Month: June 2005

Nixon called Indira Gandhi an “old witch” but she wasn’t as hostile to the US as Arundhati Roy, the narcissistic Indian novelist-turned-revolutionary who wants our enemies to hit us and hit us hard while she stands back and watches (login nobugs, pw bugmenot):

Personally I’m not prepared to pick up arms now. But maybe I can afford not to, at whatever place I am in now. I think violence really marginalizes and brutalizes women. It depoliticizes things. It’s undemocratic in so many ways. But at the same time, when you look at the massive amount of violence that America is perpetrating in Iraq, I don’t know that I’m in a position to tell Iraqis that you must fight a pristine, feminist, democratic, secular, non-violent war. I can’t say. I just feel that that resistance in Iraq is our battle too and we have to support it. And we can’t be looking for pristine struggles in which to invest our purity.

She’s basically aligned with Al Qaeda; it’s good to know that, in a “keep your enemies closer” sense.

H/t Michael Totten.

Politech relates some military reaction to the speech, all of it positive. Which leads him to this:

Memo to the left wingnuts who’ve been telling those who believe in the war (as an alternative to just leaving Saddam in power) that the chickenhawks need to join the military: it’s good to see that so many servicemembers and their families see the war as the president does. Now won’t you wackjobs please shut up?

May I propose that all who opposed the liberation of Iraq and called its civilian supporters “chickenhawks” please remove themselves to someplace like North Korea where they can experience the kind of life the Iraqis had under Saddam? Otherwise I may have to call them “terrorchickens”.

UPDATE: Mr. Goldstein is annoyed with the infantile name-calling as well:

One of the silliest arguments confronting pro-war supporters is the infantile “chickenhawk” accusation frequently floated by those swimming in the shallow end of the anti-war pool—the idea being, in theory, that if you aren’t a member of the military, you aren’t entitled to express a public opinion on the Iraqi war. Of course, in practice, non-military personnel such as those who are quick to use the chickenhawk argument are themselves permitted to express an opinion on the war—provided it’s the correct opinion, namely, that the war is illegal and immoral, and that Bush and his cronies are evil lying scum…

The idea that one need volunteer for military service in order to speak publicly in favor of the war creates any number of crazy analogues (for instance, is it okay to speak out against slavery if you’ve never owned or been a slave?)—not to mention presumes a commitment on the part of those anti-war speakers who invoke the chickenhawk argument to join the insurgency, should they wish to argue against the need for war.

Sadly, the chickenhawk argument, though logically puerile, can prove quite rhetorically effective—in the same sense that charges of homophobia and racism have proven effective in debates over gay marriage and government funded affirmative action programs: such charges, cynically delivered, tend to stifle substantive discourse, forcing one side of the argument onto the defensive by changing the focus of the debate from the issues themselves to the character of certain professors of those issues—and in that regard, they help to sustain the status quo.

Indeed.

Here’s your basic instant reaction from the Gallup Poll on the question of who’s winning in Iraq:

	U.S. and its allies	Insurgents in Iraq	Neither side	No opinion
2005 Jun 28 (Post-speech)	54%	7	35	4
2005 Jun 24-27 (Pre-speech)	44%	9	44	3

That’s bigger bump in “we’re winning” than I would have expected, and bad news for those Democrats who insist we aren’t fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, let alone winning.

H/t Bill Quick.

Laurence Simon’s cat Edloe has gone to the great catnip patch in the sky.

Condolences.

It seems to me that the American people want to know if we’re winning or losing in Iraq. The message from the MSM is that we’re losing, which I doubt, but the President didn’t offer enough evidence to win over many of the fence-sitters. It was nice that he highlighted the fact that we’re fighting Al Qaeda on the streets of Baghdad and all, but the bottom line is what matters. If we’re making progress, the people will be patient, but if we’re not, they’ll just change channels.

Basically, he blew it tonight, so he should wait a month and do it again, this time with the evidence of success.

