SCRAMBLING DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC
We're "making adjustments" in Iraq. We're "looking at different tactics." As the search for an exit strategy picks up steam, the shop-worn pledge to "stay the course" becomes non-operative.
Only the slowest and dimmest candidates still use it. But it served brilliantly in the general election two years ago. What has changed? Nothing, on the ground there. Whatever is wrong with the course now was wrong then.
No "sovereignty" was transferred, because none ever existed, after Saddam. Sovereignty means control. We never had it to give, because we never bothered to secure it. Now that's no longer possible (if it ever was). So we must find a decent way to excuse ourselves and get the hell out. As Fareed Zakaria (my fave commentator on Iraq) wrote in the Oct. 16 Newsweek:
"More waiting is unlikely to turn things around. . . There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed."
How do we ask people to keep on dying for a mistake? What has changed is our public awareness. You can't fool all the people all the time. A dozen or so good books have come out listing the lunacies that led to this fiasco. Together they spell out how and why the project was always and originally DOA. This isn't hindsight. Some of us said this at the time.
From the "fixed" intelligence to the fixed (emasculated) Congress, to the silenced generals to the hoodwinked public, this reckless gamble went forward in the dark. For such a travesty our "free press" must carry a major share of responsibility. Failing to find and expose the facts in time prevented us from stopping the folly before it could cost 3,000 Americans (counting civilians) and 300,000 (or more) Iraqi dead. Stay the course indeed!
Bill O'Reilly wrote recently that no one could have forseen the insurgency in Iraq or the sectarian strife. Condi Rice and others have echoed that nonsense. The truth is that King Abdullah of Jordan, Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, and our own generals Scowcroft, Odom, and Zinni, among many others, all warned us well ahead of the war of exactly what has now happened. They were ignored or scoffed at. I guess we'll keep moving the deck furniture around a little longer.
Respond if you wish: jgoodwin004@centurytel.net
We're "making adjustments" in Iraq. We're "looking at different tactics." As the search for an exit strategy picks up steam, the shop-worn pledge to "stay the course" becomes non-operative.
Only the slowest and dimmest candidates still use it. But it served brilliantly in the general election two years ago. What has changed? Nothing, on the ground there. Whatever is wrong with the course now was wrong then.
No "sovereignty" was transferred, because none ever existed, after Saddam. Sovereignty means control. We never had it to give, because we never bothered to secure it. Now that's no longer possible (if it ever was). So we must find a decent way to excuse ourselves and get the hell out. As Fareed Zakaria (my fave commentator on Iraq) wrote in the Oct. 16 Newsweek:
"More waiting is unlikely to turn things around. . . There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed."
How do we ask people to keep on dying for a mistake? What has changed is our public awareness. You can't fool all the people all the time. A dozen or so good books have come out listing the lunacies that led to this fiasco. Together they spell out how and why the project was always and originally DOA. This isn't hindsight. Some of us said this at the time.
From the "fixed" intelligence to the fixed (emasculated) Congress, to the silenced generals to the hoodwinked public, this reckless gamble went forward in the dark. For such a travesty our "free press" must carry a major share of responsibility. Failing to find and expose the facts in time prevented us from stopping the folly before it could cost 3,000 Americans (counting civilians) and 300,000 (or more) Iraqi dead. Stay the course indeed!
Bill O'Reilly wrote recently that no one could have forseen the insurgency in Iraq or the sectarian strife. Condi Rice and others have echoed that nonsense. The truth is that King Abdullah of Jordan, Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, and our own generals Scowcroft, Odom, and Zinni, among many others, all warned us well ahead of the war of exactly what has now happened. They were ignored or scoffed at. I guess we'll keep moving the deck furniture around a little longer.
Respond if you wish: jgoodwin004@centurytel.net
posted by John Goodwin at
9:51 AM
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