 |
| |
|
|
Agathon
|
 |
Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:34
|
|
The cheery-faced cheerleader is adopting an increasingly desperate tone. He's my nomination for fathead of the year. I can't think of anyone who has been consistently stupider about foreign policy who isn't a member of the Bush administration.
I hate to say I told you so, but the glum-faced cheeky chappie had it coming. Double the American boots on the ground? What have you been smoking? Can you say "draft"?
Iraq is FUBARed.
[VADER]: This will be a war long remembered. It has seen the end of American credibility and it will soon see the end of Tom Friedman[/VADER].
quote:
Let's Talk About Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But no one in Washington wants to talk about it. Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result, Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is being carried by our military. The rest of the country has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just fine.
Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.
Our core problem in Iraq remains Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous decision - endorsed by President Bush - to invade Iraq on the cheap. From the day the looting started, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops there. We have never fully controlled the terrain. Almost every problem we face in Iraq today - the rise of ethnic militias, the weakness of the economy, the shortages of gas and electricity, the kidnappings, the flight of middle-class professionals - flows from not having gone into Iraq with the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force.
Yes, yes, I know we are training Iraqi soldiers by the battalions, but I don't think this is the key. Who is training the insurgent-fascists? Nobody. And yet they are doing daily damage to U.S. and Iraqi forces. Training is overrated, in my book. Where you have motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army punching above its weight. Where you don't have motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army punching a clock.
Where do you get motivated officers and soldiers? That can come only from an Iraqi leader and government that are seen as representing all the country's main factions. So far the Iraqi political class has been a disappointment. The Kurds have been great. But the Sunni leaders have been shortsighted at best and malicious at worst, fantasizing that they are going to make a comeback to power through terror. As for the Shiites, their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has been a positive force on the religious side, but he has no political analog. No Shiite Hamid Karzai has emerged.
"We have no galvanizing figure right now," observed Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi historian who heads the Iraq Memory Foundation. "Sistani's counterpart on the democratic front has not emerged. Certainly, the Americans made many mistakes, but at this stage less and less can be blamed on them. The burden is on Iraqis. And we still have not risen to the magnitude of the opportunity before us."
I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and democratizing Iraq is possible. I still believe it is a vital U.S. interest to find out. But the only way to find out is to create a secure environment. It is very hard for moderate, unifying, national leaders to emerge in a cauldron of violence.
Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right? Double the American boots on the ground and redouble the diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to be part of the process and fight to the death those who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an important new book on the Iraq war, "Squandered Victory," puts it, we need "a bold mobilizing strategy" right now. That means the new Iraqi government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen the political arena in Iraq, energizing the constitution-writing process and developing a communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us. The Bush team has been weak in all these areas. For weeks now, we haven't even had ambassadors in Iraq, Afghanistan or Jordan.
We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld Doctrine - "Just enough troops to lose." Calling for more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure environment, where you can feel safe only with your own tribe. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/o...agewanted=print
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
Rufus T. Firefly
|
 |
is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:34
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
He's a fatuous oaf. He shouldn't be writing for The New York Times. He should be somewhere more suited to fatuous oafs, like the ACS Off Topic Forum. |
God, so true, and not even the half of it. He also has a unique talent -- and I said this before in the other Friedman thread -- for having "insights" that everybody already knows. Consider:
quote:
Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq. |
Gee, Tom, thanks! Until your column, absolutely nobody had even considered asking the Bush Administration what our post-election stategy was! Somehow, the question had escaped all of us, unless you count every f*cking person in the country who's given even a passing thought to Iraq since January! And Iraq's inching toward danger? Well, what would we do without you, except maybe, just maybe, watch the news and come to the same, completely f*cking obvious conclusion.
Moron.
Time to link again to the NY Press's review of his latest drivel, which has become my favorite book review ever:
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
|
|
| |
|
|
|
lord of the mark
|
 |
FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:34
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin
The administration still hasn't gotten serious about Vietnamisation... er, Iraqisation. The Iraqi Army is still around 50k last I heard where as five years ago it was around 1 million. Sure, those 1 million weren't worth much but it supplied a lot of jobs and it kept people loyal to the government. Hiring a 500k Army would soak up a lot of pissed off unemployed people and it would ally an aweful lot of tribes with the central government.
That would cost money and would be intelligent though so I'm sure Bush won't do it. |
1. According to Joe Biden (D) Delaware, the Iraqi forces (I think thats the army plus national guard, excluding the police) is up to about 160,000 now, of whom about 70,000 are actually trained, equipped, and operationally useful. We should hit 160,000 fully trained, equipped, and operationally ready within the next year or two, per Biden.
2. The Iraqi army is currently engaged in major counter insurgency operations around metro Baghdad - while US troops are there to provide fire power backup, and US advisors are along, the actual house searches, etc were done by Iraqis.
3. The insurgency continues to target the new Iraqi forces. I must assume that they do so for good reasons. Nonetheless the forces continue to grow.
4. I dont think using the army to sweep up unemployment is a good idea, as one of the keys is to prevent the army from being infiltrated by insurgent sympathizers. If make work is needed, there are plenty of things in Iraq that need doing, IIUC.
5. I dont think we can afford fewer US troops now, and I think not having more earlier was a mistake. Im not sure a surge in American troops would be a good idea though. For many reasons.
6. There was an interesting article last week, I think WaPo, of a reporter embedded with an Iraqi unit. They seemed pretty unmotivated and incompetent. OTOH it was a unit predominantly of Sunni Arabs, so it was important that they were even in uniform and fighting. The US advisors, while moaning about the poor quality of the troops, also mentioned progress.
6. Despite the evidence on "inputs" (iraqi forces trained, insurgents killed or detained, arms caches destroyed, etc) the "outputs" (Iraqi deaths at the hands of insurgents, in particular) have remained high since early April, after the drop in February and March. Clearly the insurgency is NOT in its death throes, and it was stupid of Cheney to say it was. I dont think its at a tipping point in the other direction either, though. I think the political talks with the Sunnis are very important. By the nature of these things all we see is the public haggling. Until the deal is finally reached. Certainly its striking that now the AMS and IIP are haggling over whether they get 15 or 25 seats at the constitutional convention, while 6 months ago they were asking for the end of debaathification, the withdrawl of all American troops, etc.
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:34.
Apolyton Time is 00:34. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
16-06-2005 10:05
.
), but they're not coming from Friedman.
|