Cakewalk Crowd Abandons Bush

blackadder said

READ MORE
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53637

Consistent with the predictable neoconservative line that this is "all Bush and Rummy's fault, not ours," note the spin in the article that the neocons "warned the Bush administration along time ago that the plan was insufficient."

This is a transparent effort to spin and re-write history in order to salvage the neoconservative reputation. It's a pack of lies.

I followed this story closely ever since 2002. The neocons had nothing to say prior to entering Iraq other than "this will be a cakewalk!" Invade NOW!

They did not start commenting on the incompetence of the execution of the war until it became clear that things were going horribly wrong and that quagmire was setting in. The horses were already out of the barn when these "intellectuals" tried to close the barn. Now they are attempting to salvage their own credibility.

In the in the river of ink that flowed from neoconservative pens in 2001-2002 demanding an attack on Iraq there was no more than a trickle that ever was devoted to any specifics of how the plan should be carried out.

They just wanted to get it started, that's all. They were quite shrewd and smart enough to know that once committed, no matter how the operation went, we were stuck. This is fine with them because they want American troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future to suit their own grand schemes.

Click to expand...

This has definitely been a complex war, and one that's been quite easy to oversimplify in order to bring clarity.

I would say that there is plenty for room for criticism for the conduct for the post-Saddam period. Is this a neocon self-defense, or is it legitimate criticism? Probably both.

While I understand, and agree with, components of the light-footprint strategy, I also recognize that there have been periods that brute force was needed, and not applied. When Bremer basically put out an APB on al Sadr and called for his arrest, we should have confronted al Sadr right then and there. But we backed down, apparently due to "light footprint" doctrine...When we initially were marching on Fallujah, only to surround the city and back down, again, deferring to the ideal rather than confronting reality. There have been several defining episodes that have taken us where we are today in Iraq. The strategy has brought many successes; but we seemed locked into an inflexible,theoretical doctrine of carrying out this war, no matter how much sense other alternatives may have made at the time.

Are these the neocons failures? Obviously not. These are legitimate criticisms of a war policy that, despite various successes, has managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

A valid criticism of the noecons, IMO, was their virtually complete acceptance of Chalabi pre-war. Now that is a criticism I can see as valid.