Bush links Hezbollah to Ali-Q

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Originally Posted by warch

Holbrook stated that he believed there was no longer a possible military solution/strategy for Iraq. Kristol was the optimist, but you could see his sweat. We dont have the troops to pursue the current greatly expanded mission.

I was grasping to understand why each man thought we could not provide enough troops. I was struck - and I am not sure I got this right - that both agreed we neither have enough troops nor do we have the political will to put enough troops into Iraq. If I understood what they were saying, they both agreed fully on that point.

Shit. So which bad outcome is better? When do you lose a battle to win a war?

Welcome to the Vietnam conundrum. The one thing I remember about Vietnam was the despair even as "The Whole World is Watching" in Chicago and again at Kent State. We have not yet achieved that despair. As Holbrook continued to comment, ie Kirkuk, that despair may be approaching quickly. I think he exaggerated. But it is Holbrook which means we must pay attention.

It was one of the reasons why we so need someone like Clinton back in office. He saw that problem in Somalia and had the balls to avoid that quagmire before we got in too deep. Most people have little grasp of how Clinton so successfully avoided quagmire in both the Balkans and Somalia. Too many would not see how close we came (or could have come) to disaster in both situations. But what is most interesting - who was doing so much of the strategic thinking? Holbrook.

Holbrook was a master at using the carrot and stick - skillfully used military force as a negotiating tool. Did not use the military as a solution - but only one tool in getting Milosevic to negotiate himself out of a job. It was (only) part of that Bugs Bunny reference.

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Add to the despair, this from The Economist of 12 Aug 2006:

Mayhem in the south too
The noise of a mortar round, like an incoming train, startles a bunch of contractors and aid workers waiting for their helicopter flight out of the British diplomatic compound in Basra, sending them and your correspondent scrambling for cover. This - and the array of other projectiles that have whizzed over the riverside palace complex in the past few nights - is presumed to be the Mahdi Army's revenge for the arrest of their local commander by British soldiers a few days before.

It is very different from two years ago, when British diplomats would happily cool down on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, since walled off by the concrete barriers that are ubiquitous across Iraq. The Shia-populated southern provinces used to be relatively safe. Not now. The violence in Basra, the south's capital, still pales by comparison with many other parts of Iraq, especially the Sunni areas to the west of Baghdad and the sectarian tinderbox of Iraq's capital. Even at its worst, in mid-summer, the bloodshed in Basra, caused largely by Islamist Shia militias feuding among themselves, claimed about 20 lives a week, according to the police, and now probably accounts for half that figure

Instability and violence is only increasing everywhere - even in Basara. Even in the US, logical thought is being replaced by interpretation based upon feelings and facts generated from propaganda. Deja Vue Vietnam where we met the enemy and he is us.