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Hugh “Ol’ Gunny” Hewitt standing watch at Firebase Borders, where the lead is hot, but the frappes are cold.

When General Petraeus Reports (Johnny Won’t Be Marching Home Again)

President Bush made an excellent speech this week

And my grandfather, according to his nurse, made an excellent doodie. I suspect these two events will wind up having an equal effect on the war in Iraq.

…laying out the case that al Qaeda in Iraq is a subsidiary of al Qaeda in Waziristan…

Although for tax purposes they’re incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

His central premise –a retreat in Iraq means a huge win for al Qaeda everywhere it organizes– was carefully constructed and reasoned and simply cannot be argued by the war’s critics, only ignored.

Well, our withdrawl wouldn’t exactly provide a big bump in business for al Qaeda in Iraq, now would it? And if some of those troops were diverted to Afghanistan, I don’t imagine that would really boost morale at the home office. Oops, sorry — I forgot that the president simply cannot be argued with, only ignored. The problem is, he will not be ignored! So either I engage his argument and he fakes a suicide attempt, or I ignore his speech, and get boiled lagomorph for dinner.

There is a certain panic in the anti-war leadership as they see the same data that pro-surge commentators do, and understand that the unmistakable momentum on the side of the coalition threatens to bolster support for victory in Iraq. Victory in Iraq –the creation of a stable, functioning representative government protected by a strong Iraqi military capable of and committed to the suppression of terrorism and sectarian violence– would be a vindication of the Bush Doctrine

Whereas the situation we have currently achieved in Iraq is a vindication of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, that crappy Star Trek episode with Frank Gorshin as an alien with the complexion of a spectator pump who spends 50,000 years chasing another harlequin-faced dude around the galaxy because he stole Frank’s idea for the mock turtleneck. So Frank hijacks the Enterprise, but when he and the other Othello game piece get back home they find that all the Star Belly Sneetches and all the Plain Belly Sneetches have exterminated each other, leaving the two color-coordinated antagonists to chase each other through a lifeless, smoldering, irradiated landscape for all eternity. However, if George W. Bush was the captain, I have a feeling Hugh would find a way to spin this as a victory for Federation diplomacy.

…and although it would also be in the very best interests of the country as a whole, the left sees a political disaster in such an outcome, and has hence redoubled its efforts to tarnish not just the president who ordered the war, but also the generals who lead it, and the soldiers who fight it. In the service of this last objective, The New Republic was pleased to bring its readers the now infamous “Baghdad Diarist,” but that is just one of the more visible libels on the troops dressed up as “reporting” intended to be understood as a generally applicable view of the conduct of America’s military.

Don’t you hate these guys who think, just because they’re “on the ground” and “writing” about things they’ve “witnessed,” that they’re “reporting?” That’s not reporting, that’s libelling. Reporting doesn’t consist of some jerk wandering around a war-torn country, interviewing people, taking photos, and describing events. The real reporting takes place back in the states, when bloggers prove the reporter in Iraq doesn’t exist.

Of course the victory hasn’t been won, and of course the argument about the war isn’t going to vanish even if General Petraeus gives an optimistic report in mid-September. But that report will matter a great deal, and I hope the Administration takes steps to assure that the American people get to hear it without the filter of the MSM or a Democratically-controlled Senate or House panel doing its best to muffle the good news and amplify the bad news.

I hope that General Petraeus appears before a respectful audience interested in his report and gives his remarks prefaced by an appeal to the MSM to at least play, uninterrupted, the first five minutes of his talk.

Or better yet, just let him deliver it from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia. That usually fires up the proles.

If he then provided an executive summary of what he thinks is the situation in Iraq, there is an excellent chance that the American people will be allowed to hear the key facts from the key military leader.

I hear Pinochet’s available.

I hope after that summary he proceeds to deliver a detailed speech which the responsible networks will carry live (and radio hosts will replay) and that he then takes an hour of questions, before appearing before any Senate or House panel (which he will of course make himself available for.) Even though the day is long, I hope he ends it with Brit Hume…

That seems a bit harsh. Couldn’t they just waterboard him instead?

…followed by Charlie Rose, and then appears on Meet The Press and Wolf Blitzer’s program the following Sunday, thus making himself available to the four best television interviewers working today. On the Monday following the Sunday shows, I hope he appears on the programs of Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved…

Here’s a tip: With that many clowns, you’re going to want to Armor-All the vinyl seats first, that way they can all pour out of the tiny car much more smoothly.

In the course of these talks, speeches, hearings and interviews, I hope General Petraeus does two key things.

That’s Gaius Julius Petraeus to you, pal.

First, I hope he communicates a realistic timetable for success in Iraq.

Using the Gregorian Calendar is just depressing people. He needs to start framing the debate in geologic time.

While he may commit to making quarterly reports, support for the war has to be informed by realism as to how long it will take to bring about victory.

Until an asteroid hits Iraq and causes terrorists to undergo a global extinction event?

