When it was announced that the New York Times had hired William Kristol to peddle his neocon fantasies to a wider audience, editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal defended the move saying:
The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?
Leaving aside the fact that Kristol is respected only within the walls of the White House, Fox News and the like, one wonders if it occured to Mr. Rosenthal that that "intolerance" isn't because of Kristol's conservatism, but his record. That Kristol's beating of the drum for war with Iraq, writing nearly 30 columns advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the year between September 11th and the AUMF vote, with claims of WMD, anthrax attacks in the U.S. and of course, Iraq's involvement in September 11th itself, may have caused that mistrust. And that the nearly five years of claims of "turning points," "pivotal moments," and "happy days," in Iraq make it impossible to take his intellect seriously. Or, we're intolerant.
And now, in his second effort as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol gives a scolding to Democrats for refusing to celebrate the latest impending victory in Iraq.
The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. [...]
Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?
No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq
Of course Kristol doesn't say that June was a period where American casualties were at their highest levels of the war, making that 60 percent decrease a lot less impressive, and naturally Kristol failed to mention that:
The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed. [...]
For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed.
...because saying that 19,509 people were killed would make it harder to spin his fairy tale. And as Clinton and Obama have both pointed out, the purpose of the surge was to reduce the violence so political reconciliation could occur. Aha, says Kristol:
And now Iraq’s Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law — one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground by harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation. They are being deprived of even that talking point.
And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of ... George W. Bush. The horror!
But if Kristol would have bothered to read the pages of his new employer, he would have known that:
A day after the Iraqi Parliament passed legislation billed as the first significant political step forward in Iraq after months of deadlock, there were troubling questions — and troubling silences — about the measure’s actual effects. [...]
But the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.
And a day afterward, officials were still putting off questions about it.
It seems that the "harping" can continue. And how is the rest of Bush's "not open-ended" commitment working out, Bill? Last January when Bush announced his escalation, he said that the Iraqi government would be responsible for security throughout Iraq by November, that oil revenue sharing would be enacted, and that provincial elections would be held in 2007. That's zero for four in key benchmarks for success in Iraq. Which makes William Kristol wrong. Again.