January 28, 2007

Has Former Secretary Laird Gone Crazy?

What the hell is THIS? Former Republican Congressman and Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Mel Laird seems to have lost his marbles. Either that, or he's being disingenuous in the extreme and not playing by the "civility and bipartisanship" rules he wants the Democrats to follow.

He starts off by saying that the Congress shouldn't cut Defense appropriations for a war because of the lessons he's drawn of what that led to in 1975. Well, there seems to be a giant hole in that analogy, doesn't there? US troops had already been withdrawn from Vietnam prior to the past debate he's addressing. So ... in what universe is that in any way relateable to the funding debates going on now over Iraq? He says Pelosi and Reid are have "begun to squander the trust they were given in Nevmber". Hmmm. It would be nice it he said what exactly they'd done to "squander" it. He says only Hillary Clinton can save us on Iraq, and that without success in Iraq she'll never be president. Hmmm. I think her candidacy is going to turn on a few more issues, though sure, she's dug herself quite a whole on that issue. He says McGovern won only two states because he had no plan of his own regarding Vietnam, he only criticized Vietnamization. Again we see a truly weird assertion of cause and effect that overlooks little points like how one could quite reasonably criticize Vietnamization on a variety of grounds, that McGovern's end goals regarding Vietnam were simply different from Laird's, and the fact that McGovern only won one state, not two. He then proceeds to blame Congress for a host of ills like the lack of civility and bipartisanship (wow, the Democrats have really kicked the legs out from under Washington in a mere two weeks), and the need to focus on a wider peace in the Middle East - and yet he's currently silent on criticizing the White House for its incivility and lack of bipartisanship and years of behavior that have undermined the ability to achieve a wider peace in the region. He then states that we need a bigger military, and that Congress should get behind that - but curiously omits that Democrats have been pulling for that for the past few years, while the White House has blocked it. He then seems to say Congess is to blame for the Iraqi prime minister and should hold him accountable. Hmmm - I thought the president was responsible for foreign and national security policy? Isn't that the reason the White House uses to continually assert it needs unlimited power? And finally he concludes (yes, finally), by asserting that the real enemy is ... much of the Islam? The Third World? Well he's kind of vague on that. I guess because he couldn't find a pithy way to blame it on Nancy Pelosi.

I mean really did Hannity or the White House press office just write up this crap and send it off to Laird for him to sign? Or is he really this dense and/or clueless?

Posted by armand at January 28, 2007 11:15 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Iraq | Politics


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