Pottery Barn rule revisited

[Mickey]

I have always been of the opinion that the Iraq war was a decison in search of a justification long before a single boot crossed the border. In those pre-war days, it seemed every other week a new reason to invade Iraq was being run up the flagpole. The main ones were WMD's, Iraq-9/11 connections and building a democracy in Iraq as a catalyst for change in the whole region. Well, neither the WMD's nor the 9/11 connections really held up and the building of a democracy there is on shaky ground. We are even seeing trial baloons about an Islamic Republic not being such a bad thing after all. Personally, I am leaning towards the idea that the Powell Pottery Barn doctrine maybe is not such a good one. Yeah, we broke it but why does that mean we now own it? Let Pottery Barn clean it up. Its their floor, their store.

 

Powell's idea is based on us bearing a responsibility to put Humpty Dumpty back together again since we are the ones that pushed him off the wall. If we don't, we are told, there will be a civil war in Iraq or it will become a breeding ground for terrorists. Isn't it already a breeding ground for terrorists? Isn't a civil war there inevitable if enough people there choose to have one rather than to work with a united government?

 

Would it really be so terrible for us if the north was controlled by Kurds, the south by Shiites and the middle by Sunnis with all three fighting eachother on the borders? Saddam was a threat to us so we went in and took him out and his regime. We tried to help them create a stable society, a democracy. It wasn't our responsibility to do so, it was a humanitarian effort and it isn't working.

 

I would like Iraq to be a stable democracy but that isn't going to happen. There is no way, no matter how many Iraqi troops are trained, that they are going to be able to handle the insurgency any better than our own forces have. If we can't shut it down, what fantasy would justify the belief that Iraqi forces will be able to do just that? It just isn't going to happen.

 

Whether they ever had WMD's or not doesn't matter, they don't have them now, threat gone. Would Saddam have made common cause with terrorists? Doesn't matter, he is gone and so is his regime so that threat is gone. If Iraqi's want a civil war, they will have one, sooner or later. Will it be a breeding ground for terrorists? It is now and which type of government do you think would have the most success cleaning out the country of terrorists, a democracy or a despot? Fine, let the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunnis set up their enclaves and have at it, one despot vs. another.

 

It is like a forest after a fire. All manner of weeds quickly take root in the aftermath. You can't weed a forest so you leave it to its own devices to re-grow. You hope more Oaks grow than weeeds but in the end, you can't control that. If at some point it encroaches on the farm again, you burn it down once more.

Iraq, so the administration believed, was a threat to the farm so we burned it down. We've planted some Oaks and we have pulled many a weed to try and start it off in the right direction. If continuing to do that from now till doomsday would insure a weed free forest, fine, lets stay there forever. If that won't do it, then we need to pull up and let nature take its course for awhile.

 

I'm not saying, I'm just asking, do we really have a responsibility to fix Iraq or can we take the position that Iraq is Iraq's problem and once we have removed the threats against us that it presented and that could reasonably be removed, we can leave and not look back?

[Berg]

I have always been of the opinion that the Iraq war was a decison in search of a justification long before a single boot crossed the border.  In those pre-war days, it seemed every other week a new reason to invade Iraq was being run up the flagpole.  The main ones were WMD's, Iraq-9/11 connections and building a democracy in Iraq as a catalyst for change in the whole region.  Well, neither the WMD's nor the 9/11 connections really held up and the building of a democracy there is on shaky ground.  We are even seeing trial baloons about an Islamic Republic not being such a bad thing after all.  Personally, I am leaning towards the idea that the Powell Pottery Barn doctrine maybe is not such a good one.  Yeah, we broke it but why does that mean we now own it?  Let Pottery Barn clean it up.  Its their floor, their store.

 

Powell's idea is based on us bearing a responsibility to put Humpty Dumpty back together again since we are the ones that pushed him off the wall.  If we don't, we are told, there will be a civil war in Iraq or it will become a breeding ground for terrorists.  Isn't it already a breeding ground for terrorists?  Isn't a civil war there inevitable if enough people there choose to have one rather than to work with a united government?

