If Only...

This is a more recent trip down memory lane--last year, I went to a Kerry rally here in Red Stick, and managed to quickly proffer my own advice to the then and present Senator--there's a post in my archives--IIRC, from May 2004, but I don't feel like looking it up, and don't expect either of y'all--ok, any of the five of y'all (this blog goes for quality, as opposed to quantity of readers--to look it up)...anyway, I told the Senator to emphasize "competence" as a campaign theme...which I don't think he ever did...and...

OK, I'm not THAT egotistical. But, here's Bob Herbert concluding an excellent editorial with more or less the same message:

The latest fantasy out of Washington is that American-trained Iraqi forces will ultimately be able to do what the American forces have not: defeat the insurgency and pacify Iraq.

"We've learned that Iraqis are courageous and that they need additional skills," said Mr. Bush in his television address. "And that is why a major part of our mission is to train them so they can do the fighting, and then our troops can come home."

Don't hold your breath. This is another example of the administration's inability to distinguish between a strategy and a wish.

Whether one agreed with the launch of this war or not - and I did not - the troops doing the fighting deserve to be guided by leaders in Washington who are at least minimally competent at waging war. That has not been the case, which is why we can expect to remain stuck in this tragic quagmire for the foreseeable future.

I keep seeing debates about the capability of Iraqi forces (and I think you know what side I'm on). What's wrong with a debate about the capability of our civilian leadership? (For the record--if the costs of this war weren't so tragic, I'd say that Bush and the Iraqi forces deserve each other).