Dearly Departed
Woodward holds a seance, summons up a false ghost:
Both Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, have repeatedly said that there is no military solution to Iraq and that the sectarian strife and the insurgency can be resolved only by the Iraqi government.
Actually, what they have said is that there is must be a political solution. But there must be security, a military component, for that to happen. That would be the current counter-insurgency strategy.
The last eight months have been like a lifetime. So much water under the bridge! The beloved Iraq Study Group sickened, and in the fullness of time, passed on. Iran, a longed-for partner for peace, just can’t break its bad old habits of seizing foreign nationals and was caught red-handed in the business of murder in Iraq. The Sunni tribes of Anbar defied all expectations to render their province quiet as al-Qaeda is rejected and chased from one place to another. The Mahdi Army is behaving, those elements are not now either in Iran or under attack. The nascent, troubled Iraqi government, tackling those difficult tasks of reconciliation in fits and starts.
But the vibrant, wide-eyed hopeful child of that was the product of that strange autumn romance’s betrayal is neglected, worse, the wretched brat risks being shunted out the door!
Woodward so greatly misses his beloved Iraq Study Group, and tries to breathe life into the corpse. He gazes longingly at a faded photo from when he and ISG were young, and in love. OK, when they were old and wrinkly, but in love. He remembers those heady days, when it seemed like disaster could never end. If only he could bring them back!
Because it is hard, otherwise, to see what the point of this raising of the dead is about. The headline, “CIA said Stability Was Irreversible,” suggests it’s about more fatal, wrongheaded Bush myopia. There’s a bit of debate in there about whether Hayden actually said “irreversible” or not. Several people discuss whether they think that assessment, real or not, was and is accurate or not. The article otherwise, like all efforts to bring a departed loved one to life, goes nowhere.
Coming in this particular week, in the absense of any meaningful reporting out of Iraq, from so august a necromancer as Woodward, it must be viewed as an alarming look in a rearview crystal ball. Elite Washington so desperately misses its old love and nothing will be right until they are reunited.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:34 am on Thursday, July 12, 2007
One Response to “Dearly Departed”
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July 13th, 2007 at 10:58 am
The wish us all to rest in pieces.