241 Comments

1. Skookumchuk:

As they say on another blog – first!

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:09 am 2. chrees:

I find Kaus’ argument unconvincing and, how do you say, less than edifying.

I’m certainly glad my parents’ generation didn’t decide to take a break from history-making and step away from the war in the 1944 election to vote for someone that would allow them to preserve the precarious gains in northern Africa, Italy, Normandy, and stop short of Iwo Jima.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:30 am 3. Charlie (Colorado):

Someone else pointed it out first (and I’d cite them by name if I remembered who it was) but the underlying mistake here is the assumption that you can stop a war and consolidate your gains.

The only condition under which this trick works is “victory”. Right now, if we pull back to consolidate, UbL and the other fascists will simply use the time to recoup their losses and renew their attacks.

In other words, all we’ll be doing is “kicking the can down the road” — as, eg., the Clinton administration largely did — and leave it to someone else to solve.

The only problem is that the next manifestation of the problem could easily be a mushroom cloud over DC and Manhattan.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:33 am 4. jkrank:

I did my stint with progressivism, read the pamphlet, listened to the shouting (always with the shouting!). None of them seemed in control of their own lives, and I didn’t see why they should have such power over mine.

Sham. That’s the word that flies into my head every time I see Kerry, or hear Kerry.

It’s a joke now that the guy is an spectacular waffler. Still, it’s absolutely bleak watching the guy.

I am not pleased with many of Bush’s positions, but at least I know his.

I couldn’t begin to predict anything Kerry would do in office aside from make nice with the one body who doesn’t derserve it, the UN.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:40 am 5. Michael B:

This Boston Globe article by Jonathan Power dovetails perfectly with this subject.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:41 am 6. Mike Silverman:

I have lost confidence over the past year in Bush’s ability to successfully prosecute the war on terrorism.

I fully supported the Iraq invasion, and still do support our goals in Iraq, but the past year’s long string of strategic and tactical failures in Iraq and elsewhere indicate to me that Bush has not effectively managed the war.

I think Bush’s IDEAS are excellent — he clearly grasps the gravity of what we are facing … but his execution has been abysmal.

I thank Bush for his strong initial response to 9/11 and his forceful advocacy of regime chang einIraq, and I appreciate that he has put America on a path that we are committed to, no matter who wins in November. But, I do not think he is the man who can win the war on terror.

I believe Kerry would, at worst, manage the war about the same as Bush has, and at best, he might shake things up and ove the prosecution of the war forward in a way that improves America’s security and brings us closer to vistory.

So, given a tie on the war, I will use social issues as a tiebreaker, and on those Kerry is a vast improvement over Bush.

I don’t dislike Bush, and I don’t like Kerry…I vote only on what is best for the country, and I will likely vote for Kerry, unless something changes between now and November.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:43 am 7. Rick Ballard:

Good transition, Roger.

Mr. Kaus cannot be taken seriously if he believes that a focus on national health care is more important than the WoT. If he were to support Kerry with a rational explanation as to why he thought Kerry could effectively continue the fight on terrorism AND push national health care I might listen for ten seconds. A suggestion that we should just pull the covers over our heads and hope that the bad men will go away just doesn’t cut it.

We’re across the Rubicon and there can be no return.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:47 am 8. Fresh Air:

OT, anyone who is not able to log in: Check to see that cookies are enabled!

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:50 am 9. daniel aronstein:

WHAT MAKES KAUS OR ANYONE ELSE THINK THAT IF KERRY TAKES A BREAK, OSAMA WILL, TOO!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF RESTING,

WE MUST BE RELENTLESS.

UNLESS WE DON’T WANT TO WIN.

IF KAUS WANTS A REST, LET HIM TAKE A REST!

(HE CAN GO ON VACATION OR WHATEVER.)

BUT OUR CINC AND OUR DOD AND OUR THE NATION MUST PERSEVERE IF WE DESIRE TO WIN, AND DESIRE TO CONTINUE TO LIVE IN LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY.

PEACE IS WON WHEN YOU DEFEAT THE ENEMY;

PEACE IS NOT FOUND BY RUNNING AWAY FROM THE ENEMY.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:50 am 10. Rick Ballard:

Mike,

“but the past year’s long string of strategic and tactical failures in Iraq and elsewhere”

You might enumerate a few. BTW we are aware of the Moby tactic – and you’re not doing it very well.

When you’re done enumerating the long string, please post something concerning the two John’s carreers in public service that show evidence of the executive ability necessary to perform the office of President. Take as long as you need.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:52 am 11. mrp:

Not only does Kaus support Kerry, he sent the kerryedwards campaign $300.

Money talks, bs walks.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:55 am 12. Michael B:

FYI, HTML tags for both style and hotlinks don’t appear to be working.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:59 am 13. Barry Dauphin:

Unfortunately, it seems that Mickey Kaus wants to call a time out. I don’t think that the Islamofascists are playing by those rules. He does not give anyone a sense of confidence that Kerry will handle the WoT seriously or well. Of course Kerry is too busy yucking it up with the Hollywood crowd to entertain a terrorist briefing from the administration.

MK’s reasoning reminds me a bit of yesterday’s e-mail of the day from Andrew Sullivan’s site. The writer was thoroughly indignant about having a 45 minute wait at customs coming back into the country and was hyperventilating that the US has lost all respect overseas. Yeah, yeah we all want to return to 9/10/01. So let’s talk instead about which candidates have better hair and whether any sharks have attacked Gary Condit lately.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:04 am 14. Roger:

Some points on registration and posting:

1. Please do not post all caps.

2. You can edit your TypeKey profile to provide an email address, if you wish to those who click on it. I am not making this mandatory, to ensure privacy for those who want it.

3. You have to enable cookies.

4. For those on AOL, you may have to copy and paste the validation link from TypeKey, rather than click through it.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:04 am 15. RogerA:

I do have difficulty with the argument “we need a break.” Taking a break by changing administrations may improve the rhetoric between the US and its “allies,” but those allies really do not have a lot to offer in the way of military support–in short perhaps some atmospheric changes, but no substantive payoff. On the domestic front, even should the democratics win the election, I dont see the democratics regaining control of congress–something that would certainly impede any democratic move to more “progressive,” policies. I guess it comes down to my view of Bush as more decisive than Kerry could ever be, and right now I want decisive in charge.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:08 am 16. Fresh Air:

Mike S.–

Have you ever seen the Kerry’s 1984 campaign promises to eliminate many if not most of the major weapon systems that are now used to such great effect in the WoT? Let me quote from the memo (I have the PDF; its on Kerry’s Senate stationery; John Moore may have a link):

“The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed ‘window of vulnerability’, which we now know not to exist.” I think we all know which side history vindicated.

It gets worse from there. Here are the cuts Kerry wanted to make in 1984:

MX Missile: cancel

B-1 Bomber: cancel

Anti-satellite system: cancel

Star Wars: cancel

Tomahawk Missile: reduce by 50%

AH-64 [Apache] Helicopters: cancel

Division Air Defense Gun: cancel

(it goes on, including things like the Abrams tank, etc.)

Kerry is not serious about defense and never has been. You are claiming Bush had made serious errors without citing any. But worse, you are assuming a man who has been singularly hostile to the United States military would do a better job prosecuting a global war. Your claim is unsupported by the facts.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:10 am 17. Eric Deamer:

I just want to say that the new system is great. I normally hate registration type solutions but this one is painless and easy. I hope it will have the desired effect.

Anyway, I can’t possibly have the zillionth iteration of the who to vote for conversation. I’m voting for Bush. I would like him to win, but I no longer think his losing would be as catastrophic as I might have in the past.

I just want to make a comment on 9/11 “changing everything”. I certainly feel this way, and I would say that some 70% of the country also feels that way. (All but the 30% or so who are hard-core Michael Moore acolyte types). I support what we’ve done and are doing in Iraq, and many of the reasons come from “9/11 changed everything”.

However, the connection between “9/11 changed everything” and “We must liberate Iraq” I now feel in retrospect was not effectively communicated by our president. He’s not an effective communicator, and I’m now starting to think that’s a bigger issue than I did before.

“9/11 changed everything” manifested itself for most people in support of our going into Afghanistan, not merely to attack some Al Qaeda training camps but to actually defeat the Taliban and install a new government in Kabul as well. Everybody support that war except for the lunatic fringe.

If we had lost 1,000 men fighting in the mountains of Tora Bora, killing our capturing Al Qaeda leaders, my guess is the public would not be so squeamish about those casualties as they are about losing 1,000 in Iraq.

The relationship between going into Iraq and 9/11 was complex. It was also a bold, risky move that was expensive in terms of lives lost and dollars spent. Again, I think it was the right thing to do but to convince the electorate to go along with a dangerous, risky, expensive policy which has a complex justification is the job of the President, not Steven den Beste, the Belmont Club, or Iraq the Model.

Pace John Moore this war does register as especially bloody and brutal to an American public that has not witnessed a “real war” since Viet Nam, particularly when the war’s connection to 9/11 is not something that can be convincingly boiled down to a few sentences. The country freaked out over losing 19 in Somalia, so how should we expect it to react to 1,000? But again, I think the public would be much more accepting of these kind of losses if they were in Afghanistan.

The connection between 9/11 and going into Iraq was not obvious and it needed to be explained better. I realize that the vast majority of the problem was caused by the media, but I think Bush’s poor communication skills also had a lot to do with it.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:10 am 18. Eric Deamer:

Rick Ballard:

I’m seeing people making these insinuations of “the Moby tactic” more and more often when someone makes a point that’s even slightly out-of-step with the consensus of the blog. I’ve been subjected to it myself, and no doubt will be again for my comment previous to this. I really disagree with throwing around those kind of accusations as opposed to actually arguing the point. I don’t know Mike Silverman personally, but I read his blog sometimes (you could also check it out), and I think he comes by his conclusions honestly.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:18 am 19. Syl:

Sorry. Having a hard time trying to comment and having it go through.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:27 am 20. RogerA:

I agree with Eric Deamer: while I think Bush comes across as honest, he has not used the bully pulpit well to identify American accomplishments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe the moonbats of the far left give Karl Rove far too much credit! Bush has the bully pulpit and needs to use it more.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:29 am 21. Syl:

Wow, made it! Sorry for the OT…I was sure that wouldn’t go through either.

————–

Mike

“the past year’s long string of strategic and tactical failures in Iraq and elsewhere indicate to me that Bush has not effectively managed the war.”

I guess it depends on the definition of ‘failure’. Setbacks, missteps, surely. But failures? And I’m not sure what comprises a string vs a long string.

Well, doesn’t matter, if you believe that it’s your right. I just feel that perfection is unattainable and I don’t fault Bush for being imperfect especially since I have very little confidence in the guy who wishes to replace him.

What frightens me is Kerry, not the mistakes Bush has made.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:35 am 22. Patrick Brown:

Instapundit has a link to a Mark Steyn column, and the observation that it “would seem to offer an answer to Mickey Kaus’s time out theory.”

Link http://instapundit.com/archives/016472.php

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:35 am 23. WichitaBoy:

I don’t buy Kaus’s argument for a minute. It’s rationalization, not rationality.

Kaus is a Democrat. He’s voted Democrat his entire life. He doesn’t know anybody who isn’t a Democrat. His parents haven’t given him permission to vote Republican. He would probably be disowned. He would lose his friends. He might never work in this town again. Those are his real reasons. It was inconceivable for him to do otherwise.

Kaus has observed Kerry over time quite closely and found Kerry to be astonishingly inadequate. Kaus’s own writings on Kerry are damning. That was the rational part of his brain acting. But that’s not the part of his brain that’s voting. Voting is, for most people, herd behavior.

To change the irrational part of ones (apostrophe here, heather? I’m not sure…) brain because of what the rational part is saying is very difficult. It involves a lot of pain and a lot of, shall we say, misunderstanding with one’s (hedge my bets) loved ones. Ask Roger and Samuel.

That Bush has “mishandled” the Iraq War seems to be the current Democratic meme. Howard Veit talks about this incessantly these days. This may be right. I don’t know. I don’t know partly because the main sources of information–such august organs as the LA Times–seem to be printing bald-faced lies about what’s going on over there. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m being misled by Iraqi bloggers? But let’s assume this is right and that the MSM have made the conscious decision to do everything they can to unelect Bush (and we *do* remember the unnamed reporter who said that was her goal, do we not?). In that case, honesty on our part would dictate that we admit that we don’t know whether the situation in Iraq is being prosecuted well or not. We don’t have the information to judge. To me, the whole thing very much stinks of a “Tet Offensive” situation. The army seems to think it beat Sadr. The press keeps up the incessant drumbeat “…, three more Americans killed, five Iraqis bombed, three more Americans killed, …” in order to defeat Bush.

But, merely for the sake of argument, let’s assume Bush is not prosecuting the war in Iraq or the WoT as perfectly as he should. That’s still not the question. The question is: would Kerry do better? I submit that there is absolutey zero evidence for this. In fact, what little evidence there is tends to indicate exactly the opposite (voting against weapons programs, conferring (colluding?) with the enemy during wartime, all his military commanders believe he’s unfit for command, etc.). So, no, we don’t have a tie in the WoT after all.

I submit that what’s really going on is that there’s simply too much cognitive dissonance for some people to handle. Most Democrats are still in deep shock from 9/11. They haven’t recovered even now. They don’t really want to have to support a Republican. They don’t really want to admit that their entire world-view is crumbling around them, that yes, Virginia, there really are people out there who want to kill us for no reason. Instead, they’re numbly voting for Kerry and hoping against hope that he really will be just as good on the WoT as Bush. Since they can’t possibly know that, they’re merely asserting it.

But saying something is true doesn’t make it true. That’s lame and dishonest.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:38 am 24. Rick Ballard:

Roger,

HTML tags are not functioning – no links, bold or italics.

Eric,

It is not in the least about “being out of step with the blog”. When I read your comment or Fresh Airs they have a certain substance based upon illustration and facts. Mr. Silverman’s conclusions may very well have been reached honestly but he did not lay out his logical foundation to an extent that would allow a reasonable determination of his honesty to be made.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:46 am 25. BigFire:

Voting for Kerry? The man who cannot find time to attend National Security Council terrorism briefing, but did find time to attend a Wack-A-Bush fundraiser function? Come on, lets get real.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:48 am 26. wxjames:

There’s an old saying “Don’t change horses in midstream”. Someone must have done so once. Maybe it was Mickey Kaus. A lot depends upon ones

view of things prior to an event. Perhaps Mickey dislikes Bush. Perhaps he believes Bush lied. People don’t like being lied to, so the CRATS have pushed the charge that Bush lied. Of course, to proove that he lied, they have to come up with some evidence, like : “in fact I did have sex with that woman”.

Because the right pushed Clinton on his lies, the left had to retaliate in kind. Making Mickey and thousands of others useful idiots. Some day he may see that, and people don’t like being used either. One thing for sure, Mickey does not have an open mind.

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:50 am 27. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

There is a critical issue that needs to be taken into account: character.

This is often ignored by political pundits and especially by the left. Often the left wants a candidate to be smart, while the right want’s one to be good. Character is important because a man with poor character cannot be counted on to do what he says. If the man is a pure opportunist, what he says is completely meaningless – it does not predict what he will do.

We know George Bush’s character. We know his positives and his negatives. We know he had character flaws as a young man, although he had enough character to fly fighter planes and qualify as a good leader. But on his 40th birthday, he underwent a character transformation. That it was a religious transformation may be offensive to some, but the importance is he became a serious human being as a result – the Bush of today. Such transformations are rare, but they happen – from religion or other experiences.

John Kerry has shown no change in character since the opportunist of high school.

How much do people know about John Kerry’s character? His war record, and anti-war record will reveal the truth. John Kerry is a man of extremely flawed character. This is hard to know, because the press is mostly ignoring grass roots efforts to get out the truth about him. Either they don’t consider it interesting, or they are protecting him.

If you liked Richard Nixon, you’ll love John Kerry, except Nixon understood foreign affairs.

John Kerry is the only person in history (as far as I know) to have all of his commanding officers, and their commanders up to the commander of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) publicly proclaim him unfit for command. 200 others from his unit also signed that letter. How many readers heard about this in the news (regular readers probably heard about it in my posts)? Veterans don’t normally do this kind of thing ( General Clark was widely disliked in the military, but only one former commander came out against him, and the charges were nothing compared to that against Kerry ).

Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (CINCPAC) said that Kerry had created great problems for him, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets: “We had virtually to straight-jacket him to keep him under control.”

This is the same Kerry who implied that every Vietnam Veteran committed atrocities and that we were all mental basket cases as a result: http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000799.html

I have personally spoken with Swift Boat people who condemn him as a socioopath, who say that all of his medals were questionable, and who say his misdeeds in Vietnam were even worse than his post-war activities.

Hopefully they will provide their opinion to the public in a way that will be heard.

There is a lot more information about Kerry in the links below. Suffice it to say, the guy scares the hell out of me, and many other Vietnam Veterans.

Here is a collection of items about Kerry’s anti-war activities: http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000845.html

Here is an analysis about how the media handled the historical event where the charges against Kerry were made by his commanders: http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000843.html

Here is the inside story of that press conference. Although it doesn’t say so, many members of the press were visibly distressed at the information that was released, but ultimately they did a pretty good job of burying the story. AP spiked the whole event: http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/staticpages/index.php?page=20040515063837111

Here is a link to a page about the event, and links to the home page of the SWIFT Boat Veterans for the Truth: http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=SwiftVets

Here is a link to another organization (Vietnam Vets for the Truth) trying to get out the truth. We are planning a rally in DC on Sept 12, and would appreciate any help in funding or publicity: http://kerrylied.com/

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:00 am 28. jerry:

MK is experiencing cognitive dissonance. Kerry’s selection of John Edwards is an indication of his intention of abandoning the GWOT and with it Iraq and Afghanistan in favor a French-like appeasement/buy off strategy for dealing with Islamic fundamentalists. Kaus is rationalizing his support for the creation of a Eurosocialist society by proclaiming that its time for a pause. What he is really expression is his desire to call the GWOT a success and get us back to the process of being good socialists. In his heart he knows this is a lie but cannot bring himself to vote for a Republican. MK is exhibiting the common infantile traits that make one a progressive. He is wishing something to be true so he can resume the life he wants.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:15 am 29. jdm:

Erik, I agree with your comments on the results of Bush not being re-elected. The beauty of electing of electing a professional flip-flopper is that he would not feel particularily beholden to anything he has said or done in the past. He may just do The Right Thing.

[on a sidenote, I seem to remember a Bleat by Lileks that professed to have gone into the editorial pages of the Mpls. Star-Tribune archives to find that every single justification for going to war with Iraq used by Bush was just fine when Clinton was president. Perhaps a more people will be on board in this WoT thing with a Democrat administration - I mean, (most of) the Republicans are already on board, yes?]

… yes, I am kind of using a mild form of sarcasm.

I also agree that Bush & Co has not communicated about this war very well; he certainly isn’t a Reagan. But then he has a different style – I don’t know, but he is constantly underestimated by all and yet he still seems to come out on top. I wouldn’t write him off.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:16 am 30. LloydA:

Like Roger, I love Mickey. I can’t think of a more honest opinionmeister, both intellectually and on points of fact. Except when it comes time for him to look in the mirror. His “argument” for Kerry is so damn lame that its pretty obvious WichitaBoy, tho a little harsh, essentially has Mickey’ psyche nailed. Granted, its not easy seeming to reject one’s culture, family, friends, and dare I say it, religion, all for the sake of a statistically meaningless expression of democratic participation. I’d argue one does none of these things simply by making a rational voting decision but its easier said than done. I suppose we should be thankful we won’t have another agonizing thermometer ride this year. Here’s hoping Mickey points his analytical flashlight into his own emotional baggage before his next round of self-rationalization.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:19 am 31. Mark Poling:

Eric Deamer:

However, the connection between “9/11 changed everything” and “We must liberate Iraq” I now feel in retrospect was not effectively communicated by our president. He’s not an effective communicator, and I’m now starting to think that’s a bigger issue than I did before.

Have you ever listened to Kerry talk? He makes W. sound like a cross between Reagan and Marc Anthony.

Kerry’s vision is obscured by navel lint. Vote Bush if you don’t like the idea of drifting in the currents of history.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:22 am 32. Syl:

And don’t forget P.J. O’Rourke’s experience with Kerry in the Phillipines.

I saw O’Rourke on BookTV a couple of weeks ago and when asked who he thought Kerry would choose as a running mate he said he didn’t care because he was determined that Kerry should never become president because…

article

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:24 am 33. Mark Poling:

That would have been Marc Antony from Julius Caesar, not Marc Anthony from Valio La Pena.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:30 am 34. Syl:

As for MK losing friends and family if he were to vote Republican, what about me?!?!?

My mother won’t speak to me. Neither will my ex-husband (and my ex isn’t a “bad guy”). My two best girlfriends no longer speak to me either.

Since I don’t work and our only neighbors who are pro-bush moved to Connecticut all I have is Joe and my cat.

I’m not complaining, just saying that you stand by principles or you don’t.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:31 am 35. Paul:

It seems to me that we are at a critical point in history. We either prosecute the war against the Islamists who desire our conversion or destruction, or we try to avoid the issue with talk of engaging “allies”, or the UN, or attempt to change the geopolitical equation by somehow improving America’s image in the eyed of the rest of the world.

Anyone who’s read Sayeed Qutb or UBL’s fatwahs knows that the Jihadists will only be deterred by their extermination. Anything else is just delaying the day of reckoning, because sooner or later they WILL acquire and deploy WMDs to the effect of heretofore unprecedented American civilian casualties.

I’ve seen nothing from Kerry or the Democrats that leads me to believe that the comprehend the stark and unpleasant reality of this. They exhibit the worst kind of irresponsible and wishful thinking, and a Kerry victory in November will be written in history as the beginning of a great and unnecessary suffering for the American people, as our enemies will rightly conclude that we are retreating to a weaker, softer approach to war, which is the absolute height of folly considering their ruthless and determined nature.

The fact that we haven’t been attacked in three and a half years coupled with our short attention span has lulled us into a state of false security. This coupled with the Democrat’s willingness to stoop to any depth, such as embracing the America hating lying propagandist Michael Moore, makes the prospect of a Democrat victory in November a surefire recipe for disaster.

Does anyone see the colossal irony of a man who flat out lied when he testified before congress that America routinely committed war crimes and atrocities in Viet Nam, and in fact had done so himself, had met with the enemy at least once and advocated for our surrender, thrown SOMEONE ELSE’S medals away in protest, supported the communists in Latin America, voted against numerous weapons systems, was on the wrong side in the cold war, etc., is the Democrat’s choice for a presidential candidate at a time in history when we are facing the greatest threat to our security since the Cuban missile crisis? A fool who believes that health care is the most important issue facing the nation, yet for his running mate chooses a trial lawyer whose actions have been directly responsible for the astronomical rise in medical malpractice insurance costs that are a large part of the problem in our health care system today? A man whose shameless lust for personal power and recognition leads him to take any position on any issue that seems expedient at the moment, as if no one will remember his inconsistencies? This is the man who will lead the free world in its time of crisis?

Clearly the delusional Democrats think we can retreat to the unserious nineties and their salad days of the eight years of the unserious Clinton presidency. It would be funny if it wasnít so desperately dangerous.

And yet people are sanguine about the prospect of a Kerry victory?! They want a respite from the WOT because in 16 months we’ve lost 900 soldiers while deposing a notorious unstable dictator smack dab in the middle of the region that has spawned this world conflict, and put in place a reasonably democratic government that looks to have a very good chance of succeeding?

If the Bush hatred prevails, because it most definitely is hatred for Bush and not love for Kerry that is motivating these people, I fear America will reap the calamity that all actions and philosophies based on hatred ultimately bring upon themselves.

