I was listening to Brit Hume's panel discussion this evening and it struck me that Fred Barnes sounded a bit wobbly on Iraq. First of all he questioned alMaliki's decision to leave Iraq right now and then he said [more or less] that he was getting nervous about the future of Iraq because of the civilian casualties.
Fred Barnes has been stalwart and so his concern, concerned me. And then I checked out Hugh Hewitt and he had an interesting post on the people he referred to as the 180's. The people Bush had lost on the war. He seemed to think they were lost mostly because they felt "disdained". His comment section was unremarkable.
I think people are just tired of the violence they see on TV everyday and they want it to end. Ofcourse the enemy knows this and so they keep it up hoping they will drive us away and scare the Iraqis into submission. Sometimes I wonder if we could have won WW2 if the TV and internet had been around, or if we would have turned away in disgust and despair. Imagine the impact of the fall of the Phillipines on TV. Imagine the impact of the Death march on morale.
Can Bush bring these folks back? I don't know, but I do know that if they continue to show fear the enemy will not give up.
3 comments:
Bush hasn't lost Barnes one of his greatest admirers.
The biggest mistake the Administration made (and it was Condi's for the most part for all reports) was to give DoS the biggest role in post-war Iraq. DoD had Gen. Garner in place and the plan was to allow the Iraqis to take over civil administration immediately. DoS instead insisted on appointing Bremer to run the place. We lost very valuable time.
The inter-sectarian violence we are now seeing is clearly being ratcheted up by Iran. If Hezbollah gets clobbered in Lebanon and Syria breaks away from Iran, the violence in Iraq will abate IMO.
cf:
I hope so.
No matter what had been done right after the fall of Baghdad things would have been tough. It would just have been a different tough.
terrye u r exactly right.
and the enemy - the jihadist in the battlefield and the "journalist" covering the battlefield KNOWS this.
they pulled this csame crap during VIETNAM; they're using the sem playbook.
remember, WE ACTUALLY WON TET. but not TV's version.
this war will take as long as the cold war. i think bush and rummy said this from the start.
heck: it'z been going on for 1000 years!
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