"We simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East," said new Secretary of Defense Gates today. "Failure in Iraq would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come."
There's only one thing wrong with Gates' assessment of Iraq: his choice of tense. Already, tens of thousands lie dead and hundreds of thousands are wounded. Iraq has fallen into a civil war and the situation is "grave and deteriorating." We lost our international good will over the invasion; we lost our credibility over the WMDs fiasco; we lost our reputation over Abu Ghraib. Electricity, water, oil production, and infrastructure in Iraq are worse than before. Our enemies--Al Qaeda, Iran, and Syria--now call the shots in most of the countryside and the Baathists are returning to what remains of the Iraqi government in the Green Zone. Colin Powell warns that the U.S. Army is now "about broken."
We have poured over $300 Billion into Iraq already, yet Republicans seem to think they can keep extending the game into overtime. The reality is that Bush has already lost--he just refuses to take the players off the field. Even if peace and happiness were to break out tomorrow, the Iraq war would remain a disaster. Winning is no longer a possible policy goal. The question now is how best to deal with Bush's colossal failure.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Try the Past Tense
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 1:19 PM
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6 comments:
What's more, it's a disaster that all of us intellectual types predicted. But of course we are held in derision by many in the country and by Republicans in particular these days. No wonder. I know a number of habitual screw ups and few of them like to be reminded of it.
// posted by RBR
By the way, we should take every opportunity to say "WE TOLD YOU SO." This must not be allowed to be spun by Bush and his apologists as some unforseen tragedy. This whole disaster was entirely avoidable and it is positively criminal that it was not.
NYT ran two headlines stories today, one ran Attacks at Record High . The other Iraqi Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity
The message I take when I see this is that we are effectively neutered. There are more of them than us, period. This was the British experience.
// posted by UNwest
Pombat has sent me a couple of links to quotes from Bush and Rumsfeld. How they could fail is beyond me.
Merry New Year!
// posted by Numbat of Festive Gyration
Those are pretty good! Thanks for sharing because I know that you know the known facts about what were once unknown events. But now that they are known, there arent't many unknown knowns left,I know.
// posted by USWest
I must admit, 't'was the pictures that did it for me - I wish we had a leader as photogenic as yours... ;-p
// posted by Pombat
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