Fiddling While Baghdad Burns
Side thought, before getting to the current problems inside Iraq:
I can’t help but comment on former President Ford’s Friday support of Rumsfeld against his military critics. Looking for champions to their cause, Rummy, Cheney and Bush no doubt tried to find the ‘latest and greatest.’ They came up empty. Beating the bushes (oops) all the way back through Dad and Reagan, nary a voice could be found this side of the discredited Nixon administration. 84 year-old Melvin Laird and 92 year-old Jerry Ford are appropriate bookends for Donald Rumsfeld, swinging in the wind.
Leaving that, I suppose it’s unfair to criticize the democratic experiment in Iraq for not getting its shit together over four and a half months while their country skewers itself on the twin swords of Shiite-Sunni rivalry. But then maybe not. Maybe Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad needs to rub their nose in it. What we’re seeing unfold isn’t unexpected, but it’s demoralizing and merely proves that there’s no early way out without…