"Pelosi, who said she could not reach the president..."

Thank God for Caller ID, huh?

So I guess Ms. Pelosi doesn't welcome disagreement in time of war, huh?

So I guess Ms. Pelosi doesn't welcome disagreement in time of war, huh?

So I guess Ms. Pelosi doesn't welcome disagreement in time of war, huh?

So I guess Ms. Pelosi doesn't welcome disagreement in time of war, huh?

Mommy! Make that mean Dickie Cheney stop saying those things about me. Waaaaahhh!

The Republican strategy of characterizing any criticism of the war as giving help to Al Qaeda is one of the reasons public debate of the war has become so corrupt in this country. It is a cheap and extremely harmful tactic. It presents the American people with only two choices - support the President (who has made grievous errors in executing the war/occupation and destroyed what credibility he has at this point) or be against the war. There seems to be no room for "we can do better." As long as the GOP continues in this regard, it undermines the chance to turn the debate back towards the methods of victory. But the GOP does not want a real debate, because it would highlight the bad mistakes Bush made. Villification is easier.

Vilification is taking AQ's words and putting them up next to the dems??//

Chris:

There is no middle ground because the Dems have turned 'reasonable objection' into shrieking nonsense.

When Harry Reid said more troops might help (12/13/2006), while for political purposes, it was a reasonable statement. Of course, it meant nothing in reality, because the Dems only want to oppose Bush (the louder, the better), and three weeks later, Reid was 180 degrees different.

When Durbin called American soldiers Nazis, Gulag capos, and Khmer Rouge, was that reasonable debate?

When Reid called the invasion of Iraq the worst foreign policy move ever by the US, was that reasonable debate?

Are Murtha's boastful statements about eroding the ability of the troops to do their mission reasonable debate?

In 2002, 23 Democrats voted against the authorization. In 1991, (as I remember) 44 did. But none of them said what we are hearing now.

It is more logical to question the patriotism of virtually every leading Democrat in Congress than it is to ask the GOP to accomodate Democratic demands for nicety. The Dems have made their beds, and when Boehner or Sam Johnson or Heather Wilson calls them on it, too bad.

Grievous Errors! Bad mistakes! Yikes!

Chris, your side is up now, so instead of hysteria, why not simply stop the funds, and say out loud that your cohort would rather have the police deal with terrorist attacks here at home than have soldiers deal with them on their own home turf.

You won't need to change the constitution to do it and Bush can't stop you.

Chris: who's that Democrat saying "we can do better" and laying out a strategy for victory? John Murtha? Ted Kennedy? Nancy Pelosi? Barack Obama? George Soros? Jimmy Carter? Maureen Dowd? Atrios? Any of the myriad posters at DU or DailyKos? Amanda "F------" Marcotte?

Chris is basically correct. Connecting Democratic criticism to support for Al Quaeda did not help Republicans in the 2006 elections. Totally dumb move by Rove/Bush.

I will grant that Democrats have not been judicious in their criticism either.

The Republican strategy of characterizing any criticism of the war as giving help to Al Qaeda is one of the reasons public debate of the war has become so corrupt in this country. It is a cheap and extremely harmful tactic. It presents the American people with only two choices - support the President (who has made grievous errors in executing the war/occupation and destroyed what credibility he has at this point) or be against the war. There seems to be no room for "we can do better."

Chris, if you feel yourself free to criticize Republicans for bad policies, then its "back at'cha" time when Cheny points out bad consequences for bad democratic policies.

By and large, I find Democrats have a track record for spectacular miscalculations when it comes to evaluating SECOND LEVEL consequences. Do you think that Al Qaeda and the terrorists in Iraq will not notice that the Democrats advocating withdrawal before the Iraqi government is ready is a vindication of a strategy based on an observation that the Americans cannot handle long wars that kill soldiers? They have a proven ability in the field to adapt to new military strategies, which means they have powers of observation and analysis that makes it CERTAIN that they will notice success. Past Al Qaeda communiques explicitly base the strategy Cheney refers to on American behavior in Vietnam, Beirut, and Mogadishu. There is no point denying this when you google "Bin Laden, Mogadishu Beirut Vietnam".

THERE. I talked about what Cheney SAID by discussing Al Qaeda. quit whining about unstated, imagined, and nonverbally implied accusations of unpatriotism or treason, based on some self-imagined power to read minds, to avoid talking about REAL substantive issues.

bad mistakes Bush made

What mistakes are these, or is that just another one of those bumper sticker slogans that the Dems and the Left substitute for argumentation and thought?

It would be nice if critics could provide a list, rather than simply making the assertion that such mistakes were made and then expecting that their assertion is to be used as a basis for all further discussion. They might be surprised to learn that what they consider to be a 'mistake" is not universally accepted as such, which is why any "public debate" is so difficult.

(And I would not be surprised that plastic turkeys and Mission Accomplished banners and Abu Ghriab and other trivia would make up a majority of such a list of "bad mistakes", too.)

Chris;

You're off in cloud-cuckoo land. When Congress undercuts the commander-in-chief it is aiding the enemy, whether that's their intent or not. Recall that al Qaeda assumed they'd be safe after 9-11 because we'd cut and run from Lebanon and Somalia after a few casualties.

