(This is actually May of 2005 entry. It's jus tmore true today, as Cheney says that the only way to lose in Iraq is to quit)
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/05/permanent_war_f.php*******************
No, "Operation Flypaper," the beautiful dream of the Bush administration as vouchsafed to Andrew Sullivan, has proven if anything too successful, drawing in more foreign terrorists than the U.S. knows what to do with. Little did Bush know when he boasted, "Bring 'em on," that they would bring so many.
Yet when I skim the sites of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, less and less is written about the unfolding debacle. It's the oil-for-food scandal that arouses them as the unlikely figure of Paul Volcker becomes their new bete noire. They seem to be adopting the Averted Gaze of the exclusive fraternity known as the Fuckwit 500. Perhaps they just hope all this bother will just go away if they steady their minds in other directions and thumb their Blackberries.
****************
As William Lind writes today, it isn't unthinkable, though our media and political culture assume otherwise, that the U.S. may be poised to add another one to the loss column. It's not as if we possess some magic immunity.
"Why do our senior military leaders put out this 'we can't be beaten' bilge? Because they are chosen for their willingness to tell the politicians whatever they want to hear. A larger question is, why do the American press and public buy it? The answer, I fear, is 'American exceptionalism' the belief that history's laws do not apply to America. Unfortunately, American exceptionalism follows Spanish exceptionalism, French exceptionalism, Austrian exceptionalism, German exceptionalism and Soviet exceptionalism.
"Reality tells us that the same rules apply to all. When a country adopts a wildly adventuristic military policy, as we have done since the Cold War ended, it gets beaten. The U.S. military will eventually get beaten, too."
Beaten again, that is.
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