What Has Gone Wrong, And Right, In Iraq

RealClearPolitics.com ^ | July 18, 2007 | Thomas Sowell

[gpapa]

Historians in the future will undoubtedly find many and varied lessons from the war in Iraq. But we in the present do not have the luxury of waiting for all the evidence to be in before we start to understand what has gone wrong and what has gone right in Iraq.

What has gone right is that the Iraq war is already over. Our troops won it. But our politicians may once more lose the peace -- and with disastrous consequences for us and for the world.

Peace has not been achieved in Iraq, though pacification continues -- always at a cost in American lives -- and shows signs of progress, much to the dismay of those who have bet their political future on an American defeat.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[SevenMinusOne]

Dr. Sowell always makes a tremendous amount of sense - And his words should always been given thought -

Though, in my opinion, the risk of dragging the ME out of the dark ages....was our best bet (option). The risk of allowing the ME to continue as was....was no longer responsible after Sept 11th, 2001.

Sticking with Allawi as "interim" time Iraq PM for several years before going to full elections would likely have been the better choice......But 20/20 is alway easy.

We are still moving on the whole in the right direction. It is only the DEMs and MSM who are hampering our efforts and abilities greatly....

[appeal2]

Allawi was decisive and kick ass. However he didn’t have the support of Sistani and therefore would have been perceived as a US puppet. It would be nice to see him make a comeback now though.

[srmorton]

Brilliant article, as always, by Dr. Sowell. It’s easier now to see the mistakes that have been made than to anticipate them beforehand, but this does seem to be the “hangup” that the RINOs and the Dems are having - the Iraqis have not made the “political” progress that they should have. The problem is that governments can not operate when there is no security. The only way for the Iraqi government to make the progress they need to make is for the “surge” to succeed and the RINOs and the Dems seem determined to prevent that.