The Agora

And finally today, the administration tells us we're in a worldwide war against terrorism. I believe that. But sometimes I wonder if the administration does. Telling us, for example, to go shopping and get on with our lives after raising the terror threat level may be good, calming politics, but is that the best way to rally support in wartime? And now I read we may send a man back to the moon to improve morale? A trip to the moon in the middle of a war? Surely not.

And if this is a world war, shouldn't we be bringing the rest of the world in to help us fight it? The greatest generation had far greater differences with the Soviet Union than the silly arguments over money that have estranged us from our European allies. Yet they found a way to work with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. Other countries refuse to put their troops into harm's way in Iraq because we won't let them have a say in what happens there. And while we argue with them over who gets to sell cement and phone service to the Iraqis, it is our troops that are taking the brunt of the casualties. Now where is the advantage in that?

I don't agree with the moon part, but the rest of it is pretty much stating the obvious. Who knew the 50/50 nation was composed of 50% observant adults and 50% fairy tale believing children?
8:22:18 PM    comment []trackback []

See? The administration had plans for post-war Iraq, but they just didn't survive contact with reality, and if they had implemented them, they would have pissed everyone off.

"There's no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq's reconstruction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Right now, everyone's attention is focused [on] doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer."

The new approach, U.S. diplomats said, calls into question the prospects for initiatives touted by conservative strategists to fashion Iraq into a secular, pluralistic, market-driven nation. While the diplomats maintain those goals are still attainable, the senior official said, "ideology has become subordinate to the schedule."

"The Americans are coming to understand that they cannot change everything they want to change in Iraq," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim political party that is cooperating with the U.S. occupation authority. "They need to let the Iraqi people decide the big issues."

Bremer's plan for Iraqis to write a constitution before he departed had been intended to prevent extremists from dominating the drafting process. U.S. officials acknowledge that risk exists, but said it had been outweighed by the need to end the civil occupation by the summer. The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq will go on longer, military officials have said.

With goodwill toward Americans ebbing fast, Bremer and his lieutenants have also concluded that it does not make sense to cause new social disruptions or antagonize Iraqis allied with the United States. Selling off state-owned factories would lead to thousands of layoffs, which could prompt labor unrest in a country where 60 percent of the population is already unemployed.

This ability to change tactics would be admirable, but many of the problems the US is having now were predicted before the war even started. Mass privatization of an entire country used to massive government subsidies in less than a year was always unworkable. The it took the US until November to figure that out is frightening.

Even more frightening is that the plans haven't been abandoned because they are unworkable, but because they can't be implemented in time for a US pull-out by Summer 2004.
11:17:19 AM    comment []trackback []