Mark Steyn:Spock-Charlie Reese:SSS

[Spock]

Mark Steyn is to me as Charlie Reese was to SSS in the run up to the Iraq War.

IMHO-He just hits things right on the head.

http://www.steynonline.com/6424/leaving-from-behind

Pull Quote
>>>>So whose fault is the implosion of Iraq? Bush? Obama?

Back in the real world, Republicans don't lose wars and Democrats don't lose wars; America loses wars - which is how US allies and enemies alike judge what's happening in Iraq right now, and how it will be recorded in the history books. Tthere is certainly something to Robert Tracinski's analysis - that this was a wish-fulfilling prophesy for Obama, and that, in some deep primal sense, for the Democrats it was necessary ultimately for the Iraq war to be lost. Undeniably lost. And to be seen to be undeniably lost - even if it took five-and-a-half years after Bush's departure from office, or about the length of the entire Second World War.<<<<

[silverscreenselect]

There is certainly something to Robert Tracinski's analysis - that this was a wish-fulfilling prophesy for Obama, and that, in some deep primal sense, for the Democrats it was necessary ultimately for the Iraq war to be lost. Undeniably lost. And to be seen to be undeniably lost - even if it took five-and-a-half years after Bush's departure from office, or about the length of the entire Second World War.<<<<

There's something that I don't think you and the neocons get. We could never win the Iraq War. Not in five year, not in ten years, not in twenty years. Just like Vietnam. This nonsense about whether doing a few extra things in an extra year or two would have "stabilized" the situation is sheer nonsense. As long as we kept paying off local leaders and sending in elite U.S. fighting troops to do the dirty work where absolutely needed, we could control the situation.

But when the money stopped flowing and the troops left, there are only two situations in which a local government could control the situation: (1) a popular government with a wide base of support that was viewed as legitimate, or (2) an autocratic, ruthless strongarm government willing (a la Saddam Hussein) to do what was needed to keep order. Neither of these happened in Vietnam, and they're not going to happen here.

The people we were fighting in Vietnam fought for 30 years, against the Japanese, the French, and us, and they would have fought another 30 years. The people who are fighting in Afghanistan have been fighting for over 30 years, and the people we're fighting in Iraq have just as much of a stomach for fighting.

Obama could definitely have done a better job, but unless he could have pulled an Iraqi George Washington out of his hat who was widely respected and revered by the Iraqi people, we were facing the same endgame somewhere down the line.

[Spock]

More Pull Quotes
>>>>As inept as they might think the Republicans' deployment of hard power is, the Democrats' use of soft power is even lousier. Effective soft power requires great clarity and cunning, neither of which President Obama, Secretary Kerry or anybody else seems to possess.<<<<

>>>And so the consequences of a shrunken America metastasize - from jihadist gangs in Benghazi to chemical gas attacks in Syria to the world's wealthiest jihad state in western Iraq to nuclear ayatollahs, the biggest domino of all.<<<<

>>> If you were King Abdullah in Amman, what would you reckon were the chances of your American chums helping you fend off the new pan-Sunni caliphate?<<<

[Spock]

SSS>>>There's something that I don't think you and the neocons get. We could never win the Iraq War.<<<

I concede your point. The war is ultimately and irretrievably lost. Now What?

as I pull quoted in the above post
>>> If you were King Abdullah in Amman, what would you reckon were the chances of your American chums helping you fend off the new pan-Sunni caliphate?<<<

[silverscreenselect]

SSS>>>There's something that I don't think you and the neocons get. We could never win the Iraq War.<<<

I concede your point. The war is ultimately and irretrievably lost. Now What?

as I pull quoted in the above post
>>> If you were King Abdullah in Amman, what would you reckon were the chances of your American chums helping you fend off the new pan-Sunni caliphate?<<<

The mistake is thinking that every time something bad happens there, we have to "do something." Bad things happen there all the time. Whenever we do something, we make it worse, whether it's Bush's bumbling or Obama's "line in the sand."

Our biggest mistakes are assuming (1) that we can "do something" to create a Western style democracy in any of these countries, and (2) that if we don't "do something," no one else whose interests are more directly affected (like the Saudis) won't.

The fundamentalists who are running roughshod in Iraq right now are doing so against Maliki's army that sees the handwriting on the wall. However, there are two very powerful forces who don't want to see Iraq turned into a Sunni-fundamentalist oil-enabled state, and that's (1) Iran, and (2) the secular Sunnis in western Iraq who were Saddam's allies and the hardest fighters against the U.S. in the war and later worked with us (and who kept the fundamentalists in check) when we made it worth their while to do so. It's to both of these groups' advantages to have the U.S. do what we usually do, blunder our way in and make things worth. It's not to their advantage to stand totally by if we actually let things go.

