The Seventh Sense

Failure IS An Option

Let’s get serious.  Bush screwed up by getting us into Iraq in the first place, and screwed it up once we were there.  He had no plan yada yada yada.

But let’s put down the anti-Bush signs and flags and ribbons and ask some simple questions with respect to Iraq:  NOW what?  How do we “win”?

I’m struggling with this, and I found this post by Billmon to be very persuasive.  He starts out by suggesting—and this is hard to swallow—that we may have already lost.

The silver lining, if one can be had, is that Iraq doesn’t HAVE to be the central front on the war on terrorism.  In fact, it clearly wasn’t before we got there.  So the grand strategy is to find a way to get out of Iraq in such a way where we can save face, and turn our attention to the global war on terrorism.  But how do we actually do that?  Just pack up and leave en masse?

I won’t detail the entire Billmon post.  As the saying goes, read the whole thing.  And pay close attention to this paper by Dan Byman, which discusses “Five Bad Options For Iraq”.

Quo Vadis?

Note to White House: If you want sell your message to the American people about how great things are in Iraq, don’t use Latin.

Operation Yellow Elephant Update

Max Blumenthal talks to College Republicans, and asks them why they aren’t enlisting.  The responses are what you would expect: “a nagging football injury”, “my ex-hippy parents don’t want me to”, etc.

Then there is Cory Bray, a senior at at U.Penn’s Wharton School of Business.  From the bar at a college Republican party, Bray brayed:

"The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line"

Nice observation, Cory.  I also note that anti-abortion people aren’t having abortions.  But your keen insight begs an obvious question: Why aren’t you, who support the war, putting your ass on the line?  Care to respond, Cory?

"[B]ecause I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country, and I wasn’t going to pass that up."

I see.  So people who OPPOSE the war should be fighting it, so that people like you who SUPPORT the war can go to B-school.  Makes sense.

But Cory went on:

"We’re the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit."

Mmmmmm.  What “shit” does Cory do?  Googling him gives us some insight.  For one thing, he sells Bush T-shirts in bulk, and creates disturbing (and lame) “Use Kerry For A Baseball” internet games.

And while I’m sure that programming silly computer games and being a pro-Bush junior capitalist is important, it pales in comparison to those who actually—really actually—do shit.

Terrorists Heart Bush

Remember that ridiculous meme during the past election that the terrorists were rooting for John Kerry to win?  Apparently, just the opposite:

Two French journalists who were held hostage in Iraq told a British documentary program that their captors believed George W. Bush’s re-election as US president would help radicalize Iraqis.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in August and released after four months, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Panorama” program that they were allowed to interview the leader of an Islamic militant cell within the group that seized them.

“We felt we were on planet bin Laden,” Malbrunot said on the program, which airs Wednesday night.

The cell leader trained with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told them the insurgents supported a Bush presidency because they believed it meant that “there will be confrontation, occupation and radicalization of the Iraqi people,” Malbrunot said.

And they were right.  Thank you, red states.

Bush's Speech

From the speech:

And the larger purpose of our involvement has always been to help the nations of The Middle East become independent and stand alone, self-sustaining, as members of a great world community - at peace with themselves, and at peace with all others.

With such an Iraq, our country-and the world will be far more secure than it is tonight.

I believe that a peaceful Middle East is far nearer to reality because of what America has done in Iraq. l believe that the men who endure the dangers of battle fighting there for us tonight - are helping the entire world avoid far greater conflicts, far wider wars, far more destruction, than this one. The peace that will bring them home someday will come.

No.  I’ve lied.  The words are from LBJ’s Vietnam Renunciation Speech on March 31, 1968—the word “Asia” has been replaced with “Middle East”, and “Vietnam” with “Iraq”.  Essentially, last night Bush gave us the same rhetoric as Johnson did 37 years ago, and we know how Vietnam turned out.

We’re fighting Vietnam all over again.  Replace the word “communism” with “terrorism” and change some geographical names, and the mission, rhetorically speaking, is essentially the same.  It should be noted that Vietnam actually DID fall to communism, but the dominoes did not continue to fall as the gloom-and-doomers predicted.  Too bad Bush was too busy partying and drinking during that time in America’s history—he might have learned something the first time around.

[Hat tip: Cynical-C Blog]

Actually, many have already noted the similarities in tone and rhetoric between Bush’s speech last night, and Nixon’s "Silent Majority" speech, i.e.,:

I can order an immediate, precipitate withdrawal of all Americans from Vietnam without regard to the effects of that action.

. . . Or we can persist in our search for a just peace through a negotiated settlement if possible, or through continued implementation of our plan for Vietnamization if necessary--a plan in which we will withdraw all of our forces from Vietnam on a schedule in accordance with our program, as the South Vietnamese become strong enough to defend their own freedom. I have chosen this second course. It is not the easy way. It is the right way.

It is a plan which will end the war and serve the cause of peace--not just in Vietnam but in the Pacific and in the world.

