« Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy | Main | An incredibly brave guy »

May 09, 2004

How to Get Out of Iraq

The New York Review of Books: How to Get Out of Iraq. Mentioned in the Washington Post piece, from Peter Galbraith, an exit strategy. Vs, "Dead Men Walking"

Ironic to me that the Powell Doctrine so successful in 1991 is ignored in 2001. Oh well. For those of you who don't know, ponder this:

  1. Is A Vital US Interest at Stake? Arguable, but looking at the actual WMD in Iraq, I'd have to say no.
  2. Will We Commit Sufficient Resource to Win? Well, we are spending $50B a year, but with just 130K troops in a country of 26M, I'd have to say no on this one. It was a shoe string operation that worked so well in AFghanistan, but the strategic situation is quite different.
  3. Are Our Objectives Clearly Defined? Well, despite the rationalization a minute, the clearest I can find is establish a friendly (some would say puppet) state. I also think of this one as what is the exit strategy.
  4. Will We Sustatin the Commitment? A big question, its a multiple decades and support is now 50/50.
  5. Is There a Reasonable Expectation that the Public and Congress will support the Operation? See above.
  6. Have we exhausted our other options? In retrospect, probably far from it.

Posted by rich at May 9, 2004 12:25 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?