December 05, 2006
Friedman's still not getting it on Iraq
WOW. To read Tom Friedman, you'd think we could just stay year after stupid year in Iraq.
Given this, we need to face our real choices in Iraq, which are: 10 months or 10 years. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over 10 months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if we start over and rebuild it from the ground up, which would take 10 years. This would require reinvading Iraq, with at least 150,000 more troops, crushing the Sunni and Shiite militias, controlling borders, and building Iraq’s institutions and political culture from scratch.
He's right. Unfortunately, it's not our fight and while we can crush the militias, what we'll have to do to achieve that objective will forever alienate the Iraqi people, many of whom have FAMILY in those militias. Even now, today, Friedman just still doesn't get what a failure this has all been. Never forget Friedman was a supporter or the invasion and has remained steadfast. My take on this is that he's unbelievably obstinate at best, crazier than a bag of hammers at worst.
Of course, via ELLN, there is another take on Mr. Friedman's column...
In fact, the only thing America did wrong in its "effort to bring progressive politics or democracy to this region" was not coming down hard enough on this darky riff-raff: "Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course. But instead we created a vacuum by not deploying enough troops." Instead, we took it easy on them -- I mean, Jesus H. Jiminy Cricket Walker Christ, we only killed 600,000 of them; what kind of pussyfooting around is that? -- and look what happened. A Sunni insurgency sprang up, whose only goal -- whose ONLY goal, mind you -- was to make America look bad: "America must fail in its effort to bring progressive, etc., etc. America must fail – no matter how many Iraqis have to be killed, America must fail." What was their "only one goal" again, Tom? Oh yeah: America must fail. Not a single ding-dang one of them ornery critters ever had any other motive whatsoever to take up arms against an army of foreigners who had invaded and occupied their country.
Honestly, when I read Friedman's piece I wasn't thinking it had racist overtones. However, reading the analysis linked above...
Posted by mcblogger at December 5, 2006 09:31 AM
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