Shocking! It turns out that half-finishing the war in Afghanistan and then shunting our resources to invade an irrelevant country, and then losing that war, was not the genius strategy for beating terrorism that the White House seems to think it was. If you judge winning the terror war in terms of weakening the group who attacked us, we’re not.
Other strategies might also use some reevaluation. Start with, say, torturing random brown people until they confess to shooting JFK and jerking around the national terror level based on presidential elections and Michael Chertoff’s gut. At the very least it seemed like keeping Americans in a state of constant terror would prove a surefire weapon against people whose primary goal is to make us afraid.
Yeesh. 2009 cannot come soon enough.
ThymeZone
In the race between the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda to see who can do the most damage to the United States, the Bush Administration has what seems to be an insurmountable lead.
Rome Again
Of course! They wanted to “drown government in a bathtub”.
Richard Bottoms
Yep. Glad “I” didn’t vote for them.
Twice.
Dumb bastards.
Andrew
Dick Cheney: Sleeper Agent for Iran since 1979
tBone
Let’s put the blame where it really belongs. If Clinton hadn’t diverted resources from the War on Terror for the bloody and futile invasion of Bosnia, al-Queda would have been wiped out in the late ’90s and Bush wouldn’t have inherited a broken military. To suggest otherwise is just typical BDS historical revisonism.
Jake
I see it as more of a team effort. Both groups are on members of a relay race. Team Bush’s overall time may be better but they couldn’t do a thing without bin Laden as anchor.
qwerty42
2009 cannot come soon enough indeed, but 18 more months of a drifting, incompetent foreign policy presided over by an bungling administration that has lost the confidence of the public is simply an invitation to see how much worse things can get. And I’m sure they can get so much worse, we’d look back on this as a “good time”. OTOH, drifting is a plus when you consider there are those who want to expand the war to Iran. Hell, why not more? Kinda like the game of “Risk” except for real.
I do not believe the current situation can last and the republicans, especially the senate republicans are going to have to be part of the solution. It seems obvious he is getting warnings from the republican leadership that he is ignoring; they are going to have to address this forcefully. It will be painful for them – the “base” (whatever is left of it) will be unforgiving. Too bad. they neglected their obligations while in the majority (not that the dems couldn’t have done more) and now have to pay the piper. But it has to be done. I think Reid has done a lot to hammer them and make them defend things they (now) loathe. It isn’t a great idea to try to resolve these issues in congress, but with an administration as isolated and delusional as this there seems no alternative.
and I’m being generous in simply calling the administration “bungling” and “delusional”. Other, perhaps better, terms come to mind as well.
Jake
But hey, at least we can rely on peace an quiet along the Turkish/Kurdistan border.
On some days Clusterfuck and FUBAR don’t even begin to describe this situation.
srv
Why is this bad news, as the Editors here clearly want America to lose the war?
If you wanted us to win this war, why don’t you say so?