I Hope, Therefore it Will Work

Others have already commented on this piece by Donald Stoker in Foreign Policy (see here and here) but I want to take a bit of a different angle. According to Stoker:

The cold, hard truth about the Bush administration’s strategy of “surging” additional U.S. forces into Iraq is that it could work. Insurgencies are rarely as strong or successful as the public has come to believe. Iraq’s various insurgent groups have succeeded in creating a lot of chaos. But they’re likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term. Sending more American troops into Iraq with the aim of pacifying Baghdad could provide a foundation for their ultimate defeat, but only if the United States does not repeat its previous mistakes. [italics mine]

Last time I checked, sound policy needs to be based on the likelihood of success rather than on wishful thinking about how it could work.

Posted by Kingston