Guiliani’s Iraq Strategy

I was thumbing through the latest Business Week earlier today and came across an interview with “presidential hopeful”, former mayor of NY, Rudy Guiliani.

His stance on Iraq is “clear, hold and build”.

Beautiful, catchy phraseology, but not strategy.

Strategy is something like how we can achieve something in Iraq which contributes to the US being a liberal democracy in 2030. And is the cost of keeping Iraq in our future worth the benefit.

Rudy says nothing about vision for an end state in Iraq.

He states we should clear the place, I do not know if he means depopulate the place or move them all to concentration camps, but “clearing” is a tactic. He does not state what it does in the context of a set of broader objectives.

The next groundless tactic is “hold”. This is easy if you just depopulated the place.

Finally, “rebuild” the place. Okay, this is good for Halliburton, like the other tactics are good for expending money on weapons which yield no effects, but what do we build to?

The opposition set of tactics is to “cut and run”. I can see the strategic value of saving lives and money.

We need to ask each candidate what exactly they propose to do and how it leads to a better future for the US.

Leave the catchy phrases at home.