Peter Beinart has a new column in the Washington Post aimed at his fellow Democrats – Admit It: The Surge Worked. And it did. Beinart even cites supporting examples from the New York Times, in case you missed them months before on the Strategy Page. He wants Democrats to acknowledge the surge’s success for their own good, even though “[t]hat acknowledgment may not do much for Bush’s legacy.”
That last phrase comes from the final sentence of the column, but the real phrase obligatoire I refer to in my title comes much sooner – at the top of the third graph – injected early lest anyone think the author has turned into a mushy-brained neocon: Moreover, even if the calm endures, that still doesn’t justify the Bush administration’s initial decision to go to war, which remains one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history.
“One of the great blunders.” Well, maybe so… but then maybe not. It’s hard to tell at this point. Suppose, ten years from now, Iraq is a “good-enough democracy,” to paraphrase D W. Winnicott’s brilliant description of satisfactory parenting, the “good-enough mother?” Suppose that “good-enough democracy” is a functioning state in the Middle East, not led, as it most probably would have been, by Uday and Qusay Hussein – two individuals more sociopathic than their father, if such a thing is possible. And that state is providing a buffer against the psycho-theocracy of Iran, possibly even an inspiration to democratically-inclined people there?
Will such a thing happen? Beats me. Perhaps Iraq will fall apart in tribal mayhem and civil war. But it’s also possible that, in an even shorter time frame – five years, say – Iraq will be a thriving Middle Eastern democracy with a growing economic engine, slowly but inexorably leading the Shiite and Sunni cultures out of medieval darkness into the modern world.
If that were to happen, of course, George W. Bush would be seen as a great hero, shocking as that might be to his opponents now, who think (historically speaking) in a remarkably short time frame. What’s interesting too is that a positive outcome in history is what turns Bush heroic in retrospect. It’s a strange position for liberals to be in, dependent on failure to be “right,” when you think about it. No wonder Beinart makes the preemptive strike of declaring the Surge a success. Too bad he doesn’t have the courage to leave the door open for even greater success. But that’s politics, I suppose. Or, more precisely, punditry.
Perhaps in 5 years Iran has overthrown their terror masters with a huge assist from their Iraqi neighbors. That is just as possible as Beinarts conclusion.
Assuming Israel has not turned Iran into a glass factory by then.
Roger, I thought the same thing when I read Peter’s article. However, I almost don’t care about the democracy part of the equation, although that would be a fringe benefit of killing the Hussein boys. I am just happy that 550 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium once held by Saddam are now in Canada. No matter if we found no large stockpiles of WMD(although 550 metric tons is certainly a stockpile of something), Saddam had suspended weapons programs and a history of supprt for terrorists, even sending money al-Qaeda’s way (Ansar al-Islam and Abu Sayyaf). In a post 9/11 world, that’s makes him enough of a threat to justify removal in my eyes. Mission accomplished.
I am reminded of the foreign policy legacy of the last “anti-war” movement. Cambodia suffered 1.5 million dead out of population of 7 million. Vietnam saw at least 165,000 dead in the two years following the fall of Saigon and remains incredibly poor and oppressed. Worse, had we never acted and just let the communist walk in the late 40′s, both regions would probably look like North Korea today.
Its easy for amnesic backseat drivers to declare a disaster the actions of someone who actual does something. They can always claim their impotence for virtue.
Heck, I’ll settle for Iraq being something like South Korea is today – glam, modern, solidly middle-class, the manufacturing dynamo of the region, only with more tourists … just think of how the old Saddam-era palaces would make the most wonderful luxury hotels for tourists, all eager to see the site of the Hanging Gardens, Ninevah and Ur of the Chaldees. Consider how the tourists would pack in, everyone from top-of-the-line seekers of luxurious appointments, down to the back-packers staying in youth hostels and hitch-hiking through the Land Between Two Rivers.
Imagine that a tour of duty there is an accompanied tour, just as it has been an option to Germany and Japan – and Korea, all these decades. Other milbloggers say that will be the moment when the war over there has been definitely won – when military members assigned there can bring their families along for a couple of years.
Oh, yes – imagine how the ‘Bush is a warmongering idiot’ brigade will be grinding their teeth, should that turn out to be the case.
“Beats me. Perhaps Iraq will fall apart in tribal mayhem and civil war.”
That probably would have happened once Saddam died.
We would have seen the same violence that we did in 2004 – 2006, when the punditocracy was declaring that “civil war was inevitable,” blah blah blah. Except that the major foreign power would be Iran (supporting the Shiites), and possibly Al Qaeda, instead the United States. Depending on the outcome of that war, some Ayatollah becomes the leader of the new Islamic Republic of Iraq.
If President Obama had inherited that mess, the chattering classes would find some way to blame Bush for not doing something back in 2003.
Of course, that’s all speculation. There’s no “do over,” at least in this time-line.
Amazing how the ongoing threat to the Middle East and to the world order of an Iraq with Saddam Hussein and then his sons firmly in charge and flouting UN Security Council resolutions – such a dire threat by the end of the Clinton administration and by any objective measure even worse by April ’03 – has since been revised to be utterly negligible and unworthy of mention.
The surged worked.
The NEXT obligatory statement: It’s Obama’s to lose.
