Iraq and the Stupid Party

In today's Wall Street Journal, the principal editorial (Review and Outlook) shows why conservatives can't be trusted in foreign affairs.

Referring to recent assassinations in Iraq, the WSJ asserts: "these events ought to put to rest the canard that what we are facing in Iraq is some kind of 'nationalist' uprising." Wake up, guys, it's not a canard! A nationalist uprising, led in part by Baathists and Salafists, is exactly what we are facing. We are the foreigner, they aren't, and in history, there is no battle-cry more persuasive than "evict the foreigner!" Besides, who is the WSJ to presume to state who the 'real' nationalists are in Iraq anyway? The WSJ are foreigners!

"If Mr. Rumsfeld has made a single large mistake...it has been underestimating the resilience of the enemy." Well, duh! that's what non-neoconservatives have been trying to say for a year-and-a-half!

"The CIA seems to have completely missed that Saddam's strategy from the beginning was to disperse his allies and conduct a decentralized insurgency." No, Saddam boasted for years before the invasion that, if ever attacked, he would pursue exactly this strategy. The WSJ must have been off on a blue dress hunt and missed Saddam's memo.

Warnings of such a strategy "were dismissed at the time, especially by the CIA, which still believed that Iraq could be pacified with a 'decapitation' strategy eliminating Saddam and his top aides." No, the CIA adopted the decapitation strategy from the Administration and the Pentagon, not the other way around. Fearing decapitation himself, Dick Cheney certainly favored a decapitation strategy. Notice how the CIA gets made the scapegoat no matter what their opinion actually was?

Referring to the need to completely eliminate the Baathist enemy in Iraq, the WSJ opines "the number of U.S. troops on the ground matters much less than the intelligence our forces can get from the Iraqis." This statement suggests that conservatives see intelligence as a much stronger force-multiplier than it probably merits. Push intelligence-gathering too hard, and you get torture and a mountain of bad intelligence. Plus others gather intelligence too: Ahmed Chalabi and the Iranian mullahs. In guerilla war, you need much more than intelligence - you need a presence, to make a difference. Boots on the ground. For a long time. And lots of help from the locals. Otherwise, you are doomed.

"When these columns endorsed the war in Iraq, we didn't sign up for a short or easy war." Well, the American people did, under the blowhard leadership of the WSJ, among many others. Remember how easy it was going to be? Flowers in the street? And I see no spirit of sacrifice anywhere, because conservatives insisted there didn't have to be any. Soon, we'll be hearing stab-in-the-back theories from the WSJ. Who would have thought: Reichstag Fire = 9/11 Attacks?

Liberals have been there, warning all along about the dangers of opening Pandora's box. Too bad George Bush's lies about knowing for certain there were WMD in Iraq proved so effective (and please, stop blaming the CIA for this lie: the analysts always said they didn't know for sure, and their leadership, under George Tenet, bent to Administration wishes for war). Conservatives (and now, conservatives alone) bear responsibility for what will come to pass from this misadventure. The blame (and glory, if there ever is any) will be theirs, and theirs alone.