I thought his five-point plan was pretty good - as if someone in his administration had listened to Anthony Zinni’s speech the other night, absorbed it, internalized it, and written a new policy based on it.
(Yeah, I know: who are you, and what have you done with the real RTFirefly?)
There’s still one problem, and it’s that we still don’t know how to deal with the basic Sunni/Shiite/Kurd problem, so Bush is still just fobbing it off on them, and calling it ‘done’ at that point.
But seriously:
That was Bush. What did Zinni say? “The Iraqis have to own this problem.” My main gripe is that this speech comes about a year late: the time to begin transferring control of Iraq at the local, municipal level, where problems are concrete, and ideological divisions are fewer, was last April and May. But better late than never, so long as he means it.
I hope this is the case. But in all the stuff that’s been going on lately, what have you heard from the mayor or town council of Karbala or Kut, of Basra or Najaf?
Me either. I’m kinda wondering if all this elected local government stuff is happening almost entirely in Kurd territory, which isn’t really the problem. I guess we’ll find out.
OK, they figured this one out about a month late, after slugging it out with the Iraqis and realizing they’d already alienated the local population, as well as many Iraqis elsewhere in the country. But at least it represents having gotten a clue.
He’s still denying that the abuses were due to more than ‘a few bad apples’. He needs a clue there. And certainly it’s a bit late to be realizing that the infamous Abu Ghraib prison should never have become a U.S. prison anyway.
Also, one major problem with the prison system is how we rounded up civilians nearly at random, and once there, they could be there for months without having a chance to explain (to someone who cared and could do something) that they were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. We need to be honest with the Iraqi people about what we’ve done wrong, if we’re to play any useful role at all.
He apparently forgot we didn’t go to the UN to get the OK to invade. Oops! Oh yeah: the Iraqis haven’t adopted a timetable. We did.
But finally, we get to the nub of things:
And it’s still: we don’t have a clue as to how to resolve the fundamental problem of coexistence of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. So we’re letting the Iraqis ‘own’ that problem: we broke it, we can’t fix it, so here’s the parts, do the best you can, seeya.
Somewhere along the way (though not in that speech) I think I recall Zinni saying we had to at least propose some ways the government of Iraq possibly could be organized. We don’t have to tell them what to do, but if we can’t draw up a single believable solution to the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd problem, then how do we expect them to do it?
So it’s a bit late, and it still isn’t enough. But it’s still the most insightful speech I think GWB has ever given.
but I agree it was a remarkably good speech for Bush. I was STUNNED when he referred to us as “Occupying” Iraq early in the speech. Amazing honesty not to just say “liberating.” Disappointed not to hear a word about recent American abuses (although I took two 5-minute breaks from the speech, so I may have missed something important), but pleased with his plan to essentially pull out.