Great comment

What he said.
Best,
Tom

My problem with the discussion on America's mistakes is that the discussion always reverts to the passive. One hears comments, not yours, but often enough beginning with "it was" or "mistakes were made." Who made these mistakes? Where are these magical little critters? Back to the land of bad ideas? Call me a cynic, but I suspect if those mistakes were made by people from backwards little countries in Africa, Eastern Europe or Asia, we'd not be hearing passive past tense in descriptions about said mistakes.

What about the Americans who protested the war before it started. Could we maybe give them a medal or two? At this point, I'd be content with a simple tar and feathering, though confiscation of private assets and homes to pay for the war would be better. And not just for Cheney, as I recall poor Barbara Lee was pilloried in 2001 for having the moral courage to stand in the face of rabid blood-thirst. And I've yet to hear any real apology from the US ministry of propaganda, aka media, beyond some vague Robert McNamara-esque whining. And yes, let's trot out Niebuhr the preacher who just keeps on giving to US politicians with global agendas.

And nothing changes, right now folk are hard at work ginning up a war with Iran, and we'll back to the same place in 2020. The Yemen thing fell through, you see. And "mistakes will be made" sad faces all around, but no punishments.

In response, Wehner now says that quote mining is legitimate: "Here’s the problem for Mr. Ricks: he said precisely what I quote him as saying."

Here's a funny Wikipedia quote mining example from the entertainment industry:

"I couldn’t help feeling that, for all the energy, razzmatazz and technical wizardry, the audience had been shortchanged" being pared down to "having 'energy, razzmatazz and technical wizardry'". The European Union has since banned misleading quotations from theatre critics.

If you respond to the response and just call Wehner a liar—a fair conclusion, perhaps he'll quote you back as referring to the "intellectually honest Pete Wehner," where you really wrote "I think we have an answer as to how intellectually honest Pete Wehner is."

I agree with Bren - despite the hyperbole for many Iraq war critics, there are quite a few other mistakes far more damaging to US foreign policy than the Iraq war. It's hard to say that, outside of consequences for Iraq itself and some modification to our relations with Iran, US foreign relations with almost the entire world are largely unchanged from the pre-Iraq/pre-9-11 era. Most Arab and mideast governments are still uneasy allies of the US; the Arab-Israeli conflict is still in an intractable stalemate; and Arab and Muslim popular attitudes toward the US, though inflamed by the war, were not truly much better before it.

BLUE13326: how was Yalta a foreign policy blunder or disaster for the US? What was really decided, achieved, or not achieved by that meeting (I'm guessing you mean the tacit approval of Soviet dominance of eastern Europe - the standard critique of the performance of a tired, dying FDR) that hadn't already been assured de facto by the presence in all of eastern Europe of the Red Army?

All our bungling and world wide reputation tarnished from various events such as Abu Ghraib aside, we have not endeared ourselves to the Saudis who now have to contend with an additional Shiite government and a possible gateway for Iranian influence within the Gulf oil region. And than there is the issue of Turkey, who are less than enamored with our support for the Kurds, and seem to be less than helpful with our efforts toward Iran than we would have hoped.

In addition, while our military and diplomatic effort was so narrowly focused in Iraq, we gave Russia an opportunity to reshape the balance in Europe and elsewhere, by giving them the opportunity to invade Georgia, the Kremlin knowing full well America could do nothing to stop them - certainly something they calculated.

I think it is still too early to dismiss our entry into Iraq as not having long term ramifications toward our strategic interests, which may at some point prove the case that this was the biggest strategic blunder in our history.

Ah but...Iraq came with the big promise of cheap oil.

I don't condone it, it was dumb, still is. But history is replete with zeros and heros and the difference that separated the two often rested on one fateful decision. "Hey boss you sure you want to go to this Waterloo place?" if we had gone in with 150,000 we might have been successful, if we had coordinated with Turkey and actually implemented the original double envelopment with the 4ID things might have been different, and so on. If, if, if. But none of those things came to pass. So the hero is a zero - for all time.

I think that the war in Iraq negatively effected our economy, but I don't think it was a primary or even secondary cause of the economic meltdown. We have a myriad of other issues to fault for that - and none of them have anything to do with Southwest Asia.

