Rich Lowry sticks shiv in B*sh: NRO, "Bush Adrift"

[npincus]

http://author.nationalreview.com/latest/?q=MjE1NQ==

Well, another pro-war, cheerleading Republican stalwart kicks the Chimp while he's down. It would be fun to watch these rats eat each other, but for the tragedy their arrogant fantasies have wrought.



Is President Bush still the nation’s commander in chief? Yes, he continues to return the salute when boarding Marine One, but it’s a role he sometimes seems on the verge of abdicating.

He has left the question of troop levels in Iraq to the generals on the ground. Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told Bush a few months ago that they would wait and see how Iraq looked after Ramadan, which ended in late October. Well, Iraq looked worse. Now the administration seems to want to wait to see the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group or one of its internal reviews of Iraq policy before making any new departures. In the meantime, Iraq looks still worse. As the administration waits, Iraq burns.

Bush has been at the mercy of events in Iraq. Perhaps that’s forgivable. Even Abraham Lincoln famously confessed, “Events have controlled me.” What’s less understandable is being controlled by other people’s advice. Bush has been presiding over the Iraq War for three years, and he really has no better ideas than might bubble up from his national-security council or from an Iraq Study Group including the likes of Sandra Day O’Connor and Vernon Jordan about how to prosecute the war?


<snip>

Bush simply has failed to run his war. Historian Eliot Cohen describes how, in contrast, the best American wartime president conducted himself: “Lincoln had not merely to select his generals, but to educate, train and guide them. To this end he believed that he had to master the details of war, from the technology to the organization and movement of armies, if only to enable himself to make informed judgments about general officers.”

Bush has taken the opposite approach and — for all his swagger and protectiveness of executive prerogatives — is becoming a disturbing study in lassitude in the executive branch.

[NewJeffCT]

1. what took him so long?

Was he in denial? covering bush's ass before? rose-colored glasses? Just outright lying?

[sharp_stick]

2. These gutless neocon shitheads

are running from shrub and crashcart just as fast as their yellow asses can take them. They want to be able to come back in a few years and say that they weren't cheerleaders as their asshole in chief led us to ruin.

I only hope we keep the recordings of everyone of these pricks talking about the brilliance of chimpy's "leadership" just a few short months ago.

[AlinPA]

3. All of Bush**'s decisions on war and policy are made by Karl Rove. Everything.

The decision to invade Iraq was Rove's call. He needed it to get 'murcans in a "patriotic" mood and to put the Dems in a position as "unpatriotic". Once Halliburton tasted the profits it, they kept it going and still want to keep it going.

[pinto]

4. This is a really interesting "defection" by a RW mouthpiece.

from the same article:

"For all the studying and reviewing, there are only two real options in Iraq: to stabilize the country enough that the democratic government survives or to manage our withdrawal and defeat."

Bushco appears to be between a rock, a hard place and Iraq. Speaker-elect Pelosi's recent comment was apt, and nicely put: It's sad.

Sad to see the same tired lines being run out by the boy in the bubble in the face of a chaotic and deadly reality of his own making.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. A coup;e of points

First, it is good to see the more sophisticated pundits on the right attempt to come to grips with the failure of the neconservative mission in Iraq.

Mr. Lowry says:

If press reports are to be believed, the grand idea of the Baker-Hamilton Group is start a regional dialogue including Iran and Syria. This recommendation is hopefulness disguised as hardheadedness. It seems admirably tough-minded to be willing to talk to your odious adversaries, but it is wishful thinking to believe that anything useful to American strategic interests can come of it. So long as we are in a downward slide in the Iraq War, Iran and Syria only have an incentive to keep pushing us down and out.

Anything else is just as much wishful thinking. For example, Mr. Lowry follows this paragraph with one expressing his own wishes:

The administration will never find its strategic footing unless it manages to improve the security situation in Iraq, which is the linchpin to political progress there and the key to the geopolitics of the region. Talking to Syria and Iran might hold a slim hope of accomplishing something if we weren’t losing a major war in their backyards.

It is wishful thinking to even assume that there is a a resolution to the Iraq crisis favorable to the United States. Those of us who protested the invasion ahead of the event in the winter and early spring of 2003 forsaw this, but all we could do was look on in utter horror as the events unfolded. The problem with the neoconservatives' plans for Iraq is that it was all based on wishful thinking and even shocking ignorance.