POLITICS, said the late John Kenneth Galbraith, is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. The problem for America in Iraq is that it is agonisingly difficult to tell which is which.
General David Petraeus, America's senior commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, its ambassador, went to Capitol Hill this week to tell Congress that bringing the troops home too soon would result in disaster. The general took along a flipchart of tables purporting to show that the “surge” of recent months was beginning to work (see article). The ambassador said he could not guarantee success but that if America gave up now the consequences would be massive human suffering, the intervention of regional states and gains for Iran and al-Qaeda. Continue at The Economist...
2 comments:
The US military is making an enormous difference to the Iraqi citizens! A family friend who served in Iraq for three years explained how much most of the Iraqis appreciate and need American help. He said that all the horrible news we see on television and that the media is portraying are simply a few isolated incidents. Iraq needs our help and support in order become a successful democracy. Many people in the US expected the Iraqi government to immediately come to an agreement about power and oil revenues, but look at how long, and the lengths Americans had to go through to come to a conclusion about slavery (we had to have a Civil War to come to our conclusion). What makes our country any different in how we started our own democracy to how Iraq is beginning their's. The world was eventually patient with us during our maturation stage, we should all be patient with Iraq!
well that would that would explain why much of the world doesn't really care for america :-)
impatience. we want iraq to settle down, and we want it NOW! along with my web page, my coffee, my fatty food, and everything else.
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