As SI points out below, many on the transnationalist left (and in the US Congress, for that matter) are all atwitter these days: the world, for them, is returning to normalâ€â€with the benching of John Bolton (not because he’s been ineffective, mind you, but rather because he radiates musk and kielbasa sandwiches rather than eau fraiche and anything pan-seared and drizzled with a cranberry chutney), the UN re-emerges unhindered as the corrupt and inefficient world governing body of its pre-Bush salad days, a body overseen by unelected bureaucrats from mostly undemocratic countries; diplomats of the meticulously groomed variety can get back the business of eating cucumber sandwiches and pretending that ineffectiveness and stasis is erudite nuance; and Nancy Pelosi will work that Cardinal Red power suit of hers in the halls of Congress to keep the US’s balls tightly sealed in a Fabergé mayonaise jar.
So why wouldn’t folks at The Nationâ€â€and their apparatchiks, walking brain bruises like our poet laureate, semanticleo—celebrate a return to a world modeled after their own enfeebled cowardice, which they’ve conveniently convinced themselves is just bravery spiced with pragmatism.
After all, it takes willpower to studiously avoid taking action in, say, Darfur or Iran, when your mandate is supposedly precisely opposite.
Pass the toast points, boys! We have some strongly worded condemnations to draft!
I don’t think they will even go that far. “Concern” will be the limit of any wording.
I am worried that I am going to end up retiring from the Army someday and see the problems still extant pass to my children to clean up… Dammit, we have the ability to make the world so much safer,to actually make “never again” something more than irony-fodder.
We have the people that will do the hard things that need to be done – the US Armed Forces, Allies like Australia, Canada and Britain. We have various NGOs and IOs that will wade in and build and teach and heal. There are rich countries like Japan that want to help.
Jeff, you have really highlighted the problem – WHY ARE WE HOLDING BACK?! Shit…
Helen at EU Referendum has an interesting take: great as he is, Bolton’s presence is merely keeping alive a failed institution. His departure hastens the demise of the UN.
Would that were true.
My glass is empty. Where’s the waiter?
Major John,
I honestly think that we had maybe a 2-3 year window to accomplish what we truly needed to do before the MSM propaganda machine did it’s best to unravel any type of success. As for now? Hell, I don’t know, but I imagine we are heading back to those glory years of Clintonian pussification. And it is sad, because so many have sacrificed, through hardship and death to maintain or even restore the US to what it once was, a great and prouod nation that will not take shit from anyone. I feel now we must prepare for the inevitable, an attack on our home soil..And once again Bush will be to blame.. Sad I guess, but what can we do?
Isn’t the important thing that we get another multibillion dollar program in place that can steal from starving brown people while lining the pockets of murderous dictators and ruthless bureaucrats? Can’t we all come together and find a way to work child rape into that equation?
Things just haven’t what they used to be, but hope springs eternal without that meddling mustache!
See Craig’s post above. More for the wayback machine! I mean, we’ve already seen McGovern. Will someone please wheel out Uncle Walt and tug on his drawstring?
The US is slipping back into the Carter years. And the press and politicians like it that way. A docile and depressed nation is easily pliable. Particularly if they’re comforted by HD TV and XBOX 360.
Great to see you cats still beating the same old drum. It’s really a testimony to the human spirit.
Face it guys: the President and his advisors cooked up a plan that has proven a complete and total disaster.
Yes, Major John, we have so many people of good will and so many extraordinary resources, military and economic and cultural and NGO, which should be helping make the world a better place.
And why is this not happening?
Because the people at the top squandered them on an idiotic fool’s errand, conceptually flawed and brainlessly executed. Invade a huge country. Knock off its leadership. Watch it spiral into chaos. Torture, lie, obfuscate, spin. Wait for the American people to figure out that the whole thing was a complete clusterfuck, then watch them kick your entire party apparatus square in the nuts. Sit in the White House whining and dithering.
Brilliant!
And you think John Bolton has any significance in this? John Bolton is a pimple on the ass of this administrations lumbering body of incompetence and idiocy.
Now go ahead and make fun of me. See you in a month or two.
Pan-seared Kielbasa with cranberry chutney actually sounds pretty damn good.
Just sayin’. You know. Unite, not divide.
Primer on Secular Regressivism available here.
One cannot deny the appeal of their ideas, but one can certainly dismantle them with a warm fork.
May the Misery Pimps reign forever, or at least until they drive into a lake in a drunken stupor!
