Rising Hegemon
A final lesson is the benefit of persistence. Bush made a disastrous mistake invading Iraq in 2003. But having busted up the country, he tried his best to clean up the mess. By checking the spiraling sectarian killing, the surge of U.S. troops led by Bush and Gen. David Petraeus saved thousands of Iraqi lives. It’s one thing Americans did right in this painful story.
You can, if you can stomach it, note that in the preceding paragraphs of his article Ignatius talks about all the strategic errors, but until that last paragraph NEVER discusses ALL OF THE DEATH Bush's Iraq disaster caused. And even in that last paragraph it's not about deaths, it's about "lives saved". Fucking Hell!
Those "thousands of lives" saved ONLY needed saving because we had already caused events which led to the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands.
It's a bit like having a guy shoot the mother, father, and two children in the family, but decide they won't shoot the last surviving child so thanks for being really really horrible, but not really really really horrible.
Oh and the premise of the last paragraph is, like Ignatius THROUGHOUT the build up and then the occupation, WRONG! As his Washington Post colleague Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote just a few days ago -- maybe Ignatius should read it?
8 comments:
Nothing to do with this post, but the margins are all fubar'ed. The posts are at the far left quarter, the ads in the next quarter, and nothing in the right half.
BTW, will there ever be another post to After Dark?
It's like killing the mother and father and two of the kids and setting the house on fire, but saving the last kid from the fire. Then, standing on the front lawn as the house burns down behind you and asking to be given some credit.
Agreeing that "the surge worked" is the new requirement to be a Serious Person. Viz. the Hagel confirmation hearings.
It's SE Asia redux. REMFers claim the glory of killings they deny.
Surge, my ass. It was CYA all the way.
i didn't see any backpedalling from the stupid. all i saw was profiteering for the rite wing hacks.
did you see the poll at the bottom right hand corner of the linked Chandrasekaran article - 5 Myths About Iraq ????
Was invading Irak a mistake???
**** 92% **** say FUCK YES IT WAS !!!!
almost 8400 have take the poll. a BIG FUCK YOU to the washington post !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why did Bush do 'the surge'? Might it have been related to the 2006 thumping Republicans took in the elections? Check the dates - surge announced almost immediately after the election. Republicans ran in 2006 on how well the war was going, and how good a job they had done. It took a defeat to Democrats for them to admit they had been bungling it for nearly 4 years.
So Bush gets credit for something that Democrats implicitly forced him to do.
I'm seeing a lot of people calling out the hacks for their hackiness, but the politicians (barring Bush and Cheney) are getting a pass. If readers were thinking that college kids Matt and Ezra knew what they were talking about, or that hacks like R. Cohen weren't hacks, that's on the readers. I want somebody to ask Biden and Clinton what the hell they were thinking. If the hacks are forever discredited for supporting the war, what about the people who actually voted for it?
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