Trudy, Trudy, Trudy
Trudy Rubin is the Ellen Goodman of the "Philadelphia Inquirer." Today, she offers up a classic serving of what I can't stand about the anti-war faction in American politics. Or you could call it evidence of why, no matter how odious the Bush people can be to me on social issues, I prefer to be on the side that's thinking and working rather than return to the side that stopped doing either a long time ago.
This is the "sane" wing of "liberal" America, the faction that can bring itself to admit it can't really do what they all really want to do, which is turn back the clock to 2003 and not have a war in the first place.
It can actually stand up and ask the question, "This sucks, but it happened. What should be done now?"
Her column is headlined "In postwar Iraq, one step forward may mean taking two steps back," which at least gives me hope she's actually going to bite the bullet and propose something.
It takes off, though, with a long diatribe on the evil that is Doug Feith, all cribbed from the "New Yorker's" recent uglification job on him. OK, fine, whatever. That's not really new; the profile has been online for weeks and even I wrote about it long before Trudy did (nyah-nyah).
But you have to expect her type will get themselves wound up with a lot of finger-wagging and "I told you so" and a reading of the whole catechism of Neo-Con evil deeds before they manage to write anything constructive. Like a loon, they need a lot of runway before they can get airborne. And I guess the New Yorker was on the top of her magazine stack.
So I sat on my hands and read through it.
After she does her series of dramatic poses over the corpses of Feith and Wolfowitz's reputations, as she sees it, Trudy veers toward a point:
And just as quickly veers away from it. She can't leave Feith alone. Immediately after this sentence, she's back to kicking him as though she'd never written tried to move on.
Three paragraphs later, and two-thirds of the way through the piece, she finally seems ready to straighten her lapels, face the situation, and lay out her Iraq plan:
Ah, here we go. Even though I hate the journalistic trope of asking yourself a question and then answering it. It makes you look brilliant, because you're calling the pitch you're going to swing at. But I've been waiting in the outfield for seven innings of this column, watching Trudy step in and out of the batters' box and take her warm-up swings, and now I'm ready for some action.
Huh? Back to "what the Bushies did wrong"? She didn't even swing at her own pitch!
So Iraq's a failure and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Thanks! That's why I didn't vote for your candidate in November. He seemed to have the same opinion, six days out of seven.
OK, well, let's at least see what Trudy would have done differently. More troops, that's one. Though there were "more troops," they just didn't get to the battlefield on time because Turkey refused to let its nominal ally, America, use its bases in her territory. And of course the Trudys of the world applauded Ankara for that.
And what sort of column would Trudy and her sort be writing today if the U.S. had kept Saddam's vicious security force intact and absorbed it and its pathologies into the new Iraq we were rebuilding? And what would they be writing if we had started handing out pension checks to former Baathists in May 2003, who certainly would have used them to finance their revanchist dreams? The "alienated minority" was alienated because we dethroned their boss and hero, Saddam Hussein, not because we never write to them with a card and a check.
The closest Trudy comes to a policy proposal is her "third mistake."
There you go. "Stabilize the country and come home." That's her plan for Iraq. I'm sure there are some Jedi hand gestures involved, and perhaps a sacrificed chicken or two. And suddenly in my head I'm hearing Steve Martin's old monologue:
No, it's not a real proposal. She doesn't need one, she doesn't care to formulate one. She had just enough sense of political responsibility to suggest she had a plan, not enough to actually have one. What she really wants to do is go back and bash Feith some more, which she does for her grand finale.
But I leave this wondering why the Inky wastes its newsprint on this sort of drivel you could find in a high school newspaper. I don't wonder why I stopped reading the Inquirer's editorial page, though. I still have no idea what her headline means, by the way. Perhaps the editor who wrote it didn't bother to read her column all the way through.
This is the "sane" wing of "liberal" America, the faction that can bring itself to admit it can't really do what they all really want to do, which is turn back the clock to 2003 and not have a war in the first place.
It can actually stand up and ask the question, "This sucks, but it happened. What should be done now?"
Her column is headlined "In postwar Iraq, one step forward may mean taking two steps back," which at least gives me hope she's actually going to bite the bullet and propose something.