Dear Mr. Simon: Sure, the Left should admit the surge worked. But it is fair to say that success in Iraq is only a battle in a long war. Geo. W. will ultimately be judged on whether the struggle against Islamic extremism succeeded. It it still too early to say. SBW’s comment is apt, but too limited. If The One loses Iraq, the nation and the world will pay an enormous price, far beyond what his idiotic economic policies will cost.
The androgynous Shannon Love continues business as usual at the old “we-coulda-won-VeetNyam” stand. Perhaps; it is possible. But we can say, with far more confidence, that any such effort would have kept Ronald Reagan from becoming President. That would have been a colossal disaster, worse than Vietnam by far. I should like those doing business at the Vietnam stand to show the rest of us how Ronald Reagan could ever have been a) nominated and b) elected President if the US had honored the commitments made by the 1973 peace treaty and the side letters Nixon wrote to Thieu. Those who succeed in concocting such a fantasy can be shown the door and set to work writing for Chris Matthews, a job much better suited to their alleged talents.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
The thing that annoys me the most is that when it worked for the Democrats like Reid to support going after Saddam, they did. It is all about the politics, whatever works at the time.
It is completely self serving. I do not think it was a blunder. If not for the war, we would never have known how badly we needed to improve intel. We would still be dealing with the Hussein regime or a civil war in Iraq and we would not know what weapons were or were not there.
In fact, if the regime had imploded I would imagine the US would have gone in to secure wmd and wmd programs.
That is the problem the liberals have, they just can not admit that sometimes military action works.
I’m still waiting for the Democrats to ‘Free Tibet’, or is it ‘Save Darfur’?
Heck, I’d settle for a livable urban Detroit, or Oakland or Newark or East St. Louis.
Maybe next year the Best and the Brightest Democrats will turn around one, single, American dump city. Especially one of the ten’s of which they have all pulled “good enough” salaries for themselves and families and enjoy nice pensions in Florida. Maybe they’ll all flood into one city, move into abondoned homes, flood the union schools and patrol the dark streets in their Priuses. Kind of like a…surge. Like new American Lincoln Brigades, but not in Spain, in America!
Yeah! Right!
Hello? Hello? (hey, my cellphone just dropped Democrat Central. I’ll redial. )
President Bush “blundered” all the way to victory in Iraq and it grates on the dems like nobody’s business. Now the real pr contortions begin as Obama takes over as a war president and continues – and rightly so – many of the same policies that got Bush labeled a war criminal. Ah, nuance.
Earlier today I received this link (below) to an article from The Times of India, carrying the amazing headline: “Non-violence can’t tackle terror: Dalai”. The Dalai Lama delivered this message at a lecture given in New Delhi. He ended the lecture with the statement, “I love President George W Bush.”
Peter Beinart & Co., please take note.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Non-violence_cant_tackle_terror_Dalai_/articleshow/3995810.cms
beinart is the kind of lib who STILL gives more credit to gorbachev than reagan for the collapse of the USSR – even tho’ gorby fought hard to maintain the ussr and communism.
it’s a willful blindness.
beinart is blind in one eye.
and nearsighted with astigmatism in the other.
in retrospect – as others have written last week – oslo was a disastrous mistake and amounted to installing a terrorist regime in a country. for this clinton deserves to be derided.
bush did the opposite = installed democracies;
for this he deserves to be lauded.
if steyn is correct -and i fear he is – and europe collapses into dhimmitude and islamization in the next 30 years, then most of the world will continue to see bush as a failure.
with sarko making dhimmi noises this week, i think it might take only 15 years…
sigh…
Roger, Peter Beinart’s essay is far more mendacious than that. By admitting the obvious, he allows both liberal and conservative readers to credit President Bush with one good thing — but only one good thing.
And then Beinart pulls his political sleight of hand. If both liberals and conservative buy his premise, they also implicitly accept the rest of the essay: “Because Bush has been such an unusually bad president, ” “Watching the Bush administration flit from disaster to disaster,” “Today, by contrast, it is conservatives who have been proven wrong again and again.”
Other than not immediately securing Iraq after the main military battle was over, exactly how has the Bush Administration screwed up? By invading Afghanistan and suppressing al Qaeda (and almost certainly killing Osama bin Laden) rather than having our forces humiliated in battle and annihilated by the “brutal Afghan winter” as so many on the left predicted? By invading Iraq with the approval of Democrats in Congress, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry? By adopting legislation (the Patriot Act) and policies (rendition, FISA) that the Democrats have bought into, rather than suffer wave after wave of devastating terrorist attacks on our own soil, as was widely predicted after 9/11? By allowing Ted Kennedy’s staffers to write the majority of “No Child Left Behind”? By pushing prescription drug relief for seniors that in the eyes of Democrats was simultaneously (1) somehow evil and (2) not big enough? By not fighting hard enough to prevent the Democrats (Franklin Raines, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank) from bringing on the subprime mortgage debacle? By going along with the Democratic Congress on gargantuan bailout schemes? By doing more for Africa’s welfare than any American president in history?
Yes, Bush has made mistakes. Not appreciating the ferocity of the Iraqi underground, for example. Trying to nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, for another. It was a mistake to not prevent the Democrats have their way on the subprime mortgage issue. (As Otter said to Flounder inAnimal House, “Hey, you f***ed up! You trusted us!”) And having really lousy communication skills and public relations spokesmen (with the exception of the late Tony Snow) was disastrous. But Democrats keep chanting “Worst president ever!” in the hope that someday the rest of us will believe it. God help us, with the help of the mainstream media, we probably will.
