I found the following statement from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s counter-punching piece at the Huffington Post jaw-dropping:
The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion and far too little about how, in Obama’s formulation, to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.
That could only have been written by someone whose entire view of “the debate” comes from the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Daily Kos, and the other various Left Blogosphere blogs whose sole topics on Iraq are the error of the invasion itself and how to withdraw as quickly as possible.
That isn’t the debate as it’s being framed by the Republican candidate for the presidency, John McCain.
It certainly isn’t the view from the Right Blogosphere where it’s an article of faith that the surge is working and (I speak with only a little irony) that Iraq’s incipient democracy will emerge to rectify the situation any time now. Or in the small Center Blogosphere in which most of the serious discussion about Iraq takes place in which the likely plight of the Iraqis that have helped the U. S. the most and Iraqi democrats following a hasty U. S. withdrawal has been a prime topic for months.
I don’t expect any of this to change. Why should it? People tend to stick with their strengths and what’s been working for them so far.
