There has been some disappointment that I would run such an oversimplified, canned post in support of the Bush Administration (just below). Thank you, at least, for not putting it in the comments.
It’s not in support of the Bush Administration (Ed: not that there’s anything wrong with that). Yet how telling it is that anyone would think so. The conservative complaint has been that progressives have been focussing their energy on Bush instead of terrorists since about February 2002. Through long repetition, now it has become simply automatic – a reflexive response that reads the words “war in Iraq” and thinks “stop Bush.”
Details have changed, but my stance is the same: the war critics give little evidence of considering risk/benefit, but lots of evidence that their opposition is politically and tribally motivated; the war supporters have considerable disagreement with each other, but discuss military and foreign policy strategies in terms of considering ideas that might work and discussing their merits. Within that wide framework “We Win, They Lose” seems about as much military and foreign policy expertise as I can offer. That’s not much, but it’s way ahead of folks who cannot even frame the discussion in those terms. To be forever stuck on the implications of how all this plays in American electoral politics is going to get a lot more people killed.
3 comments:
I know. Sigh.
Nothing has disappointed me more than our Congress out-and-out saying "our political lives are more important than the lives of our soldiers."
Short-sightedness in this context can best be defined as the inability to see consequences other than political, which is endemic in the "anti-Bush, anti-war" (ABAW) crowd. That short-sightedness was effective in 2006. Conclusion: the electorate needs to play more chess.
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