Insurgency or Civil War? When Will It End? How Will It End?

Today’s paper discusses at great length the controversy over whether what we have in Iraq is a civil war or something else. The Bush people do not want to say “civil war” because they fear that the American public would be even less likely to back the effort in the long run if it were [...]

Understanding Iraqis

When I was doing field work in Shiraz in 1958, interviewing a wide variety of people on aspects of Iranian culture, I was often frustrated by the evident unwillingness of my informants to tell me what they really thought. One of my worst experiences was when I set up a meeting between a friend of [...]

Effective Reaction?

It has recently been announced that the Americans and their NATO allies have greatly increased the scale of their bombing and close air support efforts in Afghanistan. The Taliban challenge has been heating up on the ground recently, and the solution appears to be increased air activity because this is a form of warfare for [...]

Understanding Iraq’s Neighbors: Our Negotiating Partners?

The present discussion of how we might escape unscathed from Iraq centers around two issues: a possible increase in troop strength and negotiating more and more effectively with Iraq’s neighbors.
Let us consider the second possibility. To succeed in the long run in Iraq, it would be helpful to involve all Iraq’s neighboring stakeholders in the [...]

A Nationalist, Strongman Solution for Iraq

Under the heading “What Baker Should Tell Bush”, Joe Klein outlines in the most recent Time magazine what he believes the Baker Commission should tell Bush to do to turn around policy in Iraq. Essentially what he asks for is a re-Baathification policy that puts the remnants of Hussein’s old power structure back in power. [...]

The Case for Dividing Iraq

In the November 13 Time magazine, Peter Galbraith, long an advocate of Kurdish rights and a supporter of dividing Iraq, develops the argument for division once again. He argues that there never was a unified Iraq. It was created out of several Ottoman Provinces, a process that illegitimately placed the Sunnis in charge of the [...]

Getting Out: The Alternatives

Everyone wants to “get out of Iraq”, but no one has a clue as to how to do it. The situation is very different from that Eisenhower faced when he promised to bring peace to Korea were he elected (incidentally we are still living with the fallout from his “success”). The Korean War had a [...]

Would more troops on the ground have made a critical difference?

Just after 9/11 when the Administration was thinking big thoughts, I wrote a short paper entitled “A Rescue Mission to Afghanistan”. It outlined what we should be doing in Afghanistan after our impending invasion. It was a plea for an intense and lengthy effort comparable to the assistance we offered Europe and Japan after World [...]

How to Leave Iraq

We left Vietnam when we realized that we had no viable theory of victory. We no longer have any viable theory of victory in Iraq. As this sinks in, we will leave. If we are leaving, the sooner we leave, the less costly for everyone. But whenever we leave, the costs for Iraqis will continue [...]