A true history of China's decision making can't be written (unless it's Chang & Haliday's "Mao: the unknown story"), but I don't agree that it was only a Chinese decision. MacArthur choose to go to the Yalu and made no attempt at ascertaining the chinese reponse. "'no compromise' mentality" is silly, becase we did compromise 3 years later. Also, the hypothetical downside of Korea is huge, the U.N. could have been kicked off the pennisula or had the situation escalate to a nuclear exchange.

Finally, 1812: we got our capital city burned to the ground. If the U.S. ever has a bigger oops than that, we'll be too busy eating looted catfood to debate it.

I wasn't talking about compromising in regards to Korea...and to call it silly, is silly. We didn't compromise with the Soviets, but made opposing them the anchor of our foreign policy for 40 years. Individual decisions along the way don't change the overall policy - the invasion of Iraq WAS the policy.

1812 featured a variety of military defeats concluded by a victory.

Militarism has become too welded to America's sense of itself. This is a bipartisan, multi-regional project that has been ongoing for 100 years. It is the perfect merger of Puritan interventionism combined with Southern belligerence and made possible by New York greed. Added to this we've had groups of immigrants who view the US as a way to settle Old Country scores. I think a good bit of the tragic recent history of Afghanistan is due to the machinations of an old, but very influential Pole who still hates the Russians. My advice, get over it Ziggy; go read some Sienkiewicz, have target practice with a Lenin poster, whatever. I mean, come on, in a time of extreme national crisis we've still got time to debate Ottoman atrocities and genocides! But it's better to debate that then talk about who voted to give Dubya a green light in 2001, right?

Militarism suffered a brief setback after Vietnam, but was given a shot in the arm in 1980. How does a nation change its idea of itself? What is required? At present the debate isn't about long-term strategy, that has already been decided; instead, we have some quibbling over tactics.

"... concluded by a victory."

Um, except that the Treaty of Ghent was concluded before the Battle of New Orleans, of course, not that the latter was unimportant, symbolically.

And some would say that the biggest motive for that war was as an excuse to make war on the Indians of the southwest. If true, that went rather well (for us).

The American people hardly pay any attention at all to the continuing wars. In the aggregate they never have. Less than 1/2 of 1% of the US population is fighting in the war. Maybe 2% total have fought in the war(s). Double or triple that to those closely affected and you still come out well less than 10%.

Nobody cares, and even though we spend more than 10 other countries on Defense it is still a pittance measured against the GDP (I think < 4%). Even more significantly, we waffle about the cost of the war effort but we fail to see that most of that money is just being spent again within our own shores to build that equipment or take care of the troops - those are jobs. It is just redistribution of the wealth again....they can go to a Democrats favorite pet project, or to building MRAPs...the net result is the same. It's the cycle of money into and out of taxpayer pockets...with something close to a zero sum gain.

Your points are well taken but the end is not night. I wish more people were involved or concerned, but they aren't and they likely won't be. In any case "united we stand" has only so much leverage as the ridiculous flags people used to fly on their cars which are now in the trash heap or back of the garage.

(Personally, open displays of patriotism or stupid yellow ribbons on SUVs without a requisite concern or demonstrated action on the part of the countries constituency - well you can keep all that shit)

The sophists of the last Administration aside, the true goal of the United States in Iraq should never be 'democracy.' Ain't none of our business how these folks run their country ... except as it bears on our own national interests. I fear those pursuing 'victory' (or a less thorough defeat) in Iraq are defining those terms from the position of enlightened Iraqis and not from an American viewpoint. 'How to win' is of much less salience than 'what to win' and 'why.'

We are trying to solve the wrong problem, the Iraqi problem. We should instead focus on the solution to the American problem, which lies in the direction of less cost, fewer American lives lost, a military able to strengthen itself for global challenges, and a final withdrawal from direct meddling in Muslim entanglements.

Motives abound and many are altruistic. But we're not in the game of international altruism. National security is about (emphasis on the first word) national security. And so while I credit Tom and others with being well-minded and even sometimes right, I do wish one could hear more analysis and advice based purely in selfish national interest and far less aimed at solving the puzzle.