I agree with your strategy. I would have advocated (2) a lot earlier, personally. I agree with (3) - independent militias who commit atrocities have no place in government.

(4) is trickier. I see why there must be a consequence of a failure to (3). I'm worried what the political consequences, both in Iraq and the US would be. However, it would be the result of the inability of their government to reign in the trouble makers, which is certainly a critical issue. So, while I think it makes sense, I don't know that it would be at all simple or straightforward.

I certainly see the benefits of (5) and think it should be possible even without (4). It would likely increase coalition casualties, though, as the coalition soldiers embedded with Iraqis would be more vulnerable. I imagine IA bases are not as secure as coalition bases, for example. Still, "no pain, no gain" applies here.

I would assume that (6) would have already happened if it were possible. I think you're right that it makes sense to do whatever is possible to reduce non-combat personnel in theater, but not if it means that the soldiers are at a risk of running out of ammunition, spare parts, fuel or any of the other critical needs. If you really think it can be done without compromising the fighting effectiveness, I don't see why not.

Overall a good plan, and I think it is a much more serious one than just "go long". In a sense, "go long" is a conservative change to the current plan, yours is more radical but likely to be more effective, too.

I like the plan. This is the kind of thinking that we must implement to make short-order of the situation. Our present rules and restrictions are contributing to the current problems. New thinking and actions are vital.

Arabic is not a particularly hard to speak language. It is in fact quite similar to Hebrew. There are an awful lot of Americans (relatively speaking) who have some familiarity with spoken Hebrew. People whose loyalty would not be in question.

TOPICS FOR MEETING WITH SYRIA, IRAN
– Morning: Brief intro, overview, goals of the day by Pamela Anderson
– Syria: When and how we intend to drop 12 GPS bombs beside Assad’s bedroom
– Power Point presentation, before/after simulation pics for palace
– Assad’s preferred bombing dates, nations he would like to do it
– Which villa he would prefer in Tunisia (virtual tours of real estate listings)
Lunch: California Fusion fare with Pamela’s comments on morning events
– Afternoon, Iran: Which Iranian rebel groups we’ll be supporting this year, $$ amounts
– Power Point presentation RE the 1-day plan to destroy Iran’s new Russian missiles
– Iranian input about which offshore oil rigs they would like us to seize first
– Invitation to Iranian leaders to aid in massive heroin imports via Afghanistan
– Financial incentives review (Deloitte Touche)
– Discussion, with fruit punch, shortbread, Syrian coffee, Iranian tea, jocular exchanges
– Condi and George’s wrap-up, with brief preview of evening events, adjournment.

Aha! This strategy is largely what I suggested this morning.

My argument was in the context of the irony that we are actually still doing fairly well with this in Anbar- even though the level of cooperation is theoretically much lower and number of foriegn jihadis higher.

Our Iraqification was going well right up until we turned over the IA to the government, at which point it was quickly coopted, corrupted, and stipped of credibility and trust.

The ticklish part is getting the Iraqi government to go along with it. The only way I see it working without the elected government basic turning on us will be to threaten them with either taking the deal or us walking in short order. Malaki and co are trying not to get eaten by several tigers, and we're the only ringmaster in town. Self preservation is a powerful force, and our troops packing up their bags in the green zone has a way of focusing the mind nicely. But we have to be willing to do it.

According to the plan, why do Iraqi armed forces obey the Americans and ignore the wishes of the government of Iraq?

If Iraqi armed forces act like they might obey their own government, what resources should the Americans use to bribe and compel them to obey foreign occupation forces instead? And do the Americans have enough legitimacy that their threats and promises are credible, especially for the long run?

I will take a serious reread before I comment.
In the mean time this is for Katzman's interest in armor technology. CNBC ran an article on a material called D3O this morning; ultrafelxible until struck; used in downhill skier suits(Spider suits) to absorb shock of running into flexible gates. My thinking was as cushiioning liner in ceramic plate and other body armor.
Run w/ it

"According to the plan, why do Iraqi armed forces obey the Americans and ignore the wishes of the government of Iraq?"

Its a fair quesion. But i think just getting the IA out of the clutches of the defense ministry will have some positive benefits even if they arent 100% responsive to US whim.

For instance we can continue training and equiping the force instead of seeing all the IA whither in the face of rampant theft and corruption of their budget. Also it enables us to embed advisors in hopefully just about every Iraqi formation which will curtail the death squad dressed up as soldiers/cops routine. Those are probably equal if not greater problems
than Iraqi forces flat out balking at challenging Sadr (or whomever). If we can get Iraqis to at least man the streets and checkpoints, we can handle Sadr with US forces on a case by case basis (oil can theory).

