Getting it Right in Iraq: A real solution

God, I hate John Kerry.

(Yeah, I've had a couple. Deal with it.)

Kerry is trying to act Sentorial. Recently, he called for a dual-staged troop withdrawal. "His" first stage is so much co-opted BS from people who actually think about things for a living that it makes me sick that he "coulda been a contenda".

What an opportunist. What a hack.

WWII was full of people like him. Patton, Guderian, Rommel, Hitler. But I really hate to disparage their reps by likening Kerry to them. They were good. Kerry is just venal.

(Yeah, I am saying he is a rat.)

Kerry says we should give the Iraqi's notice, get it together or we are outta there.

Problem with that, is that it is, almost, what we need to do.

Stephen Biddle has written a very good article for Foreign Affairs. In a nutshell, Biddle argues that tribal politics are usurping the democratic impulses in Iraqi (my interpretation, not his - but I think it is close enough to his intent that I would not claim it as my own). This is not surprising. Democratic impulses are not "de rigor" in modern Iraqi politics. Communal warfare (Biddle's words, not mine) rules the day in Iraq.

Biddle argues that we need to start playing politics. Now, this is nothing new for Americans, we do it every day. With gusto. Just not with guns. Somehow that is different, we think.

It isn't.

[T]he United States must bring more pressure to bear on the parties in the constitutional negotiations. And the strongest pressure available is military: the United States must threaten to manipulate the military balance of power among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to coerce them to negotiate.
[...]
The only way to break the logjam is to change the parties' relative comfort with the status quo by drastically raising the costs of their failure to negotiate. The U.S. presence now caps the war's intensity, and U.S. aid could give any side an enormous military advantage. Thus Washington should threaten to use its influence to alter the balance of power depending on the parties' behavior. By doing so, it could make stubbornness look worse than cooperation and compel all sides to compromise.

Today, however, Washington is doing just the opposite.

In other words, instead of finding an "exit strategy", we need to become even more intrusive, in your face, in fact. We need to say, with strength, "Get it done and get it done right".

Kerry is wrong in threatening to leave. We need to play one side off the other. Nothing immoral about that. They want to kill each other. We want to stop them.

But The John Kerry Show hasn't changed. Remember, I said he had dual-stage withdrawal strategy.

"If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end," Kerry said.

Kerry gets both ends wrong. It isn't about buggin' out. C'mon! That is exactly what Kerry is advocating.

It is about getting the job done. And the job is Liberty.

I elaborated my thoughts more clearly at Port McClellan. But, I was thinking a little clearer then.

I do think we need to start reading a little Imperial British or Imperial Roman history. Even though the Brits and Romans also had self-centered Senators like Kerry.