Although it is being fought at low intensity for now, it could easily escalate if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices. |
Given that strengthening a military they view as their enemy strengthens their resistance creates political problems -- the first thing we need to do is slow down, rather than speed up. |
I think it is probably a good general description of American foreign policy that we don't have as much control as we think we do. |
Iraq's Sunnis perceive the 'national' army and police force as a Shiite-Kurdish militia on steroids. |
It represents a misreading of the nature of the problem. When we make these forces stronger, we make the underlying problem worse, not better. We're throwing gas on the political fire. |
Most of us overemphasize hardware over software. The IED threat is going to be solved tactically. |
Removing the United States from the scene means eliminating the player most loyal to the idea of a stable, heterogeneous Iraq. |
Right now the policy in Iraq is to stay until and unless the national military is capable of waging war on its own. |
There are some Americans out there who would like to hope that something good can come out of this. |
They say we have to be perfect at everything at the same time. We can't afford to be perfect at everything.... There's a fixed size of the pie. |
Turning over the responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces . . . threatens to exacerbate the communal tensions that underlie the conflict and undermine the power-sharing negotiations needed to end it. |
Unfortunately the nature of this conflict is that we're going to have to stay there longer than we would like. |