Sunday, March 19, 2006
'History is a bigger picture': Lots of Iraq Third Anniversay pieces today. Too many. I'll try to sum some of them up. ... Rummy's right: History really is a bigger picture. So today he comes across as a full-fledged democratic nation builder arguing against early withdrawal -- when only three years ago he was undermining attempts to plan for post-invastion democratic nation building and pushing for an early withdrawal. That's the bigger picture of Rumsfeld. ... George Will, who has been admirably skeptical over the past three years: "(R)egarding Iraq, accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive -- that is, emphasize the dangers of failure and de-emphasize talk about Iraq's becoming a democracy." Note: Rummy is doing both. ... Editorials are falling along their usual fault lines. ... Protesters are too. ... The best revealing analysis of President Bush from a gent in Indiana: "That New Orleans situation just piled it on top of the Iraq War." Katrina really exposed this administration as being more than capable of botching responsibilities. The American people made a connection. The president has never fully recovered from the heck-of-a-job Brownie comment. ...
... And, ah, there are those still debating the pre-war debate. AS is trying to show he really and truly exhibited skepticism at an early stage. Meanwhile, those who dismissed the importance of WMD after no WMD were found are now sifting through documents to try and prove there really were WMD. Go figure. ... The Left is still trying to prove they like soldiers. ...
And that's about it. Oh, right. Moi? I was a consistently inconsistent Wobbly Warrior going into the war (check out archives to right) who believes George Will is right: It would be a disaster to leave Iraq in the state it's now in. I don't know how Iraq is going to turn out. I've gotten a lot of things wrong in the past. But I do know the odds for success could have been higher if there had been a little less cheerleading and more hard-headed realism heading into the war. ...
... And, ah, there are those still debating the pre-war debate. AS is trying to show he really and truly exhibited skepticism at an early stage. Meanwhile, those who dismissed the importance of WMD after no WMD were found are now sifting through documents to try and prove there really were WMD. Go figure. ... The Left is still trying to prove they like soldiers. ...
And that's about it. Oh, right. Moi? I was a consistently inconsistent Wobbly Warrior going into the war (check out archives to right) who believes George Will is right: It would be a disaster to leave Iraq in the state it's now in. I don't know how Iraq is going to turn out. I've gotten a lot of things wrong in the past. But I do know the odds for success could have been higher if there had been a little less cheerleading and more hard-headed realism heading into the war. ...
