1 post tagged “escalation”

Distressing as it is, the President has declared himself martial witness to truth and right cause as AP states:

WASHINGTON - President Bush, on a collision course with Congress over Iraq, said Friday "I'm the decision-maker" about sending more troops to the war. He challenged skeptical lawmakers not to prematurely condemn his buildup.

"I've picked the plan that I think is most likely to succeed," Bush said in an Oval Office meeting with senior military advisers.

Just a couple of things:  one, this is not a Republican/Democrat thing...this is about right and wrong.  Two, we are the decision makers.  If the mid term elections said anything, it's not that we want all the red/blue state maps redecorated, but that we as a nation do not want the fearful incompetence of this present administration to decide anything.  It's a Republic, something that the Republican in Chief has long forgotten, if he ever knew at all. 

Three, there is no such concept as the premature condemnation of the President's plan.  As noted Jan 22, in the New Yorker Magazine:

This was the advice given by McGeorge Bundy* to Lyndon Johnson in a memo dated February 7, 1965 [yes, you read that correctly], concerning an escalation plan for Vietnam that Bundy thought might have as little as 25% chance of success:

Even if it fails, the policy will be worth it.  At a minimum, it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own."

The President's plan has been condemned for the last 42 years.  In my book, the sudden resurgence of criticism doesn't quite qualify as "premature."

So what do we do?  I have to think about it, but I have some ideas...coming up next!

addendum:  HR at emergingsideways tipped me towards zefrank's show re: this.  Check it out. 

* this is a flagrant criticism of a blue government official...conspiracy diluted.