Tuesday, January 8, 2008

NPR Takes Aim at the Surge

Always one to look for bad news among the good, (assuming a conservative can take credit for the good), NPR did a hit piece on the Surge this morning.

They started by recognizing that the Surge has reduced violence (something apparently everyone but Bill Richardson can acknowledge), BUT, says the articulate Guy Ross in an ominous, all-knowing tone, what CAUSED the cease in violence. The answer, according to the smarmy voice, is that we've "bought off" our enemies.

This policy was given to the Bush administration by a writer for the "neoconservative" [Note: I do not endorse the whole of the wiki definition, the entry will give you lots of info, mostly from the liberal point of view] Weekly Standard who works with the "neoconservative" American Enterprise Institute. ("Neoconservative" is a pejorative term recently concocted by liberals to describe a perceived shadowy movement that is trying to [horrors!] export democracy to other nations. Ill-advised as that policy might be, the shadowy mutterings of a Straussian conspiracy are the stuff of Roswell, JFK and the vast right wing conspiracy.)

General Petraeus gets a 3 second sound bite saying that he credits the decline in violence to the increase in troops and the strategy employed. Several retired officers and Jim Webb (who gets expert status on this particular issue because his son was fighting in Ramadi) get multiple opportunities to criticize the CLC program, which they claim is merely paying people to be nice to us.

Smarmy Guy concludes the piece by stating unequivocally that each group is arming as we speak, preparing for a future, much bloodier civil war.

Is there no room in the heart of NPR for confidence, optimism or even a lack of smugness when offering critique? The answer, of course, is ... how naive of me to even ask the question...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Surge - I believe that the U.S. has bought off our enemies, the Sunni fundamentalists who only recently were killing our soldiers. The Sunnis, along with the Shiites and Kurds have no love for Western infidels. All 3 Mohammedan sects are preparing for the day when the West leaves Iraq. Then, without restraint from the U.S. policeman, the war for one to be domonate over their other two brothers will commence in earnest. The idea of a united national government in Iraq is laughable. Their will never be a democracy in Iraq. The only "peace" in Iraq will be when one of the thee Islamic brothers is in total control. Then you will have the "peace" of Saddam the Sunni. Only this time it will be the Shiite, with U.S. help who will be the absolute ruler of Iraq. This is the way it stands now. Who knows, the U.S. may decide to throw its weight behind the Sunnis, or even the Kurds someday. The Kurds would be a safe bet to rule Iraq as they already have their "separate country" in the north of Iraq. However the ball bounces in Iraq, the West is not welcome by any of the Mohammedan sects. Even the Shiites, when they feel strong enough to rule will want their benifactors, the U.S. gone. wb