Cowardice Lurking Behind Smoke And Mirrors

Sen. Joe Biden's statement is one of the most intelligent things that I have heard a politician say in quite some time. His and all of the generals' and journalists' comments, however, will likely fall on deaf ears. They are too complex and too "sensitive" and just too damning when this country is being led by a ham-fisted clod whose followers would sell their own souls and their children's futures before they faced reality or admitted they were wrong. Their cowardice is lurking there just behind all of this smoke and mirrors. - karennkc.

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“The fact of the matter is that American lives remain in jeopardy and...if every single jihadi in the world was killed tomorrow, we’d still have a major, major war on our hands.” – Sen. Joseph Biden

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Speaking at a symposium on terrorist threats at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey said, “U.S. politicians need to act as if the country is at war and ask for sacrifices accordingly.” He also said it would be a mistake to retool the military firepower and strategy too dramatically to meet the threat of insurgencies like that in Iraq and Afghanistan and to do so would leave the U.S. ill-prepared for its next major conflict. “I don’t want to see us spend the next 15 years creating the military that would have been optimized to fight the counter-Sunni civil war campaign in Iraq. I’d rather conclude that we shouldn’t fight that campaign.”

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Retired Army Gen. John Abizaid said that beyond attacking the global threat of terrorism with military strength, the United States has done a poor job of applying the economic, political and diplomatic means to fight Islamic extremism. “We need to change that as a matter of national priority.”

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This from Warren P. Stroebel, McClatchy Newspapers:

… There was one question that Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could not, or would not, answer. It was the question that Petraeus posed rhetorically back in 2003 when he led the Army’s 101st Airborne Division into Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”

Asked whether his proposal for Iraq would make the U.S. safer, Petraeus replied, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”

Petraeus “is almost certainly the right man for the job in Iraq, but he’s the right person three years too late and 250,000 troops short,” Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, said Monday.

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“It is a measure of how vaporous the ground truths in Iraq have become that George w. Bush had to sneak into the country he conquered. Extra security was needed to proclaim that Iraq was more secure, the surge was working and the country was worth more American blood and treasure...What U.S. strategy could avert the wider bloodshed that looks inevitable in the wake of a smaller force? One small advantage of extending the surge is that it postpones having to find the answer to that question.” – Michael Duffy, TIME 9-17-07.

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Crocker is decidedly above party politics. Yet in representing Bush in Iraq, he has inevitably become drawn into the administration's effort to salvage its colossal mistakes. Buying more time may help Bush exit office without experiencing a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq. But it is wrong to ask the troops for more sacrifices without leveling with Americans about what kind of longer-term commitment is really at stake and coming up with a sensible plan to get there. Thus far, the administration has proved either unable or unwilling to get Shiites and Kurds to offer Sunnis a meaningful stake in Iraq's future. And it has done next to nothing toward accepting two of the Baker-Hamilton commission's crucial recommendations about working with Syria and Iran.

Just as with its wishful thinking in invading Iraq four years ago, the White House seems to think that it can eradicate Iran's influence in the region simply by wishing it away. If Bush is sincerely thinking about solving the Iran problem by bombing Iran's nuclear program, then its hard to take seriously its appeal for a little more time to set Iraq on the path of democracy. War with Iran would simply send Petraeus's mission in Iraq into the realm of the unknown. If Americans are being asked to keep armed forces in Iraq, a little more coherence and transparency is in order. - Scott MacLeod

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The nature of military leadership is congenital optimism; officers are trained to complete the mission, to refuse to countenance the possibility of failure. That focus is essential when you go to war, but it lacks perspective. That's why civilian leaders—the Commander in Chief—are there to set the mission, to change or abort it when necessary. The trouble is, George W. Bush's credibility on Iraq is nonexistent. And so he has placed David Petraeus, an excellent soldier, in a position way above his pay grade. He has made Petraeus not just the arbiter of Iraq strategy but also, by default, the man who sets U.S. policy for the entire so-called war on terrorism...

...Crocker also testified that the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian neighbor without a fight. - Joe Klein, TIME.

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