Good Op-Eds
During my reading today I came across a couple of great pieces. The first is on the sliding goal posts for victory in Iraq titled “What Does Bush Mean by ‘Victory in Iraq’?” A quick excerpt:
Bush and others have heralded much progress in the past year, as the troop surge went into effect and as Gen. David Petraeus devised new tactics based on counterinsurgency principles. Casualties have gone down, in some areas dramatically. The Iraqi army and police have grown in size.
However, by the Bush administration’s own standards of success, laid out in the president’s speech and the NSC’s strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
The second article is by the ever amazing Matt Tiabbi, Generation Squeeb is a great article on the humiliating state of the American electorate. Some good points:
We’re getting to be the same kind of people. We can’t focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we’re constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense — while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we… shit, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m just tired of this tone that’s always out there when these scandals break, like we can’t fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer! — when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we’ll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously. God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem.
[...] Squeeb Written by Chris Schaffer on March 28, 2008 – 9:32 am – My friend Parallax has once again found internet gold for me to bring to you! This time in the form of an article from [...]
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