Say what now?
By I wonder how much of the blame for the “too late” part will turn out to fall on Karl Rove. It seems highly likely that Bush knew many months ago that a new Iraq plan was needed, but delayed for fear of disrupting his overconfident Republican strategist’s flat-footed midterm election strategy–even though, it seems clear now, declaring this new initiative seven months ago might have saved the Republicans in the election. …
Yeah, I too wonder how much of the blame will go to the political advisor that George W. Bush hired and then listened to regarding a critical foreign policy decision… the real howler, though, is the idea that coming up with the surge six months ago would have saved the election. Really, how dense do you have to be to fail to take note of the fact that the surge speech has hurt Bush’s already low popularity (since Mickey compulsively followed the Rasmussen numbers when they were good for Bush, I’m sure that he follows them now) and that the majority of the public, including right wing evangelicals, opposes escalation?
Mickey Kaus is paid to be a moron, though, so it’s not as if his position is all that surprising. To echo Scott, however, Michael O’Hanlon should know better. Put simply, there is no plausible theory of counter-insurgency warfare that suggests that a temporary 10% escalation of a dramatically undersized force could possibly have an effect at this point in the war. Like so many right wing hacks, O’Hanlon conflates this move with earlier demands from war critics that troop levels be increased, willfully ignoring the fact that the two policy recommendations are obviously quite different. Concluding that we might as well support it because “who knows, it might work” does not constitute an argument; it does constitute a rejection of O’Hanlon’s responsibilities as both a professional political scientist and a representative of the foreign policy elite of the Democratic Party.