Bloodless Coup

Donald Rumsfeld: Flip-Flopper.

Crumbling Kerry Coaltion:
"It is sad that a senator with 20 years of experience does not recognize Polish contribution. This is immoral," [Polish President] Kwasniewski told FACTS in an interview commenting on the US Presidential Debate.
"There is one thing which should be stated clearly: this coalition is not just the United States, Great Britain, Australia alone; it also involves participation of Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Spanish soldiers who have died. It is immoral not to recognize the involvement we contributed based on our conviction that there should be unity in fighting terrorism, that there was a need to display international solidarity and that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous individual of this world."
http://www.drudgereport.com/dnc58.htm

And by the way, since Kerry has opposed for more than a year increasing the number of U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq (during which you've posted many times how the fighting's intensified), what sort of comparative advantage do you think he has on this issue?

I eagerly await his late afternoon position.

And is he saying he's not in the Intel business? Does he know where he works? What part of DC is in the Intel business if not the Pentagon?

As to Poland - fine, but there weren't many of them there to start with, they WERE NOT there at the start (back in the initial era of major combat operations), and they are now leaving (after the President of Poland noted how he'd been mislead by President Bush).

And what does number of troops in 2004 have to do with the issue of the number of troops needed in 2003? We know Bush failed on that issue. Kerry wasn't in a position to make that decision - but we know Bush screwed that up - and that's according to one of Bush's biggest fans and the man he entrusted Iraq to!

Armand,
I find it AMUSING that you easily excuse Kerry when he "mispoke", twice about the 87 billion dollars, not even getting into all his positions on Iraq itself, but it's somehow unforgivable in a defense secretary? Since when do we hold them to higher standards that we do Presidents?

Poland's leaving does nothing but put an exclamation point behind the political risk their prime minister took to help us, yet you denigrate the contribution they've made and the lives they've sacrificed (like your candidate for President does) with your dismissive attitude about their contribution.

How many times do I have to post this?!!!

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe we should put more American troops in Iraq?

SEN. KERRY: No.
August 31, 2003
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3080246/

That's 2003, not 2004, and you're the one who makes the point about how the violence has been intensifying, yet Kerry didn't want more troops there any more than Bush.

I'm sure Kerry would say on this that he mispoke on his position and Bush had the wrong position, but if Kerry were President (oops, that's a hypothetical and Kerry doesn't respond to those), he'd have been in that position and had the wrong position. I realize this requires abstract thought and Kerry's only good at shoveling a shipload of nuance.

Thirteen soldiers from Poland. Thirteen who obeyed orders to go, who supported the US-led coalition, whose families want them back.

Of all the coalition partners besides the UK, the highest number of lives given is 19, and the total is 70:

Polish: 13
Danish: 1
Spanish: 11
Italian: 19
Ukrainian: 9
Bulgarian: 6
Thai: 2
Estonian: 1
Salvadoran: 1
Netherlands 2
Slovaks: 3
Latvian: 1
Hungarian: 1

With the UK's 68, that is still 138 to 1064 US soldiers' lives lost. 13 out of a Polish population of 38 million versus 1064 out of 293 million in the US. That puts the proportion of the US population killed higher by a factor of ten, than for the Poles. For all killed, the other coalition partners are 11% of the total. It does not denigrate the effort of the Poles or the others to recognize that the US in both absolute and relative terms (by population) has borne a higher cost in lives of soldiers. It also does not denigrate the Poles to recognize that the US has a much better trained, funded and equipped military (though, as you know, I think we could do better by them) and controls the situation (to the degree anyone does) in Iraq. And yes, I heard Cheney say that it denigrates the efforts of the Iraquis themselves to talk about US casualties. Allawi is ackowledging that they are up to their ass in alligators and can't handle the situation, so is he denigrating his own efforts?

And I wouldn't be so quick to attribute Poland's motives to pure altruism and desire to right the world's wrongs. Their participation in Iraq was also a nice little angle on some balancing inside the EU, using the US as leverage. Ah, regional politics! The Polish government calculated the costs and benefits, and the benefits aren't all warm fuzzies that vanish when we start talking numbers of dead. And it may be that they are now seeing that the supposed benefits of the deal aren't so good, so getting out is a way of cutting their losses, both politically and in lives.

