Kristol's first Time column contradicted by Time's own reporting
Several points in Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol's column for the January 15 edition of Time, his first since being hired by the magazine as a "part-time columnist," were contradicted by Time's cover story in the same issue on President Bush's reported plans to send 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.
In his column, Kristol backed the "new strategy for victory" in Iraq that has been advocated by retired Gen. Jack Keane and American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan. According to Kristol:
There has been some sniping at the Keane-Kagan plan. But what is striking is that so few of the critics actually go to the trouble of analyzing it -- or proposing a substitute.
In fact, Time's cover story, titled "What a Surge Really Means," offered a detailed analysis of Bush's reported plans for a "surge" of 20,000 troops in Iraq. The article specifically noted that Keane and Kagan's plan is the basis for the White House's actions:
The surge belongs to the neocons and in particular to Frederick Kagan, who taught military history at West Point for a decade and today works out of the American Enterprise Institute as a military analyst. Kagan argued for a surge last fall in the pages of the Weekly Standard, the neocons' house organ, after the military's previous surge, Operation Forward Together, failed in late October. Kagan turned to former Army Vice Chief of Staff Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who still has street cred at the Pentagon, to help flesh out the plan and then sell it to the White House.
Kristol wrote of Keane and Kagan's plan:
And they [the American people] would be right to wonder -- because we don't need to accept defeat in Iraq. Former Army Vice Chief of Staff General Jack Keane and military expert Frederick Kagan, working with other experienced military and civilian planners, have laid out a new strategy for victory, supported by a sustained and substantial (but feasible) troop increase. That plan (available at aei.org reverses the debilitating Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey emphasis on a "light footprint" for the U.S. military and on drawing down American troops as soon as possible. Keane-Kagan follows classic counterinsurgency doctrine by sending enough troops to provide security for the Iraqi people, especially in Baghdad, now the center of gravity of the conflict. With security established, training of the Iraqi army and political reconciliation can proceed. This plan is likely to be the basis for the new way forward soon to be announced by the Bush Administration.
Kristol offered no support for his claim that the troop increase is "feasible." Time's cover story, however, quoted Gen. John Abizaid, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Central Command, saying that a troop increase of the size and duration envisioned by Keane and Kagan (and Kristol) is not feasible:
Outgoing Centcom boss John Abizaid told a Senate panel in November that the U.S. "can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect." But he added that "the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps." Surge proponents quietly cheered the recent announcement that Abizaid is retiring. They believe that Abizaid and many of the Army's other top generals are locked in a post-Vietnam mentality that has them worrying more about the recruitment and retention required for an all-volunteer force than about fighting and winning wars.
Kristol also claimed:
Based on what I've been able to learn about the situation on the ground, and based on conversations with soldiers and experts, I think a new strategy for victory supported by additional forces has a good chance of success. If others think the situation hopeless, they should make the case for withdrawal -- and presumably for withdrawal sooner rather than later. They should also describe what they think would happen during, and after, our withdrawal -- and why that outcome is preferable to trying for victory. The critics tend to say, "It's too late -- it won't work -- let's leave." Their feelings of disappointment and impatience are understandable. But those sentiments are not a responsible basis for policy.
Kristol gave no indication as to why he thinks Keane and Kagan's plan "has a good chance of success." Time, however, noted that some do not share Kristol's optimism -- such as a Bush administration official. According to Time:
So far, the [national security adviser Stephen] Hadley-run hunt for a new military and diplomatic approach has earned mediocre marks from inside and outside the White House. Wider-ranging alternatives were not explored in any depth, said several foreign policy experts who met with Hadley in December, and talks with Iran and Syria were ruled out of the question. A dismayed Administration official who has generally been an optimist about Iraq described the process as chaotic. "None of this," he predicted of the surge and its coming rollout, "is going to work."
As Media Matters for America noted , Kristol also attacked several Bush administration "critics" in his Time column without naming, quoting, or in any way identifying a single one.
take a lesson from this all you skimmers
if a columnist gets away with contradicting the headlines of the same feaking issue. Of course, the headline could totally be the guilty party here. They should take that back.
I'm so sick of Kristol I could vomit blood.
this is the all new and improved and revised for the fiftieth time strategy. this one, unlike all those others kristol predicted would work, this one is actually going to work.
Kristol has a pretty solid record of being wrong, doesn't he?
Real pisser he keeps getting work, and paid pretty well , I bet.Wish I could do that, I'm right a good percentage of the time at work, and just barely feel like I'm hanging onto my job sometimes.
Probably hard to fire Kristol, with that sad clown, half-smiling, half-crying expression of his.
It amazes me to see this kind of writing taken seriously:
If others think the situation hopeless, they should make the case for withdrawal -- and presumably for withdrawal sooner rather than later. They should also describe what they think would happen during, and after, our withdrawal -- and why that outcome is preferable to trying for victory.
The onus isn't on those who would advocate withdrawal. The onus is on those who claim that "victory" is possible. What a hollow term, victory. Kristol seems to define victory as
With security established (only in Baghdad, apparently), training of the Iraqi army and political reconciliation can proceed.
So, it would seem we would need to leave troops in place for several years. It sounds like Baghdad would have to be a police state, something like Northern Ireland with soldiers on every corner and endless checkpoints and pillboxes. Of course, that type of situation worked for the English. Why the IRA gave up within weeks, didn't they?
There never was a military solution to had in Iraq. There is not a military solution now. America has become like the apocryphal monkey with its hand in the jar. We won't let go of that orange until we pull it out, even if the mouth of the jar is far too small. Now, maybe if we just put both hands inside and pull harder.....
Their mailbox was full on Sunday so you guys must have done an awesome job generating a response!
