{"id":7538,"date":"2006-05-30T09:10:23","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T13:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7538"},"modified":"2006-05-30T09:10:23","modified_gmt":"2006-05-30T13:10:23","slug":"they-didnt-seem-reluctant-at-the-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/they-didnt-seem-reluctant-at-the-time\/","title":{"rendered":"They didn’t seem reluctant at the time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president’s [tag]Memorial Day[\/tag] remarks<\/a> yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery were largely fine, but like Michael [tag]Froomkin[\/tag]<\/a>, I found one sentence in particular troubling.<\/p>\n

“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to [tag]war[\/tag] [tag]reluctantly[\/tag], because we know the costs of war.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe Bush meant we used<\/i> to go to war “reluctantly,” because 2002 and 2003 weren’t all that long ago, and the Bush administration was anything but reluctant in going to war at the time.<\/p>\n

We are, after all, talking about an administration in which the [tag]Defense Secretary[\/tag] asked his aides to start pulling together resources for an attack on Iraq just five hours<\/i><\/a> after the Pentagon was hit on [tag]9\/11[\/tag].<\/p>\n

Indeed, though the link is no longer available<\/strike>, on October 12, 2001, just a month after 9\/11, the New York Times reported<\/a> that then-Deputy Secretary of Defense [tag]Paul Wolfowitz[\/tag] had begun crafting plans to remove [tag]Saddam Hussein[\/tag] from power, despite the fact that the war in Afghanistan had started less than a week earlier. The article noted that Wolfowitz was leading a “tight-knit group of Pentagon officials and defense experts outside government” that would begin “mobilizing support” for a new Iraq war as part of the “next phase of the war against terrorism.” R. James Woolsey, former director of central intelligence and part of Wolfowitz’s group, acknowledged that an Iraqi invasion may not be popular once it occurs, but that Bush administration officials would be “willing to put up with criticism from European states and other governments.” (thanks to reader J.P. for the link)<\/p>\n

The Bush gang was “[tag]reluctant[\/tag]” to go to war? This wasn’t<\/i> a war of choice? If only it were so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president’s [tag]Memorial Day[\/tag] remarks yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery were largely fine, but like Michael [tag]Froomkin[\/tag], I found one sentence in particular troubling. “In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to [tag]war[\/tag] [tag]reluctantly[\/tag], because we know the costs of war.” Maybe Bush meant we used to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}