Justus For All

Dave,
The only people I’ve seen making the claim that the violence is tied to influencing our elections were Republicans campaigning. The innuendo that somehow Sunni and Shiite radicals wanted Democrats to win is pretty dangerous and, in my opinion, a very cheap shot. Except for this evidence that the violence has scaled down (in which military officials are attributing to Ramadan), I haven’t seen one bit of evidence that there has been an attempt to sway the elections.

Can you provide additional evidence that might point in that direction? Have there been messages intercepted indicating that the violence should scale up to November 7? Is there any reason to believe that the radicals would prefer Democrats in power any more or less than Republicans?

The violence has been steadily escalating for over two years. Just because it took a small dip only a couple weeks after the election does not provide nearly enough data to make any reasonable conclusion like that.

I don’t see why that is so hard to believe. The violent factions in Iraq want the U.S. to leave. The Democrats largely campaigned on leaving Iraq. Obviously, in this limited sense, they have a common goal.

I think it also fair to say that regardless of the cause, the increased violence over the last couple of months has helped Democrats make the case that Iraq was ill concieved and success unachievable.

Probably more than partisan party interests, the insurgents want to convince the American people, and therefore politicians that Iraq is futile and we should simply leave.

Certainly the recent election events were applauded by several less then desirable leaders in the reason. I hope that their sense of victory is misplaced, and that the Democrats being in power won’t help their cause at all, but them being wrong about Democrats in this was doesn’t mean that they didn’t try to help them gain power. You can make a descent case, and I hope that Democrats will make this case by their actions, the Democratic control of congress is a bad thing for the insurgents and terrorists and various thugs in the world, but I don’t think you can make a good case that those types believe that now.

Also, violence in Iraq has been increasing and decreasing at times. The general trend has actually been downward, not upward, but certainly progress is uneven.

Fair enough - that’s a reasonable interpretation. But don’t you think it is pretty dishonest and slimy to insinuate, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have, that our enemies are rooting for Dems, and therefore they might be somehow aligned in goals?

On a separate note… Why do you say the violence has been on a downward trend? All the statistics I’ve seen show it’s been mostly flat for US troop deaths (average since March 2003 has been 65/mo, and this year the average is currently 62/mo, though November isn’t totally over yet).

But for Iraqis, which should not be discounted, the violence has been in a strong upward trend. Here is a somewhat old press release which doesn’t even include the more recent violence through the summer:

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr13.php

As for the Iraq body count graph, I have seen others that seemed to tell a different story. I don’t recall exactly where, or precisely what they measured or the timeframes involved, which may explain the discrepancy. Even then, the evidence you present could best be described as a mild upward trend, not a strong upward trend I think.

I don’t have the time now to gather all the evidence to support that things are getting better, and indeed I may be mistaken on that. I suspect that it is somewhat subjective in that some trends are improving slightly, others are getting worse slightly and which you think is more signifigant is a judgement call.

As for the more substantive question you pose, I greatly regret that both the war on terror, and especially the war in Iraq has become a partisan issue. Certainly I think Republicans have been guilty of encouraging this, but Democrats have done at least as much in this regard.

I certainly don’t believe that Democrats share the goals of terrorists, insurgents, and Islamists but I do think that the Democratic party has been the victim of a successful psy-ops, conducted primarily through a terror campaign. How, and if, they deal with this is probably extremely signifigant both for Iraq and the wider war on terror.

Part of the problem is that I think Democrats have yet to form a convincing ideology on how to confront extremism. One reason I am optimisitic about the results of the November elections is that now that they have control, it may prod them into doing so. Naysaying is easy, building a viable alternative is hard.

It is also fair to note that the right is subject to its own brand of psy-ops, primarily the ‘clash of civilizations’ meme that tries to conflate all Muslims with the extemists. Certainly their are large numbers on the right who have bought into this, and it is just as destructive to our goals. Thankfully, most of the Republican leadership, and especially the President has consistantly fought against this idea.

The ideology of Democracy promotion, and working with Muslims to defend against those who ‘hijack Islam’ is I think a compelling and useful defense against the clash of civilization meme that the Islamists are trying to spread. The Democrats though need to develop an ideology that combats the memes that America is not worthy of, and incapable of, making a difference in this struggle.