Private Hobgoblins
I am not saying we didn't hose this up. No one could defend that position.
Sky admits the CPA simply could not meet these expectations and no amount of hard work from many experienced British and American volunteers could make up for the lack of planning before the invasion. It left the CPA – which was assembled in haste and from scratch – attempting to restore public services, disband the security forces and build new ones, as well as introduce a free market and democracy.But she came in with a specific expectation and agenda and discovered that things were not what they seemed.'No organisation would have been able to implement such an agenda, particularly without the consent of the population'.
She makes a number of valid points that I can agree with, and I give her credit for going out and doing something rather than sitting at home and complaining about it, but I think she is looking at things through the lens of her own "private boarding school" upbringing. She assumes that we could talk this all out. As others have pointed out, even internally initiated nation building and transitions are messy things. If the Iraqi people had done this on their own does she really believe that the Sunnis would have been treated better?I had arrived ready to apologise to every Iraqi for the war. Instead I had listened to a litany of suffering and pain under Saddam for which I was quite unprepared. The mass graves, the details of torture, the bureaucratisation of abuse. The pure banality of evil...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,4794359.storyRetribution is the new law of the land in Libya. Summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and indefinite detention have emerged while the judicial system remains in a state of paralysis.
Guess I find it all a bit self righteous.
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