Letters to the Editor
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Love the milquetoast titles
"A Relatively Promising Counterinsurgency War"
"A War We Just Might Win"
...this too is covering your ass, I suppose.
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Justice
If there were any justice in the world, as O'Hanlon and Pollack described themselves as harsh critics of Bush their heads would have burst into flame at the pc and their wives would have run away with each other.
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Kenneth Pollack : doing Iraq war "properly" was "entirely conceivable"
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/12/22/pollack/index1.html
If I thought invasion was the best answer for Iran, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. But there are very important differences between Iran and Iraq. The first of them is intention: Saddam Hussein wanted nuclear weapons, as best as we understand it, to enable aggression. He willfully disregarded deterrent threats and information that should have caused him to pause. He did everything that would make you think that he would be hard, if not impossible, to deter.
The Iranians aren't like that. Since the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, they've been aggressive and nasty and anti-American, but they're not irrational, and they're not as reckless as Saddam Hussein was. They recognize deterrent threats and they pull back when confronted with superior force. That's not to say it's a good idea for them to have a nuclear weapon, but the threat is of a different category than Saddam's Iraq or North Korea.
With Iraq, we'd thought the combination of sanctions and inspections weren't stopping the progress of the Iraqis' nuclear program. With Iran, we haven't tried sanctions and inspections yet, and there's a lot of evidence that if we did employ a multilateral diplomatic approach to Iran, it would have real benefits. You always go for the diplomatic options before you reach for the sword.
Also, in Iran, the military options don't look very good. Against Iraq, it was entirely conceivable for us to invade the country and rebuild it properly.
- - Kenneth Pollack interviewed in Salon Dec. 22, 2004
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If you find it on a trash heap
by all means, read it if you really must....
Ugh
Its pieces like these in the Times that make me want to cancel my subscription.
-- MrEdCT
...but I have no idea why people who have become accustomed to Glenn Greenwald and others in the blogosphere would continue to financially support the propaganda rag the NYT has become. After all, Glenn reads it so we don't have to.
Cancel all msm subscriptions and boycott all cable and broadcast "news" shows. That will teach them. Really.
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@Retired Military Patriot
We also must pledge to never repeat the error of putting our presidency into the hands of the immoral, egomaniacal, psychologically distressed money-driven, and power possessed.
Our current system, with costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected, together with a willingness to become putty in the hands of a seemingly infinite number of marketers, image specialists, handlers, analysts and all the like, doesn't look like it can really put our presidency into the hands of someone who isn't at least corrupt, and at worst has precisely the personality highlights you mentioned. What you are advocating, therefore, is a huge restructuring of our political (campaign) if not our economic system (lobbying) to accommodate honest presidents.
Sounds good to me!
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Important point at the end of Update (I)
I think the point Glenn makes at the end of Update (I) is important. As I read the main piece, I was thinking that some would criticize the analysis because almost everything quoted from O'Hanlon was from 2003, when many people were taken in by the War fever and believed that the whole mess would end well. But it's well worth noting that O'Hanlon and many other early-on war boosters only started criticizing the war policies when it was inescapably obvious that things were going badly, i.e. after the Spring of 2004.
I think Glenn's thesis is fundamentally sound: that people who demonstrated extremely poor judgment, understanding, and foresight n the first year of this war, when many others saw reality far more accurately, have no credibility to lecture us now on how we should be giving the policies of this administration yet one more chance to defy reason and the obviously untenable situation there, and snatch victory from failure.
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Quibble (Or something more?)
I think Glenn Greenwald is as close to a hero as journalists get these days, but I have a small problem with this particular piece:
Mr. Greenwald suggests that O'Hanlon and Pollack are disingenuous when claiming that the Bush administration has lost credibility over the last four years. But all the quotes Mr. Greenwald uses are between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old. Technically (and without knowing more about O'Hanlon and Pollock), it is *possible* to square these two realities.
Since I admire Mr. Greenwald not only for the content of his arguments, but also for how clearly he presents his logic, I reached the end of this column wondering why he didn't make more of what O'Hanlon and Pollack might have said since late 2003. I did just a few minutes' worth of Googling and found these 2004-2005 quotes from O'Hanlon, which do not paint a rosy picture of Iraq:
American policy in Iraq faces a crisis. Mainstream U.S. political leaders, including President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry, have continued to insist that we must "stay the course" and that "failure is not an option." But these slogans are not enough to rescue a failing policy. The success of our mission has depended from the outset on the perception by the Iraqi people that our presence is necessary to secure their own future. Today that premise is increasingly in doubt. Unless we restore the Iraqi people's confidence in our role, failure is not only an option but a likelihood.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34785-2004May17.html)
The post-invasion phase of the Iraq mission has been the least well-planned American military mission since Somalia in 1993, if not Lebanon in 1983, and its consequences for the nation have been far worse than any set of military mistakes since Vietnam.
(http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/ohanlon/20050101.htm)
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience that Iraq is "a place that is having some real difficulties right now" and that "everything is in place if they want to have a civil war." Unfortunately, an examination of trends in Iraq backs up General Pace's later, more sober comments. [This op-ed concludes:] ...but while a strategically passable outcome still seems within reach, it is increasingly hard to believe that there are the makings of a major success for American foreign policy in Iraq.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19ohanlon.html?ex=1185940800&en=c0ae694f2bf6c545&ei=5070)
And this, from 2006: "bad news still dominates."
(http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20070610.htm)
This is not a scientific survey of O'Hanlon's writing. However, it does indicate that the picture is more nuanced than the one Mr. Greenwald paints. And I say this as a fan. I have always admired what seems to be Mr. Greenwald's intellectual honesty and rigor.
Mr. Greenwald writes: "they announce that 'the Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility,' as though they have not." This can be true even with the weakness of Mr. Greenwald's choice of evidence. But the fact remains that many of the O'Hanlon quotes with which Mr. Greenwald tries to hang him fall outside of that four-year span. It's not enough to disabuse me of my belief that Mr. Greenwald's is a valliant and much-needed voice, but it is enough to give me some pause.
And since this is the kind of action for which Mr. Greenwald rightly attacks other, far less honest and far less noble journalists (or "journalists"), I wonder what might make of this?