Finally — a diplomat who doesn’t speak like a diplomat:
A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown “arrogance” and “stupidity” in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America’s war in Iraq.
“We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq,” he said.
But enough about Donald Rumsfeld..:
“We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation,” he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. “The Iraqi government is convinced of this.”
Add this, the comments from members of the bipartisan Iraq commission headed by former Secretary of State Jim Baker, and the high-profile huddle of President George Bush and top generals and what does it suggest?
Some kind of shift is definitely in the offing. The only questions:
- Will the shift be announced (or leaked) before mid-term election day?
- Will the shift be announced in a way that says any change in policy was not at all influenced by a drumbeat of intense criticism from Democrats, Republicans, unflattering portions (which means a lot) of Bob Woodward’s book because these all represent “cut and run” (a phrase conjuring up an images of a junior high school student who just ate beans in the school cafeteria) forces? And will it be announced in a way that suggests that a shift is due to effective management of the war and is the result of choosing the best option so the war ends in “victory?”
Here’s a guess: something about some kind of shift will at least leak out before the elections, to placate Republicans distancing themselves from the White House amid polls showing massive damage to the GOP on the war issue. But it will be coupled with an insistence that the war will be fought until there’s victory and that those who seek to even set a timetable far in advance are advocating a “cut and run” policy that enables Al Qaeda in the terrorist war.
Another guess: none of this may work this time. Weariness and anger over the war and the way it is being conducted seems to run deep.
And, to hedge our best, yet another guess: perhaps there won’t be any kind of change at all and Bush will dig in his heels and the Baker group’s suggested changes will indeed be totally revealed after the election. If there’s no announced or leaked change in at least tactics by election day, the GOP will likely pay a heavy price.
UPDATE: Another reaction to this story from The Real Ugly American.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.