The Worst Foreign Policy Team in Decades
by Steve
After seeing no conservative backlash to Richard Armitage’s trial balloon of last week, and on the eve of a alarming CBO report tomorrow that says our continuing occupation of Iraq is unsustainable over the long haul without adverse effects for our national security, the Bush Administration will cry uncle in the coming days and ask for a new UN resolution to gain international support for multilateral troop deployments and funding.
The cave-in comes on the same day of massive anti-US demonstrations during the funeral services for a slain Muslim cleric, and after a report shows that we are suffering an average of 10 attacks upon our forces a day, most of them unreported by the Pentagon. It also comes as members of both parties in Congress return from recess skeptical that the Administration knows what it is doing.
There is no other way to say this: the retreat by the Bush Administration on this matter represents the collapse of the PNAC agenda. And with the Taliban reasserting themselves in Afghanistan, Iran doing whatever it takes to undercut American concerns over their growing nuclear ambitions, and North Korea playing the rope-a-dope with the Bush Administration, it is hard to see where Rummy/Cheney/Rice will be able to stir up another war anytime soon.
The Bush Hall of Shame and Ineptitude includes the following:
Our toppling of the Taliban is now being reversed by our neglect of Afghanistan.
None of our stated aims for toppling Saddam (ties to Al Qaeda, involvement in 9/11, possession of an imminent WMD capability, elimination of a terror threat in the Middle East, liberation a grateful people and improvement of their lives) have yet to be realized. And the Administration was totally out of its league in handling the occupation.
The Middle East peace process is stalled once again.
The war on terrorism has been stunted and set back by the diversion into Iraq.
North Korea has been allowed through Bush neglect to become the world’s ninth nuclear power, while laughing at our demands.
The toppling of Saddam has led to an increase in the worldwide price of oil, rather than a decrease.
In short, there has not been one success by this Administration in following the PNAC script. And there will be no support from any of our allies for any new wars we want to start anywhere in the globe, due to our allies’ lack of trust in us and their doubts about our competence.
Unless you are an oil company or defense contractor executive, the Bush foreign policy after three years has been an abject failure. If you are the parents of a member of our armed forces, the future of your loved ones is grim.
Congrats Mr. Bush. You and the rest of the blundering PNAC cabal that runs this so-called government are the worst foreign policy team in the last quarter-century. Your blunders and stubbornness, credited by your scribe Bob Woodward as “moral clarity,” have managed to evoke comparisons to the Clinton team, and you fare poorly in that matchup.
We are a long way from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and those glossy hero-worshipping pictures in Vanity Fair of your vaunted team, are we not Chimpco?