Well Iraq is dissappearing off the front page, which is presumably how the Campaign to reelect President Bush wants it. Rember our glorious victory over the Iraqi army; forget our obligation to the Iraqi people (and the fact that we didn't get Saddam Hussein). Thomas L. Friedman commented on this today at the New York Times.
In Iraq, it's still not clear to me how much the Bush team wants to do nation-building there. The Rumsfeld doctrine of small-force, high-tech armies may be great for winning wars, but you need the Powell doctrine for winning the peace: a massive, overwhelming investment of soldiers, police and aid. We should be flooding Iraq with people and money right now. Start big and then build down — not the other way around. Ditto on the politics side. In destroying the Iraqi Army and Baath Party, we have destroyed the (warped) pillars of Iraqi secular nationalism. We need to start replacing them, quickly, with alternative, progressive pillars of Iraqi secular nationalism; otherwise, Shiite religious nationalism will fill the void.
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