Lindsey Graham took to the airwaves yesterday to answer the
what we know now question himself. He turns in an effort that manages to match Jeb Bush's half-week debacle
in a single brief appearance.
"If I knew then what I know now, a land invasion may not have been the right answer," Graham told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room," detailing the record of abuse and rogue behavior by Saddam Hussein. "He had a lot to do with destabilizing the region."
Graham later said he would have "kept the pressure to get rid of Saddam," though he did not detail what that would mean.
Would he invaded, knowing that all the so-called "intelligence" was bunk? He might have. He might not have. He would have done it
differently, perhaps using fewer troops and more weaponized Roombas, but he's not telling. The mark of a very serious politician is that when someone asks you a question about which choice you would have made in a matter of utmost national importance, you answer "all of them."
"At the end of the day, I blame President Obama for the mess in Iraq and Syria, not President Bush," Graham said.
Another well-worn conservative trope. This one requires you to believe that Iraq was going Just Peachy when George W. Bush left office, and that a precipitous withdrawal by the next president is the reason for all our troubles today. It more conspicuously requires you to forget that the troop withdrawal plans were negotiated by the Bush administration, and that straying from the Bush-crafted, Iraq-demanded negotiated withdrawal would have amounted to an illegal occupation.
Graham says what we need now is 10,000 troops in Iraq. These would be military advisers, training the Iraqi army to stop losing so badly to a Mad Maxian force of other nations' rejects. Otherwise we'll all die.
"It will take us thousands of American soldiers over there to protect millions of us back here at home," the South Carolina Republican added.
So that's what the "serious" Republican foreign policy looks like. You'll note it doesn't look any different than the "un-serious" foreign policy; this, I presume, speaks for itself.
And again, as an ongoing reminder, what we know now is itself a dodge. We knew at the time that the intelligence being used to promote the war was flawed or simply fictional. Those pushing for war didn't care.