Tell it Paul. Tell..it..to..the…people!
Beinart, you little pencil necked, lying dweeb, Saddam thumbed his nose at the US and wound up swinging from a rope. Our enemies noticed that even if you didn’t in your sheltered little world.
Gore and Lieberman, Kerry and Edwards all voted for the war. The Dem. congress gave Bush all the $ he wanted w/out conditions, but the Dems still say they are “against the war”. Now they are following all of Bush’s policies. Wait, maybe Obama is different – he didn’t vote for the war, that’s why good libs voted against Clinton who did vote for the war….oh wait she’s Sec State.
The Dems who think they “don’t support the war” also think their pols aren’t bribe soliciting tax cheats and they think abortion isn’t about killing babies. Stand by for a blizzard of lies like we saw from Bubba Clinton.
Talk based on what we “know” of what happened ignores the alternate universe of what our reality would be today if GWB had acted differently. You can pick your alternate, but I think the 500 tons of cake would have been used for something very bad, and the other WMD programs would also have been activated. Iraq would have been brought under one or another Caliph wannabe, and we would be in mortal danger.
Mike:
Bush’s communication skills were good enough to get him elected to two terms as President.
I think the Democrats have decided that Bush is a president by creating the scenario in which in everything bad that happpens anywhere in the world happens because he either lets it happen, or made it happen.
BTW, I do not feel comfortable in saying that Harriet Miers was a mistake. I think a lot of people on the right made themselves look foolish by chanting over and over again that the President’s nominee deserved an up or down vote..and then going out of their way to make sure this particular nominee did not get one.
As for the subprime mess..I think Bush had to intercede in the financial markets, I really do. That does not mean that the sky is the limit or anything but if the credit market had collapsed things would be much worse and Obama’s hand would only be that much stronger. Leaders of countries all over the world responded that crisis, it is unreasonable to think an American president could just ignore it.
I forgot to mention, as for not fighting hard enough..Bush pushed for legislation for years that would have reformed lending practices, the Democrats blocked it every year, until 2008 when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed. I remember reading an article in Sep 2003 about Bush trying to bring FM into Treasury..but the Democrats blocked that. I think the thing that bugs me the most is that so few conservative Republicans were willing to back him on it. It was not until the housing bubble burst and the credit crunch came along that there was widespread support for reform.
It must be a hard decision for Oboe, weather to keep the Bush policies in Iraq, and be able to claim to have won the war himself, or to cut and run, making himself popular with the Copperhead wing of the party, but possibly getting blamed for the ensuing genocide(s).
Still, with his economic policies, it will be possible to further emulate FDR, and at the end of only four years, be able to claim to have brought Germany, Italy, and Japan to their knees.
The only chance for peace in the next 50 years is that Iraq will show another way for the Muslim world. If it does not work, it was worth the effort, even the deaths of our soldiers. Imagine if Harry Reid had been in Congress, in a position of authority, in 1942. He, of course, will respond that this is not a real war. I wonder if the US can prevail with the erosion of the political class since 1965. It is a real worry.
Liberals never admit they’re wrong. And since the lapdog media never holds them to any standard, why should they?
If I remember correctly, in 1999, despite throwing out the un inspectors, the left and France was insisting that half a million children had died from sanctions, and were proposing lifting them.
What I would like to read is what would have happened if Bush DIDN’T invade Iraq, and if instead the sanctions (thanks to the oil for palaces bribes) were lifted…would the US be facing a nuclear Iran and Iraq?
Revealing of the group “think” that so often dominates in those quarters.
These same partisans and ideologues are broadly derivative of a certain tradition, beginning in October 1917, a tradition they are at pains to find much fault with. But Bush II – who very possibly has initiated a new era that has prospects of being hugely beneficient in the long term – cannot have his name mentioned absent presumption and spew.
Let us hope Obama is not one huge social/political bubble, a la Jimmy Carter.
I am so happy all those consumed by BDS no nothing about history. Whatever the “wisdom” of finishing the actions against Iraq (which is of course BEGAN in 1990), it pales in comparison to the “wisdom” of US involvement in WW1. And it pales in comparison to US involvement in Korea.
At least, at the very least, we will get a much more positive outcome. And if we do, how can it possibly be such a monumental blunder?
“Imagine if Harry Reid had been in Congress, in a position of authority, in 1942. He, of course, will respond that this is not a real war”…had the Harry Reids been around in the early 1940s, they would have argued that WWII wasn’t a real/necessary war, either. First, they would have argued that we didn’t to fight Germany, since it was Japan that had attacked us. (The German declaration of war would probably have been rescinded, at least temporarily, had we stopped all help to Britain and promised not to restart it.) And some of them would also have argued that we should negotiate peace with Japan by giving them a free hand in the Far East and guaranteeing them access to American oil and other strategic commodities.
Hey give him credit. As liberals go, he’s one of the few who aren’t frothing at the mouth (in fact, way back in the day, he supported the war).
The Left basically shot the moon by pushing hate, rabid rhetoric, and Bush Derangement Syndrome. They’re now so totally invested in it that, if for a second they actually admitted that it was all hype, then their whole souffle would go “poof”. Presumably, President Obama’s lurch to the right is a tacit admission of all this.
