The good news is not that the Surge is working and the violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically. General Petraeus reported that news last month, to mixed reviews. The good news is that the Washington Post in an editorial today admitted that the General was right and his critics were wrong.
The criticism of the war will now shift from the "failed strategy" of the Surge to the failure of Iraqi politicians to resolve in a matter of days or weeks problems that were a century in the making. Calculating the interactions of the motives of all the political players and the internal and external factors that influence these players would be the equivalent of a supercomputer model that tracks the movements of a hurricane.
One can expect many commentators and talking heads in the upcoming months to provide their solutions.
I'm happy to hear the good news about the surge. Really, sincerely happy. Now if only there was similar progress politically!
ReplyDeleteAlso I followed the link to the excerpt from your book and was amused to read the following:
'I had a nice conversation last night with two Brits. [....] I could hardly understand the English of one of the Brits, so I asked him where he was from. Glasgow, he said. I guess he was speaking Scottish English.'