Stardate 20031113.1500

(On Screen): Gary writes:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 -  The United States wants to speed up the transition in Iraq to self-rule and is consulting with Iraqis to do just that, President Bush said Thursday. He did not elaborate, but the U.S. administrator in Iraq has returned to Baghdad, reportedly with a proposal to hold elections in the first half of 2004 and leave the drafting of a constitution for later.

It looks like Bush just blinked in the face of sustained guerrilla warfare in Iraq. Not a good sign.

I don't think that's it.

There's been criticism about "The US not having a plan for after the war"; it's true we didn't reallly have one, but that was because it wasn't possible to plan for it. We had no way of knowing what the situation would be until we were already there, if for no other reason than we had no idea what damage would be caused during the war.

Also, what we're trying to do there is pretty unprecedented. It's true that it is similar to what we did in Germany and Japan, but there are a lot of ways in which it's different.

That means we're making a lot of this up as we go. And it also means we have to learn what works and what doesn't, and acknowledge what isn't working and try something else. A pig-headed refusal to acknowledge failure is the best way to let it grow to catastrophic failure.

These kind of changes have happened before. It became clear that Garner wasn't up to the job of Viceroy after about a month and a half, and Bremer was sent to take over. He's done a much better job.

The Iraqi council was an improvisation/experiment by Bremer, and it had mixed results. Some were good, some were not so good, and it's to Bremer's credit that he's recognized that it needs to be changed.

These are not necessarily signs of moral weakness or cowardice. Rather, they're signs of intellectual integrity and flexibility. An honest man admits when an idea didn't turn out to be what he thought it would be, and changes it.