Beinart is therefore trying to find a formula that keeps the Left’s rhetoric intact. He wants the Bush and conservatives to be declared utterly incompetent in general, while still giving Obama room to adopt all their policies in the specifics. He’s trying to keep the emotional case pinned on Bush even as he concedes the intellectual case.
That’s actually an improvement over his colleagues in the netroots. For them, manufacturing a defeat in Iraq, plunging the economy into a depression and stuffing their political opponents into prison sounds like a great idea. For Beinart to espouse good policy, albeit as long as it’s enacted by his side, is at least something.
As much as it pains me to be fair to Liberals you would have to watch Beinart’s debates with Jonah Goldberg to see that he is a very reasonable and thoughtful man. Maybe there is some hope if Obama is of a similar mind. I’ve got my doubts but we’ll see.
The idea that liberal success has, as a necessary component, the defeat or failure of the US, has been a longstanding theme used by Rush Limbaugh on his daily radio show. Credit where credit is due, I think applies here. Although if this post grew from a thought that evolved separately but in parallel with Rush’s many similar statements over the past years, no harm and no foul.
The thing that annoys me the most is that when it worked for the Democrats like Reid to support going after Saddam, they did. It is all about the politics, whatever works at the time.
Oh absolutely. In a couple years, you’ll hear Reid say, “Oil makes us sick? Coal makes us sick? Eh, not so much.”
Terrye, I agree with you on several of your points. I too believe that Bush had to intercede in the financial markets — perhaps not necessarily what he did, but he had to do something and he had to be seen to do something. And yes, the Democrats seem to have made a conscious decision to blame Bush for everything that goes wrong on Planet Earth, including Hurricane Katrina and globar warmi– oops, “climate change.” Gah.
Bush’s communication skills were good enough to get him elected to two terms as President.
Bush’s communication skills were so good that an incompetent buffoon came within shouting distance of the presidency in 2004. And let’s not even bring up the 2000 election.
BTW, I do not feel comfortable in saying that Harriet Miers was a mistake.
I do. She might have made a better Justice than several of the people who are currently on the bench, but she was a profoundly poor political choice, and politics is the art of the possible. Bush should have realized she had no hope of confirmation
If I wanted to be as cynical as the Democrats seem to be lately, I might have said that another mistake was to not plant WMDs in Iraq. As things are now, Bush is being blamed for “knowing” that Saddam didn’t have WMDs but overthrowing Saddam anyway, even though the lack of WMDs was sure to be found out. What the hell — if they’re going to crucify you anyway …
As much as it pains me to be fair to Liberals you would have to watch Beinart’s debates with Jonah Goldberg to see that he is a very reasonable and thoughtful man.
I’m sure Beinart can be reasonable and thoughtful, but that isn’t what he’s doing in this essay. He’s using a rhetorical trick to spread the “Worst President EVER!” meme, while begging the question on what supposedly made Bush so bad. It’s bullshit, and he should be called on it.
Oh absolutely. In a couple years, you’ll hear Reid say, “Oil makes us sick? Coal makes us sick? Eh, not so much.”
If there’s any justice in the world, in a couple of years we’ll hear Harry Reid say, “Hey! Why didn’t I win that election?”
Major Strasser: You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he’s just another blundering American.
Captain Renault: We musn’t underestimate “American blundering”. I was with them when they “blundered” into Berlin in 1918.
George W. Bush. Just another “blundering” American.
I agree that Bush at a time when he had very little left to lose politically did the politically courageous thing and call for an increase in our troops in Iraq. My objection is to his refusal to face the necessity of more troops from the very beginning and the ridicule his administration made of any who thought otherwise. Well better late than never.
Reason number 3,652 why I am a former liberal and former Democrat (not a nascent Republican, though; I’m politically homeless) is that to many–not all–on the left they opposed the surge not because they didn’t think it would work but because they feared that it might. They preferred–and this is not an inference, many said it openly–that Iraq become a violence-ridden disaster because otherwise Bush would garner the credit for a successful war.
And this time it wasn’t even possible to believe that the enemy was just a bunch of poetic agragrian reformers. During the Vietnam War you could think so if you kept your eyes shut. But the insurgents in Iraq made no bones about what they wanted, and they didn’t even whisper to credulous western media that they just wanted a peaceful and democratic state.
Michael Moore compared them favorably to American minutemen and a decent party would have read him out of it.
Alex,
Well said. The problem is that the Left is so consumed with winning– at any cost and by any means necessary– that the very real threats we face are simply not important to them.
Try reading this article by Michael Totten. It’s (indirectly) how I discovered Roger’s blog. (adapted from this original blog post, back when MT and Roger were liberals)
I personally think that empires collapse when pie-dividing activities (mostly internecine politics) take over from pie-growing activities like economic growth and conquest. This is a symptom of something deeper in our history — the long slow glide at the top before the fall.
“It’s bullshit, and he should be called on it.”
The last election shows pretty clearly that Conservatism GWB style has worn out its welcome with the voters. Dismissing his rock bottom popularity and the trouncing the Republicans took in November as just luck or deceit on the part of the Democrats is a sure way to whine our way into a generation out of power. In the mean time it’s better to find out who on the other side can be reasoned with and persuaded rather than just dismiss all as the enemy even when they show the level of integrity that Beinart consistantly does.
Some people will blame everything on GW; whether that be George W., Global Warming, or God’s Will.
W was a fair communicator but that was not enough when the Dems house organ was responsible for the microphone. He gave some great speeches that barely saw the light of day. When they did, they were elided and spun totally beyond recognition.
