The following is an excerpt from the Asia Wall Street Journal. I post this here as one of my first posts to begin to paint a picture of breadth of issues we face inside Iraq specifically. While I think there are very strong arguments that we rushed to war in Iraq the simple fact of the matter is there is no quick and easy answer to getting out.

I believe that the fact that there is no clear strategy in Iraq points not only to the level of incompetence in this administration but also in the military responsible for execution in Iraq.

I remember sitting on a bike (working out) the morning that thousands of people where being put into the Super Dome in New Orleans and feeling a level of concern. “What is going to happen to those people once the flooding comes and toilets stop working, there is no fresh water etc etc,” I thought to myself. Imagine how astounded I was to hear an official almost 48 hrs later express that they were not aware how urgent things were in New Orleans. It was incomprehensible to me that I was worried about it that Monday morning and its not my job to worry about such things while the people to whom such things are entrusted hadn’t been able to predict that was a disaster waiting to happen.

I feel a similar way towards Iraq. We didn’t know if it would take 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months to crush the Iraq army and force a change of administration there. How come then wasn’t there a significantly more robust rebuild plan? How come today so long after the change in control is power not operating 24x7?

How can the intelligence be so bad this long after the change in control (as you will see outlined below). I remember studying John J McCloy rebuilding of Germany after WW2. Many people felt distaste for how many of the old guard (mainly in administration and military) of Germany he pardoned precisely because he knew of the need not to leave a huge power vacuum.

All of this points to me to a gross lack of leadership both in elected officials in this country and in ranks of the military.

“After Potsdam, McCloy took another around-the-world trip, stopping at points in Europe and Asia to review American policy. On his return he told a select New York audience that “the outstanding impression that I bring back with me is the global character of all the problems that face the world.” McCloy found himself discussing the same problems – “economic dislocation, currency problems, relations with Russia, coal, fuel, transporation” everywhere he went. Certainly everyone was concerned about America’s relations with Russia and McCloy labeled this that “A-1 priority job for the statesmen of the world to work out.” He was also struck by the “terrifyingly high” prestige of the United States. The world looked to America for “leadership,” as “the one stable element… around which they can get back to decent living.” American leadership was necessary “to bring this world, which is so out of joint, into some semblance of balance again.” In his journal he was more emphatic: “We can influence [the world] in a way that no other country can – Russia’s concepts and example will wilt before ours, if we have the vigor and farsightedness to see our place in the world.”

What a far cry was America’s leadership and that of its statesman back then than the perception of America and its statesman now. Yet I would argue that the issues facing the world today post collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening up of China and the rise of fundamentalist religious thinking are just as great as immediately post WW2 when world economies were being dismantled and the world was dealing with the ideologies of communism and fascism.

Fixing Iraq (from Asia Wall Street Journal)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the U.S. this week on his first official visit, and the biggest and best news is that he and President Bush see eye to eye on the need for a revamped security strategy in Baghdad.

Security in the Iraqi capital has been deteriorating, and especially worrisome is the increasing number of killings by sectarian militias. Many Baghdadis are afraid to leave their neighborhood and sometimes even their homes on normal business. Increasing numbers are fleeing for safer regions of Iraq or nearby foreign countries. While this isn’t yet “civil war,” current trends are planting the seeds of one.

One response to this is pre-emptive retreat, a proposition gaining too much of a hearing of late. Writing in the New York Times this week, former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith suggest resigning ourselves to the partition of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states. The big problem with that idea is that Baghdad is a multiethnic city, and dividing it along ethnic and sectarian lines would entail displacing at least two million Iraqis and a lot more bloodshed.

The better and more realistic option is to rethink how to help Prime Minister Maliki and his government and pluralistic Iraq. Here are a few key issues:

• More security forces for Baghdad. Whatever one thinks about the number of U.S. troops overall in Iraq, there is no question too few have been deployed in the capital. So news that American troops will be redeploying from relatively peaceful areas of the country to help out in Baghdad is encouraging.

So too is the new police plan announced by Mr. Maliki and President Bush. It envisions embeeding more U.S. soldiers with Iraqi police units, which should add to their effectiveness and help overcome suspicions that they are sectarian agents of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry. Unlike his predecessor, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani has no affiliations with any militia.

• Better intelligence. In our view the real Iraq intelligence scandal isn’t about prewar WMD estimates; it’s the U.S. inability to better identify the leadership of the “insurgency” that has actively sought sectarian strife.

The number of bombs since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi only reinforces our view that the majority of Sunni violence has always come from elements of the former regime, such as its KGB-trained mukhabarat, and not al Qaeda. Since Saddam’s regime was notorious for record-keeping, it shouldn’t be as hard as it has been to identify the likely troublemakers. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon’s intelligence agencies have failed terribly on this score, and their leadership in Virginia needs to be held accountable.

• Iraqi leadership. Most Iraqi political and religious leaders remain committed to a unified Iraq. The Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani continues to urge restraint in the face of Baathist terror, and over the past week or so an encouraging split has developed in the Sunni lead too. Omar al-Jubouri of the Iraqi Islamic Party was quoted as blaming the provocations of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars for the “50% of Sunni deaths in Iraq.”

On the other hand, the followers of hardline Siite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are a big faction in parliament and a hard problem. Sunni Parliament Speaker Mahmound al-Mashhadani also crossed the line of acceptable behavior when he said that an Iraq who kills an American soldier should “have a statue built for him.” Iraq is a democracy now, and Mr. Mashhadni is free to speak his mind. But he can also be told that such rhetoric will lead to the loss of his Green Zone residence and the squad of American soldiers that protects him.

• International Support. Iran and Syria continue to funnel men and materiel to the factions responsible for violence. But a bigger problem may be the tacit encouragement of the Sunni insurgency by the so-called moderate Arab states. Many of them support Iraq’s minority Sunnis in their intransigent belief that they are still the country’s rightful rulers. Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice should raise this issue with Arab leaders this week as she also looks for a solution in Lebanon.

• U.S. Resolve. The quickest way to further fractionalize Iraq is to send the message that the U.S. won’t be around much longer to protect the country’s non-sectarian institutions. But that’s precisely what many Democrats have been doing, including the U.S. Congressional leadership.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi greeted Mr. Maliki Wednesday with a press release headlined, “Maliki Misses the Point – Situation in Iraq is Deteriorating.” Mr. Maliki got another glimpse of Democratic unseriousness in their threats to boycott his Capital Hill speech because they disagree with his recent criticism of Israel’s action in Lebanon.

There is an almost willful defeatism in these and many other criticisms of America’s position in Iraq, as if the only point at this moment is to prove that the U.S. should have toppled Saddam Hussein in the first place. The U.S. can relitigate what in its view was a persuasive case for regime change. But what is truly unrealistic is to think that the U.S. has any choice now but to win in Iraq. The regional mess America would inevitably have to clean up if it loses could make the current difficulties look like child’s play.

“The fate of our country and yours is tied,” Prime Minister Maliki told the U.S. Congress Wednesday – adding that if democracy fails there “then the war on terror will never be won elsewhere.”

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