You almost don't even need commentary. You can just run pithy quotes and call it the "Disingenuous Prick-Ticker"

I like how the Cliff May quote he has up today says "It's easy to say that if we had left Saddam alone, nothing bad would have happened." As if invading and "leaving Saddam alone" were the only two options we had available to us. As if we had been just "leaving Saddam alone" for all those years before we invaded. As if our "leaving Saddam alone" hadn't actually been effective in keeping him from reacquiring all those nasty weapons that we falsely claimed he had. Nice way to frame the debate.

Bastards.

Damn, that is mighty white of Glenn. For a true patriot to tear himself away from service on the ground in Iraq, that’s genuine sacrifice for the good ol' U.S. of F’n A! Mr. Reynolds has a firsthand account of the predicament, and you traitors just chastise him. Every real American in fine fettle should join the cause in the fatherland’s God-given supremacy, as it is a worldly embrace that drives it.

As a 911 Democrat I'm happy with Instapundit and that side of the fence these days. Aside from the fact that I've come to agree with these folks, I just find them better company. They tend to rely more on information and reason than on the sort of ad hominem snarkiness so well displayed in this thread. Glen Reynolds also has a decent sense of humor and an interesting range of interests.

Enjoy your new friends, Jack. They're batting close to .000 on the predictions, the cowboy they believe is keeping y'all safe clearly hasn't a clue what he's doing, and the idea that they rely on reason and information is pretty darn funny. But if you prefer their company to our "ad hominem snarkiness", then by all means, join them over there in everybody-else-is-a-traitor-land.

Thanks. I do enjoy my new friends.

As to predictions and claims, it looks to me like they are doing better than the anti-war side, such as yourself.

For instance -- .000 on predictions? They only have to get 1 out of 1000 right to beat that. Just to be in the game at all after three years means that a lot of things have gone right, even spectacularly so--such as the three massive, courageous turnouts at the polls.

What you and your friends seem to mean is that the Bush administration is not batting 1.000. True enough.

they are doing better than the anti-war side

So far they've been wrong by several orders of magnitude about the necessary troops, the cost, and the duration of the war, as well as the grateful candy-and-rose-petals response of the Iraqi public, the presence of WMD, links with al Qaeda, the speed of rebuilding infrastructure, oil revenues paying for the occupation, getting electricity back to pre-war levels, avoiding civil war, the speed at which we could stand up Iraqi security forces, and I could go on but this is like shooting fish in a barrel. It would be much quicker to list the thing they got right: we drove to Baghdad quickly. But really, almost nobody said we couldn't do that.

Just to be in the game at all after three years means that a lot of things have gone right

Uh, no. It just means that we haven't withdrawn. That doesn't mean much. We'll "be in the game" at least through 2009, according to Bush. You might consider that an accomplishment, but I consider it a failure of Herculean proportions.

such as the three massive, courageous turnouts at the polls

As I've said previously, call me when there's a functioning government to show for any of those elections.

Complaining about our failure to turn a British-made Frankenstein's-monster amalgam of three separate relgious and ethnic groups into Switzerland overnight strikes me as a bit pissy.

We aren't the ones who predicted it, yo.

As if, "911 Democrat" isn't "ad hominem snarkiness".

Also, "They only have to get 1 out of 1000 right to beat that." Is that, the new standard for "911 Democrat" excellence?

At frustrating times like this, I must remind myself of the Neo-Zen question of, "what is the sound of one vinegar truck clapping upon one water truck?"

Douche!

Here's the dilemma, GB: it's not going to work, and we've been saying that all along.

Let's say there's a guy who announces he's going to run face first through a brick wall. Everybody says, "Um, you can't run through that brick wall."

"You people are just a hateful bunch of irrational haters who hate me!"

"No, we've seen people try to run through brick walls before. It's a really, really stupid idea and you're just going to hurt yourself."

"Piss off, you losers! You all suck and you're stupid, smelly, traitorous, America-hating defeatists. Here I go!"

Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack.

After he's shattered most of the bones in his body from repeatedly bouncing off the damn wall, he looks up and demands, "So, you're all just going to stand there saying 'I told you so' instead of supporting my efforts to run through this wall? Typical liberals. People like you are exactly the reason I didn't make it through the wall of the Vietnamese restaurant last year. And I would have, if it weren't for you losers. Fuck it, I'm going to run through this Iranian wall over here."

You see why we aren't climbing on board?

Are we really going to have this ridiculous argument? We won every straight-up engagement in Vietnam, and it's utterly beside the point (just like our "insurgent body counts" in Iraq). We still weren't ever going to win that war.

Zakaria's track record on Iraq has been pretty miserable as well. I do believe that, eventually, Iraq will get its house in order. It just won't happen until after we leave them alone to do it. It won't happen while we're there.

Hey look! It's Godwin!

