An Exit Strategy

First, a mea culpa of my own: I should be blogging more! After a few months ruminating in my own pessimism I figure total silence is even less useful. So on we go...

In this little article here an American exit strategy for Iraq is discussed. No doubt an exit is needed...it is impossible to doubt the need for a massively different strategy when the current troop deployment only seems to be sightly slowing the descent towards civil war. While I believe the Americans have a reaponsibility to clean up the mess they made, it hardly seems possible to "win hearts and minds" when the local population knows you're there for the oil (or maybe to keep a buffer against Iran?).

I won't discuss every point of the larger article (maybe at a later date) but I think a true international stabalization force with substantial Muslim involvement is absolutely necessary. Maybe, just maybe, if the American presence in the region humbly devotes itself to reconstruction (including paying most of the bill) Iraqis might respect and support that.

The country can not be abandoned to become another terrorist training camp and anarchaic breeding ground for crime and chaos, but nothing will improve unless the global community joins hands and massively increases its efforts in Iraq.

Just don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.