Pajamas Media

15 Comments

Well done once again Jules.

Polls are a measure of opinion, not fact.

Exactly.

Congress is trying to catch up to the public’s shadow instead of trying to assess the country’s interests and promote them. It’s been too long since we had a decent Congressional leadership in this country. Looks like it’ll be at least another two years.

“drumbeat of bad news…” Recently I’ve been reading reports headlines from the NY Times et. al. from around November 2001. The spin and sotto voce disdain smells like dog fur rolled in dead fish. Multiply this by a thousand, thousand, thousand for six years, it’s no wonder people have, in Krauthammer’s words, “turned against the war.” But the “war” turned against is a complete fiction, bits of bodies, attitudes and events piled in a heap on the pages of newsprint and the flashing TV lights. The press is failing in its constitutional duty to report factually on events, ask difficult and embarassing questions of all in power and authority, than to drive events. And Senators in congress are chasing these shadows of smoke,ponies, mirrors and dogs.

The anti-Bush bonfire in American media began on the very day that Al Gore failed to convince his own home state to elect him President.

It’s been a daily contest in the exempt media since then to see who can pile the largest amount of dung on their sworn enemy: the Bush Administration. 9/11, the response, the investigation and Iraq have all been distorted to add more fuel to that fire. Examples abound of malfeasance, relentless bias, illegal leaks and outright lies used to do this - and yet so far the exempt media has yet to be held accountable in any way.

The latest round in this bush-Bashing hatefest has been the process of training the public to hate this war. The message is: “Hate this war because it’s BUSH’s war,” despite the clear sentiments of all the Usual Suspects when it was being debated… and before. How else could the “Peace Now” crowd justify demands for immediate withdrawal, knowing that the result would be anything but Peace in Iraq? The answer: it undercuts the President and the Republicans. And, it perpetuates the media’s distorted caricature of those who support American security interests in the face of the violent factions of Islam who have sworn to destroy us - on numerous occasions and in many languages - beginning as far back as 1979.

The exempt media itself recently bragged that a clear majority believes reporting on Iraq has been negatively biased, going on to infer the Americans WANT biased news - either one way or the other depending on their partisan whims. This mindset is certainly not at the heart of the problem (that is far more visceral), but it is certainly a symptom, one that also pervades American academia in much the same way.

We ignore these portents at our peril.

Politics? Or Conscious Acts Of Treason … For Simple Political Gain?

Good question.

Now that the Democrats are in — Hypocrisy RULES to the detriment of national security issues. Congress does not believe that the military is up to the task of victory in Iraq and chooses to castrate their efforts as opposed to supporting their mission.

Typical of the “John Kerry Party” - the Democrats are of one voice when in saying “I was for it before I was against it”.

If you are FOR having our country stand and aid the continued freedom of the 95%+ majority of the 25,000,000 liberated people of Iraq (who have also voted to be free - 3 times), sign the pledge and get active in persuading Congress to continue to support the mission of our troops.

At the web site TheNRSCPledge.com more than 30,000 people signed the pledge of non-support for individual senators and the NRSC in the first three days of its operation. Thousands of bloggers have joined on as well. We, at MAXINE, expect the numbers to grow, and the memory of the votes of next week to remain strong for years to come.

Link Posted Here>>
http://maxine-log.blogspot.com/2007/01/politics-or-conscious-acts-of-treason.html

Win is the only answer.

Yes, but will the troops have what they need to do the job? Unless new ‘up-armored’ HMMWVs fall out of the sky, as one general said, they do not currently have the equipment to support the surge. This caused on high-ranking army officer to write me and ask, “does America support the war but not the troops?” I blog on this:

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2007/01/31/do-you-support-the-war-but-not-the-troops/

And while they are still deprived of the proper rules of engagement, the surge will not have the authority and power it would have otherwise had.

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2007/01/29/proceduralized-rules-of-engagement-prevent-engagement/

Regretably the press does not have a constitutional duty to be honest or fair–that said, I listened to 30 minutes of NPR driving to work this AM; the drumbeat is not restricted to print media, by any means.

On a different note, I recently challenged a liberal friend asking why, if the Democrats are so opposed to the war in Iraq, why dont they simply cut off funding? The obvious answer to me is that it makes a convenient platform which makes the legislative masturbation of Senator Hagel and company all the more reprehensible; even more telling though when I pushed my friend about cutting off funding, she asserted the “troops would have to fight their way out of Iraq.” She really believed that and I was unable to suggest otherwise.

