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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (62824)	6/10/2005 12:14:28 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Respond to of 81568

No, I am not. But at least I know that I don't know. That is why I listen to people more knowledgeable than me. Here is an excerpt from the "left-wing" American Conservative on saying how correct General Shinseki was and how wrong Chickenhawk Wolfowitz was, regarding Iraq : "The clash between Shinseki and Wolfowitz received considerable media coverage. For some, it lives on as emblematic of the arrogance and over-confidence attributed to the Bush administration on the eve of war. But the full significance of this civil-military confrontation remains unappreciated. For Shinseki, an honorable soldier with few intellectual pretensions, was also in his own way the embodiment of specific forces, very much at odds with those that Wolfowitz had championed. Although couching his critique in green-eyeshade, bean-counting terms, the general set out to subvert the very project that represented the deputy defense secretary’s life’s work. The administration, Shinseki told members of Congress, was badly underestimating the number of troops that pacifying Iraq was likely to require. Given that the requisite additional troops simply did not exist, Shinseki was implicitly arguing that the U.S. armed services were inadequate for the enterprise. Further, he was implying that invasion was likely to produce something other than a crisp, tidy decision; from a soldier’s viewpoint, a display of precision warfare was not likely to settle the matter. “Liberation” would leave loose ends. Unexpected and costly complications would abound. In effect, Shinseki was offering a last-ditch defense of the military tradition that Wolfowitz was intent on destroying, a tradition that saw armies as fragile, that sought to husband military power, and that classified force as an option of last resort. The risks of action, Shinseki was suggesting, were far, far greater than the advocates for war had let on. Shinseki’s critique elicited an immediate retaliatory response. One could safely ignore the complaints of liberal Democrats or the New York Times, not to mention those coming from a largely inchoate antiwar movement. But if the brass openly opposed the war, they could halt the march on Baghdad even before it began. Besides, how could Shinseki dare even to raise the question of an occupation? Wolfowitz was already on the record as declaring that the United States was “committed to liberating the people of Iraq, not to becoming an occupation force.” Shinseki had to be discredited then and there, lest the opportunity to validate the new American way of war be lost forever. ....Wolfowitz responded... caustically dismissing the general’s estimate as “wildly off the mark.” For his dissent, Shinseki paid dearly. Publicly rebuked and immediately marginalized, he soon retired, his fate an object lesson for other senior military professionals."