Re: Iraq, and other decisions, the problem with after the fact alternates is that you can’t know whether the alternative would have been better or worse in the long run. Beyond the “we should have used more troops in the beginning” what next? The use for troops was damn near perfect for the war fighting phase. Did we ever have plans to totally occupy and control Iraq, or was the idea to get out as quickly as possible and leave it to the Iraqis? If so, more troops would have been the wrong way to go.
Bush’s biggest problem, aside from his incipient big gov’t. policies, was his good nature and belief that everyone wanted the best for the country and world. He didn’t understand the virulence and meglo-mania of the back stabbing types here and abroad. In this he was too much the naif.
A certain segment of the country simply wants failure if Bush has anything to do with it, rather than desiring for or hoping for success. I hope things go well with Obama as president, although I worry about a number of issues. If things go well, I assume that’s good for me too, and I don’t want the next several years to suck. But a segment of the left wants Iraq to fail, as though that would be good for something. It would only be good in undermining the US, but that is exactly what they want. Not all on the left are like this, but far too many are. There is no talk of victory in Iraq, just “ending US involvement”. But we have won. That’s good for the US, but is not good for reactionary leftie story lines.
The ends don’t justify the means… at least not if we’re discussing foreign policy mistakes. The invasion of Iraq was based on flawed intelligence, some cherry picked data, and a far too rosy view of how it would go. It was a policy and tactical blunder. We have recovered well, thanks to the surge. We may yet salvage the country and it may become a working democracy. I sure hope so… but it doesn’t change the fact that the policy and plan put in place was flawed and indeed a blunder.
Blunders may still be recoverable and there might be successes from it… but to close one’s eyes to the lessons learned by the blunders made, seems incredibly foolish to me.
Alan if we had no plans to occupy Iraq why did we and the alternatives were not after the fact but contemporaneous or even before the invasion of Iraq. Alan I believe the war fighting stage won’t end, at lest for us, till we leave. Then the Iraqi’s can go back to murdering each other without our interference or concern.
As for George and his speeches I’m not sure we were listening to the same guy or maybe you live in a different universe with a different George.
Joseph, try the speech he gave in England just for grins, also his SOTUs were not bad. If you only get, as do most people, the MSM Digest version you don’t get the truth. And even if you caught the original a steady diet of MSM/Dem spin and negativity could sour anything.
As far as the invasion it was a strategic and tactical success. Don’t you remember how the great Republican Gaurd was going to turn Baghdad into Stalingrad II? Do you really feel that the war fighting stage is still going on? That was over in a month. Are you one of those that would prefer to have had Hussein sans sanctions (see France & Russia circa 2002) with his WMD programs (check the Duelfer report) in full swing handing out his new toys to every Islamic nut job that he could? Or have you forgotten what happened in 2001 that made trusting to the good wishes of Islamonuts a losing proposition?
When it came to occupation there were competing views as to how much we should do and how much should be turned over to the Iraqis…and how fast. Personally, I think that the way that got handled was a mistake but it hardly comes under the heading of blunder. It’s in fact arguable that without the travails of 2005 & 2006 it would have been much worse. If we were there in large numbers the pressure would have kept building and the people of Iraq would not have turned on the crazies as they did cause the crazies wouldn’t have gotten enough control to ruin their reputation.
I don’t know if the flypaper approach was deliberate or not but it certainly was a big success. Don’t let an unrealistic demand for perfection become the enemy of the good.
Ratatosk — The decision to invade Iraq is one on which informed citizens of good conscience can diagree. The glib dismissal of the war as simply a matter of flawed intelligence and misplaced optimism is a conceit that the war’s opponents should acknowledge as well as their incorrect assessment of the surge.
See Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq for the full basis of why we went to war.
Although one appreciates a Democrat extending even a morsel of honesty to Republicans over the Iraq War, Beinart’s overall piece remains deeply vexing.
As modest and self-serving as Beinart’s recommendation is that Democrats should admit that the surge worked lest Democrats fall prey to hubris for “being proven right too many times”(!), who wants to bet that Democrats will take that even that small step?
No, Democratic hubris has already grown large and malignant. One has only to think back to Obama’s speeches (”the oceans will stop rising”) to realize it. Even Beinart has his surfeit on display.
And no, no Democrat from Obama on down will make any such acknowledgment of the surge.
Alan I supported the invasion of Iraq because of a personal flaw (among many). I hate powerful people harming or killing others especially murderous governments like Saddam’s, but if we are to start curing others we should at least remember admonishment to do no harm (I know war is different than medicine). The problem I have with George is that his government didn’t recognize their plan wasn’t working and refused to listen to dissenters and dismissed them as crackpots. Then suddenly because they couldn’t ignore the reality anymore(midterm elections)they started looking for a new plan. Now it looks like we are going to have everything George didn’t want: a time table for withdraw, an Iraq closer to Iran with a friendly Shia government, Afghanistan and Pakistan imploding and our reputation in taters.
Good Job George.
43. AlanC: Your last sentence says it all. This is what the Leftys have been demanding all along, perfection. Thier mindset seems to be that it is better to stand in the rain demanding a perfect house when an adquate one is available in front of them.
Well they have their chance now, let us see how perfect they are.
As wars go, I’d have to say the U.S. did pretty good if measured by a body count rubrik. When did troops actually hit the ground there? Wasn’t it in 2003? So the war is going on 6 years now, and seems to be going so well at the moment that you don’t hear peep out of the MSM, and Beinart’s squeaking about how the surge worked. This has got to have been the strangest war that the U.S. has ever fought in its history. Remember Baghdad Bob telling the world how they’d just run the U.S. soldiers out of town, with U.S. tanks sitting right there in the background in full view of the cameras? And finally getting the millions of Shi’a and Sunnis to start reading from the same page was no small matter. Maybe an earlier surge would have worked, but maybe not. Maybe enough Iraquis had to die by their own hands before the landscape was conditioned properly to where they were ready to oust Al Qaeda, and fortuitiously that starting to happen just as the surge commenced. So maybe the best time for the surge was exactly when it occurred…it sure got immediate results. The legitimate beef that the left has, I think, is their arugument that Bush never should have gone to war with Iraq in the first place. But the present success is taking the wind out of that argument, and so Beinart’s disclaimer will not raise anyone to arms. The reality now envisions a thriving, democratic Iraq. It’s up to Obama now to see it through.
Finally, Bush associated with Hitler in a good way.
History takes a long time to sort things our. Beinart has deadlines to work with. Maybe he could write about something else for a while and revisit this later.
Joseph, I’m not sure that what you see as a personal flaw is really a flaw.
However, what IS a flaw is your idea that war is a medical operation subject to the Hippocratic oath despite your claim to the contrary. This was not a case of curing anything or anyone. It was a case of trying to remove a huge threat to ourselves (and others, but forget them for now).
According to our best current information Hussein would have re-constituted his WMD within months of the end of sanctions. Given French & Russian efforts that would have been about April or May 2003 if we had done nothing. It would only have take a couple of months to start producing Chem & Bio weapons and I doubt that the 550 tons of yellowcake would have been made into paper-weights. Once those Chem and Bio weapons started coming off the line how long do you think it would be before Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar-el-Islam, Al Queda, LeT,et. al. were getting presents? What would the world have looked like then? Was it worth the risk?
Your insight to the Bush admin. is remarkable. How do you know: a) that he/they didn’t listen to dissenters? Maybe the dissenters couldn’t make their case. b) how many alternatives were presented? c) that the plan wasn’t working as well as could be expected? d) they DID change the plans several times. The first changes didn’t work until one did.
Again this sounds like an argument for perfection where anything else is a blunder by despicable fools.
Commenter Tioedong raises an issue now long forgotten: the alleged deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis due to our pre-2003 sanctions. I do remember numerous countries and organizations (the Vatican included) claiming that such deaths had occurred.
Has any evidence been found, that shows whether or not this alleged genocide actually occurred?
If it did occur, shouldn’t the ending of those starvation-causing sanctions (even if by war) be considered something of a triumph?
If it didn’t occur, shouldn’t those who made the claim be called upon to explain why they made this claim? (or why they lied about it?)
Personally, I was opposed to the war; there was a chance for a great victory, but a chance for a great defeat as well, and I didn’t believe that Bush should have taken that gamble. Still, the soldiers (it appears that our change in tactics was initiated by a number of officers and enlisted men at the company and regimental levels) seem to have succeeded in turning a bad situation into a good one, and we should now deal with the war as an opportunity to leave a working democracy in the middle east. (There was no war that was dumber than the War of 1812, but after we learned that we couldn’t achieve our stated goal, we changed the mission and managed to achieve a secure border and a lasting peace with Canada and the British empire.) Let us hope that President Obama makes use of this opporunity.
johnbrown,
Ask the Kurds about the genocide and the marsh arabs. There has been much evidence about Hussein’s crimes but as I tried to point out they are immaterial.
In your post, as in so many others, the context of 9/11 is missing. The world of the fundamentalist Islamonazis or whatever you choose to call them had declared war on us and all of the Civilized world. Hussein, while not a true believing Islamist himself had no problem seeing himself as the next Caliph and no problem using the worst of the fanatics to do his work. Once it became totally clear what the situation was it would have been hugely irresponsible to leave him in power with his WMDs, even if they were in stasis for the moment. THAT is the context in which the discussion must be held. Every day he and his terrorist house guests remained untouched icreased the prestige and strength of the Islamonuts world wide.
Building a functional democratic state in Iraq had and has nothing to do with Hussein. Once he was dead the “War in Iraq was over. Building a functional state has to do with Khameini, Ahmadinnerjacket, Mashal, LeT and all the rest of the bin Ladin wannabes. It also has to do with all their funders and enablers in Riyadh, Damascus, Tripoli, Cairo, etc. Look to Libya for the side effects of the Iraq invasion. Q/Kh/G/adaffi was smart enough to figure it out are you?
Alan I’ll give you an example of my personal failings you will agree is a flaw. If I was the Afghanistan taxi driver picked up and sent to Gitmo because someone wanted the reward or hated me and so told those trusting Americans “…oh yea he is al Quida.” I’d want some pay back and if you think all those folks we have killed or put in Gitmo are guilty you probably think everyone in US jails are guilty no matter what Project Innocence tells us. If we are doing God’s work we need to do it much much better. More personal faults, if the reasoning is dangerous countries who have or may have THE BOMB and might give it to our enemies to use against us what about North Korea and Iran the other axis of evil countries. It was like invading Italy in WWII and leaving Germany alone. Also if we are in a war where is the draft and why were we told that our (non military) job was to go to the mall. No Bush is an idiot and his administration seems (I know too soon to tell) to have screwed the pouch and all of us are going to have to live with the consequences. But in the long run it is probably better for all of us Alan if you are right, I’m afraid I don’t see it yet.