It takes off, though, with a long diatribe on the evil that is Doug Feith, all cribbed from the "New Yorker's" recent uglification job on him. OK, fine, whatever. That's not really new; the profile has been online for weeks and even I wrote about it long before Trudy did (nyah-nyah).
But you have to expect her type will get themselves wound up with a lot of finger-wagging and "I told you so" and a reading of the whole catechism of Neo-Con evil deeds before they manage to write anything constructive. Like a loon, they need a lot of runway before they can get airborne. And I guess the New Yorker was on the top of her magazine stack.
So I sat on my hands and read through it.
After she does her series of dramatic poses over the corpses of Feith and Wolfowitz's reputations, as she sees it, Trudy veers toward a point:
The answer is crucial to understanding what can be done to improve the situation. U.S. officials must analyze past mistakes to move forward.
And just as quickly veers away from it. She can't leave Feith alone. Immediately after this sentence, she's back to kicking him as though she'd never written tried to move on.
Three paragraphs later, and two-thirds of the way through the piece, she finally seems ready to straighten her lapels, face the situation, and lay out her Iraq plan:
So what are the errors that must be corrected to stabilize Iraq and avoid making the same mistakes elsewhere?
Ah, here we go. Even though I hate the journalistic trope of asking yourself a question and then answering it. It makes you look brilliant, because you're calling the pitch you're going to swing at. But I've been waiting in the outfield for seven innings of this column, watching Trudy step in and out of the batters' box and take her warm-up swings, and now I'm ready for some action.
The original sin was the lack of U.S. preparedness to secure the country postwar. The massive plague of postwar looting set the stage for the insurgency: Former Baathists and Islamists saw this as the signal that the Americans were unprepared to restore law and order.
Huh? Back to "what the Bushies did wrong"? She didn't even swing at her own pitch!
Nation-building takes mega-manpower. There weren't enough U.S. troops then; it's impossible to send more now. The burden of coping with what flawed U.S. planning wrought must now fall on Iraqis.
So Iraq's a failure and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Thanks! That's why I didn't vote for your candidate in November. He seemed to have the same opinion, six days out of seven.
OK, well, let's at least see what Trudy would have done differently. More troops, that's one. Though there were "more troops," they just didn't get to the battlefield on time because Turkey refused to let its nominal ally, America, use its bases in her territory. And of course the Trudys of the world applauded Ankara for that.
The second major U.S. mistake was the lack of a Sunni strategy. Top U.S. officials disbanded Iraqi security forces without pensions and pursued large-scale de-Baathification. This alienated many Sunnis who had committed no crimes and might have been wooed had they not lost jobs and hope. Many insurgents come from this alienated minority.
And what sort of column would Trudy and her sort be writing today if the U.S. had kept Saddam's vicious security force intact and absorbed it and its pathologies into the new Iraq we were rebuilding? And what would they be writing if we had started handing out pension checks to former Baathists in May 2003, who certainly would have used them to finance their revanchist dreams? The "alienated minority" was alienated because we dethroned their boss and hero, Saddam Hussein, not because we never write to them with a card and a check.
The closest Trudy comes to a policy proposal is her "third mistake."
For now, Shiite leaders want U.S. troops to stay because they have no viable army and fear a Baathist comeback. But the U.S. presence also angers many ordinary Iraqis - killing and injuring innocents while pursuing insurgents. There is a limited time for U.S. troops to stabilize the country and draw down, before they become more of a problem than an asset.
There you go. "Stabilize the country and come home." That's her plan for Iraq. I'm sure there are some Jedi hand gestures involved, and perhaps a sacrificed chicken or two. And suddenly in my head I'm hearing Steve Martin's old monologue:
You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! You say, "Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?" First, get a million dollars.
No, it's not a real proposal. She doesn't need one, she doesn't care to formulate one. She had just enough sense of political responsibility to suggest she had a plan, not enough to actually have one. What she really wants to do is go back and bash Feith some more, which she does for her grand finale.
But I leave this wondering why the Inky wastes its newsprint on this sort of drivel you could find in a high school newspaper. I don't wonder why I stopped reading the Inquirer's editorial page, though. I still have no idea what her headline means, by the way. Perhaps the editor who wrote it didn't bother to read her column all the way through.
