It is tiresome to read utterly conventional narcisso-lefty rants about whatever Bush says or does. Our boy Kaplan is perhaps the most predictable, least imaginative kneejerk paid opinionator out there (leaving aside Frank Rich and others hidden behind The Wall.)
There's an easy solution to that, don't read them. But of course, that wasn't a real comment, only an affectation on your part.
I note that today Kaplan and the Washington Post both want to decry the assasination of Sheikh Abdul Sittar Bezea al-Rishawi. Now that he's dead, he is an important man, the lost key to Bush's success in Iraq. While alive however, the guy was invisible unless you read independent reporters or soldier blogs while he worked with us to move key Sunni leaders away from the other side. But his new-found post-mortem importance is the posture of the moment and thus requires a kneejerk mention by deep-thinkers like Kaplan.
Bushistas have been making him "an important man," Bush himself met with him in Iraq. Now he's dead, and that's emblematic of the uncontrolled violence in that country. The kneejerk here appears to be your own.
Those of us who read beyond the New York Times and Daily Kos knew that Anbar started changing last spring. Why Bush, Casey, Sanchez et al. took so long to adapt to the success crafted by more junior men is disappointing but my disappointment does not make me a policy expert as it magically does for Mr. Kaplan.
Of course, the surge forced insurgents out of the more dangerous areas and into other areas not previously considered that dangerous, including the south.
Neither you nor Kaplan are experts, true, but of the two, he seems a lot more knowledgable.
He now opines that removing troops is a bad thing, forced upon Bush and unrelated to his general's recommendations or the situation in Iraq. However, had Harry Reid put this exact outcome in a bill and tried to mandate it it would have been seen as progress, a step in the right direction. Nobody surfs the lefty zeitgeist like our man Kaplan.
Uh, no, he opines that allowing surge troops (who would be coming home anyway) to come home and them pretending that that's a 'troop reduction' is dishonest, and I'd agree.
I do agree that if any Dem put any kind of withdrawal in a bill, it wouldn't pass, and would likely be the cause of more accusations of 'defeatism' against the Dems. But that hypocrisy is on YOUR side of the account sheet.
The notion that Fred Kaplan is more maturely grounded in reality than George Bush and his senior military advisors is patently silly. But how imaginative and of him to use the Bush-is-on-another-planet metaphor because that's like totally original. No wonder Slate pays him the big bucks.
Let's see, has Kaplan pretended that his fellow editors have WMD? Has he invaded their homes, shot members of their families, tortured anyone? Did he then go on to pretend that the whole thing was necessary, and that he was 'winning' something by doing so? I think it's pretty obvious that that's a poor comparison- for Bush.
Kaplan may be a sophomoric disaster as an opinion journalist but his work may be studied by future generations to examine the mysterious verbal-but-useless class of Americans who believed (a) that validating their feelings should be the essence of foreign and military policy and (b) those who disagree with that approach are like on another planet.
Making silly, abusive posts against Kaplan no doubt seems clever and self-aggrandizing to you, but if you can't really refute much of what Kaplan says, who's the one who ends up with egg on his face?
That'd be you.
