A sensible assessment

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution makes a sensible assessment of the situation in Iraq. Basically, he's calling for American forces to, instead of conducting offensive operations, secure areas inside Iraq where civilians would feel safe. Then, over time and simultaneous to an increasing indigenous security force, civilians would become happier and more productive and more willing to assist in defeating terrorists. This is all contigent on having enough troops, something he claims that we do not have.

I, myself, am leaning to the thought that we do not have enough forces inside Iraq in order to secure it in the short term. However, on the other side of the coin, I think that the administration is using an optimization strategy. That is, we have enough troops to allow the Iraqis to grow their own security forces, which will then take over as we fall more and more into support mode. I hope that they know what they're doing.