American Weakness

♠
"You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel."

-- Syrian Dictator

Mark Steyn is doing the quoting, in a piece supporting President Bush's use of the Vietnam War as an analogy for his case to stay the course, in the face of the controversy that the Vietnam analogy is more fitting for the left and why we need to withdraw from Iraq.

Losing in Iraq certainly isn't going to help America's cause, but not even having a real strategy to win isn't better. We don't seem to be able to do what it takes to win, so it is hardly insensible to cut our losses.

It is a nightmare.

It is so bad a nightmare that, if Iraq does fall into chaos and becomes effectively a platform and staging ground for anti-Western hostilities, we may have to go back sometime, maybe within ten years, and it is likely to be costlier and harder, but we might not have any choice.


(Source: Mark Steyn for The O.C. Register)

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American Weakness

♠
"You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel."

-- Syrian Dictator

Mark Steyn is doing the quoting, in a piece supporting President Bush's use of the Vietnam War as an analogy for his case to stay the course, in the face of the controversy that the Vietnam analogy is more fitting for the left and why we need to withdraw from Iraq.

Losing in Iraq certainly isn't going to help America's cause, but not even having a real strategy to win isn't better. We don't seem to be able to do what it takes to win, so it is hardly insensible to cut our losses.

It is a nightmare.

It is so bad a nightmare that, if Iraq does fall into chaos and becomes effectively a platform and staging ground for anti-Western hostilities, we may have to go back sometime, maybe within ten years, and it is likely to be costlier and harder, but we might not have any choice.


(Source: Mark Steyn for The O.C. Register)

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Stealing Iraq

♠
What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

... According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.

-- "The Great Iraq Swindle" at RollingStone.com

One hears bits and pieces of the corruption going on in Iraq over goverment contracts, but this article puts it all togethre in one molotov cocktail of criticism and indignation. I think the writer hurts his case by suggesting that the main purpose behind the Iraq war is the profiteering of private businesses, and one does sense a certain ideological axe to grind.

Still, if the anecdotes and claims he puts together are not bullshit, if you are not a hopeless cynic, this report can make you one. What really grabs you is the case that the Bush Administration is so complicit in the corruption, going out of its way to protect the bad guys. To think that this sort of abetted, callous thievery is what underlies the war effort, and that we are losing this war, it just leaves you shaking your head. It is too absurd, even evil.

xXx

Stealing Iraq

♠
What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

... According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.

-- "The Great Iraq Swindle" at RollingStone.com

One hears bits and pieces of the corruption going on in Iraq over goverment contracts, but this article puts it all togethre in one molotov cocktail of criticism and indignation. I think the writer hurts his case by suggesting that the main purpose behind the Iraq war is the profiteering of private businesses, and one does sense a certain ideological axe to grind.

Still, if the anecdotes and claims he puts together are not bullshit, if you are not a hopeless cynic, this report can make you one. What really grabs you is the case that the Bush Administration is so complicit in the corruption, going out of its way to protect the bad guys. To think that this sort of abetted, callous thievery is what underlies the war effort, and that we are losing this war, it just leaves you shaking your head. It is too absurd, even evil.

xXx