There ain't no easy way out
11/16/06 12:48
All the wonks in Washington are anxiously awaiting a
report from the Iraq Study Group headed up by James
Baker. He's a former Secretary of State under the
elder, smarter George Bush. There have been lots of
rumors floating around about what that report will
say. One of the most plausible ideas that I have
heard involves getting Iraq's most influential
neighbors actively involved in the security
situation. I say it's a plausible idea, but I don't
think it's very likely to happen. That would mean
sitting down with Iran and Syria and asking them for
help. Diplomacy was never dubya's strong suit to
begin with(he prefers to bluster and bully), so I
can't see him trying it now, especially with a couple
of countries that in his simplistic world view are
just plain bad.
I was over at Talking Points Memo and they've got a post up about a couple of other options for US policy going forward in Iraq. They are calling them "the tilt" and "the last big push." The tilt involves our moving from our current impartial referee position between the Shias and Sunnis to a position of actively supporting the majority Shia population. It is thought that this might be the quickest route to some semblance of peace. I guess the idea here is that the killing will stop when the Shia run out of Sunnis to kill. The problem I see here is that it would really piss off the surrounding Sunni countries, which would give a serious boost to al Qaida recruiting and create a possibility for destabilizing the entire region. Can you say $4.00 per gallon?
The last big push scenario is what I'm predicting dubya will pursue. It entails our actually increasing the number of troops we have in the region in one last big attempt to achieve victory militarily. I think he really believes that if we just kill enough of them, they will start to like us, and peace and democracy will break out. Our preznit just can't grasp the fact that the moment we went into Iraq, we became the problem, and the only solution is to get out. Hopefully in an orderly way, leaving some kind of regional international force(for which we provide the funding) to put what we broke back together. He doesn't get it and he never will. He wants to be able to say he won and any recommendations from the Iraq Study Group that don't allow for that will be rejected. Sigh.
I was over at Talking Points Memo and they've got a post up about a couple of other options for US policy going forward in Iraq. They are calling them "the tilt" and "the last big push." The tilt involves our moving from our current impartial referee position between the Shias and Sunnis to a position of actively supporting the majority Shia population. It is thought that this might be the quickest route to some semblance of peace. I guess the idea here is that the killing will stop when the Shia run out of Sunnis to kill. The problem I see here is that it would really piss off the surrounding Sunni countries, which would give a serious boost to al Qaida recruiting and create a possibility for destabilizing the entire region. Can you say $4.00 per gallon?
The last big push scenario is what I'm predicting dubya will pursue. It entails our actually increasing the number of troops we have in the region in one last big attempt to achieve victory militarily. I think he really believes that if we just kill enough of them, they will start to like us, and peace and democracy will break out. Our preznit just can't grasp the fact that the moment we went into Iraq, we became the problem, and the only solution is to get out. Hopefully in an orderly way, leaving some kind of regional international force(for which we provide the funding) to put what we broke back together. He doesn't get it and he never will. He wants to be able to say he won and any recommendations from the Iraq Study Group that don't allow for that will be rejected. Sigh.
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