Professionalization of war is ghettoization of warIt's not enough to actually commit genocide, you have to have the right propaganda to back it up. Otherwise, you end up with soldiers too dumb to realize who the enemy actually is.No. Really.......

Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe attacked the use of the epithet "chicken hawk." But is "chicken hawk" really an insult?...

So I guess the heat wave we just went through has fried more than just a zillion transformers on our nation's power grid. Via Billmon, I am led to a truly frightening article in Harper's magazine. Could U.S. Troops End......

Straw man, I'm afraid. I don't know whether I would've won the gun fight had I brought a gun instead of a knife, but it's a pretty good bet that by bringing only a knife, I set myself up to lose.

As for Maliki, what exactly would you expect him to say to the House? "Glory to Hezbollah, you infidel dogs"? But it appears that he was thinking it. ("Where do you guys get this incredible ability to read minds?" Skill and practice ....)

"Iraqis are your allies in the War on Terror," al-Maliki told lawmakers from the speaker's podium in the House chamber. "The fate of our country and yours is tied. Should democracy be allowed to fail in Iraq and terror permitted to triumph, then the War on Terror will never be won elsewhere."

On WMD, I would say our dedication to diplomacy and coalition building gave Saddam all the time he needed to cover his tracks. I wouldn't say troop levels had anything to do with it.

One other assumption you have made, is that if Iraq had not happened, we would have more resources for Osama. This is another classic liberal trap. You assume that we are not employing all necessary resources for Osama, but simply have not gotten him. You assume that applying resources from Iraq to Afghanistan would have brought better results and would not have created a 'quagmire' there.

Where do you guys get this incredible ability to determine potential future outcomes by contradicting past decisions?

Now, Iâ??m not holding Greenwald responsible for the views expressed by his commenters

Well, then, damn it, I will.
If Ace is responsible for his commentors and their supposed excesses, and Hawkins at RWN for the supposed excesses of his, by GG's own lights, why its it GG refuses to accept the same role for HIS?

And Anjin-san, the Democrats have net postives, where?

LJD, we disagree on most things, but I've always thought you're a bright guy, so let me pose some serious questions.

I really don't understand this dead-ender opposition to considering how and why things went wrong in Iraq. I was opposed to the war as a stupid diversion from putting Osama's head on a stick, but given that we were doing it anyway, I wanted it done right, in a manner that would astonish the world with the power of the American armed forces.

Hasn't happened like that.

Do you have the same hostility to historians' efforts to understand why France folded in 1940, or why Russia didn't fold in 1941? Or is just a Bush thing?

Specifically on the more-troops issue, there's a logic-class concept, "necessary but not sufficient." More troops were *necessary* for the immediate post-battle situation, but not *sufficient*, if they weren't being deployed properly. It would not have done for Rumsfeld etc. to put twice as many troops in and *still* have them failing to guard key points, terrorizing the population, etc., etc. And all would've been made naught anyway by the twin brainstorms of wholesale de-Baathification and the Iraqi army's disbandment.

But more troops *were* necessary if anyone was going to do the job *right*. Hell, we went over there for WMD's ... and we didn't even send enough troops to seize the alleged WMD sites and seal the borders. What was up with THAT?

Ditto what Caliban said, he's right on the mark.

Anderson, you make a huge assumption that more troops would have resulted in a different outcome in Iraq. Quite possibly, it would have been nothing more than additional body bags. We will never know, but I love to see the liberal omnipotence demonstrated by such comments.

Anjin- same sh*t, different day.

As opposed to, say, Donald Rumsfeld? LOL!

And a lot like that in the U.S. military in 2003-06:

... to their everlasting discredit, America's most senior generals did not stand up to Rumsfeld as he and his ideologues went forward with a plan they knew would not work--at least not until after they had retired and the consequences of Rumsfeld's careless approach were blindingly obvious. Greg Newbold, who later joined the revolt of the generals, told Gordon and Trainor of his reaction to Rumsfeld's 125,000-troop figure:

My only regret is that at the time I did not say "Mr. Secretary, if you try to put a number on a mission like this you may cause enormous mistakes.... Give the military what you would like to see them do, and then let them come up with it. I was the junior guy in the room, but I regret not saying it."

Men who had put their lives on the line in combat were mostly unwilling to put their careers on the line to speak out against a plan based on numbers pulled out of the air by a cranky sixty-nine-year-old.

(Peter K. Galbraith, reviewing Cobra II. "Knew would not work" is of course strong--anything can happen--but OTOH, top officers owe their country a little better than to keep silent unless they "know" a plan won't work.)