Thomas E. Ricks was on yesterday's Morning Edition on NPR, discussing his new book, The Gamble . The book focuses on Iraq's 'surge era'.
Wish I could say his interview with Steve Inskeep left me with a good feeling, but I'd be lying. Ricks, who wrote the excellent Fiasco, thinks we're only about halfway through our time in Iraq. He notes that no one in Baghdad think that all the combat troops will be out by 2011.
Some snippets from the interview:
"The point is as long as you have American troops in Iraq, no matter what you call them, they are going to be fighting and dying," Ricks says. "The surge worked tactically — it improved security enormously. But it didn't succeed strategically, politically. And that was its larger goal."
Ricks argues that the Iraq war "was the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy," adding that "we don't yet understand how big a mistake this is."
He paints a bleak long-term picture for Iraq, where the country is no longer an American ally.
"It's not going to be a democracy, it's going to have a surprising level of violence, it's probably going to be an ally of Iran and it's probably going to be ruled by some sort of dictator, some sort of little Saddam," Ricks says.
One thing he mentioned really disturbed me. While giving a talk near Mill Valley, CA - that bastion of liberalism in Marin County - he told his audience he believed that if we drew down the troops too much, genocide would likely result.
The response from the "Gucci liberals"? "So what?" and "Genocide happens all the time."
Enlightened comments from the same people who no doubt donate heavily to Darfur causes and decried our inaction during the Rwandan genocide. Wonderful.
"The events for which this war will be remembered have not yet occurred." -- Thomas Ricks, The Gamble, paraphrasing Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq
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