Neo Culpa (Perle and Adleman on Iraq)

Vanity Fair | November 3, 2006 | David Rose

[truth_seeker]

"The best we can hope is an Islamic Republic that is not hostile to the United States."

Name one or more of those.

Name any islamic republics not hostile to things non-islamic?

Bottom line: The double whammy of arab and islamic means small chance for modern, civil democratic society, at peace within and without.

[RobbyS]

Well, it would not be the Shiite part of a divided Iraq. The Constitution already provides for the establishment of Islam. There is a possibility that so long as the country hangs together that anti-Persian Shiites can balance the power of the pro-Persian ones.

[91B]

Steady on man-there is much good and true in what you say, but the enemy can only win if we withdraw-so we must not withdraw, we must continue to fight. I know that many Americans are frustrated but even many Democrats recognize this (there are some who are not completely lost to madness).

Our casualties amount to less than 3 GIs killed in action a day. We had higher rates of soldiers killed in training accidents per year in the early 1980s. Every soldier killed is one less great American, and we should all mourn their passing, but the media has completely lost all perspective and the administration has not done a particularly good job of pointing this out (although I think Snow is doing a good job).

We must do whatever is necessary to expand the Army, I am perplexed that the administration has failed to do this up to now and Rumsfeld's bizarre reluctance to do so is the main thing that makes many of us doubt him.

In retrospect we were wrong to use the most recent conflicts (Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan) as templates for Iraq, but mistakes are inevitable in war. But the enemy can never in a thousand years drive us from Iraq. They can only win if we hand them a victory, that is unacceptable.

[justshutupandtakeit]

You can put the blame on him if you like but it came from far deeper sources than Richard Perle. Nor does his background tell one that much. There are many with similiar backgrounds
and students of Strauss are everywhere.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rich and Colin Powell shaped our foreign policy no one else.

[nathanbedford]

But the enemy can never in a thousand years drive us from Iraq.

The same was true in Viet Nam.

It took Walter Cronkeit about four minutes of air time to drive us out.

The war is not fought in Bagdad, but we can guess where it is being fought.

[Prost1]

Richard Perle and Ken Adlemann are both (imo) looking to the future. They have never been significant players in the Beltway, except for the honorariums heaped upon them by the MSM (DBM).

They want to protect their "legacy" in the history books and still be marketable to the next administration.

We should all remember that the next election cycle begins with the end of the prior election, now upon us.

[beckett]

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I've been busy lately.

Many of your points are persuasive. Iran poses a particularly nasty danger to us now, one that could have been better managed had we not skewed the balance of power in the region by invading Iraq.

So many of these problems could have been anticipated -- should have been anticipated. To toot my own horn some more, I thought of many of them myself in the pre-invasion days. How did Bush's team bring such a naive optimism to the grave decision to invade another country?

'Tis a puzzlement.

It just kills me that we seem to be in a worse strategic position globally than we were before the Iraq invasion. I suppose brighter days may be ahead if things start to break our way, and as I've been happy to say on many occasions, Bush deserves credit for no post-911 attacks on our own soil (which is why I voted Republican in the early voting here), but right now things look exceptionally glum.