Iraq

Harrold Ford Jr, who is running for Bill Frist's seat in the Senate, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in which made the following statement. From the Post:

We cannot leave Iraq and Afghanistan until they have adequate systems in place to govern and defend themselves. There is conflicting rhetoric coming out of the administration on this front. One day we hear that a pullout or drawdown of U.S. troops is imminent. The next we hear the opposite. I want the troops home as much as anyone, but having to send another generation to that region to fight 10 or more years from now because we left too early would be a worse outcome than the situation we now face. We need to do this right the first time.

He's right about Afghanistan, but in Iraq I'm afraid we're already through the looking glass. Our lack of security in the post war occupation has led to lawlessness and the verge of a civil war. It will take ten years to bring peace to the country, and I'm not sure our presence helps at all, at least with our current force levels. Also Bush has proved very reluctant to raise the necessary force level to one that can pacify the country.

Today's post highlights one of the main problems caused by our inability to make the population restive. The best and brightest Iraqis are simply leaving the country, and who could blame them. From the Post:

Iraq's top professionals -- doctors, lawyers, professors -- and businessmen have been targeted by shadowy political groups for kidnapping and ransom, as well as murder, some of them say. So many have fled the country that Iraq is in danger of losing the core of skilled people it needs most just as it is trying to build a newly independent society.

"It's creating a brain drain," said Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of political science at Baghdad University. "We could end up with a society without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"

The short answer to Fayed's question is that it can't. I've said many times that the occupation is a one shot deal. You have to get it right in the beginning or it is nearly impossible to recover. We didn't, and we haven't been able to recover. At this point I'm thinking we've done about all we can do and strategically the best thing to do would be to abandon the project.