Our only interest in Iraq now should be protecting U.S. lives and property there now.

[Bob Juch]

We are not Team America World Police.

This time we don't even have a flimsy excuse.

[Bob Juch]

[Spock]

I know SSS etc won't read Steyn(and if he does, he won't see past the Neocon label)-but somebody may, so this is linked for anybody who wants to decipher and enjoy his English dry wit.

http://www.steynonline.com/6417/harmles ... s-a-friend

He is speaking of the US-"Harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend."

Pull quote
>>>Hugh Hewitt said it felt like 1975 all over again. Forty years ago, as another American client regime crumbled, the US Ambassador sportingly offered asylum to a former Cambodian prime minister, Prince Sirik Matak. His response is worth quoting:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky. But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.<<<<

Another Steyn quote>>>And, if you're in Benghazi or Aleppo or Kandahar - or, come to that, Kiev - why would you believe the Americans over the other fellows? Unlovely and blood-soaked as they are, the other guys mean it; America doesn't.<<<<

[silverscreenselect]

I>>>Hugh Hewitt said it felt like 1975 all over again. Forty years ago, as another American client regime crumbled, the US Ambassador sportingly offered asylum to a former Cambodian prime minister, Prince Sirik Matak.

I have to admit the name Sirik Matak didn't ring a bell so I looked it up. Sirik Matak was a right-wing politician in Cambodia, who along with Lon Nol, staged a coup backed by the CIA that deposed the relatively popular government of Prince Sihanouk. Matak originally suggested assassinating Sihanouk, which Lon Nol rejected. Supposedly, Matak forced Lon Nol at gunpoint to commit to the coup.

Since Lon Nol was in poor health, Matak, as acting premier was de facto running the country for periods of time after the coup. Later, Lon Nol pretty much forced Matak out of power and had him under house arrest. When the Khmer Rouge eventually headed towards Phnom Penh, Matak was on their death list and the US offered him asylum, which he rejected in the letter Hewitt and Spock quoted. He was later executed by the Khmer Rouge.

This is just another case of the U.S. sticking our nose into somebody else's business and making things far worse. We effectively engineered a coup in which a relatively peaceful country with a popular government that was not favorably inclined towards the U.S. was replaced by a puppet state run by a bunch of right wingers who didn't get along with each other and were not well liked by the general populace. The result was another weak state that we wouldn't prop up that was followed by a truly horrific government, the Khmer Rouge.

There's a lesson to be learned here: Don't get involved. Period. We put Lon Nol and Matak into power and pretty much paved the way for the Khmer Rouge. Matak wasn't a good guy we abandoned; he was a bad guy who was done in by worse guys.

[Spock]

>>>This is just another case of the U.S. sticking our nose into somebody else's business and making things far worse.<<<

The main point of Steyn and it is throughout his body of work- that for better, or for worse, is that we DID stick our nose in and people believed us and helped. Throughout the Vietnam War era and in Baghdad and Kabul and Kandahar and Mosul and Fallujah-people helped us and put their lives on the line and we left/are leaving them in the lurch.

Who will be willing to help us when we really need it. As he says "The bad guys mean it-The Americans don't."

If anyone is so inclined-I STRONGLY suggest Steyn's "America Alone" and "After America"

The flow of events in the world fits his model-so to speak. What is going on just make sense when viewed through Steyn's eyes. It's all in the book.

[silverscreenselect]

The main point of Steyn and it is throughout his body of work- that for better, or for worse, is that we DID stick our nose in and people believed us and helped. Throughout the Vietnam War era and in Baghdad and Kabul and Kandahar and Mosul and Fallujah-people helped us and put their lives on the line and we left/are leaving them in the lurch.

So, your view and Steyn's is that because we "gave our word" to a bunch of corrupt, militaristic, incompetent thugs in the South Vietnamese government, we should still be there? We didn't exactly leave them in the lurch, either in Vietnam or Iraq. We left them with tons of state of the art military hardware, lots of training, and lots of money and they still screwed it up. The problems in Iraq right now are due primarily to the fact that Maliki is an incompetent fool who alienated the more moderate Sunnis, and that fact wouldn't have changed in another six months or a year.

You and Steyn apparently feel we're turning our backs on Mother Theresa, Albert Schweitzer, and the Dalai Lama.