General Odom on Iraq

General William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency, compares Iraq to Vietnam in Nieman Watchdog. It is a very interesting read. I think both these experiences illustrate the fallacy of viewing circumstances on the ground through the prism of ideology rather than how they really are. The Iraqi people’s politics are probably much more driven by internal dynamics between the various ethnic groups and communities, than by some monolithic drive toward liberty or democracy. It is a fairly trivial observation that we are destined to fail in our goal of establishing a democracy while trying to sort through the complexities of Iraqi politics, the undercurrents of which we barely understand.  All this, it seems to me, was a fairly predictable outcome. The question then really is: what was our exit strategy when we planned this intervention?