WaPo: Victory Is Not an Option, by Lt. Gen Odom

[Tin Man]

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy

By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007; Page B01

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.

Its gloomy implications -- hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact -- put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon.

Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.

For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.

continues at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/09/AR2007020901917.html

[mike_c]

1. K&R-- the chimperor is getting nekkider by the day....

eom

[Fridays Child]

2. When are the treasonous actions of this administration going to be stopped?

It makes me sick to my stomach when Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats refer to him in deferential terms. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, at the very least. He's a shameful bastard and any sentient being can figure that out.

[bdrube]

3. Odom has consistently been one of the most ardent Iraq war critics. n/t

[Tin Man]

4. I was thinking... you know, I can't recall Odom ever being wrong

I wonder if somewhere, there's a compilation of all his writings on Iraq. If there is, it's gotta read like a history book of events that have come to pass.

[Tin Man]

5. Answering my own question. Here's one such article - from WSJ, April 2004

Former General Sees 'Staying the Course' In Iraq as Untenable
JOHN HARWOOD / Wall Street Journal 28APR04

Mr. Odom opposed the Iraq war before it happened. An expert in comparative politics who teaches at Georgetown and Yale, he warned that there was no reason to expect that Iraq could soon develop the ingredients for constitutional democracy: individual rights, property rights and a tax-collection system supporting a government to enforce them. The violence of recent months, he concludes, has exposed Mr. Bush's vision of doing so as a dream.

Following the planned June 30 handover of nominal sovereignty, Iraqis may go to the polls and vote. But the result, Mr. Odom explains, will resemble theocracy more than liberal democracy. As televised images of Iraqis cheering attacks on U.S. troops suggest, it's not likely to be anything Americans would consider worth the war's cost in blood and treasure.

"Anybody that's pro-American cannot gain legitimacy," he says. "It will be a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing ... to fund terrorist organizations." The ability of Islamic militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks elsewhere may increase.
...

Yet the stakes, in Mr. Odom's view, are much bigger. The longer U.S. troops hang tough, he reasons, the more isolated America will become. That in turn will place increasing strain on international economic and security institutions that have undergirded the emergence of "America's Inadvertent Empire," as Mr. Odom's latest book calls it. "I don't know that the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO can survive this," he says.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Gen-William-E-Odom28apr04.htm