Apollo and Dorothy – here is why you are both wrong.
At no time do Lee, or I for that matter, expect a flawless war. What we do expect is a war carried out to the best of our abilities. By any objective measure we have not done this. Have our troops performed admirabily, heroically and to the best of their abilities? Hell yes they have. The breakdown occurs from the leadership they are following. Here are some examples of how inept leadership, from the President on down, has lead to clearly aviodable problems in the war in Iraq and the War on Terror:
1) There are very few people outside of the Bush Cabinet that would say we had enough troops to truly win the peace in Iraq. We won the “War” portion of the conflict quickly and decisively. It is winning the peace that we are struggling with. Why is this? Why was there no plan in place to properly secure the Iraqi borders? Why wasn’t there better security throughout Iraq? The most direct answer is that our forces were spread too thin. We asked out soldiers to do the impossible and that is not fair to them.
2) A mixed message sent out by the administration on how to handle POWs and interrogations has lead to things like the “Fraternity Pranks” of Private England. This is a failure of LEADERSHIP. While I don’t agree with his handwrining and whining on this subject, Andrew Sullivan has also documented much more extensive abuses in Iraqi prisons that are hard to ignore. When these abuses become public they lead to greater resentment from moderate muslims, give recruiting fodder to terrorists and make the War on Terror harder to fight.
3) The political scandal over the NSA wiretaps could have been avioded by simply following proceedures layed out by congress regarding “black” operations. However, carrying out these operations with the hamhanded hubris we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration this necessary project has become public – most likely rendering it useless.
4) Bush’s idiotic appointments to key positions in his administration like Michael Brown at FEMA show a severe lack of judgement when it comes to true Homeland Security. 4 Years after 9/11 we were NOT prepared for a large scale disaster – this is failure of leadership.
5) Bush’s idiotic and completely incompetant handling of the Dubai Ports World Scandle, while on the surface may seem unconnected to the War on Terror, has a direct effect on it. This deal makes good sense economically and more importantly it brings us closer to moderate Arabs. If there is any better way to make enemies into friends than trade, I haven’t heard of it. And yet Bush’s political blundering, failure to communicate and educate the public, and lack of LEADERSHIP has allowed the deal to be derailed thereby making us look like racists to the moderate Arab street. To make matters worse it has allowed liberal presidential candidates, who would be horrible at waging this War on Terror (if they would even wage it at all) to stake out a position that looks strong on Homeland Security.
Above all I find it insulting that you call me a fool for not demanding more from my leaders. Quite frankley I think its my duty to require Bush to live to a high standard – one he is quite frankly failing to live up to.
Do I think we are in dire straights? No. Do I think we are winning? Yes. Do I think it could and should be handled better? Yes.
For those of you who are quite happy to meander along accepting easily aviodable failures simply because Bush has an R next to his name – you are the people that deserve the moniker FOOLS.
Posted by Jamie in George Bush Sucks!