Monte Cargo wrote:blatham wrote:Come on, MC. I have (dwindling) hopes you'll take some care with these matters. Your response immediately above re the title of this thread just avoids the discussion/debate that leads up this thread...that is, the AEI and neoconservative individuals who designed and pushed the policy ideas which provided impetus and rational for the project of attacking Iraq who now seek to attribute blame for the negative progress of the project. Those people aren't anti-war.
Please try a bit harder.
There are two ways of seeing the current situation in Iraq. One way is to see the increase levels of violence and the call to end the "Iraq Quagmire" as proof of Bush incompetency and confirmation that toppling Saddam was in itself, too consequential in its destablizing influence on the ME.
The other way of seeing the current levels of violence in Iraq is to appreciate the increased violence, not as proof that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, but as a condition which must be countered with decisive military measures, including confronting Iran and preventing further bloodshed in the short run, while steering the factions toward a resolution to share power. I stop short of Biden's suggestion to geographically divide Iraq into three separate provinces or countries, because that will just provide the Sunnis and the Iranians with more well-defined targets.
Of course, the second paragraph here represents a complete avoidance of reflection on the prudence of decisions made which have led to the present situation. And it absolutely avoids accountability. You relieve yourself and the administration through past
and future of any possible blame/failure with the implicit notion that all we can do - the only positive option open - is to continue barging forward regardless of all else. The "all else" being limited, it seems, to nothing more substantial than leftist media whining about stuff. Any other "else" (perhaps another half million or million dead, millions of kids and women blown to ****, american kids who won't be able to wipe their own ass ever again, increasing recruitment against the west, etc etc) is just stuff needing to be barged through. Forward, never reverse, no matter what. Is there any imaginable point of degradation of affairs where you would say "reverse"?
As to some version of the "3 state" Biden proposal (convincingly argued for by Galbraith and others as possible if complex option)...maybe. Forwarding valuable ideas on that requires a level of familiarity, experience and learning which I won't approach in this life.
As to your earlier post on Ricks etc... you play a game there I'm hoping you will cease playing because it has no more value than watching the Hatfields and McCoys piss at each other across the creek. You tempered your post later, but why engage as you first did? You demonstrate some knowledge of Ricks' book (but mis-state the content in what you limit the subject matter to) yet fall to a silly ad hominem response. And dishonestly in that, failing to mention that he covered the Pentagon for the WSJ for seventeen years. You compare his work to Coulter (at least for supposed rhetorical gain) framing how we ought to evaluate the worth of reporting/writing/commentary/thinking merely on the basis of partisan allegiance. One could compare Dowd to Coulter, but not Ricks.
Let me know if you agree with my last sentence here. You're a smart fellow and it would be nice to have you around for the thought-provoking challenges you are capable of presenting. But if you don't agree with my last sentence above, I'm not going to bother.