 

Would it really be so terrible for us if the north was controlled by Kurds, the south by Shiites and the middle by Sunnis with all three fighting eachother on the borders?  Saddam was a threat to us so we went in and took him out and his regime.  We tried to help them create a stable society, a democracy.  It wasn't our responsibility to do so, it was a humanitarian effort and it isn't working. 

 

I would like Iraq to be a stable democracy but that isn't going to happen.  There is no way, no matter how many Iraqi troops are trained, that they are going to be able to handle the insurgency any better than our own forces have.  If we can't shut it down, what fantasy would justify the belief that Iraqi forces will be able to do just that?  It just isn't going to happen. 

 

Whether they ever had WMD's or not doesn't matter, they don't have them now, threat gone.  Would Saddam have made common cause with terrorists?  Doesn't matter, he is gone and so is his regime so that threat is gone.  If Iraqi's want a civil war, they will have one, sooner or later.  Will it be a breeding ground for terrorists?  It is now and which type of government do you think would have the most success cleaning out the country of terrorists, a democracy or a despot?  Fine, let the Kurds and the Shiites and the Sunnis set up their enclaves and have at it, one despot vs. another.

 

It is like a forest after a fire.  All manner of weeds quickly take root in the aftermath.  You can't weed a forest so you leave it to its own devices to re-grow.  You hope more Oaks grow than weeeds but in the end, you can't control that.  If at some point it encroaches on the farm again, you burn it down once more.

Iraq, so the administration believed, was a threat to the farm so we burned it down.  We've planted some Oaks and we have pulled many a weed to try and start it off in the right direction.  If continuing to do that from now till doomsday would insure a weed free forest, fine, lets stay there forever.  If that won't do it, then we need to pull up and let nature take its course for awhile.

 

I'm not saying, I'm just asking, do we really have a responsibility to fix Iraq or can we take the position that Iraq is Iraq's problem and once we have removed the threats against us that it presented and that could reasonably be removed, we can leave and not look back?

416472[/snapback]

 

 

Pottery Barn has nothing remotely close to this kind of policy. Almost exactly the opposite, in fact.

[UConn James]

Pottery Barn has nothing remotely close to this kind of policy.  Almost exactly the opposite, in fact.

417288[/snapback]

 

You broke it, you bought it --> You bought it, you break it

 

Yeah. That actually sounds about right....

[Berg]

You broke it, you bought it --> You bought it, you break it

 

Yeah. That actually sounds about right....

417297[/snapback]

 

I said almost, but that's not the opposite anyway

[Mickey]

Pottery Barn has nothing remotely close to this kind of policy.  Almost exactly the opposite, in fact.

417288[/snapback]

Umm....I'm not sure that whether Colin Powell accurately described Pottery Barn's precise in-store breakage rule is really the point.

 

For the record, Powell is quoted by Woodward in Plan of Attack as referring to the "Pottery Barn Rule" and as describing it to the President:

 

"Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it."

 

Columnist Thomas Friedman claims they got the reference from a column he wrote in February 2003 where he used the term "pottery store rule". Friedman says that in speeches, he used the phrase "Pottery Barn rule".

 

My point, sticking with the metaphor, is that this pot was already broken before we walked in to the store. We just picked up the sharpest pieces and tossed them away. Let the Pottery Barn pick up the rest.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

My point, sticking with the metaphor, is that this pot was already broken before we walked in to the store.  We just picked up the sharpest pieces and tossed them away.  Let the Pottery Barn pick up the rest.

417505[/snapback]

 

That's the most commonsense thing you have ever written here.

[Mickey]

That's the most commonsense thing you have ever written here.