God help us.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:32 am 36. jerry:

Syl:

It shows them to be small minded people. If John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater could be best of friends despite their obvious political differences we should be able to maintain friendships with people who we don’t share politics with. This is beginning to sound a lot like the Wiemer Republic with our own Red-Brown-Green Nazis at the gates.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:44 am 37. Brutus:

Kaus applies the lessons he has learned from observing and analyzing American politics to foreign policy, and this is where he goes wrong. He’s done it with respect to Iraq, making predictions on Iraqi popular reactions to policies and events that treat Iraqis as black boxes without any consideration for unique cultural, historical, tribal, etc. factors that would throw off his analysis entirely. His explanation for supporting Kerry is merely more of the same. The “stop advancing to preserve gains” notion smacks of a Washington-style strategy for pushing a legislative agenda.

The assumptions that may make that approach viable when it comes to reforming health care do not work with groups like al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc, however. How many times do we have to hear Hezbollah and the Palestinians say that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon demonstrated that aggressive terrorism works, and must in fact be stepped up after such “victories”, before we take their words at face value? How many times does bin Laden have to give his spider-web speech, to recount Mogadishu, Beirut, etc.? Any “retrenchment” or breather will be perceived by Islamic terror groups as a break in our will, the spider-web metaphor being borne out. You can bet they already see this, with the wild popularity of Fahrenheit 9/11. You do not need a PhD in Middle East history to understand this, but you do need to escape the paradigm of American politics. Bin Laden’s gang truly believe they drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan and brought down the whole USSR without any recognition that without our backing it never would have happened.

Kaus wants a break? Sure, give Iran time to stockpile. What’s that — more al-Qaida are finding haven in Iran? Well, we can’t do anything about that right now, we need a breather from Bush’s militant prosecution of the War on Terror. Not a joke — what the hell else could Kaus’s words mean in reality? The breather will be perceived as American decadence prevailing over cowboyism, and we will get slapped even harder than we did on 9/11.

If Kerry’s message becomes what Kaus wants it to be, and he’s winning at the polls, there will be no Madrid-style bombing intended to alter our election outcome. Why would they do it? They will see the “retrenchment” as retreat and will seek to exploit it.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:47 am 38. Old Dad:

It seems to me that the “let’s take a breather” folks must know something that I don’t, for taking a breather suggests several things:

1. That we need one?

2. That things might improve by doing nothing?

3. That things won’t get worse?

4. That somehow a retreat to the old order will help?

Let’s focus on #4. Kerry apparently believes that the old order–the U.S as benevolent superpower working hand in glove with a functional UN and Nato–can somehow be restored. Fact is, it never existed, and 9/11 blew to hell any delusions that it ever could. The UN is terminally corrupt and can’t even govern itself. NATO without US might is an impotent joke. The EU makes the Weimar Republic seem a model of probity. The old European powers are eunuchs, drowning in immigrants who are mostly hostile to the west. Let’s stop pretending. The US must defeat the islamofascists. If we get help, well and good. If not, so what? It’s Osama who needs a breather, not us. President Bush is the clear choice, not Senator Kofi, er Kerry.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:49 am 39. Mike Silverman:

Some have asked me to enumerate some of the strategic and tactical failures of the war on terrorism. That is a fair question.

Here are a few that come quickly to mind:

- Failure to put enough troops in the Iraq theater to insure an orderly occupation…this is the root “sin” which has led to numerous other tactical failures, such as the failure to prevent the massive looting, failure to pacify many secondary Iraqi cities, failure to seal the borders of Iraq, and our inability to respond decisively to the guerilla and terrorist attacks.

- Poor planning with reagrd to the Northern Front…after we were surprised by Turkey, we didn’t seem to know what to do.

- Bad intelligence, period. This is more the the WMDs…this also encompasses things like our seeming inability to keep track of Iran’s shannanigans. It has also led to a certain desperation on our part to get any kind of actionable intelligence by any means necessary — which led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

- Poor running of the occupation, period. Half-hazard policing, slowness in repairing infratructure, inexplicable timing of decisions, etc. It is almost like the administrators of the occupation were running it from afar without actually having any idea what is going on on the ground

- Failure to followup our defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan with any kind of sustained effort to keep that country from falling back into chaos and terrorism

- Failure to confront Iran or North Korea in any serious way. North Korea is a hard case, but we ought to be doing more against Iran then passively hoping the UN will stop their nukes. Iran is also totally riding us in Iraq and we have done nothing to stop them.

- Failure to confront in any serious way the Saudis sponsorship of terrorism.

- Domestically, Homeland Security has turned into a giant bureacratic blob which has done little to improve security in any way other then symbolically. Bush needs to crack the whip on these guys!

- We have not really treated the war on terror as a real war, requiring the kind of real sacrifice by ordinary Americans that we saw in WWII. The President needs to call for national service.

OK, that is what we have fucked up. Really briefly, here is what we did right:

- Deposed the Taliban and Saddam. This makes up for a lot of everything else

- Increased prosecutions for terrorism and funding terrorism in the US.

- Asserted Amercian leadership abroad. People need to fear and respect us.

- Been strong for Israel and treater her like a trusted ally.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:56 am 40. Sun-Tzu:

Long string of failures?

It would seem to me, if that’s the metric, then the war leader who presided over: the impetuous commencement of a two-front war, the loss of a major base that had been successfully defended a year previously, the loss of another base along with tens of thousands of vitally needed troops, whose leadership had seen the near-collapse of a vital national lifeline, and who consistently refused to even think about negotiation when the other side reasonably offered to talk (even dispatching his top deputy), would be a case study in the need for change.

Glad to see that in 1942, Winston Churchill would not have enjoyed your vote.

Or are you thinking about the worst surrender of American troops in the European Theater? That would be the loss of the 106th Division in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

Don’t like World War II examples? Tet, the Chinese intervention in Korea, or the bloodily inconclusive fighting around Petersburg and Kennesaw Mountain any better?

Wars are not progressions from victory to victory, until surrender. And that leaves aside the question of just what constitutes “strategic and tactical” failures.

Jul 9, 2004 - 11:58 am 41. RogerA:

Mike Silverman–I concur with a great deal of your list–both the pros and the cons.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:02 pm 42. carl:

If America doesn’t make history, who will?

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:13 pm 43. JB:

Completely unsurprising. As a “root cause/why they hate us” liberal, ultimately Mickey has no philosophical backbone to face reality on this issue. Smarts only get you so far.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:17 pm 44. DennisThePeasant:

Hi, Honey! I’m home!

Anyway…

I’m sorry to say that Mickey has set off the ol’ bullshit detector with this “less militant foreign policy” thingee of his.

If you are out there, Mickey, I would really love to hear a detailed justification for use of the term “militant”. [Note: When I say "out there", I mean if you are reading this. You have to be specific when addressing Lefties and Liberals.] Specifically, I would love you to frame your justification with reference to the following…

First, just what constitutes ‘foreign policy militancy’ in invading Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda had taken responsibility for the attacks of 9/11, and it was the position of the then government of Afghanistan, headed by the Taliban under Mullah Omar, that OBL and AQ were to continue to receive aid, support and safe harbor from that government. Given the public position of the Afghan government, just what alternative to the invasion and overthrow of the Taliban would have sufficed to ensure the protection of the USA and its citizenry from further attack?

Second, just what constitutes ‘foreign policy militancy’ in invading Iraq. I know it is not standard practice for The Anti-Liberation Left to actually take the pronouncements of bin Laden and al-Qaeda at face value (they are such children, after all), but it is worthwhile to note that one of bin Laden’s (and by extension, al-Qaeda’s) primary grievances against the USA was the presence of US troops in ‘Muslim lands’. Those troops, stationed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, were there at the invitation of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for the express purpose of preventing further unprovoked aggression against various Muslim nations in the Middle East by Hussein’s Iraq. Our troops were there because Saddam Hussein was in power, and they could not be removed from those lands until there was a major change in the status quo in the Middle East…i.e., the overthrow and replacement of Hussein’s Iraqi government. Right?

So the question becomes, just how would you change the status quo of a perpetual US garrison in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait without invading Iraq and remove Hussein from power? Simply withdraw and leave the Kuwaitis and Saudis to their respectvie fates? I don’t think that would bother the Russians or the French too much, as long as there was a buck in it for them, but would such an action be in the short- or long-term interests of the USA? Noam Chomsky would love it, but what about such a prospect to those less delusional?

My bullshit detector when off because what I detect is a meaningless foreign policy position that is neither justified by the facts or by any detailed policy proposals on the part of John Kerry. In fact, it appears this ‘justification’ is a fabrication from the whole cloth of simply being unwilling to suffer the temporary discomfort of having to grow the cajones to take a position contrary to that of the Left/Liberal Establishment’s politburo and cadres. Could it be, Mickey, that this all stems from a desire to avoid ending up in an unfamilar, and therefore uncomfortable, place?

The Anti-Liberation Left loves to accuse those of us who support the liberation of the Middle East of ‘chickenhawkery’. What is far more apparent to many of us is the depth of moral cowardice we see from our Leftish/Liberal friends who can find and believe any excuse, any fabrication or any distortion to keep them from having to come to grips with the reality of the War on Terror and its implications in domestic politics. I am not accusing Mickey Kaus of any such cowardice, but I would be lying if I said that there is now lodged in my mind a suspicion that Kaus may not being truthful with us about his reasons for supporting John Kerry.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:17 pm 45. John Mendenhall:

In the 90’s, I think, a bunch of South American generals went on trial for “disappearing” people. I think they must have been in Argentina. There was a lot of leftist armed insurgency in those days in Latin America–still is, but more than now. Most of the people who disappeared were leftists, though I don’t think most of them were actual gun-toters. To tell the truth, I never knew much about it because, I suppose, we here in America despise Latin American generals no matter what. Nobody ever found it necessary to explain what the generals thought they were up to, and I never bothered to find out.

I don’t know where I saw it, but I later read an article about one of the generals being tried who, when asked what he would say in his own defense, said [essentially] “We were fighting World War III.”

At that time, the well-funded crazier-than-a-shithouse-mouse bloodthirsty political thugocrat who could, simultaneously, murder women and kids, destroy the infrastructure people depended on for a living, establish whole regions of countries ruled at the whim of teenagers with guns–AND tug at the heartstrings of leftists–hadn’t made his appearance on US soil.

I haven’t thought about it in a long time, but I wonder if maybe those Latin American generals weren’t right.

If I asked George Bush what country Managua was the capital of, maybe he wouldn’t know. If I asked John Kerry, I’m afraid he’d say “Neek-ar-ah-wha,” the sobriquet that differentiated those Americans who celebrated Danny Ortega’s thug-cum-marxist regime in Nicaragua from those of us native English speakers who say Nicaragua with a “g,” and I don’t want any of those people running our foreign policy for a good long time yet.

I don’t mind silliness and stupidity on campus, in the papers, on TV, or even in the Senate, but to ask me to vote for somebody who doesn’t understand that the point of war is, first of all, make sure you win–that’s just a little too silly and stupid.

Kaus had a public spurt of leftist-thought. No big deal. He’s a leftist!

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:20 pm 46. Mark Poling:

To riff a moment on DTP’s thought:

The Anti-Liberation Left loves to accuse those of us who support the liberation of the Middle East of ‘chickenhawkery’. What is far more apparent to many of us is the depth of moral cowardice we see from our Leftish/Liberal friends who can find and believe any excuse, any fabrication or any distortion to keep them from having to come to grips with the reality of the War on Terror and its implications in domestic politics.

Better a chickenhawk than a chicken.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:24 pm 47. Barry Dauphin:

Kaus’ time out for us is time to better plan for them. I believe that Kerry, should he win in November, will focus on appearances in foreign policy. Long term objectives on the WoT will be transformed into measures designed to prop up short term appearances: Kerry & Chirac hug in Paris, Kerry makes a joke in French that he has better hair than Jacques, Peter Jennings nods approvingly, we’re all now supposed to feel better.

Meanwhile, the Islamofascists can bide their time and wait for Iran to produce enough fissile material to share.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:26 pm 48. Syl:

Mike Silverman

Thanks for the list. I do agree with a lot of it though not all. It’s your list of what we’ve done right, though, that is the most important. If Kerry had been president instead of Bush do you think that list of positives would contain even one of those?

In some ways it’s a tribute to Bush that higher standards are required of him than for Kerry.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:30 pm 49. Posse Incitatus:

If nothing else, Kaus shows an abominable grasp of strategy.

Hell, any decent football coach knows that the worst thing you can do is start slacking off once you get up by a touchdown or two.

We truly are a weak generation if a couple of years of military operations and 1,000 casualties are enough to leave us gasping for breath and begging for a cease-fire.

If that is truly the case, if Mickey needs a few years of reality programing to calm himself down, we may as well start the mandatory Islamic instruction now.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:31 pm 50. Mike Silverman:

Jeez, I half-defend Kerry and then he goes and sticks his stinking foot in his stupid mouth saying on Larry King that he just doesn’t have time to attend a security briefing.

If I were Bush, I would make sure to use that clip of Kerry in a campaign commercial.

Jul 9, 2004 - 12:45 pm 51. geoffg:

Mike S.,

Your list of failures looks impressive. But, I would ask: By what historcial standard are you measuring the success/failure of our first two 21st century military actions?

Seems to me that our progress has been literally astounding. Two and half years in and we’re two down and 2 or 3 more to go.

One of the failures you mentioned was the instability and looting in Bahgdad. Even Victor David Hanson suggests we should have shot the first 500 looters, to restore order.

Well, the left would have crucified our Pentagon for doing that. So what would you have done differently?

It’s easy to make such a list after the fact. It’s much harder, even now, to identify and analyze specific operations that should have been conducted altogether differently, to produce more desirable results.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:05 pm 52. Charlie (Colorado):

Mike: Why? It would appear that overall it’s been nothing but successes: not just the apparent loss of operational capability of UbL, but the loss of two governments that were major state supporters (Afghanistan, Iraq), a third country that has gotten religion and backed out of both state support and a (previously unknown) nuclear weapons program, and lots of encouraging news from the new proto-democracy in Iraq (although, God knows, you have to scrounge pretty hard sometimes to get that news.)

What would you have done differently?

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:05 pm 53. Joe Schmoe:

Warning: Offensive comment ahead.

It’s a sixties thing.

Viewed objectively, Kaus’ decision is patently illogical. Waiting isn’t an option. The Iranians won’t pause development of their nuclear program during a Kerry administration. Al Quaeda won’t stop recruiting or attacking. Nor will they take a time-out from their search for WMD’s. The fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia won’t stop agitating. The fundamentalists plotting a coup against Musharraf won’t wait either. The Palestinian terrorists aren’t going to go on vacation until 2008. The dysfunctional socieities of the Middle East won’t remain the same; they’ll keep stoning women, chopping off heads, and performing chiltorodectomies.

Nonetheless, Kaus suggests that we “take a rest.” Why? How could anyone say something so naive and, frankly, crazy?

This question perplexed me until one day I figured out the answer.

The sixties generation acts naive becuase deep down in their bones, they believe that America is invincible. While they have spent their entire lives tearing down our country and its leaders, the ironic truth is that they still view America thorugh the eyes of the WWII generation. All powerful. All good. All knowing.

Some part of Kaus still beleives that if things get really bad, all we have to do is flip a switch and all of the problems will disappear. We’ll use our technology. Our intelligence services. Covert ops. Multinational institutions. Whatever. The point is, we’re invincible.

On a personal level, they haven’t grown up yet. That explains the crazy protests and the childish cynicism. The sixties generation still believes that if evil threatens, a real man and father figure like Hap Arnold or George H.W. Bush will come along and save the day. The reason they hate George Bush is that he is acting like one of those real men of yore. But he’s just a kid, like them! Bush is therefore uppity, a phony. He’s a teenager who is driving his father’s car and pretending that it is his own. Even Kerry is play-acting a little bit. He wants to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office and fly around on Air Force One. Hey, all teenagers want to drink their parents’ liqour and throw parties at the house when mom and dad are away. That’s what Bill Clinton did. But Bush has the audacity to pretend that he actually lives in the White House, like a real-grown up!

There is, incidentally, a deep self-loathing buried in this assumption. The kids of 1968 don’t want to grow up. When someone tries to act like an adult, he is ridiculed. He’s not admired and emulated. Why? Because those who ridicule are afraid to try.

Those of us who are not members of the sixties generation, on the other hand, don’t see Bush and Kerry as play acting. We see them as men who must protect us from our enemies. We don’t count on the WWII generation to save the day any more. Most of the ones we know are planted six feet below the ground.

As for our enemies? They are cartoon figures. They can’t possibly hurt us. Some guy with a turban in a cave? Some fancy uniform and beret-sporting, horse-crop and golden-pistol-carrying mustachioed Third World dictator like Sadaam? He’s no match for the mighty USA!

Those of us who didn’t grow up in the 60’s, by contrast, see bin Laden as a real threat. When he says he wants to kill us, we believe him totally. We’re terrified. Ignoring the threat? Unthinkable.

Finally, this also explains why Kaus and his peers are always the cynical critics. They’ve spent their lives tearing down and mocking our institutions of government. It’s all play-acting anyway, so why not be cynical and dismissive? But agian, they don’t believe it. They feel free to criticize Bush and our military becuase deep down (a) they believe that America is the mightiest nation in the world, surrounded by an aura of invincibility, and (b) anyone in a position of authority is just play-acting.

Well, I grew up hearing the sixties generation tear down our institutions and our leaders. And you know what? I BELIEVED them. When they said that the military was comprised of stupid, bible-thumping neandrathals, I believed it. When they said that all polticians are untrustworthy liars, I believed that too.

Imagine how I felt when on 9/11/01, I discovered that I was counting on those bible-thumping neandrathals in the military to save my life. Suddenly, those slick blow-dried politicians were charged with making life-and-death decisions.

Suddenly, I was faced with real enemies who wanted to kill me, and with human, fallable leaders and civil servants who are responsible for stopping them.

This explains why my reactions to events that followed differed so dramatically from those of the sixties left. We can’t find the WMD’s? Doesn’t bother me, no one is perfect. The 1968′ers, on the other hand, demand perfection. Sadaam is trying to acquire nukes? I’m terrified of the possibility. I want to kill him before he can do it. But to the 1968 generation, Sadaam is a stuffed toy who can’t possibly hurt them. Looting in Baghdad after the war? Hey, maybe we made a mistake, but what’s a little looting? It’s war, a matter of life and death. The 1968 generation is aghast at the possibility that some exhibits from a — excuse me — fucking museum might have been stolen.

To his credit, Kaus doesn’t make the aassumption that the 1968 generation can do it better. That’s typical of the teenaged left. Adults are stupid, we know all the answers, etc. Kaus doesn’t say that “Bush and Rumsfeld have mishandled the occupation, now we need to put real experts like Madeline Albright and Joe Wilson in charge.” He knows that things have gone okay in the postwar, and that Wesley Clark couldn’t have done much better.

But he is still sticking his head in the sand. He wants to think that we can take a rest and go on about our lives. I wish he’d see that this isn’t a real option.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:14 pm 54. Joe Schmoe:

Sorry about the lack of paragraph breaks in the above post. For some reason, the new software turned my post into one big run-on sentence.

In any event, Barry really nailed it. Kerry’s foreign policy would probably amount to a bunch of pointless treaty-signing ceremonies. The treaties would be worthless, of course, but some would be able ot delude themselves that they actually make us safer.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:18 pm 55. dougf:

Thanks for saying what I wanted to say when i read the Kaus comment on his blog.

I actually felt much stronger than you about what seems to me to a deliberate attempt to avoid responsibility under the guise of ‘good tactics’.

As others have pointed out,our enemies are not declaring a surrender or even a ‘hudna’.MK’s reputation went WAY down in my eyes after he not only indicated he was voting for Kerry but attempted to justify that decision with some really inferior and self-serving logic.

Thank you Roger — you are almost ALWAYS right on the money.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:18 pm 56. DennisThePeasant:

Mike Silverman-

Sorry, but your list of Bush Administration ‘failures’ reads as little more than a compendium of the latest and greatest Anti-Liberation Left’s memes, and nothing more. What you have put forth is little more than a set of factually unsupported, overly generalized criticisms that sound wonderful but dissolve into meaninglessness upon examination. I’m not going to waste a lot of bandwidth tearing your post apart, in large part because you are being civil and seem to be earnest. But you should be aware that each and every one of the ‘failures’ you list cannot be factually substantiated to a degree that a moderately intelligent and sophisticated person could buy into them in good faith. If you think you have the facts to substantiate your statements, I for one would love to hear them. But when I hear somebody parrotting a moron like Charlie Rangel over ‘national service’ and ‘failure to sacrifice’, I am inclined to be very sceptical that I am going to get the facts I want.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:23 pm 57. Morgan:

Mike -

I appreciate your willingness to back up your “long string of strategic and tactical failures” statement with specifics. I find that I take issue with most of the “wrongs”, but I’ll limit myself to some comments on the first one:

“Failure to put enough troops in the Iraq theater to insure an orderly occupation”

In hindsight. Remember, though, that:

1) The number of full-time personnel is limited. The current need for extended tours makes me wonder just how many more troops there were to send.

2) There was much hand-wringing prior to the war over the possibility that troops might have to be pulled out of Afghanistan, or that there would be insufficient troops remaining to handle other “hot spots” that might crop up.

3) The worst (forced withdrawl of American troops and descent into utter chaos) was never close to happening. A new government is in place. Local elections have been held. Most areas of the country are peaceful. Production of electricity and oil (despite ongoing sabotage) match or exceed the high end estimates of pre-war levels. The homicide rate in Baghdad is lower than it was in St. Louis in 1993 (dutifully spun by the local newspaper as “3 times what it is in St. Louis [currently]“).

4) Regardless of the number of troops sent to Iraq, there would have been some security problems – even a million troops couldn’t cover every point along the border, search every car, find every weapons cache, or stop every nut with a gun before (or even after) he used it. A million troops would have been far more expensive, however, and note that Kerry, at least, is not so sure that even the current troop levels are worth paying for (actually I think he voted against funding knowing it would pass anyway, but thinking it would help him court the anti-war crowd).

My conclusion is that the number of troops sent to Iraq may well have been the best possible number – not for the security of Iraq, perhaps, but all things considered.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:25 pm 58. DennisThePeasant:

Getting posts to the site as formatted is turning into a bit of an adventure.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:26 pm 59. michael ledeen:

Does anyone think that Kerry would have done Afghanistan and Iraq? Does anyone think that we should stop there, and risk the future of our children on the outcome in IRaq and Afghanistan alone?

I hope not. I sure don’t.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:28 pm 60. Cybrludite:

Ok folks, go watch this video & tell me if you can expect to safely have a truce with those people.

In case the new system eats the link the URL is:

http://www.ratatak.com/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=14

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:35 pm 61. The Lapsed Randian:

President Bush is a victim of his own success. Everybody needs to put themselves back into their respective “9/11 Moment,” roughly mid-morning of September 11, 2001: if your neighbor had told you (1) the worst was over for the day (2) there would be no more successful attacks that week (3) there would be no more successful attacks that fall, including during the war in Afghanistan (4) that the Taliban would fall in and the terrorist training camps would be gone (5) that we would invade and succeed in Iraq, without further terrorist attacks, (6) that a semi-functioning democracy would be present in the Arab Middle East, and (7)we would lose less than soldiers/marines in accomplishing 1-6 than the number of people who died when the World Trade Center fell, not a single sane person would have believed that possible, and certainly not possible from the President Bush we knew on September 10.

Yet hear we are, with people like Kaus out of breath, and ready to quit because their sides hurt alittle bit. Way to go Mickey: you’re a real profile in courage.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:35 pm 62. Mark Poling:

View from Iraq is one of those friend-of-a-friend things. Fascinating reading. I love this quote:

My face is dirty from riding in the turret all day, which I do just about every day. We stopped at Taji to deliver a convoy, and took some pictures in some buildings the Army has seized. Two days ago, the gate we use to enter Taji was destroyed by two car bombs.

