Glenn Reynolds has long claimed that the war in Iraq is critical to the war on terror, and that the war on terror is the most important issue we face. So I spent today reading his blog to see where he stands on "Plus Up". Er: no clue.These two have been going at each other for some time, and Putz recently called Sullivan "a troll" in defense of Jonah Goldberg. So I was a little surprised how quickly Putz bit on Sullivan's bait. Note: I usually don't cite Putz so completely, but his response to Sullivan's direct question is so flimsy and pathetic that I thought it was worth a little fisking.
Putz would've been much better off remaining silent.
As I've said before, I don't think the number of troops is nearly as important as what we're doing with them, and that's not so clear...You win a war by making it too unpleasant for the other guy to keep fighting. The additional troops, such as they are, won't make a difference in that; only a change in approach will. I don't have a clear sense of whether we'll follow through.And still: no clue. Putz absolutely refuses, even when challenged, to take a position -- any position -- on the surge. Sounds like fecklessness to me.
C'mon, Putz -- man up. Pretend you're on Sean Hannity's show. The question is, "Do you support the President and the troops or do you want the terrorists to win?" Go.
I'm not as disappointed in Bush as, say, Bill Quick, but I'm disappointed. As I've noted in the past, the Iraq invasion was supposed to be the first step in transforming the region, but once we got there we seemed to lose all momentum, and all interesting [sic] in putting pressure on Iran and Syria. As the [sic] Talleyrand said, you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
Bzzzzz. Sorry, Putz. You clearly don't support the President -- you're either with him or against him. Calling for the invasion of Iran and Syria gets you extra neocon points for being more hawkish and insane than Bush, but questioning the Commander-in-Chief during wartime is unpatriotic.
And the bayonets ... again? At least you got the reference right this time. Anyway, you were saying?
I also think that Bush's loss of support on the war stems from the loss of visible forward motion. The casualties per se aren't the problem (we've lost fewer troops in nearly four years than we were expected to lose in the initial push to Baghdad), so much as the sense that we're taking casualties and nothing is happening. This impatience is perhaps unfortunate, but it's a well-known characteristic in the Pentagon (where people were talking about the "three year rule" on support for wars back in 2003) and the Bush Administration doesn't seem to have had a strategy for dealing with it.Yeah, clearly the problem with Iraq is just that the American people are bunch of whiny, impatient, have-it-now, instant gratification crybabies. It's not that our men and women are getting killed for no good reason while "nothing is happening" -- it's just that the electorate lacks sufficient will to watch them get killed while nothing is happening. If only the Bush Administration had worked harder on PR.
When I made these observations back in this post, I got an email from an anonymous but informed reader who said that the lack of progress is more apparent than real.This "informed" reader you mention concluded his e-mail with: "We're winning." Here's a suggestion -- stop listening to the people who are telling you we're "winning" and stop calling those who've been saying all along that we're not unserious terror-emboldeners.
Meanwhile, if you haven't read it yet, I recommend Mohammed's take as worth reading, especially as he's a lot closer to the situation than I am. Ditto for Michael Yon and the troops, who seem to think that things remain very winnable. And they are, I think, but in order to win, you have to fight to win.So we've been downgraded from "winning" to "winnable." But at least we got to a bottom-line here. To win the war in Iraq, we've just got to "fight."
It all makes perfect sense now.
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