William Kristol's op-ed in today's Washington Post should have been entitled "I'm Not as Stupid as I Look" rather than "Why Bush Will Be A Winner." Kristol knows very well that the success of conservatism as an ideology and the meaning of his own career will be determined by the success of the Bush administration.
If Bush is a winner, Bill Kristol is a winner. If Bush leaves office with an "L" for loser tattooed to his head, Bill Kristol also looks like a loser despite his pundit prominence.
From Kristol's perspective, things don't look good right now. The president is a goofball and his administration is filled with incompetent cronies and sycophants like Alberto Gonzales. The Republican presidential candidates for 2008 don't look that strong either. Fund-raising for the next election cycle is going poorly and conservative columnists like Robert Novak are reporting intense pessimism in the GOP caucus. And it doesn't seem like the Republicans can buy a break from scandals either. Every week, there's some sort of news from the old Abramoff scandal or the current fired prosecutor, commutation for Scooter Libby, and Hatch Act scandals. And if it's not one of those controversies, someone like David Vitter, Republican senator from Louisiana, is revealed to be an unbelievable scumbag.
Pretty soon, Republicans are going to need a version of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" just to remember all the scandals.
Even worse, the surge is doing even more poorly we think and Bill Kristol helps explain why.
In his attempt to cast the Bush administration in a positive light, Kristol stresses that we "are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq [and] we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias."
Though these are positive developments, our military didn't contribute much to them. What happened is that we caught a couple of big breaks. Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq on their own and are now fighting on our side. That's why al-Qaeda is being routed. They lost their "host" among the Sunni population.
Perhaps even more significantly, the Shiite militias decided to largely stand down on their own rather than fight newly arriving American troops. Consequently, the U. S. hasn't had the confrontation with the Shiite militias that was anticipated.
Given the recently decreased pressure from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia, one would think that our military would have secured Baghdad and the surrounding region now that the surge has been going on for six months.
But nothing is farther from the case. The numbers of suicide bombings, car bombs, IED attacks, and death squad killings may each vary from month to month, but the overall level of violence in Iraq has not declined much since the beginning of the surge in January.
Nothing speaks more to the failure of the American military mission in Iraq than our inability capitalize on these kinds of favorable developments.
William Kristol must know that whenever he sees that pesky "L" on his forehead.
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5 comments:
I wonder if Kristol reads anything other than his own words? I was watching a clip from "The Daily Show", and I saw Condoleeza Rice mutilating the english language as is so often the case for Administration officials who have to discuss the Iraq war.http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/17/the-daily-show-is-back/ She said in an interview that Iraq has made, "not inconsequential movement forward," and that it is, "Also not the case that they've done nothing."....Well, as long as we're just throwing out random words that have no relation to each other here's my responce to Ms. Rice, "Dog all computer sky you." Makes more sense than the garbled tortured language the Administration uses to make the travesty in Iraq successful. Another day in Bushcheneyland.
The Daily Show as a news source ... good stuff ! Is Todd Mayo your only other commenter?
Anonymous, stop impersonating me.
'Why shouldn't Condi ruin the language through Beltway ebonics. What do you expect from a trained musician, Steven Tyler sing "Dream On"? to address the whole surge report 25 years ago.
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