W's Second Great Mulligan

[carlfense]

The Great Mulligan. That's the extremely helpful term Charlie Pierce coined to describe how conservatives and supporters of George W. Bush's presidency describe the attacks that occured on his watch. If you submit that the Bush presidency began on January 20, 2001, you allow that the most devastating terrorist assault on America happened nine months later. But if you start the Bush clock on September 12, 2001, you can portray Bush as a president who Kept America Safe. It's easy: Just say something like "unlike Obama's tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11" or that Bush "inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history."

 

Last week, Fox News ushered in the Second Great Mulligan. Megyn Kelly showed her viewers the "chilling warning" that President Bush gave about possible withdrawal from Iraq, back in 2007, when the country had turned on the war and newly empowered congressional Democrats wanted a timeline for the bug-out. "BUSH'S PROPHETIC IRAQ WARNING," read the chyron, as the 43rd president spoke . . .

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/09/08/iraq_george_w_bush_and_the_second_great_mulligan.html

[Abdullah the Butcher]

Lol slate

[tschu]

I thought we already won though?

 

[carlfense]

Does it count as lol slate if they're quoting Fox? Do they cancel each other out?

[TGHusker]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3917703.stm

 

I think there is plenty of finger pointing that can go around:

 

Clinton/Bush administrations for not taking adequate action/response to knowledge both admins had. See above link - summary of 9/11 report. Points to 'failures to confront' and 'missed opportunities'

 

Bush - taking the eye off the real ball - Afghanistan and jumping into Iraq full force. In hindsight, it appears we now have the devil that we didn't know in ISIS (and is perhaps worse - degrees of evil is still evil) instead of the devil we did know - Saddam This has created overall stability in the region.

 

Bush, Tschu's image above - short sighted, overconfident to say the least. But I give Bush credit for the surge - way to late however even though it finally brought order to the Iraq.

 

Obama - too quickly, IMHO, for being the anti-Bush and according to reports moving against the advise of military leaders by not leaving a sufficient deterrent force in Iraq. As any good Monday morning QB, I suggest a force of 10-15K and some jets nearby would have prevented ISIS from crashing the Iraq boarder from Syria. But my military training came from playing "Cowboys and Indians' as a kid - so they didn't ask for my advice when the troops were removed.

 

 

http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/02/us-iraq-generals-seek-to-reverse-obama-withdrawal-decision/

 

Interesting quote from this 2009 article:

 

The assertion that Obama's withdrawal policy threatens the gains allegedly won by the Bush surge and Petraeus's strategy in Iraq will apparently be the theme of the campaign that military opponents are now planning.

Keane, the Army Vice-Chief of Staff from 1999 to 2003, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star Army generals, and since Obama's Jan. 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama's troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow U.S. withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network's plans.

The source says the network, which includes senior active duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama's withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without U.S. troops.

 

The article ends noting how Petraeus had underestimated Obama's resolve to move out of Iraq:

 

Obama told Petraeus in Baghdad last July that, if elected, he would regard the overall health of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps and the situation in Afghanistan as more important than Petraeus's obvious interest in maximising U.S. troop strength in Iraq, according to Time magazine's Joe Klein.

But judging from Petraeus's shock at Obama's Jan. 21 decision, he had not taken Obama's previous rejection of his arguments seriously. That miscalculation suggests that Petraeus had begun to accept Keane's assertion that a newly-elected Democratic president would not dare to override his policy recommendation on troops in Iraq.

[carlfense]

TGHusker, if you're apportioning blame you might want to focus on this quote from your IPS link:

"Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops."

 

I'm sure you're aware of who negotiated and signed that agreement. It takes quite the imagination (or agenda) to blame Obama for not "getting around" a provision in that agreement.

[TGHusker]

TGHusker, if you're apportioning blame you might want to focus on this quote from your IPS link:

 

"Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorising large numbers of combat troops as support troops."

 

I'm sure you're aware of who negotiated and signed that agreement. It takes quite the imagination (or agenda) to blame Obama for not "getting around" a provision in that agreement.

No I'm not singling out ultimate blame on Obama - wasn't my intent. That goes to Bush and Maliki -who should have been noted in my post above (just didn't think of him until I looked at your post). Just trying to back up my opinion that more troops left in Iraq might have been a deterrent (as the generals were pointing out) I saw that article after I wrote my "IMHO" statement and then added it at the end of the post. I know who wrote the agreement - Bush's team. I did at the end note that the generals underestimated Obama's resolve. Perhaps there was nothing O could have done based on the agreement - I don't know. Perhaps it could have been renegotiated, However, I do know the previous Iraq PM Maliki was building a little serfdom for himself and he may have blocked any attempt to leave greater # of troops. He ended up being a corrupt replacement for Saddam.

My gut tells me more remaining troops (South Korea like but not as big) would have been a deterrent but ultimately we may have been stuck wt this situation: a corrupt PM, who created a leadership vacuum because citizens from the various 'tribes' didn't trust him, creating the opportunity for ISIS or someone else to take advantage.

 

I cannot blame Obama for any 'fix' of a Bush policy blunder - whether that 'fix' works or not. Ultimate 'blame' goes to Bush regardless of what we try to do now. Even the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS there could be tracked back to our misadventures in Iraq.

Sometimes humpty dumpty can't be put back together again after we push him off the wall. Obama and the administration to follow are now given the task to try.

[carlfense]

I thought we already won though?

 

 

 

The White House claimed that the banner was requested by the crew of the ship, who did not have the facilities for producing such a banner. Afterward, the administration and naval sources stated that the banner was the Navy's idea, White House staff members made the banner, and it was hung by the U.S. Navy personnel. White House spokesman Scott McClellan told CNN, "We took care of the production of it. We have people to do those things. But the Navy actually put it up."^[8] According to John Dickerson of Time magazine, the White House later conceded that they hung the banner but still insists it had been done at the request of the crew members.^[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech