US threshold for Iraq 'success' is modest

[Barrett808]

American voters care less about the exact steps toward self-rule and more about improving security.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – The United States is preparing yet another rejigging of its plan for handing over authority in Iraq, with direct election of a temporary government one possible way out of a deepening crisis.
Another possibility is expansion of the existing, US-named Iraqi Governing Council. Or, it's conceivable that the June 30 handover date, set only last Nov. 15 in a deal worked out between occupation authorities and the IGC, might now slip - although this option seems the least likely for US political reasons.

As the White House modifies plans and backs off some of its more grandiose visions for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, what matters most - especially to US voters in this presidential election year - is that Iraq come out of the immediate postwar period stable, nonthreatening, and demonstrably better off, foreign-policy experts say. "It doesn't have to be a Wolfowitzian democracy," says Brookings Institution analyst Michael O'Hanlon, referring to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's vision of Iraq as a democratic beacon to the region. "Nor does it have to be an exemplary Keynesian economy. But in the three basic bins of security, politics, and economics," he adds, "there will have to be progress beyond what we're seeing so far for Iraq to be not necessarily a campaign asset, but at least not a vulnerability, for President Bush."

Exactly what is required for the postwar period to be considered a "success" continues to change, especially as the White House shifts the rationale for war - from the original concentration on weapons of mass destruction to the current focus on ridding a key region in the war on terror of a brutal and dangerous dictatorship.

(more)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0126/p02s01-usfp.html

[yellowcanine]

1. "Success" is apparently reducing the # of U.S.troops in Iraq before Nov.

However temporary that "reduction" may prove to be.

[daleo]

2. "Wolfowitzian democracy"

I swear, these guys could have given newspeak lessons to Orwell. Sadly, though, Orwell was writing satire, while this bunch is writing history.