If there's one thing you can count on from Republicans, it's that they're going to continue to attack President Obama for honoring Bush's status of forces agreement in Iraq and insisting that he could have somehow forced the Iraqis to allow the United States to occupy their country forever. That and they're going to constantly spew revisionist history when it comes to what a debacle it was to invade that country in the first place and try to lay the blame on things going badly on Democrats.
The audience was treated to both from Turdblossom, a.k.a. Bush's brain, Karl Rove on this weekend's Fox News Sunday.
WALLACE: Karl, just on an issue of leadership, I very much doubt that during the London blitz that Winston Churchill would have somehow put what the Nazis were doing in historical context with what the Anglo Saxons had done a thousand years before.
KARL ROVE, GOP STRATEGIST: Yes, appalling lack of leadership.
But, look, there's even bigger problem. If you read this national security document, there are two fundamental errors. One is a belief that wishing something to be true will make it so. The president is clearly intent upon disabusing a notion that ISIL and other groups like it represent an existential threat to the United States and the world order, as he told Fareed Zakaria last weekend in his interview.
But ISIL, if it achieves its goal of a caliphate in the Middle East, fueled by oil riches, will be a threat to the world order. Similarly, if the Taliban reestablishes its control over Afghanistan and again becomes a sanctuary for terrorists, it will become a threat to the world order.
The second problem is, is that they declare their failures as successes in order to repeat them. The president withdrew troops from Iraq, leaving behind no residual force as the Iraqis wanted, and as a result, he's not able to even undertake the three critical capabilities that his own strategy says are essential to success, namely, targeted counterterrorism, collective action, with responsible partners and stopping the growth of this kind of terrorist organizations.
Because we all know that Rove would never do something like believing that wishing something to be true "will make it so." Right? Oh never mind.
After Juan Williams pointed out that most American's aren't exactly gung ho about the United States involving ourselves in more wars in the Middle East and even Republicans aren't calling for "boots on the ground" Rove continued his attacks with some assistance by host Chris Wallace.
WALLACE: All right. Karl, last word?
ROVE: Well, the American people would support action if the president enunciated the necessity for that action. Juan makes referenced to the U.S. airstrikes. That tempo of 700 roughly airstrike is what was normally done within a day or two.
And why the Arabs not stepping up to the line, because they think this president is feckless and weak. We need strong American leadership. The American people will follow if the president enunciates what's at stake and so will our allies. But none of them are going to get out there in front of us, except maybe the Jordanians, because they do not want to get out in front and be cut out from underneath as this president's time and time again done again to our allies.WILLIAMS: This is a blame game, and you can do alarmism and you can say it's instantaneous and urgent. We got to do this right now.
WALLACE: Can I get to one thing because we have to cut off. Sometimes it's worth getting alarmed and when they are killing hostages, cutting their heads off, burning them alive, you know what --
WILLIAMS: Yes, but that's not to say there's a direct threat to the United States like 9/11.
WALLACE: Time to hear the alarm here.
All right. We have to take a break here. We'll see you all later in the program.
Sorry Rove, but I'll take what you're calling "feckless and weak" any day over that cowboy you worked for whose foreign policy was "bombs away!" Someone let me know when Rove's going to lead the way and sign up to go over there and fight.
