Yet Another Rightwing Epiphany

Check out Rick Moran, A-List rightwing blogger of The Right Wing Nut House, as he has an epiphany and realizes that his until-now hero, George W. Bush, has screwed the pooch in Iraq.

The evidence that has been piling up the last three years against this Administration’s management of the war can no longer be dismissed as the rantings of dissatisfied bureaucrats or the partisan attacks of critics. Fiasco by Thomas Ricks, a respected military correspondent for the Washington Post, is an absolutely devastating account of the war and how the civilians (and some Generals) in the Pentagon not only made massive and continued mistakes in Iraq but also when confronted with the facts on the ground that refuted their rosy forecasts of progress, refused to change direction. This not only cost American lives but also helped the insurgency grow.

But perhaps the most damning record of stupidity and spin comes via the book Cobra II by Michael R. Gordon and General (Ret.) Bernard E. Trainor. Much of the book is a heartbreaking recitation of erroneous assumptions, overly optimistic assessments, and finally, a risible refusal to admit mistakes and change course.

Lest one think that these books are the products of left wing loons or authors suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, the one common thread running through both volumes is the massive amount of research and unprecedented access to documents that went into writing them. To deny the reality of all that these authors have uncovered is too much of a stretch, even for a Bush partisan like myself. Facts are facts and if the Administration had confronted many of the problems – insurgency, militias, disenchanted populace, the extent of foreign assistance to the insurgents, and sectarian factionalism to name a few – it may be that a different outcome to the war could have been salvaged.

Welcome to the "traitors and defeatists" club Rick...

But wait, Mr Moran isn't quite done with his epiphany, and lists all the ways Iraq is now screwed up. But what to do about it? He's now at the point many on the Left were at three years ago when we realized that 9/11 hype and wardrum banging was obscuring the truth of an administration without a plan or a clue. What did many on the Left do? We called for more troops. So does Rick:

For if there is a victory to be had in Iraq – and one can just barely make one out in the distance amidst the blood and ruin – it will take courage on the part of the President to confront these problems and do what is necessary in order to reverse course. And this will entail both risks and probably a larger casualty count among Americans fighting there.

Yes we need more troops – a lot more at least temporarily. Order must be brought to Baghdad and its environs and to do that we would need, according to General Trainor, is perhaps as many as 50,000 more Americans to both police the area and ferret out insurgents and the death squads.

For that to happen, the President would have to admit he and Donald Rumsfeld have been wrong all along and that in order to achieve stability, the additional troops must be sent. It is of the utmost distress to me that this President has failed to take responsibility for past mistakes and admitted to error in prosecuting the war. The grudging admissions of mistakes just isn’t getting it done. If he is serious about winning in Iraq (and he has called Iraq the “frontline” in the war on terror”) then he is going to have to go before the American people and explain why additional troops are necessary.

My God and Goddess, Rick! You mean Kerry was right while on the campaign stump back in 2004?

Well, no.

Both Rick Moran and John Kerry of 2004 get it wrong even though they are not alone among the ranks of hawks who had an epiphany. One of Rick's commenters nails why:

Large numbers of troops are of use in an insurgency primarily to maintain the borders of the insurgent country(another failure of our efforts). Massive troop deployment and engagement will only refuel and intensify the insurgency at this point. It is too late, with too many blunders already committed, to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, so they may themselves extinguish the insurgency. There is no joy in saying there is nothing we can commit at this point that will lead to a different outcome.

Sad but true. That is why the nation's paradigm for such adventures, should they ever become necessary again in the way that Afghanistan was and Iraq wasn't, should be a progressive realist one.

Still, even though we truly have no choice except to withdraw from Iraq, the blowback from Bush's great misadventure hasn't even begun to bite yet. Bush has managed to change the world alright - just not for the better - and there's probably precious little the West can now do about it except damage limitation where possible. Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack wrote yesterday for the Washington Post:

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.

The consequences of an all-out civil war in Iraq could be dire. Considering the experiences of recent such conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people may die. Refugees and displaced people could number in the millions. And with Iraqi insurgents, militias and organized crime rings wreaking havoc on Iraq's oil infrastructure, a full-scale civil war could send global oil prices soaring even higher.

However, the greatest threat that the United States would face from civil war in Iraq is from the spillover -- the burdens, the instability, the copycat secession attempts and even the follow-on wars that could emerge in neighboring countries. Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes.

The neocon nutcases may well have managed to engineer a situation where they get the "war on civilizations" which was always a myth but which they wanted so much. We can only hope not, but if so then one thing is certain. In the process of realizing their dream, they have crippled America and the West.