Lounsbury: On American Conservatives and the failure in Iraq

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October 21, 2004

On American Conservatives and the failure in Iraq

As I am sick of my excel sheet, and as this column by Friedman amused me:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp

Of which I focus on the following:
President Bush has a different problem. The threshold test that Mr. Bush had to pass was: "Does this man understand that we are on the wrong track?" Even though the situation is still salvageable, right now Iraq is a terrible mess because of the criminal incompetence of the Bush national security team, and we are more alone in the world than ever.

Conservatives profess to care deeply about the outcome in Iraq, but they sat silently for the last year as the situation there steadily deteriorated. Then they participated in a shameful effort to refocus the country's attention on what John Kerry did on the rivers of Vietnam 30 years ago, not on what George Bush and his team are doing on the rivers of Babylon today, where some 140,000 American lives are on the line. Is this what it means to be a conservative today?

Had conservatives spoken up loudly a year ago and said what both of Mr. Bush's senior Iraq envoys, Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, have now said (and what many of us who believed in the importance of Iraq were saying) - that we never had enough troops to control Iraq's borders, keep the terrorists out, prevent looting and establish authority - the president might have changed course. Instead, they served as a Greek chorus, applauding Mr. Bush's missteps and mocking anyone who challenged them.

Conservatives have failed their own test of patriotism. In the end, it has been more important for them to defeat liberals than to get Iraq right. Had Democrats been running this war with the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld & Friends, conservatives would have demanded their heads a year ago - and gotten them.

Did the president, in the debates, answer these concerns? He barely tried. His strategy is to focus all his energy on fanning doubts about whether Mr. Kerry understands that we have real enemies, so voters will not focus on how much we are on the wrong track - with virtually no friends in the world and an Iraq that is now so insecure our own soldiers are afraid to drive certain roads.

Emphasis added.

Amusing, although Friedman should include his own deluded self in there. (the wish that this is salvageable in some politically meaningful way is among those delusions)

However the indictment is spot on.

Spot on.

Of course, I am growing tired of the constant whinging on from Americans at home about the terrible threats and the like. As if they were the first people to face terror....

For all the pain, my dear little whinging North American comrades, the "War on Terror" or rather more appropriately the struggle with Islamic radicalism is not the end of the world. It's not even close. The pants pissing does contain enough elements to make my life difficult, however, and I am looking forward to less of it, although I expect not.

October 21, 2004

On American Conservatives and the failure in Iraq

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