Sadly, No!

Tacitus The Fascist:

History never offers exact parallels, but it does have useful lessons. In assessing manning needs for Iraq, one would do well to look to prior conflicts of similar nature… one might look especially to the Boer War, in which a fractious, semi-fanatical culture was slowly ground into submission by an occupying force — several years after the seeming success of the initial invasion. If it sounds familiar, it should: and so the means of victory there offer an instructive thought experiment for Iraq today.

Make no mistake: those means were cruel. I have stated previously that I endorse cruel things in war — to eschew them is folly. The British achieved victory over the Boers by taking their women and children away to concentration camps, by laying waste to the countryside, and by dotting the veld with small garrisons in blockhouses at regular intervals. The men who remained were hindered in their movements by the wire stretching from blockhouse to blockhouse (a phenomenon that the Morice Line experience has shown would be massively more effective now); they could either surrender or die. Absent women and children, the rules of engagement were lax. From implementation to victory took under 18 months. To accomplish this required over one-quarter million soldiers.

[My emphasis; batshit Nazified desires from the heart of darkness in original.]

And just think, if he wasn’t too crazy for the Army as well as a shitbird boy, he could spearhead the stormtrooper job with his cool lightsaber!

Anyway, great, Tacky: With your latest suggestion, you’ve just equalled Adam “Put them in human-sized microwaves” Yoshida in the great ‘Flagrant Displays of Psychopathy’ contest so many wingnuts have entered.

Bradrocket adds: Hey, but at least he doesn’t use filthy language. That makes him a perfect candidate to be a regular columnist at Time.

Via Wolcott, this profile of Professor Jeffrey Hart is a pretty interesting read.

Hart is, in Wolcott’s words,

a former editor of the National Review in those more cerebral days before it became annexed to neoconservatism and became another nut-hatchery dedicated to military adventurism abroad and environmental rampage within.

And so therein the profile is an exhibition of the sort that we Lefties love: wingnut vs. wingnut wrestling. Now it’s tempting to say that whoever loses, we win. But sadly, no — that is not the case here.

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Ace, lacking for attention on a day when the snarky left blogs are all busy covering the news, jumps into the Glenn Greenwald chickenhawk discussion by demanding that lefties volunteer en masse to fight in Afghanistan:

Above: Ace of Spades on some TV show.

Glen Ellison Ellensberg Ellers Greenwald Trots Out Chickenhawk Argument Yet Again

[…]

Here is the recruitment link you’ve all been desperately searching for these past five years. I know it’s hard to find; I took a wild guess at “usarmy.com” and by jimminy found it on my first shot.

Now that I’ve found that recruitment link you’ve all been so madly googling hither and yon for since 9/11, I imagine I’ll be seeing you in full camos within the month.

How many times have you each asserted you were just gung-ho kill-crazy to fight you some terrorists — real terrorists, Al Qaeda terrorists, the ones actually responsible for 9/11? How many times have you caterwauled we don’t have enough troops in Afghanistan to finally get the man you so viscerally hate, Osama bin Ladin?

Osama bin Forgotten? Seems to me you guys have kinda forgotten about him your own selves. Because I have some little-known intel for ya — he’s in the mountains of Northwest Pakistan, just over the border from Afghanistan.

And if you guys want to get the “real terrorists” — well, seems to me that’s the place for you!

Don’t be Chickenhawks.

There’s fighting in Afghanistan to be done, we need more troops there — especially world-class tough-guys and super-patriotic American heroes such as yoursleves — and since you’ve all lectured us so many times on how that war must be won (redeploy our Iraq troops to the Pakistani border!), I’m sure you will, like the Rangers I know you are deep inside, Lead the Way.

[…]

Oh, wait: No, don’t expect any responses. They have no responses to this, so they just sort of ignore the question.

Response.

Furthermore, we must add that Scott Eric Kaufman has dramatized the ethos which underlies the present exchange:

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How did Bush do tonight? Let’s check in with John ‘Buttmissile’ Hinderaker of Powerline, America’s most fervent George W. Bush fan not under involuntary psychiatric care (except for Mark Noonan):

“Sacka-frack liberals frim-sagga-frap…”

How Did He Do?

In the past, I’ve often said that President Bush has been more effective in televised speeches than he has been given credit for. Not tonight. I thought he came across as stiff, nervous, and anxious to get it over with. The importance of the issue seemed to overwhelm the President’s ability to communicate. I suspect that only a few listeners absorbed more than a general impression of what the new strategy is all about.

Which may be just as well. Words at this point mean little. Most Americans want us to win in Iraq. Most will be willing to give the new plan a chance to work, whether they understand what it is or not. All depends on the success of the new approach.

