“Whether your goal is simply disarmament or audacious transformation doesn’t really matter. Because in the end they will both require the same means: breaking apart Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, its governing structure, party system and intelligence networks, and replacing them with a long-term U.S. occupation of Iraq — under Gen. Tommy Franks — a la the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan. A hit-and-run invasion is not an option.”

— Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, February 5, 2003

“This is not Germany 1945. America is much more radioactive in this region. We don’t have infinite time.”

—Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, August 20, 2003

Well, it’s great to see the New York Times’s foreign affairs columnist swing, however belatedly, into the camp of those of us who have been arguing for years that America’s best decision would be to allow Iraqis themselves to take the lead in liberating and governing their own country. It took Mr. Friedman about half a year to pivot from calling for a “long-term” occupation by America of Iraq “a la” Germany to declaring that “This is not Germany.” The Bush administration, and its top man in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, seem also to be coming around to this view, however slowly. The point is not that America needs to retreat from Iraq immediately. There are still plenty of tasks there that require American military power and money. But the Iraqis themselves, with their local knowledge and language skills, will be more effective than Americans can be in rooting out the loyalists to Saddam and the terrorist operatives sent by neighboring states. The effort to build a free democracy in Iraqi, while benefiting from American assistance, is almost by definition a task for the Iraqi people.