Aside from that one of the dangers of this plan is that the IA may be unsalvageable. If there are as many death squad members in the Iraqi forces as it appears, embedding US forces could be a suicide mission.

> According to the plan, why do Iraqi armed forces obey the Americans and ignore the wishes of the government of Iraq?

Those who obey Americans will get the benefits of doing so. Those who don't will be treated as armed militias outside the govt.

The latter is the problem - we haven't been dealing effectively with armed militias outside govt. Disagree? Why is al-Sadr still alive?

I like (1), (2), (4) and (6).

Removing militias from positions of influence in the government. I assume this means Sadr. But the Malaki government rests on Sadr's support, so what's being asked here is close to asking the Malaki government to step down.

So parliamentary governments reform all the time. But here I think you will have made Sadr into Iraq's Arafat. Exceedingly popular for earning the anger of the Americans. Aligned with the most extreme elements, but according to some accounts, unable to control them. Both indispensable for popular government but impotent for all but basic graft.

I'd prefer dealing with Sadr more directly, but I'm not sure how. The decision not to kill Sadr has already been made with the hope of bringing him into the political process. His influence stems not only from his relationship to the militias, but the fear of what he would do outside the political process. I think we need to find a way to delegitimize him without making him a maurder.

Seizing the military. From my p.o.v. this would be the same as ending the democratic government and would set the precedent for the Iraqi military to take such action in the future whenever they decided the civilian government was ineffective and corrupt. The basic function of government is security and all of its other responsibilities are conditioned on the implied threat of force. Without such force the civilian government becomes a paper tiger, delegitimized and predictably dangerous in its rhetoric.

I would rather the U.S. military work on improving the Iraqi security forces from within, exhibiting the proper role of the military in supporting its democratic institutions.

Mark: But i think just getting the IA out of the clutches of the defense ministry will have some positive benefits even if they arent 100% responsive to US whim.

I am confused, who would the IA be responsive to?

It all sounds like fantasy to me.

If the blogs and the journals are to be believed, the police and the Interior Ministry troops pretty much belong to the Mahdi: they are the same people. You can't take something away from the Iraqi "government" that that "government" doesn't command in the first place.

Is that hyperboly? Last week, one Iraqi ministry basically kidnapped another. Official Iraqi news sources aired conflicting and erroneous versions of the event.

The Iraqi Army? That's a jobs program.

I could be mistaken but it looks to me like our own commanders - unnable to decipher exactly who it is we're supposed to be supporting, and who is the enemy - have largely pulled in their troops. Why let young soldiers die in gun battles between Sunni insurgents and the Mahdi? What do you do when the forces you funded turn out to be loyal to one side or the other?

Things are falling apart, folks. And half a world a way we're floating ideas that might have had some impact if implemented a few years ago.

Methinks the wretched corruption and inneptitude in our own government would be a more worthwhile focus than the entirely predictable corruption in theirs.

"I would rather the U.S. military work on improving the Iraqi security forces from within, exhibiting the proper role of the military in supporting its democratic institutions."

That has proved to be catastrophically impossible. It has wrecked everything we have done with Iraqi security forces to such an extent that trying to reform them in a gradual manner is preposterous.

If we don't get security in Baghdad under control, the Iraqi government is doomed. They are physically unable to reform their control of the IA. It has utterly failed to support the state to such an extent that it is actually a net negative at this point. The entire point of this strategy is to reverse that. If we think Iraqification is our only hope of success, the military must be reformed, and its excutiatingly obvious that cant happen under Iraqi leadership at this time.

So our choices are stark- remove (voluntarilly hopefully) control of the Iraqi security forces from government control and attempt to reform them to such a point where there is enough security that the government is truly secure and capable of leadership, or watch as the IA stands on the sidelines as the government collapses. Im not saying this is a happy choice, but this is the best of bad choices at the moment. Sometimes you have to burn down to rebuild.

"Mark: But i think just getting the IA out of the clutches of the defense ministry will have some positive benefits even if they arent 100% responsive to US whim.

I am confused, who would the IA be responsive to?"

The US military. Have a look at Chester's article, that is the entire point. It is Iraqi government control that has sidelined and subverted the IA, we cant fix that from the outside.

