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June 28, 2004 The Handover I was going to praise the surprise handover, but Spoons already expressed my thoughts perfectly, writing that, while we went about the whole thing backwards... ...if we're going to do it this way, I think doing it by surprise two days early is brilliant.I'd still have preferred we follow the US model for building a democracy - i.e., turn over local control>>regional control>>national control...in that order - but we didn't. As long as we didn't, the early handover was a stroke of genius, in that it denies the insurgents a chance to make one last stand - to derail the handover. One also has to like the attitude displayed by the new Iraqi Prime Minister... Asked by reporters attending the ceremony about why the handover was stepped up by two days, an Iraqi official said Prime Minister Allawi requested it because "every day matters" and they were ready to crack down on violence.Translation: the insurgents are put on notice...the gloves are coming off, and judgement day is coming. Or, so we hope. We can only wait and see.... UPDATE: Well, others don't think it's such a good move... If you needed convincing that the situation has deteriorated and the Iraqis are far from prepared to assume sovereignty, you need look no further, the Bush Administration proved it today.If I understand Ezra correctly, he argues that the continued ability of free people to do bad things constitutes US inability to "protect the country" and "control" events. Of course, to excercise that degree of "protection" and "control", we would have had to bomb the opposition into oblivion, and enforce the harshest of martial law. I doubt that's a position Ezra would advocate, so I'm left wondering why Ezra is suggesting that the presence of insurgents constitutes a failure of US policy. Further, Ezra seems to look down on the idea of taking away an opportunity for the insurgents to grandstand. The point here is not to gain the "political benefit of the transfer", but to transfer power in an effective manner. I'm a bit surprised that the administration critics would complain that the Bush administration passed up a chance to grandstand politically, for a more peaceful, safe handover of power. Actually, I'm not terribly surprised. For whatever reason, a great deal of the issues in the Iraq war are seen through the very narrow prism of partisan politics. Seen that way, everything anybody does can be criticized....you just have to look at it the right way, you know. |