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WaPo Gets It

Editorial on the money, minus some spare change here and there. But while Bush is having his examined, Reid gets ripped a new one: 

THE SENATE Democratic leadership spent the past week trying to prove that Congress is deeply divided over Iraq … In fact that’s far from the truth. A large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission that would involve substantially reducing the number of American forces over the next year or so and rededicating those remaining to training the Iraqi army, protecting Iraq’s borders and fighting al-Qaeda. President Bush and his senior aides and generals also support this broad strategy, which was formulated by the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton commission. Mr. Bush recently said that “it’s a position I’d like to see us in.”

More or less true, except Baker-Hamilton saw that as a present the grateful Iranians and Syrians would give us, rather than something we would have to fight to secure. 

Nothing whatsoever wrong with a strategy of reducing the number of troops in Iraq, focusing on border security and al-Qaeda … once facts on the ground support such actions.  Those facts will be established by security operations and the slow, difficult process of bringing politically and psychologically traumatized, ethnically diverse people together. Both currently trending upward.  Those facts will not determined by artificial pullout dates, grossly irresponsible rationalizing and the offhand dismissal of the fate of millions of people.

 The emerging consensus is driven by several inescapable facts. First, the Iraqi political reconciliation on which the current U.S. military surge is counting is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Second, the Pentagon cannot sustain the current level of forces in Iraq beyond next spring without rupturing current deployment practices and placing new demands on the already stretched Army and Marine Corps. Finally, a complete pullout from Iraq would invite genocide, regional war and a catastrophic setback to U.S. national security.

Points one and two are debatable. Point three is not.

The decision of Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) to deny rather than nourish a bipartisan agreement is, of course, irresponsible. But so was Mr. Reid’s answer when he was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the United States should manage the explosion of violence that the U.S. intelligence community agrees would follow a rapid pullout. “That’s a hypothetical. I’m not going to get into it,” …

Pulling a trigger will result in a bullet being fired.  It is possible it might not, but it is really something more than a hypothetical. A hypothetical is really more like, if Reid and Pelosi keep it up, Senate and House Democrats might hypotehtically become embarrassed by their ineffective, irresponsible leadership.

I like this part:

For now Mr. Reid’s cynical politicking and willful blindness to the stakes in Iraq don’t matter so much. The result of his maneuvering was to postpone congressional debate until September, when Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report on results of the surge — in other words, just the outcome the White House was hoping for.

And this is interesting:

There’s no guarantee that Mr. Bush can agree with Congress on those points or that he will make the effort to do so. But a Democratic strategy of trying to use Iraq as a polarizing campaign issue and as a club against moderate Republicans who are up for reelection will certainly have the effect of making consensus impossible — and deepening the trouble for Iraq and for American security.

So the graybeards at the Washington Post see all this Congressional sturm und drang as cynical electioneering. Toying with U.S. national security and the lives of millions of people for a few votes.  That’s fascinating.

Topics: Iraq, media, pols

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 5:01 pm on Saturday, July 21, 2007

22 Responses to “WaPo Gets It”

1. alphie Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 6:20 pm

   Reid and Pelosi took office at the same time the surge began.

   If we can now judge them, we can certainly judge Bush’s grubby little social experiment in Iraq:

   Failure.

2. S. Weasel Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 7:00 pm

   Man, you’re working hard for a reaction at this site. I’m thinking “attention whore.”

3. alphie Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm

   Nice to see you admit that logic and reason are “attention getting” here, weasel.

4. Jeffersonian Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 7:27 pm

   Al-Phie is so deeply invested in failure, S. Weasel, that he has gone from predicting it to openly cheering for it. The idea that the surge might work fills him with panic, as it does Reid and Pelosi, who have staked their political careers on the humiliation of America (and hence, Bush). Victory, so long maligned and sneered at by the Left, means total failure of their defeatism.

   Success is not an option, so failure is pursued with great vigor.

5. alphie Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 7:32 pm

   We have already passed the point where the people who sold us the surge said it could be judged as a success or a failure, Jeffy.

   The begging has already begun for “another 6 months.”