Rah, rah, rah. How pathetic. This war is over, and as many soldiers have said, it was over the minute the Iraqis started looting, and we did nothing to stop it.

AND CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!? The neocons are all upset because the Iranians have the nerve to MEDDLE in a country we invaded and are occupying against the will of a majority of people in Iraq.

U.S. Senators seem to think a democracy in Iraq has little strategic value. What country, then, do they
think does has strategic value?

Rob,
Is there a moral difference between one nation trying to foster democracy in self-defense and another nation trying to create a true theocracy? Please don’t be cute, and make smart aleck remarks about how the US is a theocracy because that would only be untenable on the face of things.

I suppose what you are saying about the looting is that we should have shot the looters. I happen to agree with that, but we were trying to be nice. So, I suppose if we do fail, we can chalk it up to an excess of niceness.

And now for the rest of the situation–I see a thin, wavering line of troops facing an onrushing horde of barbarians. And some start to cut and run even though logically they know it makes their death more certain, and dooms their friends. And then out rings a clear cry from Captain Crittenden and many like him.

“Stand! I say Stand! These brutes are beaten if we just stand!”

And so it is. The Left has very little left but ferocity.

“63 percent of Americans say they want the plan to succeed, including 79 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of independents and 51 percent of Democrats.” if I understand the Fox Poll correct—-49% of Democrats want the President to fail in Iraq. Now think about that.

Tennwriter:

No, we’re not a theocracy, but it used to be that we believed in self determination rather than imposing our form of government on every country that we think needs to be improved.

Even Central Command nominee Admiral William Fallon said today, “I think that we would probably be wise to temper our expectations here, that the likelihood that Iraq is suddenly going to turn into something that looks close to what we enjoy here in this country is going to be a long time coming.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013000099.html

So, the “new” leader, of our “new” strategy, has lowered expectations. Just as the colonists claimed that the countries that they colonized could not govern themselves, we will do the same to justify our presence in Iraq.

The problem with Iraq is that we went in as a liberating army (we were prepared for that role), and then we were forced to become an occupying army (we weren’t prepared for that role). Occupying armies are NEVER successful unless the occupied want them to be there, like NATO during the Cold War.

Even the most successful occupiers in recent history, the Red Army, the Nazis, and the Japanese, failed to impose their will once they left. And they were all hated by everyone, except for their lackeys who depended on them for power, for simply being where they weren’t wanted.

People in Tenn. should especially understand this last point if they know anything about the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Lastly, the neocons are screaming that the Democrats want us to lose. Explain please, why, with four years with a rubber-stamping Republican Congress, the President has failed to achieve victory? When, during that time, he could have gotten anything he thought he needed or wanted to “win” this war?

Rob,

Thank you for your polite response. Such is increasingly a rarity on the Net.

For a neocon, the liberation is defensive in nature. That is, we have to reform them, or they will come to us, and flowers of fire will sprout in our major cities. And then we will do a widespread nuking of ‘the usual suspects’ across the Mid-East to get the plausible deniability supplier of these nukes to the terrorists that hit us.

So thats the reason for the change in policy. Rogue nations + WMD + terrorists = millions of dead Americans and hundreds of millions of dead Arabs.

Also, while I like self-determination, it is a fact, I believe, that confident and aggressive tyrannical regimes don’t fade away. After all, the French Revolution occurred when the nobles started to reform. Saddam Hussein was not going anywhere; the Iraqi people lacked the ability to deal with him.

You seem to be saying that if we left now, the country would be able to govern itself just fine. I disagree. It would collapse into true civil war, and millions of dead Iraqi’s would be on our heads, just like the Boat People.

Actually, I think with Japan and Germany we are the best occupiers. And crushing the will of the enemy works fine. However, we haven’t done that. But at the same time the vast majority of Iraqi’s want us there. The problem is the same that was in Bolshevik Russia–a small, perhaps 5% group can force its will on the majority if they are dedicated and ruthless enough.

The question of the hour is this: Do people really want democracy, rule of law, and such, and will they fight for it if given a decent chance to have it? If not, then our enterprise in Iraq is truly hopeless, and we might as well go to Plan B–Nuke them until the bedrock glows.

But, I don’t believe most people will choose tyranny over freedom if given a half-decent chance to have freedom. Perhaps I am wrong. Pray that I am not.

I do not think you support slavery, but that is what your point about Tennessee and the Civil War means. It was either hopeless to reform the South, and the North undertook a fool’s errand to end slavery, or the North resolutely did the right thing in the broad scheme of things. Granted, then as now, there are many areas where the ending of Slavery and the Reconstruction of the South, or the ending of the Rape Rooms and the Reconstruction of Iraq could have been done much better, but as a conservative, I understand that people and government are prone to sin and stupidity.

