While reading this passage on how inevitably Libya collapsed (via Instapundit), I came across this passage:
They don’t realize it yet, but these guys are on a path to make even Donny Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks look good—and you thought that was impossible.
…Look, can we stop pretending that George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and the rest of the administration was bad at fighting and winning a war? – Because, frankly, even a cursory reading of history will swiftly confirm that postwar Iraq and Afghanistan were actually handled a good deal more competently than the antiwar Left would care to admit. Especially since their guy turned a nation-state that was repairing itself into the battleground for a no-fooling Evil Empire* that conducts slave auctions.
:pause:
No. No, that is the indigestible lump. That is an inexcusable thing. This has happened, and it is a clear demonstration of this administration’s studied incompetence in the fields of foreign policy, and post-war reconstruction. In other words: it is a failure, and there is no way to gild that lily.
Moe Lane
*Empires are not, in fact, required to be large. They merely have to be states where one particular group is paramount, and the others are subservient.
Yeah. It’s depressing, the number of people on our side who think we could have left Saddam in power, that the Middle East would have been static if we had just let it alone……
Oh, I was very much for the war. It had already reached being inevitable under Bush I and Clinton.
.
I just held that we should install Chalabi as strongman, and give him a few million to buy off the right supporters.
Bush II took a much more idealistic (and humane) view. I respected him for that, even though I thought him naive. Hindsight clearly shows that cynicism would have been a better choice, but it *was* noble of him to make the attempt.
Its clear that the American people are too unwilling to fight it out long enough to win.
The American people* bare a significant portion of the blame for what is happening in Iraq, they after all voted for this. Twice.
* those who voted for Obama that is, which thankfully I’m not related to anyone who did.
Sadly, I am related to several, one of which I am married to.
That vote was incompatible with all she said she believed, yet the power of being part of history was too strong.
Sadly, something broke inside her after that.
At least then the US went in, on the ground, and announced they were a player so deal them in.
Obama? Baritone speechifying which means nothing; as everyone starts counting committed rifles the words drift away and only the rifles remain.