417567[/snapback]

If you define "vicotry" as something abstract on the one hand and, under the circumstances, a virtual impossibility, then the whole operation is guaranteed to end in something other than victory. As it turns out, the most we could realistically achieve is to get rid of Saddam and his regime which, coincidentally, is the one thing everyone agrees was a good thing. Having won all that could reasonably be won, maybe its time to go or, at the least, it soon will be time to go.

 

The armed forces have done that which they are very good at doing now we have them trying to do something they simply aren't designed to do.

 

This is just a working idea, I have not thought it all through yet. Politically, I think this might appeal to both sides of the aisle. One major concern is that it would likely be viewed as caving in to al Queda. It might be viewed as yet another example of a democracy pulling out in response to terrorism. There has been too much of that from Lebanon under Reagan to more recently, Madrid.

[UConn James]

The armed forces have done that which they are very good at doing now we have them trying to do something they simply aren't designed to do.

 

This is just a working idea, I have not thought it all through yet.  Politically, I think this might appeal to both sides of the aisle.  One major concern is that it would likely be viewed as caving in to al Queda.  It might be viewed as yet another example of a democracy pulling out in response to terrorism.  There has been too much of that from Lebanon under Reagan to more recently, Madrid.

417653[/snapback]

 

I'm not sure how real of a concern that is --- look at the Afghanistan model. At this point, reducing troop levels to ~75,000-50,000 at the end of the year or next spring wouldn't be viewed as caving to AQ. Well, they can think we're caving and they probably will say we are b/c that's what they do, kind of like a family pathetically insulting the fire that just destroyed their house. We've done some major damage to their networks.

 

The thing is, after a big pullout of Iraq, there isn't any one area that receives the majority of the focus. We'll be left to dealing with more concentrated areas. Unless Pres. Bush goes to the next entry on his list (Iran? NK?). Another large-scale operation for this admin seems out of the question at this point (barring concrete developments, b/c our credibility is shot, with the world at large and among our own people). Trust that the govt is more or less telling the truth is the thing that's been most damaged by all of this. To go with the analogy, after spending $200B for something that's broken and wasn't our fault for breaking in the first place, who wants to shop at Pottery Barn again?!

[Mickey]

I'm not sure how real of a concern that is --- look at the Afghanistan model. At this point, reducing troop levels to ~75,000-50,000 at the end of the year or next spring wouldn't be viewed as caving to AQ. Well, they can think we're caving and they probably will say we are b/c that's what they do, kind of like a family pathetically insulting the fire that just destroyed their house. We've done some major damage to their networks.

 

The thing is, after a big pullout of Iraq, there isn't any one area that receives the majority of the focus. We'll be left to dealing with more concentrated areas. Unless Pres. Bush goes to the next entry on his list (Iran? NK?). Another large-scale operation for this admin seems out of the question at this point (barring concrete developments, b/c our credibility is shot, with the world at large and among our own people). Trust that the govt is more or less telling the truth is the thing that's been most damaged by all of this. To go with the analogy, after spending $200B for something that's broken and wasn't our fault for breaking in the first place, who wants to shop at Pottery Barn again?!

417686[/snapback]

It would free up a lot of troops to go after OBL I guess.

[The Rverside Rat]

I'm not sure ut I don't think that the USA can technically own another country.

 

Figures of speech are kinda neat, but really I think this is more about stopping the spread of terroists in the middle east and giving millions of decent people in the middle east the chance to live in a democracy. Men and women alike in that country deserve the right to live as free people.

 

Also, I never really understood the analogy about "you break it you own it". The counrty was rather broken long before we got there, with little or no hope of being fixed. Now at the very least the people of that country have a chance to have a future. weather they make pottery or not.

[Mickey]

I'm not sure ut I don't think that the USA can technically own another country.

 

Figures of speech are kinda neat, but really I think this is more about stopping the spread of terroists in the middle east and giving millions of decent people in the middle east the chance to live in a democracy. Men and women alike in that country deserve the right to live as free people.

