On July 8, the editors of the New York Times joined the chorus of Iraq leavers in a very long editorial. It was a reasonable job, yet it left many things to be desired. First, it ignored the growing evidence from Anbar and neighboring provinces that we can work with local Sunni militia in our [...]
In a recent Op-Ed, Thomas Friedman proposed that if we lose out on all our other dreams in Iraq, we should at least make sure that we preserve Iraq’s Kurdistan as a bastion of democracy. He and others admit that it is not perfect, referring to its well-known high level of corruption.
I am afraid that [...]
Seymour Hersh has long been the conscience of America’s foreign and military policy. It has not earned him much credit with our military. Nor is his reporting always above reproach. But he has played a necessary, perhaps ever more necessary role.
In the June 25 New Yorker, Hersh zeroes in on the efforts of General Taguba [...]
We hear once again of a “mistake” in Afghanistan. In the midst of a battle against the Taliban in an Afghan village, planes were called in. They destroyed the target. Unfortunately, there were children in the target. This has happened again and again in Afghanistan. It happens frequently in Iraq. The American or NATO troops [...]
The last two days bring us reports of the American military in Iraq starting to arm groups of Sunnis to fight other Sunni groups, particularly al-Qaeda in Iraq. Such programs actually started some months ago in Anbar Province. Their success in Anbar has led to them being introduced in other highly contested provinces.
The American military [...]
Despair continues to be the most popular response to the Iraq War. The latest accounting (June 10) for where we are by a reliable Brookings Institute team that has been offering a summary regularly in the New York Times finds a few bright spots, especially in Baghdad and Anbar province. Yet it points out that [...]
The more we learn about Iraq, the less we seem to know. Americans try to get between the killers and their prey while many Iraqis want to kill Americans so that they can go back to killing one another. Of course, all Iraqis are not like this. But many of those who are not are [...]
What has inspired me to devote so much of this blog to the CSIS Report is its ability to both understand the foolishness and error in the whole enterprise, and at the same time come to a conclusion that we should stay and help rebuild Iraq no matter what. As the bodies pile up in [...]
Excerpt from http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070413_iraqfuture.pdf Cordesman’s CSIS report on the future of Iraq, “Iraq’s Troubled Future: The Uncertain Way Ahead”, revised April 13, pages 4-5 PDF document.
Under the heading, “The American Civil-Military Threat to Iraq”, Cordesman makes the following points (quoted verbatim or paraphrased):
1. The US invaded Iraq without a valid understanding of the Iraqi government, [...]
In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Nir Rosen had an excellent piece on Iraqi refugees. There are now about two million outside the country, nearly all in the Middle East, and nearly as many displaced persons still within the country. The largest number is in Syria, and here the refugees have found the most welcoming [...]
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