Yeah, I had read a misleading account that suggested it was more scripted than it was (ie, the answers weren’t practiced). The transcripts of the “damning evidence” did more to convince me than the blog in question. The calls I had with my dad while he was in Bagdad leave me further aware that trying to have a conversation with 10 people in Bagdad in real time requires scripting due to delay. At least if you want to make it coherent. So, yeah, I do believe the guy is genuine, but it still leads to a “so what” for me.
It was a publicity stunt like an ugly guy who posts a picture of himself with his handsome buddy in his personals ad. They picked people, including a public relations officer, for him to talk with. Undoubtedly they selected people with the right views. Again, no shocks here. I suspect it wasn’t hard to find supportive troops (finding unqualifiedly positive troops might have been trickier, I dunno). I don’t have the backing for Scott McClellan billing it as “just typical troops.” It’s obvious to me that this does not mean “pull names out of a hat and let them say whatever they want to,” though it’s equally obvious that that is what they are trying to imply.
I’m not one of the people your post is primarily targeted at. My response to the whole situation was an eyeroll, not outrage.
You have seen some part of Iraq, and probably have access to more reports (and I’d imagine they’re higher priority reads for you) than I do about what’s going on in the rest. I think the success hinges on building local support and knitting it together into a greater whole. I’m skeptical of the top down approach going anywhere good. Though it could work out to be a stable, repressive democracy. Still much of what the author wrote was clearly rhetoric without (even counter to) factual support. Given that he was picked for the pr event, his views are unsurprising.
We’ve chosen to advance the agenda of the largest subset of the population. That is good politics and good strategy. It’s also democracy in action. But this democracy seems likely to be a tyranny of the majority. Our constitution is designed to prevent that. I don’t personally subscribe to the notion that whatever someone wants is what’s best for them. My philosophy here is similar to my philosphy when it comes to giving money to the homeless. I don’t give money to the homeless, but I will give it to charities for the homeless, because I don’t spend money on the homeless to make them happy, I spend it to improve the situation for everyone. I support care not cash. I support human rights before voting rights, see also my recent post on voting.
It just doesn’t seem worth the human lives, massive financial investment, the opportunity cost in disaster response capacity at home, the unrest, or the social displacement of the troops to replace a secular dictatorship with a theocracy. Still, if Allah wills it who are we to gainsay it…