Knowing the Score

BushCheney on his presidency:

"I don't know what Harry Truman was feeling like, or Franklin Roosevelt," he told the conservative journalists. "I'm sure there were moments of high frustration for them. But I do know that at Midway, they were eventually able to say two carriers were sunk and one was damaged. We don't get to say that. A thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was. It's happening; you just don't know it. And there's no scorecard."

That's the problem, Mr. Bush. YOU, our leader, have not offered the American people a realistic assessment of the task and its benefits. The short-term, low cost intervention to prevent mushroom clouds over New York that you promised in Iraq has turned into a deadly quagmire. Those old lies now impugn your credibility. American security interests in the region are compromised by an overextended military and an increasingly hostile, disillusioned Iraqi population. Terrorism remains a threat (although not a national security threat requiring that we abandon two centuries of Constitutional government).

That's my scorecard, Mister Bush. It's not hard to come up with a basic scorecard if you think about it. Yeah, it can get all complicated in the details but if you stick to the big goals, you can figure out how to measure progress,how to keep score. The hard part is understanding what the score tells you.

I can see why you'd rather not keep score, or keep the score on your own terms. Any realistic assessment of progress and prospects in Iraq are poor not only for the United States but also for Iraqi society. The short term looks particularly evil and the long term outlook is highly volatile. Not a report card I would want to bring home for the most important challenge of my life. Not at all.