Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution has gotten a lot of mileage out of playing indignant over charges that he has been a booster of the Iraq war, and the current surge strategy of George W. Bush. This following his and fellow think tanker Ken Pollack's rosy-ish op-ed in the New York Times on how we just might be winning the war (a view that has won them praise from the neocon faithful.) Now, the third man on that recent Brookings trip to Iraq has what you might call a difference of opinion with O'Hanlon and Pollack on how things are going:
It is scarcely surprising that my perceptions of a recent trip to Iraq are different from that of two of my traveling companions and those of several other recent think tank travelers to the country.
From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq’s ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq’s politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development.
The full report is here. And Cordesman's analysis of why anything at all might be going better in Iraq? Luck.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
