William Kristol’s Article: An Exercise in Idiocy

If one wants to observe partisan creatures in their functional element, all one needs to do is watch Fox News and observe William Kristol attempt to stretch arguments beyond the point of common sense. And as usual, he has not disappointed in his latest article afflicted upon us via the Weekly Standard. Before even considering the arguments he makes, the fundamental truths are as follows: the decision to invade Iraq was a colossal blunder – it has strengthened Iran, inflamed anti-West sentiment in the Middle East and Muslim world like never before and is one of the empiric factors responsible for the present turmoil the global economy is going through. Secondly, the operational mechanism of any robust legal system is sufficient to deal any sort of delinquency, be it pedophilia or terrorism. I would expand on these points subsequently.

Most of the clowns who helped to enable the unholy clusterfuckery in Iraq have yet to admit they made a serious error. Democrats like Hillary Clinton who were bamboozled into it have yet to apologise, but the situation facing people in this class is understandable; their hesitation is generally purely political. The Neo-conservative war mongers, on the other hand, are the ones that amaze me. During the run up to the war, one didn’t even need to have access to classified intelligence reports to simply get the sense that by any conceivable standard, the war was a bad idea. Tony Blair still defends this decision till today. Understandably, he was Prime Minister. Mr. Kristol, though, was/is nothing but a newspaper man who spends his time hitting away at keyboards, attempting to shove what he believes to be right down peoples’ throats.  The problem is he is almost always wrong. He was when he claimed Barack Obama has been nodding his head to some despicable sermon and he is wrong in this case. He has been wrong from the start. I find it hard to understand why he would not admit that the decision to invade Iraq was hair-brained. Until he does that, he will have no credibility on these matters, and his commentary will always be attributable to the senseless blather of a partisan conservative idiot.

When Kristol says this:

[a]s for the war in Iraq, well ... there Bush did find another way. In January 2007, he changed commanders and strategy. The new strategy, backed by a surge of troops, worked. Violence is way down, political reconciliation is proceeding, the additional troops are almost all back home--and progress has exceeded the hopes even of those who strongly supported the surge. Danzig is well aware that Obama's stated policy would snatch defeat in Iraq out of the jaws of victory.

he proves he one, either has no understanding of foreign affairs, or two, is disingenuous. The reality is that the overall strategy, if one can call it that, being pursued by the Bush administration from the start is neither here nor there. It is senseless. The only thing that is clear from the recent back and forth we have witnessed between the Bush administration and the Maliki government is that America, no the Bush government, wants to put its foot in Iraq. Hence, the attempt to install so many bases there. Iraq is not where the war against terrorism is, as Kristol would like to have us believe. If we are serious about fighting terrorism and killing terrorist murderers, we need to be focusing on the North West Pakistan. Of course, this is not to suggest there are no elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq, but the truth is they were not there prior to the painfully unintelligent decision to go to war with a country that had nothing to do with terrorism as we know it. An unintelligent decision that wholeheartedly embraced by William Kristol.

Thus, that the surge has led to a reduction in violence is not the issue. While that is heart-warming in itself, it merely goes to reiterate the mathematical certainty that if you send a collection of better trained and effective number of soldiers to quell a situation, they will successfully do so. What is lacking at this point is – and has always been lacking – is the execution of what one can refer to as a sensible general strategy. What next? How do you move forward? How does one end the unnecessary distraction that is Iraq to focus on Afghanistan where 800 Taliban fighters just strolled out of jail and are busy playing footie? It is that overall strategy that Barack Obama provides, and obviously, as the only Presidential contender to oppose the idiotic invasion of Iraq, he is best suited to navigate the structural travesty in the Middle East to put America and the West back on track. This is what John McCain refers to as "defeat", but he does not particularly have the track record of being the brightest bulb in the room. Apparently, John McCain wants to continue in the direction that George Bush has taken; hence his determination to keep American forces in Iraq, as opposed to focusing on where the real terrorists are, a position that Kristol supports.

Then there is the audacious assertion that:

outside the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda has failed to launch successful attacks on Americans since 9/11. Couldn't Bush have been doing something right?

The question are: Have terrorists attacks risen exponentially around the world since Bush’s bone-headed invasion? Is Iran, a nation that may well be pursuing nuclear capability, stronger than it was before the invasion? In the event that there is a calamity which requires Western forces to be deployed to some obscure part of the world, can American soldiers be effectively harnessed? Why is Osama Bin Laden even still alive? Why is NATO unable to deal with Afghanistan presently? Why is the Taliban resurging?  That all these questions cannot be answered underscores the chronic myopia that afflicts the Bush administration, Republicans, Neo-conservative war-mongers and their apologists. That’s why they are always eager to lower the quality of the discourse to despicable levels, like blurting out brazenly stupid statements such as, "Democrats want to lose in Iraq" or as William Kristol puts it, "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

Lastly, there is nothing to be hesitant about, terrorists should be killed. This is what most people believe. At least, this is what I believe. Does this validate my toughness? Of course, not. In the event that a terrorist is not killed in battle, he must be put through the constitutionally approved mechanism obtainable. Full stop. There is no choice between maintaining a robust legal system and fighting terrorism. Any such assertion is false. I know for a fact that there exists the possibility that there might be detainees at Guantanamo who are innocent. When I was in university, a Pakistani-Brit who had just been released gave a talk at a symposium I attended and shed light into the Guantanamo situation from a very personal perspective. It is a disservice to these ones who may be innocent, and the long established universal concepts and values—like rule of law, separation of powers, etc, that we hold dear to discard such notions at the insistence of an American President who is so intellectually bankrupt and idiots who want to make up the law as we travel along this journey of humanity. The common law system, of which the American legal system is a descendant, is well capable of dealing with every form of foolishness, and one may be right to think that this unnecessary choice that the Neo-cons present is merely a mask to cover the fact that they have done some pretty bad things themselves. That there are some offences which the law is "insufficient" of prosecuting betrays the very premise on which our societies exist. It is unthinkable to even suggest this. And clearly, in writing his article, William Kristol has not done a lot of thinking.