 

Also, I never really understood the analogy about "you break it you own it". The counrty was rather broken long before we got there, with little or no hope of being fixed. Now at the very least the people of that country have a chance to have a future. weather they make pottery or not.

417780[/snapback]

I wasn't trying to take that literally, that is why I broke the phrase down to the question "...do we really have a responsibility to fix Iraq...?" Certainly, it is a nice, humanitarian thing to do to go out and try to build democracies from scratch and all but do we have a responsibility to do that? Without even getting into the argument of whether our presence there is actually increasing the spread of terrorism, why do we have an obligation, as the Powell doctrine implies, to turn Iraq into a stable democracy, even if that were remotely possible?

 

I am just not sure that building a democracy there was ever anything more than a nice sounding, altruistic, noble, etc, motivation and now, even though it turns out that it just isn't a realistic goal, we have anchored ourselves to it. Drowning in our own altruism and blood. Saddam and his regime were a threat to the United States so in we went and obliterated him and his regime. Yeah, a lot of Iraqi's got caught in the cross fire of that effort but it had to get done. Okay, now its done. Why are we still there wasting lives and fueling terrorist recruiting just to build a transparent democracy that will crumble to pieces the minute we leave? Is it simply to justify the invasion after the fact by accomplishing some great humanitarian effort for Iraqi's?

 

I know it is selfish and Macciavelian but maybe we need to be selfish and Macciavelian and turn that mess over to Iraq now and tell them good luck with the civil war. I just can't bear the thought of another 1,500 or so dead soldiers a year later just so the Iraqi governement can collapse then instead of now.

 

Again, just thinking about this idea out loud.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

I wasn't trying to take that literally, that is why I broke the phrase down to the question "...do we really have a responsibility to fix Iraq...?"  Certainly, it is a nice, humanitarian thing to do to go out and try to build democracies from scratch and all but do we have a responsibility to do that?  Without even getting into the argument of whether our presence there is actually increasing the spread of terrorism, why do we have an obligation, as the Powell doctrine implies, to turn Iraq into a stable democracy, even if that were remotely possible?

 

I am just not sure that building a democracy there was ever anything more than a nice sounding, altruistic, noble, etc, motivation and now, even though it turns out that it just isn't a realistic goal, we have anchored ourselves to it.  Drowning in our own altruism and blood.  Saddam and his regime were a threat to the United States so in we went and obliterated him and his regime.  Yeah, a lot of Iraqi's got caught in the cross fire of that effort but it had to get done.  Okay, now its done.  Why are we still there wasting lives and fueling terrorist recruiting just to build a transparent democracy that will crumble to pieces the minute we leave?  Is it simply to justify the invasion after the fact by accomplishing some great humanitarian effort for Iraqi's? 

 

I know it is selfish and Macciavelian but maybe we need to be selfish and Macciavelian and turn that mess over to Iraq now and tell them good luck with the civil war.  I just can't bear the thought of another 1,500 or so dead soldiers a year later just so the Iraqi governement can collapse then instead of now.

 

Again, just thinking about this idea out loud.

417847[/snapback]

 

 

What's odd is I actually find myself agreeing with you. The Iraqi people are ingrates.

 

Let em rot.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

I wasn't trying to take that literally, that is why I broke the phrase down to the question "...do we really have a responsibility to fix Iraq...?"  Certainly, it is a nice, humanitarian thing to do to go out and try to build democracies from scratch and all but do we have a responsibility to do that?  Without even getting into the argument of whether our presence there is actually increasing the spread of terrorism, why do we have an obligation, as the Powell doctrine implies, to turn Iraq into a stable democracy, even if that were remotely possible?

 

I am just not sure that building a democracy there was ever anything more than a nice sounding, altruistic, noble, etc, motivation and now, even though it turns out that it just isn't a realistic goal, we have anchored ourselves to it.  Drowning in our own altruism and blood.  Saddam and his regime were a threat to the United States so in we went and obliterated him and his regime.  Yeah, a lot of Iraqi's got caught in the cross fire of that effort but it had to get done.  Okay, now its done.  Why are we still there wasting lives and fueling terrorist recruiting just to build a transparent democracy that will crumble to pieces the minute we leave?  Is it simply to justify the invasion after the fact by accomplishing some great humanitarian effort for Iraqi's? 

