A Bad Spell

Any more references to Victor Davis Hanson, here and I'm going to have to buy a tee shirt. Read the whole thing.

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We, deliberately or inadvertently, have empowered our enemies this last month or so by the Rumsfeld departure, the grandstanding comments about failure in the Gates confirmation hearing, the Bolton resignation, and now the Iraq Study Group, all of which conspired to convey the image of an overripe, juicy American plum easy to be picked off by assorted enemies. Which brings us back to …

The Baker Commission…

Upate: Bits I found relevent:

There is the obviously accurate diagnosis of the problem that a weak elected government in Iraq has been able neither to provide enough basic services to the people to ensure their support, nor to marshal the will to kill the jihadists—given various Shiite and Sunni militias’ infection of the government itself.

But while accurately describing symptoms and forming a diagnosis, most of its other recommended therapy and prognosis are surreal. ...

Does anyone really believe that Syria and Iran, at least in the short-term, abhor chaos in Iraq?... Only a perceived mess in Iraq keeps the attention of the United States and, indeed, the world community away from Teheran...

why are there not terrorists attacks originating from Syria on the Golan Heights? ... The answer probably is deterrence; that is, Syria knows that a single Israel plane might in response take out the power grid of Damascus for a year or so.

...the Assad regime use surrogates in Lebanon or the West Bank that offer deniability of culpability of sorts. After all, hit back at the West Bank and you only add to the “misery” of the poor “refugees” and end up on CNN. ...

We forget that the jihadist websites are still worried about Iraq, both the losses suffered there, and the emergence of a democratic government. We think we are not winning, but so do they think they aren’t either.
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..pouring in more manpower will only exacerbate the situation. Right now with all coalition troops and Iraqi security forces combined, we must be nearing 450,000-500,000 soldiers pitted against perhaps 10,000 terrorists. Thus the problem is not numbers per se, but the conditions of engagement under which the enemy finds advantage regardless of numerical inferiority.