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Another Teaspoon Of Artificial Reality
Nutrasweet, Splenda, saccharine, Neosweet and Condi Rice.
Prepare for another Supersized (tm) helping, beginning with a piece in Salon. Gushing in the WaPo Style section fluffing tradition, Mark Benjamin enthuses:
The three men [Hamre, Solomon, Abshire], to their surprise, were asked to attend a meeting on Nov. 29, 2005, with Rice, who had been among the core defenders of the Bush administration's war in Iraq. At the end of that meeting, Rice agreed to the idea for the panel and pledged to take the case directly to President Bush. At Rice's urging, Bush embraced what would become the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker.
“It was remarkable that Condi Rice took the lead,” said David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, and one of four people in the November meeting, including Rice. The Iraq Study Group, he said, “happened with her going to the president.”
All well and good, and doubtlessly true. But the essential premise is the depressing Imperial City herd mentality that the Baker Commission will somehow deliver us from the Inferno of the Iraqi Pocket. And in this narrative, as started here by Benjamin, Cher Condi is the authoress, radiating that special Condi Fabulousity.
Benjamin would be more sober-minded perhaps if he knew more about Condi. Condi acting in public as one of the most ardent proponents of the Administration's AgitProp acting differently when no one is looking? Vintage. It is no accident, as our old Soviet adversaries used to say, that Condi while on the NSC staff for 41 managed to convince all factions she was one of them. Gorbachev engagers? She signalled to them she was on their team. Hard liners? Condi told them she was really secretly one of them. Classic staffer mentality, no different today.
The fundemental strut of this AgitProp meme is that the Baker Commission tastes like the real thing (actual policy making) but with less carbs and bad cholesterol from EOVP. Yet consider what Dubya is saying, blinking without irony in Hanoi of all places.
“In his first day in the capital of a country that was America’s wartime enemy during his youth, President Bush said today that the American experience in Vietnam contained lessons for the war in Iraq. Chief among them, he said, was that 'we’ll succeed unless we quit.' ” Condi also chirps in, adding her expert advice that Vietnam and Iraq are not to be compared. What does this have to do with Baker?
Our friends at Unqualified Offerings offer a sorbet to clear off the bitter aftertaste of Benjamin's serving, citing this item from the Guardian:
President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make “a last big push” to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations.
Mr Bush’s refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker, the sources said.
What has been accomplished by Condi's “end run” to Dubya celebrated by Benjamin? Beyond announcing it in the hopes (now revealed as misplaced) of papering over the 2006 elections? Unqualified Offerings' frankly much needed corrective rebuts the rising chorus heralding the Baker report.
In the end, Global Paradigms notes that Baker may only nudge the Administration into a process-related path such as another Madrid type conference and continued conversations that Baker began in October 2006 with Syria and Iran. Neither see any indication that Dubya is prepared to move off his intrasingent refusal to reconsider the conceptual foundations of his war. We agree. Benjamin's enthusiams in Salon for Cher Condi are in the end likey overwrought. Her “end run” to Dubya is much like a harried waiter who pours some more sweetner on a dessert before slapping it down on the table. It may mask but can never change the flawed recipe.
Tags:
Baker,
Iraq,
Condi
Posted in General Aktion
at 20:55 on Friday 17 November
by DrLeoStrauss
Comments
What's the overrated phrase Bush uses? Benjamin is giving credit for Condi getting a group of Presidential allies and sympathizers to meet and issue a report? That's an incredibly low standard - There has been no accomlishment - what is praising? Forming a study group?
“It was remarkable that Condi Rice took the lead,” said David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, and one of four people in the November meeting, including Rice. The Iraq Study Group, he said, “happened with her going to the president.”
This is just underwhelming - the level of enthusiasm and praise is so high - but for something so run of the mill and political. Notice the bias - the formation of the Iraq Study Group is presumed to be an end all its own - not merely a means to an end.
If President Bush really wanted to think about the lessons of Vietnam, he should begin by asking himself why he tried so hard to go to Vietnam when he was young. Whether is was fear or lack or concern or whatever, on a certain level - he probably didn't consider it worth risking his own life for - Why is Iraq worth other risking their lives? Would the President join up if he were young. Many doubt that - if the stakes were as clear as he pretends, he would not have to manufacture urgency and a sense of crisis. But if he keeps pushing, he'll get that crisis afterall.
Meant to say why he tried so hard to avoid going. Not to press that issue - but it's something the President should reflect upon privately. Most normal people would.
Bush is prett cavalier about Vietnam - as are his magazine allies. Steyn thought nothing about repeating a mock about Cleland's war wounds - pushing a falsehood that he gained his medals by an accident, when he actually gained them at Khe Shan.
Why is this? Why the simultaneous desire to discredit wounded vets - quite maliciously - while seeking to re-frame Vietnam on behalf of someone like Dubya, whom they privately know to be unworthy? This cynicism has a deep cost. It means - endless fake debates. The Bush side believes in their own Macro argument, but never their own Micro argument - There's a gap.
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What's the overrated phrase Bush uses? Benjamin is giving credit for Condi getting a group of Presidential allies and sympathizers to meet and issue a report? That's an incredibly low standard - There has been no accomlishment - what is praising? Forming a study group?