Friday, August 11, 2006

Lieberman on Terror

The New York TImes reports Lieberman, on the Offensive, Links Terror Threat and Iraq. It mostly comes from this sentence: "If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England", which sounds remarkably stupid to me.

Why is it the hawks don't understand this? Iraq had nothing to do with terror, that's what all the evidence says. Us being there is inflaming many and inciting more terrorism. Why? Because we lied about reasons for invading a country and botched the aftermath so badly it's descending into a civil war.

But what bothers me so much about this argument is that it's so stupid. Pulling out by a certain date because that date is reached is as dumb as staying indefinitely with no plans to measure success or failure or ways to adjust actions to help ensure success. And yet these are the two choices our great democratic political system offers. Really, there must be something wrong with it.

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