OK, class. Today’s homework assignment is reading Gen. William Odom’s op-ed in the Washington Post. I’ve highlighted Odom’s analysis in the past, and he remains possibly the most cogent observer of the Iraq disaster.
Picking up on David’s wise recommendation to read the Odom column (see links immediately below), here’s one particularly salient point from it. It really sums up everything: “Why are so many members of Congress swallowing the claim that prolonging the war is now supposed to prevent precisely what starting the war inexorably and predictably caused?” Here Odom is talking about the influence of Iran in Iraq.
To me, even more critical is this short paragraph …
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess — the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a “failed state,” or some other horror. But this “aftermath” is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.
To me this sums up everything.
TPM Reader BW on Odom …
Failure is a tough sell. Odom admits that, but he does not fully understand the implications. The Democrats in Congress are not especially stupid, but they are necessarily anxious about withdrawal, because they are sensibly fearful of being blamed by the Republicans for âlosing Iraqâ.
The worst kinds of Republicans control almost the whole news Media. The punditocrisy has backed this stupid war completely. The narrative, which will be fed to the American People, by this propaganda machine will not be favorable to a Democratic Congress.
And, withdrawal from Iraq will be followed for months and years by a series of events catastrophic to American interests in the region. Stability will not magically reappear. At best, Iran may assume control of much of Iraq; at worst, Iran and Saudi Arabia will fight a prolonged proxy war.
Odom is wrong to attribute the dire situation entirely to the mere fact of the war. In fact, the conduct of the war by the U.S. has largely created the chaos in Iraq. The corrupt and incompetent conduct of the war has created the chaos in Iraq. Bushâs corrupt and incompetent conduct of the occupation and reconstruction has created the chaos in Iraq.
Everywhere, political punditry from the Right concentrates on ignoring, or distracting from, the massive contribution to Iraqi chaos made by Bushâs conduct of the occupation and reconstruction. And, too many on the Left help them in this effort, prattling on about âage-oldâ conflicts between Shia and Sunni, with scarcely a word about how the institutions of secular society were ground to dust, leaving only ancient tribal affiliations.
The critical work of the Congress in the next 6 months is to build the narrative, which places the responsibility for the course of the Iraq War on its conduct. The narrative, favored by the self-destructive left, of a war that was doomed from the outset, is welcomed by the Right, which wishes to gloss over the corruption, malfeasance and incompetence. I am no fan of Hillary’s (or Kerry’s) conspicuous calculation, but Hillary is right to remind Democratic Primary voters that the mistakes in Iraq belong to Bush. Squabbling over which Democrats have uttered mea culpas on their support for the Iraq War at the outset does not build a political majority. Focusing attention on Bush’s conduct of the war, and how the conduct of the war has contributed to the hopelessness of the current situation — there Bush’s responsibility is unambiguous and unshared.
With the foundation afforded by a narrative of Iraq failure, which clearly fixed blame on the incompetence and corruption of Republicans, the Democrats might be able to sell the idea that it is too late in Iraq, to recover. And, with that foundation, the Democrats will be able to get the country out of Iraq, without destroying themselves.
The story of how Bush conducted the war, and how that conduct led to the on-going fiasco and catastrophe, which is Iraq, is the story ALL Democrats should be telling, over and over, until nothing else can be heard in this country, and the U.S. gets out, out, out.
Two senior officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who opposed many questionable management and spending decisions by the agency’s former director are being moved to lower-ranking positions effective Thursday, officials said. . . .
The transfers are widely seen within ATF as demotions. They come seven months after the sudden departure of Carl J. Truscott, the former director, who clashed with Domenech and other senior executives over spending and management practices.
An inspector general’s report issued after his departure showed that Truscott — who previously served as head of President Bush’s security detail at the Secret Service — engaged in a wide-ranging pattern of questionable expenditures on a new ATF headquarters, personal security and other items. The report also said that he violated ethics rules by forcing employees to help his nephew prepare a high school video project.
Domenech took over for Truscott after he resigned and reversed a decision to include a costly engraved quotation from Bush’s speech to Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the new headquarters entrance.
SOP for the Bush Administration.
ABC on Obama, or what’s coming down the pike: “Obama’s foreign policy proposals are just one target for his critics, who have many questions for the senator, including whether his church on the South Side of Chicago — which preaches a message of black power — is too militant to be accepted by mainstream America.”
TPM Reader RKR thinks the ABC reporters may be picking up on this article on Obama’s church in the whacked right-wing sheet Investor’s Business Daily.
You know that, after a brief period of investigation, the committee of four ministers appointed to counsel anti-gay gay Pastor Tedd Haggard discovered that Haggard was in fact “completely heterosexual.”
“It was the acting-out situations where things took place,” explained Pastor Tim Ralph.
Anyway, Ralph and his fellow pastors have told Haggard to leave Colorado Springs to heal since presumably the gay scene there is too hot and heavy for Haggard’s heterosexuality to maintain itself. But Susie Bright doesn’t think even getting out of town is going to keep Haggard from falling off the heterosexual wagon some time within the next year.
And if you don’t think so either, she’s even set up a betting pool so you can put down money on the date.
Proceeds go to a San Francisco-based LGBT youth group.
Today’s Must Read: the PowerPoint presentation you’ve all been waiting for.
After you read those Times and Post articles about the DOD briefing in Baghdad about Iranian supplied IEDs killing US troops, read Juan Cole’s explanation of why the story is bunk. Cole isn’t saying that there can’t be any arms transfers, though he clearly has his doubts. But the numbers just don’t add up. Because the Iranians would be giving them to Shi’a militias and our soldiers who are getting killed by IEDs are still being killed overwhelmingly by Sunni insurgents. See the details.
A copy of the final version of the resolution by House Dems condeming escalation has just been sent our way. It’s here.