More Of The Same

This stuff is funny coming from the guy who help put in place the policies that allowed 9/11 to happen:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (UPI) — The following are extracts from former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft comments in the article “Breaking Ranks: What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the Bush Administration?” by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Oct. 31 edition of The New Yorker which was on published Monday.

Scowcroft, 80, the former national security advisor and close friend of President George W. Bush’s father, President George H. W. Bush, told the New Yorker it would have been no problem for America’s military to reach Baghdad. The problems would have arisen when the Army entered the Iraqi capital.

“At the minimum, we’d be an occupier in a hostile land,” he said. “Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out? What would be the rationale for leaving? I don’t like the term ‘exit strategy’ — but what do you do with Iraq once you own it?”

“This is exactly where we are now,” he said of Iraq, with no apparent satisfaction. “We own it. And we can’t let go. We’re getting sniped at. Now, will we win? I think there’s a fair chance we’ll win. But look at the cost.”

“I’m not a pacifist,” he said. “I believe in the use of force. But there has to be a good reason for using force. And you have to know when to stop using force.” Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force, the New Yorker said.

“I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes,” he said. “You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neo-cons do it.”

“How do the neo-cons bring democracy to Iraq? You invade, you threaten and pressure, you evangelize.” And now, Scowcroft said, America is suffering from the consequences of that brand of revolutionary utopianism. “This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism,” he said.

“There may have come a time when we would have needed to take Saddam out,” he told the New Yorker. “But he wasn’t really a threat. His Army was weak, and the country hadn’t recovered from sanctions.”

[…]Scowcroft told the magazine he was unmoved by the stirrings of democracy movements in the Middle East.

Scowcroft said of former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, one of the driving forces for the 2003 Iraq war, “He’s got a utopia out there. We’re going to transform the Middle East, and then there won’t be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, ‘It won’t happen,’ whereas I would say, ‘It’s likely to happen and therefore you can’t take the chance.’ Paul’s idealism sweeps away doubts.”

Scowcroft told the New Yorker he was concerned about Wolfowitz’s unwillingness to contemplate bad outcomes. “What the realist fears is the consequence of idealism,” he said. “The reason I part with the neo-cons is that I don’t think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful. If you can do it, fine, but I don’t think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse.” He added, “I’m a realist in the sense that I’m a cynic about human nature.”

There you have it, the basic moonbat line of thinking…”those people can’t make a democracy work”

And what the hell is this: “But we’ve had fifty years of peace.”

Is he joking? Peace?

February 23, 1970, Halhoul, West Bank. Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorists open fire on a busload of pilgrims killing Barbara Ertle of Michigan and wounding two other Americans.

March 28-29, 1970, Beirut, Lebanon. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) fired seven rockets at the U.S. Embassy, the American Insurance Company, Bank of America and the John F. Kennedy library.

Another 30 years worth here.

Another great line: “You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neo-cons do it.”

Let me see, the liberal way is extorting financial aid for elections and then give em a few nuclear reactors. Seems to have worked out well huh?

Also, we conquered Germany and guess what? We are still there. Where’s the exit strategy? How about Korea?

More of the same kind of moonbattery bullshit.

Curt

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