Crib from Kissinger, insult Americans, drool on keyboard

Tony Blankley must have really been in a rush to dash off "Exit Strategy Day" since all he does is equate an Iraq exit strategy with the Munich Agreement and compare dovish and non-hawkish Americans with suckered pre-WWII Brits.

Oh, and he cribs a paragraph from a recent column by Henry Kissinger, taking it out of context (of course), trimming a few sentences here and there, and presenting it as Kissinger's "prescient vision" when, in fact, the former Secretary of State was presenting it as a nightmare scenario.

Ignoring the fact that the Munich Agreement was not exactly an exit strategy, Blankley keyboards giddily with his fat fingers, inserting "Iraq" wherever "Czechoslovakia" appears in the Munich Agreement.

If one substitutes the name Iraq for Czechoslovakia, above, the resultant language probably would closely approximate what President Bush's Iraq war opponents would be saying the week after a "successful" Iraq exit strategy had been completed -- especially the phrase "further progress along the road to sanity." Can't you just hear Sen. Boxer making such a statement?

Does history repeat itself so precisely? In his column, Kissinger says no; I guess Blankley skipped over that line in his rush. Let's see what Blankley chooses to borrow and what he chooses to ignore from the learned Dr. Kissinger.

The text in black is from Blankley's column; the text in blue is from Kissinger's column; the text in maroon is what Blankley quotes verbatim from Kissinger's column. (I hope nobody's color-blind.) Emphasis added.

Consider the words of a far wiser statesman than the misguided Neville Chamberlain. Last week, in the Washington Post, Dr. Henry Kissinger assessed the likely outcome if we use an exit strategy out of Iraq before we succeed in our mission:

History, of course, never repeats itself precisely. Vietnam was a battle of the Cold War; Iraq is an episode in the struggle against radical Islam. The stake in the Cold War was perceived to be the political survival of independent nation-states allied with the United States around the Soviet periphery.The war in Iraq is less about geopolitics than about the clash of ideologies, culture and religious beliefs. Because of the long reach of the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper significance than that in Vietnam.

If a Taliban-type government or a fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic countries would be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments.

The safety and internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would be imperiled.

This is why many opponents of the decision to start the war agree with the proposition that a catastrophic outcome would have grave global consequences -- a fundamental difference from the Vietnam debate. On the other hand, the military challenge in Iraq is more elusive.

Local Iraqi forces are being trained for a form of combat entirely different from the traditional land battles of the last phase of the Vietnam War. There are no front lines; the battlefield is everywhere.

So, does the additional copy from Kissinger's column make a difference?