Thursday, January 17, 2008

SOMETHING LIGHTER

Department of Nevermind

Via Instapundit, word that the Minnesota Interstate 35W bridge collapsed because "plates, which connected steel beams in the truss bridge, were roughly half the thickness they should have been because of a design error."

All that talk of the Bush administration heartlessly underfunding vital infrastructure spending? Nevermind!

(By the way, I  still can’t believe Huckabee said, “we had no bridges falling down in Arkansas” in the last debate. There's got to be a way to tout your own record without looking like you're taking a shot at another state that has suffered a tragedy.)

Also,  in today’s Washington Post, in an editorial with the subhead, "It's becoming clear that the war must be won by U.S. troops, and not by NATO":

THE BUSH administration's decision to dispatch an additional 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan raises the question of whether NATO's participation in the war has been a failure. Though the United States already provides more than half of the 53,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the additional Marines are needed because no other NATO country was willing, despite months of pleading and cajoling by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, to commit fresh forces to the troubled southern provinces where the Taliban has made a comeback...

It nevertheless is a good thing that Marines rather than European soldiers will deploy in Helmand province this spring to head off any Taliban offensive. Defeating the Afghan insurgency will require the United States to take on a larger part of the fighting. Success will also require U.S. commanders to insist that a more coherent, nationwide counterinsurgency strategy be pursued — including aggressive training of the Afghan army and police, economic development that is centrally coordinated, and a focused attack on the opium business that supplies most of the Taliban's funding. If that means downgrading NATO's role or bruising the feelings of some allied governments, so be it.

All that talk about the importance of multilateralism? Nevermind!

01/17 10:09 AMShare