US-insurgents negotiations

[Arnfinn Madsen]

Do you see any positive outcome of these?

Clinton and later Bush tried to strike a deal with Taleban but it naturally failed since it was no way for Taleban leaders to explain this to its power base (since it included removing Al-Qaida).

What do you think of the negotations with insurgents? IMO they are doomed to fail to since the following will occur:
-Saddam loyalists will demand a release of Saddam as part of the deal which the US cannot accept without losing face.
-Moslem extremists and foreign fighters will demand to keep it a safe haven for them which US will never accept.

In Afghanistan CIA was successful in paying warlords to break their loyalty to Taleban and succeded in reducing the Pakistani support. Do you think they are trying to crack up the insurgency in Iraq by similar methods?

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
In Afghanistan CIA was successful in paying warlords to break their loyalty to Taleban and succeded in reducing the Pakistani support. Do you think they are trying to crack up the insurgency in Iraq by similar methods?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is almost 100% certain. I know for a fact that local ground forces, Im talking at the company commander type level, are authorized to make cash payments in their geographic area of responsibility for whatever they deem necessary.

[lehighguy]

I don't think you can negotiate with the hardcores or the foriegn fighters, but they can't operate without support personal. People to sell them guns, people to provide them shelter, people who give them intelligence, people who provide logistics. If you improve conditions for the average Iraqi, they will find it hard to recruit the necessary support personal to commit terrorist acts.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

Do you or any other know with which parts of the insurgency the negotiations are conducted?

[shots]

Since the agenda of most of the Iraqi fighters is political there's a chance a deal can be made with them but the die hards are another story they're the real problem and can't be negotiated with. As for them not being able to operate without support 19 foreign fighters operating in the US with little local support managed to kill 3000 people. They didn't need anyone to sell them guns they found there own shelter disguised as normal citizens and managed to aquire all the intelligence they needed to carry out their plans.

I do however think we should try to have talks with al-queda members, at first they'd only send one representative but after we offered them anything they want like Isreal or the total removal of all US troops from the mideast then a few of the higher ups come to sit in on the talks, that's when we shoot them all.

[Cyrus]

We hold these truths to be self-evident (unless one is totally blinded by the propaganda) :

- That the US will remain alone in the quagmire that is Iraq for some time to come, with most other great powers wishing her to fail abysmally there, for their own reasons. (Yes, I do take into account once Great Britain.) Never mind the sympathetic rhetoric.

- That this insurgency is nothing new in history, in neither ferocity, methods nor rhetoric.

- That it is generally an insurgency of Iraqis, for purposes that have to do generally with Iraq. (The presence, for example, of a far greater percentage of outsiders in the Spanish Civil War -on the side of the republicans- did not change the fact that is was a Spanish Civil War.) Accordingly, this insurgency has to be dealt with locally, in Iraq, with the Iraqis, first and foremost.

- That the insurgents's political objectives have not been defined - yet. When they do, the insurgents will acquire a powerful political tool to work with.

- That until such time as there is a coherent political agenda of the insurgency, no matter how "extreme" that agenda may appear to American eyes, the best way to deal with the insurgency politically is through propaganda and, mainly, through the old & tried British colonial method of "divide & conquer". Vulturesrow touched upon this issue already. (Btw, I expect money-for-peace to have become already a prime source of income for Iraqi entrepreneurs, big and small! Capitalism has to start somewhere.)

- That, sooner or later, and depending upon the relative strength and endurance of an insurgency, the establishment starts talking to the rebels, clandestinely or openly. (Usually it starts with the former and ends in the latter.) There is truly nothing "immoral" in any of this, despite the previous posturing of both sides.

...Anybody on the phone yet to Gerry Adams ? [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]