A Time for Leaving - from the "American Conservative"

[RickSp]

William Polk writting in the "American Conservative" magazine :

A Time for Leaving - American security and Iraqi stability depend on a prompt handover.

Polk is a former member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East. He has been a professor of history at the University of Chicago and Founding Director of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He is now senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation.

The longer the fighting goes on, the worse the chaos. Viewing the devastation of Fallujah, one correspondent wrote, “Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe … The city smelled like dust, ash—and death.” Viewing the same scene, the deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said, “This is what we do … This is what we do well.” This is not new or unique; it is classic. Recall the statement the Roman historian Tacitus attributed to the contemporary guerrilla leader of the Britons. The Romans, he said, “create a desolation and call it peace.” Much has been made also of the constitution we wrote for the Iraqis. It reads well, as did the one the British wrote for the Iraqis 80 years ago in 1924, but it is not anchored in the realities of Iraqi society. Absent the institutions that give life to a constitution, it will be simply a piece of paper as was the one the British provided. Representative government grows in the soil of the people or it does not grow at all. It cannot be mandated by foreign rulers. Thus, the best America might gain from this option is a fig leaf to hide defeat; the worst, in a rapid collapse, would be humiliating evacuation, as in Vietnam. The third option is to choose to get out rather than being forced. Time is a wasting asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make. The steps required to implement this policy need not be dramatic, but the process needs to be unambiguous. The initial steps could be merely verbal: America would have to declare unequivocally that it will give up its lock on the Iraqi economy, will cease to spend Iraqi revenues as it chooses, and will allow Iraqi oil production to be governed by market forces rather than by an American monopoly.

[Starboy]

Very interesing. I took a look at some of the other articles on the "American Conservative" site. It looks like "the worm has turned". I will delight in the mea culpas that will result.

Starboy

[Bob]

[quote=RickSp]William Polk writting in the "American Conservative" magazine :

Please don't bore us with cut and pasted articles from other publications. We can all read and don't need you to spoon feed us what we should read. You can refer us to an article and give us your opinion of it along with a link to it, but no more. We are all here to read what you think not get your personal tour of publications that are out there. Thank You.

[RickSp]

Please don't bore us with completely meaningless responses. If you are not interested in a thread, don't respond. Thank You.

[jose]

Thanks for the link to an interesting piece, and the quote got my interest

[Osborn F Enready]

Great article Rick, and ignore Bob. Anyone can see that is an excerpt or quote from the site and not an entire article. Thanks for bringing it to my attention also.

[RickSp]

I know Bob. Not worth much concern.

Actually sort of disappointing that the other chicken hawks aren't squawking and scratching about Polk as a member of the "critical left" .