I've got an idea for how to make this decision palatable:

We should 'consult' with the Iraqi government and our coallition allies, and decide that due to the state of Iraqi emergency, a Supreme Coallition Commander needs to be appointed with authority over all forces in the theater. This is face saving for the Iraqis because it isnt technically a demotion- its promoting an American.

The new commander can then work to integrate Americans into Iraqi forces and quickly get the Iraqi ministries out of the loop. It should through back channels be made clear that this is not optional- either accept this or US forces are out of Iraq in 6 months and good luck doing it your way. It should provide enough of a political smokescreen to get the job done.

This is actually something that needed to be done ages ago, we've never had a real figure in Iraq with true military and political authority (thanks Rummy).

"5. Create combined US-Iraqi forces. Here's where the go native part really kicks in. Forget about standing our forces down as the Iraqi forces stand up. It seems to actually be working in Anbar province, but the American public and political class don't believe it."

One of my best friends is a Marine officer who returned last week after spending 6 months embedded with Iraqi troops in Ramadi, and he does not believe it either.

My friend literally shocked me when he said that many of the Iraqi army members he trained were part of Al Sadr's militia. In fact, one of his fellow Marines remembered arresting an Iraqi army member when the man fought for Sadr (and against the U.S. troops) in Najaf.

He says that the troops he trained were 98% Shiite, and they were enthusiastic to go out and kill Sunnis. But they were not what he would consider a professional army by Western standards, nor would the confront Shiites (and especially Sadr).

I have never been quite so depressed about the war as I am now, after talking to my friend.

This is indeed the "Go Long" plan.

Train 20,000 arabic speakers in a year? Would have been a great idea 2 years ago but it's far to late for that. Possibly still a good idea to train 10,000 for future conflicts though.

This is a good thread. People are finally talking about some of the real issues in a serious, focused way that was not common enough before.

Re: #16 from jeff, thanks for that information too. It isn't a surprise, but it is important to put this stuff on the table.

I have been proposing the same thing/similar things all along (and suggesting that many of these things should have been pre-pared pre-invasion. We definately should do it, but I think it's probably too late.

I'm curious. Does anyone still think that there existed a plan that was politically doable and would have been "successful"? And by successful, I mean would have transitioned Iraq to a stable democracy in 3 years without signifcant amounts of violence?

In light of the recent revelations vis a vis the AP and "police spokesmen" who do not exist, how do we know that the Iraqi police and military really have been co-opted by the Shiite militas? I've been reading a lot of positive news about Iraq military and police accomplishments in various places (blogs and Centcom mostly, with bits and pieces in the antique media). It's only in the antique media that I'm reading this constant meme that the Shiites have co-opted the police and military.

"I mean would have transitioned Iraq to a stable democracy in 3 years without signifcant amounts of violence? "

Those are a couple of very relative terms. There is no doubt in my mind had we done any number of things (highly predictable things mind you) right, Iraq would be an order of magnitude less violent. The long term political prospects are harder to envision, but it doesn't seem a bold leap to assume a much more peaceful Iraq would have a much more tenable government.

#22 from Mark Buehner,

The difficulty with the idea of "predictable" is that just about every thing was predicted. So how do you chose ahead of time which prediction to follow?

And given that following the "right" predictions would have avoided some problems wouldn't the enemy have created others?

Politics is not like physics. Systems are neither stable nor predictable. Especially where there is opposition.

I like the Brit attitude: muddle through. You make your mistakes and fix them as best as you can. (they sure did some whoppers in Basra)

So what is the #1 mistake made in Iraq? Lack of sitzfleish. A failure of will. However, that is a character problem. Doing this or that is not a fix.

The #2 mistake? Not countering the enemy propaganda put out by "news" organizations. Even that is not fatal if we have sufficient will.

I'm not worried though. I think of 1938 when the democracies (I almost wrote dreamocracies - which is not a bad description these days) had lost their will. By the time 30 or 50 million were dead we proved that we had sufficient will. I see the same stupidity operative in this war. We will find our will on top of a pile of dead bodies.

Human nature I guess.

Apparently Bush has decided to go in the opposite direction:
Bush agrees to speedy turnover in Iraq

"AMMAN, Jordan - President Bush said Thursday the United States will speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces but assured Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Washington is not looking for a "graceful exit" from a war well into its fourth violent year."

re speedy turnover: Malaki went to the meeting publicly seeking a commitment from Americans for a plan to turn over Iraqi forces. The American delegation had to have come with a list of conditions to exchange. I wonder what they were and what was promised. Could it have been removing militias from positions of influence in the government?

