Indiana Barrister has a post about which Blue Indiana commented having to do with Steve Buyer’s advice to Dick Lugar that he should shut up and wait.
According to Buyer, in spite of 4.5 years of evidence to work with, Senators Lugar and Warner should wait for the report of General Petraeus (a report, to be penned by the White House but issued by the General, incidentally) before commenting on the strategy of Iraq. I’ve criticized Sen. Lugar for doing nothing more than talking — his votes usually go the way of the White House on Iraq regardless of what he’s been saying — but, to criticize our Senator for stating the obvious, our current strategy isn’t working, is ridiculous.
Quoth the Buyer:
“The senators need to be patient and close their mouths and listen before they speak out about Iraq,” he said. “They need to stop trying to be generals on the ground. Your job is to listen to the generals.”
Buyer conveniently overlooks the fact that this report is to be written by the White House. Buyer, as you’ll recall, is the military genius who wanted to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Unlike Buyer, his potential challenger for Indiana’s 4th Congressional seat, Nels Ackerson, is not hesitant to take a look at the past 4.5 years and suggest that changes are necessary. It is ridiculous for Buyer to suggest that we need to wait for a report ghost written by the White House before we can figure out that the White House has gotten a tremendous number of things wrong in Iraq.
Buyer certainly comes across as arrogant.
Then again, General Petraeus is a ‘new broom’ who received strong Congressional confirmation and who is seeking to employ a new approach – it seems arguable that it is premature to pass a final judgment on that approach.
But saying “shut up and listen up, you interfering idiots” is not a politically adroit way to make that point…
If we could be confident that Petraeus would be writing this report independently, things might be slightly different. But, the White House is preparing it.
Gen. Betray Us will only say what Bush wants him to say. Look at the fate of all the military people who said the wrong things – they got dumped! Why do you think only retired Generals are speaking out against the war.
Buyer is a war hawk of the worst kind. ANYONE who would even consider using nukes is out of their friggin’ mind!
Sorry about the rant, I’m a little flustered after working to get my new site up and running.
Of course, some of us were working the phones before the war. The fact that people like me were something close to 100% right in our predictions counts for nothing. No–we have to keep our mouths shut until plan 50 is finally pronounced a failure (as plans 1-49 have already been) before we are allowed to offer an opinion. But right as our proper, Buyer-defined moment to speak comes and we say, “Yeah, but…”, Plan 51 will arrive on the scene, deserving it’s proper allotment of time, money, blood, and silence in order to do its great work.
Buyer arrogant? Oh My.. that’s a revelation. By the way, when is the last time the man even stopped in Lafayette — the biggest city in his district? Or has he ever had a real debate with an opponent? Especially one in which he didn’t sneer about the man’s credentials?
Buyer is planning to take Lugar’s seat when Dick either dies or finally retires. He’s probably just frustrated that these stupid civilians (read Lugar — with decades of experience in state and national politics and foreign relations) think they have any real say about the war. He expects them to defer to military geniuses like him (read Buyer — man of dusty boots on campaign trail although he was JUST a military lawyer— kinda like the heroes who work in the West Wing — all hat and no cattle.)
I think the worst cost of all this is that it distracts from any real effort in determining the best way to proceed from here.
Too much of current politics seems to concentrate wholly on fixing the blame, rather than on fixing problems.
When I see a politician say something along the lines of:
instead of:
then I have potentially found someone to support.
Although fixing the blame is pretty important in this case, since those to blame refuse to accept any–and continue to seek to be the main architects of the Iraq policy although they’ve failed miserable for going on five years now. If those to blame had any self respect or regard for this country, they would have long since shut up and gotten out of the way. But since they continue to advocate poor policies, you have to continue to try to pin their hard-earned blame on them. The public needs to hear more “Are you really going to listen to these screw-ups? Is this idea really any better than all their other ideas that have only lead to disaster?”
Anyone else want to validate my point?
Can’t fix the situation without taking power away from the folks who caused the situation. Can’t take power away from those folks until our fellow citizens recognize that those folks are, in fact, responsible for the mess.
