We Owe It to Iraq to Set Aside Partisan Politics

Note

The following letter was written in response to Clive Crook's column "America's Wishful Thinking" which appeared in the Financial Times on September 13, 2007.

Sir, Clive Crook’s article on Iraq (“America’s wishful thinking”, September 13) provides a lucid analysis and rightly points to the imperative for a bipartisan, “centrist” solution.

I served in Iraq with the Marines and I have watched events unfold with great dismay. Iraq has been inaccurately described by the left as a quagmire. To my mind the only quagmire that exists is in Washington. The situation in Iraq was never as bad as it seemed in the media, based on my contacts and experience in the country; but, having said that, it was never going as well as the administration and some military leaders would have liked us to believe, either.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats, most of whom lack any military or combat experience, are now locked into opposing ideological positions and are dangerously incurious as to the real ground-truths in Iraq. They need to shelve notions of final victory and get down to the long, hard business of exhausting every avenue to prevent the worst-case scenarios from unfolding before our eyes.

This is the very least owed to 27m Iraqis, and to the many soldiers and Marines who are daily risking their lives.

Paul Kane,

Fellow, International Security Program,

John F. Kennedy School of Government,

Harvard University,

Cambridge, MA 02138, US