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If you have any interest in world affairs, you should be reading The Belmont Club. He recently takes up the attempts to quell the violence in Iraq.
No one can pretend the problems in Iraq are over and the fact that no one can confidently predict when they will ever be solved lies at the bottom of the public dissatisfaction with the war. About all the Administration can convincingly argue is the awfulness of the alternative. For Marine Lt Gen James Mattis the endpoint has become fundamentally psychological.
"It is mostly a matter of wills. Whose will is going to break first? Ours or the enemy's?" ... Mattis, who led the Marines in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and led the 1st Marine Division in the invasion of Iraq and march to Baghdad in early 2003, said he was once asked by an Iraqi when he would leave that country. "I said I am never going to leave. I told him I had found a little piece of property down on the Euphrates River and I was going to have a retirement home built there. I did that because I wanted to disabuse him of any sense that he could wait me out. ... Wars like this are winnable but you have got to have a sophisticated approach and you've got to have very sturdy and spiritually sturdy Marines who can keep their balance in the face of an extremely complex fight. It's not a small issue to wave to kids after just seeing your buddies blown up, but that shows on the most pedestrian level the kind of sturdiness that is needed in what is just a morally bruising environment where the enemy hides among the people."Posted by The Vorlon at August 24, 2006 8:38 PM