Even neoconservatives now accepting defeat in Iraq
David Frum was one of the leading neoconservative advocates of the invasion of Iraq. The former Bush speechwriter is a true believer, having co-authored a radical neoconservative book with Richard Perle entitled An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, which — according to its publisher — “calls for the United States to overthrow the government of Iran, abandon support of a Palestinian state, blockade North Korea, use strong-arm tactics with Syria and China, disregard much of Europe as allies, and sever ties with Saudi Arabia.”
But in a strikingly candid essay on his National Review blog yesterday, Frum all but admits that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been a failure, and says that the only realistic goal we can hope to achieve is preventing Iraq from becoming a training ground for Al Qaeda — a goal which was already achieved, of course, prior to our invasion.
Frum now admits that the sectarian civil war will rage on until Shiites assert total dominion over Baghdad and all of Southern Iraq, at which point “Baghdad – and therefore central Iraq – will in such a case slide after Basra and the south into the unofficial new Iranian empire.” About this result, Frum admits: “The consequences for the region and the world will be grim.”
“Frum all but admits that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been a failure”
If you care about nation building, yes. If you care about keeping the loons in their cage, no. The first reason is always the correct one, and the first reason for this action was to “take the fight to the terrorists”. Not great logic, but the logic that’s being followed.
I agree with his assessment of the situation in Iraq, with exception to the notion that terrorists weren’t in Iraq pre-invasion and the silly idea that Iraqis will gladly fall under Iranian control, however.
How about someone actually read the article! He was talking about a hypothetical, not an inevitable ends. Jeesh. It was a critcism of the path Bush is taking now, and offered a couple alternatives that he believes would succeed.
But what about 9/11!!! (Smell that—-that’s sarcasm!)
Watch-listen to the 9/11 post below for a reality check!!!
If Bin Laden isn’t in Iraq—it’s time to get out and let these people choose their own government. Whether we like it or not—that’s FREEDOM!!!
The invasion failed to take in consideration the culture and the history. Mcnamara admitted in his book that ignorance resulted in the Vietnam debacle. Damn cowboy mentality, and as usual scores of civilians are being massacred.
Who was it that said, “war is the health of the state”.
Ain’t it the truth. If not this putz or that one, or even that one, there will always be these people providing the rationale for continued interference and war everywhere.
I still find it difficult to respect folks who draw on their neo-con ideology like some kind of teflon jockstrap — without knowing a damned thing about the history of a whole chunk of the world.
I try listening to news readers — for that’s all these talking heads are — and they speak (for example) of Hizbollah as if they were dropped from an alien planet into Lebanon. Yet, they are Lebanese. They are one of the largest vote-getting political parties among the Lebanese.
All the nations in the Middle East, created and gerrymandered for reasons of trade and oil and (of course) expanding xhristianity, have existed in their current form, more or less, for fewer years than most of the United States. Texas has been a state longer than Lebanon.
So James says, “keep the loons in the cage” — and if that means killing tens of thousands, that’s OK. And because you believe the crap from politicians — contradicted often enough by their own intelligence services — you think that invading Iraq has accomplished something more than confirming the worst propaganda from the most sectarian jihadist.
Neither wing of our greedy, incompetent political class has worked at all at supporting genuine democratic movements in the Middle East. Certainly not in Israel. Even less in shiekdoms, monarchies and paper parliaments. The hopes for democracy kindled by the end of WW2 — were brutally crushed starting in Iran in the 1950’s.
James, you’re obviously a bright guy. Read something written by historians — instead of campaign managers. Go to a library and take out a book on Middle Eastern history written before 1955, 1935. 1920. Look at what was recorded before it was rewritten to suit political ad campaigns.
[edited for length]
Greenwald is a fraud…
[editor: pls use tinyurl for enormous IP addresses]
#6 – Spankaccount
Regardless of what Glen Greenwald is or isn’t, I’m curious as to where your head is located.
The reason I ask is Uncle Dave posted this one, not John.
Well, the Iraq war bears remarkable resemblance with The Cruzades.
The Cruzades were simply an excuse to distract the populace from the debt the nobles were creating; notice that the Iraq war began when the Bush Administration was running out of funds.
I’ve always disliked the moniker “neo conservative,” simple because if you know the history of the term, you know that they really are not conservatives at all. Not in the Barry Goldwater sense of the word.
Mike: the addition of ‘neo’ is intended to separate the Neos from the real (Goldwater/ Robert A. Heinlein/etc.) Conservatives. I know, since I used the term starting about 1994 (pre-Internet access for me BTW) since no one understood my original term ‘pseudoconservatives’
J/P=?
Except during the last few years of the Bush administration there has been this tendency of liberals to use the term to label all conservatives. You can say your are against raising the minimum wage and somebody will invariable chime that you are a neocon shill of some corporate interest.
I’m conservative, but I’m no neocon.
Frum remind me of Pat Buchannan in one way. Both have fallen from grace in the Republican leadership. There they part. Buchannan at least has a coherent reasoning for his positions while Frum is still stuck in the George W. Bush mentality mode of one thought at a time.
1) The Cruzades were simply an excuse to distract the populace from the debt the nobles were creating
2) the Iraq war began when the Bush Administration was running out of funds.
