Bush the war leader losing key battles

[struggle4progress]

WHETHER YOU supported the US invasion of Iraq or opposed it, you have to be impressed by the Bush administration's sheer incompetence. That issue, and not the wisdom of the Iraq war itself, should be John Kerry's trump in his claim that he would run a more effective foreign policy. Indeed, it would be hard to run a less effective one.
<snip>

Bush's policies were built on fantasies and cheap slogans that have now come back to embarrass their authors: The premise that "shock and awe" would stun our adversaries into quick submission; the idea, accepted by no serious intelligence analyst, that radical Islamist Al Qaeda and militantly secular Saddam were part of a common terror network; the claim that a motley assortment of small nations whose troop commitments mostly numbered in the hundreds were a grand "coalition of the willing."

Because of 9/11, I am pretty hawkish about protecting America against terror. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan as well as the intervention in Bosnia. I believe the United States should play a forward role in defending human rights and constraining nuclear proliferation.

But policies built on illusions are doomed to fail because they bump up against reality. So this is not about hawk versus dove. It's about competence versus fantasy. These supposed tough defenders of America in a risky age of terror are actually the gang that can't shoot straight -- or think straight.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/02/bush_the_war_leader_losing_key_battles/


Comes with a convenient list of bungles!