The war in Iraq was launched with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results. Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold

If they want a war, we are the sons of war. Iraqi insurgent's posting on a website

The Iraq Study Group, of course, released its report last week, and apparently it is going to be wholly disregarded by the administration. The group that met this week to "discuss the shift in strategy," was the same group that was the architect of the current benighted policy and strategy. This seems to me, to say the very least, problematic. The group consists of Rumsfeld (who is not quite done yet), Cheney and others, and has already shown itself resistant to advice and quite immutable in their understanding and implementation of "victory and democracy" for Iraq. We, as the Iraq Study, pointed out, are involved in an insurgent war, now a civil war, that is entirely of our own creating. As any military historian knows, there are two approaches to an insurgency: scorched earth, like the quote that inspired this blog's title--the Caledonian chieftan said of the Romans, "They make a desert and call it peace"; the other approach is diplomacy, with all interested parties involved. You don't pick and choose who you talk to: you talk to everybody--Shiite milita, Sunni insurgent, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and the list goes on. I don't think the administration will choose either option. A scorched earth policy is morally and ethically untenable (not that this administration hasn't entertained that idea, but we don't have the troops, and no one who wants a political future will call for a draft), and like middle-school children, the adminstration is inclined to talk to those who agree with our policy (or at least are not vocally against it). As Jim Baker, and even the Machiavellian Henry Kissinger, noted, you "must talk to your enemies." I don't see this happening, and I see a very bleak future for Iraq if policy and strategy has not changed radically within 90 days. I am despairing at this point.