They shoot hawks, donít they?

ìThe Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts,î by John Tierney, New York Times, 16 May, p. WK5.

Great article goes through long list of well-known conservative writers to see whoís going wobbly, whoís turning on what, and how much expectations are being lowered day by day. A great list of writers is reviewed in the piece, to include Charles Krauthammer, the National Review, David Brooks, Robert Novak, Max Boot, Thomas Friedman, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Andrew Sullivan, Kenneth Pollack, Fareed Zakaria, Tucker Carlson, Owen Harries and none other than Samuel Huntington.

Everyone now is gloomy in their own way, with many calling for heads to roll inside the Pentagon, of course.

Success has many fathers, failure is pretty much a bastard.

I must be an inveterate optimist, but when I see the military floundering like they are in Iraq right now, I try to focus on the opportunity for learning that failure always presents. No institution learns better or faster from failure than the U.S. military.

The question is: can we make this learning stick not just for the Pentagon, but for the rest of the world as well?

Inside the Pentagon, itís clear what needs to be done: we need to seed the back-half Sys Admin force to match the challenges and opportunities by having the worldís preeminent front-half Leviathan force. When we own the back half force that leads the way, then weíll attract the coalition partners necessary to making that process work. Think of that one as the task at the level of nation-states.

On the system level, the task is what Iíve called the development of the A-to-Z global rule set on processing politically bankrupt states. This one is getting lost in the shuffle right now.

Inside Iraq, or on the level of the individual, we all need to redefine how we want to measure success in this intervention. Hereís where the hawks are getting all upset over whether or not America could somehow rehab broken Iraq into a democracy over night, when what we need to focus on is making sure that societyís great connectivity with the outside world is our greatest legacy. Who rules Iraq and how they rule is not nearly as important as making sure that Iraq does not slip back into disconnectednessóthatís the minimal goal and the only one we really must mandate. The rest needs to be up to the Iraqis themselves.

So if Iím a hawk by many peopleís measure, then I guess Iím not going wobbly about what I know is true: Iraq is a whole lot more open now than it was a year ago. With this openness will come a lot of tumult and violence, because it will threaten the dreams of a lot of people hell-bent on hijacking the Middle East out of globalizationís creeping embrace. We donít have to win this conflictósimply extend it until the connectivity wins out and the forces of disconnectedness give up and look to some other near-hell hole to make their stand.

This is cowboys and Indians all over again. There will be many bad fights and many bad days, and plenty of atrocities will be staged for our viewing pleasure, but in the end, that railroad is aícoming. That connectivity will not be denied.

Geez! I gotta turn off Deadwood before it screws up this entire post!