Victor Davis Hanson fisks the tragicomic fecklessness from both the left and the right on Iraq. Some examples:
- It was a fatal error to disband the Iraqi army.
- Yet it was also a fatal error to keep some Baathists in the newly constituted army.
- Massive construction projects were hogged by gargantuan American firms
- Indigenous contractors proved irresponsible and unreliable
- We also lost hearts and minds by using GPS bombs to obliterate houses full of killers and take out blocks of insurgents.
- We lost hearts and minds by failing to act decisively and de facto turning over large enclaves to terrorists and Saddamites whom we were afraid to root out.
- Our helmeted soldiers with sunglasses are holed up in enclaves, don't mingle, and perpetuated the heavy-handed image of snooty occupiers.
- Leaving the Green Zone is an open invitation to kidnapping and worse. So we are both too well hidden and yet not hidden enough.
- It was a mistake to postpone Iraqi sovereignty for so long
- It is an equal mistake to rush into elections while the country is so insecure.
Hanson gives a history lesson on the horrors of World War II which was replete with bad military and political decisions and where American soldiers fought with inferior materiel and equipment but yet we look upon WWII as some kind of spotless endeavor. One wonders how we could have won that war if we had to deal with the hand-wringing and ghoul journalism of today.
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