A Sad Litany of Failures
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich regards Bremer as "the largest single disaster in American foreign policy in modern times." And whatever happened to the talented and tough-minded defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld? As described in Bob Woodward's devastating book State of Denial, Rumsfeld misjudged the strategy, tactics, and resources required for success in Iraq and obstinately held to his dictums to the military leadership that have led to today's calamitous scenario. Rumsfeld ultimately seemed to have lost interest in postwar Iraq-a striking contrast to his extraordinary effectiveness in reforming the Pentagon's management and transforming the military.
Now there is a real risk that, if we leave, Iraq will disintegrate even further into all-out civil war or spark a regional war and become home to an anti-American regime that will inflame jihadists and undermine Arab moderates all over the Muslim world.
It is no wonder public support for the Iraq venture has eroded so dramatically as 24-7 global TV news brings home the latest grim pictures. They present a seemingly endless war of attrition in Iraq that leads the public to see the war as a political miscalculation and a military disaster. In the face of the chaos and incoherence there, much now depends on the special report to be submitted-after the November elections-by the Iraq Study Group headed by the clear-thinking and astute former Republican secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressional leader Lee Hamilton. Let us pray that this bipartisan effort produces a viable and coherent policy that the American public can support.
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