The navigation is a bit screwed up. There’s no way to easily get back to the first page of the set, but it’s worth browsing forward for the whole story.

I post this because this guy is a friend of my girlfriend (what the hell) and because I don’t agree with Mike Silverman’s critique of where we’re “screwing up” in Iraq. Compared to any war I know of since the Conquistador’s razing of the New World (where the natives didn’t have guns, didn’t have horses, and got to teach us about the potential of biological warfare 500 years before we’d understand the lesson) what has happened in Iraq has been amazingly successful, human cost wise.

Please, if anyone has pre-war predictions vs. post-war results links, please post them.

I just don’t buy the quagmire meme, because nothing has played out like the knee-jerk left expected it to. No sectarian civil war, no massive civilian casualties, no uprising of the Arab street. We are handing over power as quickly as is feasible in a region with many bad memories of colonialism. Baghdad has more published newpapers than New York. Iraqi’s are pissed off and not afraid to say so. That’s a good thing, from a Libertarian point of view. To coin a phrase, faster please.

It’s not perfect, but it’s not the catastrophe of, oh, a Russian Chechnya or a French Algeria or a Franco/American Viet Nam or the current situation in the Sudan.

But you know, it could get that way. Since it hasn’t gone that way yet, and Bush has been in charge during what I believe to be an on-balance successful project, I have zero desire to roll the dice.

And if we aren’t throwing everything into rebuilding Iraq, why doesn’t anyone acknowledge that we might be keeping reserves in case Iran or Syria got hot for some (totally unexpected) reason? I don’t want a guy in charge who thought it was a good idea to hop out of his machine-gun equiped boat to take on bad guys in unfamiliar terrain. Courage and commitment, yes. No adrenaline junkies, please.

And DON’T get me started on the “I can’t be bothered to keep up with the terror situation” story. G’damn! Who’s supposed to be the dim bulb in this election?

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:35 pm 63. Lord Whorfin:

As most commenters above have noted, there are no time-outs in real life. Time just keeps on ticking away, one second at a time.

Like someone used to say,

“Stop the World, I want to get off!!”

unknown

Not going to happen, no matter how hard you wish it, no matter how “unfair” you wail.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:42 pm 64. Martin Devon:

I still think that Mickey will come around before the election…

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:45 pm 65. Rick Ballard:

Mike,

Thanks for providing the list. I would have to agree that based upon a totally unrealistic knowledge of warfare and the expectations developed by watching movies that end with everything resolved in 128 minutes the WoT has been an abysmal failure.

If you could just point to one historical instance of the subjugation of two countries of a size and population of Iraq and Afghanistan being successfully completed with as little bloodshed in as little time your argument might have value. You cannot provide the necessary comparative because it does not exist. These are all DNC talking points that require the faith (and knowledge) of a child to believe.

“Failure to put enough troops in the Iraq theater to insure an orderly occupation”

Orderly occupation is not a primary objective in warfare. More troops would not have assured order nearly as well as ruthless suppression. More troops = more targets = more US casualties. We chose not to take the Iraqi lives that a ruthless suppression would have required and to not sacrifice US lives in order to achieve a Des Moines like tranquility for Iraq.

“failure to prevent the massive looting”

Which Baathist headqurters should have been protected? How many Americans should have died preventing the theft of Iraqi government property?

“failure to pacify many secondary Iraqi cities”

Fallujah is the only city not under control. “Many cities” is specious mendacity.

“failure to seal the borders of Iraq”

Now you’ve floated off the planet. Iraq’s borders are roughly the length of our border with Mexico.

“inability to respond decisively to the guerilla and terrorist attacks”

How much of the country do the guerilla’s control?

This is actually too boring to bother with. If you can write what you wrote and believe that it makes sense, Kerry’s your man.

Jul 9, 2004 - 1:46 pm 66. kia:

Isn’t it first “principles”?

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:03 pm 67. The Lapsed Randian:

Eric Dreamer:

Your comments re: President Bush’s communication skills hit the mark. Most unfortunate is the fact that this is something that can be worked on, that is, there is no reason why he cannot become a better communicator over time, and thus a more formidable champion regarding the WoT. Very frustrating indeed.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:04 pm 68. Mike Silverman:

Rick, you seem to be unrealistically optimistic.

Thepoints I brought up are and were real failures.

These failures do not mean the war wasn’t worth it. I mean, we had plenty of failures in WWII, but we still won in the end, Iand I have no doubt we will do so in Iraq as well.

Pretending everything is hunky dory and refusing to talk about and learn from operational failure because it might cost Bush some votes is as silly and sadly partisan as pretending terrorism doesn’t exists because you are a Kerry groupie.

I do not want what is best for Bush.

I do not want what s best for Kerry.

I want what is best for America.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:06 pm 69. Eric Deamer:

Lapsed Randian:

What’s even stranger about it is that he has actually become a worse communicator over time. In the summer issue of The Atlantic there was an article by James Fallows, who is liberal but intellectually honest, about Bush’s communication style. He watched a tape of Bush in debates to be Governor of Texas and was blown away. It wasn’t just that he was better than he is today, but he was actually a very good speaker. He seemed to be a different person. He gradually got worse over time, but he was still very good all the way up through 2000. Keep in mind that he’s “won” debates against Ann Richards, who is supposedly known for her verbal ability, John McCain, and then Al Gore, all people who were thought to be smarter, better talkers than he was. In fact, if you look back to his performance in the 2000 campaign versus how he speaks today, there is a severe drop-off just during that period. It’s very strange.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:18 pm 70. Knucklhead:

Mike Silverman took the time to list what he views as strategic and tactical failures. A somewhat reasonable list and worthy of direct response. Here’s my attempt at responding with all due respect and in the spirit of discussion.

“Some have asked me to enumerate some of the strategic and tactical failures of the war on terrorism. That is a fair question.

Here are a few that come quickly to mind:

- Failure to put enough troops in the Iraq theater to insure an orderly occupation…this is the root “sin” which has led to numerous other tactical failures, such as the failure to prevent the massive looting, failure to pacify many secondary Iraqi cities, failure to seal the borders of Iraq, and our inability to respond decisively to the guerilla and terrorist attacks.”

Putting “enough” troops into Iraq to ensure an “orderly occupation” is predicated upon knowledge of what no only an “orderly occupation” would look like but also a best guess of what “enough” would be and, of course, other considerations such as what the heck else is going on in the world that requires the presence of US troops and what previous commitments we have.

It further presupposes availability of troops and some knowledge of the types of troops necessary for US troops to fight in the ways for which they are trained and armed. It seems perfectly obvious to me that, taken as a whole (can’t include John Moore and those more astute or prescient), both the US and our president were blindsided by 9/11. Regardless of the previous attacks on the WTC, several US embassies, a US warship, and specific declarations of war against the US by OBL/AQ, we just didn’t see it coming or have any understanding of how destructive an attack could be made.

On 9/12/2001 our military capabilities were identical to those of 9/10/2001 and were the direct result of policies put in place long before. We had shifted and shrunk our military and its resources to fit a world that, in retrospect, didn’t exist. We can assign blame until we are all purple in the face, but doing so is nothing more than venting.

Once the current administration believed that it was necessary to fight a war the choices were rather stark: 1) fight the war with the tools available and adjust as we go or 2) delay fighting the war until a more proper toolset could be put in place.

If, in fact, time is essential, #2 above is not a particularly viable option. In addition to this we can further argue about whether or not it was politcally viable – would the US citizenry have patiently waited AND supported a military buildup of the proper type. Call me a sceptic, but I think the answer to that is no and that we would have spent our time, energy, and rage fighting about what the military buildup should look like and how much it would cost. A knuckleheaded best-guess is that the entire WoT effort would have died stillborn until another attack was made upon us.

Which is to say that some of us believe that #1 above was the proper course of action even though just about any analyst could easily guess that there were very significant mismatches between what was necessary to fight a WoT and what we had available to us to do so. Which means, ultimately, that one is forced to muddle through as best we could.

BTW, almost anyone who has studied military action would be forced to admit, I strongly believe, that no military is ever ideally prepared to fight the war they need to fight. That isn’t pretty, but its reality. “Mistakes were made and brave, young Americans died” is nothing more than painful reality. Yeah, that’s cold, get over it.

Mike goes on to provide a list of tactical failures caused by what (I suppose) he considers a strategic failure:

- the failure to prevent the massive looting,

Maybe I’m just a cold-hearted loon, but I personally don’t give a rat’s butt about the looting that went on in Iraq, massive of otherwise. It made for good TV news pictures but was, as far as I can tell, completely irrelevant to the situation as a whole or, more particularly, the WoT.

- failure to pacify many secondary Iraqi cities,

Please explain what “pacify” would entail, why it is or was necessary to achieve victory (Charles Krauthammer made an interesting – and perfectly valid, IMO – point by comparing our actions, loosely, to “island hopping”. A very reasonable case can be made that “pacifying” (whatever that is) each and every “secondary Iraqi” city is 1) not essential and probably too costly, 2) a job best left to the Iraqi’s themselves, and 3) impossible for US troops to accomplish (unless, of course, one considers the Russian “pacification” of Grozny in Chechnya a useful example of “pacification”

- failure to seal the borders of Iraq,

Would sealing the borders be possible and is it consistent with the goals of the operation? If Iraq is viewed as a standalone war, rather than just one campaign in a larger war, the answer might be a resounding yes – at least to the desirability, if not the feasibility, of sealing the borders of Iraq.

If, on the other hand, the Iraqi war is just one campaign in a larger, longer war (a view I, and others, subscribe to) then perhaps sealing the border, even if possible, would not be the best thing to do.

I’ll toss up the WWII, pacific theater campaign of Quadalcanal as an example. Even if we had possessed the cabalility to have prevented the Japanese from resupplying are sending additional troops into that campaign, a case can be made that it might not have been in our interests to have done so. The Japanes military threw everything they could muster into that fight and it was all eventually lost to them. In retrospect it would seen that there was huge value in “allowing” them to expend all those resources on a lost cause. The troops killed and ships and supplies sent to the bottom of the ocean were no longer available to make our war effort more difficult elsewhere.

The simplistic presentation of this is the “flypaper effect”. A very cynical way to wage a war and not something a president would be wise to express publicly, but certainly a valid tactic. War isn’t always about doing the heroic, sometimes its about that cold, hard, brutal thing called “winning”.

- and our inability to respond decisively to the guerilla and terrorist attacks.

See the Grozny and “flypaper” comments above, as well as the “painful reality” points above regarding fighting with what is available and ready rather than a wishlist. What, in your opinion, would be a “decisive response”? Should we REALLY (leaving aside the fact that many of us would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing nightly news pictures of it) have obliterated everything in our way when responding to guerilla and terrorist attacks? Given that the huge popular uprising and civil war have not yet materialised, how can the tactics that were used be deemed a “failure”? There may, indeed, have been better or preferrable ways to have responded, but “faulure” or “inability” does not seem a legitimate characterization.

- Poor planning with reagrd to the Northern Front…after we were surprised by Turkey, we didn’t seem to know what to do.

In light of outcome, how can this be regarded as “poor planning”? We were, it seems, surprised by the Turkish reaction and ultimate refusal to allow us to open the PLANNED version of the “Northern Front”. So we altered the plan, parachuted some troops in, got the Kurds to do the bulk of the fighting, and one that segment of the battle. How is that “failure”?

- Bad intelligence, period. This is more the the WMDs…this also encompasses things like our seeming inability to keep track of Iran’s shannanigans. It has also led to a certain desperation on our part to get any kind of actionable intelligence by any means necessary — which led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

There are a whole lot of things being glued together here. Go see Keegan’s book about Intelligence. Intelligence is ALWAYS inadequate and that’s even when it isn’t badly false. Good grief, Mike, we were reading the German General Staff’s mail and it was still difficult to beat them. We knew every order Rommel got in Afrika and every report he made and he STILL humiliated the Allies until the Afrika Corps was finally so overwhelmed that Germany had to abandon it and cut its losses.

And, more to the point, the intelligence available and its presentation from the “intelligence community” was virtually identical to what it had been for YEARS prior to our invasion.

Its is difficult to argue that our intelligence information was badly out of whack with reality but difficult to argue that it was the current administration’s “fault” (unless you want a sipuku level of “fault acceptance”) or that it was anything more than SOP – SNAFU.

Blame Bush for it if you must, but please don’t make some claim that ANY president has had or would have had anything better to work with.

- Poor running of the occupation, period. Half-hazard policing, slowness in repairing infratructure, inexplicable timing of decisions, etc. It is almost like the administrators of the occupation were running it from afar without actually having any idea what is going on on the ground

Sigh… This does get tedious so I’ll shut up soon.

Regarding “poor running of the occupation”… Is it even possible that there is success here? Just even the slightest bit possible that things have been done even a little better than “poorly” or that things could, just maybe, be a whole lot worse than they are?

Please tell us what your expectations or standards for “well run” are.

Half-hazard strikes me as at least 50% better than whole-hazard! Sorry, that was uncalled for but I couldn’t resist. I get that way when my fingers tire. Please provide some examples of what was done haphazzardly or how things could have been done substantially better.

As for repairing of infrastructure… As far as I can tell (and there is precious little real information available in this regard) the infrastructure is superior to what existed before the war. More people have more hours of electricity and clean water, for example, than Iraqi’s have had in roughly a decade. Its been roughly a year and a couple months that we’ve been “repairing infrastructure” and it seems like we’ve gotten well past fixing the stuff we “Dresdened” (good gried how I wanted to slap the Moral Pundit Police – hereing typically referred to as the MSM – when they were doing their moronic “It’s just like Dresden!” will they ever grow up and learn the least little bit about things BEFORE they put their stupid mouths in gear?)

Iraq’s infrastructure was a MESS without the war and its seems to be better than it was BEFORE the war. That seems like a reasonable level of accomplishment to me in the time spent so far. Again, what were your expectations and what are your standards for success?

“- Failure to followup our defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan with any kind of sustained effort to keep that country from falling back into chaos and terrorism.”

Fall back into chaos and terrorism? Sorry, Mike, but I think you’re just tossing smoke bombs with this nonsense. Once again, what did you expect and what are your standards for success? Afghanistan is the “grave yard of empires”. The British empire failed there. The Soviet empire failed there. Alexander himself apparently failed there (if I remember my ancient history correctly). Jet we invested 10,000 troops and seem to be making substantial, measurable progress toward creating an Afghanistan (along with the Afghanis, BTW) that is better than it has been in decades (at least) and shows more promise than it has shown since anyone apparently can remember. How is that “failure”? It ain’t freakin’ Luxemburg yet. Wow, talk about dismal failures. What is it you wanted there? 100,000 US troops on the ground? Do you really think US troops should be swarming the mountains of Afghanistan and running incursions into Iraq and Pakistan? Why do you suppose the Russians failed over there? Is it just possible, just maybe, we’ve taken the best approach possible and achieved about the best results possible, given the circumstances?

- Failure to confront Iran or North Korea in any serious way. North Korea is a hard case, but we ought to be doing more against Iran then passively hoping the UN will stop their nukes. Iran is also totally riding us in Iraq and we have done nothing to stop them.

- Failure to confront in any serious way the Saudis sponsorship of terrorism.

Should we have nuked them already? I’ve said way more than enough in this post and I probably don’t have a single reader left. In closing, however, I’d like to point out that it will require roughly a handful of short hours, following a decision to do so, to turn NK, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria and whomever else we finally need to “get serious” with, into uninhabitable nuclear waste dumps. We can always get “more serious”. Maybe trying something short of “really, really, serious” for a while first is preferable. Is that even possible?

I’ll leave the rest to someone else. Its largely more of the same. There are no magic wands and perfect solutions. No president has the Starship Enterprise’s little thing cooks up whatever it is somebody wishes for. It just doesn’t work that way – not even in Kerry-Edwards land.

And he who thinks “taking a national breather” in war is ever a good idea had best divest of any valuable real-estate they own and move somewhere suitably remote.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:24 pm 71. Rick Ballard:

Mike,

I am not in the least bit optimistic. When someone refers to “operational failures” without understanding what a failure consists of then I become suspicious of motive. If you actually have any desire for “what is best for America” you might consider the probability that handing the Executive Branch to “2 Guys Named John” who between them have absolutely zero executive experience is not the best idea that has ever arisen.

Iraq wasn’t perfect and many errors occured but there were no strategic or tactical “failures”. Could the operation have been accomplished more effectively? Sure but perfection is not an operational objective that pertains to many human endeavors.

As I asked in my original reply to you: What have JohnJohn accomplished in their illustrious careers that leads you to believe that they would be effective executives? Just some little thing that demonstrates a modicum of executive talent?

Until then I’ll stick with “Thar she blows, Capn”

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:27 pm 72. ter0:

I still think that Mickey will come around before the election…

Posted by: Martin Devon

I agree. When I first saw his comment about supporting Kerry I thought his site had been hacked. I still don’t believe that the same person who held such strong negative opinions of Kerry would turn around and vote for him (although I do believe he sent Kerry $300 to avoid actually lying in print). The rest is just conversation perhaps to provoke a response. or…..

Maybe it’s a ploy so he will get laid when he goes to the Demo Convention; I doubt if he would have been very popular promoting his previously stated views.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:32 pm 73. DennisThePeasant:

Pretending everything is hunky dory and refusing to talk about and learn from operational failure because it might cost Bush some votes is as silly and sadly partisan as pretending terrorism doesn’t exists because you are a Kerry groupie.

Mike S.-

Your statement above is true on a superficial level. But you miss the point.

No one is pretending everything is ‘hunky dory’. The problem you choose not to address is that there are those of us who do not accept unsupported and unsubstantiated criticism of the Bush Administration’s handling of Iraq or the War on Terror as fact. You simply stating that the Bush Administration has failed in a number of areas relating to Iraq and the War on Terror does not make it so. To lift your commentary beyond the level of an off-the-cuff opinion, you need to provide substance to back up your contentions.

Until you do that, people such as Ballard and myself are perfectly within our rights to question and reject your opinions. And in doing so, we are not ‘pretending everything is hunky dory’. We are being properly cautious and skeptical, as you would not doubt be if we were to actually claim hunky dory-dom.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:33 pm 74. Syl:

Eric Deamer

I wish Bush spoke like Blair. But he doesn’t. And I don’t think his style has worsened. I think he’s using it to his advantage in some cases…like when all those reporters in a row asked him the same question re apologizing. Er, um. LOL

Anyway his answer the other day ‘Cheney can be president’ was direct, to the point, and I couldn’t have wished for anything better.

He does great on the stump and in front of crowds. He plays dumb with the press but was hilarious with the Press Club. They misunderestimate him at their peril.

Now I have a question for everybody. Is their a cure for mass hysteria? It’s like half the country started believing in UFOs.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:37 pm 75. tisnot:

To Roger: thanks for being such a courageous voice. I firmly believe that in the War on Terror, Bush’s policies are much more aligned with all of the good things that genuine liberals stand for. Certainly the Iraqis have much more freedom than before.

To Mike: even if we grant all the items on your list (which, as others have noted, is not a given), is there any reason to believe that Kerry would have done better — or will do any better when answering the next unknown challenge?

When compared to the ideal, any real-world policy or accomplishment will fall far short. It’s time for a dose of reality.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:43 pm 76. WichitaBoy:

I want to second what many have said, but in particular what Sun Tzu said.

“Failure” is a pretty heavy word. On what basis is it being applied? Mike Silverman, have you been in combat? Have you ever directed a military action? Do you have any personal knowledge of that which you seek to judge?

I know that I don’t. I didn’t serve my country. As a child of the Sixties, I was opposed to the very idea of a military. I thought we should unilaterally disarm. I was not about to read any books about military history because I didn’t want to propagate the “fascist” militaristic mindset. I didn’t want to know anything about it; I just wanted it all to fade away as I was sure it eventually would. I did, to my shame, jeer the ROTC people I saw from time to time.

Well, I’ve changed. It seems blatantly obvious to me now that we have to have a military and it has to be the best in the world or we’re toast. We’re a rich, successful country. Nobody likes us. Everybody wants to destroy us. That’s human nature. I don’t blame them, how could it be otherwise? The barbarians are knocking at the gates and the Romans are sitting around discussing music theory (true story of the 4th century AD).

I too want what is good for America. But there is a certain duty involved here. The duty to be honest. The duty to be an informed citizen, so that my decision is based on something other than which herd I wish to belong to.

I have decided that the best I can do at this point is to read up on military history. I’ve been reading much, in particular Shelby Foote’s enormous “narrative” of the Civil War. This has astonished me I must say. There’s much about war I didn’t understand. For example, there wasn’t a single battle in the Civil War in which things weren’t seriously horked up by both sides. To take but one tiny example among hundreds, during the Battle of the Wilderness (won by Lee), Longstreet was shot by Confederate soldiers coming out of the woods to his right who thought they were attacking yankees. Friendly fire which took him out of the war for months. His absence was very costly to Lee. This in what was probably the best single fighting force in the entire war.

Out of hundreds of generals, the Civil War ended up turning out only three who were completely on the ball, who could handle every aspect of what it took to win. Fortunately for us, two of them (Grant and Sherman) happened to be on the Union side.

I can’t pussyfoot around this: the standards we armchair generals are trying to impose on the US military are simply ludicrous. No war in history has been better fought than the Iraq War. That’s a simple fact. No army in history has ever advanced so far so fast. Compare the American handling of Fallujah to the Russian handling of Chechnya–there’s not even a single point of similarity in the outcome. It’s like viewing the Lakers vs. a high school team.

Now maybe the US should be held to a higher standard than the Russians. Ok. But let’s not get unreal here. That won’t help anything. Is it not a common failing of the captious “left” that it is constantly complaining that the situation is not good enough compared to some imaginary perfect world which could exist? “Compared to what?” asks the great Thomas Sowell. And so do I. Iraq is a “failure” compared to what?

Until you have better knowledge, I would suggest that you refrain from such harsh judgements. If you believe in doing what’s best for the country, do your (very light) duty and read up on your military history.

I strongly agree with Joe Schmoe’s analysis above. There is the highly fallacious presumption by many Americans that we just can’t lose. Too many successes have bred complacency. Too many Sixties types are doing their best to remain teenage rebels, well into their 60’s. Well, we can and eventually will lose. Maybe this is the time. Maybe it is time to give up beer and have my wife wear that chador. Oops, they beheaded me anyway. Maybe some self-hating secular Neopuritans will love the pain of Islamic conquest. I for one say: no way. Not on my watch.

Syl I admire your courage too. And Terrye’s and Roger’s. I think all of you are being brave and I’m sorry you’re having to suffer for it. But all three of you are talking what looks like sense to me and I think it’s true what they say, that there sometimes come times in people’s lives when it’s necessary to stand up and be counted, yes, to sacrifice for the freedom we all take for granted. My accolades to all of you.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:48 pm 77. Paul:

I have to agree with Mr. Ballard here. Put in the proper context, ie; historical precedent, the Iraq campaign has been a smashing success. Two things make it radically different than previous wars, one in actual events on the ground, and one in the perceptions of the folks back home.

The first is that rather than going in and absolutely laying waste to the country, wiping out it’s fighting forces, and utterly demoralizing the populace, we achieved military victory with an unprecedented care to avoid civilian casualties and damage to the infrastructure. This pretty much assured a more difficult postwar period as many combatants were left to fight another day, and the people never truly felt defeated.

The second is the 24 hour news coverage by a hypercritical media populated almost exclusively by people opposed to the war in the first place, and highly motivated to inculcate as much defeatism in the American viewing public as possible. Obviously had there been an analogous media presence in WWI or WWII there would have been an entirely different perception of the war back home.

Calling the postwar events “failures” shows an ignorance of history and things military.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:48 pm 78. DennisThePeasant:

Syl-

Closing down The Nation and just about every university Humanities Department would be a good start. Socks in the mouths of Michael Moore and Eric Alterman would also help…but you couldn’t be sure Michael wouldn’t eat his, so that one’s a bit iffy.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:48 pm 79. TmjUtah:

Woooo Hooooo….

THAT’S how to get in…o.k.:

I second the sentiment, expressed by many previously, that Kaus is suffering a disconnect by even proposing some sort of ‘time out’…

But, as another poster pointed out, he is a Leftist. Possibly in recovery, possibly just adrift, but still more L than C by any measure.

I measure men by how they see the world and their place in the same. Do they take it as it comes? Do they operate under a cloud of cynicism…or all the way on the other side, completely independent of outside influence until the wheels fall off?

Guess which end the Left operates on, from where I stand?

It would be nice to take a break but that only works when cleaning a garage or reading a good book. At worst, the dust might get a little deeper or your bookmark falls out…which isn’t the real world, where other peoples’agendas are constantly competing for advantage. I cannot recall a Super Bowl where the team leading at the end of the first quarter toodled off the field until after halftime. No EEO rules for the NFL yet…

The core base of Kerry support is devoted to implementing law enforcement (ratchetted back to pre-9/11 ROE) and U.N. refereeing to define our response to Islamist terror. The Democrat party establishment has not just exploited their moonbat fringe, they’ve embraced and incorporated it into their national identity.

I don’t think any informed national observer could make an honest argument that Kerry was in position to effectively prosecute the war. His senate record, his rhetoric on the trail, and most of all the national security track record/sentiment of his party all say otherwise.

There’s the way things are, and the way people want things to be. Give me a president who deals with the former, thanks.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:49 pm 80. M. Simon:

The idea in warfare is to never reduce tempo. Increase it. It reduces casualties (see Patton on the subject).

See the generals of the North vs Lee before Grant. Grant never halted between battles. He advanced after losing battles. He gave Lee no chance to rest.

I do not think we ought to give our enemies a chance to digest their losses. What they need is more indigestion. Who ever said to halt to digest our gains doesn’t know squat about warfare.

We must stretch the enemy beyond the breaking point. We must adopt a tempo they can’t match. And keep it up until like Sadr’s group they say no mas – in Arabic.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:56 pm 81. Syl:

Knucklehead

I read the whole thing! Good post!

Something else occurred to me…yet another reason to have gone into Iraq. Bin laden expected some cruise missiles and maybe something even stronger in Afghanistan. But he thought he could play us like the Russians. Get us bogged down with thousands and thousands of troops in the mountainous terrain.

Bush going to Iraq undermined his plans totally! All those jihadis who would have trekked back to Afghanistan to fight us there, instead became occupied in Iraq where the terrain is, well, much flatter.

I suspect going to Iraq saved us a lot of trouble in Afghanistan.

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:56 pm 82. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Yep. a bunch of things went wrong.

Welcome to war, fog thereof.

For one thing, we have a surplus of unused body bags. Bad planning.

How about pre-war predictions? WMD’s raining down on Israel followed by a nuclear strike? Our offensive was “stalled” in the sand storm, and reporters were muttering Quagmire. Shortly after that we took the whole country. During the sand storm, invisible to reporters, Iraqi divisions foolishly tried to use the cover of sand to move south. They were destroyed by precision air power.

Remember the battle of Stalingrad predictions for Baghdad? It didn’t happen.

Then the Shias were going to rise up and take over. Well, one tried and almost all of his followers died (4000 insurgents killed last month).

But overall, Iraq is a problem. The biggest issue is that it ties down too much of our military. We should have increased the size, although I don’t know if it would have been politically possible.

We have some problems, which shouldn’t surprise or shock anyone.

Now look at the situation if we hadn’t acted. By now, there would be little left of the sanctions. Saddam would be buying nuclear material from Khan and North Korea. Libya would not have rolled over. Al Qaeda would be perfecting their chemical weapons at the Ansar Al Islam outpost in northern Iraq. We would still have our aircraft flying over Iraq and being shot at daily. Lots more Iraqis would be dead at Saddam’s hands.

In fact, other than the tragic deaths of people in the insurgency, and the tying down of US forces, Iraq should be a side issue.

The strategic issues today involve other Pakistan (yes, we are doing things there, probably more than we know), Iran and North Korea.

For those who watch such things, we just sortied 7 Carrier Strike Groups (whatever happened to Carrier Battle Groups). It’s an exercise (right).

Jul 9, 2004 - 2:59 pm 83. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Oh, and in the list of military disasters, Tet belongs to the bad guys. Tet was disastrous to the North Vietnamese, so much so that they were planning on suing for peace until they saw how it was reported and what the peace movement did in the United States. Ironic that if it hand’t been for the peace movement and the press’ misreporting of the event (they painted it as peace for us), the Vietnam War would have ended in 1968. Source: Giap’s biography.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:01 pm 84. Mike Silverman:

Knucklhead, your post was very informative, thanks.

I may have been a bit too facile in my post on alleged failures of the war so far, but I am still really worried that we seem to somehow be stuck…I wish this were a war with more fronts and battles…that made is easier to keep score, I guess.

I know, I know, don’t trust the media.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:12 pm 85. M. Simon:

Uh, let us not look through too many rose colored mirrors.

The media has always been viciously sceptical of all wars. Even WW2. You ought to go back and look at some of the stuff printed. “Patton’s slaps soldier”. “Admiral Halsey killed my son at Tarawa” and all kinds of similar stuff. The Chicago Trib after Midway said the Jap codes had been broken.

Only totalitarian countries are 100% behind a war effort. Democracies sometimes are lucky to get 51%. See Lincoln at numerous points during the War of Northern Agression. (with a nod to all my Southern friends from a New Jersey Yankee who grew up at the foot of Monticello). Hell Jeff Davis didn’t have an easy go either.

The Cold War was up and down but we stuck with it for forty years because we had no choice. This war will be no different. Even if Kerry wins he is stuck with defending America. If he does it badly we can impeach him.

The people are not without recourse.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:14 pm 86. Michael Fay:

I believe there is only one way to determine your vote, and it is not in relation to the war on terrorism.

The question you need to ask yourself, in the continuing era of the lesser of two evils politics, is who is going to do the least harm to you?

I know my answer. Bush doesn’t believe in civil liberties beyond the right to go to church and give your church all the money that his tax cuts would purportedly give you.

I don’t know that Kerry would act to preserve my freedoms in a better manner, but Bush has already proven that he won’t.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:21 pm 87. Syl:

WichitaBoy

Thanks. Your comment re citizen’s duty to be honest and informed made me think of Michael Moore. His only concern is his right to be a loudmouth, his duties are of no concern to him.

Mike Silverman

I wish this were a war with more fronts and battles…that made is easier to keep score, I guess.

I understand the feeling. The press and everyone have concentrated on Iraq with no light shown elsewhere. I remember the earlier days when the news of the capture of so-and-so or that missile strike on a car in Yemen were ‘yee-haw, another down’. We don’t get much of that anymore.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:30 pm 88. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Michael Fay

Did you read my long comment on Kerry?

Your civil liberties are not much good if you are dead. Are you one who thinks the War on Terror is just a distraction? There is nothing more important to America today. Nothing at all.

Would you want someone like John Kerry as president? Go look at what I wrote. Remember it when more comes out in a while.

Furthermore, your characterization of Bush on civil liberties is extremely wrong. Have you read the Patriot Act and seen the many civil liberties protections?

Are you serious or are you a new troll?

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:31 pm 89. M. Simon:

With regards to the CSG sorties.

I want to march to the sound of the drums. I want to be keeping up steam in the reactors. I want to be heading into the wind at 30+ knots.

I want to go to battle stations. I want to do damage control drills. I want to talk on the sound powered phones. I want to do small arms practice on the fantail. I want to spend five hours a day every day studying the ship’s propulsion system. I want to spend my off time playing bridge with the other off duty ROs. I want to end the mid to 4AM (local time) watch on deck watching the planes take off from the Big E. I want to eat unlimited cold cock and cheese sandwiches on the mess decks while every one else is puking their guts out in a three day typhoon. I want to sleep forward in a typhoon where the deck is rising and falling ten feet at at clip and rocks you to sleep. I want to get my sea legs back.

I want to go to sea again.

Well I’m with you in spirit. Frighten our enemies. And if that doesn’t work kill them.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:32 pm 90. Old Dad:

Michael Fay

Your civil liberties post mystifies me. I’ve read many allegations that the President, more usually John Ashcroft, somehow has taken away our civil liberties. Usually the complaints center around the Patriot Act. The nuttier ones, argue that Bush somehow suspended election laws before he was even sworn in, somehow tipped the Supreme Court and then stole the election. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve never seen a single claim, based in fact, of any disruption of civil liberties.

Moreover, in war time, there are real historical examples of infringements by the executive. Take Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. Has President Bush done anything remotely as radical?

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:36 pm 91. Syl:

Michael Fay

“Bush doesn’t believe in civil liberties beyond the right to go to church and give your church all the money that his tax cuts would purportedly give you.”

So much for a citizen being honest and informed.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:37 pm 92. IceCold:

Rick and Dennis and Mark have done a good job writing what I was going to write in response to Mike’s original comment.

Mike’s litany is a good compendium of the nearly entirely incorrect yet unchallenged conventional wisdom about the war and the occupation. Only thing he left out was one of my favorites — “poor planning.” These facile but mostly incorrect sweeping judgements of failure or incompetence have been a dime-a-dozen for some time. Given the ceaseless tsunami of misinformation and unchallenged bad analysis dispensed by the media and their familiar sources in govt. and think-tankdom, it’s little wonder that silly myths like “disbanding the army” (already, happily, self-disbanded) and “not enough troops” (rarely have numbers been an issue in Iraq) are taken seriously.

Anyone with a hint of historical perspective on warfare in general and the tasks before us in both Afghanistan and Iraq has to stand almost in awe of our accomplishments — and their cost — to date.

I still recall vividly in August 1990 when the usual suspects were melting down in hysteria over the deployment of US forces to Saudi Arabia — you see, there was no way this wouldn’t result in a toppling of the status quo. There just couldn’t be US forces in the Kingdom — just couldn’t happen. The same folks then of course went on to hysteria about the certainty of dominoes toppling across the region as the enraged Arab Street (TM) rose to protest American action against a brother Arab state. But just like that, the unthinkable became the commonplace. Today — and I think Mike’s comment perfectly illustrates this — it’s common for smart folks to just swallow every facile criticism that comes along and stitch them together in a bogus pattern of failure.

To have actually toppled Saddam’s regime and also that in Afghanistan, “graveyard of empires”, at the cost we have is an amazing accomplishment, politically as well as militarily. It’s not the work of your average administration, or average president. And the mashed toes and broken china aren’t just in these dysfunctional regions of the world, or in Europe.

At State and CIA and throughout the think-tank and broader Beltway landscape, there’s something like sustained panic — that a status quo has been shattered, that comfortable relationships with client regimes may change or end, that Bush has dared to recognize the absense of the emperor’s clothes on the Pal-Isr conflict and act accordingly, that instead of managing a pernicious stasis we might have to manage change. (The same thing happened with “arms control” types prior to 9/11 — producing the preposterous situation in which DC and European soft-heads were in a tizzy over ABM Treaty abrogation, while the Russians — after realizing we weren’t backing off — were pretty blase, and instead of an “arms race” being sparked, the US and Russia agreed their biggest strategic offensive missile cuts in history).

This is where Kaus is just silly. He doesn’t exhibit any serious understanding of international conflict or strategy. You don’t “pause” when you’re engaged in a fight where seizing and holding the initiative are key. It only raises ultimate costs, even if it doesn’t hazard the eventual victory. Moreover, in this case it would only reward and encourage the moral imbecility and strategic disorientation European and American elites have shown since just before the Iraq war.

Bush’s response to 9/11 abroad has been extraordinary — the sort of boldness and indifference to political risk that most thoughtful observers usually can only dream about.

Kerry — and most of those who would staff his operation — represent nearly the opposite extreme. Bad instincts, and no visible backbone or capacity for leadership. The choice couldn’t be any more stark, or the uncertainty about the outcome more ominous .

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:39 pm 93. M. Simon:

John,

I’m with Michael Fay on Bush and civil liberties. I with you on Bush and the War.

All this mixing of government and religion will come to no good for either. It never does. The Republican Party as it now stands will not hold up much past the destruction of the Democrats in Nov. The parties no longer have coalitions with common interests. They must realign.

No way Texas Bush and Calif. Arnold can long remain in the same party.

Jul 9, 2004 - 3:57 pm 94. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

IceCold

I made the comment that we need more troops. I stand by that. However, not for Iraq, but for the next contingency – whether it is Iran or Sudan or wherever. We are stretched too tight. If the WOT is to be short, then we’re fine. But I don’t think it will be, and that means we need a larger force (especially army) or our current force will be both insufficient and damaged by over-use.

It would be unfortunate (to put it mildly) if we had to destroy an enemy nation (perhaps with nukes) because we didn’t have the troops to take and hold that nation.

It is possible that we can get help from some of our better armed allies, but there are problems there. The ROKs are currently in their own fantasyland, imagining that they will be allowed to reunite with the North (hint: China will never let that happen unless the resulting government is subservient to, and ideologically compatible with China’s). India is a historic enemy of another sort-of-ally – Pakistan. I don’t know of anyone else that has the forces to rob a fast food outlet.

M. Simon

I agree that there are interesting fissures in the Party – specifically the Republican Party has a problem between the libertarians and the moralists (also, in my model, known as the hedonists and the puritans).

What I see today is a massive assault on Christianity in the United States. It is from both the left, the hedonist right, and gay activists. It is based on a currently misplaced fear of religion. I say misplaced because most religious republicans are not in favor of theocracy, and that includes Bush. However, they do hold values derived from religion that sometimes come in conflict with libertarian values. Specifically: abortion, although I have a fine libertarian argument that is pro-life and invokes no religion at all.

The gay marriage issue is not a civil liberties issue, because marriage is not a liberty, but rather a government granted privilege. It is also an issue where the vast majority of the country opposes gay marriage. The efforts today against gay marriage are, in my opinion, in the spirit of our nation – they are an attempt to eliminate judicial activism on the subject, leaving it to the states, and also to reserve the word Marriage, in law, to what it has meant for the duration of the republic. Note that while this position doesn’t satisfy the desires of the gay activists and many gays, it is a long ways from the old days of outlawing homosexual behavior. About 40% of the Catholic Church clergy in the US are homophile or homosexual.

So this leaves me with the question of what mixing of government and religion? And especially, what mixing is happening that is more than in the past? Where has Bush brought religion into government where it didn’t exist before?

However, I recognize that many people are offended by religious judgements, which I find unfortunate. But much of the anti-religion/state view seems to be anhistoric – it is trying to reach a historically high level of separation of church and state, which is anti-conservative.

So which issues are we talking about?

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:17 pm 95. Knucklhead:

I wish to join the others in asking Michael Fay (or anyone else who believes likewise) to please identify the civil liberties that have been taken away from them personally or American citizens in general.

I’m looking out upon the same nation and I just don’t see it. Nobody has knocked on my door and forced me to go to a church and they sure haven’t forced me to contribute to any churches. I keep hearing about it and I’ve dug an escape tunnel so I can dash into the turnip cellar and from there into the cornfields when it finally happens, but despite the rumors I can’t find a single fellow citizen forced to attend or tithe.

Its as if a neighbor heard a rumor about a friend of somebody who had a cousin who skinned a knee and the neighbor starts fretting about the size of their life insurance policy. I just don’t get it. Where is this loss of civil liberties?

(Oh, and, BTW, if you do have some specific to demonstrate please be prepared to hear from the folks who participate here the LONG list of times in our nation’s history where we’ve had very real and very serious restrictions placed upon civil liberties and have not only survived whatever crisis provoked the restrictions and, miraculously, lifted the restrictions once the crisis passed.)

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:20 pm 96. geoffg:

Mike S.,

What makes you presume there are not multiple military engagements on multiple fronts gong on? Reporters are not embedded everywhere.

You might find it interesting read about the new Marine Corps, and how they now intend to go about applying force and prosecuting warfare.

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/cowan_proceedings.htm

It’s really a terrific essay about John Boyd, an F86 pilot of the Korean war era, who first single-handedly revolutionized air-fighting, and then ground-fighting.

Boyd is a relatively unknown hero and the genius behind our current USMC strategy.

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:23 pm 97. Knucklhead:

Mike Silverman,

Wars aren’t ballgames. You can’t keep score and trying to do so is not only and exercise in futility but a recipe for serious depression. You can’t possibly know 10% of what is going on or what decisions have been made and why. Mistakes get made. One of the many remarkable skills our military has developed is making indepth analysis of mistakes and adjusting to try and make sure we don’t do the same stupid thing twice. They are also pretty darned adept and figuring out best practices. That isn’t to say there aren’t scummy soldiers doing crappy things and people who zig when they should zag and, thereby, get people killed. It’s just to say that we won’t know the full story until a long time from now. Given what has been accomplished so far (a few months back there was an article in the Moscow Times that, essentially, said “Good Golly, Miss Molly, those loathesome Americans have cracked the code and figured out how to win wars without killing everyone in sight!”) is almost mind-bogglingly successful.

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:27 pm 98. TmjUtah:

Mike Silverman -

“…I wish this were a war with more fronts and battles…”

I don’t disagree with you at all, but consider where we stand right now. In less than three years we’ve fought two wars on the other side of the world. We have over two hundred thousand servicemen and women in theaters were combat is either ongoing or could happen at any time. Every ship entering a U.S. port is inspected by the Navy or Coast Guard. Across North and East Africa, in southeast Asia, and the Philippines, we have SpecOps and intelligence personnel engaged with liasion and training of local forces and governments, and surveillance and attacks on al Qaeda and kindred groups.

I refer you to John Moore, Knucklehead (awesome post), and Rick Ballard for the broad picture of why it isn’t unreasonable to wonder just what ‘winning’ means.

M. Simon -

“This war will be no different. Even if Kerry wins he is stuck with defending America. If he does it badly we can impeach him.”

At what cost?

Right this moment I’m wondering just how ugly another close election could be. I’m wondering how many percentage points EITHER WAY it will take to bring some sort of prinicpled compromise back to governance in this country. We’ve got Democrats entreating the U.N. to provide observers in U.S. elections. The DNC has already laid the groundwork for installing their own pollwatchers in at least four states, with concurrent P.R. campaigns questioning the legitimacy of balloting practices.

I’m praying for seven points. Either way. Even if Kerry was the choice. I don’t even want to contemplate the attacks or setbacks we might face that would cause impeachment to be considered.

We face a life or death situation in the war on terror. In the absence of domestic meltdown that could be laid at the feet of the administration, the Democrats face political oblivion if they lose this next election. They have chosen to exploit the confusion and unavoidable failures and misteps of the battlefield as a political tool at the expense of our lives and security. I can understand their panic.

I will not excuse their actions.

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:37 pm 99. Katherine:

M. Simon, re: operational tempo.

You are absolutely correct and the truth of you assertion has been known for centuries. As a bona fide chicken hawk I am familiar with the art of warfare only via literature and history, but one lesson has stuck with me since my early childhood:

In 1410 Kingdom of Poland was facing a deadly threat from the German Knights of the Cross, who, for years, were subjugating neighboring principalities in a rather brutal way. The official aim of the Knights was spread of Christianity among the heathen, but ordinary conquest was the real objective, perhaps something that can be related to the modern day militant Islam. In this crucial year, Polish king Jagiello creamed much stronger army of the Knights of the Cross and their Western allies. However, instead of pressing his advantage and pushing on to the enemy stronghold he lingered on the field of victory to uphold the knightly tradition of keeping the field for three days to give a chance to the challenger to come back and give another battle. The result? The temporarily beaten enemy retreated to their stronghold and managed to give the chivalrous but not too strategically bright king and his successors many deadly headaches in the future. In fact, the roots of this conflict can be found in the Nazi pretexts for invading Poland (the demand from Germany to Poland to grant them the ì land corridorî to Danzig).

I fear that if we stop pressing our advantage we will shortly face much more deadly threats and we will have to make rather unpalatable choice. Yes, we can nuke them all. But I really donít want to be brought to the point of seriously considering this choice. I am left hoping that our much more humane bumbling strategy will succeed. And that is why I will vote for Bush, though I too will be isolated and may lose lots and lots of friends.

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:43 pm 100. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

TmjUtah

What the Democrats have done this year is inexcusable. What their candidate did during and after his participation in Vietnam was also inexcusable, and sadly, predictive of his future behavior.

This year, we have a choice between George Bush (for whatever that means) and those who have shown how unreasonable, vicious and untruthful they can be. If you vote for a liar, don’t expect to see his policy positions actually enacted.

How anyone who has their eyes open can vote for Kerry is beyond me. Maybe when all the information about Kerry finally comes out, fewer will support him. But counting on getting out damaging information about a democrat is dangerous, especially given what we have seen so far.

For those who are considering voting for Kerry, please keep an open mind and pay attention to character, and to future stories about his war years. Please consider that the character of the president is of vital importance, for a man with weak or malevolent character will not do what he says he will do.

Jul 9, 2004 - 4:52 pm 101. PeterUK:

“…I wish this were a war with more fronts and battles…”

Quite frankly you don’t, we have been there and millions died.A Front frequently means being bogged down, literally for years, fighting over patch of mud.

What you are seeing now is a new kind of warfare,mobile complex,part combat, part political,rapidly changing and confusing.

In military terms, consolidation,means “Straightening the line” and is one of the most dangerous manouvers that the military can undertake.The enemy is waiting for just this moment to strike and of course whilst you are consolidating so are they.One of the features of the new kind of warfare is that this isn’t neccessary.

I notice that there is criticism for not subduing towns like Fallujah early one in the invasion,this tends to come from those who constantly invoked Stalingrad,a city which it was totally unneccessary to besiege.It has long been the practice,in mobile warfare, to take territory and cut lines of communication,investing strong points later,vis Patton.

Lastly, as the Roman Legions discovered, if you don’t fight the barbarians on the frontier you will fight them in your homeland.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:00 pm 102. M. Simon:

Kerry’s error in Vietnam ( I made the same one at the time )is not as bad as the fact that he never saw his position as mistaken. He never took responsibility for his position.

Here is a man who has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Ah, the French. Such a way with words. Ah, monseiur Kerry. So aristocratic. So rich. So French.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:05 pm 103. richard mcenroe:

One of the first things they taught us shiny new butterbars at the Fort Benning School for Wayward Boys is that you don’t stop on the objective. You attack through it to push the opposition back to where they can’t even reach thr ground you want to hold.

To completely mix my metaphors here, compromising with Democrats or Islamic fundamentalists is like trying to compromise with your ex’s divorce lawyer: every concession is taken not as a sign of good faith but of weakness, suggesting they can get more.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:14 pm 104. TmjUtah:

John Moore -

Character should count; heaven knows that the Democrats have invested their souls trying to sell the idea that Bush is deficient in that area.

I’m a results guy. You strip away the noise and smoke of day – to – day news cycles and go back to Campaign 2000 and check what Bush intended to do if elected, it’s not too hard to make a call on how he’s done on that level.

The Bush Doctrine as expressed at U.N. and West Point isn’t real subtle. Democracies don’t attack democracies, we face an implacable but not undefeatable gaggle of lethal organizations and regimes, some threats must be addressed before they can be allowed to attack, we will confront them where and when we find them, and that it is incumbent on us to provide the liberated peoples’ the necessary assistance to govern themselves.

There wasn’t anything about instituting Christian baptism in there that I recall, but I’m sure the media would have mentioned it if there was.

Going back to results again…two nations on their way to self-government with elected representation in less than three years. Setbacks? Check. Mistakes? Check. Challenges? Yep. Losses? Yes, but after the first three thousand, we’ve been shooting back. Resolve? Unwavering, and unambiguous, where it counts – the president. We are not near victory yet but then again bets were even in WW2 as late as 1943. We’ve already dealt with one of the current Axis members. I don’t doubt we’ll eventually beat the two remaining ones…if we confront them.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was the greatest tactician of our Civil War. His watchword was to ‘keep up the skeer’, and he was right. Once you engage an enemy NEVER let up as long as you have the initiative. If you fail to dictate the tempo of battle the enemy is half way to beating you…which Forrest proved again and again.

Who here thinks that the U.N. security council is going to be unduly upset about a bombed U.S. embassy? Ship? Barracks?

City?

IAEA is advising the U.N. Security council not to sanction Iran because the mullahs might have the termity to publicly disavow the NPT. Better they build a bomb in secret rather than generate embarassment for the U.N., right? The ongoing genocide in Sudan is…genocide. Where is the U.N.? What would happen if George Bush brought a resolution to the Security Council TONIGHT referencing the U.N. Charter and calling for U.N. intervention? Right. Crickets.

We do live in interesting times. I don’t think we’re screwed up enough to elect Kerry…but looking back at the nineties kinda shoots that idea right in the cheeks, doesn’t it?

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:19 pm 105. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

M. Simon

I assume you are referring to his activities after Vietnam although I can’t tell. Millions demonstrated against the war. I went to two demonstrations myself after I got off active duty – one while I was in the reserves. My reasons were silly – I convinced myself that we weren’t fighting hard enough, so I should go along (first demonstration) but in reality it was just to go along (I’m glad I did – I learned things). Second one was a lark. But I know people here who were much more serious protesters. It was a confusing time. One friend of mine shot himself in the leg to get out of the draft on a section 8. Another went to Canada. A third went to prison because he was against the war, but not a CO. Another joined the Navy with me.

These were ordinary people in an extraordinary time.

Kerry was an extraordinary person in that same time. He did many bad things in Vietnam. When he came back, he negotiated with the enemy (a crime) and then gave their propaganda line, with great effect because of his “war hero” status and his access to the media. Kerry sold out his country, not out of belief, but as a matter of opportunism, according to members of VVAW and the FBI files. He doesn’t see his position as mistaken because it worked – it kicked off his political career. That he smeared his country and all 2,500,000 of us who were in country veterans was nothing in comparison.

That his words are still being used as propaganda by the Vietnamese is telling. I suggest folks read that link. It is disgusting. And it is only a month old. They quote Kerry (by name) to prove that we committed war crimes routinely, while they treated our POWs “humanely”. In fact, three of those POWs have already asked Americans to vote against Kerry.

Moseiur Kerry isn’t just French. He’s just plain bad.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:25 pm 106. richard mcenroe:

The American way after every war has been to pretend that everything is back to normal as fast as possible. Look at the entertainment and advertising after WWI and WWII.

We weren’t able to pretend that after Korea, because the war never really ended; we just grew accustomed to the fact that we had been at bayonet point with the North Koreans and Chinese for fifty-plus-years and it was probably going to continue.

We weren’t able to pretend that after Vietnam, because so much of that war (which we never got around to actually calling a war) was fought on the campuses and streets of this country. We couldn’t pretend we had won; it was all we could do to ignore the millions of corpses and refugees piling up after our departure out of such high principles. To this day, when I bring that up to a leftist, the best I can get is a change of subject (and not just regarding SE Asia. Want to piss off a lefty? Ask him what kind of person tries to swim across 90 miles of open ocean away from 100% literacy, guaranteed employment and world-class free health care…)

But now, the left has reached its absolute peak. We are asked to pretend that everything is back to “normal” (i.e., in touch with the left’s 1974 worldview) before the damn war is even over, before the hole in Manhattan is even filled, before the butchers who behead captives, turn their own children into bombs and kill their own wives and daughters for “dishonoring” them have been dragged kicking and screaming (or smoking, if necessary) into the light to face justice and the 21st century.

I know it is supposed to be bad form to accuse the left of being psychologically impaired, but what else can you call this level of denial?

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:37 pm 107. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

TmjUtah

What I am trying to say is that Kerry’s character isn’t just a bit deficient (like Clinton’s was – narcissistic) but rather is extremely deficient.

There is a (rather naive) reason that the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth held their press conference fairly early (May 5). They thought their information was strong enough to cost Kerry the nomination, and since many of their members are Democrats or independents, they wanted the party to have the chance to make an alternative choice given their information.

It didn’t work. The press butchered the story and mostly just suppressed it. Hence nobody really noticed.

But that gives you an idea of the kind of people who think Kerry is unqualified to be commander – they are honest, patriotic, non-partisan, and deadly serious combat veterans.

The fact that they would do this shows just what sort of opinion the people who fought with Kerry have. They consider him to be dangerous.

We are thus talking about deep and major character defects, and bad behavior that includes his in-country activities.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:38 pm 108. M. Simon:

John,

I went to the demos too. The killing fields. The re-ed camps. The boat people wized me up. Giap later confirmed what I had learned.

I personally take responsibilty for my part in the deaths of several millions. Kerry never has taken responsibility for that.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:49 pm 109. Rick Ballard:

Tmj,

In ‘92 there wasn’t much of a pot on the table. Betting on an unknown charmer just didn’t seem risky to a lot of people and Big Ears just plain discouraged a lot of people from voting for GB1 (or anybody else). Those are the days Mr. Kaus seems to long for but they were not (and historically never have been) “normal” times.

I doubt that this election is going to be anywhere near close. The American people are not extraordinarily stupid (although they may rank above average in ignorance). We’re still eight weeks from the start of serious campaigning and the contenders resumes are going to be combed pretty thoroughly. On one side there will be a couple of phone books worth of material, on the other a couple of comic books. The new McCain pro-Bush ad lays out the points you made at the top of your post fairly well and ignorance in differentiating failure from success just isn’t that hard to do.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:49 pm 110. Goof®:

Thanks, Roger and, I suppose, Mickey. What a smile.

These threads always remind me of All Along The Watchtower…and I do know why.

The Thief

Kerry in ‘04

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:58 pm 111. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

M. Simon

Unless you were a witting leader, you don’t have much responsibility. The situation was way too complex for young people to understand what was happening. It was the folks a few years older, the hard left mob, that were responsible. They were working with the CPUSA (and hence taking orders from the KGB, whether they knew it or not) and others, like Kerry, with the North Vietnamese.

Furthermore, LBJ holds the biggest responsibility by burning all the political capital, setting the precedent for lying, appointing Westmoreland, fighting the war improperly, and generally screwing the whole thing up. By the time Nixon got in, he didn’t have much in the way of options, and Watergate destroyed that.

However, the ultimate tragedy was a result of a Democrat congress refusing to allow us to hold on to victory. It was a terrible betrayal of an ally, and it was unnecessary.

Jul 9, 2004 - 5:58 pm 112. Rick Ballard:

Keep smiling goof – only 1651 days till Cheney is inaugurated (he’ll still be 2 years younger than Reagan was when he took office).

All

These two sites contain more (and more accurate) information concerning Iraq than you are likely to read in the MSM over the next month. At the first site the column on the right has a box labeled ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Within the box their is a line label of ‘Weekly Progress Report’ which takes you to a comprehensive sitrep in PDF format.

The other is a Corps of Engineer site that lays out progress made in reconstruction and lists projects to be completed with the reconstruction money already appropriated.

Our people in Iraq don’t appear to be “taking a breather” nor does the term “failure” adequately describe what they are doing.

Jul 9, 2004 - 6:35 pm 113. Rick Ballard:

All

These two sites contain more (and more accurate) information concerning Iraq than you are likely to read in the MSM over the next month. At the first site the column on the right has a box labeled ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Within the box their is a line label of ‘Weekly Progress Report’ which takes you to a comprehensive sitrep in PDF format.

The other is a Corps of Engineer site that lays out progress made in reconstruction and lists projects to be completed with the reconstruction money already appropriated.

Our people in Iraq don’t appear to be “taking a breather” nor does the term “failure” adequately describe what they are doing.

Sorry for the double post but the links didn’t work the first time.

Jul 9, 2004 - 6:39 pm 114. Skookumchuk:

Rick:

Great comments and posts.

Some of the Beltway angst comes from having 22 year old Marine sargeants prove better at building infrastructure than the careerist Georgetown condo-dwellers. They just can’t stand it.

Jul 9, 2004 - 6:58 pm 115. ingrid_shizzle:

I don’t think the Kaus approach is about ignoring the war on terror (or maybe it is, what do I know), but isn’t there an argument that it would be easier at this stage of the war on terror for the U.S not to have Bush as its President? Is it not a relevant fact to an American voter that, rightly or wrongly, Bush conjures up such a large amount of hatred in the world? Wouldn’t it be better (and better for America’s interests and for the furtherance of the war on terror) if, at this point, the President wasn’t hated by the rest of the world? For example, as some consensus begins to develop that now is the time to bring the UN in (not my idea! I’m just saying a lot of people are talking about it; or if they aren’t, at least accept the hypothetical), don’t you think Bush is going to have to kiss a lot more ass, and compromise on a lot more positions than Kerry would have to just because he is not Bush? This is not to say that Kerry wouldn’t bung it up – he very well may – but in a perfect world, would this not make some sense?

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:03 pm 116. chuck:

I was going to comment on Mike Silverman’s posts, but you folks have already handled it beautifully. What a team! So I will merely note that MK voted for Schwarzenegger, or so I seem to recall. It’s not like he can’t cross party lines. On the other hand, he said that it was a tough last minute decision. It’s a long time to November, so let’s just see how things go.

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:09 pm 117. Knucklehead:

Ingrid,

“Is it not a relevant fact to an American voter that, rightly or wrongly, Bush conjures up such a large amount of hatred in the world?”

Please, you really must know better than to ask these questions!

It may be a relevant fact to some American voters, but this American voter would all but beg on my knees that any American voter who believes “world opinion” is relevant to GTFU and beg, borrow, or steal a clue somewhere, anywhere.

Ronald Reagan conjured up a “large amount of hatred in the world”. I was over in Europe (a LOT) and listened to the never ending tripe about how Reagan was a lunatic, third-rate actor who was going to bring the world to destruction.

I cannot answer why the “world” (and many Americans) are stupid enough to hate George Bush. There is nothing about the man that warrants such feelings. They will have to answer that question for themselves.

But the US cannot, must not, EVER elect our leaders because “the world” hates them.

And, BTW, when all is said and done, the “world” has gone just plain brain-dead when it comes to reflexive anti-Americanism. It does not matter who is president, anti-Americanism will only go up or down by matters of small degree. Bush is just the convenient excuse of small minds trained to hate rather than think.

“Wouldn’t it be better (and better for America’s interests and for the furtherance of the war on terror) if, at this point, the President wasn’t hated by the rest of the world? For example, as some consensus begins to develop that now is the time to bring the UN in (not my idea! I’m just saying a lot of people are talking about it; or if they aren’t, at least accept the hypothetical), don’t you think Bush is going to have to kiss a lot more ass, and compromise on a lot more positions than Kerry would have to just because he is not Bush?”

The UN is corrupt and, in its finest moments, feckless. Staying the course and forcing the UN to reform or die is the best course of action. Bush has a chance to bring the UN to heel and, to use your words, kiss ass. Kerry will turn around, do some stupid mea culpa and the UN will go on its merry way using death and destruction to line the pockets of its kleptobureacrats.

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:22 pm 118. Knucklehead:

Instapundit has two interesting links that are somewhat relevant to some of the discussion that has gone on in this thread (sorry, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to make a nice little hotlink into this comments page).

The first is a link to a Winds of Change article that discusses (and provides several excellent links to other articles) intelligence and military changes.

The second is to:

http://www.jail4bush.org/death4bush/

This is from a (allegedly) Democratic candidate to elected office (state). Anyone who believes we should placate this element of US or international society by electing the opponent of the target of their hate really needs a check up from the neck up.

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:36 pm 119. Doug:

Mickey concedes that the Kerry years will be a disaster but thinks we will survive them as we did the Carter years. I don’t think we have the same margin of error. I also think the Democratic party has been completely infected with Mcaulifism/Mooreism. The party thinks like Moore and will keep using a McCauliffe strategy to try to win elections until they are truly REPUDIATED. We need a war on terror consensus. Then, Roger, maybe you can vote on social issues again. If their were an alternative candidate who had Bush’s understanding of the world and Bush’s guts and fortitude but Clinton’s communication skills I would switch to them in a heartbeat. But that alternative is not available. Instead we have John Kerry who seems to have no actual beliefs at all and John Edwards who was the strongest hawk in America until Dean emerged then he (like Kerry) actually voted against the funding bill. These men are cyphers. If they win the war is lost and we are all in a lot of trouble. Kaus obviously does not understand what is at stake or he would not say we “need a break” from the war on terror. Did we need a break from WWII in 1944 or the Civil War in 1864?

Doug

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:52 pm 120. Promethea:

Haven’t read all the comments above, but I do have a question. As I recall, before the Six-Day War, there was a fence between Israel and Jordan-Occupied “Whatever You Call It.” So what’s different about the fence now?

The Kangaroo Court doesn’t seem to be quarreling with the path of the fence–just the existence of the fence. But before June 1967, Arabs in the Jordan-Occupied area didn’t just come and go inside Israel whenever they pleased. So what’s different now?

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:52 pm 121. Promethea:

Oops. Looks like I posted on the wrong thread. Sorry folks. But if you have an answer to my question, I appreciate hearing it.

Jul 9, 2004 - 7:54 pm 122. PeterUK:

The game plan seems to be ,Bush gets to do the dirty work,be vilely traduced and have the obloquy of the left heaped upon him,then Kerry takes over and rides the chariot down the Triumphal Way, to the adoration of a grateful world.It is an American joke, yes?

Why this infantile desire to be loved on the part of the left? The world isn’t going to love you until you are back to five acres and a cow.

Jul 9, 2004 - 8:12 pm 123. sammy small:

PeterUK

My crystal ball says that the next four years will not be triumphant for whomever is prez. The conventional wisdom seems to be that a significant terrorist attack will happen again in the not too distant future, and the election of Kerry might provide just the extra motivation to launch sooner than later. However, you may be correct in that the MSM will find some way to look at the Kerry administration with rose colored glasses. Maybe we will all be convinced to be as happy as pigs in shit while the world crumbles around us.

Elsewhere in the comments on this thread, I can’t help but be amused by M. Silverman’s comments regarding the campaign in Iraq. I thought I was reading off the talking papers of the Dems. This is obviously the same tired old generalizations, second guessing, and Monday morning quarterbacking. They offer no hint of knowledge of what actually has occured in Iraq other than what has been continuously spewed by other rank amateurs in the media. There is no analysis of Bush’s plans. Oh, by the way, what were his “plans”? How many plans were there, and what were their contengencies? Were there options within any of these plans? And who really drafted the plans? Was is the administration or the Pentagon? How broad and how specific were they? If you can’t answer all of these type of questions, you are just parroting the same old b.s. from the MSM talking heads, including their so-called experts. They don’t really know either. They are paid to speculate at a level that attracts viewers. War plans are classified Top Secret for a reason. The run of the mill swinging dick has no clue about them.

So when you use the excuse that there was poor planning or there aren’t enough troops, it tells me that you are a gullible consumer of MSM pablum. If you really want to understand what is going on in the Iraq campaign, try educating yourself before posting such lame crap. You might begin reading here for some help.

http://www.d-n-i.net

Cheers

Jul 9, 2004 - 8:39 pm 124. jerry:

I am not going to rag on Mike S. By all appearances he does not have a military background be it uniformed or within the wider defense and intelligence community. Like all too many Americans he has probably forsaken the study of history, particularly militiary history. However, rather than dismiss him, I prefer to educate him. Failure in war is often more frequent then success even for the victor. Mike, I suggest you read Cornelius Ryan’s “A Bridge Too Far” which covers the Allied Operation MARKET GARDEN conducted in September 1944. It is a primer on what can go wrong in war.

The idea that a battle can be planned and executed as in a script is a Hollywood fantasy. It is well known maxim to military planners that the plan does not survive first contact with the enemy. Success in war requires you to improvise, adapt and overcome. The side that does this best wins. Americans now expect military operations to go off like a script in a movie with the outcome predetermined. When faced with reality they become pessimistic and brand the operation a failure. Since we are at war, learn about war by reading military history.

Jul 9, 2004 - 8:42 pm 125. plunge:

Personally, I find the criticisms of Kerry here to be mostly partisan knee jerks, not sincere policy criticisms (trying to discuss weapons cuts without any sense of historical context and a highly incomplete record of what the actual policy direct was, taking the SBVfT at their word and failing to see what their criticisms were actually premised on). If you really think that we took unprecedented care in Iraq, I just don’t think you can be regarded as taking this fight seriously. We screwed up by needlessly rushing in weeks early, tossing out all the plans that would have allowed us to get the civilian infastructure up and running again within weeks instead of years. We screwed up by not going in with a plan to acheive early security. The point is not that Iraq is moderately functional, the point is that it could have been a lot more than okay. As it is, it’s become just what Al Qaeda has always wanted: a new playground.

Anyone sincere about this fight should know that it was never really about us, at least not directly. That sort of vanity is blinding, but the reality is that striking at us is a means to gain cred in the Muslim world and unite them for a far far distant conflict with us (Al Qaeda talks about this in terms of a century long chessgame of which goading us is only the first move). Crowing over kicking the asses of this or that group or building a watermain we blew up is just laughable. That’s not what this is about, and that’s not the measure of success. Merely invading at all was a huge win for the terrorists as they see it. Clinton and Bush 1 failed us and the Iraqi people by not going in sooner (as Iraq was an inevitable conflict, as many peaceniks don’t seem to realize), but after 9/11, it became a dangerous and almost counterproductive move that needed great care if we were going to attempt it. Instead, it got a sloppy, almost amatuer treatment from above. Any military commander who is free to speak will tell you this. They are pissed, pissed, pissed, at their civilian leadership like never before.

And the idea that we “must” elect Bush simply to make a show for our enemies is downright distressing. Given that I think Bush’s efforts against terror have been incomplete, misaimed, and downright sloppy, and that my knowledge of Kerry and what sort of people he’d bring with him (not peaceniks, not ideologues, but actual strategically minded policy people) tells me that he will do a lot better, what Roger seems to be asking me is to allow a disasterously amatuer strategy to continue simply out of the need for a show of pride that may or may not even affect anything (since certainly the terrorists will continue regardless of any subjective “sign”). I can’t hold with that: not good enough.

We can debate strategy if you’d like, on how we’re going to win this thing. But let’s do that, instead of this goofy “Kerry is a fag and he voted against funding the war (uh, so did Bush: Kerry and Bush each supported one of two different funding bills).”

Jul 9, 2004 - 8:48 pm 126. Charlie (Colorado):

“If you really think that we took unprecedented care in Iraq, I just don’t think you can be regarded as taking this fight seriously.”

Frankly, Plunge, if you think we didn’t take unprecedented care in Iraq, I doubt you’ve got sufficient knowledge of either warfare or history for your opinion to be of much interest.

Here’s a clue: this is the first time in history that 2000 lb bombs have consisted of 2000 lbs of concrete, and the first time in history that two countries have been reduced and their governments replaced with so few casualties — by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Go read up a little, get educated, come back.

Jul 9, 2004 - 8:59 pm 127. jerry:

plunge:

Reference to post above. I do not believe that ones military record and/or involvement in the defense establishment is a prerequisite for commenting on military policy. However, I am curious about what your military experience is either as a uniformed member of the armed forces or part of the civilian defense establishment. In addition I am curious to know how much military history you have studied. As a reference point I served 4.5 years in Navy with 2 years 9 months as a JO on a Submarine (USS TROUT) and have spent the last 20 years or so doing operations analysis, special electronic warfare and intelligence for the Navy and DoD.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:03 pm 128. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

plunge

Since I am the one attacking Kerry’s character, and you are attacking the SBVFTT, I would ask what information you have against the SBVFTT.

My information comes from conversations with some of them. I have plenty of reason to believe that they are the real thing.

Since you attacked their credibility, I would ask you to explain why I shouldn’t believe the entire command chain of John Kerry’s, themselves combat veterans, and the 200 other members of that group. The commander of all swift boat operatioons called Kerry a traitor on Hannity and Colmes. Is he lying? Why? Some POWs, including a former Senator, have said he shouldn’t be elected. Are all of these people lying too?

These are a lot of combat veterans. They have done an unprecedented thing. They were viciously smeared by the Kerry campaign.

Your turn: tell me why they are lying with these very serious charges aggainst a presidential candidate.

I have been studying Kerry a lot this year, since I found out he slandered me (Vietnam Vet) and my best friend (National Guard pilot killed in training). I don’t need the Swifties to tell me what sort of person Kerry is, but they certainly fill in some gaps.

Oh, and you don’t want to anger me. According to John Kerry, I’m a mental wreck from Vietnam. He’s wrong, but then a lie never stopped Kerry.

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:43 pm 129. PeterUK:

Plunge

“tossing out all the plans that would have allowed us to get the civilian infastructure up and running again within weeks instead of years”.

This is sheer phantasy,even a nodding aquaintance with infrastucture projects,just observing will do,gives you an idea of how big a job Iraq is.

This is, despite the oil, a Third World country,the infrastructure of which had decayed over decades,due to neglect and malfeasance,bringing it up to standard will take years

Jul 9, 2004 - 9:50 pm 130. OldManRick:

Jerry,

Let’s make it easier for Mike. Just rent “A Bridge Too Far”. The movie does an excellent job in showing planning and intellegence failures as well as the choas of the battlefield.

One of the best war films ever.

Old Man Rick

Jul 9, 2004 - 10:07 pm 131. someone:

I agree with most of the excellent points Joe Schmoe made, but it seems to me the thing to remember about Kaus is this: He’s tired of blogging. Explains a lot, including, IMO, this “pause from the war” BS.

Eric Deamer: I think your jaw will drop when Bush beats his opponent in the debates again this fall. The misunderestimation strategy works… As far as it goes.

Personally, I’m concerned that -Bush- has been slowing the tempo of the war too much. No one directing (much less overhauling) CIA, no public preparation for dealing with Iran, etc… But I know this will change in January if he wins.

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:21 am 132. Roberts:

Plunge, the idea that there were some sort of perfect plans for the invasion of Iraq that – if only President Bush hadn’t rushed – would have resulted in some better outcome is frankly a bizarre claim.

No one serious could possibly claim something that silly. The only miscalculation anyone made about the efforts to restore Iraq’s civilian infrastructure was the inability from outside the country to accurately assess its problems. Your claim that “They are pissed, pissed, pissed, at their civilian leadership like never before” is frankly outrageous. Everyone is a monday morning quarterback and there are a lot of issues that could have been handled differently with hindsight but what is truly amateurish are these claims of yours.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:02 am 133. David Thomson:

ÔøΩRoger Simon doesn’t “despise Bush personally” but he’s still voting for him. Curious behavior … 12:42 A.M.ÔøΩ

—Mickey Kaus

I just found the above comment on Mickey Kaus’sÔøΩ blog. The man obviously doesnÔøΩt get it. Voters often chose the lesser evil. We may object to some of a candidateÔøΩ’s positions—but still decide that they are superior to their opponent.

Andrew Sullivan also earlier had this to say:

ÔøΩ”But every time I listen to Kerry, I cannot help but feel that he is hopelessly out of touch with the threats we face and might make our budget problems worse with his healthcare proposal. So I am stuck between a president whose party now officially wants to purge itself of gays and a senator I cannot trust to fight the war we need. These are painful times indeed.”

I personally believe that Andrew Sullivan greatly exaggerates the Republican PartyÔøΩs attitude toward gays. But letÔøΩs for the sake of the argument concede his point. Are we still not engaged in a fight to the death against Islamic nihilism? If so, thereÔøΩs no logical way one can support John Kerry. LetÔøΩs ignore his Vietnam era activities when he was a very young man. Instead, we must focus on KerryÔøΩ’s wimpy behavior during the Cold War. As a full grown middle aged man, he miserably failed to oppose Soviet tyranny. He simply does not have it in him to vigorously fight our nationÔøΩs enemies.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:40 am 134. geoffg:

sammy small,

I see you have been illuminated by the thinking of John Boyd, as have I.

