Sullivan criticizes Petraeus for not having an answer to the question of if Iraq is making us safer.
I don’t think it’s a fair question. Petraeus is a soldier. His job is not to set policy but to execute it. When he’s on the Joint Chiefs, then he can set policy.
Most of the pundits, I think, are missing the point on the upcoming Petraeus report. It doesn’t matter what he says. The only instance in which it would matter is if he either proclaimed Iraq to be a triumph or proclaimed it unwinnable. That’s not going to happen. Petraeus, being a smart man, is likely to admit that the truth is something in between — i.e., we’re making progress but there are many difficulties, some of which may be insurmountable.
And let’s be honest. No matter what he says, Bush’s supporters — his few remaining supporters — will proclaim that this proves the surge is working and we need to keep going. And no matter what he says, Bush’s opponents — his ever-growing number of opponents — will proclaim the surge isn’t working and this prove we need to pull out now.
I’m afraid that the horrible truth of the situation — that we can’t leave but we can’t stay — a truth Petraeus understands better than anyone — is too subtle for the roughly ground lens of our nation’s politics.
To use my favorite turn of phrase, the politicians will use Petraeus’ report the way a drunk uses a lamp-post — for support not illumination. They’re not going to read it to learn anything. In fact, given their record on the Patriot Act, our politicians are unlikely to read it at all. They may not even bother to get their staffs to redact quotes out of context. They’ll just wave it in their hands and proclaim it supports their position.
Last night, we had a political grandstandfest, er, debate. And there was an actual, you know, exchange of views.
The thing is that both men are right. We do have an obligation to try to fix Iraq and we do have an obligation to leave if it can’t be fixed.
We need more moments like this. I feel a tide turning in this country — away from buzz words, one-liners and demagoguery to serious discussion. Or discussion anyway. Thank God for people like Ron Paul who’ve had the temerity to mix it up and the eloquence to do in a way that can’t just be sound-bitten away.
TSA takes our nail-clippers, our water bottles and our deodorant but can’t be bothered to confiscated a bomb.
Feel any safer?
TSA, like all government agencies, is not about what it’s about. Their goal is to enforce the rules, not to make our airlines safer.
Jose Padilla has been convicted of conspiracy.
That’s it? That’s the best they could do? They imprisoned this American citizen for 3.5 years without access to an attorney and without charges. The used sensory and sleep deprivation to turn him into a shambling wreck of a human being. And in the end, they convicted him of something they could have charged him with the day he was arrested.
And so it goes.
So what was the point of raping his civil rights? What was the point of treating him like a second-class citizen? Why do we need secret trials if this conviction was so easy to get?
Expect Bush’s supporters — his few remaning supporters — to crow about this. I can just hear Limbaugh now: “See, you libs! We gave him a fair trial and he was convicted!” But this is a tragedy. The civil rights of all Americans were trampled for nothing.
More from Sully here.
it’s fun, when you get cynical about politics, to hear someone like Ron Paul speaking. I don’t agree with him 100%, but he’s been more right than another Republican.
Even better that the Rominator gets annoyed.
Another shitwit conservative tries to tell us Iraq=WWII because apparently they haven’t gotten the memo that we’re dealing with an internecine guerilla war, not a conventional one. But their comparison unintentionally makes the case against the President:
But during those months Churchill had been busy firing or re-assigning the generals who were not bringing victories: including Gens. Wavell, Dill, Auchinleck, Ritchie, Norrie, Brooke-Popham, Messervy and Corbett — among others.
Finally he found a general who could win — Bernard Law Montgomery.
Funny how Churchill (and Lincoln) didn’t need to wait until they lost an election to realize they had the wrong guys in charge.
I wonder whether, perhaps, in Gen. Petraeus President Bush has finally found his Gen. Montgomery. And whether Petraeus’s new strategy and success at beating al Qaeda in Iraq and growing success against the Mahdi Army — may be his El Alamein.
Look, Petraeus is fantastic. If we’d had him in charge earlier, things might have gone differently. But I’m becoming concerned about the messianic attitude the Right has adopted toward him. He is not a miracle worker; he’s a good general. He and Gates are a vast improvement over the last pair of buffoons. But the surgery may be coming too late to save the patient.
To build on Blankley’s anology, this would be like Churchill switching to Montgomery after the Nazis were in London – after insisting for years that all was well. But now I’m buying into this Iraq=WW2 bullshit.
Of course, there are vast differences between WWII and the current Iraq Theatre of the War on Terror (ITWOT).
Gee, ya think?
For one thing, in 1942, the British Parliamentarians were not proposing bringing the British troops home and surrendering to Hitler and the Japanese. They merely thought another leader (perhaps Sir Stafford Cripps) might better lead Britain to victory.
Yes. This is the only difference. Iraq is a globe-spanning superpower with massive industrial might fighting a conventional war. If we leave now, Iraqi troops will be in Cleveland by 2009.
