Maryland Conservatarian

The Washington Post continues to believe that Bashir Goth has something useful to share and thus his continued presence in the annoying PostGlobal. He begins this episode with this editorial comment:

“It's refreshing to see President Bush finally admitting his failures in Iraq for the first time since he declared the Iraq war over in April 2003.” Bush Is Right This Time - Bashir Goth at PostGlobal

Check the link he provides (Iraq war over) – it goes to an Australia-based web site which boldly proclaims: Bush declares Iraq war over …without actually providing the quote where the President declared the War was over. (Hint – he never said it.).

Now I’ve previously commented on a Bashir Goth PostGlobal posting; the last time he was suggesting that Saddam be sent to some other murderous thug’s country – the better to assuage the humiliation felt by so many Sunnis. Well, that’s OBE (Overcome By Events) and remarkably, Mr. Goth resists the urge to tell the rest of us “I told you so!”…or maybe he’s just hoping the rest of us won’t notice.

The tricky part of this most recent article of his is to declare his optimism for Iraq without violating the Global Mainstream Press Code of Ethics and, you know, come off sounding like a Bush toady:

“Well, looking at the fratricide and barbarism going on in Iraq today, any withdrawal of American forces would not only be a dereliction of duty but also a call for an unprecedented disaster across the whole region.”

So we’re doing a good thing there?

“The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death.” [Quoting a President Bush 2003 speech]
“But after almost three years, the Bush Administration has shown no better record than its adversaries. What is needed is to show to the Iraqis that Americans are better at building than filling hospitals.”

First of all, it’s not the American forces that are filling up the hospitals – that would be fellow Iraqis as well as imported terrorists. And the recent record, while not perfect, does include a few elections, relative peace throughout most of Iraq and a growing economy. That’s certainly not all the Bush Administration’s doing but that’s the side of the field they were on and I’d match that record against any of its “adversaries”.

He has previously called our involvement in Iraq an “internationally unjust war” (whatever that means) and called for “resorting to the traditional Arab way of resolving problems and sharing power [so that we] may reassure the Iraqi people that their fate is in their hands”. Nevertheless, he doesn’t want to leave Iraq in the hands of Iraqis, I guess because he doesn’t think they’ll be traditional. Most importantly, he calls upon the U.S. to rain money on Iraq because – and please tell me if I’m reading him wrong – he thinks we can buy Iraqi love. But like I wrote earlier, as a member of the Global Mainstream Media, he is ethically unable to be nice to President Bush so he leaves us with this:

“Meanwhile, the Bush Administration should realize that any goodwill overtures will come to nothing if it entangles itself in more embarrassing 'shoot from the hip' situations such as bombing Somali sheepherders…”

Do you think he is referring to this? TheSpoof.com : U.S. Military Kills 27 Somali Sheep herders, and several dozen sheep linked to Al Queda