Originally posted by: Stoneburner
Fern? You're engaged in the same thing the bushies have been doing for 5 years, i.e. shifting the goals around so often nobody knows what they are any more.
Shifting the goals? Man, you're really not getting what I'm saying. The goal all along has been to develop a local government, that's where the stability is going to come from. Not a bunch of polititions sitting around in some far away captial. I'mreally saying our approach on achieving the objective was wrong. We suck at nation building.
If you really think a tri-sect rapprochment is possible at the non-national level, then you are wrong.
O'rly? We just disagree then. "All politics is local" is the famous saying. Maybe should be "all politics is tribal" for Iraq.
I still contend that governments need be built from the ground up. That's what I see happening.
Afghanistan's never had a strong post taliban national government, and truthfully, it was designed that way by Russian proxies. Afghanistan does not have iraq's problem either.
And where do you see significant "local" governmental progress? Al-Anbar? The regions that have been ethnically cleansed? The regions that are so laden with bribes that the u.s. mint needs to open a subsidiary there?
I see it pointed out in countless articles from numerous sources, whether US or foreign (e.g., DerSpeigel the German publication), whether Dem or Repub.
Dont' make sweeping statements based on incomplete data.
Hasn't stopped anybody esle, yourself included.
You also made the same mistake and pab and cad with regards to that murtha article.
What mistake? That we understand English and can read what Murtha said?
For Iraq, a thousand things have to go right at the same time. Bushies tend to point to one or two things working while ignoring the rest. Don't make the same mistake.
Most importantly, don't be too confident that even the military aspect of the surge is working.
Look, even the vehemantly anti-war anti-GWB media types that have visting there over the past several months say so.
I don't thinks it's utopian over there. Nor do I expect the progress to be perfectly linear, there will be setbacks. But to ignore the weight of the evidence and the reality of the progress is silly. How far will the progress go? IDK, but neither does anybody else in spite of what ever they may profess.