Iraq -- Getting in/Getting out

Foreign Affairs magazine, in the current issue, reports:

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

Meanwhile, at the Boston Review, we have an article by Barry R. Posen, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT. He is the author of Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks and The Sources of Military Doctrine.

Some people argue that the United States should disengage because the war was a mistake in the first place, or because it is morally wrong. I do not propose to pass judgment on these questions one way or the other. My case for disengagement is different: it is forward-looking and based on American national interests. The war as it has evolved (and is likely to evolve) badly serves those interests. A well-planned disengagement will serve them much better by reducing military, economic, and political costs.

And over at the Center for American Progress, there is a plan for Strategic Deployment:

The United States needs to pursue a plan of Strategic Redeployment. Strategic Redeployment is a threat-based strategy to target our efforts against global terrorist networks and bring greater stability to Iraq and its neighborhood. This approach will minimize the damage to the United States in the short term, mitigate the drawbacks of our eventual withdrawal from Iraq, and secure our interests in the long term. Strategic Redeployment differs from other plans for what to do in Iraq by recognizing that Iraq is now connected to a broader battle against global terrorist networks - even though it was not before the Bush administration's invasion. Strategic Redeployment also means re-engaging our allies, building a platform for multilateral cooperation that counters the terrorist threats we face, rather than relying on ad-hoc "coalitions of the willing."