Post #42

Subject: The Emperor has no clothes, and he is whistling through the graveyard! :p

What will George W. Bush do with the Iraq Study Group report? He will use it as political cover, saying that he tried the bipartisan approach but Iran would not talk – therefore, Bush will say, Iran and the Democrats are to blame for the mess stirred up by the media in Iraq.

What Bush fails to understand is that the whole policy of pre-emptive war – a war to prevent war – is wrong. Is George Orwell working in the White House?

~ Insert your favorite drunken-frat-boy-as-President joke here. ~

As Pat Buchanan said on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show the other night, “I don‘t think the problem is simply not enough troops for the occupation. I think the idea from the beginning of going in there and going to rebuild and reconstitute and remake and reshape this ancient country based on American ideas was utopian to begin with.”

And doomed to failure. Five years, ten years, twenty years – eventually, the Iraqis will throw off the shackles of occupation. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) on the House floor four years ago asked questions that are being widely considered today: "Are we prepared to keep 100,000 or more troops in Iraq to maintain stability there? If we don't, will a new regime emerge? If we don't, will Iran become the dominant power in the Middle East? . . . If we don't, will Islamic fundamentalists take over Iraq?" The other day, in an article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post, Baldwin said, "A vote like this, I didn't undertake lightly -- I almost fully expected they would find weapons there," she said. "But we hadn't heard about an exit strategy; it was such a blank."

Of course, it was a blank – the whole neo-con world view is lazy, shallow. From my Post #40, from Bob Woodward’s State of Denial: “There is a deep feeling among some senior Bush administration officials that somehow we had not started the Iraq war. We had been attacked. Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the other terrorists and anti-American forces – whether groups or countries or philosophies – could be lumped together. It was one war, the long war, the two-generation war… described after 9/11.”

From my Post #22, I quoted from the column “Islamo-fascism?” by Pat Buchanan, http://www.theamericancause.org/ , from September 1, 2006: “But the term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.”

From that Washington Post article, the incoming Armed Services chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), spoke four years ago stressing the need for "a plan for rebuilding of the Iraqi government and society, if the worst comes to pass and armed conflict is necessary." Skelton had written Bush a month earlier, after a White House meeting, to say that "I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq's forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it."

From that same Washington Post article, Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, was one of several Democrats who predicted during the House floor debate that "the outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain." He credited his views in part to what he heard over breakfasts with retired generals Anthony C. Zinni and Joseph P. Hoar. "They made the point: We do not want to win this war, only to lose the peace and swell the ranks of terrorists who hate us," Spratt said.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened. From the Iraq Study Group report, “As the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. … neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized." A real leader would admit his mistakes and try to correct them. I think all we’ll see from this President is naked back-flips through the graveyard. :p