing an intensified civil war is US withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them. But a simple US departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.

Talks require a negotiating partner. The first step in Iraq must therefore be holding provincial elections. In the first and only such elections, held in January 2005, the Sunni Arab parties declined to participate. Provincial governments in Sunni-majority provinces are thus uniformly unrepresentative, and sometimes in the hands of fundamentalist Shiites, as in Diyala. A newly elected provincial Sunni Arab political class could stand in for the guerrilla groups in talks, just as Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, did in Northern Ireland.

His article should, of course, be read in full to appreciate the nuances of his reasoning.

Others have their own ideas as well.

But regardless, the important point is that everyone, even to a degree, President Bush, recognizes that the eventual solution to Iraq will be political, not military.

The only question, then, is what course of action will best achieve that political solution?

Why no Iraqi refugees in Iran?

Are you the sort of person who's occasionally driven crazy by nagging questions? And I'm not talking about earth shattering questions like why is there air, but things like, yeah you remember, that guy, you know, the one that was in that movie with the thing? What's his name?

That sort of question.

Me too.

So one of the things I love most about the web is the ability to get immediate answers to almost any questions one can dream up.

And even if you can't find the answer already published, thanks to blogs you can usually find someone who not only knows the answer, but is interested enough in their subject to be happy to respond to your interest.

I've said before, and I'll say again that Juan Cole's Informed Consent website is a must stop on the information superhighway for unfiltered news on the middle east.

So when I had a question about some recent coverage about the Iraqi refugee situation Professor Cole was the first person I thought of.

My email:

I have a question. I've recently read several reports on the increasingly dire Iraqi refugee situation. My question is this, why is Iran never mentioned in these stories? Are there no Iraqi refugees in Iran? Are statistics simply not available? If not (to either question) why not? Are Iraqi Arab Shi'a just not welcomed by their Persian brothers?

It just struck me as odd.

To my delight he was kind enough to respond:

Most of the refugees are from the roiled Sunni Arab areas, and Sunnis don't go to Iran. Arab Shiites prefer Syria, as well, an Arabic speaking country that is now open to them.

There were 400,000 Iraqi Shiites in Iran under Saddam, but they have mostly come back. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

cheers Juan

Thanks Prof. Cole

Dontcha just love the internets?