I’ve never heard of #1 until now. And #2 is simply ridiculous.
Glenn Greenwad was outed as a fraud and sock-puppeteer a week ago.
Why not just link to the actual article in National Review, instead of secondary quotes from an unreliable source?
Actually it just sounds like a soft start to the whole “we need to stop Iran from creating an empire so should attack them too” balls.
This isn’t a admission of defeat, its the start of the next plan…
Here is a link to the actual article by Frum in NRO.
Despite Greenwald’s misleading, to the point of deceptive, summary of Frum’s article, nowhere therein does Frum call for pulling out of Iraq, in fact, he calls for MORE troops there. The only “retreat” he even remotely hints at, is the possibility of falling back to Kurdistan if the Administration does not have the will to fight the war the way it needs to be fought, in particular, to stop pretending “that the war zone stops at the international border”.
Uncle Dave –
You really should have read the actual article by Frum first, before you posted your headline.
To the liberals here, sorry, but Frum is not going to be an “ex-conservative”.
You guys will have to make do with Gary Wills, Kevin Phillips, David Brock, and Pat Buchanan.
I would have included Michael Lind on that list, but I haven’t been able to find any evidence that he ever was a “conservative”, prior to his “conversion”.
Frank, what does your issue with Glenn Greenwald have to do with David Frum? If you don’t like the message, then don’t shoot the messenger. Greenwald had his own comments on Frum’s piece and that is what was posted for discussion. Greenwald is an intelligent person and a much better writer then Frum.
If you want some dirt on Frum, we could do that. I just don’t know what good it would do. BTW, Frum fits the definition of a neo-con, Buchannan doesn’t.
14. Both assertions are wrong. The Crusades were motivated by a combination of religious fervor, opportunism and a desire to direct the aggressive tendencies of European warlords (because that’s what medieval nobles were) overseas instead of against each other.
The current mess was a combination of messianic political thought (we can remake the Middle East!) and opportunism (we can get the oil! we can keep war fervor going through the next election!).
from Frum’s article:
“In some horrible rerun of Vietnam, the US has let the enemy establish safe havens just on the other side of the line, from which it draws supplies and reinforcements with impunity. It’s like some baby boomer nightmare: after decades of swearing that we would never repeat the mistakes of our parents, we are re-enacting the errors committed in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s, every single one.”
dang, I coulda told you this was going to happen as soon as the insurgency ramped up. but nooooooo, we were going to be welcomed with rose petals and champagne … trying to fight an insurgency in a territory bordered by two states hostile to the US is simply moronic, unless you are going to stomp the adjacent states to quash the support they are giving to the insurgents. and guess where’s there no political support for that – the US.
why is it that we are letting another power (the Iraqi government) set the timetable for us? i.e. we can’t stand down until they stand up, and they are taking their sweet time about that.
time to declare victory and bye, boyos, leaving behind enough special ops troops and intel assets in the region to take down any AQ cells that get ideas about exporting the war overseas.
Mr. Effusion –
My issue with Greenwald is that he’s a fraud. His article which severely distorts what Frum actually said in the NRO article is just another example of his fraud.
Doug –
Looks like you have trouble understanding what Frum is actually saying as well. As long as we allow the other side (Sunni “insurgents”, al-Qa’idah, Syria, Iran) to dictate the terms under which the war is fought, we will end up losing like in Vietnam or at best a stalemate like in Korea.
Funny, that does not sound like someone “accepting that we have been defeated.” It amazing how different the reality of what is going on is to what the media is reporting. I would agree with this guy’s suggestion. Wipeout as many of these militant factions as quickly and as decisively as possible and put as much pressure as possible on Iran in the hopes that it will collapse on itself in a civil war or at least will have its political influence severely curtailed.
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/doonesbury
GOTTA READ staurdays Doonesbury
25. Oh, I understand perfectly what he is saying. But that *ahem* “retrograde movement” to Kurdistan is also the perfect cover for a withdrawal. And are we going to need 100k plus troops for his stratergy? I don’t think so.
and 27. talk about a rerun of Vietnam – the same revisionist history. failure was not the fault of the people who got the US into the war or who waged it incompetently, but rather those that got us out ….
Iam the president of United People Water Users Associatioin in india fighting against water commercialization and privatization. Is water a commodity of profit?. By commercializing water the gap between the rich and the poor widens where the poor gets neglect in having fresh water .the burning issue at present of it is due to lack of water in every country is because of charging out heavy amount of water for profit.
That battle is already lost. We have people here who already buy back municipal water from vendors.
Everyone here ought to grow up and look at the reality of the situation. Bush’s popularity is almost perferctly correlllated, inversely, with the cost of gasoline. That is why those neos went in there for the oil years ago, all 9-11 billion barrels of it, and now we are going to stay there to protect it. They don’t really care about the Sunni triangle, they do care about those Kurdish oil fields to the north which are very well guarded. If you think we are going to abandon those pristine oil fields, letting Iran, or worse the French have them, after this expenditure of blood and treasure you are nuts! It doesn’t matter who gets into the white house or who takes over the congress, we will be staying. So all you libs cry your eyes out while you drive your kids to soccer practice in those fat SUVs. Because we are addicted to oil and we will do anything to get our fix!