Ray McGovern: A Clear Strategy – for Disaster

[Dudley_DUright]

The bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave Wednesday at the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for continued quagmire and eventual disaster in Iraq. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to the administration's approach to the war in Iraq, the speech was long on tired clichés and bereft of new ideas, calling to mind the words of Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed warning of a future "Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain" at first seemed to me as outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians planned to land in Nicaragua in order to invade Texas. Now it seems that Bush's concern may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could hardly be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than American, "empire."

Iraqi Security Forces: A Pathetic Pillar

The president indicated that in the days ahead he would be addressing various pillars of his strategy in Iraq. Wednesday's speech was devoted largely to the training of Iraqi army and security forces, and he protested too much in his efforts to accentuate the positive. His tortured attempt to explain why, after so many months of U.S. training, only one Iraqi army battalion can fight independently was no more convincing that earlier attempts by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his star-bedecked generals. Statistics just confuse the issue, we have been told. Progress is being made. Trust us.

more...

http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=8202

[PDJane]

1. He is right,

as usual. It's hard to maintain an upbeat attitude in the face of this kind of stupidity, brutality, and dehumanization.