I anticipate that at least lead elements of it will be here, |
In their second term, administrations tend to be more multilateral, more pragmatic. It's the pattern of every one, going back to Eisenhower. |
It demonstrates that we're determined to play a continuing diplomatic, political and economic role here in assisting Afghanistan to make the transition from war to peace, |
It was well known by everyone, including the US government, that the system as constructed invited kickbacks, |
Most Iraqis remain less secure than they were under Saddam, less secure even than they were in the first year of the American occupation. |
That we have had to spend several years relearning these lessons is a measure of the U.S. defense establishment's failure to take counterinsurgency seriously after the American retreat from Vietnam. |
The Bonn Agreement, which was negotiated four years ago, has been a remarkably successful road map toward Afghanistan's political evolution, in which all of its benchmarks have been met more or less on schedule. |
The main requirement is negotiation within parties -- which won't be too hard -- about who should occupy the most senior positions. But then among parties, about how those positions should be distributed, |
The most important force in Iraq for breaking up the country and preventing a strong central government isn't the insurgency, it's the Kurds, and the second most important force is the Shiites. |
The U.S. has never been able to protect the population, and has thus never won its confidence and secured its support. |
The United States has oscillated between extremes of attention and neglect in Haiti. The basic problem is that our focus has never been continuous. |
There has been a need for the bank to be in Iraq. |
There was a real sense of solidarity among the neighboring states, a desire to see this work and send a signal to all the Afghan factions that they were no longer to receive assistance if they did not adopt this accord. |
Voters are not looking for creative, forward-looking candidates, they are looking for people who they think can protect them. They fall back on the familiar and the powerful. The same thing happened in postwar Bosnia, where the parties that fed the conflict in the first place got most of the vote. |
We are here, and we are here to stay, ... I declare this mission open for business. |