Two terrific articles from Friday:

"American Cannibalism" by Victor Davis Hanson

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200405140838.asp


And "Bigger Than Bush" by Jonah Goldberg.



http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200405140930.asp


glenmore
1991 300CE
1990 LS400

Victor Davis Hanson assumes that Rumsfeld had no role in the prisoner abuse affair. Shouldn't he wait to see the evidence before jumping to that conclusion?

Why wouldn't you assume that also?

glenmore

There is no need to make any assumptions either way. NRO pundits should wait for the evidence, then they can pontificate to their hearts' content.

I have to ponder this credit being lavished . . .

Rumsfeld and Meyers have presided over two amazingly successful wars. In an aggregate of 11 weeks, and at the tragic cost of 700 combat dead, the American military defeated the two worst regimes in the Middle East and stayed on to implant democratic change where no such idea has ever existed.

The best armed, best equiped military in the world steam rollered 1) Afghanistan, a country with no organized military and 2) a 4th rate Iraqi military. Add this conflict to the ass whooping we gave Panamanian forces and those Cuban backed folks in Grenada, and I'd say we're showing what billions in defense spending can really do.

As for staying "to implant democratic changes" isn't that just making "lemonade" from the lemons of having to engage in nation building? Let's see how the seeds of democracy thrive with the poppy fields of Afghan warlords.

Oh well, there's that little nicety of jurisprudence in which one assume innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law.

But why quibble?

B

Thank you for this ........ remarkable piece of hindsight.


glenmore

Thank goodness we have the capability to project power in which no force on earth can resist us if we choose. Imagine what the world would be like if we followed a military strategy of defensiveness?

For example, what would have stopped Saddam from invading Saudi Arabia in '91? Entreaties by the French?

The South Koreans would be thriving happily in a worker's paradise, as would western Europe.

B

The difference being that I am not sitting in judgment. Do you think, for example, that police investigating a crime are expected to presume the suspect to be innocent? That's not their job. The presumption of innocence only applies to those sitting in judgment. Having said that, we all should avoid assuming the worst about anybody (except Dick Cheney).

Hindsight? Hardly. Moe, Larry and Shemp could have been Secretaries of Defense and still have taken the Taliban and the Iraqi "militia" (which is what they were at that point) with the available resources of the Pentagon.

No disagreement, but to say that having the capability makes Rumsfeld and Meyers some sort of geniuses as a result, is way too much credit being dished in the article. Unfortunately we still have a military best trained and equiped to defeat with overwhelming force, but not trained or positioned to provide civil security. It is in this operation that the criticism of Rumsfeld and Meyers comes from. In a sense, it's another example of the Peter Principle . . . rising to their level of incompetence, nation building.

I think they served in the previous administration. Gore, Aspen, and Reno.

B

Are you taking a page out of VAdude's book Bot? It was nice to see a thread without a Clinton admin reference.

I would like to continue the Bill Clinton theme and to follow up on MTI's reference to the following quote from the NRO article:

"Rumsfeld and Meyers have presided over two amazingly successful wars. In an aggregate of 11 weeks, and at the tragic cost of 700 combat dead, the American military defeated the two worst regimes in the Middle East and stayed on to implant democratic change where no such idea has ever existed."

Has Rumsfeld ever taken the time to thank President Clinton for building the greatest military in modern history?

We have the greatest military in modern history DESPITE Clinton's 8 years of gutting the military.

glenmore

I'm not so sure that Afghanistan and Iraq are the 2 worst regimes in the middle east. Iran has to be up there and Pakistan as well.