1115.org

I would strongly advise against getting your hopes up.

A little over six months ago, I wrote:

What should we do in Iraq? Nobody knows.
[…]
…it is totally unclear whether we can actually achieve anything by staying. Whether we stay one more year or five, it’s not clear what we can do to ensure that Iraq will be more stable when we leave. Those sectarian tension fault lines run too deep, and are fueled by the kind of unreasoning blood-feud hatred that we can neither hope to understand nor reverse. No one is advocating that we stay forever. And no one has a plan or a proposal or a strategy (or whatever the hell Condi Rice wants to call it) for improving the prospects of stability in the future.

I stand by those statements today. Bush’s glib and grandiose vision of an Iraqi government that can “sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself” is one big bloody pipe dream.

If the Baker study group proves me wrong, I’ll be delighted to eat my words. But at this point I am firmly and sadly convinced that no one has the beginnings of a clue what we can and should do to improve things in Iraq. That is, beyond agreeing that we bloody well need to do something, and very, very soon.