Wesley Falls Short

Wesley Clark speaks, and I'm listening:

For the sake of every member of our armed forces, we need a plan to end the conflict in Iraq. Retreat is not an option. Withdrawal would be a disaster for America, a tragedy for Iraq, and a crisis for the world. It would destroy our credibility, give terrorists a new haven, and throw the Middle East into greater turmoil. No matter how difficult it will be, we need a "success strategy."

Success won't be easy, but only success can honor the sacrifice of our soldiers and allow the troops to come home. Success means that Iraq is strong enough to sustain itself without outside forces. Success means that representative government has taken root. Success means that Iraq's economy and civil society are healthy again.

So far, so good. Tell us Wesley! What do we need to do?

Congress just gave the administration an $87 billion check to continue down the path that we're on. But President Bush still has no strategy to succeed. I do. Here's my "success strategy":

End the American monopoly.

We must call a summit of the leaders we've alienated, the people whose advice we've scorned, the organizations whose assistance we've turned down. Out of this gathering, we can build a new organization to replace the Coalition Provisional Authority and internationalize the face of the occupation.

And there endeth the lesson.

All Wesley can think of: we need to turn things over to France and Russia, the two countries who desperately want Iraq to to fail, so that they can say "we told you so." These two countries were still still selling weapons to Iraq after the UN embargo. Weapons that are now killing US soldiers.

Clark has quickly picked up the defeatist language of the American left.

He tries to recover a semblance of seriousness with these two pieces of advice: we must secure the borders and the ammunition dumps.

Uh, no shit General. Why don't you go see if you can scratch up some your courageous French troops to help out in those endeavors?

Good luck.
- posted by total @ 11/06/2003 08:19:00 PM .