Post #102

Subject: Self-inflicted wounds

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CharlesKrauthammer

… from “The debate on Iraq takes a turn,” by Charles Krauthammer, Friday, August 24, 2007.

“WASHINGTON -- After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. … [F]air-minded observers … agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress….”

The surge has worked. We’ve whacked that mole. Even if true, that argument – we.ve whacked that mole – is irrelevant to the debate about how to best get us out of Iraq. And make no mistake: It is in America’s interest to get out; it is only in Nutty neo-cons’ interest to send more Americans to their deaths as they search for somebody to blame for their, uh, Nuttiness.

But, hey, look: “at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster.”

Um, yes, Maliki has not followed the script.

Of course, what neo-cons do not seemed to have grasped yet: Freedom forced is not freedom at all. “[F]reedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The choice is difficult because replacing the Maliki government will take time and because there is no guarantee of ultimate political success.”

Therefore, more Americans should die?

“Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally trying to change the central government is the most rational choice because the only available alternative is defeat -- a defeat that is not at all inevitable and would be both catastrophic and self-inflicted.

What is inevitable is that the whole lazy, shallow neo-con way of viewing the world, when taken from the pages of academics and applied to foreign policy, will be catastrophic… but not self-inflicted. I did not vote for this mess!