A stopped clock is right twice a day, and even big fat lying liar Al Franken occasionally has a guest worth taking seriously. Larry Diamond is a former CPA adviser in Iraq who’s written on the Administration’s blunders in post-liberation Iraq. Mainly these come down to: 1) Not enough troops to secure order; 2) Disbanding the Iraqi army; and 3) Massive de-Baathification. His essays and books are worth reading because he was there and he saw the screw-ups.
Diamond’s analysis highlights another of our problems in America: we don’t have a serious opposition party. They’re still carrying on about Bush’s chimpiness, the WMDs, and Abu Ghraib instead of dealing with serious issues such as the nation-building task in Iraq. As long as the Democrats are out to lunch, the Republicans get a free pass, and that’s wrong.
The call for a timetable for troop withdrawal isn’t a serious piece of work, it’s just posturing. The Congress should be pushing for achievement of the milestones that will enable us to withdraw.
The main thing we need to do now is get the job done:
Like many CPA officials, I found many Iraqis to have a deep ambition to live in a decent, democratic, and free society and found them prepared to do the hard work that building a democracy will require. Above all else, Iraqis want security: they want to be free from the terror that disfigured their lives under Saddam and that has continued, in a different form, since the war. But most favor achieving this security through democratic means, not under some “benevolent” strongman.
Because of the failures and shortcomings of the occupation-as well as the intrinsic difficulties that any occupation following Saddam’s tyranny was bound to confront-it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq. The post-handover transition is going to be long, and initially very bloody…
The transition in Iraq is going to need a huge amount of international assistance-political, economic, and military-for years to come. Hopefully, the U.S. performance will improve now that Iraqis are in charge of their own future. It is going to be costly and it will continue to be frustrating. Yet a large number of courageous Iraqi democrats, many with comfortable alternatives abroad, are betting their lives and their fortunes on the belief that a new and more democratic political order can be developed and sustained in Iraq. The United States owes it to them-and to itself-to continue to help them.
OK?
On the subject of Mr. Diamond, see his exchange of letters with leftist academic Tony Smith following the publication of the essay we quote above. Smith takes the standard “imperialist aggression” line and Diamond delivers a spanking.