 

I know it is selfish and Macciavelian but maybe we need to be selfish and Macciavelian and turn that mess over to Iraq now and tell them good luck with the civil war.  I just can't bear the thought of another 1,500 or so dead soldiers a year later just so the Iraqi governement can collapse then instead of now.

 

Again, just thinking about this idea out loud.

417847[/snapback]

 

The "why" of it's actually pretty easy: a stable Iraq in the US sphere of influence puts pressure on Iran and Syria and has the potential to stabilize the entire region, just through the fact of geographic location.

 

But more importantly, an unstable Iraq at war with itself destabilizes the entire region, much the same way the Afghan civil war in the '90s caused problems for the Central Asian Republics (and Pakistan and even Iran). But I imagine an Iraqi civil war would be worse; rather than focused around shifting tribal alliances as in Afghanistan, it would be along clearly delineated ethnic borders, and I can't see how neighboring countries could avoid getting involved. When the Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ia start fighting, for example, how could Iran not avoid supporting the Shi'ites, and will Turkey deny its own Kurdish regions the ability to support the Iraqi Kurds (thus importing an Iraqi Civil War to its own soil, in effect), or turn a blind eye (risking direct conflict with Iran)? Syria will support the Ba'athist remnants, the Saudis the Sunni fundamentalists, everyone with a grudge agains Jordan will use western destabilized Iraq to attack them...

 

Frankly, I kind of feel about the occupation the same way I feel about Musharraf ruling Pakistan. Yeah, it's hardly an ideal situation...but you really don't want to see the alternative.

[chicot]

What's odd is I actually find myself agreeing with you. The Iraqi people are ingrates.

 

Let em rot.

417866[/snapback]

 

Changing your tune, aren't you? I thought you always insisted that the Shia and the Kurds were suitably grateful and that the Sunnis were the only problem.

[Ghost of BiB]

Changing your tune, aren't you? I thought you always insisted that the Shia and the Kurds were suitably grateful and that the Sunnis were the only problem.

417924[/snapback]

 

Why bother. Are you expecting insight?

[Mickey]

What's odd is I actually find myself agreeing with you. The Iraqi people are ingrates.

 

Let em rot.

417866[/snapback]

I have no idea about that but even if they were not ingrates, the point is the same. That would just make it a little more palatable to keep trying to get a democracy built there. If a democracy really can't be built there then why are we still there? That question shouldn't really depend on whether they are ingrates.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Changing your tune, aren't you? I thought you always insisted that the Shia and the Kurds were suitably grateful and that the Sunnis were the only problem.

417924[/snapback]

 

Well, I'm not so sure about the kurds. They seem to have a genuine interest in democracy. The Sunnis are a lost cause.

 

The Shia, well, you had to think they would try and organize a theocracy.

 

My main question is WHY did the Sunnis not come to the table? They had so much to lose by not doing so.

[Mickey]

The "why" of it's actually pretty easy: a stable Iraq in the US sphere of influence puts pressure on Iran and Syria and has the potential to stabilize the entire region, just through the fact of geographic location.

 

But more importantly, an unstable Iraq at war with itself destabilizes the entire region, much the same way the Afghan civil war in the '90s caused problems for the Central Asian Republics (and Pakistan and even Iran).  But I imagine an Iraqi civil war would be worse; rather than focused around shifting tribal alliances as in Afghanistan, it would be along clearly delineated ethnic borders, and I can't see how neighboring countries could avoid getting involved.  When the Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ia start fighting, for example, how could Iran not avoid supporting the Shi'ites, and will Turkey deny its own Kurdish regions the ability to support the Iraqi Kurds (thus importing an Iraqi Civil War to its own soil, in effect), or turn a blind eye (risking direct conflict with Iran)?  Syria will support the Ba'athist remnants, the Saudis the Sunni fundamentalists, everyone with a grudge agains Jordan will use western destabilized Iraq to attack them...

