pocket1_pita | Entries tagged with jon carroll

"The principal sin of the neoconservatives is overbearing arrogance. It is not so much that they have been wrong. It is that nobody has ever convinced them that they've ever been wrong."

( more jon )

The neocons' great faith-based fantasy, that two wars could be fought at the same time without increasing the size of the military, has been an unimaginable disaster. The stop-loss policies succeeded in alienating the soldiers from their own civilian commanders, which is never a useful situation. Even the Republicans, with the exception of the folks in the bunker on Pennsylvania Avenue, are conceding defeat. Horse, barn door, bang.

But even if Rumsfeld had been a better tactician and strategist, even if the right generals had been given the right resources at the right time, the war would still have been wrong. In a civilized society, or one that pretends to civilization, wars are always a last resort. They are failures of diplomacy. Sometimes they are necessary, but they're never good.

This war was an unnecessary failure. If we had not invaded Iraq, if we had just let the U.N. inspectors do their work, if we had neutralized Saddam Hussein by other means, the world would be better. It's not that we fought the right war in the wrong way; we fought a deeply stupid war in a deeply stupid way.

( and more jon )

OK, we get it, it's just a mess. Candidly, and not to brag, we got it a long time ago. But we all live in the future; what's that going to look like?