Tuesday
Oct262010
Iraq: Six Answers on the War and the State of the Country (Rosen)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 8:06 | Scott Lucas in EA Middle East and Turkey, Iraq, Middle East and Iran
1. On the war in Iraq, the wisdom of the Beltway pundits might be summed up this way: Bush’s efforts were floundering, then Petraeus saved the day with his surge, converting an ambiguous situation into an unqualified success. What’s the matter with this analysis?
Success isn’t a relevant concept....
The various events that have come to be called “the surge” actually started well before Petraeus took over the war in Iraq, although he did help support and institutionalize some of the changes. And the civil war and cleansing continued well into the surge.
tagged Awakening Councils, Harper's, Nir Rosen, Nuri al-Maliki, The Surge