Bottom up or top down?

A reader wrote in with this question:

The real question on the "surge" to me whether this is bottom up or top down idea. If it is bottom up with input from the boots it has a decent chance but if from the top down very little.

Previous top-down (Abizaid) replaced by new top down (Bush-Cheney w buy-in from Petraeus).

The bottom-up feeling is get out because we're no longer in control and can't stem the sectarian stuff without about 400k, but that's fantasy because we'd need a huge influx of allies and Bush-Cheney simply can't manage that after not cultivating those relationships all these years.

Bush should have come out in second term and really pressed wide range of allies for stabilizing troops. He should have mea culpa'd like crazy and made the deals.

Then he could have gone out a winner and the compromises would have seemed reasonable. This way, though, he sets up his successor to eat crow, and I don't think that's good leadership.

Comments

[Bill Millan]

but that's fantasy because we'd need a huge influx of allies and Bush-Cheney simply can't manage that after not cultivating those relationships all these years.

Tom, I think it is fantasy to think we were ever going to get many allies to join us in Iraq. Who? The French and the Russian leadership were taking payoffs from Saddam, and want nothing to do with putting troops in the Gulf. We have a terrible time getting anybody to help in Afghanistan. Look at how little real help we got in the Balkins, even with Clinton and his crowd asskissing.

[JRRICHARD]

Bush could have made Putin any kind of offer and blew it. Putin went out on a limb and was blown off. He's not afraid to send men off to fight and die. At the time he was looking for international legitimacy and the right circumstances to make a play with the big boys. He got it and made it, but these cold-war experts don't see it. Besides, these Russians don't respect the rule of law.