Newt Gingrich, who thinks seriously about strategy (of all sorts) and is no peacenik, worries in a Newsweek interview that the allies are losing the peace in Iraq:
Sitting in his office in downtown Washington, Gingrich searched on his computer for the Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority, set up in Baghdad to oversee the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq. “I’m told over there that CPA stands for ‘Can’t Produce Anything’,” says Gingrich. “Home page of the New Iraq,” he quotes. Then: “The opening quote is, of course, by [CPA chief Paul] Bremer. Next quote is by Bush. Next quote is by U.S. Ambassador Steve Mann.” He scrolls down. “Now this is a big breakthrough. They do have the new Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. On the front page. That is a breakthrough,” he repeats, adding, sotto voce, “I have been beating the crap out of them for two weeks on this.” His basic point: where are the Iraqi faces in the New Iraq? “Americans can’t win in Iraq,” he says. “Only Iraqis can win in Iraq.”
Gingrich argues that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. “The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow,” he says. “And that is a very important metric that they just don’t get.” He contends that the civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless, hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The military has the money and the daily contact with the locals. But it’s using the same tactics in a guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
The Pentagon may not listen to InstaPundit's concerns about discretionary infrastructure bucks (see below), but it's supposed to listen to Newt. |
