From Bradblog (who has more documents):
Shorter Jonathan Chait (Updated With Dreher)
Okay. Okay. I was wrong about the Iraq War, and the anti-war liberals were right, just as they were right about Vietnam. But you should listen to hawks in the future, because one of these days we’ll be right.
Seriously, this has to be one of the most embarassing mea culpas in the history of op-ed pieces. Chait (repeatedly) says that hawks should learn the lessons of Iraq, but always in conjunction with a warning against "overlearning" them.
Chait’s thesis would be more powerful if he would explain — just once — what the "lessons of Iraq" are. Then we can decide if they should or shouldn’t be "overlearned" (whatever that means). Sadly, I suspect that he cannot articulate the lessons. [UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz picks up on some Chait insanity that I missed.]
UPDATE: Conversely, Jon Dreher is as a self-described "practicing Christian and political conservative." He writes for the National Review Online and uber-conservative blog, The Corner. On 9/11, he "thanked God" that Bush was the President. Yup, he’s been a full-throated supporter of President Bush and the Iraq War.
This weekend, in an essay at NPR, he came to terms with his conservative bent, and saw the light:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.
I turn 40 next month — middle aged at last — a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.
I did not expect Vietnam.
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative – that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word – that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot – that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.
Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle
For the first time in census history, more women (51%) are living without a spouse than with one. It’s a trend that’s been going on for several decades. The New York Times fills us in.
In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.
Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.
Several factors are driving the statistical shift. At one end of the age spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom.
25 Years Ago: Air Florida Flight 90
It was 25 years ago tomorrow, on a snowy cold day (remember those?) in Washington, D.C., when Air Florida Flight 90 took off from Washington National Airport with its wings ineffectively de-iced. Moments later, it hit the 14th Street Bridge, crushing six cars, one truck, and killing four people, before it belly-flopped and sunk in the ice-covered Potomac River.
All but 5 of the 79 passengers and crew on board died.
It’s a story of tragedy, but it is also a story of heroism — as exemplified by Roger Olian, a sheet-metal worker. On his way home from work, Olian heard a man yelling that there was an aircraft in the water. As others tried to lower cables to the passengers in peril, Olian lept into the frigid water to save lives.
A congressional office worker, Lenny Skutnick, was on the shoreline as a helicopter dropped lines to drag floating passengers to the shore. When one woman grew too weak from the cold to hold on to the line, Skutnick took off his coat and boots and — in short sleeves — dove into the frigid waters to help her to shore — all recorded by news cameras.
It’s also the story of the so-called "sixth passenger" – a survivor of the impact who handed life lines to his fellow passengers in the water so that they would be rescued. He was not rescued and was later identified as Arnold D. Williams, 46, a bank examiner from Illinois. According to the coroner, Williams was the only victim to die from drowning — all others had died as a result of the impact. The 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac is now known as the Arnold D. Williams Bridge.
I remember the crash well, and seeing the video on TV. Hard to believe it was 25 years ago.
More from Wikipedia.
Is The Whole “Surge” Plan A Set-Up?
This paragraph, buried by the NYT, leapt out at me this morning:
A Shiite political leader who has worked closely with the Americans in the past said the Bush benchmarks appeared to have been drawn up in the expectation that Mr. Maliki would not meet them. "He cannot deliver the disarming of the militias," the politician said, asking that he not be named because he did not want to be seen as publicly criticizing the prime minister. "He cannot deliver a good program for the economy and reconstruction. He cannot deliver on services. This is a matter of fact. There is a common understanding on the American side and the Iraqi side."
Views such as these — increasingly common among the political class in Baghdad — are often accompanied by predictions that Mr. Maliki will be forced out as the crisis over the militias builds. The Shiite politician who described him as incapable of disarming militias suggested he might resign; others have pointed to an American effort in recent weeks to line up a “moderate front” of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders outside the government, and said that the front might be a vehicle for mounting a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki, with behind-the-scenes American support. [My italics.]
If this is the case, this president is lying to us once again. It’s one lie too far. If all of this is a ruse to depose Maliki and attack Iran, the constitutional consequences of a runaway, duplicitous president are profound.
