Former Senator
Thomas Eagleton (D-Missouri, 1968-1987), writes in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the hubris of the Bush regime has left us in a "damned-if-we-leave, damned-if-we-stay" situation:
What do we do? Do we repeat what happened when we finally withdrew from Vietnam? Do we pull out on our own? "We are not ready," President Nguyen Van Thieu begged us. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger crossed their fingers and hoped for the best but knew the chances that the Thieu regime could survive were, to say the least, thin.
More from Senator Eagleton, and more pundits below, including:
- Dr. William Hazel Jr., warns against cutting Medicare
- Miami's Andres Oppenheimer on Bush's antagonist in Argentinia (it's not Hugo)
- Today's cartoon
Cross-posted at The Daily Pulse
Eagleton, continued:
We cannot repeat that subterfuge with Iraq. We have made Iraq a vital American interest in a region of geopolitical importance, not least because of its supply of oil. So any withdrawal from Iraq will not be total; a residual force will remain. Further, more U.S. forces could well be activated if needed. Having turned Iraq into the world's largest base for terrorists, we are stuck there. As to threats posed by Syria or Iran, the fact is that the United States, for now at least, has practically no capability to engage in another land war.
Our professional military people have long memories. They know the history of Vietnam. America's officer corps knows all too well and will not forget that General Tommy Franks planned an invasion with the smallest force necessary to win the war quickly, which has since left Iraq on the brink of total chaos. Even in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam, we had too few troops to protect the borders or secure the ammo dumps, oil pipelines, government offices and much much more.
[...]
The clearest lesson from Iraq is that we are incapable of imposing democracy by the use of force. We have not been able to translate military victory into political success. Rumsfeld and Cheney imagined well-wishers strewing flowers before our troops after a victorious war overthrowing Saddam. The "shock and awe" turned out to be theirs and ours; we were totally unprepared for what has come after our quick military victory.
[...]
From here on, any president will have to level with the American people before going to war. No more foreign misadventures.
The Powell Doctrine will re-emerge: Should intervention be our only genuine alternative, we will use massive force to win the war and perserve the peace of victory. And we must remember: Overwhelming military power cannot translate into immediate sovereign democratic authority.
Debunking the GOP's blame "the previous administration" lies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman does a stellar job tearing down the GOP's current defense in the renewed debate on how BushCo sold the Iraq War:
Defenders of the administration point out that before the war, most of Washington -- and most foreign intelligence agencies -- believed that Saddam Hussein retained at least some biological and chemical weapons.
That much is true. Even the Clinton administration believed that Saddam still possessed at least some weapons of mass destruction.
Unfortunately, to hype its case for war, the Bush administration pushed beyond those widely accepted facts to make three other assertions that were outright deceptive.
First, it argued that Saddam's WMD caches posed a direct danger to our safety and could perhaps be delivered to U.S. shores by "unmanned aerial devices" that later proved as real as a Martian death ray.
The Clinton administration did not believe that. The CIA did not believe that, not until its arm was twisted. And until it needed an excuse for invading, the Bush administration itself did not believe that Iraq posed such a threat.
In fact, when asked in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell twice stated that Saddam posed little danger. "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction," Powell said. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
I'll sum up Bookman's other two main points: Bush's team also greatly exaggerated the nuclear threat, and entirely fabricated a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. But please jump and read the column. Useful talking points on the most important argument in the blogosphere or at the cafe table.
Stop Congress from cutting Medicare
Dr. William Hazel Jr., Virginia surgeon and trustee of the AMA, offers a special commentary to the Des Moines Register and sounds an alarm against the proposed 26% cut in Medicare over the next six years:
In an American Medical Association survey, 38 percent of physicians said they would decrease the number of new Medicare patients they accept if the cuts go forward. Among physicians who serve patients in rural areas, 34 percent said they would have to discontinue rural outreach services.
Physicians, who are first and foremost healers, make such decisions with reluctance. But they are also small business owners, and the economic reality of continued payment cuts is untenable. While cutting Medicare payments, the government conservatively estimates that the cost of caring for patients will increase 15 percent. No business can survive by providing products or services at a loss.
Bush takes on recovering drug addict soccer jock
The media are talking up the encounter at the Summit of the Americas between Bush and Chavez, but the Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer says Bush's real antagonist will be a recovering drug addict-ex-soccer jock-TV host, aka Maradona:
Maradona? Yes, you read well: Diego Armando Maradona, the internationally known former soccer star, who is now this country's most popular TV talk-show host and by most measures Argentina's most admired public figure.
The soccer legend, who has been treated for drug addiction in Cuba for the past five years, has become a zealous follower of Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro. Maradona announced earlier this week from Havana that he will lead a massive ''March of the Peoples'' against Bush at the start of the summit here Friday.
58% of Argentines oppose Bush's visit, according to a poll by a leftist paper. This is a striking swing from a nation that five to ten years ago admired the U.S. above all other nations. But that was before the 2001 financial collapse that most Argentines, rightly or wrongly, blame on U.S. economic and trade policies.
Now, after Iraq and Katrina, they're instead of cheering U.S. Presidents, they're loving thug-dictators like Castro.
Today's cartoon
From Dana Summers at the Orlando Sentinel: