Quote of the Day

The administration, then, must match its goals in Iraq to the resources it is prepared to deploy. Since it cannot unify Iraq or stop the civil war, it should work with the regions that have emerged. Where no purpose is served by a continuing military presence — in the Shiite south and in Baghdad — America and its allies should withdraw.

As an alternative to using Shiite and American troops to fight the insurgency in Iraq’s Sunni center, the administration should encourage the formation of several provinces into a Sunni Arab region with its own army, as allowed by Iraq’s Constitution. Then the Pentagon should pull its troops from this Sunni territory and allow the new leaders to establish their authority without being seen as collaborators.

Peter Galbraith, in the New York Times today, echoing what has become painfully obvious to anyone serious about getting the most out of what's left of our disastrous intervention in Iraq. It's time to set in motion a plan for significant troop drawdowns and redeployments. Read the whole thing. For Galbraith, the only thing we can do now is to try to "keep Al Qaeda from creating a base from which it can plot attacks on the United States." We should go about doing this not by maintaining 130,000 boots on the ground throughout Iraq or by shifting more troops to Baghdad, but "by placing a small “over the horizon” force in Kurdistan."

For more on Galbraith see here. This guy played a big role in uncovering Saddam's Anfal campaign against the Kurds back in 1988 and was a big supporter of the U.S. invasion back in 2003. We should be heeding his advice.