[quote=gandalf]surveyor, I don’t know about the “bomb that hit Pearl Harbor”. I find it really hard to believe a graduate of Columbia (I am one), and Harvard Law (cum laude) as well as US Constitional Law professor doesn’t know the history of Pearl Harbor. Sounds to me like you’re making shit up.[/quote]
Gandalf, I apologize in advance if the facts are inconvenient to your dogma.
Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.
Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
And here’s a surprise:
[quote=gandalf]Larger point: hanging the direction of our overall Middle East foreign policy on the outcome of something as tactical and targeted as “The Surge” misses the forest for the trees.[/quote]
While the surge is not the end all be all of the foreign policy objectives, I do agree that the war on terrorism is currently being short-sighted. The war actually goes beyond the Taliban, Bin Laden, Zarqawi (you do know he’s dead, right?), Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa. The core of the war should concentrate on the ideology of islamofacism and attack based on those principles. Unfortunately neither candidate, McCain or Obama, has an inkling that this should be the preferred approach. Obama is just more obvious in his cluelessness.
