From the jaws of defeat

by | Nov 3, 2007


The Sunday Times in its lead editorial:

Is no news good news or bad news? In Iraq, it seems good news is deemed no news….

The instinct of too many people is that if Iraq is going badly we should get out because it is going badly and if it is getting better we should get out because it is getting better. This is a catastrophic miscalculation. Iraq is getting better. That is good, not bad, news.

Victor Davis Hanson:

In the recent silence about Iraq (apparently no bad news is no news at all), we fail to appreciate that we are witnessing one of the most dramatic turnabouts in a war in our history, comparable to the 90 day radical change from June to September 1864.

Both expect the Democrats to suffer. The Times:

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster.

Davis Hanson:

There will be fundamental political adjustments… [such as] having the entire leadership of the Democratic either ignore Iraq, claim the victory was not worth the commensurate cost of the last four plus years, or take proprietorship over Gen. Petraeus’s success…

If Iraq is stable by spring of next year, the entire political landscape here at home will be altered.

Author

  • David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.

    View all posts

More from Global Dashboard

Let’s make climate a culture war!

Let’s make climate a culture war!

by | Sep 29, 2021

If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad?  No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...