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I wish John Nagl well in his quest to get the United States military to increase its commitment to having American soldiers serve as advisors to foreign militaries. Capacity-building in partnership with other states is likely to be just as important as traditional "blowing stuff up and killing people" (the cool kids call it "kinetic") operations in the future. But I also hope he has success because I can then start writing somewhat skeptical posts that involve "Train in Vain" references.

For example, Nagl writes that "Based on American experiences in Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador and now in Iraq and Afghanistan, an advisory strategy can help the Iraqi Army and security forces beat Al Qaeda and protect their country." This has something of an assume a can opener air about it, but more to the point with regard to Iraq it's missing a big part of the picture, namely politics, motives, and goals. The U.S. military hasn't quite gotten around to crushing al-Qaeda yet, and it's not because our soldiers aren't trained. And of course what well-trained Iraqi security forces do is going to have a lot to do with what their leaders want them to do. As of last week, it seemed like what their leaders wanted them to do was to engage in internecine fighting with Shiite militias belonging to rival political parties.

Training, in short, is all well and good, but its advocates sometime talk as if governance problems abroad are purely technical issues that will somehow melt away in the force of really excellent training. History and common sense tell us otherwise. The Republic of Vietnam government, for example, had legitimacy problems that well-meaning foreigners couldn't solve -- part of the problem, after all, was a sense that it was a tool of foreigners whereas its adversaries were authentically Vietnamese.

Comments

I read Nagl's op-ed and it boggled my mind that anyone could think that what the USA did in Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq could be considered as any kind of positive example. Vietnam was a long bloody disaster ending in defeat; in El Salvador those "advisors" helped train the goddamn death squads; and with the "Sunni Awakening" nodding off, and the IA having just taken a beating from the untrained JAM rabble, Iraq is a mess.

Heck, Korea is probably the best of the bunch and even there we were basically propping up a dictatorship - with a rather large US military presence, not just "advisors" - for decades.
At least there the "enemy" was genuinely appalling.

Col Nagl has the reputation of being a really smart guy. But I think this is a case where his own enthusiasm and expertise for COIN is leading him to massively oversell it. Most of the places you end up doing COIN are places you should have just stayed out of. And there's no shortage of poor places where you can do good without having the huge overhead expense of fighting guerrillas.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 12:05 PM

I like the El Salvador reference. Sorta like a German military man casually referring to the success of the Einsatzgruppe in the Ukraine during the last unpleasantness.

Death squads. We train em, you host em.

Mark Danner's account of El Mozote is worth looking at.(link: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/
people/Danner/1993/truthelmoz06.html) Here's how we trained our anti-communists in El Salvador:

"After a time, when the soldiers seemed to have finished drinking their sodas, Rufina heard crying and screaming begin from the house of Alfredo Márquez: the screaming of the children. "They were crying, 'Mommy! Mommy! They're hurting us! Help us! They're cutting us! They're choking us! Help us!'

"Then I heard one of my children crying. My son, Cristino, was crying, 'Mama Rufina, help me! They're killing me! They killed my sister! They're killing me! Help me!' I didn't know what to do. They were killing my children. I knew that if I went back there to help my children I would be cut to pieces. But I couldn't stand to hear it, I couldn't bear it. I was afraid that I would cry out, that I would scream, that I would go crazy. I couldn't stand it, and I prayed to God to help me. I promised God that if He helped me I would tell the world what happened here.

"Then I tied my hair up and tied my skirt between my legs and I crawled on my belly out from behind the tree. There were animals there, cows and a dog, and they saw me, and I was afraid they would make a noise, but God made them stay quiet as I crawled among them. I crawled across the road and under the barbed wire and into the maguey on the other side. I crawled a little farther through the thorns, and I dug a little hole with my hands and put my face in the hole so I could cry without anyone hearing. I could hear the children screaming still, and I lay there with my face against the earth and cried."

Rufina could not see the children; she could only hear their cries as the soldiers waded into them, slashing some with their machetes, crushing the skulls of others with the butts of their rifles. Many others -- the youngest children, most below the age of twelve -- the soldiers herded from the house of Alfredo Márquez across the street to the sacristy, pushing them, crying and screaming, into the dark tiny room. There the soldiers raised their M16s and emptied their magazines into the roomful of children."

