Book Club: Losing Hurts Twice as Bad

If one feels charitable, you could forgive Christopher Fettweis, military strategy expert (LOL) teacher of strategy at the US Naval War College (God help us)  for expressing restraint a decade ago but after 9/11 his view can only be viewed as irresponsible and blind. His current book which is apparently cheering for a defeat in Iraq could be forgiven if were written three years ago but with the success of the surge and progress of the first Iraqi democracy in the heart of the middle-east, it can also been seen as retrograde and out-of-date.

I cannot help but wonder if Chris, as a starry-eyed youth chose beta-max over VHS; Webtv over a computer, and Intellivison over Atari.

But who knows, he may be right.

If he is, I hope he laughs all the way to Washington Mutual bank.

I don't know about withdrawal. But from what I've read of Iraqis and the Iraqi government, I don't hold any long-term hopes for Iraqi democracy. As a people, Iraqis seem unwilling to implement a truly democratic state. Iraqis don't think of themselves in strictly national terms. They regard themselves as Iraqi Shia or Sunni. More specifically some probably regard themselves as members of tribes, or alterantively as members of fundamentalist religious movements, such as the Mahdi army, which receives Iranian funding but is really an Iraqi Islamist-Nationalist group.. Each faction would like to see itself at the top, but all of them envision some sort of Iraqi nation, except the Kurds, who are quite happy on their own. The conflict is based on intense sectarian hatred, rivalry and conspiracy theory. As long as the nation proceeds along sectarian or tribal rivalries, the existence of the Iraqi government and Iraqi democracy is very, very tenuous. One thing's for sure--if Iraqi democracy stumbles, the Kurds will be first before the wall.

I guess the presence of Fettwies on the Tulane faculty is further evidence that New Orleans has yet to recover from Katrina

We the people of Iraq, newly arisen from our disasters and looking with confidence to the future through a democratic, federal, republican system, are determined — men and women, old and young — to respect the rule of law, reject the policy of aggression, pay attention to women and their rights, the elderly and their cares, the children and their affairs, spread the culture of diversity and defuse terrorism.

We are the people of Iraq, who in all our forms and groupings undertake to establish our union freely and by choice, to learn yesterday's lessons for tomorrow, and to write down this permanent constitution from the high values and ideals of the heavenly messages and the developments of science and human civilization, and to adhere to this constitution, which shall preserve for Iraq its free union of people, land and sovereignty.

Iraqi Constitution - 2005

According to "intellectuals" like Fettweis, this was all a mistake and a crime undertaken by cowboys (cue hillbilly music) and "neo-cons" (cue hasidic fiddlers on the roof).

Removing the obstacles to the first Islamic democracy in the heart of the middle-east will make the world safer as the world becomes increasingly smaller.