Sorry, no toast points, the delegate from Burkina Faso used the toaster to pay off an underaged hooker from talking about last year’s “education, hunger,AIDS, and anti-zionist prayer meeting and celebratory breakfast” (sponsored by the Turner foundation).
Oh, fucking spare us, beetrooter.
Tell me, though, is myopia a congenital or acquired condition for “progressives?” You guys are the fucking kings of second-guessing, ankle-biting, and dithering.
Here’s a big clue: this is going to be a long, LONG war. Iraq is merely one battle. Democrats may have managed to convince a slim majority of American voters that they have the answers, but you’ll have a very short time to prove it.
Yeah, we’ll see you next year, putz. The “leadership” from your party is still looking in the rearview mirror.
Please please please do not make fun of beetroot! This senseless violence against opionated tubers must stop!
I’m assuming beetroot is some pun on “netroot,” maybe implying that since beets burrow deeply, beetroot is one of the roots behind the nuts…er…roots. In other words, beetroot and reality do not have a working relationship.
Losing Bolton makes me weep. My man-crush on him is a fitting rival for Jeff’s. Bolton is probably our finest international bad-ass since Stormin’ Norman.
I have no real purpose with this post, other than to be an agitator and pimp my new blog because Jeff said I could. Yay Jeff!
beetroot,
Darfur. Answer that one world conundrum for me. Your, and your fellow traveler’s BDS doesn’t help DO ANYTHING. You merely oppose – you do not act. I just wish people like you would stop actively trying to hinder those of us who are trying.
I have given sweat, tears and toil in Afghanistan and Bosnia. I will do so again in Iraq or Afghanistan either next year, or the year after.
What have you done? What will you do? Who have you helped against the abysmal night of totalitarian tyranny and/or Islamic fanaticism?
beet, old salt! Where the hell have you been?
What’s the point if you’re not gonna hang around for it?
I’ve always though of beetroot as redundancy incarnate.
I’m sorry, but I can’t stand all these false etymologies. It’s from a Beach Boys song:
“Beetroot to your school, yeah,
Just like you would to your girl (hah!)”
Major John
I say the obvious, but please know that there are those who appreciate and respect your service.
The likes of ‘root’ will never understand the meaning of duty, honor and sacrifice.
He and his like live in an its “all about me” world. He could never phrase an answer to your questions. Hell, he could never honestly ask himself those questions.
Hmmmm.
What I find particularly amusing will be the future volte face when liberals find a war that they’d like to wage.
I think, like Champ says to Ron Burgundy in the Anchorman movie, that we’ll miss Bolton’s musk pretty soon.
I have a bunch of beet roots hiding out in my crisper, deposited there by an agency handler with a thing for fat manatees. Paranoid, hooked on smack, distrustful of the government—and still more sensible than their beetroot brother who drops by here to drop a triumphalist turd from time to time.
I feel like I am watching a baseball game, my team is ahead about 500 or so to nothing, the other team can’t get anybody out. They keep hitting batters, trying to pick off runners, intentionally walking people, doing anything they can think of to prolong the game- and proclaiming they will win by outlasting us. I look around me in the stands, and all our fans are despondent, indeed ready to quit and go home because they don’t think we can beat these guys. It is a mind-numbing situation.
B Moe: I know. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?
Jeff, I know a good clinic (my old man used to do pathology work for them) that could help the smack addiction of aforementioned beets…I mean, if they want to clean up.
B Moe, quite so.
I’d love to see some of the long term Taliban and AQ veteran fighters interviewed about the war…but they are all dead. We bemoan the fact that our troops go on second or third rotations, while the enemy pulls a “German Army at Verdun” – feeds ‘em in until they are dead, then pull up a new group to put in the meat grinder. Oy.
…while the enemy pulls a “German Army at Verdun†– feeds ‘em in until they are dead, then pull up a new group to put in the meat grinder. Oy.
Really? But that sounds like a Bushhitler-Rummy plan, and we know there couldn’t be such a thing.
Cordially…
Posted in the comment (singular…I only have one)section over at my brand new, all-wonderful, all-smartass blog (now with twice the bloggie goodness!):
In an effort to defend our boy, and his globe-trotting, heroic, alpha male facial topiary, and a blatantly shameless attempt to further pimp my blog cuz Jeff said I could, I am challenging the protein wisdom nation to go on over to my site and leave a comment on the subject of “why i love john bolton and/or regis”
[Being lead away to face a firing squad]
Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen): You do know of course that this means an angry letter to The Times?
Casino Royale (1967)
“Now go ahead and make fun of me. See you in a month or two.”
No, you did a fine job of making yourself look like an ignorant ass, and thanks for the troll warning.