I’ve been reading a fair amount about the missing explosives in Iraq over the past few days, and it put me in mind of an ongoing argument I have with myself.
What, I think, if the conservatives/Republicans reallly are right? What if the world really is this dog-eat-dog, dangerous place, and us Democrats really are living in a happy, “We can all just get along” fantasy land? Maybe we really do need a domineering administration that pursues an aggressive foreign policy. Maybe it really is Us v. Them.
And then along comes a story like this one to remind me that even if that really were the case, the Bush administration isn’t even good at it. In fact, they’ve pretty much been incompetent. For all their bluster about being tough on terrorism and taking the fight to the enemy, they’ve screwed up at nearly every turn they’ve taken. Bin Laden is still on the loose, Zarqawi is still on the loose, Iraq is falling apart, and Afghanistan (despite the much-lauded elections) is a mess.
So basically, all of this business about the administration being tough-minded realists is smoke-and-mirrors, and they’re left trying to conjure up fictional lilly-livered starry-eyed liberals to make themselves look (and perhaps feel) better.