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:23 am 135. jerry:

oldman:

I am old fashioned. Read the book then see the movie….

For those who think waiting to make the plan perfect is a good idea just remember what George Patton said:

“A good plan executed with now is better then the perfect plan executed next week.”

We had a good but not perfect plan. Even so we delayed and allowed Saddam to make preparations including the disposal of his WMD to Syria. Had we been able to go in January we probably would not be having a WMD credibility problem.

I notice that Plunge failed to respond to the my post. Its what I expected. My guess is plunge is approximately college age and not a history major.

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:01 am 136. Stephen:

I suspect the differences between you and Kaus are psychological in nature. We all tend, from time to time, to employ wishful fantasies and denial to deal with unpleasant realities. I suspect you are more willing to face the painful reality that there are millions of Islamo-fanatics who want to destroy us and impose Sharia law on the world. Looking at these facts, Kaus turns away, seduced by his liberal fantasy of a world where we an all just get along. Meanwhile the cancer is spreading.

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:03 am 137. plunge:

“I notice that Plunge failed to respond to the my post. Its what I expected.”

Good grief, not everyone has the time to check every second for a reply. I’ll most certainly respond when I have the time (tonight).

For now, I would note that Patton was speaking about an operation in the midst of an ongoing war, not the start of an entire invasion. And it was far from a “perfect” plan that we threw out, but rather one that was far superior, well thought out, and strategically far far better for the WoT. Pangloss might think that all is for the best, but I have a hard time with people who claim to be interested in winning the WoT, but then think that any military action that occurs is the best possible choice, always. If this were a chess game against Osama, frankly, I’d rather not have people that think ANY random move is the best just because it happens to be the most aggressive out of all the aggressive moves available.

“Plunge, the idea that there were some sort of perfect plans for the invasion of Iraq that – if only President Bush hadn’t rushed – would have resulted in some better outcome is frankly a bizarre claim.”

How so? Do you know ANYTHING about this subject other than that you passionately love George Bush?

And how is it outrageous to note that the brass and the policy people despise the civilian leadership, and vice-versa?

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:13 am 138. Allentown:

**************

“I wish to join the others in asking Michael Fay (or anyone else who believes likewise) to please identify the civil liberties that have been taken away from them personally or American citizens in general.”

**************

Well, let’s see…Bush says he has the right to arrest american citizens on US soil, put them in prison without access to council, and keep them in prison forever.

I would say that that is a slight lessening of civil rights. Now I understand that this has not happened to you. I congratulate you on your good fortune!

So, if you were one of the millions in Nazi Germany who did not get sent to a concentration camp, then presumably you would be saying “What fascist dictatorship?”

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:20 am 139. Rick Ballard:

plunge,

It took you twelve minutes to post a non-reply to jerry yet you don’t have the time to establish a basis for believability. In your non-reply you made additional assertions unbacked by any foundational evidence.

There may be other sites that warmly welcome unfounded specious crap but I don’t think you’ll be feeling any love here unless you bring more to the game than unsourced “plans” and unfounded allegations of unrest among bureaucrats lacking the backbone to publicly state their concerns.

BTW – regurgitation of Fallow’s Atlantic Monthly article concerning the State Department’s “miracle plan” should address the lack of existence of the means and time for implementation. Aside from that and the fact that the SD “plan” did not serve stated policy interests it was almost “perfect”.

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:48 am 140. esmense:

“this particular point in history” has more in common with the earliest decades of the 20th century than its middle decades — and this war has more in common with the WWI than II. In its excesses. Its absurdities. Its dishonesty. Its high-flown rhetoric. And in its probable longer term ramifications. The tensions leading to violence in this era are caused by the inability of established elites to creatively come to terms with, and adapt to, the changing realities (both opportunities and limits) of a new century. It is the “delusional mindset” of our elites — not those suffering from “economic disadvantage” — that is behind our current difficulties. This isn’t a revolution — it’s a crack up.

One of the wonderful visual comments in Michael Moore’s new movie is the repeated clip of Osama Bin Laden lolling in princely fashion on a divan. He is, in fact, Saudi Arabia’s own outrageously rich, elite “culture warrior.” Using religious fevor to enlist and sway less elite supporters — even against their own real world interests. He’s a power-player. Not a revolutionary.

Bush and many in his administration are also part of that old international elite order. And as such they are simply incapable of doing anything more than trying to cling to that order and keep it intact. They see Osama’s challenge within their elite world. But they don’t see much of what is happening outside that world.

Changing realities are demanding that we start seeing the world more broadly, and start envisioning what comes next.

Dean and Edwards both have been indicative of a resurgence of progressive populism in the American polity. And Kerry has been correct to align himself with that resurgence. It may not be strong enough yet to even win an election — but, as the old order continues its crack up, and the old elites more and more show their delusional weakness, it will become very important as a force for correction and a new beginning more appropriate to the new century.

Vote for the crack up if you want to. But doing so is not going to thwart the tide of history.

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:56 am 141. jdm:

> Dean and Edwards both have been indicative of a

> resurgence of progressive populism in the

> American polity

The results of the elections over the past 20 years dispute, nay, contradict your assertion.

Don’t confuse the vitriol of an aging bunch of Boomers longing for the good ol’ Days (of Rage) to be a general resurgence in the entire polity.

The suburban, SUV-driving, kids play sports (to win), politically disinterested until after Labor Day persons exist in far greater numbers that the so-called progressive populists (nee socialists). And they vote moderate-to-right.

Jul 10, 2004 - 7:34 am 142. esmense:

“The results of the elections over the past 20 years dispute, nay, contradict your assertion.”

Things change. And they are changing now. Which is precisely my point.

Everything comes to an end, honey. And so will the conservative consensus of the last few decades. Its corruptions and delusions are being reveal on a daily basis. And, it hasn’t been keeping its promise of benefit to a broad enough segment of the population.

Conservatism is only one strand (and not one that has ever held swap for any especially long time) in our political history. We have several other traditions to call on when the times demand it — and progressive populism has been one of the most dynamic and consistently repeated.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:01 am 143. Stephen Kaus:

This blog is literate, but sad. How did you all turn into Rambo? On what basis do you think Kerry will not continue the war on terror? Why is it bad to pursue the war on terror without alienating everyone else in the world? Do you think the neoconservatives have been correct that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq? Do you think tax breaks for the rich are the best way to improve the economy? Do you want a president who is less curious than my cat Peanut Butter? Cannot a nuanced, complicated answer be the best answer, even if someone like George Bush gets impatient trying to understand it? You and Mickey both have it completely wrong. Our President is a complete boob with no understanding of anything more complicated than a video game. When Kerry was fighting for our country, George Bush was vomiting off the back porch. He proudly does not even watch the news. His team is full of ideologues and anachronistic “thinkers.” We need Kerry and Edwards so that the war on terror can ultimately be won.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:36 am 144. Knucklehead:

Wow, Dean and Edwards as “progressive populists”! How ’bout regressive reactionaries? That’s how I view them. I have a particular affection to progress. Neither of those two would be “leaders” represents any hope of progress.

Jerry,

Great suggestion for quick reading for military history, particularly the parts about how “best laid plans” get ganged up on gleefully (or whatever the heck that old long saying is). Another Cornelius Ryan book that is worth reading is “The Last Battle” which helps educate one about how victorious armies are apt to behave (with the notable exceptions of the modern British and American militaries). For lessons regarding how effective “no two bricks left standing” or “kill everything that moves”, see pretty much anything about Grozny – pictures will be enough to make the point.

I often wonder if the people who are so ready to scream and stamp feet about “failure” have ever been party to constructing a plan, any plan, that required the cooperative actions of more than a handful of people and was designed to achieve “success” against some form of opposition. I’m not talking about peripheral involvement such as stuffing evelopes or working a phone bank or waving a banner and participating in the pep rallies, I mean actually sitting down and defining the goals, what success looks like, what failure looks like, and what is an adequate outcome short of “success” and then mapping out a serious of milestones and tracking progress against them and adjusting to changes or new information. I can’t imagine they have because they don’t demonstrate any understanding of how such things work.

Plunge,

Regarding civil liberties. First off, review some US history. It won’t take you long to realize that even if your accusation against the Bush administration is not wildly overwrought, even if it largely accurate (I don’t believe for a moment that it is), there are numerous examples of presidents who have done things similar on much larger scales. I’ll leave it as an educational exercise for you since I already know where to go look for references and cites.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:56 am 145. Fresh Air:

Stephen Kaus–

You say this blog is “literate,” but it is much more than that; it is filled with smart people who can weigh facts and apply their reason to situations. These are evidently qualities that escape you.

You wander in here and spew a handful of unrelated and unsupported jabs at the president, expecting us to take you seriously. I’m sorry, you are on the wrong blog. Run over to Little Green Footballs if that’s the sort of conversation you wish to have.

It not only won’t work here, you’ll barely even get a response.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:00 am 146. Fresh Air:

Knucklehead–

The Last Battle was the only one of the three war books Ryan wrote that didn’t turn into a successful movie. But it was probably his best. I’ll never forget the scenes of the Berlin zookeeper trying desperately to save the handful of animals he had left, nor the conductor (Furtwangler?) leading the Berlin Philharmonic in the last days of the war as bombs fell around the city.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:04 am 147. John Mendenhall:

I want to respond to two recent postings. The first, from “Allentown”: Presidents have ALWAYS had the power to arrest US citizens on American soil, etc, in wartime. The purpose of the law is NOT to enable the country to jail twerps, malcontents, eternal sophomores, and silly people. It is to enable us to restrain men and women of sufficient substance, courage, and character to actually behave the way they speak.

To Stephen Kaus: I learned a lesson long ago. I once encountered a patient who suffered from narcolepsy. Little was known about it, except for a classic volume, hundreds of pages in length, that described exactly how the subconscious rejection of the mother of the narcoleptic was expressed by some body-language of the nipple when feeding–or something like that–and ultimately resulted in the infant pre-narcoleptic’s formation of the defense mechanism of falling asleep whenever the threat of some possibly similar scenario might present itself, etc etc etc.

It was a brilliant exegesis. You had to be a g**damn GENIUS to understand it. It was nuanced and complicated beyond even the ability of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Mickey Kaus, and Michael Moore to understand.

And, of course, it was total and absolute bullshit. From that day on, I have understood Occam’s Razor: the smarter you have to be to understand a proposition, the less likely it is to be true.

And, to both of you, I cite you not as individuals, but as representative posters of the relatively limited number of things people of the Left have to say these unfortunate days.

Kerry, BTW, was not “fighting for our country.” That task was left to trailer park trash like me on the ground for a year or more in Vietnam. Not to Eastern preppies who rode around on boats for four months. Kerry was fighting, as it turned out, for North Vietnam.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:11 am 148. Rick Ballard:

Knucklehead,

I am positive that there exists a measurable portion of the electorate in the US who are capable of believing that populism is best represented by a billionaire and a multi-millionaire. After all, somebody buys the tabloids off the racks at the end of checkout counters in grocery stores. I must say that given Dean and Edwards lackluster performance in getting Dem’s to vote for them in the primaries I am rather hesitant to proclaim a tidal wave for populism rising on the horizon.

Joe Trippi made out pretty well on it, though. Same way P.T. Barnum did.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:28 am 149. esmense:

You may have to be rich to run, but you don’t have to be rich to vote.

Teddy Roosevelt was both a member of the elite, and the leader of a populist movement.

FDR was a member of the same elite, and the politician who was most instrumental in putting several of that populist movements deferred ideas into practice.

Evidence of the current orders corruption and deludedness is all around us.

You can’t hold back the tide of change. What goes up must come down. Decay is inevitable.

Progressives may not yet be able to gain power. But, neither are conservatives going to be able to stop the rot in their own revolution.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:51 am 150. esmense:

By the way, another sign of crack up: Bush stomping out of a press briefing when questioned about his relationship with “Kenny Boy” Lay.

If you think this petulant, pampered prince of the international elite has the where-with-all to lead us into a difficult and unprecedented future, you are deluding yourself.

He is yesterday’s man.

Jul 10, 2004 - 10:11 am 151. Paul:

“If you think this petulant, pampered prince of the international elite has the where-with-all to lead us into a difficult and unprecedented future, you are deluding yourself.”

Um, you’re talking about “I don’t fall down” John Kerry, right?

You do know that “Kenny Boy” supported Ann Richards against Bush in the Texas gubanatorial race, and that despite the nickname (something Bush gives out to just about everyone he knows) they were by no means close friends.

Besides, if they’re such good buddies and colluding together to swindle the American public how come “Kenny Boy” is under indictment?

Anyone believing that Michael Moore tells the truth will be treated with the proper derision when they accuse other people of being deluded.

Jul 10, 2004 - 10:51 am 152. Syl:

Populism no longer works with the American people because they know it isn’t true. Americans know they are unique in that they all have an opportunity to make it. Whatever their dreams are. We don’t look at a rich person and feel jealousy. Most of us believe that we can achieve whatever we want. Monetary or otherwise.

Americans didn’t know that back in the time of Roosevelt you see. But they know it now.

The Democratic leadership, on the other hand, tries to make us all into groups and pit us one against the other. It’s a psychological game they’re playing garnered not to be helpful but to get votes.

You can see it even in questions in polling. A common one is ‘Do you feel X candidate identifies with people like me?’

That hit me today as I was reading a poll. Just what does people like me mean? People who don’t go to church? People who liked Northern Exposure? People who have pets? People who are black? People who are overweight or skinny? People with blue eyes? Bald? People with 3 siblings? People between the ages of 30 and 40? People who worry about terrorist attacks?

The whole question is meaningless and is only put there to make people self-identify against some ‘other’.

Progressive ideals don’t play with Americans because there would be a limit to what an individual could accomplish. We don’t like that. We don’t want to be stopped when we reach mediocre.

Jul 10, 2004 - 10:51 am 153. Syl:

esmense

“They see Osama’s challenge within their elite world.”

Yes, Osama is targeting the elites. He is also targeting the poor masses and everyone in between. He’s targeting the factory worker as well as the computer programmer, the golfer as well as the Red Cross worker. He’ll take out a homeless man in San Francisco as readily as a Bill Gates. A Hollywood actor as readily as a farmer.

Jul 10, 2004 - 11:07 am 154. esmense:

>You do know that “Kenny Boy” supported Ann Richards against Bush in the Texas gubanatorial race, and that despite the nickname (something Bush gives out to just about everyone he knows) they were by no means close friends.

You do know that you are repeating a lie, don’t you? Lay gave some small amount to Richards but the overwhelming amount of his monetary support in that race went to Bush. (Business contributors often hedge their bets with donations to both sides.) And he did not “support” Richards “against” Bush. He backed Bush. As for their friendship — there are sites on the web where you can read actual correspondence between the two and judge for yourself.

As for populism “not working” with Americans, just what in the hell do you think conservatives have been relying on for gaining power over the last 30 years? Backlash populism, that’s what. Why do they spend so much time trying to paint their opponents as “elites” and trying to stir up resentment of those “elites?”

Populism has always played a huge role in our politics — on the Right and the Left.

Jul 10, 2004 - 11:11 am 155. Kevin P:

To all:

When the Enron scandall broke the left all claimed that the fix was in and Lay would get off. Now that Lay and his co-horts are being prosecuted they are saying it took too long.Cases like this always take a long time to develop but that doesn’t fit in with the lefts contention that Bush is a corporate lackey so they ignore the facts and continue with their cliches. If the government had gone in right away and lost the case the left would say that Bush blew the case on purpose and intentionally lost the trial.Facts never stop the paranoid conspiracy people.

Jul 10, 2004 - 11:38 am 156. esmense:

Syl –

No one is arguing that delusional conflicts within the world’s elite don’t have dire consequences for the rest of us. They most certainly do.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Osama’s fight is with his own class, his country’s ruling class. (And the foreign elites that support the power of that class.) As well as against the outside forces that threaten cultural change. Nor does it change the fact that his goal is power (and cultural retrenchment) — not populist or progressive revolution.

You are right that he doesn’t give a damn about the ordinary victims of his terrorism. But then, he doesn’t give a damn about the people he enlists to perpetuate it either. He feeds them on cultural abstractions and the promise of religious purity — not the revolutionary promise of bread and roses and a better life here on earth.

He is a profoundly conservative man whose major complaint is that his own elite class isn’t conservative enough for him.

This is not a war of the “have nots” against the “haves.” It is a war in which the have nots are mostly useful pawns or victims of conflicts between the haves.

And like most such wars it is likely to lead to disillusionment with, and doubts about the competence of, the elites who perpetuated it. And, in those places that have the freedom to do so, demands for political change.

Jul 10, 2004 - 11:58 am 157. Knucklehead:

Stephen Kaus,

Not sure what to make of your post. “…literary but sad…” Intersting observation, especially given your subsequent comments.

“How did you all turn into Rambo?”

The Rambo charge – how literate! There are those among us who believe military action is sometimes necessary. Some of us recognize the sheer fantasy of Rambo. There are those among us who understand what it means to serve in a DIP unit. Not in the intellectual sense of being able to parse the acronym – an fool can manage that – but in the deep in the bowels sense of understanding it in a eureka moment while alone, in the dark, many thousands of miles from home and standing guard.

Some among us are fortunate enough to have served and never seen combat. But even those of us to whom this applies understand that there is danger even in the handling and movement of weapons of war and, sometimes, fatality even in training for possible combat. There are some among us who understand the profound sadness of seeing, of hearing, the slow plop… plop… plopping of a friend’s brains upon a cold, steel floor.

Puking from the back porch? Do you believe you even know the half of it, Mr. Stephen Kaus? You, sir, may take your Rambo crack and return it, as forcefully as you please, to whatever dark orifice you orginally pulled it from.

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:06 pm 158. PeterUK:

Progressive populism,Backlash populism,what next elitist populism,unpopular populism,snap, crackle and populism? Give us a break!

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:27 pm 159. esmense:

Lay’s indictment doesn’t prove or disprove anything about Bush. Politically, there is no way Bush could or can save Lay from being at least called to account for, whether he is convicted or not, his role in Enron’s collapse and the economic damage that collapse inflicted on so many.

Any damage to Bush is engendered by his long, and important to his own success, association with the kind of crony capitalism that Enron embodied. It’s a question of values, not crimes.

Bush’s association with Enron contradicts the image he wants to project as a politician. It raises questions about class and privilege, and about who he is as opposed to who he would like the public to think he is — questions that he would rather not have raised. That’s where the danger lies for him politically. And that’s why he stomped out of that press briefing.

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:32 pm 160. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

David Thomson

Re: gays in the Republican Party. I don’t know what is going to happen there. The strongly divisive effect of Roe v. Wade and subsequent SCOTUS rulings have created a powerful fundamentalist/evangelical movement in the Republican Party. Also, the attacks on Christianity by the ACLU, gay activists and other groups have served to radicalize Christians, with the more ‘moderate’ denominations (e.g. Presbyterians) losing people to either the Catholic Church (which is not radical, but has some strong injunctions) or the various Evangelical denominations. Some of the latter (all? I don’t know) are strongly opposed to gays. Many, many more of us are opposed to the ‘gay agenda,’ but not to having individual gays in the party (or our lives). Andrew Sullivan may not realize it, but he is ‘collateral damage’ of the fiat abortion rulings, and of the gay activists.

I find Andrew Sullivan’s position to be selfish. At a time when our nation is at war, he is dithering with voting for a man so bad that his own commanders call him unfit, because Andrew cannot get what he wants (and what the majority of the population would deny him in a democratic vote). While others are sacrificing their lives, he seems unwilling to sacrifice a major, court-ordered change in our society that would benefit a very small fraction of the population. He calls himself a libertarian. His writings are those of a libertine – he is focused on the FMA when a whole lot of people want to kill him and the rest of us. He is fighting himself – his instincts can detect the deep inner flaws of Kerry but he doesn’t want to hear them.

There is, however, a valid observation of tension within the Republican Party between the puritans and the hedonists (to use the extremes). It is normal for a major party to have such tensions. Sometimes they lead to a split, but rarely – the parties are very durable. There are also a number of points of tension in the Democratic party, with the biggest one right now between the insane radical leadership and the more sane of the rank and file.

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:38 pm 161. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

David Thomson

Let’s ignore his Vietnam era activities when he was a very young man. Instead, we must focus on Kerry’s wimpy behavior during the Cold War.

Kerry was not a very young man. He was 27. He had a top secret clearance. He controlled a boat with deadly weapons on it, and he used those weapons to kill people, The aircraft I flew on rarely had a crew member that old, and we had nuclear weapons. Kerry was old enough to know what he was doing, the evidence is that he knew exactly what he was doing, and there is no evidence that his character has changed at all. And frankly, some of the things he did were unforgivable. He smeared the country with the charge that we routinely committed atrocities, and that charge is being used to this day against us. So what he did as a very young man is affecting us today. Once a gain, character counts. For most people, character is formed long before they are 27.

Furthermore, for those of us he slandered, and for our country which was slandered (see propaganda link below), this is very current stuff.

Fresh Air asked for a link for Kerry’s weapons systems record. here is the link from his 1984 campaign which specifies exactly what his plans are for most of today’s weapons systems (Tomahawk Missile, Apache helicopter, B-1 bomber, and many more) – almost all were to be cancelled (except the Tomahawk, cut by 50%).

Allentown

That was pretty pathetic. You even managed to use “Nazi: – a sure sign of rhetorical desperation. Bush arrested exactly one citizen under that claim, one who was arriving from overseas. The Supreme Court gave him access to counsel. Nice try, but very, very minor. Oh, and so you don’t bring it up, a US citizen was arrested fighting against us. He also was denied council until SCOTUS changed the rules – something that they did not do during WW-II when many American citizens were taken prisoner for fighting in the German Army. Do you have any plans to fight us on the battlefield? Act as a scout for Al Qaeda? If not, you were safe then, and you are safer now. Hell, you can be a foreigner, not wearing a uniform, taken prisoner after you kill a bunch of Americans, and the idiotic SCOTUS has ruled you can sue in Federal Court. I suspect this will significantly reduce the number of terrorists captured, since there is no requirement to give quarter to a terrorist.

esmense

Ah… it’s been a while since I have heard unadulterated progressive crap. Thanks for reminding me that idiocy reigns on the left. I would argue with the points you make, except they are so diffuse as to be meaningless, for the most part.

But comparing the current war to World War I is really rather bizarre. We went into this with our leader stating it would last a long time, maybe decades. WW-I was going to be weeks. We are fighting a new threat, and we know it. WW-I was just another internecine European squabble, which got out of hand due to improvements in weapons technology – primarily the machine gun. We are adapting to new realities, except for the left and the progressives, who still see the world through a lens created in industrial age England. And nobody except you said it was a revolution. Are you arguing with yourself?

“Osama’s fight is with his own class” – great – can’t have a progressive that doesn’t talk about class. Nobody really knows at this point who Osama is fighting, since he (or Zawahiri – there’s a question whether Osama is even alive) has said so many different things. That his goal was to take over Saudi Arabia is apparently true. That Al Qaeda has moved far beyond that is also true. How does blowing up trains in Madrid help him take over Al Qaeda?

We have a commenter on here who knew Osama. Hopefully he can shed some more light.

But when you see the world through the cracked lense of class consciousness, you will inevitably make idiotic statements. It is as silly a model as the narcolepsy model described above. Haven’t you guys figured out yet that your philosophy is based on a model of the world that hasn’t existed since 19th century England?

Stephen Kaus

How did we turn into Rambo? Perhaps because some of us are veterans? Perhaps because we understand the dangers a lot better than you do?