Were they more patriotic than the current defeatists in Washington? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just that they understood (at least by that terrible summer of 1942) that for England, it was victory or death — while for many of the Washington defeatists in this dismal summer of ’07 they are under the delusion that America in all its might and glory can simply surrender to al Qaeda without potentially mortal consequences.
To quote Robert, jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, is this guy serious?! Is he mental? Does he not realize that Al Quaeda is only one of the factions in Iraq — one that didn’t exist until we went there? Does he really think Iraq sliding into chaos is going to be the same as Nazi marching in Trafalgar Square? Or that our getting out of a civil war is the equivalent of “surrender”?
Look, you can make the argument we need to win Iraq. You can make the argument that we can win in Iraq. But you need to lay the World War II comparisons aside. History did not begin in 1939 and end in 1945. There are thousands of historical comparisons that are better here. Just off the top of my head, I could say better comparisons might be Vietnam or Korea; the Occupation of Haiti; numerous British occupations including Afghanistan; our recent experience in the Balkans; various Roman occupations; maybe even the Greek invasion of Sicily.
None of these comparisons are very good, but they are far more accurate than World War II. The problem is that the “conservatives” see everything in terms of World War II. Good vs. evil instead of good vs. evil vs. evil vs. evil. A straight-forward conflict instead of a non-linear ethnic strife. A villain with distinct facial hair instead of many villains with different agendas. And, to be honest, they’re mostly thinking in terms of movies and TV shows instead of history. (Remember the “lessons” of 24?)
And if we are going to go with the World War II analogy, Bush is closer to Chamberlain than to Churchill. Churchill said he had nothing to offer but blood toil tears and sweat; Bush tells us all is well and offers us tax breaks. Churchill changed commanders when they lost; Bush stuck with Rummy until he lost an election. Churchill knew he needed to get the hell out of Dunkirk; Bush would say this was surrendering to the enemy. Churchill acknowledged bad news and was honest with the British public, whose resolved he trust; Bush thinks Americans are a bunch of weak-kneed morons and constantly insists that the only thing going wrong in Iraq is that we have Democrats and a media at home.
Bush isn’t even in the same league as Churchill. He’s not even in the same God-damn sport. I’m not even certain he’s the same species.
Again, there are some Dems who would love for us to lose in Iraq for political reasons, sure. But most of the people opposing our continuing presence are genuinely concerned that we are throwing lives and treasure into an unwinnable situation. Fuck the historical analogies – let’s deal with the situation we have in the present.
That’s what it’s called when you take one fact or a few facts in isolation and attempt to prove something. Fred Thompson was doing it below with global warming; and the entire the Right Wing Echosphere is doing it with the death toll in Iraq, which was at an eight month low in July. Rush Limbaugh was going on about this non-stop yesterday.
Of course, no word on if Iraqi sectarian violence declined as well.
The problem that many people — left and right — seem unable to grasp is that one data point does not create a trend. Trends are trends, i.e., more than one data point. The violence in Iraq has been trending up for years. A one-month pause does not mean anything, especially since past Julys have also been relatively calm.
I hope they are right and things are getting better. But this could just be a blip. Let’s not go around screaming success because Iraq is “only” as bloody as it was in November, when it was so bad President Bush decided to call for the surge in the first place. Oh wait, that was the bloodshed at the ballot box.
If the trend continues in August, then we have progress. But if the violence ratchets back up, as it has every August, I hope the RWE will acknowledge it.
Fat chance.
There are some encouraging signs in Iraq. Let’s hope they continue. But let’s also remember that it didn’t have to be this way. And that the surge was only supported after the GOP lost an election.
Step One: Coverly support a radical Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
Step Two: Convince the US to make a$20 billion dollar deal on the condition that you’ll do something about the insurgency you created.
Yeah, the Bush people are all over that whole Iraq thing.
I am currently reading James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds and ran across this quote about diversity:
The negative case for diversity, as we’ve seen, is that diversity makes it easier for a group to make decisions based on facts, rather than on influence, authority or group allegiance … After a detailed study of American foreing policy fiascos, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the failure to anticipate Pearl Habor, [Irving] Janis argued taht when decision-makers are too much alike – in worldview and mind-set – they easily fall prey to groupthink. Homogenous groups become cohesive more easily than diverse groups, and as they become more cohesive, they also become more dependent on the group, more insulted from outside opinions, and therefore more convinced that the group’s judgement on important issues must be right. These kind of groups, Janis suggested, share an illusio of invulnerability, a willingness to rationalize away possible counterarguments to the group’s position, and a conviction that dissent is not useful.
Remind you of anyone? By diversity, he’s doesn’t mean “diversity” the way academics do. He means differences of opinion. (It’s worth noting, however, that the lone voice of dissent in our latest foreign policy fiasco was that of a black man – Colin Powell.)
We have a President who likes to surround himself with people who think alike – authoritarian in temperament, convinced of American invincibility and viewing the law and the Constitution as obstacles not guides. He’s not unique in this, of course. But we’re know seeing, in vivid red colors, the result of having a bunch of people running the country who agree with each other.
