Looking for Option Number Three


It's not the middle road
I liked Warren Myer's take.

What Althouse misses is this:  American's are not necessarily ready to give up on the war in Iraq, but they are ready to give up on the Administration's management of it.  One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  This is how many folks, including myself, see our effort in Iraq.  We beat our head over and over against the same wall in the same place, expecting different results, and we don't get them.  People need to see an acknowledgment that the current approach is not working, so we are going to try X instead.

In this context, "stay the course" looks less attractive.  Because no one can seem to communicate what the extra time is going to buy us.  What will be done in three more years that was not done in the last three?  Or will we have to support the Iraqi's for decades against their own desire to tear themselves apart, so twenty years from now we can say "well, it took all our capacity and the military got nothing else done, but we finally converted one bad regime out of about fifty out there to a democracy."

I am willing to give the administration one more shot to define success in Iraq and a plan for getting there.  Right now, many Americans feel like the only two choices are "retreat now, with Iraq still a mess" and "retreat in five years, with Iraq still a mess and after a lot more casualties."  The administration is going to have to define an option 3 to get people back on board.

Long time readers will remember I don't like either/or choices, so I definitely agree we need an option 3. I haven't been real happy with the "management of the occupation." For a while I was thinking, okay, I'm not an expert and maybe there are things I am not seeing. But that looks less and less like what happened.

On the other hand, we have done one thing tremendously right and we need to make sure that it happens again and again. Those images of women with ink stained thumbs will do more to shake the pillars of Islam than any armored division we could put in the country.

I am a great believer in the importance of aunts and grandmothers. Part of it is because I knew my first remarkable woman from before I was born. Part of it is because in the American Southern families that I know work extremely well, "Momma" is the one person who can veto "Poppa." And finally it is because I grew up next to the Diné and Hopi, whose men know that it is best to take the ladies' counsel if the men wish to show wisdom.

Everything that I have read, all the talks I have had with people since 9-11, it has all convinced me that the missing piece in Muslim culture is respect for the ladies.

Which is why I am amazed that most of the "feminist" organizations in the West are willing to overlook the indignities visited on women in Muslim nations.

I say let them vote.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - November 14, 2006 at 06:42 PM  Tag


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