Bush's attempt to remake Iraq is the centerpiece of his foreign policy and, almost certainly, will be the defining event of his administration. The invasion and occupation were highly ideological decisions reflecting the philosophy of the President and his closest aides. What is astonishing is that the conduct of this venture was not left to the military and civilian professionals most qualified to make it work but rather to those most committed to a fuzzy vision of a transformed Iraq. In too many cases, these were people with no knowledge of Iraq, with no experience in dealing with post-conflict environments, with limited experience in making the US bureaucracy produce results, and with little or no expertise in the substantive matters (i.e., finance, trade) for which they were responsible. It is not surprising that so many gave up after relatively short periods in Iraq.now galbraith was an ambassador under the clinton administration, and, unfortunately that fact alone is what passes for a rebuttal on some ends of the blogisphere.
but lost in all of the attacks on messengers is a rather sad story of this country's mounting failure in iraq. the saddest part is not that attacks against u.s. forces keep increasing, or that the u.s. has lost control of several cities in iraq to muslim fundamentalists, or that meaningful political reform keeps being pushed back in time, or that political islam--a force which has largely been absent from iraq for decades--seems to be taking hold there now. the saddest thing is that the biggest blunder of bush's blunder-ridden career is going largely unmentioned in his reelection campaign. read the galbraith article and weep.
UPDATE: i was just surfing around and came across this post from explananda. i know i surfed by there at some point earlier today and i think i unconsciously absorbed the "read it and weep" line chris used and then plagerized it when i wrote the above post without realizing it. this was always my nightmare when i was a student. i never tried to plagerize but i was always terrified that i would accidentally repeat something i heard somewhere and then get expelled, disgraced and devoured by lions (my school had a tough anti-plagerism policy). sorry chris!
