Here’s a story that gives you some idea of the huge task still ahead in Iraq. The new recruits to the Iraqi police and civil defense corps are loathed by their fellow-countrymen in the Sunni Triangle. They risk death every day doing their job. Only money keeps them in uniform. How on earth will they become loyal to a new Iraqi government that does not represent Sunni privilege? I don’t know. Here’s my worry, and it can be summed up in a simple dialogue from the piece:
“Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam,” Wathban said. “The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here.”
The fact that this can still be believed is deeply worrying. It seems clear now that Saddam has played a simple, clever game: instead of fighting conventionally, he simply withdrew his forces and went into hiding; now he plays a game of guerrilla harassment until the U.S. wearies and pulls out; then he makes another bid for power, in league with Islamists and terrorists of all stripes. In order to keep this from happening, we have to stay in Iraq in considerable numbers for a decade or so. And we have to convince the Iraqis that we mean it. I still don’t believe that this administration is intent on premature withdrawal. But I do know we still have a hell of a job ahead of us – in the Sunni Triangle at least. I know it’s early days yet, but the president needs to speak to the public at some point in ways that acknowledge more deeply the long, hard slog we face. And the huge dangers we have yet to encounter on the way.
DIGGING IN THE IRAQI SAND: Funny what you might find there. Like a whole Russian MiG. I wonder what else they buried.
MORE PALESTINIAN TOYS: It gets better, doesn’t it? Then take a look at the photographs of the mass graves from Saddam’s Iraq. Two sides of the same, awful story.
THE BLOG ANTIDOTE: Reading the New York Times every day. I mean, all the New York Times.
The Dish 