Kenneth Pollack, yes, that Kenneth Pollack who was proclaiming victory in Iraq last summer, is back, praising the surge in The New Republic as a path to victory. Pollack was one of Hillary Clinton's chief foreign policy advisers while she was in the Senate and is supporting her candidacy for president. Here, he expresses hope that the Bush administration will finally make good on its path to "success" and offers up a new plan for victory. The link is available to subscribers only, so I'll paste the best parts below the jump:
The bottom line in Iraq remains complicated. We should be heartened by recent progress, but we should not assume we have won yet, either: Failure is still at least as likely as success. But all is far from lost in Iraq, and the outlines of a successful strategy are finally appearing. Nevertheless, if the Bush administration is going to engineer lasting achievements from the accomplishments of the surge so far, it still has a lot to do and little margin for error.
So Pollack hedges here. Nevermind the fact that violent attacks are down to intolerable 2006 levels, that there has been little to no political progress among the various factions in the government, and that Baghdad has been thoroughly ethnically cleansed.
Pollack casually mentions that the central government "remains a highly counter-productive force." But have no fear! Pollack has a plan. Turn it into....Switzerland! "It may be necessary for Iraq to move to something closer to a cantonal system along Swiss lines." Yes, Iraq can be turned into Europe's most peaceful country by speeding up elections, doing a little partitioning, and bringing everyone together to just draw up a new government. Feel the success yet! With these move, Pollack is still optimistic that Iraq can turn into Northern Ireland in no time:
As both of these examples illustrate, such campaigns require lots of time. In Iraq, several important factors, including the fortuitous and well-exploited "Anbar awakening," in which large numbers of Sunni tribes turned on their former allies in Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and other Salafi extremist groups, has speeded progress. But there are three hurdles the United States must clear if it is to convert initial success into victory and leave Iraq as the next Northern Ireland, instead of the next Vietnam. This will still require considerable skill--and not a little luck.
OK, Northern Ireland is a tiny fraction of the size of Iraq. Everyone speaks English in Northern Ireland, which is firmly in the Western European tradition. And the idea that we can solve this problem along Northern Irish lines by turning Iraq into Switzerland is just as naive as the hope that we could import Jeffersonian Democracy at the point of a gun.
It's worth noting that Kenneth Pollack has been one of Hillary Clinton's top foreign policy advisers in the past. Why he is off penning articles praising the surge and expressing hope that Bush can engineer success is beyond me. I find it highly troubling that this man could end up being very influential in formulating foreign policy in a Hillary Clinton White House. Progressives should be working on getting out of Iraq, not trying to turn it into Switzerland. Hillary Clinton should be sure to keep men like Pollack, and his colleague and Clinton foreign policy adviser, Michael O'Hanlon, away from policy should she win.
UPDATE: Pollack is not a chief foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, although he was during her senate years. His colleague, Michael O'Hanlon, who co-wrote Pollack's victory in Iraq op-ed in the New York Times, is one of her chief advisers. I apologize for listing Pollack as a current chief adviser earlier. I should have done a better fact check. That said, her team includes many advisers who have been sympathetic with Pollack and O'Hanlon's views. She has never repudiated Pollack's logic for war either. The only prominent anti-war voices on her team are Wesley Clark and Joe Wilson. I hope they will be given top roles in any Clinton Administration. Albright and Holbrooke's positions on Iraq were identical to Ken Pollack's until Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign began. I updated the diary to take out anything misleading regarding Pollack's role.