Look for the miracle

"We don’t need to look very far back to see the mechanism of why these things fail. Rather, all we need to spot is where the miracle needs to occur in order for it to succeed. " Bill Whittle

Interesting commentary on the ISG report:

The Iraqi Miracle
I read through the executive summary and a good deal of the report of the Iraqi Survey Group. And I have read and heard a good deal of commentary and analysis. I am not usually a big fan of turning the name of something into an insult, but I like Rush Limbaugh's "Iraqi Surrender Group."

I was most struck by the group's conclusion that convincing Iran and Syria to become forces for stability in Iraq is one of the keys to success. Success being defined as the removal of US Troops from Iraq - victory in Iraq is apparently not a consideration.

Syria and Iran are currently the primary forces for instability in Iraq. They are supplying weapons, training and probably personnel to the terrorist forces in Iraq. They do not want Iraq to become a stable, secure and successful democracy, and they are working hard to prevent that. A stable, secure and successful democracy in Iraq would be a very bad influence on the citizens of Iran and Syria. They might decide they want that for themselves. Once they see freedom, oppressing them will be that much harder. And wasn't that one of the reasons for invading Iraq in the first place. Eliminate Saddam and his terror supporting oppressive regime, deal with the WMD issue once and for all, establish a democratic Iraq as an example to the rest of Middle East. That was the plan. Now we're supposed to convince the regimes that according to the plan would be taken out by their own people to help us?

While I was reading the report - and the buzz surrounding it, there was a thought in the back of my mind that I needed to try to answer the wishful thinking it was based upon, and then I remembered that the answer had already been given. It had been given before the ISG was even conceived.

Bill Whittle wrote in March 2004

We don’t need to look very far back to see the mechanism of why these things fail. Rather, all we need to spot is where the miracle needs to occur in order for it to succeed.
The phrase that I kept filling in between the line of the ISG report is "and then a miracle occurs."

Whittle's example

We will set up a society where all people work and share equally -- and then a miracle occurs. And all the laziness, deception, hoarding, cheating and stealing that marks human, primate, mammalian and lower animal behavior ceases to exist because the map says so.