NYT Editorial is hard hitting....

[Spazito]

using words like "unrealistically optomistic assumptions".

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/opinion/20WED1.html

The Bush administration has to commit sufficient additional resources, and, if necessary, additional troops, to prevent that. Iraqis need to see that Washington has the will and the means to get their country back on its feet. American soldiers cannot be left fearing so much for their own safety that they start treating all Iraqis as potential enemies. And international relief agencies must not be frightened away from what is now the most important American foreign policy endeavor.

snip

The upsurge of terrorism, which began earlier this month with the deadly bombing of Jordan's embassy in Baghdad, is all the more alarming because the list of potential targets seems almost limitless. As things now stand, any public building not fully surrounded by a fortified, patrolled concrete perimeter appears vulnerable.

snip

What seems clear is that those carrying out the attacks are organized and seek to thwart relief and recovery efforts. They seem intent on fanning hostility to American occupation authorities by prolonging the misery of ordinary Iraqis. Targeting the U.N. is especially chilling because it conveys a message to international organizations that they are not safe. Washington cannot let this message sink in.

To prevent that, the administration will have to radically rethink its approach to postwar Iraq. Unrealistically optimistic assumptions have led the White House to severely underestimate troop and spending requirements and wrongly dismiss the need for more international help through the U.N.

more

[revcarol]

1. They don't even admit that the UN

could have been targeted because Americans were supposed to have been there at that time.

Hard-hitting my ***. Just the repug line. We gotta do everything by ourselves, we gotta do everything militarily, we'll let the UN and those other do-good agencies in but not to DO anything-just to say we didn't keep them out...

[KoKo]

3. The unfortunate thing is that an editorial like this makes Shrub just dig

in his heels all the more to prove that what they are suggesting isn't true. It's not just Shrub it's the whole PNAC group who are determined that bringing in the UN will be admitting that the organization they have hated since it's founding and have done everything to split apart is the correct one to deal with the problems in Iraq. They NEVER admit they are wrong about anything, so no matter how many editorials are written, they will do it their way until the bitter end whatever that end is.

[Jacobin]

sigh......its deja vu

Same tired claptrap that was used to justify staying in Vietnam.

The "journalists" are really getting lazy. All they have to do now to write a "story" is go to archives and dust off all the "reasons" we had to escalate the Vietnam war and with just a few more troops, we would win. No wait, now we must bomb cambodia and loas and then we can win. No let's bomb North Vietnam, that'll do the trick.

This is disgusting.

[lanlady]

2. wishful thinking, NYT

There are a lot of "gotta do this, gotta do thats" in this editorial. All good points but none of it will happen because it would require the Busheviks to admit to error and miscalculations. It would require accountability and that is ANATHEMA to the BFEE.

[Kbowe]

4. When you OCCUPY you are responsible.

This is a lesson that only the Brits seem to have learned...and well.
Israel and the US will have to learn for themselves.

[Jacobin]

5. Um, NOBODY has successfully occupied a M.E. country for any

length of time, viz:
Alexander the Great
Genghis Kahn
King Richard the Lion Heart
Napoleon Bonaparte
The British in the late 19th Century.

It ain't a matter of "doing it right". It's a matter of you can't win a guerilla war. See: Vietnam.

This is going to be another disaster. Already is, but it will get worse until we are finally run out during some future administration.

[Tracer]

6. Bunker Mentality?

It's already there.

Happened to see Tom Friedman on the NewsHour last night. Although my opinion of Tom has gone down sharply in the past year, he was in Iraq last week and said that they are building "a wall that looks exactly like the Israeli wall" around the CPA headquarters. He said "it looks like it was designed by the same architect".

[RichM]

7. Not "hard hitting" at all - questions NONE of the basic assumptions

underlying the whole Iraq project.

The article's title uses the word "Mission." It talks about the US "reconstruction efforts." It says "Iraqis need to see that Washington has the will and the means to get their country back on its feet."

All this stuff builds up the Big Lie that the Iraq occupation is about "helping" Iraq; that the purpose is noble & altruistic. This is meant to suppress from public consciousness the troubling thought that the Iraq invasion is really about LOOTING Iraq, & establishing US control there.

This is standard-issue US propaganda, carried through the mouthpiece of the NYT. "We" are always noble, "our" missions always beneficent.

This article is scarcely a wrist-slap. While tut-tutting about the details of how much money & troops the Busheviks have chosen to deploy on the occupation, the Times is tacitly supporting ALL the underlying assumptions of the invasion & occupation.

[Spazito]

8. Your point re "mission"....

is right on and I had missed that. I posted the article primarily because CNN had referred to the "radical rethink" aspect in covering the various newspaper coverage, all of them negative in tone regarding US quagmire.

[HFishbine]

9. Two Choices

Ony two choices for the cabal (if you exclude going down in flames):

1) Make nice with the U.N. and internationalize administration and peace-keeping in Iraq.

2) Bring back the draft.