What Went Wrong In Iraq

Foreign Affairs magazine is one of my three top choices for long airplane flights (along with Scientific American and The New Yorker). In preparation for London, I picked up a copy a few days ago. I've jumped the gun and read one of the essays already though. It's by Larry Diamond, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Ooops! I forgot the appropriate modifier! Nobody ever says "the Hoover Institution" all by itself. It is obligatory to say "the Hoover Institution, a leading conservative think tank". The essay is titled What Went Wrong In Iraq.

Diamond is an expert on development of democracies. He was hand-picked by fellow Hoover Senior Fellow (on leave) Condoleezza Rice to serve as a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority. He has the background, the direct exposure to the situation, and the expertise in this matter that almost all other commentators lack. Here's the summary of his article.

Summary: Although the early U.S. blunders in the occupation of Iraq are well known, their consequences are just now becoming clear. The Bush administration was never willing to commit the resources necessary to secure the country and did not make the most of the resources it had. U.S. officials did get a number of things right, but they never understood-or even listened to-the country they were seeking to rebuild. As a result, the democratic future of Iraq now hangs in the balance.

I urge everyone to read this article and remember the litany of mistakes made by the administration the next time candiates Bush and Cheney blast Senator Kerry for supposedly "not supporting our troops".

Diamond ends on a cautious, oh so cautious, optimistic note:

The transition in Iraq is going to need a huge amount of international assistance-political, economic, and military-for years to come. Hopefully, the U.S. performance will improve now that Iraqis are in charge of their own future. It is going to be costly and it will continue to be frustrating. Yet a large number of courageous Iraqi democrats, many with comfortable alternatives abroad, are betting their lives and their fortunes on the belief that a new and more democratic political order can be developed and sustained in Iraq. The United States owes it to them-and to itself-to continue to help them.

You can see elements of both the Kerry ("huge amount of international assistance...") and Bush ("The United States owes it to them-and to itself-to continue to help them") positions in his assessment. You can see that this is an even-handed analysis, and if I were to paraphrase the conclusion myself, this is how I'd do it: We need to stay the course in Iraq, and we need to do so for a very long time. We need to change our own leadership, and we need to generate the will to bring in more international help, because our leaders have not listened to the experts, to the Iraqis or to the world, and they have made too many mistakes. We really owe it to the Iraqis at this point, because we've made a serious botch of it so far.