Tenet: The Point About Saddam

Rich Lowry has been posting salient points from Tenet's new book. Here is a key one (emphasis mine):

Exactly [Rich Lowry]

Here's a key point about the debate over Iraq—it was always fundamentally about how much risk we were willing to tolerate in a post-9/11 environment (page 328):

The absence of evidence and linear thinking, and Iraq’s extensive efforts to conceal illicit procurement of proscribed components, told us that a deceptive regime could and would easily surprise us. It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise.

04/30 12:11 PM

Read some more here.

The War at Home

From Glenn Reynolds comes this pointed reply to the question "Is the war lost?"

It's up to you The Iraq war is lost or won if the American people choose to lose or win it. With the way things are going at the moment, I perfectly understand why they might choose to give up on the war. But that is not because the war is inherently unwinnable by a country as great and rich and powerful as the United States.

-- Kanan Makiya, Iraqi scholar who supported the U.S. invasion

Washington Post

Flight Patterns

This is pretty cool.

(ht: S. Hayward at NLT)

Nathan Hale: New Yardstick for Congressional Action

Nathan Hale over at The American Thinker articulates a principle that should be guiding our national legislators in their daily deeds and talk. It is pretty simple.

Does this action weaken or strengthen our opponents' will to fight?

And the corollary:

Does this action strengthen or weaken OUR will to fight?

The key, Hale points out, is that the point of war is not to kill people but to break his will to fight. It is for this reason that Lincoln sent Sherman to Atlanta, Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan. As Victor Hanson says, it is the moral way to wage war. The quicker the opponent's will is broken, and the more resolutely it is broken, the sooner life can return to and remain in normalcy, or at least, the best it could be.

Bush Undoing What Good He has Done?

Has Bush reversed the pro-democratic and pro-western reform he brought about in north Africa? So says this AEI scholar, Jeffrey Azarva, in his assessment of the work that Bush has done over his two terms. This would be a great misfortune. It would seem to indicate doubt in the central Bush doctrine of the universality of the love of freedom. Further, it indicate a return to realism, the western policy that has allowed the fever swamps in the Middle East to fester its radical anti-westernism in the first place. Not good at all.

Here is the beginning of Azarva's piece:

On November 6, 2003, President George W. Bush proclaimed, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." This strategic shift, coupled with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, put regional governments on notice. The following spring, Tunisia's president, Zine El Abidine Bin Ali, and Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak--stalwart allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and two of North Africa's most pro-American rulers--were among the first Arab leaders to visit Washington and discuss reform. But with this "Arab spring" has come the inadvertent rise of Islamist movements throughout the region. Now, as U.S. policymakers ratchet down pressure, Egypt and Tunisia see a green light to backtrack on reform.

(ht: Michael Rubin on the Corner)

Speaker Pelosi, Going Where no Grandma has Gone Before

Kathryn at The Corner was one the first to point out this editorial, in today's Post, putting a fine point on Pelosi's foolishness. You know, visiting Syria and inciting peace talks and understanding with the West and Israel.

As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president.

Remember, this is the woman who claimed that being a grandmother qualified her to be Speaker of the House. Well, this shows us that she is just a grandmother.

UPDATE: Here is Claudia Rossett on Pelosi's trip. It is called "Pelosi was Nuts to Visit with Assad". (ht: Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard)

UPDATE 2: What's this? Pelosi's trip broke the law? So says Robert F. Turner, a former assistant of Secretary of State, in the Wall Street Journal editorial today. It's titled "Illegal Diplomacy". He says:

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States." Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.

(ht: Drudge)

Algeria 1957 and Iraq 2007

Commentary's Contentions has been the site for several good exchanges between specialists regarding Iraq and historical precedents. The first was Victor Davis Hanson and Max Boot and now Arthur Herman and Max Boot. I'll dig up the VDH/Boot exchange next. But first, Herman submitted an article in Commentary comparing the experience of the French in Algeiers in the late '50's with our experience in Iraq and the lessons we could learn. Max Boot offers his qualified agreement and then Herman responds.

UPDATE: Here are the letters between VDH and Max Boot, from the first of the year, on Iraq and the "surge". Apparently it starts with Boot. All the letters appears linked at the bottom of each letter.

Boot 1 & Hanson 1, Boot 2 & Hanson 2, Boot 3 & Hanson 3, Boot 4 & Hanson 4