Posted by roger | April 3, 2008 12:06 PM

El Salvador?
To look at El Salvador and draw favorable lessons about US training of foreign militaries requires a generous mixture of ignorance and evil. I don't care if it helps Banana companies keep their profits high, training death squads is bad. Unless I am doing an amazing job of missing the point, you should probably write off Nagl as both morally bankrupt and stupid.

Posted by urbell | April 3, 2008 12:10 PM

Vietnam was a long bloody disaster ending in defeat

I'm as big an opponent of the Vietnam war as anybody, but my understanding is that one arena in which the war was waged effectively was training and counterinsurgency operations in the central highlands.

Posted by Jim W | April 3, 2008 12:14 PM

"Many others -- the youngest children, most below the age of twelve -- the soldiers herded from the house of Alfredo Márquez across the street to the sacristy, pushing them, crying and screaming, into the dark tiny room. There the soldiers raised their M16s and emptied their magazines into the roomful of children."

Yeah, that's the ticket. And now thanks to the mighty John Yoo, we can "advise" our clients that this kind of action is not just good COIN, but also perfectly legal and constitutional as long as
you're doing it to defend the country, not for fun. Awesome.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 12:16 PM

I highly recommend "A Bright Shining Lie" by Sheehan, about the Vietnam war in general and efforts to create an effective South Vietnamese military organization in particular - the book is horrifying and entertaining in equal measure. It was all a spectacular failure, of course, and reading about it now you wonder how anyone with two brain cells to rub together could have thought it had a chance of success.
And now we get to do it again in Iraq.

Posted by peter | April 3, 2008 12:21 PM

"but my understanding is that one arena in which the war was waged effectively was training and counterinsurgency operations in the central highlands"

Yeah. So if you do a really good job of training and COIN, then you can achieve a local and temporary success, before the whole country falls apart. Big deal. COIN isn't a solution to any problem that's worth solving. If you're doing COIN, that's a sign that it's past time to go home.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 12:29 PM

Not sure what the U.S. would gain by using the same "advisory strategies" that were used in El Salvador, which helped perpetuate a long, bloody war (dare I say genocide). WTF?

Posted by AKBY | April 3, 2008 12:31 PM

Not sure what the U.S. would gain by using the same "advisory strategies" that were used in El Salvador, which helped perpetuate a long, bloody war (dare I say genocide). WTF?

Posted by AKBY | April 3, 2008 12:35 PM

I'm glad all the other commenters have made my outraged splutter at the idea of using Vietnam & El Salvador as positive models unnecessary. I'd like to add my voice anyway.

Seriously, Matt, I thought that liberals had gotten over their love affair with COIN theorists when Petraeus used his position to wage a domestic surge in pro-war propaganda.

Posted by Kalkin | April 3, 2008 12:47 PM

"the cool kids call it "kinetic"

No the squares who serve in the military use the term "kinetic"; twenty-somethings who blog from their couches while drinking PBR are the cool kids.

If you guys think you understand the history of the wars in Vietnam and El Salvador -- or the current situation in Iraq -- better than John Nagl, you should do a little research on his background and open your mind to the probability that you don't.

Posted by Fred | April 3, 2008 1:04 PM

It is interesting. The love between a puddle, humping its master's leg and peeing for pure joy, can only be matched in nature by the love of a warmonger, such as Fred, attaching himself to the pant's leg of a true "American Hero" like John Nagl, whose very aura we are not worthy to touch.

Such servility is one of the outstanding characteristics of the Bush deadenders. They have dropped the "don't" in the slogan, "don't tread on me." I don't know where this strain of abjection comes from. It used to be that even the most dyed in the wool redneck rightwinger had some spine. No longer.

Posted by roger | April 3, 2008 1:26 PM

"better than John Nagl, you should do a little research on his background and open your mind to the probability that you don't"

I don't doubt that he knows the trees really well: my objection is that he doesn't realize that trees make up a forest. Following Clausewitz, we should always remember that war is the use of force in pursuit of a political aim. And COIN seems to be what you get stuck doing when you've made a strategic blunder and dumped your forces in the wrong place with no goal that's achievable by force. But really if it's a problem that can't be solved by conventional military means (blowing stuff up, a.k.a "kinetic" operations) then it's time to clear out and hand it over to the diplomats and the UN and other supra-national organizations. They probably won't be able to fix it either; but they won't waste such huge amounts of blood and money in trying to trim nose hair with a chainsaw.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 1:37 PM

Let's check the scoreboard:

Korea - tie. Probably necessary during the Cold War.
Vietnam - loss
El Salvador - moral disaster
Iraq - laughable if it weren't so tragic
Afghanistan - success! at least in helping the NA beat the Taliban.

