Category Archives: War

UPDATE II: The Punditocracy Must Resign (T & A Show)

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Media, Music, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. Better Late than never, you say. Fine, then. Let’s fawn over the celebrated Ann Coulter for finally clashing with neoconservative Bill Kristol. The first part of the Coulter column, however, would make Bill proud. This section is redeemable:

“Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war – and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we’re all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a ‘National Greatness Project,’ too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president – and look how great that turned out!

Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here’s mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.”

[snip]

I wrote “A War He Can Call His Own” two years ago, but who’s counting? Truth doesn’t count; celebrity does. For what it’s worth (read the complete column):

“By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a ‘good’ war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials. …

But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”

UPDATED I (July 10): I’ve actually, mercifully, never read this Gerson sort. The class of commentators you all reference are the least obnoxious to me, because they have some facility with the English language, and can cobble together a vaguely coherent column. Hey, a neocon must make a living too. These pests have kids to feed.

No, it’s the tits-and-ass idiots that offend me. These are the barely literate females who get lucrative book deals for their here-today-gone-tomorrow epistolary vomit, purely because of a combination of ass-ets, pushy self-promotion (which might include heroic action over and above grinding out grating gerunds), and a knack for not threatening Big Cable Egos.

One of the bad things about the rise to fame of a cretin such as SE Cupp, or the deeply silly Margaret Hoover, for example, is that this program for fem affirmative action has made these dumb dodos believe that O’Reilly and Hannity have them on as side kicks because they are so smart.

The ditzes don’t get that they are on TV weighing in on weighty matters—having never uttered an original thought in their lives—because, however hard they try, they simply cannot make their hosts look bad. Impossible.

I do respect SE Cupp’s training as a professional ballet dancer. That requires incredible skill and dedication, a determination IT has applied to the craft of political circus animal. (Ballet dancer: that’s the one aspect of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that I respect too. Ditto Kip Winger.)

How we got from trash to gold, I don’t know, but I’m glad my mind works in mysterious ways. Feast on this embodiment of American manhood. (The hard work that goes into learning to play as tightly as this and move like this is manly.)

UPDATE II: How could I forget this moron among the Fox News menagerie: Imogen Lloyd Webber is an imported liberal airhead who came up with this shopworn shibboleth on The Factor: “we must build bridges with Islam.” “I’m not particularly bright and I put myself under a lot of pressure to do well,” she said of herself. At least she possesses a modicum of self-knowledge, unlike her American bimbette competitors.

UPDATED (7/31/020): Beck Bad-mouths Byrd, RIP

Democrats, Glenn Beck, Race, Racism, Republicans, States' Rights, The South, War

It looks like Glenn Beck is positioning himself as a right-wing racial policeman to rival the Sharpton and Jackson reign of terror. Today, Beck badmouthed the late Robert Byrd, one of the last principled, old-style Democrats, making sure that his listeners were aware of the old Byrd’s clan membership way back in the 1940s or 1950s.

Byrd was an old Southern gentleman after whom Republicans have always chased for his past peccadilloes. Intellectually honest souls that they are, Republicans would attack Byrd’s present policy positions by citing his distant-past indiscretions. Pretty much how Beck played it today.

Most recently, Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.

According to Politico, “Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions ‘can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'”

Last year, Sen. Byrd issued this warning regarding the procedural shenanigans the Democrats tried to deploy to pass the healthscare bill:

“I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation…. As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose.”

The frail senator had taken to the floor of the United States Senate on October 14, 2009, “to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and voice his concerns over the possibility of a major increase in U.S. forces into Afghanistan”:

“General McChrystal, our current military commander in Afghanistan, has requested 30,000-40,000 additional American troops to bolster the more than 65,000 American troops already there. I am not clear as to his reasons and I have many, many questions. What does General McChrystal actually aim to achieve?” “So I am compelled to ask: does it really, really take 100,000 U.S. troops to find Osama bin Laden?”

Perhaps if Republicans adopted Byrd’s skepticism of war for the sake of war, and rediscovered authentic Taft Republicanism—they might even deserve to win the next election.

Here Sen. Byrd is at his finest:

RIP Robert Byrd, you were sui generis.

As for Beck: as if the nation does not already feed on fiction, Beck, aided by one David Barton, has been busily breathing life into—and developing—a fanciful idea: America had black Founding Fathers. A racist society and its schooling have stopped this truth from percolating down to your kids. Glenn to the rescue.

UPDATE: The footage is not yet online (or I haven’t been able to find it), but Beck also singled out Byrd for opposing the Civil Rights Act, the same tack Democrats took with Rand Paul recently.

I would not have expected anything less from Byrd. As I wrote when Rand was being lynched, “It has never occurred to me that for the reasoning advanced in these posts, I could be construed as a racist. Respectable scholars advance the same arguments: Richard A. Epstein, Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England, 1995), and Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: The Story of How Through The Centuries Private Ownership has Promoted Liberty and the Rule of Law (New York, 2000).

Beck’s litmus test for racism is as rigorous as Shaka Zulu’s sniff test for witches.

UPDATED (7/31/020): Anti-war all the way.

UPDATE III: Can General (Stanley) McCrock (Chris’s Episode)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

BHO ought to accept General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation. He must. If he doesn’t, the president will be in even more trouble than he already is.

The Telegraph:

The US commander in Afghanistan was ordered to fly back from Kabul for a carpeting after he and his aides were quoted in “Rolling Stone” magazine mocking the president and senior officials. … Although the worst barbs came from the lips of aides, they indicated that the general did not respect Mr Obama. One was quoted as saying Mr Obama appeared “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the military and “didn’t seem very engaged” when he first met Gen McChrystal.

