Quote Originally Posted by Rank amateur View Post
This observation was very interesting. How do you create "breathing space" without creating dependency? (The Bible talks about giving a man fish and teaching him to fish. Nowhere does it say that if you fish for him he'll eventually insist on doing all the work himself.)
dependency, which is happening. Takes time. Some people wean more easily than others; in the ME, it'll be pretty slow. All we could ever do was open the window, crawling through it is up to the Iraqis -- who are as politically diverse and fractious as a bunch of Americans. Herding cats come to mind...

Still, that's a minor problem. The flaw in her argument is the paragraph in the article following the one you cited:
"And herein lies the cause for concern. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki government appears largely unwilling or unable to take advantage of the space created by improved security to move toward political accommodation, provide for the basic needs of the Iraqi people and lay the foundation for stability — and its own legitimacy. And the Bush administration appears to lack a strategy for getting it to do so."
Perhaps I missed it but I didn't see her prescription for such a strategy in convincing a sovereign government to do ones bidding. Much less an address of the issues of doing so.

As has been often said, any idiot can surface a problem; the genius provides a solution.