Of course, there’s considerable discussion about whether the President can constitutionally attack Iran absent a Congressional authorization. Clearly he can’t. But constitutional limitations have not stopped this President before, and it’s pretty clear that the Bush Administration thinks it is not constitutionally required to get Congressional approval — a scary abuse of power that exceeds even the worst from the Nixon Administration.
Washington is full of rumors that Bush has already ordered a "secret war" against Iran. I tend to doubt that, but I happen to agree with Pat Buchanan and others who say that Bush is trying to provoke an attack from Iran, in order to launch a war there. After all, if Iran attacks us, then Bush can, under the War Powers Act, attack Iran without Congressional approval.
Recommended Reading: Christian Right’s Use Of The Bible
It’s a bit scholarly and long, but interesting if you’re into that sort of thing.
Margaret Mitchell is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago. In this essay, entitled "How Biblical is the Christian Right?", Mitchell chonicles how the Chiristian right, who claim themselves to be biblical "literalists", frequently engage in biblical cherry-picking — or mere bible invocation — to further their political (as opposed to biblical) views. A typical example:
One clear example of the cyberspace Bible-as-sub-text hermeneutic can be seen on the family.org web site run by James Dobson (an American citizen who both sides will agree played an enormous role in the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process, and merited an infamous thank-you note from Justice Samuel Alito). From the “Citizen Link” tab (www.family.org/cforum/) one finds a range of topical headings (rather apples and olives) under “Focus on Social Issues”: Abstinence Policy, Life, Constitution and Government, The Courts, The Media, Education, Gambling, Homosexuality and Gender, Marriage and Family, Origins, Persecution, Pornography and Worldview and Culture. Only two of these categories have a sub-heading “Biblical View.” Can you guess which? Actually, I was surprised, but they are Abstinence Policy and Gambling.
When one follows the link to the latter (“The Biblical View on Gambling”) we find only one actual passage cited: Matt. 10:16: “Jesus says ‘Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.’” This may indeed be taken to refer to a single blackjack dealer, most of our state governments, or the whole “gambling industry” (as the statement later on the page puts it), but I think we can agree that in either case it is hardly a literal reading of Jesus’ commission to the disciples to walk the roads of Galilee preaching and healing. In an unusual concession the author says frankly “Gambling is not addressed directly in the Bible,” but follows that up with the last word on his own authority: “nor is it exempt from God’s instruction.” Yet the web page itself is anonymous, and the authority for its interpretation (gambling is not Biblical) depends entirely on the link to Dobson’s web site. So, despite the fact that there is no verse in the Bible about gambling, somehow (how?) God’s instruction about it can be known.
In other words, these evangelicals cloak themselves in the Bible and God, without having to go through the rigor of actual applying literal scripture:
A similar set of moves may be found in Jerry Falwell’s sermonic column (“Listen, America”) of January 31, 2004, which is entitled, “God is pro-war.”15 Falwell lines up Eccles. 3:8 (“a time of war, and a time of peace”), Exodus 15, Judges, 1 Chron. 14:15, and Prov. 20:18 and 21:15 (“It is a joy to the just to do judgment”) against what he characterizes as the errancy of “many present-day pacifists who hold Jesus as their example for unvarying peace. But they ignore the full revelation concerning Jesus pictured in the book of Revelation 19, where He is depicted bearing a ‘sharp sword’ and smiting nations, ruling them with ‘a rod of iron.’” Those who might respond by appeal to the sixth commandment are easily rebuffed by Falwell: it does not say “thou shalt not kill” but “actually, no; it says: ‘Thou shalt not commit murder.’” Falwell does not feel the need to document this point with reference to the Hebrew verb ratzach in Exod. 20:13 nor even to any particular translation (the venerable KJV so loved by many conservative Christians reads “kill,” but the more recent NIV and NLT read “murder”). It is just so because Reverend Falwell says it is so.
Mitchell sums it up thusly:
My thesis is that what makes the Christian Right biblical is not a literalistic hermeneutic so much as a mode of argumentation by reference to a deliberately selective set of biblical passages, annexed to the predetermined cause through a variety of exegetical moves, which are usually unexplained because they depend upon prior agreement of the ends of interpretation.
That’s a scholarly way of saying this: members of the Christian Right twist the Bible to make it fit with their own pre-conceived notions and agenda, not necessarily the Bible’s (or, indeed, God’s).
Finally, in the end, she answers her original question: "How Biblical Is the Christian Right?"
Biblical? Yes and no. Biblical in the sense of seeking biblical support for an agenda? Yes. Biblical in the sense of reading the whole Bible? No. Biblical in the sense of reading the Bible literally? No, not consistently. Biblical in reading parts for the whole, and in using the Bible as a source of weapons to define themselves against their enemies? Yes. Wrestling with the possible plural meanings and complex legacies of Bible itself? Not in public, at any rate.
Troop Reaction To The Iraq Escalation
Having announced his "new" strategy on Iraq on national TV Wednesday, the Bush team needed a PR boost to show Americans that real Americans are in support of the Bush plan.
They consulted the standard playbook, and placed President Bush in front of what they assumed would be a favorable rah-rah audience: the American soldiers.
So off Bush went to Fort Benning, Georgia, yesterday to give his plan to a rousing audience of uniformed men and women, who would should "huzzah!" and so on, and give good sound bites to the media.
Except…
…his lunchtime talk received a restrained response from soldiers who clapped politely but showed little of the wild enthusiasm that they ordinarily shower on the commander in chief. (New York Times)
Except…
…he received only tepid applause at this Army base (The Washington Times)
Except…
…it was hardly the boisterous, rock-star reception Bush typically gets at military bases. During his lunchtime speech, the soldiers were attentive but quiet. (The Washington Post)
Normally, at such events, the press is invited to talk to members of Bush’s audience to gauge their reaction. This was no different, but for some reason:
The White House brought a planeload of reporters along when President Bush flew to Fort Benning to tout his new Iraq strategy to a roomful of American soldiers, some of whom will be deploying to Iraq sooner than expected. It just didn’t want the reporters to talk to those soldiers — or any others, for that matter.
Scott Stanzel, the deputy White House press secretary, initially told reporters that they’d be able to speak to some of the soldiers who had listened to the president’s speech in a large dining hall in Fort Benning, a sprawling facility in Georgia. That would have been the first opportunity for many reporters to talk to those most directly affected by the Bush administration’s Iraq troop escalation: the soldiers who will be sent to Iraq sooner, and kept there longer.
When the president finished his prepared remarks, however, reporters were shooed out of the dining hall by White House aides and public-affairs personnel from the military base, who said that soldiers were now off-limits to the media.
Later on, just as the press was getting on the plane back to Washington, the press liason at Fort Benning "made available" to the press a hand-picked group of soldiers, who (presumably) would spin the Bush plan favorably. But the press was out of there — not interested in the pre-selected spin.
This is NOT a popular escalation, expecially with those who are going to be most affected by it.
RELATED: This New York Times breakdown of the Bush speech is simply amazing in both analysis and format.
UPDATE: The actual troops in Iraq have talked to the media, and they’re not crazy about Bush’s plan. By the way, Rassmussen Reports does a daily tracking of Bush approval/disapproval. Bush gave his speech on January 10 — look what happened (I’ll give previous days’ data just to show it wasn’t a fluke):
| Bush Job Approval Dec 2005 – Current |
||
|---|---|---|
| Approve | Disapprove | |
| Jan 12 | 35 | 61 |
| Jan 11 | 39 | 58 |
| Jan 10 | 44 | 54 |
| Jan 9 | 42 | 55 |
| Jan 8 | 40 | 57 |
| Jan 7 | 40 | 57 |
| Jan 6 | 42 | 55 |
| Jan 5 | 45 | 54 |
| Jan 4 | 44 | 55 |
| Jan 3 | 43 | 56 |
35%, by the way, is the lowest recorded for Bush with Russmussen.
I Meant To Post This Earlier….
CNN:
After 10 years of research on a project that was supposed to take only five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.
Something has to be done about it, sooner rather than later, University of Calgary professor Piers Steel concludes…
Yeah. We’ll get right on that….
Death Blogging
Last Saturday, science fiction author and futurist Robert Anton Wilson posted the following on his blog:
Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
According to the last blog entry, entered (presumably) by relatives and/or friends, Wilson died at 4:50 a.m. on January 11.
“An Inconvenient Truth” Banned From Seattle School
There’s about nine things funny with this story. Sad, and funny:
This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."
After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a PowerPoint presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists’ findings.
Oh, my. Let’s here from the parent:
"Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old.
Actually, Frosty (*snicker*), Gore is a schoolteacher.
But let’s hear more from Frosty:
"The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD."
Well, it kind of is. I mean, it is called "global warming", right?
School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."
The article later explains that the phenomenon of global warming is "backed by the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences."
So what is the "opposing view", and who has it?
Um, apparently, the opposing view is held by Frosty Hardison’s wife, Gayla:
Hardison and his wife, Gayla, said they would prefer that the movie not be shown at all in schools.
"From what I’ve seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of ‘bad America, bad America,’ I don’t think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you’re going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don’t think the video should be shown."
Well, I wanted to find out more about the Hardisons of Federal Way, Washington. So, hellooooo Google. First of all, Frosty Hardison is all about Powerpoint presentations, and is quite furious that when he goes to complain to the city council, they forbid him from using the program. I also discovered from his Amazon wish list that he’s a bit of a dork.
Anyway, back to the story. It seems that the students in Federal Way, Washington are smarter than the adults — at least the Hardisons. How’s this for reason and maturity?
"I think that a movie like that is a really great way to open people’s eyes up about what you can do and what you are doing to the planet and how that’s going to affect the human race," said Kenna Patrick, a senior at Jefferson High School.
When it comes to the idea of presenting global warming skeptics, Patrick wasn’t sure how necessary that would be. She hadn’t seen the movie but had read about it and would like to see it.
"Watching a movie doesn’t mean that you have to believe everything you see in it," she said.
Yup.
The Tigger Assault: Part II
I blogged about it a few days ago: the lawsuit and video in which Tigger allegedly assualts a teenager at Disneyworld.
People, it’s not the Zapruder film.
Bend It Like Beckham
This is good news for those who wish soccer would become more popular here in the States:
David Beckham agreed to a five-year deal with the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, leaving the Real Madrid club at which he enjoyed worldwide popularity but experienced disappointment on the field.
The Surge And The Surger: Adding More Deck Chairs To The Titanic
Time for me to weigh in seriously on the whole Iraq "surge" thing. Yes, I’m just another twitter in the cacophany of pundits, commenters, analysts, and armchair generals — but here I am.
Now I didn’t see the speech (I heard a later recording) so I won’t comment on the theatrics of his delivery. I’ll leave that to Howard Fineman of Newsweek:
George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
What the voters saw on TV just now was a man struggling to come to grips with his own unwillingness to face facts. It’s still a struggle. His acknowledgement of mistakes was oblique and not as brave as it sounded at first blush. Mistakes were made, and he said. "The responsibility rests with me," he said. What he meant to convey was that others had made the mistakes, but that he was stepped up to take the hit. Hoo-aw! He said that he had "consulted" congressional leaders of both parties before he came to a decision on sending more than 20,000 additional troops. He didn’t really consult with members of Congress, and certainly not with Democrats, unless you consider Sen. Joe Lieberman a Democrat.
Yikes. That bad?
Anyway, a few slightly organized thoughts about the substance of the surge plan:
(1) People need to realize that when Bush speaks about adding another 21,500 troops, he’s not really going to be adding an additional 21,500 combat forces. Generally, only one in four "troops" constitute combat forces — the rest are support personnel (mechanics, etc.). So, at best, we’re adding 6,000 actual combat forces into Iraq.
Is this enough to make a difference? No.
Consider the island of Manhattan. That has a police force of 45,000. And that’s just 10 square miles. Iraq, on the other hand, is thousands of square miles. What will the addition of 6,000 combat forces do in a region that size? Very little.
Granted, most of the sectarian violence is limited to Baghdad and outlying provinces. But 6,000 combat forces — if they have any effect at all — will merely serve to relocate the violence in other parts of Baghdad, or in further outlying provinces.
Look. Just last month, the US Army came out with its first ever counter-insurgency manual, and it makes this clear point: the ideal ratio of troops to population in a counter-insurgency operation is 20 per 1,000. Iraq’s population is 26 million. This would imply the US would need to add at least 250,000 to its existing force of 140,000 – a logistical and political impossibility.
So I disagree with the metaphor that this is Bush’s "hail mary" pass. Hail Mary passes are looong passses. This is a short passes from his own 20 yard line.
