Iraq war rhetoric summary on Sunday news talk shows - 22-Jan-07 - Generational Dynamics

Generally, each speaker on the Sunday programs started from the same assumption: That Iraq is in a "tribal sectarian civil war," and that if you don't do what the speaker says, then Iraq will spiral out of control into "anarchy" and "chaos" and millions of Sunnis and Shia will be killing each other in a huge bloodbath.

This is everyone's assumption, but it's completely wrong: Iraq is NOT in a civil war, and there's no chance whatsoever of it spiraling out of control into a huge bloodbath, no matter what we do, since Iraq is in a generational Awakening era. I'll come back to this point later.

So people like Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (Neb), and Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy (Mass) and Joe Biden (Del) used the incorrect assumption as follows: "It's crazy to put more troops into a civil war situation."

And Republican Senators John McCain (Az) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) used the incorrect assumption as follows: "If we pull out, the huge civil war bloodbath will force us back in right away."

Another completely wrong assumption is that the Iraq war is like the Vietnam war. The reason that this is completely wrong is that Iraq today is in a generational Awakening era, while Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s was in a generational Crisis era, and so comparisons are almost completely irrelevant.

So the Democrats used this incorrect comparison as follows: "We're hearing the same arguments that we heard in Vietnam. We should have pulled out of Vietnam earlier, and we should pull out of Iraq right away."

The Republicans used this incorrect comparison as follows: "When we pulled out of Vietnam, the Vietnamese civil war expanded into Cambodia, killing millions of people, and we can't let the same thing happen in the Mideast."

Democrats also used this argument: "The Administration has gotten every prediction wrong so far, and there's no reason to believe that their predictions on the 'surge' proposal will be right."

This last argument really makes me laugh, because almost all the Democrats supported the war in 2003, so EVERYONE's predictions were wrong.

The same is true of most of the "anti-war" pundits today, almost all of whom initially supported the war, and are now acting like reformed drunks who want to burn down every liquor store.

The only consistently correct predictions that I know of are the Generational Dynamics predictions on this web site.

In August 2003, when the terrorist attacks were beginning and terrorists blew up the United Nations building in Baghdad, pundits and politicians immediately started predicting a massive uprising against Americans and a massive civil war. I explained that these things are impossible, since Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, and I made the following predictions on August 19, 2003:

"That's why you're seeing massive riots and demonstrations among the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, but you're not seeing massive violence against the American occupiers. There's no "Tet offensive" and no Vietnam-like "quagmire" in the cards for the Americans. ...

That's not to say there aren't dangers, and here we'll point out two major ones:

First, the terrorist attacks may continue and get worse. Terrorism is more a political technique rather than a military technique. Al Qaeda may succeed in increasing the level of terrorist attacks in order to influence American public opinion.

And second, the terrorist acts may presage a larger regional war involving the Palestinian Arabs and the al Qaeda against Americans in Iraq. Iraq is in an awakening period, but the Palestine region is just about to enter a crisis period. Some analysts claim that the terrorist acts are being perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs and "Mujahadeen" being paid thousands of dollars each, funded by Saddam and Osama bin Laden, arriving from Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The really dangerous scenario is that large numbers of Palestinian and "mujahadeen" terrorists will be motivated by identity group relationships to move into Iraq as a theatre of war against the Americans. That isn't happening now, but it's one of several possible scenarios that may unfold in the Mideast region during the next few months and years."

This is exactly what has happened. Given the information that I had at the time, I'm not aware of how I could have had a more accurate prediction for Iraq. And it wasn't a lucky guess -- it was based entirely on Generational Dynamics principles. The only major change today is that terrorist attacks are coming from the Shiite/Iran side as well as from the Sunni/al-Qaeda side.

As I mentioned recently, I'm working on a major status report on the Iraq war. I'm still working on it, but I've reached the point where I believe I can summarize what's going on in Iraq:

The question is: If the Iraq war isn't a civil war, then what kind of war is it?

Thus, there is a unique situation today. Those, like Biden and Kennedy, who claim that there's a civil war and that nothing's changed are simply wrong. A lot has changed in the last few months, and there truly is a new situation in Iraq today.

Does that mean that President Bush's new "escalation" policy will work to stabilize the government? There's no way to predict. But if you ignore the political hysteria, it's a reasonable thing to try.

What would happen if Americans withdrew from Iraq? When Americans withdrew from Vietnam, the Vietnamese civil war spiraled out of control and spread to other countries.

That can't happen in today's Iraq, because there's no civil war to spiral out of control. Instead of a civil war spreading OUTWARD, the external groups funding the insurgency would converge INWARD. Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would certainly intervene. Whether that resulted in a major war cannot be predicted.

However, the most important point is within the framework of the entire Mideast, the Iraq war is just a sideshow. The main show, the center ring of the circus, is still in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The situation in those two regions continues to deteriorate every day almost without fail, and a major war cannot be far off. And that war will engulf the entire region, with Iraq becoming far less important than it seems today. (22-Jan-07) Permanent Link
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Iraq war rhetoric summary on Sunday news talk shows

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-Jan-07 Iraq war rhetoric summary on Sunday news talk shows

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-Jan-07
Iraq war rhetoric summary on Sunday news talk shows