Yet another take
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Foreign Policy, General Politics, News, The War On Terrorism, The World, WarMy take on Bush’s speech:
More of the same, punctuated with spurious justifications and disheartening implicit admissions that he was slow to admit what the rest of us saw long ago, and that he pursued a strategy (”clear and hold”) even though he didn’t have the resources to make it work.
His proposed pacification campaign will work because we have more troops and because the Iraqis have promised that this time their troops will do a good job and they won’t let politics interfere.
Some good (if minor and unsurprising) ideas, like revenue-sharing, demobilizing militias and allowing Baathists back into government.
I go into it in greater detail over at Midtopia. But bottom line: This is not a change, and it’s still rife with wishful thinking (or, if you’re a bit more pessimistic, willful denial of reality).
We are in trouble.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 and is filed under Foreign Policy, General Politics, News, The War On Terrorism, The World, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 11th, 2007 at 3:44 am
If the escalation of forces is too small, and we do not have the numbers to add the hundreds of thousands that we originally needed, according to General Eric Shinseki, it begs the question:
Why do it at all?
Paul Reickhoff said it best: This is a draw play on fourth and long.
More on my take here.