Bluntly giving his best assessment of a timetable to victory will serve notice on the enemy that the military is prepared to go the distance

Even if the weak-kneed civilian leadership gives up on the war, the military will not be moved. Any future Democratic Administration would have to scurry around Iraq, popping each individual soldier out of his foxhole with a prybar.

…and it will also give the public a measuring stick not just for our effort their but for Congressional support for it as well. General Petraeus has been attacked by the anti-war fringe

If your fringed shawl is 30% shawl and 70% fringe, chances are it’s not really a fringed shawl, but a regular shawl that’s just really badly unraveling.

I also hope General Petraeus tells us how many foreign jihadists have been killed in Iraq in the months since the surge began.

Because as Hugh and the other hawks never tire of pointing out, there is no similarity between Iraq and Vietnam. And what better way to demonstrate that than by measuring the progress of the war with body counts?

I know the policy against giving body counts, and debated it on air with Tony Snow recently, but I hope the Pentagon will see that there is a huge difference between tallies of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed in the ’60s and the ’70s, and the number of international terrorists dispatched in Iraq in 2007.

In one case, the corpses were sort of yellowish, and in the other, they’re kind of brown.

The president made an excellent case in Charleston that we cannot allow al Qaeda to establish a base of operations in Iraq…

Um, Hugh? I hate to be the one to tell you this, but uh…

But that threat is still not real to many Americans. Why they refuse to believe the obvious is a problem

Hugh’s job used to be easy, but all these educated immigrants from India and Asia pouring into the U.S. have increased the average IQ, and decreased the National Gullibility Index. Damn you ICE!

…but the one measurement they may understand are the numbers of foreigners who travel to Iraq to make jihad against us. We can’t know that exact number, but we can establish a minimum of the number of them killed by our military before they ever had the chance to take jihad anywhere else.

Maybe, finally, the American people will wake up when they see the large numbers of dead jihadist toddlers, militant teddy bears, and terrorist binkies caught by our new body count system.

Every dead terrorist in Iraq represents a significant victory for American security (and every foreign jihadist there is there against the wishes of the lawful government of Iraq and must be considered a terrorist.)

Except the Shiite ones. And to be fair, the Sunni foreign jihadists are there with the express good wishes of the lawful government of Saudi Arabia. But I’m sure there’s some radical Baha’i terrorists we can all hate on together.

The numbers of these terrorists in the country and the number of them killed matter a great deal, as they communicate to the American public a sense of the scale of the threat we face in Iraq. Had we left when the Democrats wanted us to leave last year or early this year, those terrorists killed since the surge began would not only be alive…

But so would several hundred American soldiers.  And several thousand Iraqi civilians.  And where would we put them all?  We’d have to send the kids down to the Piggly Wiggly for more ice, and Bob would have to put a leaf in the table. 

…they would have greater training, greater ambitions, greater momentum, and a sense of mission that could carry many of them to the West. If the United States doesn’t fight them in Iraq, we will indeed be fighting them in the county or in the countries of our allies.

Well, we shouldn’t have offered to host Mesopotamian Civil War XII: Caliphate Smackdown!  Yeah, it brings in the tourist dollar, but it’s going to screw up traffic in the downtown area for weeks.

General Petraeus and the officers and troops he commands have been winning huge victories for the American people as well as for Iraqis since January

Even though we’re told that the surge only started two weeks ago. Well, I’m sure the General has won many famous moral victories. And probably several huge pyrrhic ones too.

and the significance of those victories deserves to be spelled out for the public and broadcast by the MSM. If General Petraeus asks for five minutes and doesn’t get it from the networks, the outrage will be real and sustained.

Well.  It’ll be sustained anyway. 

If he does get those five minutes I hope he assembles the facts that Americans need to hear and which will confirm for them not just the excellence of their military and the skill and courage with which they fight, but also the significance of their mission and the necessity of the awful sacrifices made by so many men and women. 

I recommend he open with a joke.

22 Responses to “Come On, You Guys Haven’t Given This War A Chance!”

If your fringed shawl is 30% shawl and 70% fringe, chances are it’s not really a fringed shawl, but a regular shawl that’s just really badly unraveling.

That about covers it, yep.

Some of these guys, you know they cannot possibly believe that staying in Iraq, or invading Iraq in the first place, makes us safer. Hugh? I’m pretty sure he believes everything he’s saying.

No, I see Cheney as more of an action flick, with Dick a la Steven Segal, and not just because they both share the same range of emoting and facial expression.

You know, “They laughed when Gerald Ford called appointing him ‘the worst mistake’ of his presidency. He’s been saddled by CIA stooges who needed constant hand-holding and threats, and he’s been flustered by his W. puppet whose strings just keep getting all tangled up. But worst of all, his insightful policies have been maliciously screwed up by incompetents every step of the way. Enough is enough.

“Now, after finishing sharpening his turkey carving knife he’s back and ready for revenge, in Cheney: Hard to Die.”

I for one can’t wait for the scene where Cheney snaps Mitt Romney’s elbows.

Oops. Sorry about that — had too many windows up. That was meant for the K-Lo thread.

Hey Hugh, SHOW US YOUR TITS!

