Published on May 18, 2004 by Bruce Fein | Permalink
The United States neglected serious planning for governing post-Saddam Iraq. A steep price has been paid. The rule of law, democracy, and secularism are highly doubtful; and, the Iraqi people have turned from United States cheerleaders into sullen critics or insurgent sympathizers.
Published on May 11, 2004 by Bruce Fein | Permalink
Time is out of joint.
The miniscule percentage of American soldiers and officers implicated in prisoner and detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere confront charges, trials and punishment that earmark the rule of law. That incriminating photographs and videos will be manipulated to aid the enemy in the Arab and Muslim worlds has been no deterrent. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld elaborated last Friday before Congress: “We know what the terrorists will do. We know they will try to exploit all that is bad and try to obscure all that is good. That’s their nature, and that’s the nature of those who think they can kill innocent men, women and children to gratify their own cruel will to power…”
Published on May 4, 2004 by Bruce Fein | Permalink
As was said of Napoleon’s assassination of the Duc d’Enghein, President George W. Bush’s inanely conducted effort to summon a secular democratic Iraq into being is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. His latest follies unwittingly aid the enemy. The President should publicly confess his monumental miscalculations over post-Saddam Iraq, arrange for an orderly withdrawal of America’s military presence, and accept the inescapable Iraqi convulsions that will follow as less horrific than would be additional aimless American casualties. As the Vietnam war taught, victory is hopeless without a discernable and plausible North star to inform military operations.