Mark Buehner (#22)

It seems to me that the violence we're seeing is about who is going to control Iraq and settling old scores. It really seems to have little to do with the US presence per se, it's about filling a power vacuum. Turning over control is what created (at least) the appearance of a power vacuum.

At this point, I believe it's somewhat naive to think that if only we'd had more troops or if only we hadn't disbanded the Iraqi army or if only we had more translators or if only we'd had more international cooperation or whatever. Pick your favorite silver bullet. This idea (deomcratization) was fated to be bloody. Sure, mistakes were made, but they were much more of a political nature (the goals & timetables) than of a strategic or tactical nature. The thought (and I shared it) that there was an nascent Iraqi democratic polity waiting to be freed from the yoke of Saddam was wrong. The fact that people weren't willing to fight for Saddam didn't mean that they were unwilling to fight for Iraq.

But that's in the past; we are where we are. Personally, I think the current situation is a failure (and it is) only because we set the victory conditions to make it a failue. By defining victory in Iraq as a democratic Iraq at peace with itself and its neighbors that we've made it easy for the enemy to defeat us. Chaos is simple to create.

The current situation in Iraq is not inherently a problem for America, it's a problem for Iraq. Frankly I think we ought to be encouraging red-on-red conflict anywhere we can in the Muslim world. Anything that attrits the enemy benefits us. We ought to stop thinking about ways to salvage Iraq, and ought to start thinking about ways to turn the chaos to our advantage. We're playing the enemy's game. We should play ours. Let Iraq have its civil war. We don't need to pick a winner, but we can and should pick some losers. Pull Iran and Syria into the conflict. Don't let them use proxies, force them to engage directly. Expand the conflict. The US military is exceptionally good at breaking things; nation building? not so much. Let's let them do what they're good at.

"At this point, I believe it's somewhat naive to think that if only we'd had more troops or if only we hadn't disbanded the Iraqi army or if only we had more translators or if only we'd had more international cooperation or whatever. Pick your favorite silver bullet."

I agree that no one of these things would have retrieved the situation. But doing a number of things competantly sure would, no? Or are you suggesting no matter what we did, it wouldnt materially change anything? That seems to me a pretty unlikely theory.

This kind of thinking gives me this image of an unemployed layabout getting kicked out of his apartment, car repossed, charge cards cut up, and all he can do is throw up his hands and claim there is nothing he could have done to address all these things.. because look at what a big mess they are. Well, yeh, but the point is if he would have been working and dealing with them as he went along many of them never would have become an issue.

Is it an Iraqi problem that we never sealed the Syrian and Iranian borders, allowing thousands of AQ and jihadis to come in and suicide bomb thousands of victims, which is one of the major reasons there is civil strife right now?

Regardless, this isnt about fairness. Not sealing the borders, not repairing the electricity infastructure, not addressing the militias, not providing enough security against large scale bombings, all things things may not be our 'fault' but this isnt about fairness. We dont not fix things just because its 'not our problem'. Thats how you lose. You do whatever the hell needs to be done using every resource you can bring to bear. Otherwise you dont get involved in the first place. Thats how you win wars.

Mark:

If you think (as I do) the goal was to have Iraq as a peaceful, stable democracy without requiring excessive numbers of American troops by the 2008 election cycle, no I don't think there was anything we could have practically done to have achieved that goal. We wanted to get in and get out reasonably quickly, and creating lasting liberal democratic institutions couldn't be done in that timeframe, regardless of how many troops or dollars you wanted to throw at it.

But I think you may be misunderstanding me: when I say the situation in Iraq is not our problem, I'm not saying that it's not our fault. (I'm not saying it is our fault either, but that's a separate discussion.)

Our problem is to provide security and propserity to the American people. The fact that Iran is developing nuclear weapons capability is a much larger threat to the US than which particular militia is in charge of which particular block of Baghdad. And if various militias and factions want to busy themselves fighting over that block, well that's fighting not directed at US interests. If the whole things devolves into ethnic cleansing, then we might have a chance (a la Kurdistan) to help create something positive out of the rubble.

We went into Iraq to remove an existing threat (Saddam's regime) and with the theory that standing up a democratic government would create an allied, or at least a neutral, Arab and Islamic nation. Between the (reasonably) fair election of Hamas in Palestine and the cooperative but autocratic governments of Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, I'm prepared to say that the theory that democratic governance is both necessary and sufficient to blunt the Arab/Muslim threat to US and allied interests is well disproven. We've accomplished the first mission objective, and I think we have good reason to doubt the utility of the second objective.

