Are the adults finally taking charge?
Juan Cole weighs in on the changing of the guard in Iraq:
I have no way of evaluating these guys, but I find Juan Cole's judgment is usually sound. I hope he's right about this.
Bush is bringing in Ryan Crocker, a distinguished career foreign service officer, as the new US ambassador to Iraq. And Gen. David Petraeus will replace Gen. Casey as top ground commander in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing ambassador to Iraq, will go as ambassador to the United Nations, replacing the lying blowhard John Bolton.
I'm stricken with a case of the "what ifs" and "if onlys"! What if Gates had been at the Pentagon in 2003 and Petraeus had been in charge of the US military in Iraq and Crocker had been there instead of Paul Bremer? These are competent professionals who know what they are doing. Gates is clear-sighted enough to tell Congress that the US is not winning in Iraq, unlike his smooth-talking, arrogant and flighty predecessor. Petraeus is among the real experts on counter-insurgency, and did a fine job of making friends and mending fences when he was in charge of Mosul. Crocker has been ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, and knows the region intimately (as does Khalilzad). Bremer had been ambassador to . . . Holland. Despite all the talk of the resurgence of the Neoconservatives with their "surge" (actually ramped up occupation) plan, this team is the farthest from Neoconservative desires that you could possibly get.
I wish these seasoned professionals well. They know what they are getting into, and it is an index of their courage and dedication that they are willing to risk their lives in an effort that the American public has largely written off as a costly failure. If the US in Iraq can possibly have a soft landing, these are the individuals who can pull it off. It is a big if.
I have no way of evaluating these guys, but I find Juan Cole's judgment is usually sound. I hope he's right about this.
posted by walldon | 9:58 AM
1 Comments:
Thomas Ricks certainly gives Petraeus high marks in Fiasco. But he was not operating in the heart of the "Sunni Triangle," either. It's easy to get suckered into thinking more competent people might have pulled this off, forgetting the fundamentals like: non-existent knowledge of language and culture; occupation of an Islamic nation at a time when the West and Islam are in simmering conflict over Israel; elimination of U.S. ability to function as an "honest broker" in that conflict; only minimal and opportunistic international support; lack of justification for a preemptive war and weakening of the constraints against it; use of lies and destruction of U.S. credibility everywhere in the world; inevitabilility of sparking some level of civil warfare by weakening Sunni power not from within. No matter if Petraeus and company had been there from the beginning, it is hard to see how strategic success in the most important sense was ever possible. The bottom line was that it never had anything to do with fighting terrorism, and everyone in the world except some gullible Americans desperate for leadership in a scary time knew that. Not a good recipe for "success."
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