Happy talk, sad reality
I'm not sure I can put it any better than Steve Soto, who posted this yesterday on the anniversary of 9/11:
And while Bush gives speeches today, the big question on this fifth anniversary is why is Al Qaeda’s Number Two still giving speeches about attacks to come, when any president committed to fighting a war on terror would have made sure that both Number Two and Osama Bin Laden would be dead by now instead of given them free passes at Tora Bora and northern Pakistan? Why is the Vice President sounding like a good German when he says that anyone who dissents from the administration is emboldening terrorists, after saying that 2005 will be seen as the turning point because the faltering Iraqi government came to power, a government that has no presence in the al Anbar province? Is that the only defense you have left Mr. Cheney, to do a Mussolini impersonation to quell critics of your own failures with smears challenging their patriotism? Tell the members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, who have had three tours in five years and have now been extended again to save Baghdad why al-Zawahiri is still alive, and why you encouraged the Pakistanis to harbor Bin Laden nearly five years after Tora Bora when the trail has gone "stone cold".
The happy talk of success is just a thin veneer of partisan political rhetoric that masks a sad reality of failure.
(Cross-posted at The Carpetbagger Report -- with an open discussion in the comments section on 9/11 and the five years since.)
Listen to all that happy talk from Bush and Cheney as the fifth anniversary arrives, about how things are getting better in Iraq, and how they wouldn’t do anything differently. Then why is the Marine chief intelligence officer in Iraq saying we have already lost the Anbar province (home to Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities we have tried to take and hold several times already)? If things are going so well and you say you would do nothing differently, why are the Shiites and the Kurds pushing ahead with partitioning plans, after seeing that the central government is impotent and unable to secure either the Sunni center or the Shiite south? And if you wouldn’t do anything differently, why would the Shiites and Kurds do this even if the move costs Iraq its central government and constitution? The fact is that partitioning Iraq, with all its plusses and minuses, is a serious possibility no matter what plan Cheney has for the country.
And while Bush gives speeches today, the big question on this fifth anniversary is why is Al Qaeda’s Number Two still giving speeches about attacks to come, when any president committed to fighting a war on terror would have made sure that both Number Two and Osama Bin Laden would be dead by now instead of given them free passes at Tora Bora and northern Pakistan? Why is the Vice President sounding like a good German when he says that anyone who dissents from the administration is emboldening terrorists, after saying that 2005 will be seen as the turning point because the faltering Iraqi government came to power, a government that has no presence in the al Anbar province? Is that the only defense you have left Mr. Cheney, to do a Mussolini impersonation to quell critics of your own failures with smears challenging their patriotism? Tell the members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, who have had three tours in five years and have now been extended again to save Baghdad why al-Zawahiri is still alive, and why you encouraged the Pakistanis to harbor Bin Laden nearly five years after Tora Bora when the trail has gone "stone cold".
The happy talk of success is just a thin veneer of partisan political rhetoric that masks a sad reality of failure.
(Cross-posted at The Carpetbagger Report -- with an open discussion in the comments section on 9/11 and the five years since.)
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
6:40 PM
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