Hunting Tigers

I deeply respect the observations of Mr. Friedman. This is a response to today's article. His book "From Beruit ..." was recommended to me by a lady who used to work for the CIA.

But I do not always agree with his conclusions from those observations. Sometimes subtle differences in emphasis can lead to profoundly different conclusions.

Senator Kerry: Would he pull the trigger on the Tiger? There is absolutely nothing in his record which would suggest he would. The abberation in his career was the authorization of force in 2002. Absent that, he has been a remarkably consistent opponent of American power in the world (he had a brief timeout regarding Bosnia).

Would Bush shoot: of course.

But here is where I disagree. Iraq was the correct target after Afghanistan, and Bush hit it dead center.

Complaining about the looting is monday morning quarterbacking -- we could never have put the forces in to stop the looting. (First, we don't have them anywhere. Second, we couldn't have put them in theater and supplied them if we had had them.)

There are of course many things to criticize, but that is demanding perfection and overlooking much of our actual results.
Look; We opened up Iraq and found Yugosolovia just like Friedman warned we might. But he did note it wasn't completely out of the question we might have found Germany as the neocons hoped. (And one of the people at the WeeklyStandard said immediately after the statues fell, at we should give Iraq back to the Iraqis as quickly as possible.)

My read?

• Breaking Iraq was still vital for the US even if it later decends into Yugoslavian civil war.
• Our execution in the Iraq aftermath is sub-optimal (in hindsight) but hardly incompetent.
• We are still winning.
• The problem with wars is the guys on the other side try to win, too.
• Our enemies correctly identify our soft center -- American public opinion inflamed by a biased media.
• This is a clash of civilizations.
• If Bush wins it is a clash we _may_ win.
• If Kerry wins this election I think it is a clash we will lose.