Good post. About not giving out any more “reconstruction” money, I couldn’t agree more. A vast sop to corruption.
But his attitude has a lot of Bush’s low expectations type assumptions. Foremostly, that we have to wait for the politicians to negotiate, etc. No, we need to tell them what to do, and get a fair oil deal on the books. Powell complained about “not enforcing our will” and Bush’s character defect from his Texas days of expecting competing cronies to present him a deal to approve which is equally corrupt for both sides doesn’t cut it in Iraq.
It would be nice if we could tell them what to do. But if we try that it will be rejected out of hand. They have never been here before in nation building, and they refuse to follow our suggestions.(Lots of little children are like that) Until they can learn to work together for the common good we have to hold off the bad guys. If we can’t do that it is a lost cause.