BISCUITS AND GRAVY? I DON'T THINK SO...
AS is right to take "Dean Barnett" to task. Dean is in the "We're Making Progress in Iraq" crowd.(I still don't know who "Dean" is - can't find any biographical data, so I just think of him like Hewitt's poodle, I guess. I wouldn't care except that "Townhall", a Heritage spinoff as best I recall, is ... a masthead publication and all that).
Seriously, the record shows that, when it comes to sizing up and implementing a large-scale peace-keeping/stabilization effort, the GOP have been nothing short of dressed-up truants.
There are two things to add to AS's list. One is the cost of the war, which so few seem to mention. In the comments, someone pegs it at "upwards of $340 billion dollars", which just makes me laugh in comparison to the charts on this page.What's more, on Dean's calculus, maybe someday "the Left" can engage in a Nation Building Exercise without end at $10 billion a month, appoint a "superb general" and call it "national security", thereby avoiding any critique of the raid on the public finances when it is all "paid for" with ... a tax cut!
Oh, and let's not forget that OIF has cost more than all - all - of welfare, for the entire history of the program in the United "Welfare" States. ALL, Federal and State expenditures.
WHO'S IN CHARGE?
The second is related to this:
Since David Petraeus came to command in Iraq, unanimously confirmed by our prescient and wise senators, have you noticed what we haven’t heard? We haven’t heard any stories of operational stumbling. We haven’t heard any stories of strategic cluelessness. We haven’t heard anything that resembles the breakdowns at Abu Ghraib or the temporizing in Fallujah. In short, General Petraeus is running things superbly in Iraq. - Dean Barnett
First, Petreaus is not in charge of "the war". Bush-Cheney still are, with Gates a distant third, by most estimates. Why should we continue to give time and money to people who have squandered both with military incompetence, fiscal profligacy, and ineffectual banter in the place of public diplomacy? Because they are all we've got? LOL. No, their days of benefit of the doubt are long past, "Dean", no matter whether things are improving in Iraq on the ground for a while or not.
Second, Petreaus has said that the fight has no military solution, so why we keep asking the generals about how things are going is beyond me.
IT'S A SAD DAY WHEN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY READS LIKE 'A NIGHT AT THE OPERA'
Last, I'm reading that there is a grand strategy document on the way (a Campaign Book) in the next weeks. Gosh, that's got to be a bitter pill for Ambassador/Regent Bremer, who wanted to write a comprehensive plan himself, but was told to do it quick-and-dirty instead because we were leaving and didn't have time for a 'big plan'.
There are the folks that Dean wants to continue to fund. Seriously, the record shows that, when it comes to sizing up and implementing a large-scale peace-keeping/stabilization effort, the GOP have been nothing short of dressed-up truants.