Kerry will be forced to continue the war on terror, but there is every reason to believe that he will do it incompetently. See my posts back in this thread on why his announced policies are meaningless because of deep flaws in his character. Then there’s the Democrat war cabinet. Let’s see, when did we last have one of those? Why what a coincidence… it was while I was in the service. It was Johnson and McNamara. They made a real hash out of things. I suppose you could imagine that Clinton had one, but bombing with a floor of 15kft AGL is not something a real war cabinet would do; nor is ignoring an attempt to kill 50,000-100,000 of our citizens (WTC, 1993). So there is hardly a reason to believe that Kerry, even if he had the sense to wage war properly, would put together an administration that was capable of it. Oh, in bombing Serbia, Clinton killed 8 tanks, a few more than the number of Chinese diplomats he killed. Lots of bombs were dropped on decoys, a civilian train was taken out – all the work of a great warrior.

In Iraq, we were greeted as liberators, except by the Sunnis. Maybe you should read the blogs of people who are actually over there. As to your implication that Bush is stupid, that is a standard leftist line – they used it on Reagan while he destroyed the USSR that the left said was going to be ahead of us by 1990.

Bush is the only president with an MBA, from Harvard, btw, which does not award MBA degrees except on merit. He was also a very good poker player there, as you will find out. Misunderestimate him at your peril.

As to Kerry fighting for his country… do you mean when he was meeting with the enemy in Paris and then spouting their propaganda, calling me and every other Vietnam Veteran routine committers of atrocities? Or do you mean when he got a purple heart for a self inflicted wound where there was no enemy action, a purple heart the records for which he won’t release, a purple heart at Cam Rahn 2 months after I was there, when there were no VC around (they were effectively wiped out in 1968), and when people did R&R at the beaches there?

I know some of the people he served with. Check out this to see what they say about him [for regular readers, this is a new link]. Maybe you’d like to see how much the Vietnamese still honor Kerry – his picture is in their war museum in a place of honor, they recently endorsed him for president, and they quoted him in this nice little piece of propaganda. BTW, I joined the Navy 2 days after Kerry, and was an aviator.

Since you slander Bush’s service record, I’m going to bore regular readers by telling you why I find that so incredibly offensive. George Bush was a fighter pilot. He took a risk every time he strapped on an airplane. He served about 2 years, whereas a regular National Guard enlistment was 6 months. My best friend was also a National Guard fighter pilot at the same time in New Mexico. He was killed on a routine mission. Go screw yourself.

Jul 10, 2004 - 12:44 pm 162. esmense:

John Moore –

Thanks for reminding me of the difficulty partisans have in dealing with independent thought (as opposed to repetitions of ideological claptrap espoused by “authoritative” others) — and, how often they mistake insult for argument.

There. Now that I’ve insulted you in return, do you feel on more comfortable and familiar ground?

Jul 10, 2004 - 1:10 pm 163. esmense:

“WW-I was going to be weeks.”

The initial timeline in Iraq was that our troops would be out by September.

How quickly we forget. How readily we accept the ever-changing stories of our leaders when under the sway of partisanship.

Jul 10, 2004 - 1:23 pm 164. Old Dad:

Just want to say that I’m a big fan of capitalism, especially of the crony species. America was built in backrooms and boardrooms. We Americans are a social bunch. We like to help our friends when we can. I like W more not less because he’s connected.

Let’s face it. W, Cheney, Kerry, and Edwards are rich as hell. More power to ‘em. The Log Cabin spiel worked for Honest Abe becasue it happened to be true, but none of the current candidates are “just like us,” and you know what? We don’t want them to be. We want to be more like them–rich! The Breck girl’s two America’s clap trap won’t sell outside the far left. Most of those Depression era dirt farmers now drive SUVs.

Sure the Great Communicator could talk to us like he was back home in Dixon, but no one ever forgot that he was a movie star with a mansion in Bel Aire.

Jul 10, 2004 - 1:35 pm 165. richard mcenroe:

Today’s Lesson — Our Tolerant Liberals

Jul 10, 2004 - 1:52 pm 166. richard mcenroe:

Today’s lesson ó

Our Tolerant Liberals

Read it. Then look at what office the buffoon is running for…

Jul 10, 2004 - 1:55 pm 167. esmense:

Americans don’t resent the rich and privileged. It’s true, we strive to be rich and privileged. But, that doesn’t mean we aren’t periodically ready to overturn entrenched power and privilege — especially when we perceive that it is creating obstacles to our own aspirational goals.

We have never been tolerant of incompetent power.

As for talking about class; Americans say they hate it but they, no matter their political persuasion, do it all the time. One of the first complaints made in this thread about Dean and Kerry was a complaint about class and economic status. Presumably, by a conservative. And, as I pointed out earlier, conservatives bitch about “elites” non-stop.

Whether and which elites you resent most likely depends on whether and which elites you perceive to be standing in the way of your own goals.

The problem for the conservative revolution isn’t populist resentment of the rich and powerful. It is populist intolerance for incompetence and failure.

All dogs have their day, and this dog’s day is almost over. It’s in its doddering twilight years.

In this country, you have to earn your right to power with performance. It’s never automatic, and it’s never going to last forever.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:12 pm 168. richard mcenroe:

Esmense — Kerry tried his damndest to get a deferment. A lot of that going around. When that failed, he enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army. Again, not in the least uncommon for those who could swing it. Had Kerry spent his hitch bobbing around the deep blue sea in his nice air-conditioned destroyer there wouldn’t have been a person on this board to condemn him for it, even us veterans.

Even when he transferred to the Swift Boats, which were then engaged in relatively low-threat coastal patrols under the MARKET TIME operation, his service would still have seemed perfectly laudable albeit unspectacular.

But frankly, once the Swift Boats moved into the Delta, his service to his country and his later credibility went straight into the toilet.

His own commanding officer described him as undisciplined, trigger-prone and atrocity-happy, and declared they were glad to see him leave.

He wrote himself up for medals in which he was his own recommending officer.

When he left Nam (early, based on his own medal recommendations) and returned to the States, he went before Congress and accused his fellow servicemen of crimes he had not witnessed (but has admitted to committing himself), in the company of other “veterans” who turned out to be frauds. He attended meetings of a group that took votes on assassinating American senators. He posted other men’s service records on his campaign web site and claimed that man’s experiences as his own.

And this is a man Mickey Kaus is prepared to vote for? And that is Bush’s fault. No. As far as I am concerned, Kaus is just desperate to cling to the illusion that anything he has held with in the last thirty years has worked, and will come up with any rationale for not changing his views or his ways.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:29 pm 169. esmense:

By the way, that demented fool in Washington State (my state) you linked to isn’t a “liberal” and certainly not a Democrat. (Direct quote from his site: “No one hates the corrupt King County Democrats more than I do.”)

He’s a Scientologist.

It seems he’s had a few too many “clearing” sessions.

There’s nothing less productive than dragging the mentally ill into a political debate.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:31 pm 170. Fresh Air:

Esmense–

You are taking a page out of Joe McCarthy’s playbook: guilt by association. What does Ken Lay have to do with George Bush? He was a campaign contributor. Was there a quid pro quo that allowed Enron to go uninvestigated? (I think the Houston U.S. Attorney would have something to say about that.) Crony capitalism? Enron was a massive fraud (they fooled Arthur Andersen, remember?). Your invocation of “crony capitalism” is meaningless absent a definition, and in any event is an extremely simplistic view for what was a massively complex fraud.

Furthermore, Lay was buying stock while the company was sliding into the ditch. We will see if the jury belives he really had intent to defraud investors or whether (more likely) Messrs. Skilling and Fastow were behind the whole thing. So you (like the sodomy enthusiast Atty. General of California, Bill Lockyer–good company that) leap to assume Ken Lay is guilty, then ipso facto assume his guilt is part of some Texas mafia’s “crony capitalism.” Really, you’ll have to do better than that.

How did we even get on the subject of Enron anyhow?

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:39 pm 171. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

esmense

You came in, dropped your load in one posting, and have said nothing with any content since. That puts you on the suspected troll list.

richarad mcenroe

Very nice, succinct summary of the slime who would be Commander In Chief. The Democrats have really outdone themselves this time!

Anybody who wants to keep an eye on Kerry’s Vietnam War crimes, as they come to light, just periodically check wintersoldier.com.

And if you want to help us clear the names of Vietnam Veterans and our country, please let every Vietnam Vet know about Vietnam Vets for the Truth ( kerrylied.com ) . If you can, contribute – we need the bucks and are a registered 527 PAC. If you are a Vietnam Vet, join us (contact info on the site).

John Kerry smeared his country and all Vietnam Vets. We are holding a rally on September 12 in Washington to counter his lies.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:52 pm 172. richard mcenroe:

esmense ó Scroll down and look who he links to, surprise, surprise…

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:53 pm 173. jerry:

Esmense:

Populism has always been present in American politics. However, Populism has never been “Progressive” in any sense of the word. Populism is a reactionary force used by defenders of the old order. William Jennings Bryan represented the decline importance of the Agricultural sector. The Populism of Kevin Phillips represented the decline of the ethnic working class. The Populist revival you are talking about is nothing more then the death cries of the socialist order. An order, by the way championed in the name of the “working class” but really led and cheerished by rich educated elitists like Kennedy and Kerry.

Plunge: I am still waiting for you to tell me the extent of your military, national security or Intelligence background. I have no way to evalute the value of your opinions. You are obviously dodging the question because the only background you have is Michael Moore and the NYT.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:58 pm 174. Syl:

Esmense

Sometimes the classes get all confused and all. Elite doesn’t necessarily mean rich you know.

Elite is an attitude, not how much is in the bank. Bush is rich but he doesn’t have the same attitude Kerry has. And you can’t tell me the reporters for al-reuters are rich.

Jul 10, 2004 - 2:58 pm 175. PeterUK:

Esmense,

Presumably, the deal between the Department of Defense and Halliburton unit Kellogg, Brown & Root is determined by capitalist interests which lead to the seizure of the Iraqi Oil Ministry. So far, the unstated purpose of this war brings about the police state which has come to pass. Perhaps for the first time since the late 1940s, the apparent demise of “anti-Americanism” as a respectable means of stifling recognition of American imperialism leads our attention to a humanitarian disaster of unimaginable scale. It appears that the American state, with its unelected president, venal Supreme Court, silent Congress, gutted Bill of Rights and compliant media represents the crushing of internal dissent in order to propagate the end of any possibility of social justice in a reactionary state.

Would you agree?

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:00 pm 176. esmense:

Richard McEnroe –

My brother and husband are Viet Nam era vets. One a Navy corpsman (a “doc”) who served with — volunteered to serve with — the Marines in Viet Nam, the other a Special Forces paratrooper and demolitions expert who saw a lot of action in the region without ever actually stepping into Viet Nam proper (also in Central America and the Congo — in conflicts most Americans at the time barely bothered to take note of.)

I don’t take kindly to disparagement of ANYONE’S service during that era. And I know that conflicts about the proper course of action in regard to that war is the badge of a thoughtful man who takes the notion of duty seriously — not a sign of weakness.

Kerry served two tours of duty in Viet Nam. His time on the swift boats was his second.

Now you may disparage his first tour as not being in the thick of battle, and his second as not being, in your opinion, dangerous enough. But, the truth is, ANY tour in Viet Nam — a war in which there was no clearly defined “front” and one in which members of the civilian population could be your friend today and your sniper tomorrow — was dangerous. Certainly more dangerous than anything you might encounter in the “Champagne” unit of the Texas Air National Guard.

Plus, if you think anyone leaves service “based on his own medical recommendations” you don’t know much about the service.

Furthermore, Kerry’s service records tell a different story than the partisan one you are trying to peddle here. He was highly praised by his superiors AT THE TIME — no matter how much their resentment of his activities after the war and their partisan loyalties today have made them want to revise that history.

I know a lot of Viet Nam vets. I don’t know any who aren’t bothered by some aspects of that war. My own brother’s most serious injury was inflicted by a 20-something mother and sniper. Wars that pit trained soldiers against civilian insurgents — women, children, old men — are ugly. They can’t help but be.

If you can’t imagine a scenario in which burning people out of their village is the HUMANE response to a serious threat, than you can’t imagine what Viet Nam was like. And you are in no position to judge Kerry’s actions after the war.

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:05 pm 177. Fresh Air:

Esmense–

I submit you don’t know what you are talking about, and are about to get schooled on the ways of the military.

Incoming…

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:15 pm 178. richard mcenroe:

Epsiode 2 in Our Tolerant Liberals — Of course it was the wounded soldier’s fault, one way or another..

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:17 pm 179. jerry:

esmense:

Contrary to your opinion, flying Century fighters was more dangerous then many jobs in the Vietnam OP area. For example my time on station off the coast of North Vietnam was virtually hazard free. The only way I could have gotten killed is if we screwed up. A clerk in Saigon was statistically safer then Bush flying F-102s.

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:17 pm 180. PeterUK:

Well Folks,

I recognise esmense’s screed from another time and another place,if I remember rightly she ducks on identifying the units her husband and brother were in.

Jul 10, 2004 - 3:21 pm 181. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

esmense

As I said before, my friend was killed flying one of those safe century fighters.

Kerry is despised by all of his commanders, both for his actions during the war and his actions with VVAW. Just this month, the Vietnamese News Agency used Kerry’s 1971 statement to “prove” that America mistreated Vietnamese:

Candidate in this year’s American presidential elections, John Kerry, who fought in the war, went further in his criticism. In a statement to the US’ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, he said the war crimes committed by US soldiers in Southeast Asia “were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”

Vietnamese News Service, in the same article, talking about the “Hanoi Hilton” said:

It was also true that except for their incarceration, the American soldiers lived normal lives in prison though many of them had been caught red-handed committing crimes against humanity. They got fairly good food, exercised, played on the guitar and read books, received letters from home and celebrated Christmas with trees just like they would have at home.

Here is what his comrades-in-arms had to say:

Senator KerryWe write from our common heritage as veterans of duty aboard Swift Boats in the Vietnam War. Indeed, you should note that a substantial number of those men who served directly with you during your four month tour in Vietnam have signed this letter.It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a “war hero” status. You now seek to clad yourself in the very medals that you disdainfully threw away in the early years of your political career. In the process, we believe you continue a deception as to your own conduct through such tactics as the disclosure of only carefully screened portions of your military records. Both then and now, we have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political goals.Your conduct is such as to raise substantive concerns as to your honesty and your ability to serve, as you currently seek, as Commander-in-Chief of the military services.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:01 pm 182. esmense:

Jerry –

In my experience actual combat veterans of that war have far less sentimental notions about it than those who did not see combat.

Personally, I’m not prepared to either disparage or condemn any choices made during that war — except for those who avoided it while claiming to “support” it. If you were of draft age and sound mind and body there was only one way to “support” it — sign up. Sitting in the Quad and yammering about the “domino theory” doesn’t, in my book, count as patriotism.

George Bush should be given credit for attempting to serve in some way. But if you extoll his courage on the one hand, and demean Kerry’s — or that of any other man who actually saw service in Viet Nam — on the other, you are simply engaging in dishonest partisanship, and your judgments aren’t ones that I can respect.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:02 pm 183. richard mcenroe:

Esmense Part One — If you’re going to quote me, get the quote and the facts right, please.

I specifically stated that Kerry trying for a deferment was not unusual for the period. Unusual that someone from his set wouldn’t get one, but hey.

I specifically stated that no veteran here would begrudge Kerry his Navy service.

But Kerry got out of Nam after four months, based on medals he put himself up for. That is a documented fact.

Kerry’s commander said they had a “problem” with Kerry disregarding orders and using excessive force against civilian noncombatants. That is a documented fact.

Kerry came home and accused American soldiers — that includes your husband and brother — of war crimes, sight unseen, in front of Congress and the media. He has never retracted that accusation. That is a documented fact.

Karry associated with “veterans” who turned out to be frauds, who used the credibility of your husband and brother’s service to spread lies about our troops and the war, and who took votes whether to assassinate US senators. That is a documented fact.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:04 pm 184. richard mcenroe:

Emense PT 2 ó BTW, redundancy aside, Special Forces Paratrooper? I was only a straight leg and mechanized officer, but in the US Army, Airborne-qualified troops call themselves Airborne. Paratrooper is a WWII anachronism. So I’m a touch skeptical about your family’s military creds. Of course, I’ve only seen six soldiers killed directly in front of me and only lost part of my hearing from the muzzle blast of an M-16 fired by a naked, screaming, self-medicated noncom (that was a fun postwar decade), so I probably still have my romantic illusions intact, right?

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:11 pm 185. esmense:

John Moore –

Nice partisan document published in a campaign year. Kerry has plenty of “comrades in arms” who take a different position. There will be many Viet Nam veterans who support him, and many who don’t.

My generation will obviously go to our graves before the wounds and divisions of that war finally heal.

But, let’s be honest here, you don’t object to Kerry’s actions in or after the war in themselves — if the same history belonged to a Republican, you would be defending them passionately. Just as you now passionately defend Bush’s record of service in the Guard.

There’s nothing less attactive than moral outrage that always and only follows a partisan path.

Kerry may not be the man you want for President. But that should’t make him someone whose service and courage can be demeaned without dishonor, or whose history should be casually and self-interestedly distorted and smeared.

These partisans are fighting on very low ground here.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:20 pm 186. richard mcenroe:

Esmense PT3 ó the vast majority of the Swift Boat vets who have come out against Kerry were enlisted men; their opinions have nothing to do with officers’ recommendations but are probably more accurate.

As far as Kerry’s records go, I was an officer. I’ve had a lot of OER’s written on me and wrote some. I am conversant with the arcane, indirect language used in those forms: Mandarin court poetry ain’t in it. For example, when a commander in a combat zone praises a subordinate, as one of Kerry’s did, for his turn out, deportment and mastery of French, he is not praising him. He is saying, in OER speak, ‘take this man off my hands.’

But I know I’m not the only ex or serving officer here. If you want to post or link to some of Kerry’s superb recommendations, we’d be happy to translate them for you.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:20 pm 187. richard mcenroe:

Esmense PT3 ó the vast majority of the Swift Boat vets who have come out against Kerry were enlisted men; their opinions have nothing to do with officers’ recommendations but are probably more accurate.

As far as Kerry’s records go, I was an officer. I’ve had a lot of OER’s written on me and wrote some. I am conversant with the arcane, indirect language used in those forms: Mandarin court poetry ain’t in it. For example, when a commander in a combat zone praises a subordinate, as one of Kerry’s did, for his turn out, deportment and mastery of French, he is not praising him. He is saying, in OER speak, ‘take this man off my hands.’

But I know I’m not the only ex or serving officer here. If you want to post or link to some of Kerry’s superb recommendations, we’d be happy to translate them for you.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:21 pm 188. esmense:

Richard McEnroe –

Yes, you are right, he was “Airborne.” Probably the term paratrooper gets thrown around inter-changeably in his family because his Dad was one, too, in WWII.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:22 pm 189. esmense:

The swift boat guys against Kerry disappeared from the scene pretty quickly. This was a political stunt.

Kerry’s war records have been pretty widely published. Why don’t you go read them, and form your own opinion?

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:26 pm 190. richard mcenroe:

esmense — The press decided not to cover them; they have not gone away. That’s like saying Darfur or the Oil-For-Food scandal haven’t happened, becasue the Times didn’t run with them… But thank you for the excellent example of lefty rationalization. “It can’t be true, it isn’t on teevee…”

As for Kerry’s war records, I have read them, hence my opinion. And that’s not even considering that Kerry posted other officers’ evaluations in with them and took credit for their actions…

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:35 pm 191. Kenneth Gauck:

Has the Bush administration made strategic and tactical blunders? Certainly. But how much of this can be attributed to Clauswitzian friction in its various forms? Every administration would make mistakes. The question is, who will make more mistakes in the choice of two candidates.

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:41 pm 192. PeterUK:

Esmense,Fascinating about your father in law was he in the 101st or 82nd,they had a rough time in Normandy and Grave?

Jul 10, 2004 - 4:42 pm 193. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

esmense

The two documents I produced are:

1) A current propaganda document on the Vietnamese News Site, quoting John Kerry by name with his 1971 lies about our troops. Somehow I don’t think the Republicans were responsible for that. I suggest everyone check the link. It will take you back 35 years in time – photos of our POWs being “well treated,” etc. But the article is from this year, not 35 years ago.

2) A statement by all of Kerry’s chain of Command through CINCPAC calling into question his ability to serve as Commander in Chief. It was also signed by over 200 other SWIFT boat veterans.

Do you know of any time in American history a candidate’s entire command chain called his capabilities into question? Lots of Presidential candidates were veterans.

You write:But, let’s be honest here, you don’t object to Kerry’s actions in or after the war in themselves — if the same history belonged to a Republican, you would be defending them passionately. Just as you now passionately defend Bush’s record of service in the Guard.

Let’s be honest here. If it were anyone but Kerry, I would not be actively opposing him. I would vote for Bush, but it was Kerry’s behavior, which I only found out about this year, that caused me to become an activist. You are demeaning my motives inaccurately. John Kerry slandered me and all Vietnam Vets and our country. That is why I am actively opposing him. I am not normally a political activist.

As to Bush’s service in the guard, I defend that because the attacks are ignorant and offensive. Also, attacking Bush’s service attack’s my best friend’s service, and sacrifice of his life, flying in the guard. Furthermore, as a former military aviator, I know the hazards. My best friend wasn’t the only person I lost in training – and I was almost killed myself several times.

When the Democrats attacked Bush as a “chickenhawk,” it brought back old grief, for my best friend and for my own squadron mates.

I have good reason to understand the danger Bush was in. And when he landed on that carrier in a flight suit, he was part of my crowd, and he fit right in. You aren’t, and apparently have no idea of the hazards involved in military aviation.

The Swift Boat guys are still around. They held a press conference that was not well covered by the press. Anyone who wants to find out about the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth can go to here or to their home page. Video of the press conference is there.

The organization is both enlisted and officers. The enlisted have the stronger opinions.

Calling their press conference a political stunt is brushing off the efforts of a lot of brave fighting men who felt it their duty to inform the nation about something only they could speak to: the character of John Kerry. They did so early in the campaign (May 5) because many of the members are Democrats, and they wanted the Democrats to have a chance to change nominees after their report.

Jul 10, 2004 - 5:06 pm 194. richard mcenroe:

John Moore, PeterUK, esmense — Ah, now it’s a multigenerational family of Airborne vets.

You know, one of the neat things about arguing with lefties is how their credentials magically expand to match yours. You’re a vet? Why, so are they. Had family in the Towers? Hey, them too. You’re a Democrat who can’t bring himself to vote for Dem candidates anymore? How about that — they used to be Republicans/conservatives/libertarians until Bush drove them away…

Jul 10, 2004 - 5:09 pm 195. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

richard mcenroe

Not all the records are present. Kerry has refused a request to authorize the Pentagon to release his full military records. He has something to hide (for example, the records on how he got his first purple heart). But some of his fitreps are the classic “glowing” to a civilian, “turkey” to an officer.

“airborne” isn’t quite the right term for what I did. I was Navy aircrew. I suspect that my former Green Beret friend would laugh at me (if I’m lucky) if I used the word “airborne” around him. It seems the Army has proprietary rights to the term

Jul 10, 2004 - 5:16 pm 196. richard mcenroe:

John Moore ó I getcha. I was referring to Emsense. I gather your definition oof airborne is basically, “Oh, shit, the plane broke!”

Jul 10, 2004 - 5:24 pm 197. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

richard mcenroe

Yeah, something like that.

We did have parachutes, and they had an excellent QA system for parachute riggers. Periodically, they’d grab a rigger and a chute he had packed, have him put it on, take him up and throw him out of an airplane.

It gave the rest of us more confidence.

Jul 10, 2004 - 5:27 pm 198. PeterUK:

Richard Mcenroe,

I seen esmese in action before,she will never give specifics.Why do they always use the special forces line,didn’t any of them have relatives in the Dental Corps?

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:22 pm 199. jerry:

Richard:

My father was one of the orginal troopers in the 82nd. However, there was no glory for him. It was the Army’s wisdom that he should spend the war at Fort Benning training new paratroopers. I guess he wasn’t a real soldier.

