David Frum, NeoCon Supreme, slapped awake by rude failure in Iraq

[BurtWorm]

As noted by Gleen Greenwald:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/07/even-neoconservatives-now-accepting.html

Even neoconservatives now accepting defeat in Iraq

David Frum was one of the leading neoconservative advocates of the invasion of Iraq. The former Bush speechwriter is a true believer, having co-authored a radical neoconservative book with Richard Perle entitled An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, which -- according to its publisher -- "calls for the United States to overthrow the government of Iran, abandon support of a Palestinian state, blockade North Korea, use strong-arm tactics with Syria and China, disregard much of Europe as allies, and sever ties with Saudi Arabia."

But in a strikingly candid essay on his National Review blog yesterday, Frum all but admits that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been a failure, and says that the only realistic goal we can hope to achieve is preventing Iraq from becoming a training ground for Al Qaeda -- a goal which was already achieved, of course, prior to our invasion:


Hands up, everybody who believes that the "hundreds" of troops that the Pentagon plans to move from the rest of Iraq into Baghdad will suffice to secure the capital against the sectarian militias now waging war upon the civilian populations of the city? Anybody? No, I didn't think so.

To take back the capital from the militias that now terrorize it will take thousands, not hundreds, of American plus tens of thousands of Iraqis. . . . So a real plan for success in Baghdad will have to be built upon additional troops from out of area, potentially raising US troop levels back up to the 150,000 or so of late 2005.

Manifestly, neither the administration nor the Congress will contemplate such a move. Which means, most likely, continuing violence in Iraq and a continuing rise in the power of the militias, especially the Iranian-backed Shiite militias: the Hezbollah of Iraq.


Frum has been arguing for the last five years, at least, that Iran is an evil supporter of international terrorism and a monumental threat to the U.S. Indeed, Frum is credited with creating the phrase "axis of evil" when he was at the Bush White House, which famously included Iran, and even now is agitating for confrontation with Iran. And yet, by Frum's own admission, the invasion of Iraq which he and his comrades so desperately wanted, has delivered control of Iraq into the hands of our arch Iranian enemies, and Frum admits that the U.S. has no realistic hope of doing anything to reverse that result....

[hadrons]

1. David Frum (from his multimillion $ home): oooops, my bad ....

[AlwaysQuestion]

2. Who cares

Who cares what that detestable glob of icky substance has to say about anything. Knowing that his mother was a well respected journalist here in Canada, I was completely stunned when Davey boy first surfaced in the form of a neocon. Seems Bushco has a sixth sense for ferreting out rats to work for his evil empire. Being the very essence of evil, Who better than Frum to coin that infamous phrase.

[Norquist Nemesis]

3. Sounds like he's putting his white flag up n/t

[Bush_MUST_Go]

4. Everyone knew that there were NEVER enough troops to win this thing.

They knew it going in & they spent years lying and pretending they didn't anticipate what happened.

What a load of b.s. from this admin. & their cohorts.




Here's what Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had to say in 1991 about invading Iraq.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/soref/cheney.htm

(snip)



"Some have suggested that if we had gotten involved just a little bit -- for example, if we had shot down a few helicopters -- it would have changed the outcome of the conflict. Again, I think that is a misguided notion. One of the lessons that comes out of all of this is we should not ask our military personnel to engage "a little bit" in a war. If you are going to go to war, let's send the whole group; let's make certain that we've got a force of sufficient size, as we did when we went into Kuwait, so that we do not suffer any more casualties than are absolutely necessary.

Now, if you're going to deal with the effort to change the military balance inside Iraq, if you want to really neutralize the Iraqi Army, you have to deal not only with helicopters but also with artillery, with tanks and armored personnel carriers, and with the infantry units that clearly make the Iraqi government -- even today with a two-thirds smaller army than they had a few months ago -- significantly an overwhelming presence vis-a-vis the insurgents that exist inside the country.

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."




One thing I'll say, bush's father wasn't a totally incompetent & ineffective leader like his son has proven to be. And once upon a time, Cheney understood what it would take to invade Iraq.

[seemslikeadream]

5. And what say you, Mr. Frum to these folks?

[BuyingThyme]

6. They're just hedging their bets for November.