The reason we can’t fix the situation without taking power away from those folks is that they don’t seem to listen to reason and they seem to reward loyalty above competence.
Doug –
True – but it is sad to consider just how large a percentage of our leadership could be caught in the net you are casting.
I especially look at the U.S. Senate, and think how far they are from the ‘best’ 100 we could have in there.
Term limits, maybe?
I do think that failing to impose term limits on all three branches (instead of just the executive) may be one of the great political failures of the 20th century.
I totally agree with Parker and Doug. While I am less of a blame-type guy, in the end we can’t make real change with the same set of bozos who didn’t listen in the first place, especially since they stubbornly refuse to admit wrong and change course.
It’s obvious that Bush & Co have flunked history and government, and are well on their way to making common sense as rare as the dodo. Too bad we don’t have a parliamentary system, or we’d have ditched him long ago!
Term limits are fine. But as we’ll see with the Idaho situation, there’s a healthy farm system of people with the same opinions and voting patterns waiting in the wings when Senator or Congressman X retires. It is much more useful to say that “people of a certain mindset regarding foreign policy have made a big blunder regarding Iraq, and continue to make it worse/more expensive/more dangerous and shouldn’t continue to call the shots”, than to say “Hey, we’ve got a DIFFERENT guy in now. He’s a Republican like the last guy, thinks Bush is great, and thinks the main problem with Iraq is the media won’t tell us the good news. Let’s hear him out because he hasn’t screwed up anything personally yet.”
Term limits are less effective than analysis of why we screwed up, and electorally purging those who continue to have the thinking that lead to the screw-up to begin with.
Regarding Iraq, there are for the most part only two groups of congressmen/senators: Those who advocated/actively pushed for a stupid policy to be enacted, and those who lacked the will or courage to stop that first group. Both those groups deserved to be pinned with blame for where we are now, though I don’t believe they are equally to blame. It turns out that doing nothing in Iraq in 2003 was probably the right way to go. Without group number one, we might still be doing the old policy that was working fine, rather than the highly destructive current policy that has gotten us mired in an expensive war that has not advanced our interests.
I guess I’m still not sure why acknowledging that someone is to blame for this is such a bad thing. There was certainly no shortage of people putting their Iraqi balls on display in the 02 midterms, or congratulating themselves in 03. Those people are to blame, and shouldn’t be so shy about accepting that.
But ok, let’s not assign blame. We’re there now, and let’s figure out what to do next. What would an ideal solution in Iraq look like?
In a perfect situation, loss of life would decrease, the “terrorist” element would be suppressed, democracy would take root, we would get a big thank you, an oil contract would get signed, and we could pack up and go home.
Who thinks that can really still happen? Not many people do, but a surprising number of the good old group #1 congressmen still believe it’s worth holding out for that, or at least for a few more months (then after that, a few more months. Oh, and then a few more months. Probably their patience will run out when Bush leaves office). Not many other people believe such a fine solution can happen at this point. But that good old group that some believe should remain blameless for this debacle keep pushing for this “way forward” that is senseless. But pointing at them and saying, “These people haven’t known anything about anything for going on five years now… Oh and they got us there in the first place!” just isn’t appropriate somehow (it’s too *political*) So we have to remain fixed in this senseless policy until who knows when, although we long since should have agreed that an ideal ending isn’t possible and we really should be cutting our losses and moving to some other policy that can actually conform to reality.
Those to blame had their gloves off in 02 and 04. They didn’t think twice about calling a Vietnam triple-amputee’s patriotism into question. But now that they’ve screwed the pooch on this (and screwed our country, my future tax bills, and a bunch of my countrymen now dead for no national gain) we’ve got to put the kid gloves on, walk on eggshells, and make sure the big boys don’t get their feelings hurt by something like us pointing out their failings. And of course we can’t engage in something so counterproductive as blaming those who actually *are* to blame. We can carry on endlessly with a counterproductive war. But please, no counterproductive assignments of blame or responsibility.