I can appreciate the fact that Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) is an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Iraq. I can also understand that Allen is going to run for president in 2008 and doesn’t want to say anything now that his rivals might use against him.
But if he’s going to praise a debacle, the least he could do is put some thought into it.
Allen was on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday, and was asked to comment on a Washington Post article detailing massive, systemic flaws in the training of Iraqi security forces. (C&L, of course, has the video.)
Stephanopoulos: We read on the front page of the Washington Post this morning that these elements of the Iraqi military, the army and security forces we’re training up, are actually, many of them, still loyal to their parties, still loyal to their militias and it’s not a national army.
Allen: Well, that’s true. And you have that even in our United States. We have local police; we have state police, and you have the FBI…
Consider the susbtance behind these remarks. It’s possible Allen hadn’t seen the WaPo article Stephanopoulos referenced, but it described militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, carrying out abductions, assassinations, and other acts of intimidation, while creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments.
To hear George Allen — a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — tell it, the various state and federal agencies in American law enforcement offer an analogous picture. As Michael Crowley explained, Allen essentially argued, “Bloodthirsty Shiite militiamen really aren’t so different from, say, Virginia state troopers.”
Presidential material? Well, by current standards, maybe.