« Which Proposal Is Which? | Main | A Different Kind of Surge »
September 10, 2007
When All You Have Is A Hammer, Every Problem Looks Like It Needs A Continuing Deployment Of 165,000 American Troops
Read Kevin Drum on the chaos hawks. As he says, first we were to believe that we needed war to take out Saddam, then more war to fix what we had broken, and now more war to keep what we couldn't fix from exploding all over the Middle East. The hawks have become the supply siders of foreign affairs -- no matter what Iraq's problem is, the answer is more military deployment. That the continued military deployments haven't made anything better does nothing to change the prescription, just the rationale. But as Jon Chait smartly said about the supply siders, the only way to evaluate a theory is to see if it fulfills the predictions of its proponents, and you need barely glance at Iraq to know that that's not been true.
Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman and John McCain continue setting new records for wank. Check them out in the Wall Street Journal saying "The president had the courage to change course on Iraq. Does Congress?" It's an interesting definition a "changing course": If I'm in a car at 85 miles per hour on an iced over road and angrily insisting to my terrified passengers that "no, i won't slow down, I'm the $@&$% decider," McCain and Lieberman would not define changing course as pulling off onto the shoulder till the de-icer comes, but instead speeding up to 110 mph.
September 10, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Tom Tomorrow is way ahead of you.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Sep 10, 2007 3:14:59 PM
i think success has been accomplished in iraq already.
we are building a base there. we are building a huge, permanent embassy there. we will be there permanently.
isnt that what the government wanted?
the human toll was just the cost of getting the job done. just details.
all of the reports,just window dressing.
i think when bush said, "mission accomplished", he really meant it.
our long term plan for occupation of the country has been realized.
Posted by: jacqueline | Sep 10, 2007 3:23:56 PM
Jacqueline, you make a very good point, and one that isn't raised often enough. I'm starting to think that those of us who see how bad all of this is should stop calling it "the war" and start calling it "the occupation", since that's much closer to what it really is. I mean a "war" can actually be "won". It seems pretty obvious to me that these nutjobs plan on running Iraq from the US embassy forever.
Posted by: Herschel | Sep 10, 2007 3:37:38 PM
I can just see Shrub channeling Mayor Daley from '68. "We are not in Iraq to create disorder, we are in Iraq to preserve disorder."
As far as a new goes, how about the "Iraq Insurrection." How dare those people contest our rightful rule of their country?!?!?!?!?
Posted by: justawriter | Sep 10, 2007 4:19:09 PM
Y'know, I might be able to justify all of this, I might be able to let my moral qualms pass me by if the industrialists and the oil companies to which Bush is beholden were somehow bestowing benefits onto the American people in the form of cheaper energy or even an overall better job market because of the skilled labor taken to mount the occupation.
That's not happening so we don't even have some sort of quality of life benefit to distract us from the human toll of the conflict.
Posted by: Thomas | Sep 10, 2007 4:35:12 PM
Your driving on ice analogy is a strong argument against touching the steering wheel at all. "If we change direction at all, it'll be disaster. Now back off; this is very tricky driving!"
Posted by: Grumpy | Sep 10, 2007 7:09:48 PM
Yeah Grumpy but it is also a strong argument for easing off the gas. Only an idiot stomps on the brakes when driving on ice, in fact you mostly want to ignore the fact that you have a brake pedal at all. Doesn't mean you want to stick the car into cruise control.
Posted by: Bruce Webb | Sep 11, 2007 2:06:39 AM