GB, I think the constructive thing to do is to figure out what the best policy is now. And to do that, we need to figure out in part who to trust about the situation on the ground. And to do that, we need to figure out who's been right in the past.

Not to say that I don't enjoy saying "I told you so" as well.

the incessant adolescent whining from anti-war folks

Funny. The whining I hear comes from the right. "Not fair! They're trying to hold somebody accountable for the biggest foreign policy fuck-up in half a century! We painted some schools! We held some elections that didn't result in governments!"

Sure, you can find some things that have gone right. Christ almighty, you'd certainly hope so after $300 billion dollars sunk into the project. But the go-war-go-war crowd are the ones trying to desperately to distract from the stench of death and failure. "Hey look: IRAN!"

It isn't working.

Well, what sounds like whining to me is the complaints that things didn't get done on schedule. Honestly, you guys sound like kids in the back of the family car: "How much longer is it, Dad? But you said we'd be there already!"

No, GB, we were the ones insisting that Dad was lost while he refused to admit it.

has accomplished as much as Lincoln or Roosevelt accomplished in their wars

That's just silly.

by any fair, realistic comparison with past wars, the Bush administration has run the Iraq war with a minimum of American military and Iraq civilian casualties

Shall we start with Kosovo and work backwards?

Though, to be precise, all our past wars, with the exception of Iraq '91, did indeed have a very, very small number of Iraqi civilian casualties.

I think the writer may mean that Bush has accomplished as much as L & R, proportionate to the level of losses (military and civillian) suffered in the conflict.

In other words, given that we have (rightly) refused to bomb entire cities off the map in Iraq, we're doing all right. And the mistakes we've made compare favorably to the mistakes L & R made in their wars — mistakes that resulted in hundreds, even thousands, of American deaths.

Lincoln - ended a civil war in his own country.
Bush - started a civil war in a country halfway around the world.

Roosevelt - helped drive three expansionist world powers that declared war on us and took over much of Europe and Asia back inside their borders.
Bush - attacked a tinpot third world dictator who never had anything resembling the means to attack us and who had briefly taken over the sprawling Kuwaiti empire and had a stalemated border war with Iran.

I'm afraid neither one of those rises to the level of a "fair, realistic comparison." But I expect that level of analysis from Sullivan. Not so much from you.

And the mistakes we've made compare favorably to the mistakes L & R made in their wars — mistakes that resulted in hundreds, even thousands, of American deaths.

The mistake was going to war with Iraq in the first place, and that mistake has resulted in thousands of American deaths. Neither Roosevelt nor Lincoln had a choice about going into their wars. The one we find ourselves in currently was absolutely, 100% optional.

GB, this is a genuine question, not snark:

Do you think adding 206,000 troops into Vietnam would have been popular, or at least feasible, if it had been announced by the Pentagon and not by the NY Times?

While we certainly were justified in responding to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, there is little sign that it would have kept attacking us if we had just left it alone to build its Pacific empire. In a sense, Roosevelt's entry into the war was designed to pre-empt Germany and Japan, before either could become a global threat.

Granted, the Middle East is neither Germany nor Japan, but in the age of terrorism, you don't have to be, do you? Invading Iraq in the particular time and manner that we did may have been "optional", but doing something about the threat posed by the anti-Democratic, anti-American, pro-terrorism regimes of the Middle East assuredly was not.

Regardless, your hairy ass shall remain unkissed by me.

"We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease"

So, we knew this type of thing happens (people who have been "freed" resent an occupying army)? Well, then, why has Anti-American backlash been hard to predict AND PLAN TO ADDRESS then (and hg, it is a VERY few things indeed; well put sir)?

Somebody put these clowns on the record; GB, do you or do you not feel that the American people have the right to hold their leaders accountable for POOR PLANNING that wastes American lives and treasure?

M/tch:

I assume, but don't know for sure, that it would have been feasible.

As for popular, well, maybe (support for the war was actually fairly strong up through Tet, all things considered), but maybe not.

I do feel fairly confident, however, that our continued robust prosecution of the war would have led to a different, more positive, conclusion.

Sterling,

First of all, I would like to point out that I did not write the comment you quoted.

As to your question: Sure, hold our leaders accountable — by voting them out of office. But give them the best chance to succeed while they're in there.

Okay then, but how did the NY Times reporting it render a presumably feasible deployment unfeasible?

Also, not to play on semantics too heavily, but I would label a 40% increase in troop strength a major escalation, not just "continued robust prosecution".

And I think what Tet showed many in the States, despite it being a military defeat for North Vietnam and the Vietcong (which wasn't a secret; it was widely reported at the time, once it was known to be so, although granted the initial images of the panic and carnage probably had a much bigger impact on public opinion), was that the war would require much greater effort/casualties/expense/etc. (the Pentagon's desire to increase troop strength by 40% being a particularly striking example of this) than the public had been lead to believe by upbeat administration reports.

