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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (51024)	6/20/2004 11:57:47 AM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 794032

Iraq appears more and more like the old yugoslavia every day. And now that their Tito(theirs was far worse) is out of power, it seems fruitless not to move quickly to a three state solution. Let the shia have their islamic state and hope they learned the lessons of iran and not repeat it. That will be hard tod do in a homogenous shiaa state however. Let the sunni in the triangle figure it out. It may end up a more benign form of baath state or a terror state or a combination of the two. And let the kurds have a shot at independence and insist on a reconciliaton with the other muslim democratic state--turkey. I think perhaps we have about six months to prevent this new balkanization but the only thing that can prevent it is a truly federal, republican, somewhat democratic iraq. And thats less than 50/50 shot right now. mike

To: LindyBill who wrote (51024)	6/20/2004 12:01:16 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794032

The "Transformationists": As Reckless as Saddam? Belgravia dispatch blog How ticked off are intelligent pro-war people about the Administration's post-major combat phase handling of Iraq? This T.O'd: The willingness of members of the Bush administration to abandon their past records of prudence and match Saddam's reckless and delusional behavior with their own may have been the most important element missing from my own thinking about the war. Alexander Cockburn? Robert Fisk? Noam Chomsky? Nope, Ken Pollack! Pollack is clearly torn on Iraq now well over a year out. He rues the fact that Powell didn't have more influence re: Iraq policy-making and, correctly, states that one might have thought he would have around the time he was spearheading passage of 1441. And Cheney, whom Pollack doesn't talk about quite as much, had as 41's SecDef shown a willingness to mount a war effort in the Gulf with 28 coalition partners and a high troop count. But, of course, this was pre-9/11 Cheney. He hadn't yet caught the "fever"! Pollack doesn't mention Wolfowitz at all and mentions Rummy just once (unless you count the reference to the "transformationalists"). But, of course, everyone knew that these two would be key players in any prosecution of the Iraq war. And that they weren't necessarily known as the most cautious, realpolitik types in the Beltway. What we didn't know, I guess, was that State was going to get so firmly shut out of the process and, most important, that the Pentagon would be flat out unwilling to put enough boots on the ground to create secure conditions. That, ultimately, was the biggest F up (with the related disbanding of the Iraqi army writ large with Jacobean fervor amidst all the de-Baathification chest-beating). Does this mean Wolfy (or Rummy) pace Pollack, were (are?) as "reckless" as Saddam? No, that's a tad exaggerated, don't you think? But it does mean they imperiled a nation-building excercise with their stubborn refusal to pursue real 'shock and awe'--at least 300,000 troops patrolling that country, securing supply lines; specialized constabulatory units policing less 'hot' areas; more marines; fewer reserves; more effective intelligence gathering (sans Ghraibian truncheons) fewer lugubrious 'sack-hoods' and razor-wire; fewer I.E.D's and terror bombings. Meanwhile, Fareed Zakaria wishes we had done Iraq more like we did Afghanistan: Why has Afghanistan been more successful than Iraq? In Afghanistan, the Bush administration adopted a version of postwar policies developed over the '90s. After the war, it handed the political process over to the United Nations and directed its military efforts through nato. The United Nations was able to structure a political process (the loya jirga) that had legitimacy within Afghanistan as well as internationally. With some massaging, it produced a pro-Western liberal as president. Making the military efforts multinational has meant that today, the European Union spends about as much on Afghanistan as the United States and that the new Afghan army is being trained jointly by the United States and ... France. Posted by Gregory Djerejian at June 20, 2004 04:42 PM belgraviadispatch.com