Bad to Worse in Iraq
So, a very interesting thing seems to be happening: the White House, while stopping short of admitting that the reconstruction of Iraq is in trouble, is tacitly admitting it by their actions. (And as they’ve demonstrated many times over, we can’t trust their words, but have to follow what they’re actually doing to get a sense of what they’re thinking.) Josh Marshall has some good commentary on this: I’ve found it difficult. And Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a great opinion piece (as always): Blame leaders as support for war wanes.
Meanwhile, from inside Iraq, Riverbend of Baghdad Burning paints a really informative picture of how Iraqis view those we’d like to install as their leaders: Iraqi governing council…
Finally, this article by Paul Starobin from the National Journal is one of the best things I’ve read on Iraq in a long time. Very highly recommended: The French were right. An excerpt:
An understanding of how the French got to the place they got to and stubbornly clung to, even as relations with Washington badly deteriorated, requires a probe of the substance and roots of the French position.
That may not sound like much fun. Even though they deny it, the French are already gloating that their much-maligned prewar forecast has proved to be on target. But here’s the good news — and it really is very good news. One big reason the French were right is that they were thinking along the lines that Americans are generally apt to think — that is, in a cautious, pragmatic way, informed by their own particular trial-and-error experience, in this case as an occupier forced out of Algeria and as a front-line battler, long before 9/11, against global Islamic terrorist groups.
The Bush administration, by contrast, approached Iraq the way the French are often thought to approach large world problems — with a grandiose sweep of the theoretical hand, a tack exemplified by the big-ideas neoconservative crowd, whose own thinking, ironically, draws on European political philosophy. So as the administration rethinks Iraq, the way back to a sound position may lie at home, in the great but neglected tradition of American Pragmatism. And then everyone can forget about the French.
The thing I like best about the Starobin article is that it’s not just Chicken Little-inspired “the sky is falling” stuff. It’s eminently practical. It’s just saying, look, this is what’s happening. The sooner we face up to it the sooner we can start fixing the mess we’ve created.
Good advice.