I think Nagl is correct in the sense that anything you do you should try to do a little better. That goes for pedicures and dog-walking too.

Posted by Chris | April 3, 2008 1:48 PM

"I don't doubt that he knows the trees really well: my objection is that he doesn't realize that trees make up a forest. Following Clausewitz, we should always remember that war is the use of force in pursuit of a political aim."

Right, because I'm sure that a Rhodes Scholar and former West Point professor with a doctorate from Oxford never heard of Clausewitz. Maybe if he had watched Crimson Tide as many times as you he'd have a broader understanding of Clausewitz and he'd be able to see the forest for the trees.

Posted by Fred | April 3, 2008 2:00 PM

"Afghanistan - success! at least in helping the NA beat the Taliban."

And that was done mostly by providing air
support (i.e. dropping bombs and blowing stuff up). The political and COIN side has been pretty
disappointing, and the Taliban is still around
(and growing, by most accounts).

"I think Nagl is correct in the sense that anything you do you should try to do a little better. That goes for pedicures and dog-walking too."

If you keep walking on hot coals and getting your feet burnt, what's the best future approach ?

a) Recruit 30000 people, train them to become
expert hot-coal-walkers, and spend $40B/year
practising ?

b) Stop walking on hot coals.

But then I'm guilty of applying common sense to issues of defense policy, which marks me as a deeply unserious person and probably a DFH as well.

Of course if you spent that $40B/year on attacking the worst of global poverty you could have a huge impact (Jeffrey Sachs estimated
$150B/year to *eliminate* severe poverty worldwide). And that would stop the next-but-one war rathert than the last war ...

Sorry, I'm being a DFH again.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 2:10 PM

"Based on American experiences in Korea" Which was NOT a counter insurgency and where we trained the forces for conventional warfare after they had been overrun and became secondary forces supporting US forces.

And "Vietnam, El Salvador" Where the forces we trained for counter insurgencylost.

"and now in Iraq and Afghanistan" Where five years of training shows no sign of creating an effective military force.

This is the essential idiocy. Based on repeating the things we did in past failures we shall succeed in the current attempt.

Insurgencies fail when the people decide the current governance is acceptable or when the current governance become so unrestrained in violence that terror suppresses it. "Effective military counter insurgency tactics" would involve the latter, not the former.

Posted by Roger Tompkins | April 3, 2008 2:16 PM

"Jeffrey Sachs estimated
$150B/year to *eliminate* severe poverty worldwide"

Familiarize yourself with William Easterly.

Posted by Fred | April 3, 2008 2:19 PM

"Right, because I'm sure that a Rhodes Scholar and former West Point professor with a doctorate from Oxford never heard of Clausewitz"

I went to a couple of pretty fancy universities myself: enough to notice that people with fancy degrees can make dumb mistakes, and people without much education can be plenty smart. Nagl knows about the nuts and bolts of COIN: but anybody who can count Vietnam and El Salvador as successes is rather evidently taking a very strange viewpoint.

If you think he knows his Clausewitz, then explain to me in simple terms the political goal of a continued US military presence in Iraq ? And what political goal might be furthered by our current policies of:

a) Supporting the Maliki government which is
primarily backed by the Iranian-formed ISCI.

b) Supporting the "Sunni Awakening" groups
hostile to the Maliki government

c) Supporting the Kurds, largely hostile to the
Maliki government, and to any control from
Baghdad.

d) Helping Maliki attack the mostly-nationalist
Sadr movement.

The goal is not apparent; the policies are
incoherent and self-contradictory; and no amount of COIN cleverness will solve that. Heck, it was Petraeus himself who trained the IA and told us all how well it was going. Is that statement still operative ?

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 2:24 PM

"Familiarize yourself with William Easterly."

So there are disagreements about the correct
strategies for improving life for people in poor countries. Big deal. Take the $40B, give a
quarter to Sachs, a quarter to Easterly, a quarter to Amartya Sen for microcredit initiatives, and a quarter to the Gates foundation. Review after 5 years and see what's working, then reinforce success.

This stuff is hard. But it's worth doing; more worth doing than the at-least-as-hard problem of how to make a COIN silk purse out of a pigs-ear foreign adventure.

It's just outrageous that the US spends $500B+ on the military and only about $20B on non-military
foreign aid (and much of that used as subsidies to US corporations).

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 2:39 PM

Matt's basic point is that training doesn't help if the army you're training belongs to a government that has political objectives that conflict with yours. To be fair to Nagl, what he argues in "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" is that the US's efforts to build a South Vietnamese army were overly domineering and consigned that army to a subordinate position; he also argues that US advisers pushed to build the ARVN as a conventional army prepared to fight a Korean-style main-force invasion, ignoring the advice of some of the best Vietnamese officers who saw early on that counterinsurgency would be key. And because the ARVN became the structuring institution of South Vietnam, it's fair to argue that these mistakes are part of what created the perverse political situation that made subsequent military training efforts somewhat irrelevant. That is, South Vietnam had a hopeless government by 1963 in part because that government consisted of the generals and colonels whom the US had helped mis-train in the late '50s.

I still have a hard time believing, though, that it's remotely realistic to believe the US could have gotten that nation-building job in South Vietnam "right", or could do so now in Iraq.

Posted by brooksfoe | April 3, 2008 3:41 PM

"if the army you're training belongs to a government that has political objectives that conflict with yours"

But really it goes further than that: what kind of
government tends to suffer from insurgency ?
Governments which are corrupt; governments with policies of sectarian division; governments propped up by foreigners. Let's face it, we're not talking about putting military advisers and
COIN experts in Luxembourg or Sweden or Germany or
even Argentina. We use them to prop up lousy
governments. Very occasionally - as in Korea -
*our* sonofabitch is noticeably better than the
alternative sonofabitch. More often, as in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran
before 1979, and Iraq today, we're backing an
unpopular and corrupt government.

Is this just bad luck ? Of course not: good
governments and popular governments don't need -
and don't want - foreign military "advisers"
telling them how to run the show. If you're
doing COIN, you're probably in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 3, 2008 4:10 PM

I don't know if I understand anything better than John Nagl - I just think that using as positive examples a strategy that consisted of the kind of atrocities roger has described upthread and a war which resulted in the deaths of 2-4 million Vietnames is ethically reprehensible. Perhaps one might say I have a difference of values with Nagl - I try to count the lives of US citizens and other humans equally, and it would appear that he does not find this consistent with his responsibility as a US national security strategist.

I am quite sure, however, that I understand pretty much everything in the world, from the internal dynamics of the Sadrist movement, to the English language, to tying my shoes, better than Fred.

Posted by Kalkin | April 3, 2008 6:11 PM

Richard Cownie makes a number of very effective arguments in support of his position that having to do COIN probably means you've already screwed up. I spent enough time in Central America to become convinced that we would have had much more success much more quickly there if we had spent more time aiding and supporting (and eventually co-opting) groups trying to help compesinos instead of associating ourselves with death-squad types.

But I'm troubled by the lack of real understanding of where we stand in Iraq that I see here. I don't claim any great depth of understanding of this very complex and difficult situation myself, but I have followed it closely for nearly twenty years, spent time there, and have a number of ongoing contacts with people there now and others here in Europe who have family there. It is far from clear to me that there is a real "insurgency" in Iraq.

There is certainly a complex power struggle, but it seems to be playing itself out increasingly in the political arena, and the political system in Iraq has been structured to be the most representative and legitimate in the Arab world. Also a lot more so than that of South Vietnam, El Salvador, etc. Isn't it reasonable to assume that if we are helping the development of a system that will allow the traditional Iraqi method of assuming power by killing those who had it before you, we are in fact doing the right thing?

It seems the popular wisdom dictates that any group opposed to the US must be legitimate, and any government supported by the US must be illegitimate. I don't think this is the case in Iraq.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 4, 2008 5:07 AM

Correcto chango. That mangled sentence should read:

"Isn't it reasonable to assume that if we are helping the development of a system that will REPLACE the traditional Iraqi method of assuming power by killing those who had it before you, we are doing the right thing?"

