I thought about this on my drive home last night. If you embrace the economic cause and treatment in Iraq, you are in effect correctly identifying a problem, but incorrectly nominating a solution.

An analogy: The Titanic sunk, because of improper heat-treating techniques of it's hull plates. If the hull plates weren't as brittle, the collision with the iceberg wouldn't have caused as much trauma. Therefore, once you have the collision, wouldn't it make sense to sit the entire crew down and have some nice classes on hull plate heat-treating? Of course, at that point, treating the cause would have no positive impact on outcomes.

So, if one wishes to treat the cause of the current violence in Iraq, you need to apply the tourniquet of "security" first. And, like a tourniquet, you are forced to cause damage in order to save the victim. Then, you can treat the base causes that "may" improve the long-term situation.