Nutshelling it
“All that’s missing is handing over our lunch money to Syria and Iran.” Good one, Chris. And before it scrolls off the main page, I’d best get a link in to the best post I’ve read on this goatfuck yet, and perhaps one of the best and most complete blog posts I’ve seen since I started doing this:
Since when did the United States or any country wage war by publishing its plans or suggested plans for all the world to see? Since when did the United States or any country let its enemies see internal deliberations and strategic pivots, and since when did we think our enemies shared our interests, either in one war theater or on a more broad strategic plane? Since when did we wage war by a geriatric committee of has-beens and shady Washington insiders? Since when has there been anything to talk about with the world’s two worst remaining terrorist states?
To me, the ISG report represents the end of the sole-superpower world. We’re not a superpower anymore, not if our so-called best and brightest think that this report represents anything useful, and not if we think it’s wise to put our war planning up to a body of old hands with no new ideas, and subject their findings to an international review.
I thought we voted against the international test when we rejected John Kerry? Guess not.
Well, I think the problem here is more that Bush has gradually morphed into John Kerry, actually; after all, this ISG business was his idea. And if he’d stuck to his “Axis of Evil” guns — keeping his focus on crushing our enemies rather than trying to mollify an internationalist crowd that’s never going to like him anyway, by too-rapidly trying to gin up democratic governance for a people not quite ready to embrace it — he wouldn’t have felt he needed an ISG in the first place.
Caveat: hindsight, 20-20, all that. Still. That’s why a President makes the big bucks, no?
Read it all, people; my niggling dissension from it on a single minor point aside, it’s right on the beam. And Bryan: bravo, my friend. You’ve really said just about all there is to say on this.
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