After the whistle has blown.
(2) Bush also talked about a change in military strategy — not just more boots on the ground, but allowing those boots to go into areas in which they were formally forbidden to go.
Prior to now, U.S. and Iraqi troops would go into violent areas, secure them, and then leave. Naturally, as soon as we left, the violence sprouted up again.
Bush’s strategy this time appears to be "clear and hold" — where we go into violent areas, secure them, and stay there. This makes sense in a situation in 20th century warfare, where the "enemy" is a soldier in uniform, clearly identifiable. Not so much in guerrilla warfare, where the "enemy" could be anybody. What we’ll see is a slow attrition of our forces there, as small potshots and IEDs pick them off one-by-one. With the enemy both in plain sight, and not in sight at all, we can’t ever keep any neighborhood secure by "clearing" out the bad guys, since we won’t know who they are.
So instead, we’ll be perpetual targets.
(3) People should also realize that the 20,000+ increase in troops does not mean we will be getting 20,000+ fresh troops. Part of the way the "increase" will come about is to extend tours of duty for soldiers who are already there — tired men and women. Not a good thing.
(4) Also, even with the surge, the number of troops will still be less than what we had in Iraq in 2005 [We had 160,000 troops in November 2005; we have 140,000 there now — a surge will take us to just over 160,000].
If we couldn’t accomplish "victory" then, what makes anybody think it will be different now, when the insurgency is even bigger?
(5) Bush was correct in saying that ultimately, the Iraqis have to step up to the plate and secure their own country. However, by providing more "support", we send the exact opposite message. It’s sort of like telling a welfare recipient that they should go out and find a job, but giving them more and more money. Disincentive.
Furthermore, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government simply have not stepped up to the plate when required. Just two months ago, our National Security Advisor said:
"…the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
Last year, for example, the Iraqis agreed to contribute six battalions — about 3,000 soldiers — to a joint security operation in the capital called Operation Together Forward. Only two battalions showed up, according to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. And only one was combat-ready.
What makes anybody think it will be different this time?
(6) I still have no idea what the metric for "success in Iraq" means. Is it possible to extinguish all sectarian violence in Iraq? No. This is a hornet’s nest, and there simply is no way to put the hornets back in the hive. There’s no way to unscrew the pooch. There’s no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube. As Ollie North and others are saying, all you are doing now is putting more American lives in danger, with no payoff.
(7) The most troublesome part of Bush’s speech was this:
Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.
Now, it seems clear that we can’t allow Iran and Syria to take advantage of the turmoils in Iraq. And Bush is right that we need to "address" those two countries. But immediately, President One-Track-Mind jumps to the military solution, totally avoiding the political solution, the international pressure solution, the diplomatic solution, the sanction solution, or a combination of all of the above.
This is a playground presidency, where the only answer to international problems is to blow shit up. It seems to me, and I’m not the only one, that Bush’s "revised plan" is to baby sit Iraq until we can go find some other country to bomb.
[UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. We’re already starting our fight with Iran.]In other words, the flop known as the Iraq War is going on tour. Ugh.
(8) Another Bush line:
The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time.
I have a hard time with this rhetoric.
If this truly is the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, shouldn’t he be calling upon Americans to sacrifice? Shouldn’t he be raising taxes to pay for this war? Or be bringing back the draft?
Bush suffers from a disingenuity problem simply because with one hand, he makes this conflict out to be as if our survival depends on it. But with the other hand, he wants us to keep shopping at Walmart as if nothing is going on. No wonder he’s not connecting with the American people.
(9) To listen to Bush last night, one might come away with the impression that al Qaeda (the people that attacked us on 9/11) are all over the place in Iraq. But we must never ever lose sight that, while al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, the conflict in Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda. As Middle Eastern expert Juan Cole points out, al Qaeda has little presence in Iraq:
And the main problem is not "al-Qaeda," which is small and probably not that important, and anyway is not really Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. They are just Salafi jihadis who appropriated the name. When their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed, it didn’t cause the insurgency to miss a beat. Conclusion: "al-Qaeda" is not central to the struggle.
(10) We all remember the blind faith at the beginning of the war, don’t we? Where we would be "greeted as liberators" and the grateful Iraqi public would throw flowers at our feet?
