Noted Without Comment

"One of the great mysteries to me is exactly when the war in Iraq became inevitable."

--George Tenet, quoted by Thomas Powers
New York Review of Books 70, July 19, 2007

Pat Lang Is On a Roll (Plus a Question)

Pat Lang is on a roll this morning—

On George Tenet as a likeable guy:

I dislike George Tenet. I always have disliked him. I knew him well when he was head of the staff at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). I then thought that he was an ignorant, oily, political "hack" who "weathervaned" constantly to know which way the wind blew. He was pitifully under-qualified to be DCI and his lack of integrity under pressure in 2002 reflects his character in general.

On worrying about civilian deaths in war:

Most of the "tough guys" who like to talk about killing civilians have never seen a dead human other than in a casket in a funeral home.

On Bill Clinton’s “cowardly pacifism:”

I never voted for President Clinton, never gave him any campaign money, thought he was ludicrous in many of his actions, but to call a former president of the United States a coward and a pacifist takes a lot of hubris. You have to be really full of yourself to do that. He avoided military service? If that were a criterion for public service then Washington would be a "ghost town," depopulated of the leading lights in both parties.

For all the above see (link). In another post (link), Lang aligns himself with the absolutists on Iraq withdrawal:

The announcement of the beginning of our withdrawal will merely signal to all concerned that the "real" fight has begun.

In that context it must be understood that US logistical teams, advisers, the embassy, etc will all be at terrible risk during and after (the embassy) our withdrawal.

To withdraw our combat forces and leave these others in the country would be criminal. As Voltaire said, "pire qu'une crime, c'est stupide!"

I wish he would say more about this. The narrow point sounds right (Underbelly's class military analyst has been making the same point in unpublished emails for weeks). But I’m one of those who believes that we are stuck with the Middle East whether we want it or not. Does he mean to say that we have absolutely no role in stabilizing this tinder box? If he believes we have some role, just what does he envision it to be?

Why Tenet Is Still a Bonehead

Kevin Drum (and God knows, everyone else) are going on about the George Tenet non-event (link), in which the former CIA director proves once again that you shouldn't run with wolves if you pee like a puppy. In Kevin's case, the focus falls in particular on the Medal of Freedom, as in "just for a handful of silver he left us..."--Tenet's artless and ultimately pathetic fixation on the Bushy bauble.

What Tenet seems never to have grasped was that he would have a thousand times better chance of getting good notice in the history books if he had refused the Medal than he did by taking it. Wiki's list of notable recipients includes, what, 100 names (link). And I'll bet even the most devoted trivia maven will have trouble identifying more than two thirds of these. And these are the notables. By refusing, he might even have made us forget "slam dunk."

Fn.: I should add that, reading the early out-takes, I suspect that Tenet may actually have the better of on the issue of slam dunk (but recall that his principal adversary here is Bob Woodward, and don't get me started on him). But nobody cares, or will care for more than one news cycle. Now, refusing the medal...

Fn2: Recall Hitler's generals, with their tropical rainforest of decorations. As I recall, Hitler liked to appear among them with no medals at all.