Jim Lehrer - Iraq: What Now?

[Magical]

Read the discussion...

Snip....

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Mearsheimer, in general terms, is this going to work?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No, the United States is basically in a situation where it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. If we get tough on the Iraqis as we're doing now, tough on the insurgents, it's likely to backfire on us. What it's going to do, is it's going to enrage more of the population and make them more sympathetic to the Iraqis. And even if we shut this down in the short-term, we still have the long-term problem that we have no political institution inside Iraq that we can turn power over to on July 1. We also suffer greatly from the fact that the Iraqi security forces that we have been building up over the past year are effectively melting away and many of those forces are joining insurgents.

It's very hard to see how getting tough with the Iraqis is going to solve the problem. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to me that it is going to work if we back off either because then we'll show weakness and the Iraqi people will tend to bandwagon with the insurgents. The insurgents will grow stronger. So we're in a hopeless situation. Either way we turn we lose.

Snip...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/iraq_4-7.html

[Paul Hood]

1. Thanks for posting this.

I read the transcript. They don't all agree with the part you excerpted but they don't sound much more optimistic either.