There was no empirical evidence for that — it was just a belief held by the Bush Administration. The New York Times this morning shows that blind faith still is in abundent supply at the White House:
He put it far more bluntly when leaders of Congress visited the White House earlier on Wednesday. “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” the president told the Congressional leaders, according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought this strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back: “Because it has to.”
Because it has to?
Clap harder everybody, and Tinkerbell will live.
(11) Small point, but a point that needs making. Bush said:
"Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."
Just for the record, that’s not an admission that he made mistakes. It’s saying that he’s taking responsibility for others’ mistakes.
(12) So what’s the answer to the Iraq quigmire?
Well, I think — hard as it might be for some — that we have to acknowledge that the tube is out of the toothpaste, and the pooch — once screwed — cannot become unscrewed.
But if leaving would be a disaster, dicking around for nine months and then leaving would be somewhat more of a disaster.
We have to cut our losses with respect to Iraq. Our presence there only fuels the problem, not only in Iraq, but regionally. Logistically, we can’t go to war with the entire Middle East.
And Iraq itself needs to be taken off the U.S. military teet. If they ever are to stand up, it will only be after we stand down.
This does not mean abandoning the Middle East militarily — we still have unfinished work in Afghanistan. Nor does it mean forgoing putting military pressure on Iran and Syria. But all these things need to be done in conjunction with the international community of nations, and there must be a parallel track of diplomacy and negotiation — especially with Iran and Syria.
I’m still on the fence about the "Democratic" response in Congress (although, to be honest, the nay-sayers to the Bush revised strategy include many hawkish Republicans and military men). I think it is political folly to withhold funds from the troops themselves — after all, if they are ordered to fight, we want them to have body armor, etc. I think the symbolic resolution being proposed — the one saying "no" to Bush’s new plan — is a nice start, but it will be, at the end of the day, just that: symbolic.
There is the larger question of whether Congress can revoke its resolution, passed in the days of 9/11, authorizing President Bush to go to war. My earlier research (and admittedly, it’s been a few years) suggested that they can, and if so, they should.
At this point, the U.S. cannot "win" (whatever that means) in Iraq, but we can make it worse by staying there and breeding the kind of anti-U.S. sentiment that led to 9/11 in the first place. That’s not just me saying that — that’s the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (the assessment of the country’s combined military intelligence agencies). Creating more extremism and zealots is not in our best interest. Time to pull out. We got Saddam — let’s hang our hat on that victory, and begin anew our efforts to deflate Islamic extremism.
UPDATE: A new Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted following the President’s speech finds broad and strong opposition to his call to send about 21,500 more troops to Iraq: 61 percent oppose the force increase, with 52 percent "strongly" opposing the build-up. Thirty-six percent support the additional troops; only one-quarter of the public is strongly supportive.
Worse still is the AP poll:
Fully 70 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops, and a like number don’t think such an increase would help stabilize the situation there. The telephone survey of 1,002 adults was conducted Monday through Wednesday night, when the president made his speech calling for an increase in troops. News had already surfaced before the polling period that Bush wanted to boost U.S. forces in Iraq.
The Iraq situation continued to be drag on Bush’s overall job approval rating, which stood at 32 percent, a new low in AP-Ipsos polling.
The last word to Keith Olbermann, who catalogues the missteps of Bush regarding Iraq, and why he simply cannot be trusted:
President Bush makes no secret of his distaste for looking backward, for assessing past results.
But in our third story on the Countdown tonight… too bad.
Any meaningful assessment of the president’s next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far.
So, let’s look at the record:
Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America.
Now, he says it is vital for America.
He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.
He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.
He has told us the war is necessary…Because Saddam was a threat; Because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda; Because of terrorism in general; To liberate Iraq; To spread freedom; To spread democracy; To keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden.
He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and "de-Baathified" the government. He short-changed Iraqi training.
He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence.
He sent in troops without life-saving equipment.
Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis.
Staffed U-S positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
We learned that "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".
He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it’s up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.
He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, ¤elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam.
We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers.
As they stood up–we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never ‘stay the course’,
The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists.
The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.
OKAY, THE REAL LAST WORD: Inadvertantly, a game show contestant gives the proper response to the Bush speech last night —