Eliot Cohen: No Way to Win a War
Eliot Cohen's piece, No Way to Win a War, from Thursday's Wall Street Journal is, in my opinion, the best summary of why the Iraq Study Group is nothing more than political bubble-gum. Take this for instance:
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The commission members spent four days in Iraq, and with the exception of a one-day foray by former Marine Chuck Robb, they stayed in the Green Zone, that bubble of palaces and residences that has little to do with the real Iraq of Basra, Kirkuk, Ramadi, Baquba and Mosul. At the end, they had breakfast with the president and a few hours later posted their conclusions on the Internet for all the world to ponder. There is something of farce in all this, an invocation of wisdom from a cohesive Washington elite that does not exist, a desperate wish to believe in the gravitas and the statecraft of grave men (and women) who can sort out the mess in which the country finds itself. |
Four days? I can't even do my Christmas shopping in four days and these guys have come up with the solutions in that time. At that rate, we could send them around the world on weekend stops to solve other crises.
Certainly, a fresh look was -- is needed in Iraq. New people, new ideas, not with, as Cohen puts it, "a group composed, for the most part, of retired eminent public officials, most with limited or no expertise in the waging or study of war. It consists of individuals carefully selected with an eye to diverse partisan and other irrelevant personal characteristics".