Peters in New York Post, November 2006; VFR, April 2004

On our incoherent Iraq policy, Ralph Peters writes in today’s New York Post:

A fundamental problem is that the mission in Iraq remains vague. And vague mission statements are not conducive to military success.

Generalities won’t do. Let’s tell our troops precisely what we expect of them: Are they there to defeat our enemies, or just to buy time with their lives in the forlorn hope that something will go right? [Italics added.]

I wrote at FrontPage Magazine and VFR in April 2004 that President Bush was “pursuing a ‘stay the course’ mode that cannot, by itself, ensure the victory that is the very condition of democratization.” I then continued:

Let us hope that I am wrong, and that the insurgency soon collapses and the jihadist forces fade away, allowing the Iraqi people to continue forward to the “broad sunlit uplands” of freedom and self-government. But if that wished-for event comes to pass, it will have happened as much by good fortune as by any conscious plan on the part of the Bush administration. [Italics added.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 30, 2006 01:16 PM | Send