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...with the WaPo's David Ignatious.
July 20, 2007 - Iraq is an inferno that will spread through the region:
The Bush administration is groping toward a diplomatic firewall strategy that might help keep the inferno in Iraq from spreading in the Middle East.July 27, 2007 - too bad we don't have a government like Englands, then we could dump that idiot Bush and get out of Iraq!This approach has two basic components: pushing harder for negotiations to establish a Palestinian state and creating a standing "Iraq neighbors' conference" to prevent states in the region from taking advantage of Iraq's chaos or being infected by it.
<...>
To make real progress on either front -- Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations or a concert of Iraq's neighbors -- will require an intensity and deftness in diplomacy the administration hasn't yet shown.
<...>
Rice and Gates seem to agree that this diplomatic push is an essential response to the continuing violence in Iraq. In an administration often marked by intense disagreement between State and Defense, their alliance will help focus thinking about how to stabilize a region that is dangerously out of control.
This is a moment when America would be better served by a parliamentary system. The Bush administration would have lost a vote of "no confidence" after November's congressional elections, and the Democrats would now have responsibility for overseeing the tricky process of extracting American forces from Iraq without doing even more damage.August 24: Progress? Hah - it's all in Anbar where the Sunnis are playing us for stooges to get arms to fight the Shiites after we leave, and you'll never see al Qaeda in this discussion, brother.
What modest progress the United States has recently made in Iraq has largely been in Sunni areas, such as Anbar province. It's an alliance of convenience: The Sunnis increasingly see U.S. troops as their best ally for containing the power of Iran and its proxies in Iraq.September 12 (Petraeus goes to Congress: Okay, there's been a little more progress than I thought, but Petraeus better hurry up cause he doesn't have time to fix this huge mess:
But Petraeus's ad hoc, ground-up security framework is not the same thing as stabilizing the country. In the time remaining, he has to pull things together as best he can -- connect local successes to provincial and national institutions; extend the Sunni rebellion against extremists into the Shiite regions; break the control that Shiite militias exert over the Interior Ministry and the police.October 19 (Insert your own interpretation here*):We do know how this is going to end: with U.S. troops returning home. The question is what they will leave behind. It's likely to be a ragged, patchwork quilt, and there isn't much time left to stitch it together.
Let's assume that the numbers from Iraq are right and that there has been a significant reduction in violence there. Let's even agree that the Bush administration's strategy is finally showing some success. Isn't that an argument for accelerating the transfer of security to the Iraqis -- and speeding up the withdrawal of some U.S. support troops?After that much hard work, I think the man deserves a vacation.
*My interpretation: The coalition** has won the war in Iraq.
** "We" being the wrong pronoun in this instance.
