Comments Posted By The Yell
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IRAQ: THE WITHDRAWAL CLOCK IS OFFICIALLY TICKING
Nobody can disagree that this commission and its supporters in Capitol Hill desire what you say, Rick. However, I think you're wrong that this is the juggernaut Bush must yield to.
Three reasons to think otherwise:
1. Here's a list of the membership of this committee.
http://www.usip.org/isg/members.html
There's no generals or admirals, the only person with any real "military" experience is William J. Perry, who was Clinton's Secy of Defense, which is not exactly the top-tier of experience.
The notion that Vernon Jordan, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Edwin Meese, Lee Hamilton, and James Baker III have superior military insight than the Joint Chiefs of Staff is laughable on its face. We might as well fold if we lose the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce.2. The issue of Iraqi democracy v. "stability" was put to the voters in 2004 and democracy won out. The idea the Baker Commission has the popular momentum to swing us behind fighting for dictatorship is looney.
3. Democracy has in fact been established in Iraq; there has been a constitution drafted, an election has taken place under that Constitution, and the leaders of Iraq have yielded their authority peaceably to the winners of that election. Those are facts; and talk of 'representative government' in its place is a call for regime change, the destruction of a form of government Iraq has chosen for itself over a year's time.
The Baker Commission has applied its massive inexperience with wartime policy, and wandered into a fantasy land where the United States will keep its supposedly "unsustainable" committment to Iraq for six months, but aim it at creating a pocket dictator we can do business with. Nuts.
A word on the "failure due to lack of resources committed". Those resources were more troops. More troops earlier on would have resulted in fiercer, more frequent firefights, and higher casualties, which is exactly what the doves find intolerable in Iraq.
We have got more arguing to do in 2007, but it is the same argument we've been winning for three years and will continue to win regardless of what politician or bureaucrat makes it. There is no Prominent Hawk with the juice to bring down the war, but the doves do keep making casting calls.
The existence of militias and other irregular factions indicates a ferment of Iraqi popular opinion unsatisfied by simple loyalty to the existing government. This could be and should be addressed by promoting grassroots nonviolent political activism and more populist local government. That is not the same as destroying the federal government and picking Our Man In Baghdad out of a lineup of warlords; and unless the conservative movement is totally incompetent from the top down, that case can be made to the American public in 2007.
Comment Posted By The Yell On 15.10.2006 @ 18:39
