Krauthammer on Maliki and the Surge
Posted by Peter Lawler
Charles thinks that only the real prospect of a redeployment--one that would leave Maliki at the mercy of a civil war in Bagdad--can produce enough nonsectarian behavior for the surge to succeed. He won’t respect us unless he believes we’ll really abandon him if he doesn’t. And without that respect the surge will fail because he’ll undermine it.
4:50 PM / January 19, 2007
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Did anyone else read the Bing West piece in National Review? It was a "read it and weep" review of the war. At least I read it and wept. He WAS there, and does have some constructive suggestions to reduce casualties. He, like Krauthammer, refers to Maliki as part of the sectarian problem and suggests the Iraqi Army as the least sectarian part of official Iraq. As I read it, he is proposing that we build a government around it, the Iraqi Army, as a solution to the violence. Not exactly a call to democracy, but perhaps a there are instances when a strong military presence can be a greater guarantor of individual freedoms than a freely elected, but weak, or even just wrong, government.