So lets look to our primary objective (security and propserity for the American people) and figure out the best things to do now to meet the primary objective. It's all the better if that can be done in a way that helps others, but that ought to be a secondary concern.

SG, I agree entirely with what you've said so far in this thread, with the slight exception of forcing Iran and Syria to engage directly in Iraq. (I don't think we have the power or the need to do that. Desirable red on red conflicts can expand without our aid.)

Force protection as top priority makes more sense to me than "going native".

Trying to grind down the enemy is rational. Taking more casualties to aid the enemy is not obviously reasonable.

The idea that there was a third way, that by knocking over a couple of undemocratic regimes (In Afghanistan and Iraq) we could remove the barriers to the passion for freedom that burns in the hearts of all men and women everywhere and thus convert enemies into friends as we advanced on the road to a universal end to tyranny has proved wrong. We threw open the gates to "let freedom reign!" and we have received from Muslim and Arab pro-democracy forces all the help that they are willing and able to give us. It amounts to little. So much for those guys and that plan.

I hope not to hear another important presidential speech on the long war in the spirit of George W. Bush's second inauguration speech.

Since it turns out that giving our present enemies the vote does not make them our friends, we have no program of conversion. (Though through demography and creeping sharia, the enemy does have a valid program of conversion.) Therefore, to the extent that we are in it at all, this is a war of attrition. But since we have to operate under such severe cultural, diplomatic, political and media restraints that we are unable to inflict adequately severe attrition, the enemy must do the bulk of the work. (Which would only be fair, as we are doing the work of depopulating and aging our own states.)

Fortunately, it seems the hostile culture is so aggressive and violent that our enemies cannot but provide the needed red on red conflicts, if we let them.

The determination of Iraqi Sunnis to keep fighting a terror war for Sunni tyranny in Iraq, despite demographic facts that say they can't win, is really impressive in this regard. These people are, by our standards, violently insane. They will do things we would not, and persist in conflicts long after we would have given up - which in many contexts means our doom, but which if our hope is red on red conflict may mean our salvation.

I think whatever stands in the way of the needed red on red fights, including a new policy of "going native" is a counterproductive idea.

"Force protection as top priority makes more sense to me than "going native"."

Making force protection your top priority doesnt make any sense. By that rationale you should keep your forces how (maybe that's what you mean). The best force protection of all is quelling the violence. If it gets far enough out of hand we will take casualties at our bases/supply lines no matter how well protected they are. Fixed fortifications are a testiment to the stupidity of man.

"Trying to grind down the enemy is rational. Taking more casualties to aid the enemy is not obviously reasonable. "

It depends. We killed a million+ Vietnamese with little to show for it. We are taking casualties now with little to show for it.

If can can devise a strategy that creates casualties in the short run but achieves our goal in the long run- isnt that better than minimizing casualties in the short run but losing in the long run? If not, whats the point of using military force?

"By that rationale you should keep your forces how (maybe that's what you mean)."

Keep your forces home rather.

Wow.

SG - you say that we went into Iraq to remove an existing threat: Saddam's regime.

Can we not agree yet that this was nonsense?

The Iraqi state was never a threat to us. I know, I know... we heard that it was from BOTH parties, many times, so they very least that can be said is that THEY must have believed it to be true, right?

All kinds of intelligence, including that of our allies, indicated that Iraq was developing WMD (the "Mass" part of that acronym being defined down with every iteration) so they must have at least believed it to be true, right?

Ya. Maybe. Or maybe the Government was fabricating a justification, and the opposition - having done the same in the past - was hoist by its own petard.

We spend more on intelligence per capita than any nation on the earth. We have Arab linguists working for the NSA who can listen to a phone call on the other side of the world. SIGINT. MASINT. SATINT. HUMINT. We have the most finely tuned intelligence machine in the history of the planet, and we somehow saw a giant weapons program that wasn't there and accidentally launched a war to the tune of billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

Ooops!

Please. There was no threat!

I ALWAYS believed that the WMD argument was a very stretched one, linked to legitimate concerns of immediate terrorism, in order to persuade the public to support a war this administration felt necessary to defuse long-term terrorism. In otherwords, it wasn't about Saddam nuking us or Israel, or even handing Al Qaeda a nuke in the next few years; it was about tranforming the Middle East so that organizations like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Islamic Brotherhood, etc., ad infinuium, would cease to flourish, and wouldn't be seeking nukes in the next few decades as proliferation innevitably accelerates.

