The
NYTimes reports today that which is obvious to any who are willing to see:
American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come to Baghdad last weekend to consult with the new government. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to insurgents and allow American forces to begin stepping back from the fighting. General Abizaid, who speaks with President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld regularly, was in Washington this week for a meeting of regional commanders.
... But [an Army] officer said that despite Americans' recent successes in disrupting insurgent cells, which have resulted in the arrest of 1,100 suspects in Baghdad alone in the past 80 days, the success of American goals in Iraq was not assured. "I think that this could still fail," the officer said at the briefing, referring to the American enterprise in Iraq. "It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."
On January 30, the day of the Iraqi election, I wrote this:
This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures. Why? Because Elections are to choose governments, not to celebrate the day. Are the people elected capable of governing Iraq at this time? Without 150,000 U.S. soldiers? Or even with them? I have been accused of gloating by people right HERE because of my focus on the continuing violence. But my focus has been on the realities of governing a land in chaos, in the midst of civil war, with 150,000 U.S. soldiers the only force with the ability to provide security. And this is 2 years after the invasion.
I hope I'm wrong on this. I think I am not.
I was criticized severely by many from the Right, and right here at dailykos, in this fashion and worse:
dKos guest poster Armando takes leave of all senses and declares, "This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures." Because it is Tainted By Violence, Producing a Government Unable to Govern, etc., etc. To which one with a modicum of historical memory must reply, look left. That's the storied photo of the polling line at South Africa's first free election in 1994.
And
this:
Initial commentaries by various left-wing pundits, bloggers and politicians is predictably trying to minimize the magnitude of the achievement and courage of the Iraqi people.
Armando at the Daily KOS
This Election is simply, in my estimation, an exercise in pretty pictures.
What these folks, and many folks right here, don't understand is that wishing don't make it so. That is the essential problem with Tom Friedman. He writes the other day that Muslims should be marching against attacks on Arabs by fellow Arabs. Well Tom, while I can agree with that sentiment what does it have to do with our policies in Iraq? See, making policy by what we think SHOULD happen as opposed to what we think WILL happen is the story of this folly.
The Iraqis SHOULD be throwing flowers. The oil revenues SHOULD pay for the war costs. Our soliders SHOULD have been home by now.
But wishing don't make it so. Making and advocating policy based on wishful thinking is the height of incompetence. And attacking those who are willing to use their heads when discussing the Iraq situation is a recipe for burying our heads in the sand in order to ignore the collosal problem we have in Iraq.
I come not with any specific policy proposal here but with the plea that we admit that what we are doing is simply not working and that all Americans, Republican and Democrat, acknowledge this and get to work on finding out what we can do to make the situation better.
When Bush came to office in 2000, Republicans used to say "the grownups are back in charge now." Where are the grownups now?
Update [2005-5-19 13:6:40 by Armando]: Some commenters insist on making this post something it is not. This is NOT about my being right. This is about something important - the inability of this country to deal with the fact that we are in a Debacle in Iraq. My plea, for the past year at least, has been that we deal with the reality of where we stand in Iraq, not where we think we SHOULD stand. I am sorry that some in the comments miss this central point.