MUDGE’S Musings
So, guys, this one’s lost. My generation’s Vietnam, indeed.
What now? Here’s an interesting idea…
Defeat Without Disaster – The least bad plan for leaving Iraq.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, July 27, 2007, at 2:45 PM ETPeter Galbraith’s article in the current New York Review of Books, “Iraq: The Way to Go,” is one of the most bracing essays written on the subject lately—a provocative but logical case for a U.S. withdrawal (though not a total withdrawal) that still manages to achieve a few of the war’s original goals.
I don’t agree with every plank of Galbraith’s proposal (more on that later), but anyone seeking a solution to this disaster needs at least to contend with his arguments.
[Per L-HC’s reformed process, please click the link below for the complete article — but then please come on back!]
The least bad plan for leaving Iraq. – By Fred Kaplan – Slate Magazine
Kaplan reports that the main tenet of Peter Galbraith’s proposal is:
He has now abandoned his plan for a partitioned federation, regarding the southern two-thirds of Iraq—the areas dominated by Shiite and Sunni Arabs—as hopeless. Instead, he calls for withdrawing U.S. troops from those areas and redeploying some of them to the northern sector, in order to protect the Kurds.
The Kurds need and deserve our protection, especially if it’s true that the Turks are massing 140,000 troops on their border with “Kurdistan.”
Kaplan is unhappy that Galbraith has pretty much written off Arab Iraq as hurtling toward a “sectarian bloodbath.”
If defending Kurds takes our forces out of the path of that certain (and ongoing) Sunni-Shiite bloodbath, I’m liking that idea.
“Least bad” would save some U.S. lives and lots of body parts (the fewer new cases at Walter Reed, the better!).
Any of our vast field of presidential wannabees weigh in on this? Michael Bloomberg, what do you think?
It’s it for now. Thanks,
–MUDGE
Left-handed Complement 