I watched the president’s White House address on Iraq online, in part so I wouldn’t have to endure the talking heads’ analysis, but apparently, as soon as the speech ended, CNN’s Larry King got reactions from Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, and John McCain.
I noticed today that Kevin Drum and James Fallows didn’t hold back in their mockery of Giuliani. I thought, how bad could it have been?
Let’s go to the transcript to see what the former NYC mayor thinks about the president’s Iraq policy and current conditions on the ground.
On the U.S. mission: “It seems to me that our goal is in Iraq is no different now than it was at the very beginning. The goal of the mission in Iraq is to provide safety and security so we can have an ally in Iraq against the Islamic terrorists.”
On the definition of “success” in Iraq: “Larry, that’s what they used to say about crime in New York, right? We’d never be able to reduce it. How do you define safety and security? How you define it is, a society in which people can send their children to school, a society in which people can go to work…. So what we have to do here is to provide enough safety and security so that the Iraqis can work out a stable government for themselves. ”
On the U.S. costs of the war: “You know, do you re-examine the goal every time there’s a loss of life? And the general said yes. And you do. And there’s nothing that you can say to someone who has lost a loved one there. I mean, I lived through that when I was mayor of New York.”
On counter-terrorism: “They were killing more Americans when we were on defense in the ’90s than they have since September 11th, since we’ve been on offense.”
On Bush’s new catch-phrase: “I think the idea of return on success is a good idea.”
On Democrats: “I don’t see the idea of running out and withdrawing and retreating…. Think of the consequences of what the Democrats want to do. Retreating and running away in Iraq. It will bring us back to that same position of weakness we had in the 1990s…. We’ve got General Petraeus there. It seems to me despite the attacks that some of these Democrats have made on his integrity, this is a man of honesty and integrity….I was really disappointed in Hillary Clinton’s attack on the general’s integrity, kind of joining in that and her failure to condemn moveon.org.
I’ve seen smarter analysis on right-wing blogs.
There’s just nothing there. Giuliani seems to just string talking points together in search of coherence. Every answer included an attack on Democrats, but no answer included any real policy discussion.
Is this how he’s been all along? To start with, he doesn’t know anything. To be more precise: not a single sentence that he utters suggests any familiarity with what people have been saying and arguing — about terrorism, Iraq, the situation of the military, security trade-offs, etc — for the last few years. He’s out of date in two ways: He displays the “fashionable in 2003 and 2004” assumption that if you say “nine-eleven, nine-eleven, nine-eleven!!” enough times, you end all debate about military policy.
He displays the “fashionable about three weeks ago” assumption that if you say “General Petraeus, General Petraeus, General Petraeus” enough times, you’ve offered an Iraq policy. And through it all he seems totally self-confident. Hmm, have we seen anything like this combo before?
Kevin added that Giuliani’s days as a credible candidate are numbered.
I’m surprised he’s done even as well as he has so far, but there’s no way the press is going to give him a pass on his pull-the-string-and-hear-a-buzzword candidacy for much longer. He’s doomed.
I sure hope so, but I thought the exact same thing in 2000.