To follow up on my previous post, there is a short article by Michael Barone that notes some of the reasons for the softness the American public is showing. He also links to an editorial on the website for Der Spiegel, which is here also, about how much worse things are in Europe. The one consolation for concerned Americans whenever we consider the dark waters the American people are allowing our nation to drift to is that Europe is much further along than we are in almost all respects of weakness (economic, military, demographic, cultural, etc.). There will always be the final hope that Europe going into the abyss will at last wake up the American people just before we fall in.
On the political side, the wife of wannabe First Lady William Clinton Rodham is continuing the Democrats strategery of trying to bring about defeat in Iraq, like they did with Vietnam, while not being blamed for it, like they did with Vietnam. Her comments that it’s Bush’s job to extricate us from Iraq are classic liberalism, all political maneuver no substance. If it’s Bush’s job then she needs to prevail on her party to get out of his way and let him handle it. If however, she doesn’t think Bush is making the right choices and needs to be told to then it isn’t his job and she shares responsibility for the outcome. Again, though the Democrats want neither of those things. The Democrats want to hide the fact the jaws of defeat we are struggling to pull victory from are their own. Then if Bush can manage to pull victory from their jaws of defeat they can still claim they were in favor of it all along, they just had some “constructive criticism”, but if Bush cannot then they can step aside and let Bush take the blame. Either way, politically they win; our soldiers and our nation will always be second to that.
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continuing the Democrats strategery of trying to bring about defeat in Iraq,. You think that America can win in Iraq? Morally and militarily, you are spent.
ReplyDeleteIf you stay you are just provoking the violence with your presence. Pull out and you leave a country in the grip of the very people you would least like to see in charge.
Catch 22 of your own making.
Of course we can win in Iraq. All we need do is leave a decent government (not necessarily democratic) in charge in Iraq. The Sunnis will eventually either cooperate or be removed from the picture. Already their population has fallen by something like 20-25% (while Iraq's has grown something like 10%). As with Kosovo where we and Europe allowed the Albanians to ethnically cleanse the Serbs, it'll calm down with time as the Sunnis are diminished.
ReplyDeleteThe key thing will be to not withdraw before a decent government is fully established. This problem is somewhat of Bush's own making, can't ignore the role that the utter stupidity of the Sunnis played either, but he simply moved to slowly and with too much deference to the Iraqi political scene. He is at last starting to do things he should have had our military doing since 2004, like dealing with Al-Sadr, countering the Iranians, giving our soldiers freer rules of engagement, and so on.
We may still lose (more accurately the Iraqis will lose it but it will be seen as our loss also which is what matters), but at the moment the only thing that will cause us to lose are the policies of the Democrats. It also matters if we are seen fighting to the end or cutting and running. If it is the former we will still be trusted as an ally since we at least stayed with Iraq until the end. If it's the latter we will be seen to be continuing our habit of running when the going gets tough and thus not worth trusting (especially not with other great powers entering the picture).
Yes indeed the population is exhausted, which as I've said before is truly pathetic. Europe can go to sleep in collective self-exhaustion, from I don't know memories of WWII or something, since we were there to pick up the slack. There won't be anyone to take over for us if we do the same. If we don't change then the world is heading for some troubled times, as can partly be seen by my addition to the post. Thanks for the comment.
Change of plans, made a new post and an extra comment instead of adding it to the old post.
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