Reagan was different. His decision were often made after heated discussion among his staff. But even Reagan messed up occasionally – as in the War on Drugs. That’s understandable since most Presidential Administrations have a dearth of crack addicts.
It’s not just conservatives who are prone to stupid groupthink, of course. “Reasonable rational” iberals are even worse. I work in academia were everyone – man or woman, black white or polka-dot – thinks alike. And the pressure to conform is enormous. I don’t even bother to express my opinion anymore. And they are not only convinced that their dumb political ideas – gun control, high taxes and big government – can work; they are convinced that they are far smarter and far more reasonable than the skeptics. They have letters after their name, dontchya know.
There is peculiar kind of grand stupidity that comes out of smart people agreeing with each other. Communism, fascism, socialism, neo-conservatism, statism – these are all grand ideas for running the world that have crashed upon the rocks of reality. Rocks the world might have been spared with greater diversity of opinion.
Iraq can now take its place with our previous foreign policy fiascos and we can sleep comfortably knowing that we haven’t learned anything from our previous blunders. As things began to unravel, we stuck to the groupthink that all was well. And before I get too high on my horse, I was part of the groupthink that stupidly thought democracy could be brought to a multi-ethnic middle eastern nation that was drawn on a map by the French with an army a third of the size we needed. I knew that when everyone around me was agreeing, I should get scared and reconsider my opinions. I didn’t.
A more intellectually diverse group of people – or more rational, intelligent and articulate dissenters — would have spared us the agonies. Yes, I’m saying the dissenters bear some blame. They could have raised rational arguments against the invasion – or better yet, advocated for far superior management of the post-invasion Iraq. They could have raised their voices when the situation began to get out of control. But they were too busy chanting “no blood for oil” and screaming about Haliburton and hating Bush to bother.
I keep hoping that the Information Age and the blogosphere will help us make better decisions in the future. But I know politicians. They like their groupthink. They don’t like skeptics who poke holes in their fantasies.
It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in “good faith” in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America’s clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.
…
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America’s losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam — where we both proudly served twice — America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
Geneva is not about the enemy. It’s about us.
Myth: Paper grocery bags are a better environmental choice than plastic bags.
Fact: Plastic bags use 40% less energy to produce and generate 70% less emissions & 80% less solid waste than paper. (U.S. EPA website, www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)
Myth: Plastic grocery bags take 1,000 years to decompose in landfills.
Fact: Today’s landfills are designed to prevent decomposition of anything. Chances are your orange peel, milk carton and even last year’s newspaper won’t breakdown. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project, has shown that when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.
Really, you don’t need to be a scientist here, just use your common sense. Plastic bags are cheaper because they use less resources.
In his article on Avandia, Dr. Nissen was careful to note the limitations of his analysis. In some media interviews, though, he was less guarded. On the ABC television program “Nightline,” Dr. Nissen predicted that the deaths caused by Avandia could “dwarf” the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001.
Which is nonsense. Second, he seems to be of the school that only 100% safe drugs should be on the market. But, fool that I am, I think people should be allowed to make their decisions. As long as they know the potential risks, they can decide for themselves whether pain-killers like Vioxx or anti-diabetes meds like Avandia are worth it.
Feingold said that Bush made misleading public statements on the war and went into Iraq without adequate military preparation. You know what? There has never been a war that this country entered with adequate military preparation. Feingold would have to censure FDR if this was the test. There was no way in hell the U.S. was prepared for war in 1941. The Japanese brought the war to us, and we responded. The Islamic fascists have now brought us war once again, and once again we must respond.
Um, Neal? We had to go into World War II against two major superpowers on short notice in the middle of a Depression. We invaded Iraq with years of preparation times as the only superpower on the planet with a great economy. Those situations aren’t even remotely comparable.
We could have been prepared. Men like Colin Powell tried to get use prepared with more troops and more allies. But Rummy wouldn’t have it.
I usually like Boortz — still like him. But these World War II comparisons short circuit my temper. Bush supporters — what few of you remain — please memorize the following:
World War II was not the only war in American History. Ths situation in Iraq is not even remotely comparable to World War II. If it were, Bush would have, like FDR, cut spending, instituted a draft and raised taxes. He would not be treating the war like it’s an annoyance he can’t seem to get rid of and would spend more time attacking the enemy than the other party.
I find this post on ten lesson from Iraq fascinating (hat tip, Sully). My favorite:
(6) Think very hard about the lessons of history. For every case like Munich, in which failing to confront a dictator more forcefully led to disaster, there is a Cuban Missile Crisis, in which a leader’s unwillingness to make the most hawkish response to a dictator’s provocation averted disaster. Trotting out Munich at every possible opportunity only ensures that the next time you find yourself in a Cuban Missile Crisis, your country will be turned to radioactive glass.
This works both ways. As I noted before, the Reichstag Fire is not the appropriate historical comparison for 9/11. The Maine, the Zimmerman Telegram – these are more appropriate.
I’ve been on a very big history kick lately, bookwise. This year alone, I’ve read long books on the Civil War, the translation of the Bible, World War II and ancient Rome. The insight it gives me into modern issues is striking.