Via Kevin Drum:
America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment. If a guy is stupid, it makes a big difference.
If a retired general is saying that, things must be bad. More on the flip...
That quote, by Gen. Tony McPeak (retired) Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, was the last line in a really, really depressing roundtable in the latest Rolling Stone. There are some luminaries on the panel, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, Bob Graham, Juan Cole and other, equally stellar names. Let's say they are not too optimistic about our prospects in the Middle East in the future. What is the bottom line? Three scenarios:
BEST-CASE SCENARIO
CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ AND A STRONGER AL QAEDA
MOST LIKELY SCENARIO
YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND WAR WITH IRAN
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
WORLD WAR III
Did you get that? A panel of the leading experts on foreign policy say that the best we can get out of Iraq now is a civil war and a stronger al-Qaeda. In fact, Michael Scheur, former chief of the CIA Bin Ladin unit comments about this best case scenario:
Scheuer: No matter what happens now, the Islamists will have beaten both of the superpowers -- first the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and now the United States in the heart of Islam. The impact of that in Islamic civilization is going to be enormous. We have made bin Laden a prophet: His organizing concept for Al Qaeda was "The Russians are a lot tougher than the Americans. If we can beat the Russians, then we can eventually beat the Americans." Even more important, Al Qaeda will have contiguous territory on the Arab peninsula to attack from.
This is the BEST case scenario, folks! I urge you to click over to the
round table and read while I go and bang my head against a wall to make myself feel better.