Past……..Future — what’s missing?
A presidential candidate says the surge is working and adds this:
“It’s working. We’re just years too late in changing our tactics,”…”We can’t ever let that happen again. We can’t be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war.“
It’s an interesting rhetorical device. It is arguably true that generals and politicians have been re-fighting the last war in much of their approach to Iraq, and what we really need is to prepare for the next or new war. Fair enough. But what about the current war? In what sense does “preparing to fight the new war” include ignoring the consequences of this one?
UPDATE
Perhaps we should look past that statement and simply be glad for small favors. After all, it could have been far worse. The candidate could have omitted the term “war” altogether and merely said that America is in “a period where there’s a lot of stuff going on internationally.” Now that’s a bold vision for America.