"Stephen D. Biddle" is an American author, historian, policy analyst and columnist whose work concentrates on Foreign policy of the United States/U.S. foreign policy. Currently, he is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the George Washington University. He is perhaps best known for his award-winning 2004 book Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, published through Princeton University Press. He also has worked in groups under Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus forming U.S. counter-insurgency policy.

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Turning over the responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces . . . threatens to exacerbate the communal tensions that underlie the conflict and undermine the power-sharing negotiations needed to end it.

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They say we have to be perfect at everything at the same time. We can't afford to be perfect at everything.... There's a fixed size of the pie.

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I think it is probably a good general description of American foreign policy that we don't have as much control as we think we do.

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Right now the policy in Iraq is to stay until and unless the national military is capable of waging war on its own.

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Removing the United States from the scene means eliminating the player most loyal to the idea of a stable, heterogeneous Iraq.

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Although it is being fought at low intensity for now, it could easily escalate if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices.

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It represents a misreading of the nature of the problem. When we make these forces stronger, we make the underlying problem worse, not better. We're throwing gas on the political fire.

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Unfortunately the nature of this conflict is that we're going to have to stay there longer than we would like.

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Given that strengthening a military they view as their enemy strengthens their resistance creates political problems -- the first thing we need to do is slow down, rather than speed up.

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