The Democrats keep fighting their favorite war:
Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it’s easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago — and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn’t he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — the man who will be sworn in as vice president today — didn’t limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president’s people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to “keep it from totally collapsing” until they could “hand it off to the next guy.”
For his part, on the night Mr. Bush announced the surge, Barack Obama said he was “not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Three months after that, before the surge had even started, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pronounced the war in Iraq “lost.” These and similar comments, moreover, were amplified by a media echo chamber even more absolute in its sense of hopelessness about Iraq and its contempt for the president.
For many of these critics, the template for understanding Iraq was Vietnam — especially after things started to get tough. In terms of the wars themselves, of course, there is almost no parallel between Vietnam and Iraq: The enemies are different, the fighting on the ground is different, the involvement of other powers is different, and so on.
Still, the operating metaphor of Vietnam has never been military. For the most part, it is political. And in this realm, we saw history repeat itself: a failure of nerve among the same class that endorsed the original action.
Prescience. Let us join hands and mau-mau them to death. “There would be no war if it wasn’t for the damn troops.”
Blow to beer company and opportunity for name that party.
Americans poured into the nation’s capital to celebrate the inauguration of their first black president. But with the U.S. in its worst economic crisis since the Depression and at war on two fronts, Barack Obama was expected to call on the country to embrace a new culture of responsibility when he takes office at noon.
What was “lost” was any possibility of respecting the judgment of the likes of Reid, Durbin, Biden, Obama, Pelosi, et al, either in matters of warfare or even, as I noted at the time, having an appropriate political sophrosyne, one able to distinguish their own good, let alone the nation’s. They painted themselves into a corner unnecessarily and that, merely for the sake of what they thought was a political advantage, with obvious perils to the nation in view. They have yet to admit their error, perhaps because the are ashamed, possibly because they are just that pusillanimous. To this day they have FAIL stamped upon their foreheads.
Yet another “name that party” opportunity. All crimes are committed by Republicans and Incumbents.
“This morning, in DuPont Circle, eight blocks from the White House, Bush Derangement Syndrome raged among the old coots of VFP, VVAW, IVAW, Code Pink, World Can’t Wait and who knows who else was there.”
A lot of things were probably going on in DuPont circle, as is always the case…
But if you don’t ask, I won’t tell…
The left has actually successfully used the war in Iraq just like they used the one in Vietnam; as a political football, a tool to score cheap political points with…
In ’76 they used the war failure, the economy, the crookedness of Nixon, and the ineptitude of Ford to win the White house for lightworker I. In 2008 the used many of the same themes with just different people wearing the mantles. Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and Biden kept declaring the war lost, even though the surge was working, RethugliKKKan distate for regulation was blamed for the economic mess-even though the Democrats actually blocked GSE regulation, Cheney was constantly vilified as a fascist Svengali-who used his position to benefit Halliburton, and Booooosh! was painted as an inept boob….
And now we have lightworker II…
Brace yourself, because most often a sequel is much lamer than the original tha it follows…
Dupont Circle was one of my old stomping grounds back in the eighties Bob. Looks like it hasn’t changed a bit in the intervening years.
[…] Dan Collins points to two excellent essays today; one, at WSJ’s Opinion Journal by William McGurn… Mr. Bush’s disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable. […]
Barack Obama was expected to call on the country to embrace a new culture of responsibility
This, from a leftist? Vacuity, desolation, emptiness, it is all nothing and senseless and jabberwocky.
I pay my bills, do not expect anyone else to pay me bills; I carry insurance, look out for my loved ones, tithe to aid the less fortunate, and this guy wants to stick a gun in my back to take from me what I have earned so he and his partisans can take credit for what I earn and the wealth that I create.
Ah, now I feel better.
I question the timing.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, or smoke-filled back rooms, but every time I consider two or more Democrat politicians gathered together, I imagine the benediction to be “Lord, let the voters keep buying it.”
Take Jamie Gorelick, for example. Her career consists of disaster after disaster, leading to personal enrichment. Well, apart from the stint on the 9/11 Commission. That was one slick piece of ass-covering.
That we’re not hunting Democrat politicians with shotguns and hounds fills me with fear for my country.
