chickenfeet

kidnapped from masqthephlsphr

I dutifully read the recently released US strategy for winning the war in Iraq.. It's a well written and cogent document but, ultimately, it's based on several very flawed assumptions. It fails to recognise that the American presence in Iraq is part of the problem. It assumes that the American (and by implication, British) forces are simply a resource necessary to create the security conditions necessary for disengagement. The idea that the presence of 160,000 American troops and a considerable degree of American "supervision" of the Iraqi government might be feeding (and broadening) the Resistance is simply not considered. It also assumes that the vast majority of both ordinary Iraqis and the Iraqi political elite share the American vision, clearly expressed in the document, of a pluralistic, democratic, federal, united Iraq centred on Baghdad. That may be the case or it may not but it's an issue that deserves analysis not wishful thinking.

All in all, this document, like so many other manifestations of BushCheneyism is far too inclined to assume the world is as the Americans would wish it to be rather than as it is.