Send ’em Bob Vila!

Andrew Cory has a list of things we need to get done before we should consider leaving Iraq.

The idea that we should be mostly out of there within a year is absurd (presumably this is so there aren’t any pesky headlines like “Two More US Soldiers Killed” within, oh, two months of the election). It takes a lot of time to build a nation – – hell, I could make a case that the bit of nation building that started in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776 still isn’t done.

Anyhow, I like Andrew’s list. It covers the basics of what the Iraqis will need to get their economy and their democracy and economy going again. I assume that when Andrew says that, say, 85% of the country needs to have potable water, he’s talking about 85% of the people, not the geography. It is, of course, far from clear that all this can work in a country of Iraq’s complexity – – what of the Kurds, to name just one concern – – but it would be nice to have a clear idea of just where we’re going with all this, a clear idea which doesn’t seem forthcoming when the Administration apparently can’t figure out just who’s going to be in charge of all this nation-building in the first place.

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