LIBERTY: January 2008 Archives
The long long years of the Bush presidency are coming to an end -- but sadly, that's of little comfort: the consequences of those years will be with us for a long long time to come.
In his final State of the Union address, President Bush predictably made the case for an open-ended military presence in Iraq, probably for decades. Bush has previously invoked Korea as a model and his administration hopes to conclude a formal status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government that would effectively tie his successor's hands in ever getting us out of Iraq.
Christopher A. Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, puts it this way:
What a dramatic change from one year ago, when the president claimed that the surge would facilitate political reconciliation that would enable U.S. forces to come home. But the reduction in violence has not contributed to national reconciliation, and the president now argues that we cannot withdraw below pre-surge levels lest Iraq fall back into chaos. Approximately 130,000 American troops will remain in Iraq, roughly the same number as when the surge was first announced.
We cannot know how long it will take for Iraqi politicians to take responsibility for their country, or even whether they will do so. Given their many past failures, there is little reason for optimism. In the meantime, while Iraq's politicians dither, and our troops are risking their lives every day, we hope that the lull in violence continues. But this much is certain: President George W. Bush launched a war of choice in March 2003 that has so far cost the lives of nearly 4,000 Americans, and left many thousands more with life-altering injuries. The venture has cost American taxpayers more than $500 billion, and the meter is running at a rate of $10 billion a month. It will be up to the next president to clean up the mess.
Looking back, it's almost farcical how it all started, and how it would have been so easy to prevent: Back in 2003 or 2004, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke talked to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes about the Bush administration's neocon obsession with Iraq:
Pro-tax Liberal Values, for reasons that aren't at all clear to me, has gone on a small jihad against Supply-Side Economics (what he's calling Voodoo Economics).
It's a rather astonishing and embarrassing mix of sweeping generalizations and red herrings substituting for real analyses from a guy obviously smart and bright enough to know better.
The attack begins with a clear-as-mud critisism of the "Laffer Curve:"
A conservative publication, which I will not name, just spiked a book review because I said that the Laffer Curve didn’t apply at American levels of taxation, even while otherwise expressing my vast displeasure with the (liberal) economic notions of the book I was reviewing. This isn’t me looking for an alternative explanation for the spiking of a bad review: the literary editor accepted it, edited it, and then three hours later told me it couldn’t be published because it violated their editorial line on taxation.
I suppose I ought to have known, but I didn’t. Go ahead liberals, pile on: you told me so.
(Megan McArdle, The Atlantic.com, 10 . 16 . 2007)
Pro-tax Liberal Values frames this quote with this out-of-the-blue and way-the-hell over-generalization:
I’ve often noted that a major problem with the modern conservative movement and the Republican Party is that they put ideology before reality.
. . . ?! . . .