Posted by robert powell | April 4, 2008 6:42 AM

Mr. Powell,

I guess the real question is-- who are we fighting in Iraq right now and who will take over when we leave? Are they more like the equivalent of the Viet Cong, or of the Khmer Rouge?

If it's the former, then we should leave, and if it's the latter, we assuredly should not. I'm not well versed on the situation in Iraq so I really don't know.

Posted by Hector | April 4, 2008 9:34 AM

I think that's about exactly right on "the real question", Hector. The only difference between you and all the "experts" posting here is that you're honest enough to admit what you don't know.

It's extremely difficult to figure out who's who in Iraq right now, and I'll certainly admit that I have a lot more questions than answers too. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming Crocker/Petraeus testimony as these are two guys who really do have a lot of good information.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 4, 2008 10:52 AM

There is certainly a complex power struggle, but it seems to be playing itself out increasingly in the political arena, and the political system in Iraq has been structured to be the most representative and legitimate in the Arab world. Also a lot more so than that of South Vietnam, El Salvador, etc. Isn't it reasonable to assume that if we are helping the development of a system that will allow the traditional Iraqi method of assuming power by killing those who had it before you, we are in fact doing the right thing?

This doesn't make sense. First of all, Sadr and his followers are not part of the previous power structure. Neither are Badr nor Da'Wa (ISI). And the struggle for political power is being fought both in the parliament and through armed conflict on the streets; these are not entirely exclusive of one another. No matter who we support, it's a different (and more inclusive) set of people than the Baathists, who held power before.

Posted by AKBY | April 4, 2008 11:25 AM

"But I'm troubled by the lack of real understanding of where we stand in Iraq that I see here."

Yes, and that's another aspect of the problem. The USA has a bad habit of futzing around with other countries without making any serious effort to understand their history, culture, and politics in any detail. It's notorious that the State Department people who actually knew SE Asia were vigorously opposed to US policy in Vietnam, and many of them resigned. This Iraq debacle is pretty much the same: we're blundering about and doing a whole load of stuff that makes no sense.

The underlying problem is that none of the major
power groups in Iraq has any sympathy for US goals. No major group particularly wants democracy for its own sake (rather than as a way to get power and money for their own group); no major group wants Iraq to be a long-term base for the projection of US military power; many of the Shia groups get funds and training from Iran; and
the ones with the weakest ties to Iran are the Iraqi-nationalist Sadr organization, which wants the USA out.

As for Al Qaida in Iraq, from what I've read the upper-class Sunnis see it as a revolutionary threat to their tranditional power, and will crush it for themselves if we give them half a chance. Indeed, that's what the "Sunni Awakening" has been all about.

At this point we seem to be busy arming, funding, and training Kurds, ISCI and Dawa Shias, *and*
Sunnis. In fact *everybody* except the small AQI and the Sadrists. And whenever they get a chance the various groups take a step in their slow-motion civil war. As for the role of electoral
politics in all this, from recent reports it seems
that violence goes hand in hand with the elections: Maliki sends the Army into Basra to
disrupt the Sadrists and destroy there political organization because he's afraid they might win the upcoming local elections. Think what US politics might look like if Bush decided to send the US Army to assault New York, LA, and San Francisco shortly before elections.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 4, 2008 12:15 PM

AKBY--
see "correcto chango" @6:42 in terms of "making sense". Sorry, again, for the confusion. It seems pretty clear to me that the "insurgency" was primarily a Sunni hedge against the traditional Iraqi method of killing the previous rulers (them) when someone new takes over. AQI exploited this opening effectively because we were asleep at the switch.

The power struggle within the Shi'ite community is another matter. Although there is inevitably sporadic street fighting, it seems to be largely about positioning for the next elections. I think it's unreasonable to expect that this new system will overnight move from traditional tribal mafia-style violence to the ballot box, but that does seem to be the general direction things are taking. And it is certainly "a different (and more inclusive) set of people than the Baathists who held power before", especially since even the Baathists came to be dominated by the Tikriti clan.

Mr. Cownie--ignorance is indeed a familiar enemy. I read somewhere that in the two decades before the big escalation in Vietnam the total number of advanced degrees awarded by American universities in Vietnam-related subjects was eleven. And in addition to the resignations you note, we were also hit by a big purge of area experts who were damaged in the "who lost China" fiasco.

