Kristol Math
After a continuing effort to reorient his support of an ever-shifting architecture of justification for the Iraq adventure, Bill Kristol — Kung Fu master of relativistic political positioning — has finally declared that:
…we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq…
His point, after years of supporting the administration, seems now to be it should have been a bigger, bloodier affair. Again, it’s not as though there weren’t predictions that a larger troop presence would be required to control a post-Saddam Iraq. It’s just that those numbers were politically undesirable.
In the multi-dimensional redirection of causes and responsibility, the chess masters on the right are running out of options. Taken in light of Buckley’s and O’Reilly’s quotes earlier this week (hanging the blame on “ice men” and “crazy people” respectively), it’s clear that a new messaging offensive is under way.
Like his colleagues, Kristol seeks to shift the blame from the underlying philosophy. This smacks of “You didn’t win, I wasn’t racing.” But, unfortunately, with hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqi lives at stake.
