Broder: Doubling Two Bad Bets (Iraq and Israel/Lebanon)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201388.html

If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you're not hearing things. In both cases the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."

President Bush says over and over that cutting short the occupation of Iraq would turn that country over to the terrorists and embolden them to carry their wicked plots ever closer to our shores. He also endorses -- implicitly -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's view that an early cease-fire with Lebanon would strengthen Hezbollah and make its prime sponsor, Iran, even more of a threat to its neighbors. That political support enables Olmert to wage the kind of campaign he has in Lebanon.

<snip>

The point is that history and economics have their own logic. A military mission that fails to yield a victory does not always presage disaster. Today, virtually no one argues that we should have continued fighting the North Koreans or the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

Can we think about the costs of carrying on, without an end in sight, against Hezbollah and the insurgents in Iraq?

[MissWaverly]

1. Who to say Iraq is a war to preserve the Iraqi people

or is it chaos while we protect the oil wells and certain safe areas and the rest of the country
is falling into barbarism, it sures seems like that to me. Iraq to me is like Katrina and the
Gulf Coast with military campaigns.

[babylonsister]

2. Broder's thrown in his hat thankfully. He's giving an out to the cabal

claiming a failed mission doesn't always presage disaster. Too bad the hubris of these pieces of crap won't allow them to remove themselves/us, because they don't admit mistakes.

[teryang]

3. No one argues that we should have continued fighting in Nam?

The entire generation of US military officers who bombed that country argue that we "should have taken the gloves off." This is what McCain believes. There is a conservative US mindset similar to the early Nazi movement that posits leftists betrayed the war effort and caused the defeat.

Of course these beliefs do not stand up to historical examination, but millions of Americans feel this way.

Unleash Chiang Kai Chek!