WARNING: Long Post

We need more troops to do things right in
Iraq, but we need to get out of there. The civilian leadership screwed
up and we should listen to the former CIA analysts and the generals and
a former ambassador who had tea with some people in Niger.

Not
only is the continuing media assault on President Bush and Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld an “unprecedented” breach of normal civilian control
of the military, it is also at cross-purposes with itself and ignores
the underlying tension within the Pentagon over Rumsfeld’s attempt to
transform U.S. armed forces. Few of the storiesnote that the Infantry would be radically altered or replaced
in any move to a more mobile force designed to handle the asymmetric
warfare of insurgencies and would-be nuclear powers. Even fewer note
what political connections or aspirations the six generals may have.

Which brings me to Iran. For some reason, thinkers always want the United States to negotiate with terrorist regimes such as Iran, even when they acknowledge that the talks won’t produce anything. The latest is Fred Kaplan’s essay in Slate. Kaplan suggests that failed talks will make the “case to China, Russia, and Europe
that the [Iranian] regime is dangerous and untrustworthy. At that point it will
be much easier to impose the economic sanctions that will scare the
Iranians into better behavior.”

Like talking to the North Koreans?

The foreign policy
realists are no longer realistic. The United States is in a tenuous
position because many of the other major powers (France, Germany,
Russia, and China) are ambivalent or antagonistic to free markets and
free peoples. They are more than happy to deal with threats to global
stability such as Saddam Hussein,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong Il for the sake of short-term gains.

At
this point, the press seem to be following the same series of blunders
that led Judith Miller to jail over unclassified information. They
think they have a way to embarass the administration and pay no
attention to the potential effects of their proposed solutions.