The American Spectator

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Zinni Cuts In

4.10.06 @ 12:01AM

MODERN-DAY McCLELLAN
Re: Jed Babbin's Fighting for a Ticket on the Titanic:

Thwap! Take that, Zinni. Stuff a sock in it and say goodnight.
-- Cara Lyons Lege
Frisco, Texas

Jed is absolutely correct. It is amazing how many Cold Warriors have opted to switch allegiances if not parties. Sometimes I really wonder if the end of the Cold War was just as traumatic on our diplomats and military intellectuals as it was on the Eastern Block. 911 crushed the ideas and strategies that formed the foundation for so many careers. As Jed noted, General Zinni invested much time and effort into this stability strategy during the Clinton Administration. He, like others saw the Middle East as some grand chessboard. Stability must be maintained through complex diplomacy. Saddam's biggest sin in 1990 wasn't an illegal invasion. His biggest sin was rocking the boat -- disrupting the "balance." Removing Saddam ruined everything. Years of diplomacy perished in 2003. How rude of Bush.

I imagine many people like Zinni or Scowcroft even saw the Taliban as a useful pawn on the chessboard of Middle East diplomacy. If some enlightened public servant could reach out and understand the language, culture, and history of the Taliban, then perhaps they could be put to some use. This kind of stability required a special knowledge, as well as the ability to overlook rape rooms, public torture, and genocide. These men had an almost cultic attachment to this form of foreign policy Gnosticism. Their model wasn't John Foster Dulles but Prince Metternich. Stability and not security was their ultimate goal. Such abstractions perished with the Twin Towers. Perhaps it isn't pride that explains Zinni's recent behavior, but guilt.
-- JP
Indiana

I don't agree with Mr. Babbin with respect to his recent positions on Iraq and illegal immigration, but I agree totally with his comments on General Zinni.

The analogy between Civil War General George McClellan and modern day Generals Clark and Zinni is too strong to ignore. A similar analogy exists between Civil War era Copperheads and today's rabid anti-war leaders like Kennedy, Pelosi, etc.

History teaches how wrong McClellan and the Copperheads were in 1864. History teaches how wrong Zinni and the liberal democrats are today.
-- Doug Santo
Pasadena, California

General Zinni is actually a Marine. I had heard it predicted of him that he would go very, very far in the Marine Corps from a flag wife around 1994. She thought he was tremendous, but I discounted this to some extent because I found her not particularly credible generally.

I checked in to CENTCOM in January of 1999 to drill in the J3, and saw that everybody LOVED him. I didn't get it. Not that I grew personally attached to General Franks, but I could see he was getting things done.

General DeLong was the case where everybody loved him, including me. Mrs. DeLong is a sweety-pie, and was continually surrounded by a cloud of male junior field-grade at social events.
-- Ed Ahlsen-Girard
Walton Beach, Florida

Sad to see another former Marine turn himself into a joke.

While General Zinni was "planning" in the '90s, his bosses halved the U.S. Army. Build partnerships with the EU and UN? Maybe we should have joined in with their courageous actions to stop genocides in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Generals who speak political nonsense make themselves look particularly foolish.
-- Chris B.

Thanks for your clarification of General Zinni's inept views. Now we know the truth. We DID TOO plan intelligently for the realities of a post-hostilities Iraq. We had more than enough troops on the ground there to establish and maintain order, and all this stuff about the Sunnis and Shias not getting along turned out to be just a Baghdad urban legend. Or was it Fallujah. I forget. Whatever. So post-Saddam peace now reigns over there just as the Bush Administration planned it and Democracy is beginning to work there just about as well as it does here, give or take one or two Mexican Nationalist Demonstrations. And wasn't Condi Rice received so well recently in Sharialand? She really got those guys working together now. What nerve of that guy Zinni! And after General Garner got all the lights back on and Paul Bremer handed out all those Boy Scout leaflets and George Bush posed on the aircraft carrier. Mission Accomplished, baby! The West really CAN TOO show the East how to live. Glad you cleared all that up.
-- Gene Wright
Laguna Niguel, California

Thank you for this letter. Zinni gets an F. I have watched him over the years. One of Clinton's boys. His attacks on Bush and Rumsfeld tells me our guys are doing well. I still say "Rumsfeld '08."
-- Martin N. Tirrell
Lisbon, New Hampshire

I read Babbin's diatribe re: Gen. Zinni and I wonder: Where is Babbin's solution?
-- John Denson
Nashville, Tennessee

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