Almost one paragraph
Joe Klein had two positive paragraphs a while back. Now he has almost another one:
The reduction of violence is real. The defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq–sneezed at by some antiwar commentators–is nothing to sneeze at. The bottom-up efforts to reconcile Sunnis and Shi’ites across the scarred Anbar/Karbala provincial border, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, quite possibly reflect an Iraqi exhaustion with violence that has to be taken seriously as well. There is no question that the performance of the US military has improved markedly under the smarter, more flexible and creative leadership provided this year by General Petraeus. And the withdrawal of U.S. troops is beginning. The refusal of the antiwar movement — or some sections of it — to recognize these developments isn’t helping its credibility.
Did you get the sense that there’s a “but” around the corner? Next sentence: “Let me reassert the obvious here: The war in Iraq has been a disaster, the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made by an American President.” We don’t know what will transpire in the future, any more than you. But what happens if this “stupidest foreign policy decision” results in a “genuine, old-fashioned victory“?
November 14th, 2007 at 8:38 am
OK, let’s shift gears to 9/12/2001. Who would have offered odds that six years later there would have been no further attacks within the US and that thousands of Al Quaeda terrorist would be dead or captured? If that’s disaster, how would one define success? Criminal indictments for Osama Bin Laden? Applause at the UN?
Since we are in the mood to demand perfection, let me be the first to castigate our stupid president for not developing a secret weapon that would just magically make all terrorist’s heads explode without injuring any innocents.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
“…the stupidest foreign policy decision ever made by an American President.”
What a crock! Anyone not lobotomized by the MSM would correctly identify that as either:
a: Allowing our strong partner in the middle east, Iran, to fall to islamic fanatics, and become a strong sponsor of global terror (Jimmy), or
b: Allowing those same fanatics to grow strong and confident by failing to respond to 8 years of incessant attacks on US citizens, soldiers, and interests (Bubba).
Both these incredible blunders grew from the flawed assumption that becoming non-threatening turns your enemies into friends, the core value of liberal thought that has been taught in our universities for 50 years now. The trainwrecks above are a direct result.