Imagine my shock after reading this article about how the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq — not on Fox News, but in the New York Times! It’s written by war critics, to boot. (Note: the New York Times site may require you to register to read the article.)
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
They’re kind of splitting hairs when they differentiate between “sustainable stability” and “victory,” in my opinion. We are talking about the Middle East here. “Sustainable stability” is practically the holy grail of peace negotiations in that region.
Ahhh yes … Kenneth Pollack, the war “critic” that wrote this book.
I don’t know as much about O’Hanlon, but his Wikipedia entry describes him as “one of the most militaristic major national security experts in the United States Democratic Party.”
Playing this as a major switch in viewpoints by “war critics” doesn’t quite work.
Shhhhh. Don’t tell Scott or Stoner. Their heads will asplode.
Knight — He wrote that book before the invasion, just like the Democrats voted for the invasion before they started their rhetoric against it.
And you’re using Wikipedia as an authoritative source for information? Ok, yeah. That line about O’Hanlon being “…the most militaristic…” — that was added in March 2007 by Matthew Yglesias, a former staff writer for the ultra-liberal American Prospect, and now an editor at the Atlantic. Up until March, the line read, “He [O’Hanlon] is regarded as one of the foremost foreign policy and military experts in the United States Democratic Party.” While Yglesias may consider O’Hanlon “militaristic,” that’s hardly an unbiased assessment. Just read Yglesias’s blogs — he’s been critical of O’Hanlon for years.
I never stated that Wikipedia was an “authoritative” source. However, I think the word “militaristic” is a fair adjective for the man who wrote Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security and A War Like No Other.
In January of 2007 … just six months ago … O’Hanlon wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that, while somewhat derisive of the Bush administration in its tone, was fundamentally a defense of Bush’s surge policy.
O’Hanlon was playing the same game then – he entitle his piece “A Skeptic’s Case for the Surge.” He claims role of skeptic, yet fundamentally plays the shill for the Bush administration. Yglesias is quite justified and correct in his criticism, methinks.
My original point stands … Pollack and O’Hanlon are hardly “war critics”, and their attempt to portray themselves as such in the recent NYT editorial is laughable.