Reply #63: I'm sorry, but I don't read it that way...at all [View All]

[FrenchieCat]

Clark wrote this at a time when when Iraq had just fallen, and the Neocons and the press were gleeful. Clark wrote this article to bring the unseemingly ever incoherent cheering that the mission been accomplished back to reality.

In other words, Clark was pulling on coattails publicily. In the same article in where you chose to highlight only the front end of his backhanded compliments, he does clearly lists what would still go wrong, and points out that there was still a long way to go (which was the whole point of his article to begin with).

The last sentence of his first paragraph and the entire second paragraph and third paragraph details the problems that layed ahead and why....

Yet a bit more work and some careful reckoning need to be done before we take our triumph.

In the first place, the final military success needs to be assured. Whatever caused the sudden collapse in Iraq, there are still reports of resistance in Baghdad. The regime’s last defenders may fade away, but likely not without a fight. And to the north, the cities of Tikrit, Kirkuk and Mosul are still occupied by forces that once were loyal to the regime. It may take some armed persuasion for them to lay down their arms. And finally, the Baath party and other security services remain to be identified and disarmed.

Then there’s the matter of returning order and security. The looting has to be stopped. The institutions of order have been shattered. And there are scant few American and British forces to maintain order, resolve disputes and prevent the kind of revenge killings that always mark the fall of autocratic regimes. The interim US commander must quickly deliver humanitarian relief and re-establish government for a country of 24 million people the size of California. Already, the acrimony has begun between the Iraqi exile groups, the US and Britain, and local people.

He does then go on to praise the MILITARY in what they were able to accomplish in the initial stage of the war which fell Bagdad.....but in the end, he asks the readers to understand that a MILITARY victory does not mean winning the peace. In addition, Clark reminds readers that the reasons that we went to war still had not been justified.

Is this victory? Certainly the soldiers and generals can claim success. And surely, for the Iraqis there is a new-found sense of freedom. But remember, this was all about weapons of mass destruction. They haven’t yet been found. It was to continue the struggle against terror, bring democracy to Iraq, and create change, positive change, in the Middle East. And none of that is begun, much less completed.

Let’s have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue — but don’t demobilize yet. There’s a lot yet to be done, and not only by the diplomats.