Fiasco Iraq

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: "Money quote from Michiko Kakutani's review of Thomas Ricks' new book, 'Fiasco':

An after-action review from the Third Infantry Division underscores the Pentagon's paucity of postwar planning, stating that 'there was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational.' And an end-of-tour report by a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office's work as 'pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck.'

Observing this, many of us have gone from denial to despair to grim hope to acceptance that the scale of the task was greater than even the pessimists foresaw and the means deployed to achieve it almost pathetically unequal to the goal. I guess a miracle may eventually emerge. Maybe a de facto Iraqi partition after more bloodshed and sectarian massacres may pave the way for a more peaceful future. We can hope. But Baghdad is fast turning into what Beirut once was - a cualdron of unrestrained sectarian hate and violence, fomented by a few empowered by the incompetence in Washington. I'm left with contrition at my own small contribution to the misunderstanding; and abiding, deep, and furious anger at the administration who conducted this war with such arrogance and negligence. This president's betrayal of the Iraqis, his betrayal of the armed forces, his betrayal of those who supported him, is profound. Some of his supporters will forgive him. This much I'm sure of: History won't. "