And George Bush and his aides are so wounded, not to mention virtually incompetent in all matters political, they are doing nearly nothing to prevent the coming disaster.
This textbook failure will make Viet Nam look positively heroic.
Put simply, America stands poised to snatch defeat (and so much worse) from the jaws of victory. Bush and the military leaders in Iraq have virtually won the peace. We've gone from Invasion, to War, and then on to Occupation. FInally we are on the verge of peace.
I believe the occupation is now at an end and we are ready to enter into a period of mutual support, cooperation and even friendship.
And the Iraqi Government clearly believes the same thing. We should see troop withdrawals begin this fall.
If intelligent forces were guiding the foreign policy of our country, instead of electioneering and demagoguery and the flames of personal hatred, we would be entering into a long term agreement of mutual support and protection between our countries. The agreement would absolutely mirror our agreements with Japan, Germany and dozens of other countries.
Instead, Bush is unable to negotiate such a treaty. Not because the Iraqis are unwilling, they are actually begging for such an agreement, but because Bush is terrified by our Congress and the mood of the electorate.
He cannot bring a treaty before a Congress that most certainly will fail to ratify it.
No the mood in this election year is retreat, submit, withdraw and abandon. There are no facts on the ground that will ever placate a Congress effectively controlled by Moveon.org.
Bush is so inarticulate and so inept he cannot speak to the American people and convince them to do the right and intelligent thing. He lacks the powers of persuasion of his predecessors and the current Democrat Presidential candidate.
Instead Bush has "promised not to tie the hands of his successor." No treaty, no agreement, no nothing.
And Obama will most certainly leave a very fragile Iraq to fall under the control of a religious dictatorship that will become the greatest enemy ever faced by any power on earth.
And it's so damned unnecessary. The war is won. The occupation is over. All we need to do is support the people of Iraq, exactly as we have supported the people of Germany, Japan and South Korea. Trade, financial aid, rebuilding, mutual aid. Iraq is ready to govern. If we don't abandon them.
Please read the entire Wall Street Journal article from Friday, How Prime Minister Maliki Pacified Iraq.
- America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias, including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the political process builds momentum.
These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S. was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006, we are just as unequivocally winning today.
4 comments:
Wizard, I know you not to be a fool. So, I'm confident you wrote this article sort of like pulling the pin from a hand grenade, because you just wanted to ignite an argument. I do not have time to refute point-by-point. (Forgive me!) I Just have time to let you know I showed up.
Here are the major points of laughable idiocy I noted in your column:
I believe the occupation is now at an end and we are ready to enter into a period of mutual support, cooperation and even friendship .....
The agreement would absolutely mirror our agreements with Japan, Germany and dozens of other countries .....
..... but because Bush is terrified by our Congress and the mood of the electorate. He cannot bring a treaty before a Congress that most certainly will fail to ratify it.
..... There are no facts on the ground that will ever placate a Congress effectively controlled by Moveon.org.
All of the above is news to me. But then I don't have any time to waste on Faux news.
You are certainly right on this score:
..... Bush is so inarticulate and so inept he cannot speak to the American people and convince them to do the right and intelligent thing. He lacks the powers of persuasion of his predecessors and the current Democrat Presidential candidate.
That is why I favored an early impeachment of Busheney.
As for Fred Kaplan? He's a major part of the problem. Pundits and scholars who signed that Mein Kampf document, the so-called Project for a New American Century (PNAC) are part of the problem. History has already impeached them.
vigilante, Thanks for stopping by. You are much appreciated even though we are seeing the same events from extremely different perspectives.
While I see the Occupation of Iraq at an end (and a reasonable success), you see defeat at the hands of an incompetent (and downright evil) President.
It's almost hard to imagine that you and I are watching the same exact events unfold.
It took me friggin' forever to get the Kaplan reference here (and back on your blog). I have to assume you are actually referring to Robert Kagan and just have continuously mistyped (or misremembered) his name.
It is Robert Kagan that was a co-founder and director of the Project for a New American Century.
The Wall Street Journal article was written by Frederick Kagan and his wife Kimberely Kagan, both military Professors at West Point and Yale. And, frankly, both extremely well respected.
But Frederick is guilty by birth and association.... he is Robert's brother and they both work for The American Enterprise Institute.
Regarding Fred Kagan: checked my original reference, The Fall of the House of Bush, which I reviewed here. I had drawn from a run-on sentence on page 343 which seems to be ambiguous on which of the Kagans signed on to PNAC, and which did not. However, Wiki is not ambiguous:
Frederick along with his brother Robert Kagan, who is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, and their father Donald are all signatories to the neoconservative Project for the New American Century manifesto titled Rebuilding America's Defenses (2000).
Whatever! It seems that Neocon-melancholia is an inherited affliction.
Vigilante, The problem here is that there are simply too many messengers bringing good news out of Iraq every day. You simply can't shoot them all.
You don't trust Frederick Kagan? How about Steve Inskeep and Lourdes Garcia-Navarro at National Public Radio just this morning? They are hardly right wing Neo-Con shills? Iraqi Forces Target Sadr's Militias. This 4 and 1/2 minute report is fair and balanced and deserves a listen.
How about Steve Farrell and Richard A. Oppel Jr. REPORTING for the New York Times just moments ago. This is not an op-ed piece, but a news story. Big Gains for Iraq Security, but Questions Linger
By virtually every measure from troop casualties, to economic measures, to Iraqi military readiness, to public safety, to public confidence, to International investment (not just US), Iraq has turned the corner.
If you bookmark and read the Iraq sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post every day, the positive reports are simply overwhelming.
But the peace and prosperity are both fragile.
It's tougher and tougher to make a case for abandoning Iraq to the control of Iran and/or al-qaeda.
If any intelligent person thought for one minute the Iraqi's could actually control their own future without outside interference, then a massive pull-out of troops might be a logical decision.
And in a few short months, this might be a real possibility. But not in the next year.
But then the real question SHOULD BE why we wouldn't want to have a permanent treaty and plan for mutual support with Iraq?
We have similar agreements with over half of the counties in the world today. And we have a variety of treaties will many, many more.
The only question in my mind is "Will Barack Obama, our next President, follow through on his immediate pull-out plans or will he reconsider and make a permanent alliance and continue to support this young democracy?"
You know where I stand, but Obama will be calling the shots.
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