Talking surge on WAPO radio
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 3:46AM ARTICLE: With Iraq Speech, Bush to Pull Away From His Generals, By Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, January 10, 2007; Page A01
Went on WAPO radio with Jim Bohannon yesterday morn for quick 5 minutes. Ended up talking new counter-insurgency and modularization of the army, even tough pre-interview with producer was all about troop surge strategy.
Here's (at least) what I said to the producer off-air:
1) I like the people picks of late (Gates, Petraeus, Fallon, Negroponte, McConnell).
2) I can support a surge, plus a Baghdad focus, plus new jobs-creation spending and more State oversight on the ground for reconstruction (though I fear CSIS Rick Barton's critique of too little, too late is true)
3) If all that was combined with a diplomatic initiative to dialogue on regional security issues with Syria, Iran, Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, the EU, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Russia and China (with all putting some skin in the game--either literal and figurative), THEN I'd be behind this 100 percent.
4) Absent 3 (or at least the talking part designed to start some permanent regional security forum), I have a hard time foreseeing success here.
5) For now, it's our lack of strategic imagination on diplomacy that's hurting most, and since I don't expect Bush to fire Rice, I think Bush is pretty much done with his presidency in terms of initiatives in foreign policy. To me, this is too much "stay the course" stll and not enough serious effort to keep the Big Bang rolling. In short, this is not a strategy to win, but one designed to keep not losing and basically pass this problem on to the next administration.
The one wild card left for me with Bush and Cheney is if they try a significant air strike on Iran before leaving office.
Reader Comments (2)
I'm not trying to take liberties with Tom's words and ideas. I just said I thought that there might be problems with the extended list, seeing how some leaders might react to saying country X thousands of miles away had some kinda say when they lived next door to the madness, might have some problems that need to be addressed. Tom's smart enough to know that there's no silver bullet and there's always some draw back or flaw that needs to be watched. I'm not claiming he said it was all sweetness and light(particularly since it's the history of killing Islamic extremists that is part of what recommends them to the reconstruction force.)
I still think that. There's some issues with the extended list here. India, Russia, China. Sure, all have economic, serious economic, ties to the region and have histories of fighting Islamist radicals. That's the strength. It's also the weakness in the infowar campaign(those damn materialists with long histories of killing Moslems!). Ask Tom if he feels like fleshing it out a bit. I'm skeptical of the long list but not full on hating it. It isn't bad, but I think it's got some problems.thanks.
the 50ks are something Tom was has said in the brief as long ago as 2 years ago. he has not reiterated this recently.
if i had a point, it was along the lines of 'this whole thing would have gone down better with a little more coalition-building on the front end a la the 50ks.
nowadays i think Tom would say Russia and China still matter b/c what we should really be trying to do is transform the whole region, and they figure in that way, overall-security-wise. further, they are, at a minimum, important trade partners (China re: oil especially)