The first thing that bothered me is how horribly written Giuliani's op-ed is. The Slate's Fred Kaplan remarked, "Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible." A perfect example is Giuliani's confusing sentence structuring.
"Achieving a realistic peace means balancing realism and idealism in our foreign policy," Giuliani writes. "America is a nation that loves peace and hates war."
Giuliani's poison pen doesn't get better. I seriously wonder the America's Mayor paid a high school sophomore to write this shit. Another example is "The first step toward a realistic peace is to be realistic about our enemies." Was Giuliani under the impression that the American people have been living in a dream-like state the past six years since 9-11?
Giuliani engages in revisionist history.
"America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South."
Vietnam was not going to become a democracy, no matter how long the United States remained militarily engaged. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history at best and utter batshit insanity at it's worse. Giuliani contends if Iraq and Afghanistan (already) fell that the consequences would be as disastrous as Vietnam. Conservative blogger Dan Drezner points out that Giuliani accidently debunks his own argument.
Actually, the fall of Saigon was, in the end, the final falsification of the domino theory that Giuliani's essay unconsciously accepts. South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia collapsed. That was it. The Soviet Union's subsequent expansionism proved to be its ruination, as it found itself bogged down in Afghanistan.
There is the question of how Giuliani expects to get enough recruits for ten more ten new combat brigades" with a volunteer. He makes it very clear he has no intention if leaving Iraq. Ever. That doesn't entice young men and women to enlist. Even if Giuliani got enough recruit, ten brigades is only an "appropriate baseline." We may need more soldiers. Perhaps he can use clones like Emperor Palpatine.
I could go on, but I don't have the time. This foreign policy paper is Gigli bad.
Well, I got this far:
ReplyDeleteBut this war will be long, and we are still in its early stages. Much like at the beginning of the Cold War, we are at the dawn of a new era in global affairs, when old ideas have to be rethought and new ideas have to be devised to meet new challenges.
You know, one has to just stop and say Jesus Fucking Christ. Terrorists have blown up some trains and buildings, and not to demean those tragedies, but... That's all the offense they've been able to muster. During the Cold War, it was Democracy vs. Communism. East vs. West. One world view vs. the other, and both sides were armed to the teeth with weapons that could have easily wiped out human civilization. How in fuck is that comparable to al-Qa'ida? Jesus Fucking Christ, it's just whackos with some firepower. Nobody gave this much of a shit when a few conservative Christian white guys from the south blew up a federal building in Oklahoma, why all the big fuss now?
Just how delusional have people become?