Rob, I think if you take an honest look at your statements here, you might recognize a few problems.
First: “it used to be that we believed in self determination rather than imposing our form of government on every country that we think needs to be improved.” This is a gross overexaggeration of the facts. There are numerous countries out there that could be improved. The U.S. is not imposing on “every” one of them.
As you are really just referring to Iraq here, you also miss the point that the Iraqis themselves have continually voted in support of that which you claim we’re imposing upon them: a representative democracy. In many cases they’ve done this at great personal risk, and in numbers that should make American voters ashamed. So your remark here is not only erroneous on two counts, but an insult to their bravery as well.
Next: “So, the “new” leader, of our “new” strategy, has lowered expectations.” No. WaPo chose to use the term “lowered”. Fallon is simply stating for the record what the left has refused to acknowledge since the President first spoke on the subject – when he warned that this process would be long and difficult, but necessary, because the alternatives were (and still are) unacceptable.
War is a constant process of shifting to compensate for the actions of the enemy. Those who judge this latest shift by the standards of Unreal Perfection (i.e., Bush’s critics) should temper their expectations.
The rest of your armchair “analysis” on the “new” strategy and the current status in Iraq completely misses the most important aspect of the conflict. That is that once Saddam was removed, Iraq became a battlefield in a much larger war: Radical Islam’s War against the Rest of the World. This is very different from any of the (irrelevant) scenarios you cited. You also conveniently left out the two most successful occupations – those of the Allies’ in Germany and Japan. Occupation of Japan lasted for seven years, with significant Allied influence following. Germany’s lasted much longer, and was also complicated by the Cold War. Still both occupations transformed their respective countries, and resulted in nations and cultures that have surpassed our own in many respects.
The point you insist on missing here is that in neither of those cases were there adherents to a psychotic and suicidal religious ideology bent on preventing any progress whatsoever, as we have in Iraq. So your comparison breaks down irretrievably.
The Bush Administration didn’t misunderstimate the enemy in the Middle East. What they underestimated was the almost unimaginable degree of relentless, traitorous abandon with which the American exempt media has distorted the conflict (and all other current events) – starting long before 9/11 – with the single goal of destroying confidence in Bush and the Republicans.
Bush’s most egregious failing here is in not having figured out a way to balance the bias, innuendo, misdirection and outright lies coming from the terrorists’ Fifth Column – ABCCBSNBCNYTCNNREUTERSBBCAP&c. Even with the myriad of blogs handing him the evidence of lies, bias and distortion in the media on a daily basis, he’s chosen to remain pretty much silent on this subject.
The President apparently has (perhaps misplaced) faith that the American People will know the truth when they hear it. But what we’ve been hearing is nothing more than a barrage of bile – focused not on a positive outcome in Iraq, nor on peace in the Middle East, but on wresting back power and control of the federal government. And to hell with the Iraqis or anyone else who’s destroyed in the process.