   I would say the panic is all on their side.

6. 4iraqisfuture Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 8:04 pm

   Notice how Alphie and Olbermann are using coded language to describe a successful counterinsurgency campaign. This includes kinetic (military) and non-kinetic (community building, ribbon cuttings) activities. Both part of successful “Grubby little social experiment” to Alp-fi.

   Here they are next to each other.

   Olbermann: “Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?”

   Alphie: “Reid and Pelosi took office at the same time the surge began.
   If we can now judge them, we can certainly judge Bush’s grubby little social experiment in Iraq:

   Failure.”

   “ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq”

   “grubby little social experiment in Iraq”

   Of one mind wouldn’t you say? One messed up mind, void of facts, or reasoning.

   Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we have capitulation. Alp-fi and Olbermann cannot deny it anymore. The surge is working. It’s slipping out in subtle ways.

   Their meme is changing to, “If we’re winning its because Bush cheated at war just like everything else in his life. He fights dirty, you know”.

   It’s sunset time for the moonbats and MoveOnToGenocide crowd.

   “Once upon a time I had the ear of the democratic party, now they won’t return my phone calls. I’ve still got lots of great ideas. Want to some? Hey where you going. Hey. Hey.”

7. alphie Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 8:15 pm

   Haha, forsomepeoplesfuture,

   It ain’t coded language. It is crystal clear.

   You guys begged for another 6 months and $100 billion for a final try.

   It failed.

   Times up.

8. Jeffersonian Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   We have already passed the point where the people who sold us the surge said it could be judged as a success or a failure, Jeffy.

   Precisely the sort of construction that makes my point for me. As soon as the first pair of boots hit the ground, quoth Lord Phee-Phee, the surge was on; an assertion that is as illogical as it is obvious in its attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

   Tell you, what, Al-phie: Push for the Donks to win the White House in 2008 and then have them declare failure and retreat.

9. alphie Says:
   July 21st, 2007 at 8:55 pm

   Do you guys really think your idiotic “the surge just started” is going to fool anyone?

   Maybe we should replace the U.S. military with some folks who don’t need 6 months and hundreds of billions of dollars to even begin a campaign?

   They are like your worst nightmare of a high maintenence girlfriend who needs 3 hours to put on her makeup for a trip to McDonalds.

10. Buck Naked Politics Says:
    July 21st, 2007 at 10:31 pm

    Is Reid to Blame for Polarizing Congress on Iraq?

    Today’s Washington Post editorial stated that many Congressional Republicans want to slowly withdraw troops in Iraq, leaving some behind to train the Iraqis and that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to force a vote on Iraq was an irrespon…

11. Jeffersonian Says:
    July 21st, 2007 at 10:45 pm

    Maybe we should replace the U.S. military with some folks who don’t need 6 months and hundreds of billions of dollars to even begin a campaign?

    Write yer congressman, wet suck.

12. alphie Says:
    July 21st, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Maybe I will, Jeff.

    Your namesake knew a standing army would be a surce of corruption and adventurism, and worked hard to prevent America from having one.

    I think it would be a great idea to scrap the whole thing, then build it up from scratch, to about one tenth its current size.

13. OldManTyme Says:
    July 21st, 2007 at 11:46 pm

    Jihad boy’s in a real panic these last few days.

14. 4iraqisfuture Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 am

    The Lies never cease…

    Of course Jefferson was leery of a standing army from his experience with the British army and all the liberties they took with colonists. There is no way Jefferson could have known how the world would change and necessitate land based forces. Jefferson’s views of land-based armies are held captive by his era and circumstances.

    “Adventurism” is contemporary term usually reserved for Iran and it’s proxies. To say that Jefferson knew that the US army would engage in “adventurism” shows Alphie is ascribing Noam Chomsky like qualities to Thomas Jefferson. This is called transference. Al-fi is so frantic he is rewriting history in his own emotionally and intellectually crippled image and that of his leftist heroes like Chomsky.

    Sad thing for Al-fi, Jefferson is very much like Bush in regard to Muslim dysfunction. He urged building a stout navy sailing across the world to destroy the MUSLIM PIRATES.

