It's too early to pronounce the U.S. military's surge in Iraq a failure. It's not too early to say, though, that there's no sign that it's succeeding -- that it's making Iraqi politics or security better in any appreciable, self-sustaining way. At best, the surge is keeping Iraq from descending into full-scale civil war. At best we are dog paddling in the Tigris. Which means at least we should start to think about what happens if we have to get out of the water.
We have to start by taking stock -- honestly -- about where we are. President Bush talks about Iraq as a country where the vast majority of the people are longing to live with each other in peace, harmony and freedom, and where only a tiny minority of terrorists and die-hard Baathists are standing in the way.
I wish. If that were really the case, how could it be that after four years, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of U.S. troops and thousands of casualties, we and our Iraqi allies have not been able to defeat this tiny minority? It doesn't add up. No minority could be that powerful.
The truth is we have a majorities problem in Iraq, not just a minority problem. For too many Iraqi leaders and too many of their followers, America's vision of Iraq -- a unified, pluralistic, democratizing, free-market -- is actually their second choice, at best.
OP-ED COLUMNIST; Dog Paddling in the Tigris
very important, indeed.
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