Liberal Talk Radio

I’m pretty sure Matt Yglesias is an avowed multilateralist, so I’m puzzled as to why he’s writing stuff like this in TAPPED:

…but the question of what it would have taken to pull Iraq off better deserves a rigorous look. As Beinart writes, “at the beginning of the fairly successful Bosnia and Kosovo nation-building efforts, NATO boasted more than 22 troops for every 1,000 local civilians. In Iraq, when Saddam fell, there were six.” That implies we should have had almost 480,000 soldiers in Iraq. The Army only has about 500,000 active duty soldiers, backed up by 700,000-odd National Guard and Reserve troops. That’s not even close to enough to sustain a 480,000 person commitment to Iraq for a long enough time on top of the other things the Army needs to do…

….So it’s really not clear that nation-building in Iraq could have been pulled off without an earlier, major upsizing of the Army or major reorganization of U.S. security commitments around the world.

Umm… Matt? Isn’t that what multilateralism is for? Isn’t that what John Kerry was for? Isn’t that what this whole election was about? Of course we don’t have enough troops to sustain Iraqi operations unilaterally. That’s why we hate George Bush, remember?

Weird.