Yep...and a challenge to Asa
Said historian Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "Certainly at this point, you have to say that the Bush administration's critics have made as many mistakes as the Bush administration in assessing Iraq."
It's fairly obvious what the mistakes of the Iraq War have been, and I've accepted them all, and criticized Bush a number of times for the administration's incompetence and lack of foresight.
I'm talking about the war being sold largely under false pretenses, the catastrophic intelligence failures that led to the war, the poor post-war planning, the failure to take Fallujah in April 2004. The failure to stop Zarqawi in 2003. The failure to train Iraq soldiers. The failure to embrace the other great tenet of neo-conservatism: nation-building. The petty fighting between the State Department and the Pentagon. The policy rifts that led to Rumsfeld's lean, mean, stripped down high-tech military, never actually becoming reconciled to the large standing armies need to play post-modern Empire. And most frustratingly, the Admin.'s love of doing EVERYTHING on the cheap. Especially when lives are at stake.
Anyway, I've made my list of Bush mistakes. I now challenge Asa to come up with a list of mistakes made by the Bush administration critics. And I'm not simply talking about, "Well they should of fought harder to make sure we never went into Iraq in the first place." Let's pretend Iraq was inevitable. What mistakes have the anti-war folks made in understanding, observing, debating, and helping/hindering the quest for a democratic Iraq?
3 Comments:
Well, anyone who said the election would be a bloodbath was clearly wrong. Those who encouraged a withdrawal at various points were, I think, wrong, but we don't really know.
And there's the rub of this question... Because the Democrats and Bush critics are without any real power, anything they've said is purely theoretical. Bush says something, acts or does not act, and we can see the consequences. He was right or wrong. Critics of the war, on the other hand, have only to make commentary.
So what was Bush right about that met any opposition from the Left?
-Holding to the Jan. 30th elections
-Holding to the transfer of "sovereignty" date
-All the speculation during the initial "major combat operations" that Saddam would unleash his WMD on our troops.
-Any speculation that "major combat operations" wouldn't be a joke.
-Guesses that we would go after Syria next. Now the guess is Iran, but I really don't see how we have the troops for it. I think critics are right that Bush is a warmonger, but wrong in that even he knows when his army is spread far too thin.
Funny, the first thing I thought of is that Bush has stubbornly forged ahead, which is what everyone else seems to love about him too.
I mean, give me 10 years and I'll be able to make a better list. So much of what most of the complaints have been revolves around the long term effects of things like alienating our allies and weakening our moral authority. If those things turn out to not matter then the critics were wrong, at least from a practical standpoint.
At this point though, I have to say that I think a list of Bush mistakes would be a lot longer than a list of War Critic mistakes. From troop levels to rose petals, WMD to KIA, "no safer with Saddam captured" to "no permanent bases in Iraq" it seems as though the critics have had it right most of the time. I would be happy to see your list, in case I've forgotten something.
Yes, the Bush mistakes are still worse than the critics' mistakes. I mean, Bush's mistakes cost lives in the present...and possibly the future. Still, it was an interesting exercise.
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I love our site. We have a bi-partisan blog! The future!
Oh, I forgot to add this:
I think we've covered the bulk of the mistakes on both sides. Like you said, it will take another ten years to see where we are. If a free Iraq leads to region-wide reform and cuts down on terrorists, well, it's advantage pro-war people. (Although, I'm sure by then we'll have completely lost track of what sides we were all on.)
But if Iraq collapses, and terror cells multiply exponentially and hit us big, well, obviously, it's Anti-War 10, Pro-War 0.
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