Post by showcase on Apr 8, 2004 9:31:56 GMT -5
An interesting column by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times...
www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/08FRIE.html
I think Friedman's got a great point, even if his thesis has been undermined somewhat by the events of the last few days (anti-American resistance can hardly be confined to Sunni and non-Iraqi elements anymore).
Iraq was prehaps the right war at the wrong time and in the wrong way. This Administration threw caution to the wind in pursuing its objectives, and now wants credit for doing so. It's too late to return to the status quo ante, so pulling troops out is not an option. On the other hand, I'm not sure how one can argue that the current Administration is qualified to see it through to a successful conclusion. Any thoughts on that one?
Durned formatting...
We cannot want a decent Iraq more than the Iraqi silent majority. Because this is an urban war, and U.S. soldiers having to fight house to house inside Iraqi cities cannot win it. Only Iraqis can. If we try to fight this war ourselves, we will kill too many innocent Iraqis, blow up too many mosques and eventually turn the whole population against us - even if they know in their hearts that what we're trying to build is better than what the insurgents want.
In fairness to Iraqis, though, asking the silent majority there to stand up right now is asking a lot. After decades of Saddam's brutal rule, civil society there was just beginning to come back, and the first threads of trust between the different communities were just beginning to be tied. The whole purpose of the U.S. occupation was to build a constitutional framework in which this center could be developed.
This was always a long shot. But, I believe, after 9/11, trying to build a decent state in the heart of a drifting Arab-Muslim world - a world that is manufacturing millions of frustrated, unemployed youths - was worth trying. But it takes resources and legitimacy, and the Bush team has provided too little of both.
From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party - let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."
From the day the looting started in Baghdad, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops to create a secure framework and to control Iraq's borders. As a result, local militias began to spring up everywhere. If you turn on your TV, you can see how well armed they became while Donald Rumsfeld was insisting we had enough troops there to control Iraq.
I know the right thing to do now is to stay the course, defeat the bad guys, disarm the militias and try to build a political framework that will hold the now wavering Shiite majority on our side - because if we lose them, the game is over. But this will take time and sacrifice, and the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority.
Without more allies, without more global legitimacy - and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong - we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.
In fairness to Iraqis, though, asking the silent majority there to stand up right now is asking a lot. After decades of Saddam's brutal rule, civil society there was just beginning to come back, and the first threads of trust between the different communities were just beginning to be tied. The whole purpose of the U.S. occupation was to build a constitutional framework in which this center could be developed.
This was always a long shot. But, I believe, after 9/11, trying to build a decent state in the heart of a drifting Arab-Muslim world - a world that is manufacturing millions of frustrated, unemployed youths - was worth trying. But it takes resources and legitimacy, and the Bush team has provided too little of both.
From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party - let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."
From the day the looting started in Baghdad, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops to create a secure framework and to control Iraq's borders. As a result, local militias began to spring up everywhere. If you turn on your TV, you can see how well armed they became while Donald Rumsfeld was insisting we had enough troops there to control Iraq.
I know the right thing to do now is to stay the course, defeat the bad guys, disarm the militias and try to build a political framework that will hold the now wavering Shiite majority on our side - because if we lose them, the game is over. But this will take time and sacrifice, and the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority.
Without more allies, without more global legitimacy - and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong - we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.
www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/08FRIE.html
I think Friedman's got a great point, even if his thesis has been undermined somewhat by the events of the last few days (anti-American resistance can hardly be confined to Sunni and non-Iraqi elements anymore).
Iraq was prehaps the right war at the wrong time and in the wrong way. This Administration threw caution to the wind in pursuing its objectives, and now wants credit for doing so. It's too late to return to the status quo ante, so pulling troops out is not an option. On the other hand, I'm not sure how one can argue that the current Administration is qualified to see it through to a successful conclusion. Any thoughts on that one?
Durned formatting...
