Those who discouraged Lucianne Goldberg from paying her son’s tuition at Goucher College, observing that Jonah was too stupid to paper train, let alone to complete an undergraduate degree, were forced to retract at least the first part of their indictment this morning, when Jonah squatted Sumo wrestler-style over the Op-Ed pages and grunted out another steamy pile of ruminations.
AMERICANS ARE torn between two irreconcilable positions on the Iraq war. Some want the war to be a success — variously defined — and some want the war to be over. Conservatives are basically, but not exclusively, in the “success” camp. Liberals (and those further to the left) are basically, but not exclusively, the “over” party. And many people are suffering profound cognitive dissonance by trying to believe these two positions can be held simultaneously.
While Jonah seems to be the one suffering from cognitive dissonance, I have some good news: it’s far from profound. Even better news, Americans aren’t “torn between two irreconcilable positions on the Iraq war” at all. In fact, Bush has done a near Rooseveltian job of uniting our once fractured country, since 70% of oppose escalation of troop levels, and only 35% still believe we were right to invade Iraq in the first place. (Normally, at this point I would suggest that we just call the rest of the column on account of lame, but Jonah has 650 words to go, and 2 teaspoons of Metamucil to process, so all I can say is: I hope you brought a magazine.)
With last night’s speech, President Bush made it clear that he will settle for nothing less than winning it. He may be deluding himself, and his plan may not work, but he at least has done the nation the courtesy of saying what his position is, despite an antagonistic political establishment and a hostile public.
So Jonah’s position is that we ought to respect Bush because at least he has the courage to lie to our faces. To me, that smacks less of fortitude and more of sociopathy, but what I find truly amazing about this column is the implication that Bush’s fantasies about Iraq are morally superior to the Democrats’ realistic assessment of this debacle, because in Bush’s dreams we get to win. Take the title of the piece (ordinarily I don’t hold writers liable for the headlines editors slap onto their work, but this one seems to pretty accurately reflect the contents):
So one’s ethical standing is determined by the content of one’s -like dreams, no matter how surreal. Okay, but according to Jonah’s logic, Bush is morally dwarfed by Miss USA, because while they both share a drinking problem, Bush would be satisfied with stability in Iraq, whereas Miss USA wants world peace.
What is maddening is that the Democratic leadership cannot, or will not, clearly tell the American people whether they are the party of “end it” or “win it.”
Yes. Take the sense of the Senate resolution opposing the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq — what the hell is Jonah supposed to make of that? It’s like these people are speaking in code, or something! Now, I’m not one to bleg, but I urge everyone to send the labels from their jars of rich, chocolately Ovaltine to NRO, so Jonah can get the secret decoder ring that will allow him to translate Nancy Pelosi’s encrypted press releases.
On the one hand, they tell the president that they want this war “brought to a close.” On the other, they refuse to use their power of the purse to do exactly that, opting instead for a symbolic resolution. It may be the wisest political course for them, but it does a disservice to the nation by making the Iraq debate the equivalent of boxing with fog.
Yeah, it’s almost like they don’t want to let concern trolls goad them into passing a law that Bush will effortlessly circumvent through simple accounting tricks, but which would allow the Republicans to relentlessly mau mau the Democrats for starving the troops.
Sorry, Jonah. Your arms too short to box with fog.
Here we have a president forthrightly trying to win a war, and the opposition — which not long ago was in favor of increasing troops, when Bush was against that — won’t say what it wants. This is flatly immoral.
Okay. This is where Jonah stops being an amusing mediocrity and suddenly becomes creepy and loathsome, morphing before our eyes from Kato Kaelin into O.J. Simpson. The Democrats’ opposition to the war is “flatly immoral,” because it hasn’t been couched in the exact combination of magic words acceptable to Jonah. Evidently they need to say “bring our troops home” in Klingonese, or Elvish, or three times in a row while gazing into a mirror. But what Bush is doing — throwing 21,000 more troops into harms way in the hope that if we give the insurgents enough Americans to shoot, eventually they’ll run out of bullets — is a “forthright” effort to “win a war?”
