Your inconsistency extends to Iraq, as well, LB. My position is that now that we messed with Afghanistan and Iraq, we should fix both. You claim you want to neglect Afghanistan and fix Iraq, but what you advocate will result in failure in both places.
For Iraq to be fixed a few things are needed such as:
1. A considerable increase in our forces there -- both civilian and military.
2. Lots of money now to buy the goodwill of the population. If we wait for the oil to finance this, Iraq is as sure as lost.
3. Reversal of the de-Baathification policy. Use every available, willing, educated Iraqi to build a functioning government and disengage ASAP. Of course, we can exclude the few hundred top Baath officials -- probably the only ones that care about the politics of Baath anyway.
These positions contradict Rumsfeld's and the Necons' theories, so it is not popular among the administration supporters in this thread. This is very unfortunate. Slavishly supporting the latest administration position does the administration and the US no good in the long run. We should not be gambling the future of this country on petty short term politics.
You need to evaluate the administration's positions and criticise them when they are obviously stupid. Like the dismissal of the Iraqi army with no compensation -- a decision that I now suspect came from Rumsfeld rather than Bremer. That decision, against which I railed right from the start, and which you reflexively supported, was later reversed -- after it caused considerable damage.
Or the inane de-Baathification policy. Getting rid of top dedicated Baathists is OK. Purging tens of thousands is stupid. The vast majority joined the party to get a job. And they constitute practically the only educated, skilled pool of talent in Iraq. Iraq is no longer the educated, sophisticated country it was before Saddam's wars and the long sanctions. It is in fact below third world levels in services and education. Well over fifty percent of the population is young people with scant education and little sophistication. Dismissing summarily the only educated class in Iraq is an act of supreme stupidity. Watch this space for a reversal of this policy soon.
Or the pipe dream that oil will pay for Iraq's rebuilding. That's true in the long run -- when we are all dead. But the critical time in Iraq is the short term -- the next few months, or year or two. If we wait for oil revenues to roll in before the Iraqi people see improvement in their lives, Iraq is as good as lost.
Kyros |