___________________________________ read Kristol's essay with amazement. Truly, the self-delusional quality of the neocon pro-war cadre----a group growing smaller and obviously, more defensive, by the minute----knows no bounds.
Kristol extols the virtue of the "fair and just" legal proceedings against Saddam Hussein by a hastily installed US puppet government. This "trial", subsequent verdict and execution were widely regarded as a protracted farce by every true democracy on earth---except, apparently, in the fantasyland inhabited by Bill Kristol, the White House and their pals. A trial in which all the key participants had their lives threatened on a regular basis---indeed, one in which three of the defense attorneys were murdered and the defendant himself was ultimately banished from the proceedings----can hardly be hailed as a triumph of "democracy" or "justice." We now know that the grim outcome, a primitive hanging by bitter partisans with overtones of sadism and humiliation, was hardly something to celebrate.
Yet bizarrely, to Kristol this deplorable result is "proof" that the entire debacle in Iraq is somehow worthwhile. As if the death of Hussein-----himself an enemy of religious extremists and terrorists-----were some marker of progress in a struggle against religious extremism and wanton terror.
This is the kind of dizzy illogic and reality-challenged jingoism that has become a signature feature of the ever-dwindling cadre of Iraq war supporters. The US presence in Iraq has done nothing to stem terror, either in Iraq or elsewhere----if anything, the ranks of the terrorists have grown since our invasion, a fact which our own CIA freely admits. But perhaps the White House is not on speaking terms with them, either?
In reality (something to which Kristol, Bush et al are obviously allergic) the fall of Saddam has given aid and succor to the most violent religious extremists in the Mideast, building the profile of brutal Shi'ites and allies of the regime in Iran, strengthening their hand against the West.
When his own military advisers tell him that victory in Iraq is not a realistic concept, Bush simply gets rid of them. He has replaced them with brown nosing careerists who will tell him what he wants to hear---that you can throw more human cannonballs for a while into the abbatoir and somehow undo centuries of sectarian bloodshed and strife.
Kristol ultimately lapses into the same kind of hostile paranoia that defined Nixon's attitudes: namely, that any critic of the White House strategy or the war as a whole---including lifelong Republicans, five star generals, and even Bush's own friends and family---are merely snide defeatists who want George Bush to fail. To Kristol, not one opponent of this disastrous foreign policy is an honest broker; the critics of the war have mere political victory and not the welfare of the nation at heart.
It would seem to far more discerning observers that it is Bush, not his critics, who have put politics and ego ahead of the welfare of the nation. In brief, this war was a mistake and a disaster and the dilemmas confounding the mideast have no military solution. How many decades, how many dollars and how many lost lives will pass before we admit it?
Joanne G Murphy
Kristol lapses into his signature sarcasm and accuses all war critics of having one basic, venal ulterior motive: seeing Bush fail.
"Oh heaven forbid----this just might work! we can't have THAT, can we?" he huffs.
Who is he kidding? Bush's own father knows the war is a disaster---that is why he had (vainly it seems) put together the Iraq Study Group to try to inject some reality into the proceedings. The Study's two major recommendations-----gradual withdrawal of troops, combined with renewing negotiatiations with Iran and Syria----have been rejected out of hand by Junior.
Bush's stance will appeal to all of the extremists and harldiners who bitterly resent the result of the November elections and are willing to throw democracy over the side in the interest of a lost vision of American cultural supremacy and military might. These folks are dangerously deluded and we need to oust them by whatever means necessary, as soon as possible.
Its Kristols projection when he says
Kristol lapses into his signature sarcasm and accuses all war critics of having one basic, venal ulterior motive: seeing Bush fail.
Right because it couldnt possibly be that we are concerned with all the unecessary deaths of both Americans and Iraqis. No we just hate Bush so much THAT is all we care about. How ludicrous is that. On the other hand all Kristol cares about is NOT being wrong or seen as having been wrong and if a few hundred thousand Iraqis and a few thousand more Americans have to die for THAT, well for Kristol its well worth the price.
Thanks for the fascinating story! If you read between the lines, you get the impression that no one at TIMES is doing anything to make Kristol welcome. They did not even bother to clue him in to the fact that his first column would be contradicted by the magazine's own cover story, making Kristol look clueless--since the pro-wat stance is the unpopular one and anyone espousing it is assumed to have a screw loose.
This raises the question, who decided that TIME needed Kristol?
As I have mentioned in other sites, the Bush FCC rules the corporate media with a carrot-stick strategy, heavy on the stick. TIME parent company Time Warner had to wait over a year to get approval for its Adelphia acquisition and even when it received the FCC's blessing, it came with a warning that the approval could be rescinded at any time. Anyone who followed the political bias at CNN during that time noted a decided turn towards the right.
I would not be at all surprised if Time Warner did not decree that TIME would hire Kristol, because someone in the administration implied that this would be good for its parent company's business.
I would feel sorry for the world of the corporate media if not for the fact that they participated in Gore is a Liar, Kerry Waffles and then they concealed the Ohio Exit Poll Data, because they believed that the Bush Administration would give them unlimited merger ability. Silly rabbits. If they had that, how would the FCC keep control of them?
a fascinating book about military escalation, find a copy of Arthur Schlesinger's 1966 masterpiece "Bitter Harvest." At that time approximately 4,000 American military personnel had been killed in Viet Nam. Dr. Schlesinger lays out all the arguements for going it alone (vs. almost universal world opinion) and escalating the military forces in Viet Nam. Then he demolishes them, one by one.
After another 50,000 Americans were killed there, the US Government realized what Dr. Schlesinger said was so true: "There isn't a military solution to this problem."
PLEASE read this book. We were at this same point in history 40 years ago...let us not make the same mistake(s) four decades later.