Here’s your basic transcript in case you didn’t hear it.

UPDATE: OK, the details are starting to come out, so maybe it wasn’t so bad; the President hit the high points, and the minions will supply the detail.

The good folks at Moveon.org have an automated letter-writer to respond to Chimpie McBushitler’s speech. You enter your name, and it tells you what you think:

It’s time to start responsibly coming home from Iraq.

The president offered nothing new in his speech. No plan. No exit strategy. Nothing.

Iraq is no closer to stability than it was a year ago. Things keep getting worse every week. More than 1,700 Americans have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded.

The U.S. occupation is fueling a growing insurgency. Our presence is exacerbating the problem. There are tens of thousands of insurgents backed by hundreds of thousands of supporters.

We got into this war based on lies – the wrong way. It’s time to get out the right way. The first step is to realize that the Bush policy is out of touch with reality.

We need a real exit plan with a real timeline providing real accountability for our leaders. We need to turn control of the training of Iraqi forces and the rebuilding of Iraq to the international community. And we must renounce permanent military bases in Iraq because that angers the Iraqi people.

Now don’t run over there and claim your name is Saddam and you want your palaces back.

H/T Captain Ed, who live-blogged the speech.

This is a cute little piece:

WASHINGTON, June 27 – Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.

“I feel very good” about the detainees’ treatment, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.

That feeling was also expressed by another Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

On Monday, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said he learned while visiting Guantánamo that some detainees “even have air-conditioning and semiprivate showers.”

Another Republican, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, said soldiers and sailors at the camp “get more abuse from the detainees than they give to the detainees.”

In the last month, several senators, including some Republicans, have suggested that Congress should investigate reports of abuses at the detention center or that the military should close it to remove a blot on the country’s image.

One senator, Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has come under criticism and apologized repeatedly for comparing reported abuses at the camps to treatment in Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps.

Poor old Durbin is getting the cold shoulder from his buddies on both sides of the aisle these days.

One of the more bizarre tactics employed by opponents of regime change in Iraq has been to insist that war can’t be supported or even suggested except by those who’ve either served in combat or donated a child to serve in combat. Those of us who haven’t done active duty time are mere “chicken hawks” not entitled to an opinion. But in America we believe in civilian control of the military, as Mr. Christopher Hitchens points out:

This expert delivers himself of the opinion that, “If this is such a great cause, let us see one of the Bush daughters in uniform.” Let me do a brief thought experiment here. Do I know a single anti-war person who would be more persuaded if one of the Bush girls joined up? Do you? Can you imagine what would be said about such a cheap emotional stunt? Stalin’s son was taken prisoner by the Nazi invaders (and never exchanged), and Mao’s son was killed in the war that established the present state of North Korea. I am not sure how encouraging such precedents are supposed to be, but they have nothing at all to do with the definition of a just war.

Much more important than this, however, is the implied assault on civilian control of the military. In this republic, elected civilians give crisp orders to soldiers and expect these orders to be obeyed. No back chat can even be imagined, let alone allowed. Do liberals really want the Joint Chiefs to say: “Mr. President, I’ll respect that order when you have a son or daughter in uniform”? It was a great day when President Lincoln fired Gen. George B. McClellan.* It was a great day when President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. No presidential brat needed to be on the front line for this point to be understood.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are either worthwhile or they are not (and I see that nobody as yet requires an “exit strategy” from Afghanistan). The worst exploitation of a hero by our military has certainly been the crass lying by the Pentagon about the “friendly fire” death of Pat Tillman, who was looking to risk his life against the Taliban. However, the majority of American dead have still been civilians living in America, and those who prattle on about the sacrifice of children seem not to have read about Beslan, or thought about it, or broken with the lazy old American habit that supposes that war is always “over there.”

And there’s also that issue of Americans believing in democracy, freedom, and human rights. What ever happened with all that?