Worth repeating.
“Given that Bush isn’t really trying any serious regional diplomacy, I can’t escape the feeling that the surge was never designed to succeed in the first place, but just to give Bush the excuse to broaden the conflict to include Iran down the road (again, the animating aspect to this entire piece) because then he can say, “I tried, but Iran screwed us over and now it’s payback!”
Looking further ahead: This segment is obviously the most frustrating to contemplate, in large part because Bush continues to make our military fight under the worst possible strategic circumstances.
As I look to the next prez, only Giuliani makes me think he’s got the go-your-own-way courage to cut the deals necessary to extricate our combat troops from harm’s way in a reasonable amount of time while making that transition seem less like a “loss” and more just plain common sense. I mean, you take what you can get after a while, and what we’ve got is a free and safe Kurdistan, and relatively stable and safe and recovering Shiite Iraq, and that hell-hole called Sunni-land.
The notion that we somehow “lose Iraq” unless we fight it out in Sunni-land until all the bitter-enders have all met their bitter end is just goofy.
Since Bush seems unable to define anything short of that mythical desired outcome as “victory,” we’re in desperate need of somebody who can. Hell, the Balkans were a piecemeal victory/stalemate/loss that slowly but surely turned into something we’re all relatively proud of, so why do we think we’re ever going to reach some magical moment where everything’s perfect in Iraq as a whole so we can pull out with our pride somehow completely restored?
Simply put, Rudy’s the most Nixonian of the bunch, and we need a plain-talking hardass to make this work. He’s got just enough gravitas and just enough arrogance to pull it off — unless the cast of “Law & Order” runs as a full-slate.”
Read the rest here.