I’ve long thought that Jonah was as intellectually lazy as the Presidential meal ticket to which he clung with limpet-like tenacity , but even I don’t think he’s that stupid. Which means he knows that there is no “surge” of troops in the offing. There’s a trickle of exhausted, overstressed forces that Bush will whizz randomly over Iraq like a drunk signing a snowbank with his own urine. And these additional lives, as well as the lives of all the other U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians will be pissed away so that Bush can run out the clock, until the the whole issue is so immersed in the sturm und drang of the 2008 elections that nobody even wants him to take action on Iraq anymore.
Bush is “deluding himself” to a degree not seen since the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Except the President is not personally getting hacked to pieces – the dismembered knight is simply his employee, so it’s fairly easy for Bush to declare “It’s just a flesh wound!” each time blood geysers from a rudely truncated stump. As long as there are servicemen and women to take bullets on his behalf, Bush won’t be forced to take his medicine — not even the St. Joseph’s flavored baby aspirin served up our cooing and solicitous press corps. Call it Black-Knight-by-Proxy Syndrome.
Another Democratic dodge is the incessant demand for a “political solution” in Iraq. “What is absolutely clear to me is there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq, that only political solutions are going to bring about some semblance of peace,” Sen. Barack Obama declared. This is either childishly naive or reprehensibly dishonest.
To concede that four years after our invasion we have nothing to show for it but blood and anarchy, and to suggest that our only hope of salvation lies in reversing course and talking to Syria, Iran, Sunnis, Shi’ites, Kurds and any other interested parties is ”flatly immoral” and “reprehensibly dishonest”? You know, there came a point where white people were no longer allowed to use the N-word in decent company. At what point will people like Jonah be forbidden to deploy the language of moral outrage, on pain of being frogmarched out of the dinner party?
Saying we need a political solution is as helpful as saying “give peace a chance.” Peace requires more than such pie-eyed verbiage. In the real world, peace has no chance until the people who want to give death squads another shot have been dispatched from the scene.
The fact that Jonah’s side was funding death squads in Central America during the Reagan Administration only proves his point, since once they were dispatched from the scene, peace did indeed prevail. It’s clear that Jonah has made a thorough and thoughtful study of the political history of the 1980s.
It reminds me of the liberal obsession in the 1980s with getting inner-city gangs to settle their differences with break-dance competitions. If only Muqtada Sadr would moonwalk to peace!
Okay, he’s made a thorough and thoughtful study of the plot of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo!
Last night, Bush finally acknowledged what Americans already knew: The war has not gone well.
So if, after screwing up, and after everybody else has already agreed that you’ve screwed up, you’re the last guy to actually admit that you screwed up, that too is a definition of moral courage. Damn, we’re gonna need one whole thesaurus just for this entry.
But he also acknowledged what few Democrats are willing to admit: If we leave — i.e. lose — it will be a disaster, a geostrategic calamity for the United States and quite possibly a genocidal one for the Iraqis.
The only rational course: Continue screwing up! Otherwise, we might look incompetent.
It’s long since forgotten, but perhaps the chief moral argument against the Iraq war in 2003 was that it would create an enormous humanitarian crisis in the form of refugees spilling over the borders, which in turn would destabilize the region. That didn’t happen.
Right. If you ignore the 2 million Iraqis who have already fled the country.
Bush declared last night that “victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship”
To quote Doghouse Riley, “Right. This one’ll be on an aircraft carrier, and it’ll come at the beginning instead of the end.”
Bush came up with the “surge” plan. Will it work? Nobody knows.
But you know a war plan is serious when it has the same probability of success as hitting 33 black in roulette.
But the one thing the American people know about George W. Bush is that he wants to win the war. What the Democrats believe is anybody’s guess.
Well, maybe you have to guess, Jonah, but for me, the Democrats’ message is coming in loud and clear. They want me to drink more Ovaltine.