Quote du Jour

New Yorker writer George Packer ponders the Iraq conundrum:

The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem. Both moral obligation and self-interest require that Americans accept the consequences of the war and, if the Administration will not, imagine new ways to resolve it. Leslie Gelb and Senator Joseph Biden, in an Op-Ed they have written for the Times, propose that the United States, with the involvement of Iraq’s neighbors, broker a political deal among the country’s three main groups, based on terms set down in Iraq’s new constitution: a division into three autonomous regions, a weak federal capital in Baghdad, and a fair share of the oil revenue for the Sunnis. The premise is that if the Iraqis are to have a chance of living together in the future, they need a period of separation now. This is, admittedly, the logic of desperation, raising a thousand questions and provoking as many vexing problems. Nor is it entirely a new idea. But, after three years of war and a chronic inability of leaders in both countries to think beyond next month, a fundamental change of policy deserves to be taken seriously. If there are no more Wise Men in Washington, can there at least be wisdom?