What is it about the American memory? It’s non-existent.

What is it about the Neocons-cum-Republicans? They have no core principles other than to line up behind their man and against Obama. They cheered this McChrystal chap when, in October of 2009, he sojourned to London to lobby for more troops.

At the time I wrote that, “It’s got to be obvious that the general knows nothing about the chain of command. He lacks discipline or a code of conduct. McChrystal’s a lobbyist in fatigues, guarding his fiefdom.”

As is my habit—it hasn’t rubbed off on our valued blogger James Huggins, who carries the torch for GOP fraudsters—I reminded my readers at the time that “Gen. David Petraeus conducted himself similarly. Although he didn’t lobby abroad for his cause, Petraeus assumed a decidedly political role. However, back then, Republicans and their Bush boy were on board with Petraeus’ push for more war.

The difference between Petraeus and McChrystal is that the first was successful in establishing the illusion of a successful surge in Iraq—quite a feat given that the Democrats were not yet in power. So useless is this McChrystal that he has not even been able to win the PR war, and persuade the ruling Obamamaniacs that his war wank is working.

It goes without saying that both O’Reilly and Hannity have already dictated received Republican opinion: BHO must forgive McChrystal and let this loser win their war. (And BHO’s war)

UPDATE I: “I think it’s clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed a poor — showed poor judgment,” the president said in his first comments on the matter, surrounded by members of his Cabinet at the close of their meeting. “But I also want to make sure that I talk to him directly before I make any final decisions.”

UPDATE II (June 23): “The Runaway General: Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

That’s the title of the Rolling Stone article. What would a crappy Stone feature be without the expletives? So raw and real. The cussing is all the “writer’s” repertoire; he’s not even parroting the army men, whom you’d expect to cuss. Clearly a requirement of a job with RS. Imbibe from the masters: “Fuck this; fuck that, be shit-faced, piss-off.”

McChrystal is molding the military into a cross between the “Green Berets” and an “armed Peace Corps”—killing tempered by nation building—with a view to carving out a permanent place for himself over there, and taking his showcase war on the road, when the gig is up.

The guy is as evil as he looks. Not as stupid as McMussolini, who finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets, but a serious underachiever, “ranking 298 out of a class of 855.”

This man McChrystal is a riot of fuck-ups to use Rolling Stone lingo. Hey, this is easy. I think I’ve got it, Enry Iggins.

UPDATE III (June 23): CHRIS HAS AN EPISODE. This is the second momentous time Chris Matthews felt an-Obama induced thrill up his leg. Although Chris spends his days in sexual delirium over BHO, like in a boy who reaches maturity, the thrill manifests only on very special occasions. Emasculated left-liberals don’t often allow themselves to revel in the masculine—it represents oppression. But when an all-round good guy like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, “girlie boys” get giddy.

Obama sacking Stanley: now that was a good day for Chris, who managed to disguise arousal with folderol about the act instantiating the genius of the Constitution; the beauty of our country’s landscape, blah, blah.

Here’s the wreck himself:

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UPDATE III: An Act Of War? (Reuters Doctors Images, Allegedly)

Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Journalism, Media, Terrorism, War

Is it a prelude to an act of war? If I didn’t know better, that’s what I’d call the threat Iran has issued to send its Iranian Revolutionary Guard to escort ships attempting to break through the blockade of Gaza. Were I a resident of Israel, I’d be nervous.

But of course, I know better. After all, it would be perfectly proper, and in keeping with US sovereignty, were Turkish “activists,” escorted by the Iranian military, to wash up on American shores. I’m glad I got that straightened out in my own mind.

FOXNEWS:

Israel will do “whatever it takes” to defend itself from terrorism, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday, without elaborating what actions would be taken in the face of a potential Iranian Revolutionary Guard escort of ships to break through the blockade of Gaza.
Ambassador Michael Oren said Israel is “open to any ideas to somehow deal with the Gaza situation” but dropping the blockade is unlikely since that would mean allowing thousands of rockets to arrive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

UPDATE I (June 7): WINNING THROUGH WEAKNESS. Daniel Pipes’ keen analysis of the strategy involving the “Amity Armada” is particularly insightful:

“One of the most important rules for a strategist is not to be put on the defensive. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, developed this concept into a doctrine of forward defense that brilliantly served his state in its early years.

Eventually, however, Israel’s enemies realized that they could not win a conventional war. Instead of launching planes, tanks, and ships at the Jewish state, they turned to other means – weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and (most recently) political delegitimization. Delegitimization turns the rules of war upside down: in particular strength is weakness and public opinion has supreme importance.

Israel’s command structure, having mastered the old ways of war (the ones that lasted to 1973), has shown utter strategic incompetence at the new ways of war (in place since 1982). The new rules require an agile sense of public relations, which means that a powerful state never physically harms, even inadvertently, its rag-tag political adversaries.”…

[snip]

Where Pipes and I depart is in that, finally, after decades of bumbling, I see an Israeli public-relations sea change. Michael Oren accounts for 90 percent of it.

UPDATE II: Nebojsa Malic’s take on the winning-through-weakness strategy:

“Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.”

UPDATE III (June 8): Fox News reports:

“In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.”

The blog ‘Little Green Footballs’ challenged Reuters’ editing of the photo.

‘That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,’ the blog stated.”