3 Minute Must Read on Iraq
David Brooks, one of my favorite Op-Ed writers (due to his sharp and relatively fair mind), wrote a thought provoking piece in today's New York Times. I strongly recommend the entire thing (all 3 minutes worth).
Steve, I still owe you a description of "success", but I think Brooks offers a partial version near the end:
Iraq will look like a lot of places in the world: a series of cold and fragile understandings, with occasional flare-ups (like in Basra), but no genocide and no terror state.
This is certainly nothing I think we should be doing cartwheels over... but it may be better than the alternatives associated with withdrawal.
I'm still in the undecided camp, so I don't know if I believe it or not. I'm particular skeptical of the sustainability of the "balanced opposition" that Brooks cites as the critical new dynamic that has emerged.
But, it occurs to me that we are staying until at least January 2009, so we should take the opportunity to honestly consider all possibilities - including those that come from new leadership in the White House and new developments on the ground.
5 comments:
I am curious as to the members of this long list of places that hold together with "a series of cold and fragile understandings, with occasional flare-ups ... but no genocide and no terror state." Which nations operate like this? Afghanistan? Rwanda? Because those places don't really impress me.
I think they are going for a Bosnia-like outcome (whether they know it or not). Bosnia has huge sectarian divisions with a history of grotesque violence on a stunning scale, but today is largely peaceful and steadily progressing economically and socially -and has been for about a decade.
I don't know a great deal about Rwanda since the genocide in the 1990's but present day Afghanistan doesn't qualify as a model of Iraq. I'd still call it a terror state given the persistence operation of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda...plus it is just dramatically less developed economically and socially. Doesn't seem appropriate to have similar goals for the two...
Like I said, I'm still skeptical that this is possible under any circumstances - but we are there for the rest of the year - so I'm trying to be productive by reviewing all my operating assumptions.
But...like you've said/implied, for that to have any value, you must have a vision of success and specific goals/milestones to idenitfy progress... and we're still pretty far short of that as far as I can tell...
Jared, just stumbled upon the blog...
My personal experiences with the region have leaded me to believe that I'm skeptical about any Truce... You either believe they are working or you believe that they are just waiting us out....
Either way, I do not believe that either Democrat Presidential Candidate has a grasp on the massive infrastructure that has been set in place and that I would not want to be the one to have to remove it....
What really sucks is the Military is stuck in a position where we could really start to kick a$$ if we had a clear future. We finally have the resources that we’ve needed since the beginning.
Good to hear from you Brook.
When you say, "if we had a clear future" - do you mean if you had clear goals from the political leaders or if you knew how long you were going to be there...?
Also - do you feel that the current resource levels are sustainable indefinitely?? It seems like the manpower levels definitely are NOT (not cite comments by Colin Powell and others). Our do you believe that the Iraqi Army could slowly (and finally start taking over more of the responsibility..)?
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