Tejek, excellent article.
Highlights worth noting:
"That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of others things will work out."
"The idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms."
(HUGE cultural lack of know-how in USA leadership. Yale - enrollment by donations, not merit)
"they...didn't understand the region, the culture"
(No kidding - Bush & USA drives blind in the 21st century!)
"we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind."
(America the Dishonest: Enron, Bush, etc.)
"We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort."
(Bush's biggest mistake.)
"every intervention we had since we used the (UN) model, and it worked...Somalia, in Haiti, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, East Timor"
"And we ended up with a group that fed us bad information. That led us to believe that we would be welcomed with flowers in the streets"
(Clueless in America.)
"nobody bothered to ask me about how my troops would be used. ... These exiles did not have credibility inside the country or in the region."
"didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the ..economic reconstruction"
"The size of the CPA was about the size we felt we needed for one province, let alone the entire country"
"The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground...we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's."
"Lack of a dialogue or identification of the leadership in the Sunni and the Shia areas. The inability to connect with the leadership down there. Somebody like Sistani who doesn't even talk to Jerry Bremer - I don't think they've ever had a conversation"
"But clearly the first and most important thing you need is that UN resolution. That's been the model"
"ask the countries to give us five or six officers for each of our battalions and regiments and brigades and above, five or six Arab officers that have attended our schools."
"I need more than some kid who happens to be of Arab descent and speaks Arabic that I drug over there and probably doesn't speak the dialect."
( I didn't understand this part. Are they drugging people too? )
"I would ask these countries in the region to allow us to build camps along the borders of Iraq, to train police, border security, and Army. I would lure the young men into these positions by considerable pay for what they are about to do...to develop truly competent security forces with high morale, organizational coherence, the equipment and the pay that would make them proud."
( Certainly would be cheaper than the current method. )
Smart guy. So why the huge disconnect between Bush Admin and him?
Regards,
Amy J |
