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I listened carefully to the Democratic Senators denouncing the effort in Iraq. All were supposed repositories of deep wisdom. Most of them voted for the war, once gave alarmist speeches on the threats of WMD, and now demonize the Iraqi reformers of all people as ingrates who weren’t worth our sacrifices. For each face that came to the podium, I remembered a past quotation: the now shrill Sen. Harry Reid once demanded that we go to war on the basis that Saddam had broken the 1991 armistice accords (a fact no one has contested);...
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“There is no military solution.” Who denies that? But such reductionism means nothing when no Iraqi politician can craft any meaningful compromise until Anbar province is first secure.
“It’s time the Iraqis step up.” Of course, they should. But it’s difficult for 25 million to do so when under daily assault by a few thousand killers in their midst who kidnap, behead, and now employ poison gas. How odd that liberals are the most vehement illiberal critics of liberal Iraqis.
“George Bush did …” Of course, as President he is responsible for the war. But he went to war only after seeking approval from Congress, and not only got it, but also as dessert impassioned speeches from the Democratic Congress on why he should. ...
“We are in the middle of a civil war.” It would be wise, then, to cite a civil war akin to Iraq....
We took our eye off the real war in Afghanistan.” Would some Democrat explain exactly how to invade nuclear Islamic Pakistan and kill the al Qaeda leadership responsible for 9/11?...
...Democrats the last two years called for Rumsfeld’s head, for more troops to be deployed, for a change of military leadership in Iraq—and now got all three. But no sooner has Dr. Petraeus arrived and inaugurated his radically different way of doing things, than the Democrats wish to cut off his funds before the verdict is in.----------------
If you can stomach it (and I'm not sure I can), read the whole thing.
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George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld dug us a deep hole in Iraq. They led us into war on false pretenses. They failed to send enough troops. They didn’t do anything to stop the looting. They fired the Iraqi army, essentially telling hundreds of thousands of young Iraqi men, “You’re fired, get out of here, we’re not going to pay you, and take your weapons with you!”
The Republican Congress, for its part, stood by cheerleading. In addition, they refused to do any oversight of war contracting while waste, fraud, and the misappropriation of billions of dollars torpedoed the reconstruction of Iraq. Every dollar that didn’t go towards getting up the electricity and the water, taking care of the sewage, and putting Iraqis to work alienated the population and fueled the insurgency, making a difficult mission impossible and sending the country into total chaos.
President Bush the other day that the media don't cover the "good news" stories in Iraq, I found it literally incredible that anyone in this administration could continue to blame the media for Americans souring on this fiasco. After all, as you might recall, there was "no doubt" about the stockpiles of WMD. The Mission was Accomplished in just six weeks. There was no insurgency, just a few "dead-enders." Then the insurgency was in its "last throes." A week before the recent elections, the president said we were "winning" the war.
Yet many Bush administration supporters (talk about "dead-enders") still bash the media for not reporting about the many Army and Marine units that bring school supplies to children around Iraq. They may not realize that, as has been widely reported, Iraqi principals beg journalists not to cover these stories for fear of their schools being targeted by insurgents. Perhaps, as I suspect, their ignorance is one of partisan convenience.
The truth of the matter is that the Bush administration has made enormous and tragic mistakes at every stage of this debacle. It overplayed the threat from Iraq and undersold the price, in lives and resources, of a war. It failed to plan for a post-invasion Iraq, ignored the threat of an insurgency and allowed a shoddy reconstruction rife with fraud, abuse and sheer amateurism to sabotage our efforts to put the pieces back together. Worst of all, it has failed to admit to its mistakes or adjust to emerging realities along the way, leaving us in what now seems to be a no-win situation
Unfortunately, those decisions will be made by a leader whose judgment most Americans no longer trust. And if he wants to regain that trust, if he wants to honor the incredible successes and sacrifices of our troops, if he really wants to "win" in Iraq, he should start by being honest about the mistakes we've made and the options left to us, not by continuing to shift blame for this mess onto everyone but himself.
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