Opinion: Dust-Up Round 4: Where’s Iraq’s fearless leader?
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In today’s Dust-Up, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Brian Katulis take aim at Iraq’s fractured politics. With the apparent drop in violence and sectarianism, why haven’t Iraq’s leaders managed to build a more unified and effective government?
Katulis makes his first move:
The so-called political surge has not happened because of two main reasons — structural flaws in Iraq’s political transition and institutions and the Bush administration’s unconditional and open-ended commitment of U.S. money and troops fostering moral hazard among Iraq’s leaders.
When it’s his turn, Rivkin doesn’t hold back:
Your musings about the absence of a ‘political surge’ reveal two fundamental mistakes, widely shared among the administration’s critics: The first is a serious failure to appreciate why democracy-building in the Middle East, while a slow and painful process, is the only way to advance America’s long-term national security interests. ... The second failure is an obsession, widely shared among the critics, with the alleged mistakes and ineptitude of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq.
Read the rest and join in the debate here.