Instead, I will just say that I would very be interested in seeing links showing that The Plan(TM), or something like it, was seriously considered on ET 18 or more months ago i.e before or during the time when we were formulating the Surge strategy.

Absent that, wouldn't be more accurate to say that JakeS has just unintentionally appropriated, and implicitly validated, major elements of the current US strategy in Iraq?

It validates the reconstruction part of the US strategy. I won't attempt to asses the military part of it, because my information regarding that part is insufficient and so is my expertise in the area. But the emphasis still given to the military component in the official propaganda (see your links, for instance) gives me the impression that the Surge is 1/3 sanity and 2/3 staying the course.

I expressed surprise at the presence of any sanity at all, because frankly I didn't expect that. But that doesn't make it impressive.

Since I didn't sneak peek at the Pentagon's Iraq strategy while formulating mine - and since I haven't kept abreast of the developments in Iraq beyond noting the development in the American casualty figures occasionally, I think it's fair to say that this is a case of parallel evolution. We can argue about who discovered the strategy first, but I am happy to concede the honours, because I haven't seen it spelled out before.

But the major premises - that the central government isn't viable, that there needs to be more building and negotiation and considerably less reliance on purely military solutions have been around since forever, or at least since before I started frequenting the site (which was before the Surge started).

Seriously, you ET'ers need to realize that whatever sources of information you rely on for Iraq have not served you well in this case.

I am not sure I see how they failed us. The task was to come up with a viable strategy for Iraq. We did.

You raised a number of objections in another thread, and I made a number of replies, but I haven't seen anything so far that would kill my plan dead if sufficient political will to implement it existed.

Another task was to determine whether it would be wise for Europe to support the current US stance in Iraq. So far my impression is that it is not.

This is based partially on the fact that the US strategic stance still appears to be sufficiently far removed from what I think would be most effective that it might very well be more effective to use European resources to set up a separate effort. And partly on the fact that the apparent long-term objectives of the US in Iraq (basing rights, containment of Iran, installation of one or more pliable client states, securing the Iraqi oil for US-based corporations, padding the pocketbooks of various and sundry war profiteers, etc.) are not particularly savoury.

Finally, none of the current American stance addresses the part of the problem that resides at least partially outside Iraq, namely documenting and dealing with the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed fairly massively by all sides in the conflict. So far, the US and their European fellow-travellers appear to be in complete denial that there might be a problem here, which is not exactly the most constructive attitude, to put it mildly...

So while our information was incomplete, it wasn't sufficiently incomplete to substantially change the strategic picture; at least not from where I sit.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

Instead, I will just say that I would very be interested in seeing links showing that The Plan(TM), or something like it, was seriously considered on ET 18 or more months ago i.e before or during the time when we were formulating the Surge strategy.

So I went trawling for diaries and stories on Iraq deom 18+ months ago, and I found this:

• An Answer for Iraq Part II by Sven Triloqvist on December 13th, 2006
  
• An Answer for Iraq by Sven Triloqvist on December 13th, 2006
  
• Fixing Iraq (Americans Keep Walking) by cskendrick on November 28th, 2006
  
• Iraq: Handicapping the Baker Report, Part Three by cskendrick on November 26th, 2006
  
• Iraq: Handicapping the Baker Report, Part Two by cskendrick on November 26th, 2006
  
• Iraq: Handicapping the Baker Report, Part One by cskendrick on November 26th, 2006

A few notes: both "plans" were proposed by Americans and were not particularly well received in the comments. Cskendrick's "part 2" contains a putative "neocon dream scenario", part 3 is his own "plan" and "Fixing iraq is his idea of what ETers would propose to do based on feedback to part 3. I have to say that the basic stance of ETers seemed to be "Iraq is FUBAR", so the only reason we propose plans of action for Iraq, if we do, is when provoked with "you need to do something" or "what would you do?".

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes