Cakewalk Crowd Abandons Bush (1 Viewer)

[blackadder]

Cakewalk Crowd Abandons Bush
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, said a rueful John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush knows today whereof his predecessor spoke.

For as he prepares to "surge" 20,000 more U.S. troops into a war even he concedes we "are not winning," his erstwhile acolytes have begun to abandon him to salvage their own tattered reputations.

Case in point, the neoconservatives. As the Iraq war heads into its fifth year, more than half a dozen have confessed to Vanity Fair's David Rose their abject despair over how the Bu****es mismanaged the war that they, the "Vulcans," so brilliantly conceived.

Surveying what appears an impending disaster for Iraq and U.S. foreign policy, the neocons have advanced a new theme. The idea of launching an unprovoked war of liberation, for which they had beaten the drums for half a decade before 9/11, remains a lovely concept. It was Bu****e incompetence that fouled it up.

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


Not to be deterred by the fact that as a neophyte in world affairs he was steered so wrongly by the neoconservatives on Iraq, Mr. Bush continues to listen to them. He is dutifully "doubling down" (surge and accelerate) as ordered to by the editorial staff of the Weekly Standard:

Neocons' hand seen in 'the surge'
They push plan to boost troops in Iraq

By Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times
January 04. 2007 8:00AM

Ever since Iraq began spiraling toward chaos, the war's intellectual architects - the so-called neoconservatives - have found themselves under attack in Washington policy salons and, more important, within the Bush administration.

Paul Wolfowitz, who was the Defense Department's most senior neocon, was shipped off to the World Bank. His Pentagon colleague Douglas Feith departed for academia. John Bolton left the State Department for the United Nations.

But other neocons have moved back into the mainstream of steering Iraq policy. A key part of the new Iraq plan that President Bush is expected to announce next week - a surge in U.S. troops coupled with a more focused counterinsurgency effort - has been one of the chief recommendations of these neocons since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

This group - which includes William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, and Frederick Kagan, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute - was expressing concerns about the administration's blueprint for Iraq even before the invasion almost four years ago. In these neoconservatives' view, not enough troops were being set aside to stabilize the country. They also worried that the Pentagon had formulated a plan that concentrated too heavily on killing insurgents rather than securing law and order for Iraqi citizens.

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http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070104/REPOSITORY/701040393/1013/48HOURS


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 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.

 

[dapperdan]

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.

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.

 

[dapperdan]

It just seems that when you rail against the neocons, you do so with a broad brush, making generalized, bordering on ad hominen, attacks; as opposed to your criticisms of Israel, which, while quite frequent, are typically very specific.

 

[blackadder]

It just seems that when you rail against the neocons, you do so with a broad brush, making generalized, bordering on ad hominen, attacks; as opposed to your criticisms of Israel, which, while quite frequent, are typically very specific.

I am in agreement with the Baker-Hamilton commission, Tony Blair and now the new UN Secretary General that the key to stabilizing the Middle East is finally, once and for all, dealing with the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Ask yourself honestly why this is not happening.

All the major Arab governments have offered to recognize Israel and sign a formal peace if the Israelis end the occupation and settlement of Arab territory. The Syrians want the Golan Heights back and will make peace in exchange.

Only a ragtag group like Hamas still refuses to recognize Israel. If you actually listen to them in detail, they say they refuse to recognize Israel as it currently stands, extending outside the 1967 borders of Israel and settling Arab land.

But Hamas leaves open recognition of an Israel within the 1967 borders, which is a way of saying the settlement of the West Bank must end.

So, there is plenty of room to bargain between Israel and Hamas but the hardcore elements on both sides refuse.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3341534,00.html


Still, Israel ignores all these overtures.

I am hard on the neoconservatives for sure because, since the majority of them are Zionists, I can not tell whether they are in this for America or Israel. All their war advice seems to be perfectly consistent with Israeli interests, but counter to the long term interests of America.....

 

[dapperdan]

Ragtag group notwithstanding, I would submit that while Hamas, as a stand-alone entity may not represent a strategic military threat, Hamas has openly introduced al Qaeda into the Gaza strip. Additionally, it appears that Hamas is working with Hezbollah. And I would say, at least based on the results achieved by Hezbollah over this past summer and their subsequent rearmament of Western Lebannon, that this triumvirate of Hamas-al Qaeda-Hezbollah represents a legitimate military and terrorist threat to Israel.

Also, there appears to be an insistence on the part of those oppsed to Israel to return to pre-1967 borders. You mention this in almost all your writings. My question is why. There is nothing magic with the pre-1967 borders; there is nothing more legitimate about pre-1967 than there is simply with the existence of Israel where it was carved out. If the U.N. mandate was illegitimate in carving out the pre-'67 borders, then the entire concept of Israel as a nation state is illegitimate, which is pretty much the position of the extremist Arab states.

The other side of the arab coin is why isn't Israel having similar problems with their other neighbors - Egypt and Jordan.

Additionaly, where I have a problem with your argument re Israel's almost non-stop Arab land grab, is that, the last time I looked at the map, we're talking about disputes over incredibly tiny parcels of land. If Israel truly had the ambitions to expand that you attribute to the Israelis, given their military strength, they could certainly gobble up much more land than they have cordoned off. At the rate the Israelis are expanding, one would have to extrapolate hundreds of years into the future before they would be moving into anything other than what you or I could possibly see as worthless pieces of desert. At the root of the matter is whether the Israelis have some sort of unspoken Grand Plan to expand and take over significant portions of the Middle East, or whether their land acquisitions have been legitimate responses to protect their population hubs - an expansion to provide a greater buffer zone. Sort of like using their expansions like suburban tripwires to protect Tel Aviv.

I suppose I just don't see the Israeli conspiracy as you do. But I do enjoy reading your conspiracy theories.