Letters to the Editor
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Can we pull this off with the leaders we currently have?
This is "Nation Building 101". Now that the U.S. has invaded and occupied Iraq it is morally responsible for what is going to happen in that country. Even those of us who have never approved of invading Iraq now share this view.
Mr. Conason is advocating the right idea: The fight against the Iraqi insurgency can not be won militarily. Thus it needs to be resolved via compromise through negotiations between Shiites,the Sunni minority, the Kurds and other, and with great diplomatic help from the United States. However, diplomacy is not a skill that the current U.S administration has great command over. So this plan is bound to fail. Mr. Conason’s plan can only work if the U.S. administration learns to skillfully use diplomacy and peaceful conflict resolution within a completely foreign cultural setting. Is that a likely scenario? Do we have the right leaders to deal with this situation?
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Exit strategy for Iraq -your last article
Dear Sir:
The main problem with the war in Iraq is that there is no experience of a terrorist movement defeated by regular troops but a many experiences of the opposite (Indochina, Alger and counting). See the case of the Shining Path of Peru (intelligence to eliminate the heads, disorganize the cells and gain time to begin a political answer = education and markets). This is a different type of war. This is not the Philippines at the end of the XIX century. The war has been fought the wrong way and the side effects are unavoidable but it is not late to correct. We should invite the United States and the Arab government allies to secure order (as the Africans in some of their civil wars) and make a commitment to create and participate in their new intelligence system. With this complement, the back up proposed by Murtha makes sense and your intelligent proposal for a negotiated withdrawal finds its correct place. The most terrible effect of all this mess could be the reinforcement of fundamentalist movements that use democracy to gain power in a way America cannot discuss. Election is Iran and Egypt are examples of this and al-Sistani could be expecting that Iraq be the next one.
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Exit strategy in Iraq -correction
Dear Sir:
The main problem with the war in Iraq is that there is no experience of a terrorist movement defeated by regular troops but a many experiences of the opposite (Indochina, Alger and counting). See the case of the Shining Path of Peru (intelligence to eliminate the heads, disorganize the cells and gain time to begin a political answer = education and markets). This is a different type of war. This is not the Philippines at the end of the XIX century. The war has been fought the wrong way and the side effects are unavoidable but it is not late to correct. We should invite the United Nations and the Arab government allies to secure order (as the Africans in some of their civil wars) and make a commitment to create and participate in their new intelligence system. With this complement, the back up proposed by Murtha makes sense and your intelligent proposal for a negotiated withdrawal finds its correct place. The most terrible effect of all this mess could be the reinforcement of fundamentalist movements that use democracy to gain power in a way America cannot discuss. Elections in Iran and Egypt are examples of this and al-Sistani could be expecting that Iraq be the next one.
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Circumventing Blame: The Bush M.O.
While it might be a fruitful academic exercise to aid future administrations, there is simply no way Bush is going to do anything other than sacrifice young American blood at the altar of The Bush Legacy. This is all he cares about, and as we've seen countless times during his administration, he will do ANYTHING to avoid taking blame and hurting his image, as if there was actually a congruency between what the mainstream media says and what history will remember. As a result, Bush is going to sit on his hands, wait for another president to try to deal with the mess, and when the civilians of Iraq are forced to deal with the inevitable and horrifying consequences of Bush's actions, he and the rest of the Bush Administration will be able to point their finger and blame someone while snidely remarking, "If only you'd stuck it out a little longer" for as long as his apologists remain on this Earth. I wish Bush employed some semblance of rationality in his governing of his country. I wish this country was his first priority. That, however, like most things related to this administration, is not reality, and until this hubristic video general is out of office, we're all going to have to remain at the mercy of his historical ambitions.
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Don't Disrespect Dean
Why does Joe Conason attack Howard Dean for his statement, which he paraphrases as "suggesting that the war "cannot be won" by our troops". The statement is quite clearly correct. The administration has no goal in Iraq, so we cannot "win" our way to that goal. The administration has never sent enough troops to "win", and now it is too late: the country would rebel if we sent the hundreds of thousands of troops it would take to subdue the insurgency.
This constant bashing of democrats who take leadership on the accepted goal of getting our people out of harm's way plays into the hands of the republicans, who not only play the verse: "Dean is a loon" on their mighty noise machine, but add a chorus: Even that liberal toad Conason agrees.
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Iraq and the media (and I mean ABC NEWS)
This one if for Joe Conason, but anyone else out there with some info please respond.
Why is the Wonkette the only website I've seen so far ripping the "Note" the ABC News official blog site. You know, I could understand this type of tripe from the Freepers, but ABC News? Since What could possibly have made ABC decide that hiring a group of circle jerkers with their lips so glued to Dubya's ass that they've long ago asphyxiated themselves seem like a great way to promote their "blogging savvy." Today's Note was beyond the pale. Wonkette couldn't load fast enough to shoot the zombies, despite a plethorah of amunition. "Which party is most on point on Iraq?" "Which party is more unified?" Had these interns from Bob Jones Karl Rove school of politics ever read Jonathan Swift? Douglas Adams? What could being "on point" or "unified" ever contribute to an issue when there is no regard for the "unified theory of point's" relation to reality on the ground. Why not just judge which General is best suited for winning the war in Iraq by the spiffiest uniform, the most gold braids and whether he really is the very model of a modern day general? I cannot watch ABC News anymore, not with the Note hanging around. They really do create their own reality. I no longer need to watch them to get Jon Stewart's punch lines; they are self written.
So why, Joe, why? Why is their no complaint no hue and cry, no radio or TV talk shows that would invite these "yahoos" (from Gulliver's Travels, not the search engine) on their show to so humiliate them they might never write again without suffering shameblock?