No discussion of Bush hatred is complete without the incomplete misdirective of one of WingNut Nations finest apologists….(said before, and will probably, by necessity, need repeating many more times)
Since Krautmacher coined the term, his psychotherapy peers have winced at the all-too-obvious defense mechanism. Bush Derangement
Syndrome attempts to color the prolific anti-Bushism as a delusion without any foundation in truth, and more like the hallucination of a paranoid schizophrenic. It’s a deflection worthy of Plausible Denialists. The problem seems to be that Bush is a yellow shit-storm of redundant idiocy that cascades almost daily upon a hapless public who can’t comprehend how they ever believed in him. It’s BDS, but pronounced..’Bush Days Suck’
Go ahead madame cleo…
Better use that ammo up while the weapon still eats it; in a short time you won’t be able to use the left’s favorite catchphrase, “I blame Boooooooosh!“…
Didn’t you cut and paste that from another thread?
Also, shouldn’t you be on the parade line waiting to grasp at The Lightworker, if only at the hem of his garment?
“I blame Boooooooosh!“…
The blame is an eternal flame.
And Techie, I said it was a ‘repeat’. If you didn’t like it the first time, you probably don’t like it now.
Every time I consider a Moonbat, I imagine a person who starts out calmly enough, but who proceeds to rolling-in-the-dust gnashing-of-teeth, invective-spewing, howling -at-the-moon idiocy in about 10 seconds.
Just consider the evaluation of the Bush legacy, elsewhere in these pages, with the delusions vomited out above.
The left painted themselves into a corner and the MEDIA unpainted them out of the corner.
Obama could fart in church and the media would smell roses.
We’re fu#$ed as a nation.
geoffbb, It doesn’t matter what a liberal does anymore.
The U.S. MEDIA is co-opted. If you are a PARTY MEMBER you are never wrong.
[…] Protein Wisdom tackles it as well. Why They Hate Bush. […]
Bush Derangement Syndrome attempts to color the prolific anti-Bushism as a delusion without any foundation in truth, and more like the hallucination of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Madam Cleo inadvertantly restates an argument we’ve seen here before: the unhinged ranting of the loony left, and their insistence that every act of the Bush administration has been calculated for maximum evil effect, distracts and detracts from the many legitimate criticisms levelled at the administration for the mistakes and missteps they have made. By standing too close to these “paranoid schizophrenics,” and by taking few (if any) opportunities to distance themselves, the moderate Left has risked being written off as part of the rabid pack.
Fortunately for them, the outgoing administration has proven completely inept at communication and public relations, and their allies in the media give them positive coverage and sympathetic analysis, and they’ve appealed to the public’s dislike of violence and its fear of government intrusion into their privacy to stay relevant and win support.
Faced with a very savvy new administration, and a media that has proven completely unsympathetic toward their philosophy, those who would stand in the way of statism will need to be vigilant about policing their ranks, and distancing themselves from the more unhinged characters on their side of the argument. They’ll also need to work hard at forming arguments that can fit on a bumper sticker or sound bite, and can appeal to the feel-goodism that currently dominates.
It’s gonna be a hard slog.
Comment by Semanticleo on 1/20 @ 10:10 am #
Do you speak English?
Well, that was sophomoric.
“The blame is an eternal flame”? What, no “hope”? Even the Left’s poetry can’t rise above its compulsion to calumnize. What a tirelessly ugly movement. I imagine the next four years will be something like “hope and blame” — a constant invocation to “hope” to sustain all of statism’s recycled conceits and follies, but as failure piles upon failure, a reminder of the perdurably terrible legacy of George Bush. This victory has put the Left in its most uncomfortable position — the corner of responsibility. If there is one amusement to be had from the next four years it will be to watch the squirming.
“At war on two fronts”! Just like World War Two!
Only, well, not very much like it at all.
The US has a total of about 50,000 troops in Afghanistan; that’s a quarter the number who invaded Leyte alone in 1944 (and less than the 60,000 at Guadalcanal)
That’s one action, mind you, not the entire Pacific Theatre.
If there is one amusement to be had ..
Don’t forget “Joey Plugs” Biden. He will never fail to delivery on the buffoonery.
So thats two things.
The walking to the wrong posium and screaming into the mike at Saturday’s Obama Fellation was classic.
Even my moonstruck Obama wife had to giggle and shake her head.
Obama tried to laff it off and then quietly shook his head. “I’m so fucked with this clown” probably the thought that went through his mind.
damn.
posium = podium.
I can’t wait to show how patriotic I am – dissent, here I come !
[…] said Bush’s biggest sin was winning in Iraq. Sometimes I wonder if his biggest sin wasn’t keeping us safe? Think about […]
“At war on two frontsâ€Â! Just like World War Two!
It is only another Viet Nam when we have a Republican President.
Madam Cleo
Is she still running that psychic hotline?