Max Boot on the "Big Ifs" About the Surge
Posted by Peter Lawler
Max rightly sees it as a worthy and risky effort to salvage our huge investment so far. There are no credible alternatives. But are we putting too much weight on the surge by thinking of it "as one final effort"?
10:21 AM / January 17, 2007
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Honestly, the neocon think tank crowd needs to get out more. More and more conservatives are abandoning the War. Bush lost the left (if he ever had a piece of it) and the center long ago.
The Free Republic style "kill all the Islamo-facist" saber rattlers are a vanishing breed. They only talk to each other.
Max Boot says, "An all-out civil war could break out. Neighboring states such as Jordan could be destabilized by massive refugee flows. Western Iraq could become a Taliban-style haven for Sunni terrorists. Southern Iraq could become a launching pad for Shiite extremists bent on liberating their oppressed brethren in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states."
Well perhaps you should have thought about that before we invaded big guy. That is exactly what the paleos were predicting. (I take no joy in being correct.)
"it seems worth one final effort to see if we can salvage something from this dire situation."
Yeah, a dire situation that you and Kagan and the rest of the keyboard warriors got us into.
Note, I am not arguing that public opinion makes right. Im supporting Ron Paul so I am clearly no nose counter. But these guys have no constituency left other than a small but rabid band of "security is best secured by preventative war against every potential enemy" crowd.
Of course it puts too much weight on the surge to call it a final effort, but if you think of it any other way its an escalation and the escalation obviously is a no-seller. Its another example of the administration bungling policy because it is lying about its intentions; and lying about its intentions because we would all be horrified by the policy.