Centerfield

I agree - this is a big development. We need to watch Sistani very closely. He is going to be a big factor in how this plays out.

I'm beginning to be more than a little nervous about Iraq. Given the criticism for the war, I assumed that the administration would work very hard and very carefully to make sure things would go well. Especially given that it's an election year.

Silly me.

I don't see any reason to think that the admin has not been doing whatever it could during an election year to make the democratization of Iraq a success, crony-riddled bureaucracies notwithstanding. These are a given in such efforts.

My main objection to invading Iraq was that I was skeptical that we'd be able to create a situation there that was much better for the US than what was already there. Granted, a realpolitik view.

Something like Fallujah was bound to happen eventually. What is happening now has been anticipated, expected, and the admin has in fact repeatedly warned that resistance would reach its highest pitch in the weeks and months before the government transtion. As those Reason articles I cited last week made clear, there are simmering pockets of resistance. Undoubtedly, the occupation is steaming full-speed ahead into all the catch-22s that occupations such as this end up facing.

The biggest problem is that the people of an occupied country always think that they can run things better than the occupying force, and the resentment and humiliation of the occupied people quickly grows. I've never felt our chances of long-term success in Iraq were better than 50-50. But once we invaded, I felt that failure would be disastrous for both US and Iraq. I'll view it as a catastrophe if we withdraw and allow Iraq to descend into civil war. (By the way, here and there I've seen some conflation of the june government transition with a troop draw down, and there is at present no reason to think they are concurrent events)

The decision to invade Iraq and try to install a democracy was a bold and risky step. If it fails, Bush has to take the blame because it was his decision and it was conducted on his watch. And I don't mind blaming him, but I'll do so in the context that he made a bold and risky choice and it didn't work out, not in the context that he made an obviously wrong choice that blew up in his face. And OTOH, if it works out, then Bush deserves credit for it, and I'm willing to give it to him, in the same context of having made a bold and risky choice that paid off.

But I don't get the sense that many or even any of his harshest critics are willing to give Bush any credit if a generation from now, Iraq is a democracy.

And that's a shame.

I don't see any reason to think that the admin has not been doing whatever it could to make the democratization of Iraq a success. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that that they're not trying hard enough even though they've made it the centerpiece of the administration. Now THAT'S silly. It's the bailiwick of opposition critics with no power or say in events to cast things in the harshest light possible.

In my mind, whatever failures occur in Iraq are best attributed to the extreme difficulty of the task we face. Like I said above, this does not mean giving a pass on bottom line accountability.

I don't think I agree that they've been doing whatever they can to make this work. It seems like most steps in the process have been underresourced -- both materially and politically.

I think that's a pattern all the way through.

Consider, for example, the fact that they did not produce realistic estimates of the cost or difficulty of this occupation back when we were debating the war. This was the opposite of what we saw from his father's administration before Gulf War I. They sent leading military guys before Congress and openly discussed estimates of 10,000 military casualties.

We had the debate -- fully informed -- and once the war got started, people were ready psychologically for whatever eventualities presented themselves. Of course, we lost very few men in Gulf War I -- but a responsible leader doesn't depend on that sort of good fortune.

They didn't prepare the nation for the sacrifice, then they sent too small an occupation force, failed to stop looting, and followed with a pretty jumbled up plan for rebuilding the country.

This isn't because they weren't committed to win. I just think they don't know what they're doing ... and, at bottom, they're convinced it doesn't take as much time, money, or men to complete a nation-building assignment as it actually does.

I think Donald Rumsfeld's self-assurance has a lot to do with this. The guy thinks he knows how things work, and sets aside conventional wisdom routinely. He really shakes things up -- which is sometimes a good thing, just not in this case.

I'd like to point out something else, though, that puts this all in a different light.

Even if Bush is really bad, it will be quite difficult for Kerry to make a reasonable case for himself and to handle these issues responsibly during this election year.

A responsible leader might need to suggest that we change the transition date -- or that we modify our overall effort so we're achieving certain interim goals and building toward a stable transition ... rather than one big (and quickly approaching!) transition.

That puts Kerry in the position -- if he wants to be responsible -- of suggesting a greater commitment to Iraq than the Bush team. Anyone care to gauge the likelihood of Kerry championing a longer occupation and calling for more sacrifice in blood and treasure than Bush? During a campaign year when he wants to solidify Democratic support?

Some of those core Democrats are pacifists. So that road is, shall we say, a bumpy one for Kerry.

That leads me to a troubling overall conclusion. Bush may be awful -- but Kerry may be unable to offer anything like a reasonable alternative this year.

I think the "alternative" is one that requires strenth and steadiness as a leader ... and an ability to remain firm through some very controversial times.

If Iraq goes bad, these will indeed be troubling times ... and the easy road for a Democrat -- withdrawing from Iraq -- may be very bad for us as a nation.

Yeah, you might have a point about "lowballing," and i myself have wondered about it. But I don't feel like I really have anywhere near enough of a handle on the details on the ground to make any kind of a vaild judgement about that.

Some people seems to be simply assuming that more is better and using bad news as proof that we need more troops and more money, etc. These of course are both things that make pretty obvious sense in the context of infinite resources.

I have been assuming that we don't have all that many more available resources for deployment to Iraq, based on the fact of the number of national guard deployments. So while i agree that, in the abstract, it might make sense to devote more troops and financial resources to Iraq, I don't know if it can be done. Especially with troop deployment, we probably run into a "robbing Peter to pay Paul" scenario pretty quickly.