What to Do in Iraq: Responses and Discussion
Responses and Discussion
Article Summary and Author Biography
In this special web-only supplement, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, Kevin Drum, and Marc Lynch respond to the roundtable, "What to Do in Iraq."
Essay
Can anything -- international mediation, regional collaboration, decentralization, or constitutional negotiations -- save Iraq from a full-fledged civil war and the Bush administration from a foreign policy fiasco?
Essay
Most discussions of U.S. policy in Iraq assume that it should be informed by the lessons of Vietnam. But the conflict in Iraq today is a communal civil war, not a Maoist "people's war," and so those lessons are not valid. "Iraqization," in particular, is likely to make matters worse, not better.
See also: "What to Do In Iraq: A Roundtable," a debate including Biddle, Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, and Leslie H. Gelb.
"What to Do In Iraq: Responses and Discussion," a debate including Biddle, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, Marc Lynch, Kevin Drum, and Diamond.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
Fred Kaplan is the "War Stories" columnist for Slate and the author of The Wizards of Armageddon.
Kevin Drum is a contributing writer for The Washington Monthly and author of the blog "Political Animal" at www.washingtonmonthly.com.
Marc Lynch is an associate professor in the department of political science at Williams College and the author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. He writes the blog "Abu Aardvark" at www.abuaardvark.com.
Stephen Biddle is a Senior Fellow in Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Military Power.
Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, and the author of Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