    Jefferson tried to form a coalition of nations but failed. The other nations just thought it was easier to pay the ransoms—sound familiar? The US acted unilaterally to open the lanes of commerce as we are now, protecting the oil and shipping lanes.

    Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates…from the Library of CONGRESS

    “Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America’s minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, “I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro’ the medium of war.” Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: “The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both.” “From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money,” Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.”

    Jefferson’s plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war.”

    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjprece.html

15. alphie Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 12:57 am

    Oldman,

    I was in a state of panic in the run up to the Iraq fiasco.

    The way things are going now actually puts me in a state of calm.

    The neocon’s costly social experiment is coming to an end soon.

    But do keep flogging that line, it symbolizes the intellectual bankruptcy of your cause nicely.

16. Dave Surls Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 2:01 am

    “Your namesake knew a standing army would be a surce of corruption and adventurism, and worked hard to prevent America from having one.”

    Yeah, and every lefty’s hero, FDR, decided we needed one, built it, and we’ve had one ever since.

    That’s what happens when you put socialists in charge.

    First they build a giant army…then they whine about it.

17. alphie Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 2:58 am

    Nice to see all the honesty today.

    The U.S. military is indeed a lefty creation, desparately seeking something that will justify its continued existence.

    Now if only all the “Clash of Civilations” clowns would admit they are leftists, too.

18. RTO Trainer Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    Truth telling?

    The United States is itself a massive Left Wing experiment.

    It’s easy to forget in the extreeme circumscription of US politics, that even Conservatives here, are Liberals.

    Democracy is a left wing ideology. Republicanism is a Left Wing ideology. There are Monarchists and Reactionists in this country, but their numbers are so few they can be very safely discounted.

    As for the creation of a standing army, I’ll disagree with Dave’s assessment (and Alphie’s predicably blind approval of it, lacking in any historical perspective as he is). While the buildup for WWII is generally the first one that “took,” (though with caveats for periods immediately preceeding the Korean War and since casing in the “peace dividend”) any serious debate on the necessity of a standing Army in peacetime was lost by the anti-Federalists and won by the Federalists in 1794 (exemplified by the actions of the American Legion under GEN “Mad” Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers , though the anti-Federalist impulse is still with us and still afraid of the Cromwellian “man on horseback” despite that Washington himself excised that demon from our political heritage, relegating it to a favored paranoid fantasy of the left much like the Bircher’s fear of Soviet invasions through Canada.

    We’ve had a standing army ever since, though it’s been severely reduced, past the point of prudence and utility many times.

19. Dave Surls Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    “We’ve had a standing army ever since…”

    It wasn’t of significant size until Roosevelt came along.

    Total strength of the air force and army in 1939 was about 200,000.

    It’s been several times that size ever since we started arming up to fight Germany and Japan.

    For example, when the Korean War broke out in 1950 we had 591,000 men just in the active army alone.

    The liberals created a gigantic standing army, which we never had before…and we’ve been stuck with it ever since.

    And, now we have to listen to the leftards whine about it.

20. RTO Trainer Says:
    July 22nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm

    Nearly.

    WWI November 1918–Army end strength nearly 3.7 million.
    With the exception of the Civil War, an Army millions strong was not needed.

    My only point, is that, despite early fears of the Founders of a standing Army, we have had one almost since the beginning. Often not large enough when time came, but nearly always there. The Navy, however, we did almost entirely without for our first century and we’ve had to reconsitute the Marines once, and intelligence services at different times becuase they were stood down entirely.

21. tanstaafl Says:
    July 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 am

    Here’s the best Iraq news I’ve read in awhile.

    It’s exactly what has to happen before it can turn around.

    “A key factor is that local people and members of al-Qaeda itself have become sickened by the violence and are starting to rebel, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael said. “The people have got to deny them sanctuary and that is exactly what is happening.”

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2121006.ece

    (don’t look for a mention from the nytimes or Hairy Reid)

22. Jules Crittenden » Poll Party Says:
    March 17th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    [...] like which democratically elected mandate-poor [...]

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