Saturday, November 15, 2003
Cutting and Running From the 51st State
In the last couple of days, Bush has made various statements about how we're going to stay the course in Iraq and how we will not cut and run. But Ivo Daalder and James Lindsey note that Bush's decision this week to begin turning over the administration of Iraq to Iraqis sooner rather than later (by June 2004, we learned this morning) is actually a sort of cut and run. It's similar to what we did in Afghanistan, where we rooted out the bad guys and installed a handpicked "president" before the whole country was pacified. Now Hamid Karzai is essentially the mayor of Kabul with no real authority outside the city, and the vibrant democracy we originally envisioned is nonexistent. While nobody in the United States gives a damn about Afghanistan (come on--you know it's true), a similar failure in what is, for all intents and purposes, our 51st state would be much more damaging to Bush, and much more dangerous for all of us.
Name dropping alert: For two glorious years in the mid '90s I went back to college at the University of Iowa to get a teaching certificate. For a couple of semesters, I was essentially a history major, and during that time I took a course in the history of American foreign policy taught by two instructors, one of whom was James Lindsey. Daalder is an advisor on national security at the new Center for American Progress, the progressive think tank founded by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta to counter the influence of conservative tanks like the Heritage Foundation. The Center's website is enough to make a public policy junkie weep with delight, including a detailed daily update on major issues.
If Bush's adjustments in policy this week mark a change in course, speculation in Washington is that at least one head may roll. Not a famous head, but an important one--Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who's been in the middle of nearly everything that's gone wrong in Iraq, according to reporter Jim Lobe. Feith would be the first administration official to get sacked over Iraq since the guy at Treasury who suggested the war would cost a lot more than the administration was saying and the general who said we would need more troops than we had committed. Which would make Feith the first administration official to be sacked for being wrong.
In the last couple of days, Bush has made various statements about how we're going to stay the course in Iraq and how we will not cut and run. But Ivo Daalder and James Lindsey note that Bush's decision this week to begin turning over the administration of Iraq to Iraqis sooner rather than later (by June 2004, we learned this morning) is actually a sort of cut and run. It's similar to what we did in Afghanistan, where we rooted out the bad guys and installed a handpicked "president" before the whole country was pacified. Now Hamid Karzai is essentially the mayor of Kabul with no real authority outside the city, and the vibrant democracy we originally envisioned is nonexistent. While nobody in the United States gives a damn about Afghanistan (come on--you know it's true), a similar failure in what is, for all intents and purposes, our 51st state would be much more damaging to Bush, and much more dangerous for all of us.
Name dropping alert: For two glorious years in the mid '90s I went back to college at the University of Iowa to get a teaching certificate. For a couple of semesters, I was essentially a history major, and during that time I took a course in the history of American foreign policy taught by two instructors, one of whom was James Lindsey. Daalder is an advisor on national security at the new Center for American Progress, the progressive think tank founded by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta to counter the influence of conservative tanks like the Heritage Foundation. The Center's website is enough to make a public policy junkie weep with delight, including a detailed daily update on major issues.
If Bush's adjustments in policy this week mark a change in course, speculation in Washington is that at least one head may roll. Not a famous head, but an important one--Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who's been in the middle of nearly everything that's gone wrong in Iraq, according to reporter Jim Lobe. Feith would be the first administration official to get sacked over Iraq since the guy at Treasury who suggested the war would cost a lot more than the administration was saying and the general who said we would need more troops than we had committed. Which would make Feith the first administration official to be sacked for being wrong.
