December 10, 2007
As foreign policy disasters go, the American adventure in Iraq is a splendid one - "splendid" in the sense of being both grand and manifest.
We might call it "exceptional" as well, except that the troubles which beset U.S. policy do not end at Iraq's borders. The policy wreck is a more general one. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has run aground, too.
1 comment:
Carl Conetta has it just right. The only things lacking in this assessment are a frank acknowledgment of the utter incompetence of the U.S. military and a recognition that the Pentagon is not only the biggest spender in the discretionary budget but the least accountable, honest and efficient. We have become so accustomed to the demand that we "support our troops," it seems, that we are just as willing to support our generals and our defense bureaucrats. As for the competence of the U.S. military, for all its firepower, both Afghanistan and Iraq display utter incompetence -- from sending Afghan irregulars into Tora Bora in hot pursuit of bin Laden in place of American troops to the bizarre "planning" that went into the invasion of Iraq (see Thomas Ricks' Fiasco for a clear-eyed account that lays the blame squarely at the feet of the generals) -- this is a military that has lost its way. It's fantasies of absolute dominance feed a penchant for denial that goes back as far, one suspects, as Colin Powell's blithe cover-up of the My Lai massacre.
Michael Foley
foley.mw@gmail.com
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