Juan Cole: 4 years after 9-11 "We do not stand in a good place"

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A long essay from Juan Cole on September 11.
http://www.juancole.com/2005/09/911-77-and-830-on-fourth-year.html

one snip from the end of the article>

Bush has given us the worst of all possible worlds-- a half-finished job against al-Qaeda, an Iraqi imbroglio that could still explode into civil or even regional war-- and which serves as an al-Qaeda recruiting tool--, a government starved for funds, an enormous windfall for the rich at the expense of the middle class (which saw average wages actually fall recently), and an inability to respond effectively to a major urban catastrophe.

Four years after September 11, al-Qaeda's leadership should have been behind bars or dead. Four years after September 11, Afghanistan should have been stabilized. Four years after September 11, the government should have been ready to save lives in an urban disaster.

Bush recently started likening his poorly conceived and misnamed "war on terror" to World War II. What his handlers have forgotten is how long World War II lasted for the United States.

Four years.

In four years, Roosevelt and allies defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. In four years, Bush hasn't managed even to corner Bin Laden and a few hundred scruffy terrorists; or to extract himself from the deserts of Iraq; or to put the government's finances in good order so that it can deal with crises like Katrina.

snip>

[Inland]

1. I should be reading Juan Cole's blog regularly.

Him, Krugman, James Wolcott, all worth reading. I don't get Cole and Wolcott regularly.

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2. It's hard to read it all, but I like to get back to Juan Cole

when things get too hyped up on any one story. He is a steady presence.