Joseph,
This is not a matter of police and law; this is a matter of war. Too bad if some wrong people get caught up. You know, people like the ones that take airplanes from Boston to LA only to detour through NYC. Life’s a bitch. We do our best to keep the collateral damage down but again you whine about the lack of perfection. I don’t think that everyone that made it to Gitmo was guilty but I damn sure believe that virtually all of them are; same with the prisons, are there some innocents?; sure, but not a large percentage but then again, this isn’t cops and robbers, this is war.
If it bothers you that much, I hope you are out there fighting against the bad guys; finding out all the 5th columnists in this country or around the world. Otherwise you’re just sitting on the sidelines carping at the good guys that are trying to fight the war. That’s easy & safe.
That meme about “what about all the other bad guys?” That’s really old and boring and a totally worthless argument. Gee we can’t cure everyone with cancer right now so let’s not bother to cure anyone until we can. Your last post has, as far as I’m concerned, proven that you are a fool. Back to your bridge troll.
5th columnists? Hey old man you want me to start investigating anyone with a muslin name and denounce them to the proper authorities and I guest you want me so show my papers too. And here I was trying to be nice. I’d like to see you suffer some “collateral damage” and then not whine just a little.
Alan I wish you could just put yourself in the position of innocence folks caught up in this war and I would hope you would try to persuade instead of Ad Hominem attacks. I also wish we would kill more Osamas and not so many women and children so my question is when is “collateral damage” too much or is it acceptable in some cases (Nazi Germany)to kill most of a nation to save ourselves and if that is the case is it the case now?
The one unique thing about leftists is that they are sore winners.
Remember the Newsweek cover in 1994 when the republicans took over? “The Gingrich that Stole Christmas” with newt painted green and goblinesque.
I read with interest many of the astute comments above. However, I can say with almost complete certainty that history, especially history related to President GW Bush will reflect ….the mindset of those who are entrenched to write it.
I see so many traps being sprung around so many ankles of otherwise bright, informed, thoughtful and articulate people above, some days it makes me want to cry, or ball up my fists and challenge our most dastardly enemy to a physical duel. That enemy, is our own information stream.
I see above how often we frame issues in THEIR language, in THEIR framework, in THEIR dogma…and try to reason it out from that cesspool of a foundation.
It is NOT “liberals” vs. “conservatives”…at least as I see it from my seat in the cf bleachers. It is hard core leftists against everyone who is moderate and beyond.
It is NOT the “mainstream” media vs. “alternative” media…it is leftist propaganda and intentional distortion vs. the truth.
It is NOT about whether Republicans can “win” an election, it is about whether we can self-govern this land of ours based upon the ocean of lies and distortions that lap up on our shores relentlessly every day of our lives.
The lies and distortions fed to our politically illiterate masses, pounded into their brains so that the leftist worldview becomes reflexive, where lies become truisms, where distorted fun house mirrors reflect back the “right and normal” image…it is not one legacy of a President, it is the legacy of EVERY non-left leaning President.
In what parallel universe would a composite package of slime like Jimmy Carter be elevated to saintly status and the good hearted, pure soul of Ronald Reagan be painted as evil, dull and dim-witted?
The fight for truth does not belong to Republicans vs. Democrats. Democrats are recipients of the rigged game, because they are closest in ideology to the leftist propagandists who have stolen our information stream and will surely steal our history, revise it and put it out for consumption.
The fight is for everyone with a conscience, from classic liberals to evangelical rightists. If we don’t have truth, we don’t have a chance. Any man or woman of honor should be fighting against intentional distortiong and bastardization of our information stream. The principle outweighs party affiliation. It is a slippery slope that Democrats have chosen to slide down on their backsides. Riding on the river of slime that rigs every election in their favor, by cheating the truth out of the system. Every win is tainted, every policy is suspect, every decision is tarnished.
History reflects those who write it, not necessarily the truth. But what is worse, is we stand by and allow the present to be “owned” by those who have an agenda to constantly attack us from the inside, tear us down, and feed us lies…upon which we impale ourselves.
We do not have a “mainstream” media. We have a stolen information stream by the infiltration corps and a resistance media. There are very few “liberals” any longer (Joe Lieberman, perhaps)…just leftists and their mindless, regurgitating lemmings.
“Conservatives”, “neo-cons”, ….are simply everyone else…who will not give up their notions of fairness, decency, honor and common sense. We ALL have been relegated to the “resistance” status. The inexorable march of lies through our populace has taken hold. Stop framing the issues in THEIR language, it empowers them. Stop using THEIR terms, it cements them into the public conscience. DEMAND truth….don’t beg for it.
Or suffer the consequences of living at the mercy of the enemy of truth.
cfbleachers, you have it right.
Many years ago in college I was taught that
“he who has the power to table papers has the power”
What this means is that the person that controls the agenda controls all. The Gramscian left have insinuated themselves over the last 30 years into the positions that table the papers. We must fight back to regain our ability to compete in the market PJM is a good first step. We need many more.
AlanC, I believe that it is even more dire than that.
The enemy of freedom, is tyranny. Tyranny of thought, tyranny of information, tyranny of ideas, tyranny of choice.