I am uncertain why the President has not more boldly attacked the enemy. Part of it is the ‘make nice’ approach; part is the unrelenting assault from the Left in a manner with people writing novels about assasinating him, and all sorts of other evils of partisan excess; part is the fact that Reconstruction takes time. We’re still in Germany sixty years later, and they still struggle with neo-nazis.

But, I don’t know why he hasn’t just said ‘You can get hanged for a sheep as well as a goat’ and bombed Iran to provoke a revolution , and had the Saudi’s over for a Texas BBQ with them as the main course. Some people suspect that Saudi money is just so sweet to various officials. Some wonder if the Iranians already have a nuke, say planted in the US, and there’s a quiet blackmail vs. blackmail game going on. Some suspect Bush of not really being that serious about the war on terror.

Two things I can say: 1)I think the man is a bit beaten down. Six years of abuse, there’s not another word for it, is enough to break down even the toughest man, and Bush seems that sort, but there’s only so much one can take. 2)I wonder if he is reverting back to his father’s ways. I remember his father in the election he lost saying that he would come out with a new plan to energize the campaign…if the conservatives would just wait. So we waited. The date got moved back. Wait some more. Repeat, rinse and recycle.

His father struck me as a good manager, not a leader. I think Bush jr. saw these mistakes and vowed not to do them, but that after six years of pounding, he might be going back to his roots.

Rob, I think if you take an honest look at your statements here, you might recognize a few problems.

First: “it used to be that we believed in self determination rather than imposing our form of government on every country that we think needs to be improved.” This is a gross overexaggeration of the facts. There are numerous countries out there that could be improved. The U.S. is not imposing on “every” one of them.

As you are really just referring to Iraq here, you also miss the point that the Iraqis themselves have continually voted in support of that which you claim we’re imposing upon them: a representative democracy. In many cases they’ve done this at great personal risk, and in numbers that should make American voters ashamed. So your remark here is not only erroneous on two counts, but an insult to their bravery as well.

Next: “So, the “new” leader, of our “new” strategy, has lowered expectations.” No. WaPo chose to use the term “lowered”. Fallon is simply stating for the record what the left has refused to acknowledge since the President first spoke on the subject - when he warned that this process would be long and difficult, but necessary, because the alternatives were (and still are) unacceptable.

War is a constant process of shifting to compensate for the actions of the enemy. Those who judge this latest shift by the standards of Unreal Perfection (i.e., Bush’s critics) should temper their expectations.

The rest of your armchair “analysis” on the “new” strategy and the current status in Iraq completely misses the most important aspect of the conflict. That is that once Saddam was removed, Iraq became a battlefield in a much larger war: Radical Islam’s War against the Rest of the World. This is very different from any of the (irrelevant) scenarios you cited. You also conveniently left out the two most successful occupations - those of the Allies’ in Germany and Japan. Occupation of Japan lasted for seven years, with significant Allied influence following. Germany’s lasted much longer, and was also complicated by the Cold War. Still both occupations transformed their respective countries, and resulted in nations and cultures that have surpassed our own in many respects.

The point you insist on missing here is that in neither of those cases were there adherents to a psychotic and suicidal religious ideology bent on preventing any progress whatsoever, as we have in Iraq. So your comparison breaks down irretrievably.

The Bush Administration didn’t misunderstimate the enemy in the Middle East. What they underestimated was the almost unimaginable degree of relentless, traitorous abandon with which the American exempt media has distorted the conflict (and all other current events) - starting long before 9/11 - with the single goal of destroying confidence in Bush and the Republicans.

Bush’s most egregious failing here is in not having figured out a way to balance the bias, innuendo, misdirection and outright lies coming from the terrorists’ Fifth Column - ABCCBSNBCNYTCNNREUTERSBBCAP&c. Even with the myriad of blogs handing him the evidence of lies, bias and distortion in the media on a daily basis, he’s chosen to remain pretty much silent on this subject.

The President apparently has (perhaps misplaced) faith that the American People will know the truth when they hear it. But what we’ve been hearing is nothing more than a barrage of bile - focused not on a positive outcome in Iraq, nor on peace in the Middle East, but on wresting back power and control of the federal government. And to hell with the Iraqis or anyone else who’s destroyed in the process.

The democrats are eager about their prospects in ‘08, but they fail to realize that in trying to appease the left they will ignore what is in the best interest of our country.