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New Ambassador to Iraq Done Little with Life But Iraq Mistakes
Rule No. 1: When you find yourself in a hole, first thing to do is stop digging it deeper.So, with all the good news in Iraq these days (didn’t you see, Disney is buying up land for an oil-based water park), you’d think that some new thinking might be just the thing.
Looking back on events since 2003 (looting, dissolution of civil society, disbanding the army and police, losing trillions of dollars, Sunni-Shia-Kurd slaughter, civil war, Stalingrad on the Tigris in Falluja, more civil war, Abu Ghraid, failed reconstruction, failed US base strategy, failed US elections strategy, failed US oil strategy, failed US Kurd reconciliation strategy, World’s Largest and Most Expensive White Elephant Embassy, Iran-sympathetic autocracy emerging, etc) it sure seems that the US has made its share of mistakes.
So let’s look at the resume of the guy Obama wants as the new American Ambassador to this pile of failed foreign policy doo doo, Brett McGurk:
After law school and clerking, McGurk was a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.
Advisor to the last three US Ambassadors to Iraq: Jim Jeffries, Ryan Crocker, and Christopher Hill.
National Security Council, director for Iraq and later as senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lead negotiator for the 2008 US-Iraq security agreement that extended the U.S. troop presence there until the end of 2011 and leader of the failed negotiations in 2011 to extend the US troop presence in Iraq even longer.
McGurk is 38 years old and has never done any job other than help fuck up Iraq on behalf of the United States. Dude only graduated in 1999. Despite essentially doing nothing but Iraq stuff his entire adult life, McGurk has also avoided learning any Arabic. You’d kind of think that maybe that wouldn’t be the resume for the next guy in charge of cleaning up some of his own mistakes, like maybe you’d want someone who had some… depth or experience or broad knowledge or understanding of something other than failure in that God-forsaken country. Normally when you are a hand maiden to failure you don’t get promoted, but then again, this is the State Department. This is almost as good as Harriet Miers.
How could this possibly not work out?
Oh yeah, a lot of Iraqis don’t like McGurk because he is seen as a toady for Prime Minister Malaki, our brother freedom fighter in Baghdad. “Many Iraqi players outside Maliki’s circle view McGurk as an advocate for the prime minister. That may not be a fair characterization, but the perceptions are there on the ground. There’s the possibility that this sentiment could undermine our perception of neutrality and therefore our ability to effectively mediate disputes between all Iraqi factions,” one expert said.
Also, Gordon Gecko called and wants his hairstyle back. Party on, McGurk!
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cranston said...
1The Gordon Gecko hair works for me.Plus he has the runs on the board. NOT!
Does anyone know where you put the Huey from the Embassy in Saigon? You might need it shortly.
03/29/12 5:18 AM | Comment Link
Chappie said...
2This reminds me of the Dr Seus story, “If I Ran the Circus”. Young Morris McGurk has great plans for the Circus McGurkus. Little Morris McGurk is convinced that if he could just clear out the rusty cans, the dead tree, and the old cars, nothing would prevent him from using the lot for the amazing, world-beating, Circus McGurkus. The more elaborate Morris’ dreams about the circus become, the more they depend on the sleepy-looking and innocent Sneelock, who stands outside his ramshackle store sucking on a pipe, oblivious to the fate that awaits him in the depths of Morris’s imagination. An allegory for US – Iraqui relations…?
03/30/12 12:13 AM | Comment Link
jim at rangeragainstwar said...
3PVB,
You call Fallujah, the battle there of as Stalingrad, but i prefer to see it as Warsaw when the Jews rose up and fought the germans to the death. An organised Army against a hodge podge of desperate resistance.
jim
03/30/12 9:25 PM | Comment Link
Sylvester T said...
4Brett is a good guy, but it is unlikely he will be confirmed, as anyone who was in Baghdad in 2004 knows how Brett was caught having sex on the roof of the Republican Palace. The Palace was the HQ of the Coalition Provisional Authority. This is the equivalent of a political officer being caught having sex on the roof of the Embassy. In an Islamic country (or anywhere), this is not acceptable.
04/10/12 8:31 AM | Comment Link
Billions Wasted, Again: State Likely to Give Up on Costly Efforts to Train Iraqi Police | Isenberg Institute of Strategic Satire said...
5[…] to Iraq Jeffrey, who is desperately seeking to curtail his assignment if State can find a successor whom Congress will endorse, mumbled “I think that with the departure of the military, the […]
05/15/12 5:17 AM | Comment Link
Billions Wasted, Again: State Likely to Give Up on Costly Efforts to Train Iraqi Police – Ms Sparky said...
6[…] to Iraq Jeffrey, who is desperately seeking to curtail his assignment if State can find a successor whom Congress will endorse, mumbled “I think that with the departure of the military, the […]
05/15/12 11:12 AM | Comment Link
Iraq snapshot (C.I.) | thecommonillsbackup said...
7[…] Listening to him list his part in one Iraqi failure after another, it was difficult not to remember Peter Van Buren’s observations last March: McGurk is 38 years old and has never done any job other than help fuck up Iraq on behalf of the […]
06/7/12 12:44 AM | Comment Link
The fact check! | thecommonillsbackup said...
8[…] to him list his part in one Iraqi failure after another, it was difficult not to remember Peter Van Buren’s observations last March: McGurk is 38 years old and has never done any job other than help fuck up Iraq on behalf of the […]
06/7/12 11:02 AM | Comment Link
international idiot of the week (Rebecca) | thecommonillsbackup said...
9[…] to him list his part in one Iraqi failure after another, it was difficult not to remember Peter Van Buren’s observations last March: McGurk is 38 years old and has never done any job other than help fuck up Iraq on behalf of the […]
06/7/12 11:03 AM | Comment Link
William said...
10Yes, it is true, he had sex on the roof. Everyone knew it. I was there, not on the roof, but afterwards when everyone was talking about it and he was walking around like cool man on campus.
He does lack key leadership jobs and it appears his expierience has been handed to him, but he found these positions because people like him and he does a good job. I will give him that – he is likable and does good work.
He also has a talent for attracting the ladies.
06/14/12 1:50 PM | Comment Link