This weeks The Economist magazine leads with Baghdad or bust... Clearly its bust, the question now only remain how bad will the fall-out be. The bottom line is that there is no selfish motivation at play with-in any of the groups over there to desire peace. We never had enough troops there to obtain, hold and build and we never had a build plan. Putting another "20,000" troops there MAY be enough to 'hold' Baghdad long enough for the current administration to get out of office but that is about it. The math just doesn't work...

It was my opinion with China and even other Middle East states that they have enough to lose now with their strong exports that pure self-interest is a stabilizer. Right now there is no self interest in Baghdad and Iraq in general that will benefit enough of the leaders of the factions to bring about any sort of lasting peace. All of this BEFORE you even layer in any kind of religious animosity. The one thing everyone agrees with is that there needs to be enough self-interest that peace and prosperity is a better option that the current level of discourse and strife before there can be any resolution.

In this one respect politics and rational thinking goes out the window the moment that the first bullet is fired. Truth be told, the USA IS creating the next generation of West hating Jihadists right now in Iraq, because for the kid who's family was hurt or injured during this war, the concepts of democracy, WMD's etc are far to high-minded, all he/she knows is death has rained down in a greater way since the USA has been in Iraq than before, creating a spiraling self fulfilling prophecy.

The great evil that exists in situation is the fact that the human face of western aid organizations that could come and aid in health, education and commerce are so vulnerable to the ruthless attacks of various fundamentalist groups that have no agenda for peace what so ever. The fatal mistake that this administration made was eliminating the ruling regimes, hopefully we learn from that one…

A secondary problem is how seriously committed are these factions to really resolving their own issues? There is no ownership of the issues its spread between the local’s and the allies, without ownership there is no solution.

The next issue, there is a great fear that it will put the whole region into a tail-spin. Truth be told we have the capabilities of destroying any nation in the region, but we have to believe that those states that do have enough “self-interest” to want to sell their oil to the western markets will want peace.

The west had a strategy that worked for the cold war, mutual assured destruction matched back against a containment strategy in which capitalism could simply out-run communism in terms of the management of every form of capital. Anything you read about USA fears of the “domino theory” and the concept that “communists were under every bed” simply went to far. Sure there was a time to stand (e.g. The Cuban missile crises), but general positive growth of the free world was the most important thing.

I would make the argument that US intelligence capabilities during the cold war vastly out matched the Soviet’s and gave us our greatest edge and comfort not to have to do anything drastic. I believe that the US needs to shift its focus towards revamping its intelligence agencies, strengthening its special forces and towards an engagement strategy with the more conservative components of the worlds Islamic community to reach out with better aid programs and education programs with the hearts and minds of those perceived as our enemies.

Putting people onto a pathway of peace and prosperity to create that level of self-interest about having more to lose than to gain in violence is the only long term option we really have. The number of people who are truly extreme are very limited, the bulk of the population sits on the fence let apathy and self-interest be our most potent weapons. As targeted as the US military has become its strategies and execution are still to broad to be effective. We push more people off that fence on the wrong side every day accidentally than we kill of those whom are extremists who will never listen to reason.

There are two old saying goes that seem very relevant right now “he is wise saves souls” and “don’t gain the whole world and lose your own sole” – It seems to me that America must focus on (a) getting our own house in order and (b) reinvigorating our efforts to be leaders and investing in the world that is around us.