So, in no way should anyone say that those coalition soldiers who gave their lives were useless or anything of the sort. However, proportionally, the numbers show that the US is bearing a greater share of the burden, both absolutely and relatively in comparison to Bush's new favorite allies, the Poles.

death stats from: http://icasualties.org/oif/

Binky,
There's a difference between acknowledging the difficulty of the situation, as Allawi does, and ignoring the contributions of Iraqis when remembering those who've sacrificed their lives. The difficulty of the situation was published a couple years ago in Duh! magazine. But there is a psychological effect on our troops of focusing on the negatives, of taking a pessimistic approach. Bush knows how difficult this is for the troops, and he doesn't want to make it any worse for them; Knute Rockne wasn't known for telling his players how they were playing the wrong game in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kerry denigrates the sacrifices of our allies by saying that seventy mothers gave up their sons and daughters because their governments were bribed and coerced. That's an insult, by most standards it is immoral.

So you want to diminish Poland's contribution because they were motivated by other interests besides altruism. I wonder if you were President, would you write to a mother and tell her how her son's sacrifice means just a little less because he took a bonus offered by the military, chastise him for not being truly idealistic, altruistic? I find this strange, you think it diminishes another nation's contribution to benefit in other ways when for our own troops you have insisted they should be payed more, that they are owed the very compensation you would suggest in another nation makes their efforts just a little less meaningful. These people are giving their lives to protect us, whether they wear an American or an Iraqi flag. Doesn't that mean anything to you?

"So you want to diminish Poland's contribution because they were motivated by other interests besides altruism."

No, I wanted to show that on no reasonable standard of comparison does Poland's contribution match that of the US (or the Iraquis, for that matter). Deaths? Nope. Money spent? Nope. Number of troops? Nope. Does that mean it isn't meaningful? No. Does it even mean if Poland's "non-altruistic" reasoning is because it thinks it can increase its power as a nation-state that the contribution is not meaningful? No. In fact, that's the most meaningful thing to a nation-state. What my comments on Poland's intra-Europe maneuverings suggests is that the political risk you mention wasn't just undertaken to "help us" but to help themselves as well. When we're talking about the actions of the modern nation-state, self-interest is always part of the picture. For Realists it is the primary motivation to action (lest we forget, the Bush administration is Realist, the NSA explicitly so). Hence, getting worked up about Poland's Prime Minister going to great lengths to assume risk without acknowledging that Poland gets something too is a skewed vision.

And while I am not the world's expert on diplomacy, in my line of work I occasionally have the opportunity to study international relations and even interact with diplomats from the US and other countries. And you know what? Under the Bush administration as under others, there is plenty of "what will it take to get you to support our position, and how can we make that happen" going on. That's politics, horse-trading, what have you. But to ignore the fact that big, powerful states have something to offer smaller, less powerful ones - and that do they offer, and that the smaller states accept - ignores a fundamental reality of world politics.

From your own postings and beliefs (as much as I can construct a perspective from our discussions here) one could construct a similar argument about the US involvement in Iraq: it is both for the public good/altruism (take out a threat and general bad guy) and our own self-interest (a threat to the US, a sponsor or terrorism [and hush, baltar, don't tell me Iraq wasn't a threat I am channeling for a minute]). Why should Poland be different. And again, this has very little to do with whether or not we are denigrating the loss of soldiers' lives. Does my post above imply that the Poles (or anyone else) did a shitty job? It simply says that they contributed less, which is a statement of fact. I contribute less (in number of words, in number of posts, in number of comments) to this blog than Armand. That is a fact. I don't see that I denigrate myself by recognizing it. I might even permit myself the conceit to think that my contribution is qualitatively valuable and symbolically important even if not quantitatively significant. I am Poland hear me roar!

"I wonder if you were President, would you write to a mother and tell her how her son's sacrifice means just a little less because he took a bonus offered by the military, chastise him for not being truly idealistic, altruistic?"

No, um, that would be you, Morris. Let's see, what was it you said? Oh yes: "I'd prefer our soldiers join because of duty to country rather than essentially use money to motivate them like mercenaries"
http://www.bloodlesscoup.com/blog/000391.html I was the one saying we ought to support them and their families better and that for national security reasons we would have to offer incentives to maintain troop strength.

Hmmm. That seemed too easy...did you miss me so much you decided to toss me an easy one? :)

ruh-roh (as Scooby says). That was me, as if you couldn't tell.

Binky,
Welcome back. I'm in such a good mood tonight I'll let you have this one.