The problem, in my view, continues to be the difficulty of defining “success.” As the President warned, even if the new approach is “successful,” our television screens will be filled with scenes of violence. But that is precisely what, until now, has been defined as failure.

(From Oneiros Dreaming, in comments: “I didn’t watch the speech. So the solution is to define escalating violence as success? Awesome.”)

So let’s see what happens. The administration has bought itself a window of time, at least until the 2008 campaign heats up, to try to achieve discernible signs of progress. While the new strategies sound to me like good ideas–one wonders why some of them weren’t implemented some time ago–the more important factor, I think, is sheer persistence. The President will persist; let’s all hope and pray that he succeeds.

Wow. And I mean ‘wow.’ The speech bombed like hell.

Retardeaux adds: Yes, but Hugh ‘Boobmissiles’ Hewitt comes to a different conclusion:

“Noble and Necessary”
Posted by Hugh Hewitt | 9:24 PM

President Bush was at his best tonight: serious, detailed, and above all, resolute. He spoke to many audiences.

To the public weary and grieved by the death of many of the finest Americans, the president spoke of the crucial issue: “For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.”

It isn’t, he explained repeatedly, just about giving Iraqis hope, but maintaining American security for all of the reasons he detailed.

Iraqis who desire peace heard the commitment, but they also heard its contingent nature: The Iraqi government has run out of time to dodge the tough choices.

Our enemies did not hear what they had hoped to, a declaration of surrender, whether phrased as a “timetable” or a simple “We quit.” They know that as long as Bush as in office, they will not win in Iraq.

Boobs, not Butts, for Bush?

Gavin adds: Bonus!

Retardation Ruling The Nation adds: Uh-oh:

Did We Just Declare War on Iran and Syria? [Michael Ledeen]

….Those “networks providing advanced weaponry and training” certainly are based in Iran and Syria. It sounds like he said we are going after terrorist training camps and the IED assembly facilities, doesn’t it?
Well?

re: Iran and Syria [Cliff May]

Michael, that caught my eye, too. I hope, this time, we mean what Bush says.
Posted at 11:00 PM

Thanks, Cliff [Michael Ledeen]
Yes, we’ve heard lots of good speeches, but haven’t seen the actions that the words seemed to demand.

But I liked a lot of the specifics of the speech. It seemed to me that David Frum’s advice was taken seriously (“details, details, details…”),

Gavin adds: Oh god, the pantomime. Michael Ledeen cannot for a moment believe that the White House rewrote a major speech at the last moment because David Frum posted some ‘suggestions’ on a blog. What an unbelievable bunch of whooping liars.

it sounded like our soldiers will get Rules of Engagement that haven’t been neutered, that are not PC, but ROEs that are appropriate to winning a war rather than avoiding casualties. Maybe…
Posted at 11:10 PM

‘Such a good speech, expand the quagmire theatre of operations, exterminate the brutes; wipe them out, all of them, down to the last insect in Mesopotamia; faster, please!’

On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities…

[dook-dook] Aaah!

Oh wow, is anyone else getting drunk already?

Update 9:35PM EST:
Woop-woop! Exclusive! Must credit Sadly, No!

In last line of speech, President Bush will call upon Steven Coonts to “guide [America] through these trying hours.”

It’s a day spelled with a ‘y’ at the end, so there must be something silly going on over at Blogs For Bush.

Blogger Conference Call with Tony Snow
By Matt Margolis at 04:11 PM

A few moments ago, I participated in a blogger conference call with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Brett McGurk, Director for Iraq, National Security Council. They discussed President Bush’s speech on the way forward in Iraq and responded to our questions. Unfortunately, bad reception caused me to get disconnected from the call prior to my asking my question.

“Tony, as you know, Flopping Aces has reported that according to an email recieved from CPATT, the Associated-with-terrorists-Press may have has failed to reveal that ‘Jamil Hussein’ may in fact be a pseudonym, adding yet another fatal blow to the credibility of the MSM, in which case my question to you involves the role of the blogosphere in debunking the false news of so-called ‘violence in Iraq’ promulgated by the terror-sympathizing media, which… Hello? Hello, Tony, are you there?”

Actually, that doesn’t sound like Matt. It probably went like this:

“Oh Tony, I… [faints, wakes up twenty minutes later with the phone crooning a dial tone.]”

I will go into more depth on the call later, and link to other blogger participants’ accounts of the call as well. In the meantime, I have posted the White House fact sheet on The New Way Forward in Iraq in the extended entry.

Citizen-journalism is indeed sweeping the Internet. What’s interesting here is that Tony Snow and Brett McGurk took the time, on the day of a critical policy speech, to lay out the message for the right-blogowhoopties.

The red John Hinderaker LED is blinking madly on the operations board this evening… This portends some fun!