MORE THOUGHTS:  It struck me as odd that Bush cited bin Laden favorably in support of his stay-the-course-in-Iraq policy:

Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: “This Third World War … is raging” in Iraq. “The whole world is watching this war.” He says it will end in “victory and glory or misery and humiliation.”

So, according to bin Laden, Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. And therefore we must operate under the same reasoning? Unfortunately, Bush thinks so.  But is there any chance that bin Laden doesn’t really think that and/or was just merely being somewhat hyperbolic?

Better There Than Here?

One of the most annoying and disingenuous memes coming from the White House these days—and Bush repeated it in his speech last night—is the idea that it is better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than it is to fight them here.  When I first heard that message, I dismissed it as silly rhetoric . . . but then, I kept on hearing it.  So I actually thought about the premise and implications of that meme, something which I doubt many war supporters have done.

Now, on its face, in a factual vacuum, the meme is appealing.  Obviously, I would prefer that the terrorists fight our soldiers in Baghdad than interrupt me on my way to work.  Everybody would prefer that. 

But George Bush is basically admitting that we have turned Iraq into a terrorist battlefront . . . so that the United States can be safe.  “Better there than here”?!?  Some humanitarians we turned out to be! 

Also, I wonder how Iraqis feel about that.  As one Iraqi who listened to Bush’s speech last night said about the United States: “Why don’t they find another place to fight terrorism?”

Good question.

Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard also slaps down this meme, with two more points:

The first, is that we’re not altogether sure we are fighting terrorists, in the al-Qaeda sense of the word. As Newsweek recently reported in a piece entitled “War In the Dark,” “what the Americans don’t know is who, exactly, they’re fighting."

The second thing to remember, for most of the people declaring where they’d rather fight the terrorists, is that they are not personally doing much of the fighting.

But my main criticism of the meme is that, even if the people we are fighting in Iraq are terrorists, they certainly don’t represent ALL, or even MOST, of the worldwide population of terrorists.  And if they start losing (and I suspect that eventually, at some point, they will), the remaining insurgency probably will not remain in Iraq to die to the last man.  Instead, equipped with their new skills that they acquired in the Terrorist Training Ground known as Iraq, they will disperse throughout the world—including (wait for it!) . . . here.

“Better there than here”?!?

The enemy is not the German Army.  There is no Berlin.  In the next ten years or so, we may finally bring stabilty to Iraq.  But it will not have furthered our interests in the Global War on Terrorism—indeed, just the opposite.

UPDATE: Juan Cole has the final say on the “better there than here” meme:

This is monstrous and ridiculous at once. The people in Fallujah and Ramadi were not sitting around plotting terrorism three years ago. They had no plans to hit the United States. Terrorism isn’t a fixed quantity. By unilaterally invading Iraq and then bollixing it up, Bush and Vines have created enormous amounts of terrorism, which they are now having trouble putting back in the bottle.

A Sad Passing

R.I.P Shelby Foote.

Anyone who fails to read his Civil War narratives and/or enjoy him in Ken Burns’ “The Civil War”, really misses out.

Bush Then And Now

THEN:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is . . . I think it’s also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."

-- Bush criticizing President Clinton on not setting a timetable for troops in Kosovo, 4/9/99 and 6/5/99

NOW:

"It doesn’t make any sense to have a timetable. You know, if you give a timetable, you’re—you’re conceding too much to the enemy."

-- Bush on Iraq, 6/24/05

Washington Nationals and George Soros

Just another sign that some Republicans are so anti-progressive that they abandon every notion of common sense.  The latest outrage from the right?  They’re upset because billionaire and progressive-cause-supporter George Soros wants to be a part-owner of the MLB baseball team, the Washington Nationals.

Rep. Thomas David (R-Va) issued a veiled threat to Major League Baseball, suggesting that if Soros was permitted to buy (or co-buy) the Washington Nationals, it would be unwise, since baseball enjoys exemption from anti-trust laws.  In other words, MLB, if you let Soros buy a baseball team, the Republican Congress could “punish” the sport. Read more here.

This is particularly ironic, since many politicians—including Bush himself—were or are part owners of major league baseball teams.  What’s the deal here?  Baseball ownership only for people of one political stripe?

Democrat Representative George Miller has the correct response:

Why should politics have anything to do with who owns the team...So Congress is going to get involved in every baseball ownership decision? Are they next going to worry about a manager they don’t like? I’ve never seen anything as impotent as a congressman threatening the baseball exemption.

Even Michelle Malkin recognizes this overly partisan stupidity.

Freedom In Iraq

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Students in the Shi’ite Muslim religious Iraqi city of Najaf said that police recently arrested and beat several of them for wearing jeans and having long hair.

“They arrested us because of our hair and because we were wearing jeans,” said student Mohammed Jasim, adding that the arrests took place two weeks ago in the city, the spiritual heart of Iraq’s newly dominant Shi’ite majority.

“They beat us in front of the people. Then they took us to their headquarters, beat us again, shaved our heads and tore our clothes."

I hope these aren’t Iraqi police that we’ve been training.