Tom Friedman: "So far, the surge has created nothing that is self-sustaining"

[sabra]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/opinion/05Friedman.html?hp


Letter From Baghdad

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 5, 2007


I saw many contradictory things on this visit to Iraq — too many to declare a definitive trend. So let me share three scenes that had an impact on me:

...

When I asked one of them, Omar Nassif, 32, why he had gone from shooting at Americans to working with them, he said, “I saw an Al Qaeda man behead an 8-year-old girl with my own eyes ... We want American support because we fought the most vicious organization in the world here ... I would rather work with the Americans than the Iraqi Army. The Americans are not sectarian people.”

At one point we took a walk around the neighborhood, trudging through the powdery dust in 126 degree heat. When I looked up, I saw a surreal scene — former Baathists insurgents, guns pointed in all directions, providing a security cordon around a senior U.S. officer. That is the good news and bad news from Iraq. Good news: the surge is tamping down violence. Bad news: the relative calm stems largely from a Sunni-Sunni war that has pushed mainstream Iraqi Sunnis into our camp to fight the jihadist Sunnis — rather than from any real Sunni-Shiite rapprochement.

...

Scene 2: On my way into Iraq, I had a private chat with an Arab Gulf leader. He said something that still rings in my ear: “Thomas, everyone is keeping you busy in Iraq. The Russians are keeping you busy. The Chinese are keeping you busy. The Iranians are keeping you busy. The Saudis are keeping you busy. Egypt is keeping you busy. The Syrians are keeping you busy...”

He’s right. Everyone loves seeing us tied down here. One need only observe how Vladimir Putin is throwing his weight around Europe, how China is growing more influential by the day, how Iran has been emboldened and how all the Arab dictators are relieved that America is mired in Iraq so we can’t push any democracy on them to understand that there’s a huge “opportunity cost” for our staying here without either success or an exit strategy.

...

We don’t deserve such good people — neither do Iraqis if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids.

:eyes:

[BlooInBloo]

1. Well - that means we go check and see what Atrios says about this fool.

[KG]

2. freidman sees want he wants to see, and makes up the rest.

he goes up against the wall with all the rest when my revolution overturns capitalism.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. Even blind squirrel finds acorn every now and then.

(with apologies to Confucious)

:evilgrin:

[Blackhatjack]

4. Mark my words, by the time we pull out, Repubs will say it was their idea and Dems kept us there....

It is all about creating the reality to match the 'story' they now made up.

Just like Bush saying he was against breaking up the Iraqi Army.

It is all about 'reality construction' ... facts have little to do with anything.