Dissension on the (Radical) Right. Ralph Peters, a supermilitarist, rightwing columnist for the New York Post, has recently embarked on a crusade against fellow rightwingers in the Bush defense establishment. Here are some intriguing quotes from his column two days ago.

If there were any justice in the world, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and Steve Cambone would be walking point in Najaf or Fallujah. But that's a sight you'll never see. When Wolfowitz went to Baghdad he had tighter security than Saddam Hussein ever did. He then accused journalists, more than two dozen of whom have died in Iraq, of cowardice.

Yeah, you're a hero, Paul. You should've been on that Swift boat with John Kerry. * * *

Ultimately, the blame [for the hideous Abu Ghraib scandal] leads back to Washington, to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A hallowed military rule applies: A commander is responsible for everything his soldiers do or fail to do.

When the going was good, Rumsfeld reveled in the role of warlord. Now he needs to take his licks like a man.

The Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes, and Feiths of the Bush Administration persuaded themselves that the Iraqi people would welcome their “liberators” with open arms, so made no plans for quelling a long-term, widely popular “insurgency”. Now some American militarists are indignant about the needless risks our men in uniform (and, of course women — in our social-Communist military, which is devoted to the pretense that sexual difference is meaningless, because individuals are meaningless) have been exposed to, with the result that almost daily Americans are being killed and the Bush defense leadership hasn’t a clue what to do about it.
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In addition, an underappreciated 1998 explanation for why President Bush the Elder refused to carry the First Gulf War to Baghdad has recently received the attention it deserves:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see , violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land . It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome." — George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 489-90

Didn’t Dubya’s Daddy warn his baby about this? Or is Bush 41 (41st President) “out of the loop” in his son’s Administration? Perhaps Bush the Elder isn’t radical-enuf rightwing to be permitted input to the decisions of the cabal that is the Real President for which Bush the Younger is only the public face (or poster boy, puppet, or marionette — your choice).
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Let’s hope the Radical Right escalates its internal dissensions as to expose the profoundly dishonest arguments it has used to manipulate the public and the un-American principles that motivate it. Americans might then see that they have been played for fools by people who do not have their best interests at heart — not in Iraq, not at home. (Responsive to “Blame Reaches to the Pentagon’s Top”, column by Ralph Peters in the New York Post, August 27, 2004 (URL presently at http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/27549.htm, tho most items on the Post’s website are no longer accessible after a couple of weeks)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:22 PM