 

Frankly, I kind of feel about the occupation the same way I feel about Musharraf ruling Pakistan.  Yeah, it's hardly an ideal situation...but you really don't want to see the alternative. 

417876[/snapback]

All that could be exactly true but if we can't build a stable democracy in Iraq, that is where we are going to end up anyway. I don't see the new Iraq having any more success quelling the insurgency than we have had. How are they going to succeed where we, with all our power and wealth, have not? If you the insurgency can't be stopped, Iraq is going to explode anyway just as you fear. If we are clinging to the idea of building a democracy there because we truly believe it is a reasonable possibility, I can understand sticking it out. My worry is that we are sticking it out so that our last justification for the war, the altruistic goal of a free Iraq, won't turn out like the WMD justification did.

 

If I firmly beleived democracy had a chance in Iraq, it would be easy support staying but I am rapidly losing faith in that idea.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

All that could be exactly true but if we can't build a stable democracy in Iraq, that is where we are going to end up anyway. 

418063[/snapback]

 

Endless occupation.

 

Which isn't democracy, either. Frankly, I've always thought the justification of "democracy for Iraq" was total bull sh-- anyway. Akin to saying "You'll be a democratic society whether you want to or not!"

 

Or worse: based in the unrealistically polyanna idea that anyone, once exposed to the Western liberal idea of democracy, will embrace it wholeheartedly to the exclusion of all else. It's not entirely unlike Victorian England's attitude to the colonial world..."But of course you'll accept our rule, once you understand what it's like to be subject to the British crown..." It's the same peculiar blind arrogance that, just because we accept it, everyone else must eventually come around to our point of view as well...

[Typical TBD Guy]

I wanted to address this specific paragraph of yours that I lighlighted:

 

I would like Iraq to be a stable democracy but that isn't going to happen.  There is no way, no matter how many Iraqi troops are trained, that they are going to be able to handle the insurgency any better than our own forces have.  If we can't shut it down, what fantasy would justify the belief that Iraqi forces will be able to do just that?  It just isn't going to happen. 

 

416472[/snapback]

 

Are you basing this opinion on actual information from military personnel? Or is this a position you've reached after careful selection of only the negative news reports that support your "Bash is bad" argument?

 

The reality is that we haven't seen the Iraqi soldiers show any capability in fighting the insurgents on their own because - to date - we have not done a very good job of training these Iraqi soldiers. It's only recently that the high level military officers are recognizing their faults in how they've executed these Iraqi training programs or in how they've prioritized this aspect of the war. So my point is to give our own military and the Iraqi military a chance to switch gears and correct this training deficiency before declaring the whole war hopeless and unwinnable.

 

And many military officials DO believe that we'll be able to win the Iraqi War over terrorists; but unlike people such as yourself, they have the virture of patience and realize that an Iraqi democracy won't stabilize for at least several more years. As soon as we're able to properly train enough Iraqi troops for urban guerilla warfare, we will be able to pull our own US troops out of Iraq. And once the Iraqi cilivians, Iraqi soldiers, and Middle Eastern Muslims in general see that there is no longer a US occupation and that the insurgents are only fighting other Muslims, the terrorists will begin losing their support base within Iraq and among neighboring Middle Eastern countries.

 

You are probably reading this and laughing at my optimism. But I am basing this optimism on a myriad of opinions I've heard from people that work directly with military personnel and with US counterterrorists. I value these people's opinions over everyone else's because they're the ones who actually work with the data and facts surrounding the global war on terror. At the very least, they have more exposure to the various faces of the truth than do politically biased lawyers like yourself who love complaining for the sake of complaining, even when no viable alternative solutions to problems have been proposed by the complainer.