Esmere: The whole controversy about Kerry’s service was not stated by the Republicans It was started by Kerry when he took every opportunity to remind the voters that he served in Vietnam and W served in the Air Guard. Then we had Terry McCaulife touting his hero candidate with a chest full of medals. Kerry made the mistake of equating any kind of military experience with ability to be Commander-in-Chief. He turned the election into McClellan (Him) versus Lincoln (Bush). As I recall Lincoln won.

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:30 pm 200. richard mcenroe:

PeterUK ? It’s like comedian Blake Clark’s routine about his time in Viet Nam: “What the fuck does the cook at Da Nang have flashbacks about? Does he wake up in the middle of the night screaming “Pancakes!”?”

Jul 10, 2004 - 6:31 pm 201. PeterUK:

LOL

Jul 10, 2004 - 7:31 pm 202. Charlie (Colorado):

“How did you all turn into Rambo?”

Pretty much the same way Rambo did: they got mugged by reality.

I would like to dispute with you to some extent, however: I didn’t turn into Rambo — I’ve always thought “plays well with others” wasn’t a very useful diplomatic goal.

Jul 10, 2004 - 7:59 pm 203. Charlie (Colorado):

“You can’t hold back the tide of change. What goes up must come down. Decay is inevitable.”

Wow. Dialectic materialism. You don’t actually see a real classical Marxist in the wild very often.

We really probably ought to put this one in a preserve somewhere, see if it’ll breed.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:03 pm 204. Charlie (Colorado):

“There’s nothing less productive than dragging the mentally ill into a political debate.”

You know, Esmene, you shouldn’t leave straight lines like that lying around; someone could trip over it and get hurt.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:10 pm 205. Charlie (Colorado):

PeterUK ? It’s like comedian Blake Clark’s routine about his time in Viet Nam: “What the fuck does the cook at Da Nang have flashbacks about? Does he wake up in the middle of the night screaming “Pancakes!”?”

Speaking of… I like to died laughing at that one.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:16 pm 206. PeterUK:

My own brother’s most serious injury was inflicted by a 20-something mother and sniper.

I wonder who did what to whom and who has the negatives.

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:46 pm 207. richard mcenroe:

Charlie(Colorado) — It may not breed, but if it’s a true Marxist it’ll screw everything it touches…

Jul 10, 2004 - 8:57 pm 208. richard mcenroe:

John Moore ó They use the same rigger check in the Airborne. Gives you good parachutes or wide flat riggers.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:07 pm 209. richard mcenroe:

PeterUK ó Yes, but Wapping wasn’t a combat zone…

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:09 pm 210. Rick Ballard:

Charlie,

The homo rufus experiment has proven a failure. They do produce offspring but have never proven capable of foraging for themselves in the wild. The diminution in the sapiens quotient is thought to be the probable cause for the failure. Continuing studies to determine the precise cause of failure continue among the groups clustered around major universities. Very little chance is given for their survival as a species. They will join the dodo and the passenger pigeon on the list of non-adaptive species.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:11 pm 211. PeterUK:

Richard,I was quoting emense,I think her brother got his in Bougie St Singapore.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:17 pm 212. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

Richard… Not Olongapo?

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:31 pm 213. sammy small:

John Moore

I never made it to Olongapo. Angeles City kept me plenty busy.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:35 pm 214. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

sammy

I didn’t either. Cavite City instead (Sangley Point NAS).

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:45 pm 215. sammy small:

Esmense

One thing about the military, an individual’s character comes shining through to those he is around and those he deals with. It is very apparent whether in combat or not. I can’t exactly explain why, but it happens. (I’ve also heard similar things about golf. Play a round with someone and you will get a good feel for the ethics etc. of the person.)

This is one reason why Bush is often defended by so many vets and Kerry isn’t. With a little background info, vets can read the tea leaves and connect the dots on the two individuals based upon service experience. Its something that I wouldn’t expect a civilian or non vet to be able to understand the nuances.

Again, vets marvelled at the trap aboard the Lincoln last year. He looked like he did that kind of thing every day. He exuded the right stuff in spades that day. It was awesome to those who know the code. To those who don’t, it was deemed a “stunt”.

Remember one thing. The credibility of the two from a military background perspective is at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. If you can’t comprehend that, you will just have to trust those who can accurately judge this. If you choose to decide based upon media and political perceptions, that’s your choice. If Kerry wins in November, maybe after four years his real character will shine through enough for you to see.

Jul 10, 2004 - 9:52 pm 216. Kevin P:

Esmense:

“Crony Capitalism” doesn’t roll off the tongue as smoothly as capitalist pig but it has the same tired old sound as that old sixties cliche.President Bush had nothing to do with the crimes at Enron.Nothing.Lay was a contributor,that is all.Using you logic President Clinton could be associated with the political repression in China because he took money from them.

The Democratic Party is going to get just as much money from those “evil corporations” as the republicans are.Kerry is worth, well he married into it, from one to three billion if you trust the estimates of that radical right paper the LA Times.And if Kerry would release his wife’s tax records you would find her ankle deep in those repressive corporations you so despise.Without the Ketchup money as collateral the banks would have never loaned him the 6 million he borrowed for the primary race since his personel assests nearly match the total amount of the loan. So throw away the tired bromides from the sixties. Kerry is worth 1 to 3 billion.Bush has a net worth of 15 to 16 million.Bush got his money from his Father.Kerry got his from his two wives.The corporations will give millions to both parties. Using your logic Kerry must be a tool of George Soros since he is spending more of his money to get Kerry elected then Enron ever gave Bush.

Jul 10, 2004 - 11:27 pm 217. Charlie (Colorado):

“Bush has a net worth of 15 to 16 million. Bush got his money from his Father.”

One little quibble: Bush made most all that 15 million from the sale of the Texas Rangers, of which he was the managing partner.

Jul 11, 2004 - 6:56 am 218. John Mendenhall:

Menses, or esmene, or whoever:

Why would anybody need to “passionately defend” somebody’s stint in the National Guard? It’s like “defending” somebody’s time as a roofer, or a business intern, or a community college sophomore.

The stirring leftist cry: “J’accuse Orville Throckmorton of Moonshine Gap, Tennessee, of having been a second-string fullback in high school!”

Jeeze.

Bush was in the National Guard. Kerry rode around on boats, on active duty, for four months. Neither statement, based on those declarative statements, has meaning beyond the obvious. They are not nuanced and complex.

The relevance–if any–comes with the ends of the stories.

Bush finished serving unremarkably in the National Guard. He pulled some strings to get out a little early, I think, so he could go to Harvard, and became the managing general partner of a baseball team.

Kerry decided that four months was plenty and recommended to his superiors that he DEROS out of country and out of the Navy, which he was able to do because he recommended himself for sufficient medals, and because there are strings to pull for those, like Bush and Kerry, who have access to the strings. He did this so he could serve the North Vietnamese cause, mostly by smearing me and my colleagues who fought the real war on the real ground in the real rice paddies and the real jungles and the real Cambodia and the real firefights and the real patrols and the real ambushes and the real dope hazes as murderers, serial burners of babies and women.

A charge he cannot prove, has never withdrawn, has ridden for thirty-five years to personal fame and fortune, and which cannot be accounted for in any way except negatively in the context of the venal, evil, narcissistic man who leveled it.

George Bush accused Saddam Hussein of mass murder.

John Kerry accused me.

I can tell you for DAMN sure that Kerry’s lying.

Jul 11, 2004 - 8:07 am 219. richard mcenroe:

John Moore ó Hey, I lived a pure and virtuosu life in my service days. I certainly have no idea what you’re talking about. Nope not me. And thank God for slow MP’s…

Jul 11, 2004 - 10:56 am 220. richard mcenroe:

John Moore ó Hey, I lived a pure and virtuosu life in my service days. I certainly have no idea what you’re talking about. Nope not me. And thank God for slow MP’s…

Jul 11, 2004 - 10:59 am 221. Sandy P:

–But the US cannot, must not, EVER elect our leaders because “the world” hates them.–

Oh, pooh, Knucklehead, that’s reason #3.

We’ve been driving them loco for 225++ years, I see no reason to stop now.

It’s too much fun.

Jul 11, 2004 - 11:41 am 222. Sandy P:

–esmense:

Contrary to your opinion, flying Century fighters was more dangerous then many jobs in the Vietnam OP area. For example my time on station off the coast of North Vietnam was virtually hazard free. The only way I could have gotten killed is if we screwed up. A clerk in Saigon was statistically safer then Bush flying F-102s.–

Esmense – search vodkapundit’s archives for his quote from his father in law about F-102’s. That thing was a death machine, they were being phased out.

And as to W’s national guard service, Bill Hobbs has the info as to how it worked. There’s no there there as to him being AWOL.

I now probably know more than the MSM about how the NG works.

Jul 11, 2004 - 11:51 am 223. richard mcenroe:

Sandy P ó only reason #3?

Jul 11, 2004 - 12:23 pm 224. richard mcenroe:

Sandy P ó Only #3?

Jul 11, 2004 - 12:46 pm 225. Knucklehead:

Sandy P,

“–But the US cannot, must not, EVER elect our leaders because “the world” hates them.–

Oh, pooh, Knucklehead, that’s reason #3.”

Thanks for the thump upside the head . I meant to say the opposite of what I typed (one of the difficulties inherent in being a knucklehead is that sometimes the words come out all wrong) and you are correct.

The “world’s” feelings or attitudes about us and/or our president should have ZERO influence upon our elections. And if one finds oneself undecided between candidates, flip the lever for the one the “world” can’t stand just to shove a thumb in their eye.

Best regards!

Jul 11, 2004 - 1:37 pm 226. Sandy P:

#1 – we are at war

#2 – we need to be feared, under W we are getting there

#3 – “the world” doesn’t like him.

Jul 11, 2004 - 1:47 pm 227. PeterUK:

#3 If the world pretends to like you, it is stealing your wallet.

Jul 11, 2004 - 2:34 pm 228. richard mcenroe:

Knucklehead ó Always remember to use your {{{irony}}}, {{{/irony}}} tags…

Jul 11, 2004 - 3:37 pm 229. Charlie (Colorado):

Bush finished serving unremarkably in the National Guard. He pulled some strings to get out a little early, I think, so he could go to Harvard, and became the managing general partner of a baseball team.

Tiny quibble: Bush probably didn’t need to pull strings: he was going to have to do a refresher to get back to flight status, was qualified in a bird that was being deactivated, had already accumulated more than his required AD hours and was about to qualify to go IRR anyway, at a time when regular officers were transferring to the ANG to keep flight status during major RIFs. The personnel office probably fell on his voluntary request for early separation with glad cries.

Jul 11, 2004 - 4:30 pm 230. Timothy Lang:

Interesting discussion with many fascinating permutations! But I’ll go back to the OP (awww! Spoilsport!).

I’m sure Mickey is an honorable man, but what he says and what he does is two different things. Heck, that’s why we have secret ballots!

Who do you think Bill Clinton or Joe Lieberman are really going to vote for? They want to live too!

p.s.

Roger…love the way you’re managing comments!

Jul 11, 2004 - 8:27 pm 231. arrScott:

I’m glad someone is calling Kaus on his position re: Kerry. Given the depth of loathing he feels for Kerry – and it’s not all personal; Kaus clearly believes Kerry is a terrible senator and would be a terrible president – he can have only one rational basis for voting for Kerry in November: Disastrously bad as President Kerry will be, President Bush has been worse.

Any talk about “consolidating gains” and whatnot is just so much hogwash. That’s not how wars work. In fact, the real question is, “What gains?” Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups have conducted more attacks in more countries with greater transnational coordination and more fatalities in the 34 months since Sept. 11, 2001 than it did in the 34 months before that date. In late 2001, the Bush administration chose to rely on a ragtag band of corrupt Afghans rather than on American soldiers to fight the decisive battle against Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora; bin Laden escaped, and with the immediate switch to planning for war in Iraq, Bush effectively gave bin Laden a two-year breather to regroup and rebuild his networks.

Most of Afghanistan exists in a state of anarchy, ruled – not governed – by the same warlords and narcotics cartels that gave succor to al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion. Much of Iraq has also regressed to a state of terrorist-friendly anarchy.

Meanwhile, North Korea is now mass-producing atomic warheads. Pyongyang has sought to export for sale every weapons system it has ever manufactured. Every single one. Many of its sales have been made directly to terrorist groups like Hizballah and Hammas. Yet the Bush administration has a policy of trusting North Korea not to sell its nukes on the black market. Al-Qaeda has begun cooperating with Indonesian pirates in a manner that poses a direct – and as yet unanswered – threat to U.S. trade and port cities. Furthermore, al-Qaeda’s unchecked cooperation with gangsters involved in high-seas piracy gives it the perfect infrastructure for smuggling nuclear devices from North Korea into the hearts of American port cities.

At home, Bush opposed creating the Department of Homeland Security. He opposed taking airport security out of the hands of untrained minimum-wage contractors and putting into the hands of federal law-enforcement professionals.

I intend to vote for Kerry rather than Bush, despite my many misgivings about Kerry’s executive abilities, because I have certain minimum expectations of progress toward victory. George W. Bush is not meeting those expectations; on the contrary, the United States under Bush is losing the war on terror. Generally speaking, Abraham Lincoln was right when he said that the country ought not switch horses in midstream – unless the horse we are on is drowning. Kerry may not do better than Bush, but it is smarter to take a chance on a new commander-in-chief than to stick with a proven loser. Vote for Kerry not because you want to consolidate Bush’s gains, but because you would like one day to have some gains to consolidate.

Jul 12, 2004 - 10:14 am 232. Catherine:

Late to the party again.

I’d like to ditto everything Eric Deamer said in his first post, apart from the idea that Americans fold at the news of casualties. I’m with Ledeen and others that Americans back away from casualties only when they are asked to lose soldiers without winning the conflict, or when the goals and objectives of a conflict are not clear.

Eightteen deaths in Somalia is eightteen too many when the public doesn’t know what we’re doing there. (\Which, of course, is why an administration’s ability to explain itself to the public is so critical.

Apart from that, Eric has said what I’ve been trying say for a while now, only better.

I’ve planned to vote for Bush on WOT all along, but in the past week I’ve stumbled onto a new reason to vote for Bush, which is education.

I’ve just discovered the “Math wars,” and my brain is set on stun. Having to fight a war on terror and a war on math at the same time may just be the End. Talk about your two-front conflict.

I’d been feeling for a while that Democrats are hopeless on education, but now that I’ve discovered fuzzy math I feel the Dems are actively bad. Ted Kennedy is trying to gut the No Child Left Behind Act, which is pretty much our only defense against math “reform.” John Kerry hasn’t been sounding much better.

I should add that many, many liberals loathe “constructivist math” as much as conservatives do. Brookings has terrific White Papers posted on the subject, and the main anti-constructivist math organizations are bipartisan.

it’s worth checking Brookings for a report called “Computation Skills, Calculators, and Achievement Gaps: An Analysis of NAEP Items.” In this report you can watch black and Hispanic kids making big gains in math scores throughout the 80s, then losing those gains when constructivist math takes over. The data isn’t quite that clean, but it’s close.

It doesn’t matter: the Democratic Party is too beholden to the teachers’ unions to ride herd on the education establishment.

We have the Clinton administration to thank for fuzzy math. Clinton’s Secretary of Education pushed it, and actually went so far as to create a list of Clinton-approved math textbooks, all of them exemplars of constructivist math. Mathematicians from all over the country, including 4 Nobel Prize winners, formally petitioned the administration not to take this step.

To make a long story short, I am now in the position of having to homeschool my son in math.

He’ll still be in public school, taking public school math.

But every day he’ll come home and we’ll work our way through Saxon Math (as well as, probably, Singapore Math.) The time he would have spent finally learning to play a musical instrument and read music, or getting exercise, or reading books, will go to learning the math he’s not learning in school.

I could go on, but I won’t. For me, a vote for Bush is a vote for education.

Jul 12, 2004 - 7:04 pm 233. DOUGY:

I believe Mr. Bush is a pretender and I disagree that he strikes fear into the hearts of terrorists. A new executive who will win the respect of west and east europe and asia is our best defense against terrorism. Let’s not forget that the terror cells grew in Germany and England and other foreign countries before easing into America. Moreover, I disagree that future terrorism should be the main theme in 2004. Do we really want GWB replacing Rehnquist? Do we really want this country’s tax burden shifted more onto the middle class? Is it fair to our grandchildren to continue to consume energy and resources at the current rate? Terrorism is extremely serious, but the fact that the WTC attacks occurred while Bush was in office and the fact that he was the executive at the time our country retaliated is no reason to keep a president who by many accounts is lacking a number of intellectual skills.

Jul 12, 2004 - 8:14 pm 234. nhtahoe:

So you say, “I am idealistic by nature and want to heal the world.” How can you claim that and vote for Bush, knowing that he is a man ridiculed by every single reputable environmental organization as the greatest threat to the planet. Don’t take my word for it; please check out these three links if you have time:

1. http://www.nrdc.org/legislation/rollbacks/rr2004.pdf

2. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=5939345&pageid=rs.PoliticsArchive&pageregion=mainRegion&rnd=1089702841433&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153530,00.html

Thanks for having an open mind and remembering that economy, war and gay marriage are not all that matter!

Jul 13, 2004 - 12:19 am 235. Love Them Cubs:

I’m saddened by the number of people who are blindly supporting Bush’s “efforts” in the war on terror. The real question should be, “What does this guy have to do to lose his job?”

The steady drumbeat of ex-administration officials, the president’s own words, and books such as “Plan of Attack” clearly demonstrate that while W was on vacation, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Franks and others were cooking up an Iraq war plan before 9/11 even happened. Was Iraq unfriendly to the U.S.? Absolutely. Were they somehow unique in that regard? Not in the slightest.

It’s the responsibility of American citizens to think critically about issues, and to let our elected representatives know how we feel. Frankly, I’m angry that people I know have been needlessly injured in Iraq, and that we’ve spent nearly $200B so far prosecuting this conflict.

For all the anti-Kerry folks out there, I don’t recall him ever saying we’d pull back and take a break. He’s said he will continue to push for a positive resolution in Iraq. However, he has also demonstrated a willingness to look for another solution that doesn’t require the U.S. to shoulder nearly 100% of the financial and personnel burden. Bush should have been doing this from the outset, but unfortunately he has neither the experience nor the intellect to understand issues in such a way that we can expect anything other than a good vs. evil, black vs. white, for us or against us, mentality.

It’s time for someone new. George Bush in the Oval Office is not remotely critical to prosecuting the war on terrorism. If the cause is right, it can transcend one person, and in this case the cause is just, but the execution is horrific. It will be interesting to see how the Republican Congress supports a new president. I’m guessing we’ll see more of the same stonewalling we saw when Clinton worked to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Unfortuntately the recent history of the Republican party demonstrates that supporting the troops is only important when a Republican is in the executive office, and payment of any expenses can be pushed to future generations.

Jul 13, 2004 - 12:30 am 236. Syl:

Catherine…good to see you here. I’m in total agreement re education!!

—————-

Hey, look at all the chickencommenters who have dropped by. I call them chicken because they drop their misinformation on dead threads in the belief that nobody will drop by to counter their silliness.

Anyone who posts “Much of Iraq has also regressed to a state of terrorist-friendly anarchy” is simply asserting a belief..not facts.

Your time would be better served looking up information than hunting for dead threads.

Jul 13, 2004 - 8:11 am 237. Kevin P:

Love them cubs:

You say that Kerry won’t cut and run. If you are basing that on what he is saying now you should remember how quickly he can change his mind when faced with a difficult decision.When the decision on the 87 billion funding bill came up he tried to get it funded with a reversal of the Bush tax cuts, You can argue that Kerry’s proposal was good and that he made an effort to fund the troops and keep the deficit down. When his bill was defeated he was asked if he was still going to vote to fund the troops. Kerry stated that to vote against the funding would be “irresponsible” and I thought now there is a statesman, who could get past his own political goals and do the right thing for the troops. But what happened when he had to voice his vote? He voted no! The very action that Kerry himself said would be “irressponsible” suddenly became the thing to do. Why? Because he was getting his butt kicked around by Dean and Kerry, for purely political considerations, decided that his race for the President was more important then whether or not our soldiers would have the weapons and equipment to defend themselves. When asked to explain his rapid turnaround this great intellectual giant stated, “well you know I voted for the bill before I voted against it” Remember, the question of how the 87 billion would be funded was over and the question was only whether or not the troops could would be funded or not. It was a simple yes or no question.Kerry put his finger in the wind, he saw that Dean was going to beat him if he voted yes so of course this man of vision and integrity decided that the troops could make do with what they had and that his own political future was far more important.

On his VP pick of Edwards. We all know that during any primary candidates of the same party attack each other and disagree on policy issues.That is the purpose of any primary, Rep. or Dem.But when JFK was asked about Edwards qualifications to be President he stated that the oval office was to important a position to rely on “on the job training”. What did he mean. He was saying that Edwards was not ready to run this country and that we need someone who is prepared NOW,not years down the road. In todays climate, where the possibility of the VP having to take over the #1 job at any moment who does that great “intelect” Kerry pick.The man who in Kerry’s own words is simply too inexpierenced to handle the job!Why? Because Edwards polled better.Once again Kerry puts his political interests ahead of what is good for the country.Mr. Cub, if you can give a good defense of these two Kerry flip flops I will consider switching my vote.Explain how a man who will take a , and these are Kerry’s words not mine, make a “irresponsible” vote on the troops and pick a “unqualified” man for Vice President.

Jul 13, 2004 - 8:20 am 238. jerry:

Cub fan:

Maybe you didn’t know but Woodward’s “Plan of Attack” is favorable to the President. Its recommended reading on the Bush Website.

Here is something you also don’t seem to know… The military always is planning for contingencies. We have been planning for Desert Storm II since Desert Storm I. This planning went on during the Clinton administration.

Here is something else you haven’t appeared to pick up on over the past few days. The Senate Intelligence Committee report vindicates the Bush Administration and reveals several prominent critics to be liars.

And I suppose you probably don’t know that there have been significant residual finds of undeclared chemical munitions during the past several weeks.

Your ignorance of current events is matched by your ignorance of Baseball. All real Chicagoans support the White Sox. Just ask Mayor Daley.

Jerry the White Sox fan.

Jul 13, 2004 - 8:59 am 239. Knucklehead:

Catherine,

Welcome to the Math Wars! It is really amazing what they are trying to use to teach children simple arithmetic. You’ve seen first hand with your son.

What you have probably escaped, maybe without realizing it since you obviously love to read and probably taught your children to read (you homeschooled them even if you didn’t do so purposefully), is Whole Language. When you’ve had all your stomach can stand researching the gibberish they are teaching our children for math, have a look at how they are handling reading. Then wonder what happens to the kids who don’t have mom and dad reading to them and, slowly but surely, teaching them to read. Johnny can’t read because they aren’t teaching reading in many schools.

Jul 13, 2004 - 9:17 pm 240. Wolgang Faust:

14 july 2004

RE: Why We Are the Way We Are

dear Mr. Simon-

I am impressed with your clarity and balance in regards to the WAR we are now in. I have a theory about the global implications of this cleansing, and wish to share it with you. I will not, however, post it publicly on this site. If you forward me a secured e-mail address, I will forward my theory to you, and I am sure it will be of interest. My contact information is available to you through Type Key.

namaste-

Wolfgang Faust

Jul 14, 2004 - 11:23 am 241. jfxgillis:

Utterly discreditable logic, especially coming from a pseudo-right-wing pseudo-intellectual like Roger L. Simon:

“I just think an electoral defeat of Bush will be seen worldwide as a rejection of the War on Terror.”

WHO CARES what the world might think about what our election might mean for the War on Terror? The world would be wrong to see it the way Simon says it would, and even if the world was right, it’s not their call.

Its OUR democracy, OUR election, OUR White House and it’s OUR call.

Hearing this idiotic logic from the same type of scum who complain that Kerry would require Chirac’s opinion before fighting a war just makes it all doubly ridiculous.

Jul 17, 2004 - 8:19 pm

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