Hope: Lost and Found
Gregory Djerejian has lost hope in Iraq:
In good time, I will write my personal mea culpa in this tragic affair. I had greater faith in this Administration, and they have let us down time and again. But it’s too easy to say it would all have been OK but for the dumbies who effed up the show. People who supported the war, and there were many of us (on both sides of the aisle, lest we forget), had to keep in mind the abilities of those charged with prosecuting it, and the resources that would be brought to bear. We knew the Powell Doctrine had been shunted aside in favor of utopic transformationalist nostrums, and we knew that some who were listened to in the leading counsels of power had memorably declared the effort would be a cakewalk. We should have smelled the danger signals better, and we deserve the scorn of those who were against this effort from the get-go, at least those who honestly believed we were doing the wrong thing rather than just opposing anything the horrible Bushies would bring to the plate.
Fareed Zakaria is keeping the faith:
Three years ago this week, I watched the invasion of Iraq apprehensively. I had supported military intervention to rid the country of Saddam’s tyranny, but I had also been appalled by the crude and unilateral manner in which the Bush administration handled the issue. In the first weeks after the invasion, I was very critical of several of the administration’s decisions—crucially, invading with a light force and dismantling the governing structures of Iraq (including the bureaucracy and Army). My criticisms grew over the first 18 months of the invasion, a period that offered a truly depressing display of American weakness and incompetence. And yet, for all my misgivings about the way the administration has handled this policy, I’ve never been able to join the antiwar crowd. Nor am I convinced that Iraq is a hopeless cause that should be abandoned.
Both are worth your time…
I’m still in the mode of “when the going gets tough…”. There are always dark days, on balance I think progress is being made, and I’m unwilling to cut loose from Iraq – at this time – simply because the reality on the ground doesn’t exactly match my (or conventional wisdom’s) earlier expectations.
I do believe that we need to adjust our expectations and goals as we learn what the Iraqis are capable of implementing and accepting.
I’ve always admired Zakaria and this time is no exception. His discussion of Afghanistan (and what I know about Kosovo) makes a stong case for working more through IGOs — more NATO than the UN, of course. Hopefully Angela Merkel will be able to get a stronger majority in the next election, Sarkozy will be the next French president and Harper will stay in as PM in Canada, we may be able to get more NATO support for Iraq yet. Probably just wishful thinking, though.
It would seem that NATO is almost a spent force at this point. As long as countries like France have veto power, it won’t matter who’s in charge at the moment – the US has been demonized to such an extent at this point that it would be political suicide for any formal endorsement of actions in the Middle East.
Well, if I recall correctly, NATO either already has or soon will officially take over operations in Afghanistan, and the other NATO powers seem to be on the same page as the US on the Syria and Iran.
And don’t get me wrong. It was this time last year that I was advocating a US withdrawal from NATO. I used to favor Kagan’s Paradise and Power, but more and more I’m seeing the virtues of Moravcsik’s argument in “Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain,” which is essentially that the US and Europe have complementary skills: we’re good regime-topplers and they’re good nation-builders.