Sunday, May 09, 2004
Interesting Viewpoint
This article by Peter Galbraith (from the New York Review of Books, of all places) provides an interesting perspective on Iraq, and apparently was read by a number of high-level people in the US military. Essentially, it says we should use the same model applied in Afghanistan, where we rely on local militias to manage most security and concentrate on the cleanup operations which really need American firepower. It also argues that we should abandon hopes of a strong central Iraqi government capable of holding things together. At best, we will get a loose Yugoslavia. Iran, Turkey and Syria will just have to deal with the fact that the Kurds aren't going to accept being forced into control from Baghdad again, not after 11 years of autonomy and years of economic and political freedom.
The article concludes by stating that America should NEVER attempt to wage a unilateral war ever again. Our troubles in Iraq would certainly be ameliorated if we had succeeded in convincing the rest of the world of the importance of removing a dictator as odious as Saddam Hussein (Galbraith doesn't whitewash Saddam's atrocities, though thinks we should have done something about him in the 1980's, when the American government was giving him political cover).
This article by Peter Galbraith (from the New York Review of Books, of all places) provides an interesting perspective on Iraq, and apparently was read by a number of high-level people in the US military. Essentially, it says we should use the same model applied in Afghanistan, where we rely on local militias to manage most security and concentrate on the cleanup operations which really need American firepower. It also argues that we should abandon hopes of a strong central Iraqi government capable of holding things together. At best, we will get a loose Yugoslavia. Iran, Turkey and Syria will just have to deal with the fact that the Kurds aren't going to accept being forced into control from Baghdad again, not after 11 years of autonomy and years of economic and political freedom.
The article concludes by stating that America should NEVER attempt to wage a unilateral war ever again. Our troubles in Iraq would certainly be ameliorated if we had succeeded in convincing the rest of the world of the importance of removing a dictator as odious as Saddam Hussein (Galbraith doesn't whitewash Saddam's atrocities, though thinks we should have done something about him in the 1980's, when the American government was giving him political cover).
