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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
http://www.instapundit.com

Re Instapundit's discussion of Tommy Franks' new book -- actually, Glenn Reynolds was just quoting from a review by Max Boot -- you should take a look at this. Phil Carter is a former Army officer who has a blog and writes for Slate. He quotes extensively from Franks' book to refure Boot. This is only part of his conclusion:

• I think that Mr. Boot's review misses the mark in two major ways. First, Mr. Boot says that Gen. Franks does not "seriously ponder what more he could have done to foster a secure postwar environment in Iraq and Afghanistan." That's not true. He does ponder it, and at some length. But as a good soldier, Gen. Franks is not going to come out and say that the White House and Pentagon screwed the pooch on Phase IV — he's going to imply it in subtle ways, by shifting responsibility for certain segments of the operation or levels of command. That's exactly what he does in the book, but Mr. Boot misses it.
  
  Second, the review implies that the other post-war criticisms of the Bush administration are unfounded — that the administration's judgment on this operation has been borne out by events. I just don't think you can make a colorable argument to support that point. The fact of the matter is that this administration latched onto every optimistic assumption in the book, as James Fallows reported in the Atlantic Monthly, and failed to effectively plan for the chaos and instability that followed the war. Of course, you couldn't foresee that with any certainty. But you sure as hell could plan for it — and in my opinion, it was derelict not to at least anticipate (and plan for) a worst-case scenario. As I wrote in June 2003 for the Washington Monthly, we have always known that it takes more troops and time to secure the peace than to win the war — it's simply a more complicated endeavor. We ignored the lessons of Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo in Iraq, and we are now paying the price.

BTW, when you quote from something like a blog and use the QUOTE tags, and include only the cite outside those tags, it's hard to respond to you because when somewhere quotes your post, the software omits from that quote whatever was in your QUOTE tags. This is one reason to use the LIST tags instead. Just FYI.