April 4, 2008
Bleeding The Hyperpower Dry
Among available options, "victory" in Iraq doesn't exist. For an army of occupation perhaps it never did. The smart thing would be to get out as fast as practicably possible — sadly, that doesn't seem to be in the cards. Policy preferences aside, nevertheless, it's helpful to try to understand the political-military dynamic. For that I turned once again to Wayne White, a top middle east analyst, formerly with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. This is his third appearance on EP. I'm very grateful to Wayne for sharing his professional insight and considerable wisdom. He knows the game. Total runtime here of an hour and nineteen minutes. Please redistribute the link liberally.
Comments
How strange! So much stupidity at the highest levels of government and media, but brilliant flashes of competence at a lower level, like today's guest.
It seems to me that antiwar critics like myself have had to weasel a bit on one item. On the one hand, we argue that we should definitely not bomb Iran without evidence. On the other hand, we admit that Iran has good reasons to want a bomb, i.e. the North Korea option mentioned by White. Thus, the solution is to talk rather than threaten. By shouting 'no evidence', we imply that should the evidence show up, then bombing would be justified. We have to, because the idea of talking with Iran would make a serious pundit (if not some anonymous blogger) sound like a Chomsky or a Rev Wright, i.e., on the irrelevant 'radical' fringe. That's how the cards are stacked, politically. Pretty sad!
Posted by: benjamin777
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April 4, 2008 3:52 PM