Many people felt, rightly so, that they had been sold a bill of goods. One can blame the public for being wimpy, I guess, but I think the blame is more appropriately placed upon the administration and its fundamental lack of honesty and forthrightness.

your hairy ass shall remain unkissed by me.

Well, you're way over there in Japan, so it wasn't likely to happen in any event. The invitation wasn't directed at you, though, because what I don't recall you ever doing was declaring my essential traitorous nature and expounding upon my deep, personal love for Saddam Hussein. So, y'know, I don't have any unpleasant feelings toward you, despite whatever disagreements we have about foreign policy, because you have always been both fair and honorable.

to pre-empt Germany and Japan, before either could become a global threat.

Both Germany and Japan were established global threats by the time we entered WWII, which had been raging for several years by 1941. Also, it's really hard to declare it pre-emptive when they declared war on us first.

doing something about the threat posed by the anti-Democratic, anti-American, pro-terrorism regimes of the Middle East

I'm hard pressed to identify any legitimately pro-democratic regimes in the Middle East. We've turned plenty of relatively neutral countries into anti-American populations thanks to our adventurism, and as far as supporting terrorism, our closest allies in the region are among the worst offenders. Iraq wasn't even in the amateur leagues in that sport. Moreover, they were pro-American until we fought them in 1991 following April Glaspie's implicit green light for them to invade Kuwait. Funny how that all worked out.

In any event, "doing something" wasn't limited to inaction on the one hand and full-on invasion on the other. That's the false dichotomy I and many others have been appalled at all along. Some (mostly) Saudi ex-pats pull off a terrorist attack on behalf of an organization comprised largely of other Saudis, Pakistanis, and Afghanis, so we invade Iraq? WTF?

legitimately pro-democratic regimes in the Middle East

Except Israel, obviously.

Well, you're way over there in Japan, so it wasn't likely to happen in any event. The invitation wasn't directed at you, though, because what I don't recall you ever doing was declaring my essential traitorous nature and expounding upon my deep, personal love for Saddam Hussein.

Huh? I just meant I was gonna shave it first.

Okay then, but how did the NY Times reporting it render a presumably feasible deployment unfeasible?

Beats me... maybe the way they turned Stalin's famines into prosperity?

Beats me... maybe the way they turned Stalin's famines into prosperity?

Um, maybe I'm just being thick (again!), but i don't see what you're getting at.

Reporting a famine as prosperity is false.

Reporting a plan to deploy 206,000 more troops as a plan to deploy 206,000 more troops is . . .?

I thought you meant that the NY Times reported a feasible deployment as unfeasible. That would be analogous to reporting a famine as prosperity.

I haven't read the 1968 article, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that it put a pessimistic spin on Westmoreland's request.

Question about Vietnam: why were we there, again? I mean, after we left, the total assholes we supported were desposed, some chaos ensued (not too different from the years and years of chaos imposed by French then American troops, no?), and then things eventually sorted out more or less. Where was the Big Evil? The Great Catastrophe Which We Were Trying to Avoid By Sacrificing All of Those Lives and Dollars? Possibly, I'm blindingly ignorant here, but, I (obs.) think that's unlikely.

But, if for some reason you think I'm wrong and the Vietnam War was worth winning, because of some possible outcome, then how can you blame the NY Times and American opinion? It's not as if the President doesn't get all the free air time he wants. And, if the American people want to quit, then our military should follow the wishes of democracy.

As for the stuff about pointing out who got what wrong. I can see how it gets tedious, but, there is one serious, pertinent disagreement: Can we possibly do significant good by staying in Iraq? Significantly more than if we lose?

It's a hard question to answer. And, as in everything, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Being right doesn't mean you can't be wrong, and vice versa. But certainly past performance is neverthless significant in determining how much to weight predictive ability. "Fool me once" and all that.

And there are plenty of organized right-wing attempts at rewriting history: Malkin, of course, and all those ridiculous books on Clinton, etc.. I'm fairly certain that there's a background fear among liberals that if we shut up about this stuff, the right wing will take that opportunity to spin away and try to rewrite history again. Like, perhaps, yesterday when Bush assered that Saddam didn't let the inspectors in.

GB, u tet awesome!!1!

Another Neo-Zen koan, "If our country falls in the desert, does it make it unsound?"

Do I ever need to start proof-reading. Several mistakes made, but, I'll only bother you with noting "lose" at the end of the 3rd paragraph should be "leave."

"give them the best chance to succeed while they're in there"

Best chance would be everyone at the table; critical viewpoints considered with a hard deference to REALITY. It's hard to argue that that's the case w/ this Administration.

And, I'm sorry I didn't break up my question to you and my response to (as you note) hgw's comment.