Saddam just happened to be the best target of opportunity. And without a doubt, he had it coming.

That seemed like sound reasoning to me, real leadership.

We can slow, not stop proliferation. I believed that dealing with root causes is the only long term solution... and that meant democratization. I believe in it still, though a close inspection of how this occupation has been handled - putting ideology, partisan politics, and corporate profits above all else - leads me to wonder if the current administration ever sincerely believed it themselves.

But now, having earned no success, we've got your vision.

Instead of introducing Democracy, Human Rights, the rule of law, free market reforms, and liberalisation... you want to run the other way? You want to destabalize the Middle East on the theory that red on red is good for us? Draw a few hostile regimes into the conflict and send the US military out on a kind of scorched earth, search and destroy mission at the international level? That way they'll be so busy killing each other that they won't have time to think about the West?

???

If you haven't forgotten, the entire reason this region is important to us - vice some place like Darfur, where we're content to let the natives rape, pillage, and slaughter each other with wild abandon - is because it's sitting atop a good portion of the worlds oil supply. We are now inextricably tied to the world economy. Turning the entire place into a war zone would sort of defeat the purpose of fighting for access to that supply, and likely result in a depression that would make the Great Depression seem like a hiccup.

If you belong to the camp that says we can live without that oil, and your main concern is terrorism... then I'd suggest that going to war with more and more regimes in the area is probably not a good way to reduce terrorism; especially inconclusive, quasi-wars where we are not out to defeat an enemy and achieve an objective, but just to create trouble and protracted conflict.

(How on earth can a fellow American even IMAGINE our Republic coming to THAT? Yegads!)

These people are sometimes crazy, often primitive, and frequently ignorant. They are not stupid.

"(How on earth can a fellow American even IMAGINE our Republic coming to THAT? Yegads!)"

Come on. Our Republic is the one that "spared" Japanese cities so that they'd make good demonstrations of the power of a atomic weapon. Twice. We forcibly relocated entire tribes of native inhabitants so our citizens could homestead. We established and enforced a doctrine that no other powers could come into our hemisphere. We killed a million Vietnamese, largely to prove that we were willing to, and then walked away.

I harbor no illusions about the moral purity of our Republic. We (like any other nation) are not likely to set aside our own interests for the greater good. The great thing about our Republic is that we've (often) recognized that the world is not a zero-sum game and that our interests can sometimes be best served when others also benefit.

We tried to align the Iraqi interests with our interests but for whatever reason that has not succeeded. Maybe we were wrong to believe they could be aligned, maybe we failed to provide the proper environement to align them. I think it was a noble effort. I agree that the democratization was more the primary goal than the elimination of Saddam (although I don't think that was an afterthought), but democratization is failing on at least two levels: 1) the democratic government is unable to govern effectively and 2) it seems increasingly obvious that the polity does not share our interests.

At some point you have to write down your losses and try something new. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do recognize that are no good answers, only differing kinds of bad ones.

#29 David Blue,

No program of conversion?

Then just what are these "western influences" the imamms are raving about?

Where are they coming from?

In fact it is our program of conversion that has got them all agitated.

Just because the US government is not officially selling pornography over the internet to Muslims is not proof that it is not policy. Or perhaps it is the old "benign neglect' and let nature take its course strategy.

So is republican government possible in Iraq? Yep.

Will it be done in 3 to 5 years I had originally hoped? Nope.

So the question is: do we have the courage and will to see it through the 10 to 30 years it will take. (Think South Korea - economically liberal, politically rigid to start. Now economically liberal and politically much less rigid. It only took 30 years of occupation to do that. Taiwan went through a similar process - one party rule until recently.)

Be nice to find a politician with the guts to say this:

"I am not going to tremble before a bunch of psychopathic suicide bombers and mass murderers and I am not going to surrender our rights or the rights of the Iraqis."

Turman said this about South Korea:

"I am not going to tremble like a psychopath before the Russians and I am not going to surrender our rights or the rights of the South Koreans." (Harry S. Truman)

They Don't Make Democrats Like That Any More.

My friend who just returned from embedding 6 months with the Iraqi army in Ramaid wrote to tell me that this article on MSNBC, which features the emails from a soldier who was ultimately killed in Hit, is almost dea-on.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15458906/site/newsweek/