Thursday, October 29, 2009

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

From last night's Fox News All-Stars.

 

On the Democrats’ health-care legislation:

Well, it's astonishing that people are talking about restructuring a sixth of the American economy and don't even have a bill, don't even have a [Congressional Budget Office] scoring, don't even know what opting in and opting out [of the "public option"] means.

And here we are at a point where the president has said, weeks ago, that the time to debate is over. Well, how can you debate if you don't know what the plan is and what's in the plan and what it's going to cost?

 

I think the Reid gambit is about internal Nevada politics, about staying alive [in next year's Senate race], appeasing his left. The best he can hope is that if he loses Lieberman on the public option, which he will, and he somehow holds all the other Democrats, then he goes to Olympia Snowe, he puts in a trigger [for the public option] which will be extremely weak, which means it will be triggered if it rains once in March — and then he gets the public option.

 

I think that's a three-cushion shot in pool, but it's his hope. But I think, in the end, he doesn't really care. All he wants is the political cover of having proposed it.

On what’s happening in Pakistan and its effects on Afghanistan:

Let me start by addressing what is happening in Pakistan. I think the bombings in the cities are obviously linked to the Pakistani army assault on south Waziristan, which is the stronghold of the Taliban in Pakistan.

 

And the reason it is important in terms of our decision on Afghanistan is this — if the Pakistanis are attacking the enemy in Pakistan, unless there are Americans or NATO or Afghans on the other side of the border, the Pakistanis will fail because there would be a haven on the Afghan side.

 

We always think of Pakistan as a place in which you create a haven for the Afghan bad guys that we are attacking, but it works in the other way as well. You have got to have hammer and anvil. And the hammer now in Pakistan is the Pakistani army.

 

But unless we secure the Afghan areas on the other side, the bad guys will relocate and have sanctuary in Afghanistan.

 

That's why the wars are linked, and that's why the increase in the violence now in Pakistan is linked intimately with our decision on Afghanistan. And I worry that if you adopt the McChrystal-light strategy…a narrow strategy, holding the cities and the infrastructure and leaving the countryside to the enemy. I'm not sure if that would in any way succeed.

 

The real issue is what does McChrystal think, and would he accept the McChrystal-light as a viable strategy, or will he say that I can't conduct this in good honor and resign.

 

…Let's remember, it's the president himself who said just a month and a half ago [that] Afghanistan is a war of necessity. Well, if it is a war of necessity, you have to have success and you have to have victory ….

10/29 12:18 PMShare