John, it appears criticizing Josh gets under your skin or something. So you disagree with my disagreement, fine. Not surprising given your pov. :)
Marshall offers almost no evidence to support his positions. Most of his blogs are complete speculation biased toward a deep seated hatred of any position which places the administration in a positive light. He's been repeatedly wrong in regard to his predictions of the past year, beginning with Afghanistan and now Iraq.
It's obvious, from the degree of consistency and inflammatory language his uses, that his posts are purely motivated by politics. Therefore, he offers little value in regard to analyzing foreign affairs strategies.
Past performance is no guarantee of future stumbling and bumbling, but in this case I think we can make an exception for Josh. :)
In regard to your analysis,
So you wish to assert a truth different from an assumption Marshall makes. That's fine. If you wish, however, to argue that your assertion is superior to his assumption, you will have to bring forward some evidence, argumentation.
I asserted that he simply used inflammatory statements and offered no support whatsoever to back it up. To call the situation in Iraq *chaos* is extreme. As I said, there is a struggle going on, a struggle moving in the direction of democracy and peace. My evidence for that is the relative peace in 90% of the country. The reports of reconstruction, the freedom to protest and hold marches, the hiring of tens of thousands of Iraqi police, the appointment of a ruling council made up of a cross section of the population, the opening of shops, bazaars, food and water available to the people and on and on. To describe the situation in Iraq as *chaos* is extreme and simplistic. Your denial of this, and effort to defend Josh and his assumptions places you in bed with him.
I don't have time to respond in depth to the rest of your post, however, the assumptions you make are just simply wrong. Josh is an extreme leftist, sort of a cross between that cynical N.Y. Times opinion writer you so love, Maureen Dowd and that grayed haired CNN talking head guy who writes occasionally. (sorry can't remember his name).
Serious foreign policy analysis is not what they offer. They offer political mudslinging and that's about it. |