The Gramscian leftists, as you accurately identify them…have seized every aspect of our flow of communication. They have intercepted and cut off our ability to obtain facts, they then process, filter and prism those facts to fit the Gramscian narrative…or “message”.
It’s funny/odd….that I find myself grabbing hold of the reins and trying to lead the charge into battle on this front. I see myself as an “Issue-ist”, defiantly resisting the pull of party dogma, discontent with kneejerk or reflexive stances preordained by association with or membership in… a “side” in “the” debate. For me, there is not one debate, but rather, a string of thousands of issues, each requiring facts, logic, reasoning…in that order, to formulate a belief system or worldview that is meaningful and consistent.
Association with a “side”, appears to my eyes and ears, to be fertile breeding ground for hysteria, histrionics, straw men, false attributions, ad hominem attacks and an absence of concession, compromise or consideration of other viewpoints.
What tilts me into these pages…is that the vast majority of the danger lurking in the scream and screech “debate”, is not the inane parroting of echo chamber talking points, however. It is the intentional destruction of truth by the Gramscian leftists.
What would otherwise be merely annoying to me, by BOTH sides screeching at each other, becomes very personal and offensive to my sense of morals and fair play. The Gramscians are not just obnoxious in their tone, they are despicable in their conduct.
Those are MY facts they are trifling with. That is MY information stream they are gang raping. As an “issue-ist”, I would not ordinarily have a “side” to champion. However, I am steadfastly enrolled in the battle against Gramscian slander of my country. They are my enemy…and anyone who is aligned against them in the battle to recapture the truth…is my friend.
Matt McDonald, yellow cake is not enriched uranium. I thought cons were so damn smart and educated compared to the rest of us, wassup?
Does anyone realize at least half those Arab countries are technically democracies? If the people there are fundamentally fascist and intolerant, is democracy a good idea? Too bad all the brainless warmongers here not only didn’t sacrifice or risk a thing here in the US for this war, but they have the gall to ask for tax cuts too. When war is this easy for us, it is a curse.
cfbleachers, you are right but I think a bit too pessimistic. One problem is that you are trying to approach the fight logically and rationally. That won’t work because this is not a rational / logical argument it is a religious war between those who believe in enlightenment ideals and those who believe in Communism. Logic does not apply herei.
Horarce you are a fool and/or a tool. Yellowcake is procnessed ueranium and is a required, intermediate step for making bomb grade uranium. You may quibble that this is not “enrichment” but that is all it would be, a quibble.
Did you know that the USSR was “technically” a democracy too? What does that have to do with anything? As far as tax cuts go, you do know that they are one of if not the best way to increase gov’t. revenue right?
Good to see you again Alan. I guest Bush’s tax cuts just weren’t deep enough because now we have the largest deficit in history. I guess it is just an aberration. Also for Alan and others who believe Yellowcake is synonymous WMD here is this:
You are mistaken. I work in the nuclear sector. I received this post in a google alert.
Yellowcake uranium is very far from being weapons-grade material in any way, shape, or form. It is probably closer to copper shavings than plutonium, in terms of its ability to make a bomb.
The substance used to make nuclear bombs is Plutonium-239, which is bred from the radio-isotope uranium-235, or U-235. Yellowcake uranium is uranium oxide, or U3O8, which consists of natural oxygen and natural uranium, or uranium-233, or U-233.
In order to convert Uranium-233, or U-233, into U-235, it must undergo various costly and technologically-complex enrichment processes. It must first be separated from the oxygen. It must then be bombarded with neutrons. Even once you have U-235, it must still be enriched further to create Plutonium-239, which is the bomb-grade material.
There are only a few countries in the world that have the technology to enrich uranium. The facilities cost tens of billions of dollars to construct — in many cases, over $100 billion — and require a particular expertise. Not just any physicist with $100 billion can build one. They must have the plans.
So you see, yellowcake is very far from being a WMD.
I hope this allays your fears.
Posted by: acbryan | July 10, 2008 at 09:40 AM
What in the world is a “technical” democracy? Alan, how do you follow the logic of some of these folks? LOL. Sometimes using logic, you are correct…is a waste of time, I see your point.
Hamas is engaged, technically in a truce…while it is firing rockets at innocent civilians. Saddam Hussein was “technically” in violation of a Resolution against building, secreting and amassing weapons of mass destruction, which he had previously used to technically mass murder the technical lives of thousands of Kurds.
Iran is not technically building a nuclear arsenal for anything but energy supply and other technical needs.
Alan, I may be pessimistic…but the above logic is what has been infused into the public consciousness, like a pernicious disease. If we don’t get facts, demand truth…we are jesters in the court of public opinion.
cfbleachers, you can’t speak logically or rationally to these people as they are incabable of reason, at least in this area. I like the old saw, “You can’t reason someone out of a position that they weren’t reasoned into.”
A “technical” democracy is one in which elections are held to ratify the dictates of the tyrants. See Iran, Zimbobway, USSR, etc.
Ratatosk said:
The ends don’t justify the means… at least not if we’re discussing foreign policy mistakes. The invasion of Iraq was based on flawed intelligence, some cherry picked data, and a far too rosy view of how it would go. It was a policy and tactical blunder.
Would you like to review what blunders were made during World War II — and how many Allied soldiers’ lives were lost as a result? Those dwarf by a huge factor mistakes made in the Iraq war.