Raoul

"What mistakes are these"

August 6, 2006

"President Bush said mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion...(and later)

"Bush said the United States erred in attempting large reconstruction projects soon after the invasion was completed" "It didn't make any sense" undertaking these projects because "they became convenient targets for the enemy,"

"Decisions, you know, like preparing an Iraqi army for an external threat. Well, it turns out there may have been an external threat but it's nothing compared to the internal threat"

I might add a complete lack of adjustments regarding IED which have resulting in "over half" of the 22000 casualties and half of the American deaths. Also a failure to listen to advice of Ali Sistani.

OJ

Chris mentioned nothing about cut and run.

Those all sound like tactical mistakes coupled with bureaucratic inertia, made worse by bad intellegence. Nothing that hasn't hapened in any previous war, and won't stop just because Czarina Hillary the Great or Barack the Magnificent or Edwards the Unready leads the charge.

Besides, if you apply the same standard to any of the Left's projects, all of them would have to be abandoned. That includes the number of casualties inflicted criteria, too.

Another problem is that we allow the Left to talk about "failure" and "mistakes" when they've never given us a clear picture of what, for them, constitutes "success" or "victory." Without that, then how can we consider the effects of these so-called "mistakes" in any context? And at the same time, anything and everything can be called a "mistake". Ain't relativism fun?

Should the Army have shot Iraqi looters in April 2003? I don't know a liberal who says yes (at least, not in mixed company).

Should Garner have been sacked so quickly? Was that the first step in 'appeasing' the Sunni?

Should the US have ignored the Syrian border from Day 1, until Assad closed it tightly on his side? Again, I don't know a liberal who says yes.

Should the US have invaded with 250,000 men? No liberal would have been comfortable with such a number in March 2003.

Should the US have offered (more forcefully) to help protect Shi'a clerics and the mosque in Samarra? I don't know a liberal who understands the question (certainly no Democrat in Congress does).

Should the US have recruited Iraqis from the Ba'athist government to run things from the get-go? Again, I don't know a liberal who says yes.

Should the US have partitioned Iraq in May 2003? Some liberals now say yes - but they would never have suggested it then.

Should the US speed up the ethnic cleansing and relocations now happening in Baghdad? "Realists" might say yes, but would liberals in general?

Should the US have simply installed a Shi'a strongman back in late 2003? I don't know a liberal who says yes.

Should the US have allowed American oil companies to repair (and expand) the Iraqi fields directly (under Army protection)? I don't know a liberal who would say yes.

Should the Iraqi Army go through every house in Baghdad and kill anyone caught with explosives? I don't know any liberal who would say yes. Few conservatives probably would, either.

Should Moqtada have been killed in 2004? Sistani said no, and we didn't do it. What would the liberals say now? Kill him or work with him? And how to do that?

Mistakes are made in any war. What would the Left have done differently? Very few of their leading lights have given even a smidgen of specificity to that question. I would guess that most of the 'mistakes' in this war have been errors of timidity or hesitation or expedience, not errors of excess. The Left would not be happy with the corrections.

Raoul
"they've (liberals) never given us a clear picture of what, for them, constitutes "success" or "victory."

Neither has Bush. (Other than everyone will live happily ever after)

Jim Hamlen

"Should the US have partitioned Iraq in May 2003?"
Yes, and there were liberals and Bush supporters who said as much.

Democrats are offering nothing but cut and run.

h:

Are you counting OJ in both of those columns?

I remember (thoughtful) liberals from TNR and Slate dancing around the partition question, but not endorsing it. I think everyone wanted to see if it could be avoided. I didn't research the issue, but you are probably right that someone noteworthy wanted it that early.

The hard Left doesn't have a clue, and doesn't care about Iraq or Iraqis one bit. Unfortunately, in this political environment, almost all the elected Democrats in D.C. are following the hard left playbook. Even in the House, only 2 Dems voted against the stab-in-the-back resolution.

Chris has written before that Bush has not communicated clearly about the war. I agree, but only up to a point. He has never said victory would be easy, or cheap. He has given many notable speeches about Iraq, and the WoT in general (several have been quoted here at BJB). The press just doesn't care, and won't report them. The reason we remember the 9/14 speech, and the SOTU of 1/2002 is because they were live and full, untouched by the media wing of the Democratic party. Had Clinton been President for a 4-year war, no one in the press would be trumpeting that the reasons for the war were not elucidated from the White House. Even in 1999, the 'opposition' GOP did not say that President never articulated why we were bombing Belgrade, they merely said no vital interest was being threatened.

What more could Bush have done, short of calling a special session of Congress just to give another speech? Having interviews with Dan Rather or the NYT editorial board would not have helped, and his only other option might have been to attack the Dems as stridently as they attacked him. He doesn't govern that way, and that isn't a President's role in any case.

He could have called for national sacrifice, but this isn't December 1941 and inflating the enemy (in this case) is a bigger mistake.

My one thought is that he should have done some public appearance(s) with the Democratic leadership after the vote or when the war started, to show unity. And kept them involved as the unrest unfolded. We know the Dems would have balked, but this is where he needed to strangle them into standing with him. It would not have lasted (to be sure), but it would have set the record straight. And it would have forced the media to remember the truth about the reasons for the war.

Other than that, I stand with John Burns and his assessment that much of what is happening in Iraq probably could not have been avoided, no matter how well the transition from war to policing took place.