WE Blog

“The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq’s complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it,” Robert Kaplan wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary. Kaplan argues that the comfort and safety we enjoy have disconnected us from the realities of war, causing us to forget that those serving in Iraq are heroes, not martyrs.
Hearing so much about how badly the war is going, we tend to see the military as a pitied group of men and women being shot at in Iraq. Those fighting for us want to be admired for the competency and skill with which they do their jobs, and given the respect they earn every day.
Posted by Kristin Mehler

The plan by Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to divide Iraq into three areas received broad bipartisan support in a 75-23 nonbinding Senate resolution. But it came under harsh fire from the Bush administration and Iraqi leaders, who showed rare unanimity in condemning the plan as breaking up the country.
Biden responded that the proposal has been misinterpreted — it doesn’t call for a hard partition, he said, but rather federalism, with Iraqi regions acting like our states. The proposal wouldn’t separate ethnic and sectarian groups and wouldn’t be imposed by force.
“The Bush administration’s quixotic alternative has been to promote a strong central government in Baghdad,” he said. “That central government doesn’t function; it is corrupt and widely regarded as irrelevant. It has not produced political reconciliation — and there is no evidence it will.”
Whatever its faults, the Biden-Brownback plan remains the only credible alternative to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s dysfunctional government.
Posted by Randy Scholfield