Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Reality knocking
Another fascinating post from a blogger in Iraq. Once again it's clear that we went into Iraq with far too little human intelligence on the ground. And in this I include the lack of people speaking the language and understanding politics in Iraq and in general. The naive belief that we could march into flowers on the streets, the watch democracy bloom was so stupid it hardly needs exploding. Now the reality of internecine struggles among Shia clerics is America's problem.
Bush was briefed today by Bremer and Abizaid. That is good news by itself; it sounds like Bush hardly ever gets news except through Condi/Cheney/Rummy & co., and we all know what that's worth. I'm not excusing Bush, but I fear his poor decisionmaking skills all the more because of the cone of silence around him.
Joshua Marshall has a typically trenchant post on the looming disaster. I especially like this line:
I've never seen the stupidity of "credibility" arguments for failed policies so well described. Of course the irony of this admin claiming we need to maintain our credibility by staying the course is too much.
What can we do? It's too late to pull out---we blew up Iraw, and now we have to put it back together, as Moseley-Braun said. Otherwise it will be exactly the theat we were supposedly preventing. But Bush isn't up to this task.
Bush was briefed today by Bremer and Abizaid. That is good news by itself; it sounds like Bush hardly ever gets news except through Condi/Cheney/Rummy & co., and we all know what that's worth. I'm not excusing Bush, but I fear his poor decisionmaking skills all the more because of the cone of silence around him.
Joshua Marshall has a typically trenchant post on the looming disaster. I especially like this line:
From the White House's advocates we hear logic puzzles about appeasement in which the fall-out from the president's screw ups become the prime argument for continuing to support them.
I've never seen the stupidity of "credibility" arguments for failed policies so well described. Of course the irony of this admin claiming we need to maintain our credibility by staying the course is too much.
What can we do? It's too late to pull out---we blew up Iraw, and now we have to put it back together, as Moseley-Braun said. Otherwise it will be exactly the theat we were supposedly preventing. But Bush isn't up to this task.
