Michael Gordon's name attached to a New York Times article makes some of us as wary as Judith Miller's name. Gordon has been an irritable fan of Bush policy. Reporting on a recent embed with the military in Iraq in which he takes a look at the effectiveness of the relatively new US policy to arm Sunni counter-insurgents, Gordon writes:
The political gridlock at the national level had made the recruiting and organizing of Sunni groups around Iraq all the more important. But what would happen once bands of concerned citizens were organized, trained and equipped? If the Iraqi government embraced the strategy, the effort to work with tribal leaders and local insurgents could lead to a broader political reconciliation. “At the local and national level, it could provide impetus to force some reconciliation,” [Lt. Col. Mark] Odom observed. “In other words, the Sunnis could come to have some sort of legitimacy through us.”
But if the effort to forge a link between the central government and the new security groups falters, the United States might simply be laying the groundwork for a heightened round of civil strife. The Iraqi government and the security forces it controls might become alarmed if Sunni security organizations were to sprout around the country and begin to network, and Shiite militias might also respond by stepping up their attacks.
“We have not made political progress at the national level,” Odom said. “We have taken on a decentralized effort with the concerned citizens at the local level and somehow hope that we can tie it back into the local and national government at the end of the day.”
You and I, of course, are largely at fault because of our unpatriotic impatience.
War critics at home have bemoaned the two-year time line, but meeting the objectives in such a short period would be an extraordinary accomplishment. The mission has been made all the more complex by the fact that the
United States’ adversaries in Iraq are well aware that the “surge” of American reinforcements has placed a considerable strain on the Army and Marines and will probably run its course by early 2008. Yet the surge has also provided a chance to forge alliances between American forces and Sunnis who were fed up with Al Qaeda militants and uneasy about the Shiite-dominated government. The additional troops have enabled the United States to push into Sunni areas where American forces had not operated for many months and to stay there rather than sweeping through and leaving.
Gordon's tenacious stupidity is not something for which we humble war critics can find a cure. But we would like to point out that the "two-year time line" in itself is a bunch of bull. It's not 2 years, it will have been 6 years. 6 years! And how many lives? Hey, pal! You were "embedded." You were protected. They (American military and Iraqis alike) were rousted out of their normal lives and killed. Get that, Mike?
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