Letters to the Editor
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Forget? How?
Last weekend I was awakening to my Saturday and heard Sen. Kyle, from Arizona I believe, on NPR, make that same kind of argument -- that it doesn't matter how we got into Iraq, that it is time to look at the present and make some lemonade out of them lemons. OFF went the radio. Sorry, some self-reverential views and self-justifications I just won't listen to.
Interesting that on this very Easter weekend five years ago gathering families were throwing around "playing cards" at the pre-feast table of all the Iraqi baddies who were going to be taken out -- shared with children and adults alike, like a game. The jocularity and cameraderie and simplistic notions were breathtaking to behold. Needless to say the realities of war for the Iraqi people were not much on their minds.
So many people wanted this war -- so much so that they were willing to look at an obviously lying Colin Powell at the UN as the evidence (See?) that restraint was only for those who were cynical or has-beens or just not pro-American enough. This was a NEW administration, of the kick-butt kind that would show who was who in this global frenzy of who gets more when and how. Conventions were held before the invasion that allowed anybody, anybody!, to stake a place in this new Middle East of opportunity. Apparently even Democracy itself now needs a strong man, a dictator, to bring stability to the region.
Now those glassey-eyed wallet-checkers want those who cautioned and worried and spoke out against an invasion to just forget. We've come full circle this Easter Sunday weekend. And those who championed a debacle of horrific proportions want me to wake up at 3am and find some reason, somewhere, to be pragmatic about their self-serving and naive glee at destroying a country, a culture, and a vast amount of people so they can feel better about themselves? Huh.
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OT Full ten minute Wright sermon
Item #3 of Salon's 5 Things is the ten minute sermon by Rev. Wright that we have only seen snippets of. Recommend you ask those who condemn him to look at the full sermon and then make an evaluation. As always, things taken out of context can easily be distorted.
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Iraq vs. Vietnam
Another person you won't often see on the editorial pages or TV.
In March 2003, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bacevich wrote in the Los Angeles Times that "if, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bacevich
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Annie-Marie Slaughter is Correct
Slaughter wrote: "The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion and far too little about how, in Obama's formulation, to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. That does not mean that those of us who were wrong about Iraq -- with whatever nuances, explanations, and justifications we might care to offer -- do not have a great deal to answer for. We do."
She is entirely correct.
Glenn deceivingly converted her argument that critics should be suggesting more solutions, to being about her self-defense.
She admitted she has "a great deal to answer for." Her point was that we should spend more time on solutions.
Obama should be engaging in a robust debate about what to do about Iraq. He should be attacking Clinton about Iraq in the same strong way that Glenn is attacking McCain and co here.
It is true that those who advocated war are not really worthy of supplying possible solutions. But also, those who were against the war were not advocating sensible alternatives about what to do with dictators and terrorists. So anti-war people are not especially qualified either.
The real solution is that in the same way we have local police to stop local violence, we should create an international police force for stopping international violence (war and terrorism).
Until anti-war advocates engage properly in this issue, the stagnation will continue, which is Slaughter's valid point.
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Drinking the Kool-Aid
Col. Lang, Journal of the Middle East Policy Council, Summer 2004
An excerpt:
(...)
What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean today? It signifies that the person in question has given up personal integrity and has succumbed to the prevailing group-think that typifies policymaking today. This person has become "part of the problem, not part of the solution."
What was the "problem"? The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the "bearers" of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined until they, too, had drunk from the vat.
What was the result? The war in Iraq. It is not anything like over yet, and the body count is still mounting. As of March 2004, there were 554 American soldiers dead, several thousand wounded, and more than 15,000 Iraqis dead (the Pentagon is not publicizing the number). The recent PBS special on Frontline concerning Iraq mentioned that senior military officers had said of General Franks, "He had drunk the Kool-Aid." Many intelligence officers have told the author that they too drank the Kool-Aid and as a result consider themselves to be among the "walking dead," waiting only for retirement and praying for an early release that will allow them to go away and try to forget their dishonor and the damage they have done to the intelligence services and therefore to the republic.
What we have now is a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends and beliefs held to the point of religious faith. Is this different from the situation in previous administrations? Yes. The intelligence community (the information collection and analysis functions, not "James Bond" covert action, which should properly be in other parts of the government) is assigned the task of describing reality. The policy staffs and politicals in the government have the task of creating a new reality, more to their taste. Nevertheless, it is "understood" by the government professionals, as opposed to the zealots, that a certain restraint must be observed by the policy crowd in dealing with the intelligence people. Without objective facts, decisions are based on subjective drivel. Wars result from such drivel. We are in the midst of one at present.
The signs of impending disaster were clear from the beginning of this administration. Insiders knew it all along. Statements made by the Bush administration often seem to convey the message that Iraq only became a focus of attention after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The evidence points in another direction...
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp