David Brooks plagiarizes idea of Ambassador Kiesling: US can't win in Iraq

Compare and contrast:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10160-2004May8?language=printer

To Win the Peace, We Must 'Lose' the War
Find a Credible Iraqi Leader, and Hand Him Victory

By John Brady Kiesling

Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page B04


The deadliest illusion about warfare is that the aim of war is military victory. The true aim of war is to accomplish the political, economic or security goals for which it was fought. In a war competently waged for rational ends, one could rationally expect that America's aims would best be achieved through dominance on the battlefield followed by the dignified establishment of a new and better order. But in a war like the one in Iraq, which is based on assumptions since proven false, we cannot win by being victorious.

Any selfish motives aside, America's war aim remains the creation of a viable Iraqi state. Ideally, that state would serve as a democratic model to its repressive neighbors, but at a minimum American interests require that the new Iraqi state not harbor terrorists or pose a threat to its neighbors; that it renounce nuclear weapons, long-range missiles and nerve gas; and that it exercise an effective monopoly on violence within its own territory.

My resignation from the U.S. Foreign Service in February 2003 was driven by my conviction that this minimum aim was unachievable. I was certain that the Iraq of 2004 would bear no resemblance to the Germany or Japan of 1946. Long before the publication of the awful photos from Abu Ghraib, we Americans lacked the legitimacy in the eyes of the Islamic world to be accepted as liberators rather than occupiers. Nor did we possess any magic toolbox of democracy-building to substitute for the slow, bloody evolution of democracies elsewhere. There was no external enemy -- no Red Army at the gates -- to validate us as the lesser of two evils. Iraq's internal schisms were too deep for quick fixes, and the highly touted Iraqi George Washingtons who trailed behind our tanks were irrelevant or fraudulent.

But now we seem stuck. If we hand over power to an Iraqi government on June 30, we doom it from the outset. Legitimacy is the missing link -- that moral/social capital that causes a population to obey authority by instinct rather than compulsion. America's democratic legitimacy stops at our borders. We cannot bestow legitimacy, nor can the United Nations, acting on our behalf. Iraq's own sources of legitimacy will not suffice. Elections have always been rigged in Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's divine mantle does not cover the Sunnis or Kurds, or even all Shiites. Iraq's hereditary rulers long ago lost their hold. Tribal authority is precisely that. And there is no outside threat to rally Iraqi nationalism....



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/11BROO.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

OP-ED COLUMNIST
For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must Lose
By DAVID BROOKS

This has been a crushingly depressing period, especially for people who support the war in Iraq. The predictions people on my side made about the postwar world have not yet come true. The warnings others made about the fractious state of post-Saddam society have.

It's still too soon to declare the Iraq mission a failure. Some of the best reporting out of Iraq suggests that many Iraqis have stared into the abyss of what their country could become and have decided to work with renewed vigor toward the democracy that both we and they want.

Nonetheless, it's not too early to begin thinking about what was clearly an intellectual failure. There was, above all, a failure to understand the consequences of our power. There was a failure to anticipate the response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate. They resent us for our power and at the same time expect us to be capable of everything. There was a failure to understand the effect our power would have on other people around the world. We were so sure we were using our might for noble purposes, we assumed that sooner or later, everybody else would see that as well. Far from being blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism.

Just after World War II, there were Americans who were astute students of the nature and consequences of American power. America's midcentury leaders — politicians like F.D.R. and Harry Truman, as well as public intellectuals like Reinhold Niebuhr and James Burnham — had seen American might liberate death camps. They had also seen Americans commit wartime atrocities that surpass those at Abu Ghraib....

Actually, they just resent being attacked, killed, and tortured.

How did this asshat get a column? :eyes:

American power is more of an influence on people's feelings about us than our alleged freedoms.

Brooks considers it an 'intellectual failure' and not a moral one. That's the entire crux. His column is as befuddled as the ethics he is basing it on.

I didn't mean to suggest he came anywhere near the reasonableness and subtlety of Kiesling's essay in Sunday's Post, just that the basic idea--we have to "lose" to win--is not an original idea. I think Brooks should have cited Kiesling's column, which he must have read (or he's even less worth his salt as a columnist than we all thought).

the spin on this is magnificent--now it will become a virtue to lose, and the Bushies will be strutting around gloating over the completeness of their victory!

Brooks is the king clown in this bunch.