Afghanistan was a war of necessity, |
Bush is implicated. For Bush to fire Rumsfeld is for Bush to declare himself a failure as president. Iraq is the main issue of his presidency. |
But the strategy has hardly succeeded either. Rival militias, some with ties to Iran and many with hostile views against not only Sunnis but fellow Shia, are quite active, and indeed are also infiltrating state security units. The situation is highly fragile and tenuous. |
Certainly we seem to be getting more indication of more aggressive Pakistani raids. So I think the first order, yes, the Pakistanis are doing more. Whether they are doing enough, however, is entirely debatable. |
Don't put American Special Forces into Afghanistan. |
Existing law does not give Congress a lot of leverage. |
Frankly, breaking new ground is an unrealistic expectation for a speech that is scheduled in advance for a celebration at Princeton. If Dr. Rice wanted to break new ground, she would do it on her own schedule. |
Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn't do it. |
I believe that is not affordable even in this age of surpluses, ... wrong. |
I do not think the decision to invade [Iraq] was a mistake, ... I would agree with the Bush administration that Saddam was a nasty enough guy. |
I don't think we owe anything more to the Iraqi people, to be blunt. We owe it to our own troops and our own strategic interests. |
I don't think we'll catch bin Laden anytime soon. If we did, it would be great. But he's likely to be in a part of Pakistan where government resources are quite limited, for both the U.S. and for Pakistan. |
I tend to think it's actually more common now for Republicans to be using very much the old rhetoric and for Democrats to be reverting more to post-Cold War approaches still, where things like civil liberties and union rights are given a higher importance. |
I think he is less scary to them. |
I think that the idea that you can simply let that situation fester and demand the North Koreans make good on their nuclear weapons program -- and eliminate it prior to any negotiations -- is not a sustainable policy. |