Any deeper stupidity would require invasive surgery
April 7th, 2008, 11:39 am · Post a Comment · posted by jhogg
Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq ambassador Ryan Crocker are getting ginned up for this weeks Iraq report and the signs leading up to the event are really pointing to the country diving head first off of a very high cliff with very sharp rocks at the bottom.
The Washington Post article, The Next Campaign Stop: Iraq Hearings , pretty much bashes the nail firmly on it’s sloping criminal head. Chances are, we aren’t going to be served a fair and honest assessment of Iraq. What is likely to be found on the unwashed plate, is political grandstanding with the requisite harumping, hooping and hollering about this and that and blar, blar, blar and someone will call so and so a “defeatist” and then someone else will be called a “warmonger” and then the blogs will come in and next thing you know the whole country is divided into either cowardly communists or blood drinking baby killers. I simply can’t wait.
These sorts of meeting translate poorly into elective politics, because the issues at hand are inherently nuanced and complex; in other words, there’s a paucity of campaign slogans to be found. Certainly John McCain and most of the Republicans have already decided that “we’re winning” and would hold to that belief if Gen. Petraeus said by tomorrow every Iraqi insurgent will be transformed into an unstoppable ninja killing machine. Similarly, the Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama and most of the democrats would bang the “we’re losing” drum if every sectarian group in Iraq had a spur of the moment conversion to boundless tolerance and representative democracy.
We really don’t need a legislative side show on this issue, not with November fast approaching. We’re looking at essentially two options for deciding post-election Iraq policy: a democratic White House and Congress will make the calls oblivious to the numerous protests of the republicans, or a McCain White House and heavily democratic (if most predictions hold true) Congress will reach political gridlock on the issue. The idea that the electorate will hand the White House and Congress back to the Republican Party is a possibility on par with electing a unicorn to the White House. Public opinion on Iraq is cratering, and that venture is being laid at the feet of the GOP.
If this plays out like I think it will, the coming testimony will be a monument to political idiocy at a time when clarity and decisiveness is what the nation desperately needs. But expecting such a feat from the mongrels in Congress is the height of wishful thinking.
