His reluctance to use the military for nation building is probably part of the reason we had problems in Iraq for as long as we did. He might have thought it ought primarily to be a State department job - in principle, I would agree - but in practice, the State department simply doesn't have the right kind of staff to do it.
Heck, until Rice started nearly requiring it for promotion, no one in the State department even wanted to learn Arabic.
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winterfish
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Date: 2008-12-07 03:51 am (UTC)Heck, until Rice started nearly requiring it for promotion, no one in the State department even wanted to learn Arabic.