PrintMay 8, 2007
Plan B thinking
Political Animal Kevin Drum has a blog post up at the Washington Monthly site titled, "SIX MONTHS....No more Friedmans after September?" Citing today's Tom Ricks and Jonathan Weisman article at the Washington Post, Mr. Drum's post discusses the "Plan B" scenario in Iraq should the surge falter, or should the Maliki government fail to make progress toward reconciliation of the sects. A White House fallback to a "Plan B" would result in wobbliness from GOP moderates sufficient to green-light "abandoning Bush this time around." In six months cue up a Sue Collins/Gord Smith duet, warbling Weill's "September Song" in the well of the Senate.
America is weary, says Mr. Drum, of kicking this up the road in predictable increments:
But political progress? There are virtually no positive signs right now, and after 18 months of stalling it's unlikely that 18 more weeks are going to make a difference.
Here is a Founding Father (of Friedmans?), who apparently hung on well after his predictions of November 29, 1775, were found unrealistic:
His first act after settling into his quarters on Chestnut Street was to undertake a solitary assessment of how much a war against England might cost the colonies, not in terms of deaths but in terms of dollars. He seemed to believe that an all-out military conflict would not last long. "One bloody campaign," he wrote a friend, "will probably decide everlastingly our future course." So his calculations of cost were based on the assumption of a six-month war, which he estimated would require about three million dollars in new taxes. (Emphasis. added)
American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Jos. Ellis, A.A. Knopf, NY, 1998, p. 39.
I doubt Paine ever called him a chickenhawk.