Everyone is looking forward to Bush’s speech this evening, in which he will announce the Kagan plan for escalation in Iraq.

‘Everyone’ is a word that often even includes David Frum, who contributed the following nota bene to The Corner yesterday evening.

Above: David Frum

Jan. 09, 2007: Tomorrow Night

My suggestion:

No Oval Office, no big desk. Have the president stand in the Map Room, the room on the ground floor of White House in which Franklin Roosevelt reviewed strategy with his generals.

[…]

Hang a map of Baghdad on one wall. A map of Iraq on another. Have the president stand between them with a laser pointer. Let him show where the sectarian fighting in the city is occurring, let him detail where US troops are currently deployed. Then he can explain the new plan: Where the extra troops would go, what they would do, where the new checkpoints would be placed, how the city would be cleared, how it would be held.

No flowery language, no hazy generalities. Detail, detail, detail – to assure the American people that their commander-in-chief has thought this plan through and has reason to believe that it can and will work.

Frum is not only a Republican mouthpiece, but is also a former Bush speechwriter — and as such, he’s in an excellent position to have advance knowledge of this speech. Is he pulling a Hinderaker and pretending to make ‘suggestions’ based on what he already knows will happen?

Well, we shall soon see!* But whether or not Bush appears in a General Montague outfit with riding crop and laser pointer, repeating the Iraqi place names that emit from his ear-prompter, we refuse to be scooped by a man with a preposition for a surname. (“We’re talking to David Frum,” the radio voice will say, and one’s brain will always momentarily scream, “Frum where!?”) (David is in fact a native of Toronto, Canada.)

Our prediction (with checklist):

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Oy:

Bush talks frequently of his disdain for micromanaging the war effort and for second-guessing his commanders. “It’s important to trust the judgment of the military when they’re making military plans,” Bush told The Washington Post in an interview last month. “I’m a strict adherer to the command structure.”

Uh. Under the command structure, you’re the Commander-in-Chief, dumbass.

You get the feeling that “I’m a strict adherer to the command structure” is just Bushspeak for “I’m too lazy to read about what’s really going on.”

Remember those heady days of, like, two days ago when the WingNet was all jumping up and down holding a paper plate over its head like a halo, saying, “Nonsense! We didn’t ‘out’ Jamil Hussein, endangering his life and causing him to be arrested — the Associated Press outed Jamil Hussein by publishing his name sixty-two times!”

Welp, what do you suppose they attempted to do today?

No, guess. Nono, after you; I insist.

Now, that’s the same Daffy le Pew Dafydd Ab Hugh, imitation Welshman and pulp science-fiction author, who just oomphed a grandiloquent Sousaphone suite in reply to Eric Boehlert, the WingNet’s enemy-of-the-century for a couple of days straddling the weekend. Boehlert wrote a Media Matters piece on the mordant foolishness and lynch-mob danger of the Jamil Hussein affair. Ab Hugh replied with a catalogue of Debate Club sophistries, of which the following is typical:

Where does Boehlert blog from, one wonders? As an honorable man, I am certain he spends quite a bit of time in the Iraq or Afghanistan war zone. If he has any military background, he certainly doesn’t mention it in his presumably self-written bio over at the Huffington Post, where he also blogs…

Many are familiar with our controversial picture of Dafydd ab Hugh, which we now reproduce for informational purposes only.

Above: Spends quite a bit of time in Iraq or Afghanistan war zones

But, to follow in ab Hugh’s junior-college conceit of imitating Mark Antony’s oration in Julius Caesar (I mean really now, gag us with a frickin’ Norton’s Guide) (and you just have to imagine the cocked eyebrow here, and the Friars Club cadence), ‘Dafydd ab Hugh is an honorable man.’

We look forward to Michelle Malkin’s posts from Iraq. Ol’ Michelle is a lot of things, but if she actually goes out on patrol in Baghdad, there are a few things we’ll be happy never to say about her afterwards.

It’s Koufax Awards season again — vote early and often!

I’m flattered that we’ve been voted for already several times in the early polling; you love us, you really love us!

But this post isn’t about the Koufaxes (more on that anon); rather, the concept of the Koufaxes gives me an idea.

Here’s Dwight Meredith’s explanation of what the Koufaxes are all about:

The Koufax Awards are named for Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest left handed pitchers of all time. They are intended to honor the best blogs and bloggers of the left. At the core, the Koufax Awards are meant to be an opportunity to say nice things about your favorite bloggers and to provide a bit of recognition for the folks who provide us with daily information, insight, and entertainment. The awards are supposed to be fun for us and fun for you.

And amen to all that. But… hmm. What about the kind of ‘negative’ fun we like to do around here, like tearing wingnuts new ones? Could it be done with an awards concept like the Koufaxes?
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