I think we may be better off this time. We've got some good people on the case at the moment, having dispensed with the College Republican circus of the CPA. As Bernard Lewis has pointed out from his youthful experience of observing our transition into form in WWII, Americans often get into a lot of trouble by ignoring all the experts and making all the predictable mistakes, but then seem able to recover and adapt. I hope he's right in this case.

I disagree about "sympathy with US goals". Most Iraqis, and in fact the Iranians too, share a number of our important goals. First among them is a stable, non-aggressive Iraq that's pumping oil.

Also, it seems to me that it's not so much a matter of Sadr either being more of a "nationalist", or having "the weakest ties to Iran". It's just that Sadr's ties are with a different Iranian faction than ISCI's and Dawa's. We will inevitably need to re-think our relationship with Iran, and it can't hurt to have Iraqi allies with good contacts in Teheran.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 4, 2008 3:31 PM

"I think we may be better off this time. We've got some good people on the case at the moment, having dispensed with the College Republican circus of the CPA"

Obviously the CPA was terrible. But as far as I know the embassy in Iraq still only has a tiny number of people fluent in Arabic. And indeed, it seems that one reason why we've ended up backing the ISCI faction is imply that there are more senior ISCI figures who speak English. Which is really no way to decide anything.

"We will inevitably need to re-think our relationship with Iran, and it can't hurt to have Iraqi allies with good contacts in Teheran."

Just like we "inevitably need to re-think our relationship with" Cuba, maybe ? No, one of the great luxuries of being an economic and military superpower is that you can cling to bad policies for decades or even generations, because you've got enough inherent advantages to tolerate a few bleeding sores.

Really Iran isn't much of a problem. They can't project military power far from their own borders, and they don't have much money. We *should* be talking to them - not least about establishing common goals for stabilizing the mess in Iraq - but we aren't. It would have been much easier to talk to them before our various concerns got swamped by the Iraq issue.
And Iran isn't unhappy to see the USA bogged down
in Iraq.

As for whether ISCI are our "allies", I'm very skeptical. Seems to me everyone is just using the USA for their own purposes, and while we help various groups, it's very much a one-way street:
ISCI isn't going to do anything to further the USA's interests. If you look around the poker table and you can't figure out who the sucker is, it's you. And if you're spending $120B/year to be in the game, you're a really big sucker.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 4, 2008 4:15 PM

"I disagree about "sympathy with US goals". Most Iraqis, and in fact the Iranians too, share a number of our important goals. First among them is a stable, non-aggressive Iraq that's pumping oil."

Ah, but first you have to decide what the US goals
really are. We had "a stable non-aggressive Iraq
that was pumping oil" back in 2002, and the USA decided to blow it up. Now we have an unstable Iraq that is pumping less oil. If we really had a stable and wealthy Iraq, then surely it would tell the USA to clear out, because who likes having a foreign occupation ? Is that what "the US" wants ? Is it what Bush/Cheney/McCain want ?

As for the Iranians, they have a number of goals.
They don't want Baathists or Sunnis back in power.
They want the Shia to get a better deal than under Saddam. And they probably want Iraq to remain militarily weak, and subject to Iranian
influence. If they face a choice between having a
stable Iraq, with 140K US troops free to engage in
other operations, or having an unstable Iraq, with the bulk of the US military bogged down indefinitely, I think they'll choose the status quo. Though that could change if we offered them more constructive engagement and less futile
saber-rattling.

But overall, it is, as you say, a complex situation. And the military - even the COIN folks - is rather too blunt an instrument for dealing with such subtleties, in my opinion.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 4, 2008 4:27 PM

Mr. Cownie--
I agree with most of what you wrote--we certainly *should* be talking to Iran (and have dumped the Cuban embargo decades ago). It seems we blew an excellent opportunity to do so in 2003.

Iran may not be "much of a problem", but it is a large, important, traditional regional power in the region that currently happens to be the most sensitive geopolitically, and its nuclear program is a test case for ongoing non-proliferation concerns. We need to engage with them.

I don't really want to get into re-litigating the decision to invade in 2003, but I think it's fundamentally un-serious, not to mention ahistorical, to dismiss the magnitude of the problem presented by Ba'athist Iraq. "Stable and non-aggressive" is hardly an accurate description, and the infrastructure for "pumping oil" was being systematically destroyed by sanctions and mismanagement.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 5, 2008 3:28 AM