Losers, Foreign and Domestic
March 26th, 2008 - 6:24 am
Is this the “terrorists’ Tet” that Austin Bay warned us was coming?
If so, I have two thoughts.
1. Is this the best they can do?
2. It won’t be long now before some modern would-be Walter Cronkite tells us the war can’t be won.
OK, a third thought — those would-be Walters are already all around us.
And a fourth thought, just to keep things even — those Walters are everywhere, despite the lameness of the New Tet.
But isnt Basra just a small model for what Iraq as a whole would look like if we did leave? Doesnt Basra, prove the necessity of our intervention rather than disprove it? Doesnt Basra argue for more troops, not less?
You cant simultaneously argue that we should leave Iraq, and then complain about the condition of Basra. The brits did leave Iraq when they left Basra, and look what happened.
The British evacuation certainly seems to have emboldened al Sadr, Frank.
How this is a “failure of the Petraeus strategy,” as it’s being spun, is a mystery to me. Basra was in the British occupation zone, and we haven’t “surged” there.
But it seems as though the combination of the New Iraqi Army and Coalition air power is enough to get the job done. That’s promising.