Monday, May 19, 2003
DISORDER IN IRAQ
Has caused the blogosphere 's heavyweights - even Andrew Sullivan - to blast the Bush administration for incompetence, underestimating the difficulties of democratizing Iraq or just plain lying. Well, here's my two cents:
My observation so far is that the Bushies need to stop worrying about how they are being perceived in Iraq and start enforcing martial law because this hands-off, PC charade of civilian administrators is getting people killed and creating a dangerous situation for American troops. Appoint a no-nonsense, somewhat scary looking, military governor with complete proconsular powers over all American troops and Iraqi civilian administration. A top State department advisor, fluent in Arabic can be his advisor playing Robert Murphy to the military governor's Eisenhower. After security and basic services are restored and humanitarian agencies are distributing food and medicine we can focus on democratic governance and constitutions for Iraq. This will take at least 3 to six months minimum.
My second observation is that most of the critics need to go read up on how disorderly, dangerous, cold and hungry liberated Europe was after WWII for years ( or for a real nightmare, read about the Red Army's " liberation " behavior in Eastern Europe) after Nazi Germany was occupied. Iraq has been free for about a month so the trendy impatience with the situation borders upon the ridiculous in comparison. ¶ 9:47 PM
Has caused the blogosphere 's heavyweights - even Andrew Sullivan - to blast the Bush administration for incompetence, underestimating the difficulties of democratizing Iraq or just plain lying. Well, here's my two cents:
My observation so far is that the Bushies need to stop worrying about how they are being perceived in Iraq and start enforcing martial law because this hands-off, PC charade of civilian administrators is getting people killed and creating a dangerous situation for American troops. Appoint a no-nonsense, somewhat scary looking, military governor with complete proconsular powers over all American troops and Iraqi civilian administration. A top State department advisor, fluent in Arabic can be his advisor playing Robert Murphy to the military governor's Eisenhower. After security and basic services are restored and humanitarian agencies are distributing food and medicine we can focus on democratic governance and constitutions for Iraq. This will take at least 3 to six months minimum.
My second observation is that most of the critics need to go read up on how disorderly, dangerous, cold and hungry liberated Europe was after WWII for years ( or for a real nightmare, read about the Red Army's " liberation " behavior in Eastern Europe) after Nazi Germany was occupied. Iraq has been free for about a month so the trendy impatience with the situation borders upon the ridiculous in comparison. ¶ 9:47 PM
