Surging Optimism?

A very well-reasoned piece from this month's Foreign Affairs laying out the continuing follies of our military and diplomatic strategy in Iraq. As laid out by Steven Simon, the Bush Administration's touting of the "troop surge" as the key to a stable Iraq

"fails to account for any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq."

If the anonymous Administration sources quoted in this piece are to be believed, the White House and DoD are once again ignoring the concerns of the career diplomats and foreign affairs experts at State and agencies regarding the medium and long term impacts of strengthening the Sunni tribal leaders without making strong efforts to encourage / demand their integration into the political process.

Looks like McCain's line about 100 years might not be too far off of the mark if we continue down this road...