Letters to the Editor
commendatore
Published Letters: 29 Editor's Choice: 3
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The best line came later...
[Read the article: "You have more bread crumbs than I do"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bread crumbs, bah. Gonzales's memory is so conveniently faulty that he must use a trail of bread crumbs to find his way back to the DOJ after visiting Capitol Hill.
Actually, the best line of the day came after Congressman Wexler, when Congressman Cohen (D-TN9), said, "If you don't know who put Iglesias on the list, how do you know the president or the vice president didn't?" Dramatic pause. "They wouldn't do that. The White House has said publicly that it was not involved in adding or deleting people from the list." How reassuring.
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Don't jump on Carl
[Read the article: Carl Levin reveals the Democrats' Iraq "strategy"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a general admirer of Mr. Greenwald's work, but I am disgusted by this column. First off, I'd like to point out that Carl Levin is one of the few senators to vote against the Iraq war in the first place, so to even remotely imply that he just caves to the Administration's sound machine is unfair. To say that he is an "uncritical spokesman" for the surge is a willful misinterpretation, and is a shameful claim from Mr. Greenwald.
While the casualty figures are mixed at best, and the army is a smokescreen for the militias, these facts are not exclusive of the idea that progress is being made on the military aspects of the 18 benchmarks, which is what Senator Levin really addressed. Even if the military overstated the importance of this progress, it is probable that some advances have been made in consolidating the Iraqi military into a more cohesive and intensively-deployed fighting force (even one under Shi'ite control). If Mr. Greenwald disputes this, he should present statistics to prove his point. Senator Levin may not have seen much firsthand, but he is an astute observer, SASC Chairman, and quite well-informed. Can Mr. Greenwald not even concede the possibility that Senator Levin learned something promising on his visit, something Mr. Greenwald might not know?
More importantly, the Senator specifically said that political progress has not been made, and that violence continues, and that the Iraqi government is not making progress on the political benchmarks, which was the whole justification for the surge in the first place. If the Iraqi government cannot pass electoral reforms, decide on issues of federalism, or even pass an oil law, then the raison d'etre for the surge collapses, since its only realistic hope of real success was to buy time for the Iraqi government to come to a political understanding.
Further, for Mr. Greenwald to defend al-Maliki (and failing to condemn him is to defend him) is equally atrocious. I am the first to say that America has caused much of the chaos in Iraq, but al-Maliki has made things worse. He has pandered to his Shi'a base, alienated the Sunnis even further, and done little to promote national unity. If there is no spirit of a common Iraq left today, then some (not all, but some) of the blame must lie with Nouri al-Maliki. He is intransigent, uncompromising, and a dreadful leader. Despite the deep sectarian clefts, the right people might have been able to build the bridge, but you would need a Nelson Mandela to do it, and al-Maliki is no Mandela. He is perfectly happy to wait, blame foreign terrorists for now, and consolidate his Shi'ite support against the day that the Americans leave and the Sunnis can be oppressed in the same way they oppressed the Shi'a under Saddam Hussein. To suggest that government is irrelevant in steering a national course of action as a people is misguided at best; again, South Africa is an excellent example (where ethnic strife led the state to the brink of civil war), the Adenauer years in West Germany are another example of the transformative power of politics. Might it be too late now? Perhaps. However, it was worth a try; al-Maliki made no such effort.
It is not Carl Levin's fault that some (like Fox) have seized on the positive aspect of his message and ignored his warnings. Senator Levin spoke in shades of grey, acknowledging some glimmers of hope, but recognizing that the situation is, overall, still deteriorating. If the Democratic position on the war is such that it cannot admit to any facts contrary to the anti-war/anti-surge message, then the Democratic leadership needs to reassess itself and the Party's commitment to truth and honesty. Otherwise, they are simply ideological mirror-images of the Bush Administration, and God knows that the country has suffered through enough of that. As a Michiganian anti-war Democrat (and a surge skeptic), I remain immensely proud of my Senator.