Can We Not Pull for and Hope for Success in Iraq?

Joe Guarino provides a link to an article by Kimberly Kagan of the Wall Street Journal, and review of that article on the site Captain’s Quarters. The gist of Kagan’s article seems to be the success of the surge – the surprising success.

From the multiplicity of the reports coming back from Iraq it seems to be that there are many reasons to be very cautiously optimistic. Is not the ideal outcome that the surge would be successful, and Iraq would be stabilized?

But, as things appear to me, there are many politicians and pundits who want the Iraq effort to fail, and there are those those who would paint an overly optimistic assessment. Once again, from where I sit, it seems that our own political divisions are making it hard for us to assess accurately the situation. yet there is enough testimony and apparently compelling evidence that there are good things happening - and that from people who are not Bush stooges - to think something is going right for a change.

It seems to me that we should all be hoping and praying that, despite all that has gone wrong, the tide will turn, and things will go right. It is certainly in the interest of the Iraqi people that things get better. It would also be in our armed forces interest, and in the interest of our national security and financial stability. It seems the only people who would lose if things were to get better are the Iranians, Al-Qaeda, and all those who politically need to see this fail in order to be or feel vindicated.

And regarding all the talk about the money being spent, yes, it’s astronomical. Yes, it could be used on other things. But I would like someone to paint for me a realistic scenario whereby our effort there fails, we pull out, the surrounding powers jump in , and the situation does not end up pulling us back in and under possibly very worse circumstances and into a broader and even more expensive war, because I just cannot see it.

I cannot understand what seems to me to be at least an appearance of a deep seated desire for this whole thing to fail. That just bothers and disturbs me very much.

And could we possibly lay off the Iraqi government just a little. Go back and read about our own national beginnings. There was enough division and intrigue to fill a hundred books – oh yeah, they’ve been written, and are being written. We are expecting the Iraqi people, with their multi religions and ethnicities, complex histories of deep seated distrust, including some who have killed and brutalized others, to sit down together and smoke peace pipes and play “All You Need Is Love”?

I think maybe we don’t appreciate how hard the process is. Who are we to lecture their leadership? Look at our own divided mess here.

Of course the war and its aftermath were handled poorly. I don’t hear anyone disputing that. But we are where we are. And it just seems to me that we should hope and pray that these more optimistic assessments coming from various quarters to be realistic. It is in the interest of all decent people that we succeed. The situation is no doubt fragile and this is no time for popping corks. But maybe it is a time for hope.