6 months to see progress in Iraq...6 months later, it was May, 2004

Anyone who didn't think the occupation was going to last over a decade was just plain naive. You don't overthrow a government and just leave.

How long were we in Germany and Japan after WWII? How long were we in Korea?

The answer to both those questions is that we are still there now. Where are our largest Military bases outside the US? In the countries that we had wars in.

 

So you are calling the administration liars or naive?

Korea, Germany, and Japan were all drastically different than Iraq as well.

 

At least this story in the Chron today made me feel like we were finally applying a little competence to the situation:



http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5046973.html

Before the invasion, Ryan Crocker co-wrote a memo warning the U.S. of the dangers of attacking Iraq. Now the ambassador to Iraq says the U.S. should think long and hard about leaving the nation.




Aug. 12, 2007, 1:14AM
Envoy to Iraq wins high marks
Experience gives American skills to help quell crisis in the war-torn nation


U.S. military interventions since '50s BAGHDAD — Ryan Crocker and a handful of other State Department officials wrote a six-page memo warning of the possible pitfalls of a U.S.-led attack.

An invasion could "unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions," the memo said. It also warned "that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events."

It was titled "The Perfect Storm." It was remarkably prescient.

Now Crocker is the American ambassador to Iraq, and it's fallen to him to help quell the tempest.

It may be an impossible task, but there's hardly anyone better prepared to do so.

Crocker has done two previous stints in Iraq, arriving for the first time in 1978, the year before Saddam Hussein came to power. He met his wife, Christine, the same year Saddam seized control.


Wins Iraqis' respect
The wall outside his office bears the scars from a recent mortar round or rocket. But Crocker has worked in hostile environments before.

He still carries with him a calendar he salvaged from his office in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut after a car bomb in 1983 hurled his marathon runner's frame against the wall and killed 64 of his colleagues. He helped dig corpses from the rubble with his hands.

He reopened the American Embassy in Afghanistan after U.S. forces ousted the Taliban, and he's served as ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria, as well as Pakistan, the Islamic world's nuclear-tipped trouble spot and his most recent assignment.

Iraqis say the difference between Crocker and his predecessors in Iraq is stark — and welcome.

While his predecessors often either dictated or demanded, Crocker is a diplomat.

And though Iraqis may not like U.S. policy, they respect Crocker, who during his first Iraqi tour managed to drive up the Euphrates River all the way to the Syrian border, picking up hitchhiking Iraqi soldiers en route. He was rewarded for slipping his police-state leash with several hours of detention by Saddam's police in the town of Qaim.

"He wants to treat Iraq like a sovereign nation," said Ahmad Chalabi, a nimble Shiite Muslim politician who was once the darling of Bush administration neoconservatives. "He supports initiatives of the government, he doesn't initiate them."

None of his predecessors had the knowledge or style that Crocker brings to the job.

Crocker also has been working to remake the embassy staff.

One of his first memos to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained that embassy workers were too inexperienced for what should be the most important diplomatic posting in the world.


Rebuilding staff
Since then, he's brought in at least four fellow ambassadors: The former ambassador to Greece is in charge of the embassy's economic affairs office; the former ambassador to Albania runs the political affairs office; the former ambassador to Bangladesh is Crocker's deputy; and the former ambassador to Uzbekistan is coordinating U.S. efforts in Iraq's provinces.

Phil Reeker, Crocker's public affairs counselor, is the former No. 2 diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest.

"For three or four years we haven't had our best and our brightest on the field," said one senior military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

"If you compare the staffs from then and now, I think we're light-years ahead."

Crocker keeps in close touch with his military counterpart, Army Gen. David Petraeus. Every Sunday, Crocker and Petraeus, a fitness fanatic, run together and discuss the future of Iraq. At least five other times during the week, the two discuss how to proceed.

Crocker recognizes that he faces a difficult path.

The Iraqis aren't even close to passing laws that the U.S. Congress has said they must pass if the U.S. is to remain supportive. Crocker and Petraeus must assess Iraq's progress toward those goals by mid-September.

"This is clearly a period when Iraqis need to assert a national vision and a national identity," Crocker said.

But Crocker also said the U.S. must show patience.

"For a lot of Americans, after four years, it's like we're halfway through the third reel of a three-reel movie," he said.

"For Iraqis, it's still the first half of the first reel of a five-reel movie."

Crocker still hopes that the risk of failure will drive Iraqi politicians to compromise with one another. "Nothing so concentrates the mind as the prospect of hanging," he said.

But even if compromise seems a long way off, he said, the U.S. should think carefully before leaving.

"We just can't switch the channel on this," he said. "The program goes on whether we are here or not. The decisions that we took early on have consequences."

 

Give the troops another 6 months?

Heck, the liberals didn't give the troops 6 SECONDS before they were already crying failure, waiving the white flag, and wanting to surrender to al Qaeda.

6 Months? Give me a break, libs, you passed judgment on this surge (which to your dismay has been successful) almost immediately after it was announced.

 

thats awesome, since its become so successful that means we should be on track to pull out and hand it over to Iraqis. When will that occur.

 

Seems to me more like we're demanding another 6 months from them.