Are you trying to give everyone nightmares, Goseph? Or just turn us all into bulimics for life?

[Now that I think about it, "Bulimics For Life" sounds like an anti-abortion group.]

First, I hope he communicates a realistic timetable for success in Iraq.
[...] Bluntly giving his best assessment of a timetable to victory will serve notice on the enemy that the military is prepared to go the distance

B-b-but but giving any kind of timetable at all will embolden the enemy and tell them they just need to wait us out…right? Our Leader tells us that, over and over and over again.

Surely Hugh isn’t contradicting Our Leader? Say it isn’t so!

I am trying SO HARD to work how “General Petraeus” sounds like a character in one of the latter-day George Lucas screw-ups, AND sounds like “General Betray-us,” into a single joke.

The numbers of these terrorists in the country and the number of them killed matter a great deal

Does the emphasis on killing people bother anyone but me? I know that they’re not caucasians, but still, isn’t not killing people generally a goal of a civilized society? Settling differences with diplomacy, instead of invading hapless countries? Or did I just smoke too much grass in the 70s? (I suppose these questions aren’t necessarily related.)

Not just crappy propaganda, but really boring CP. ZZZZzzz… I doubt even his loyal audience got past the third paragraph. Ick.

Does anyone with a functioning brain really believe anything this twit says? If this bit is an example of Hugh Spewit’s grip on logic, one wonders how he made it through law school – but it’s even harder to believe this guy is a high-dollar lawyer.

“While he may commit to making quarterly reports, support for the war has to be informed by realism as to how long it will take to bring about victory.”

Oh, why start now?

“General Petraeus and the officers and troops he commands have been winning huge victories for the American people as well as for Iraqis since January”

Hugh? We’ve been winning huge victories for the American people as well as the Iraqis for FOUR FUCKING YEARS!

This whole “the democrats aren’t letting the REAL information on Iraq come out!” schtick is pissing me off to no end.

The Republicans need to listen to Jesus for once and attend to the huge fucking supporting beam that’s sticking out of their eyeballs.

Every fucking day of this war the Bush administration has been assuring us that we’re no more then 8 months to a year away from victory.

Suppose I listen ONLY to the official white house line on the war, and ignore every other piece of reporting on the planet.

Here’s what I know:

They said there were weapons of mass destruction.

There weren’t.

They said it was mission accomplished.

It wasn’t.

They’ve made dozens of predictions about how close we are to wrapping things up, all of which have turned out to be wrong.

Why in the hell would we trust White House prediction about this war when they’ve been wrong EVERY DAMN TIME, and THEY ADMIT OUTRIGHT that they’ve been wrong.

This war is a huge failure when judged SOLELY on the standards that the White House has set.

They don’t need the help of the Democrats to look like incompetent fuckups.

Does the emphasis on killing people bother anyone but me? I know that they’re not caucasians, but still, isn’t not killing people generally a goal of a civilized society?

Oh, yeah, it creeps me out how much these people seem to really, really enjoy watching/reading about/thinking about other people dying. After six years, though, it just no longer surprises me.

“On the Monday following the Sunday shows, I hope he appears on the programs of Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved…”

Yeah, no one would accuse him of being a partisan hack with a political agenda anymore after that…

“there is a huge difference between tallies of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed in the ’60s and the ’70s, and the number of international terrorists dispatched in Iraq in 2007″

Uhh…How? Sorry Hugh, I’m not calling you a liar necessarily. But if you’re going to make a claim like that you’re going to have to back it up with some hard facts if you want people to believe it.

One of the Institutes, or sThink Tanks, has a group of “C” High School students ghostwriting up this pigslop. Then they send it out to their various pundits.

“I hope, I hope, I hope…”

Crise, reading that I feel like I’m peering into the bedroom of a 14 year old whacking with a fury on the strength of his hopes.

Then the Rush-Co orgy and finally the climax and the after math where he assures himself that the General loves him/this war like no other before him, it is different, he swears.

And now that they will go and declare their love in the streets, woe be to those who dare to cross them and deny their love!

He should be writing pulp romance.

There is a certain panic in the anti-war leadership as they see the same data that pro-surge commentators do, and understand that the unmistakable momentum on the side of the coalition threatens to bolster support for victory in Iraq.

What assholes like Hewitt fail to understand is that this is not a GAME to us. I would fucking well LOVE to believe that, against all common sense, the war is going to be won and peace and democracy will flower in Iraq. I’m not playing to WIN–something a loathsome apparatchik like Hewitt is incapable of understanding, because all he fucking cares about is his side being “right.” And you know, maugre the fact that it would make him even MORE insufferable, I wish like hell he were. Unfortunately, whenever I try to emulate his deranged, sunny optimism, my brain kicks in and I realize how fucked we are. I have to tell you, being reality-based is a great burden.

Is that Stephen King’s evil twin?

…laying out the case that al Qaeda in Iraq is a subsidiary of al Qaeda in Waziristan…

…and don’t miss the grand opening of al Qaeda’s newest, faboo location, al Qaeda of East Paramus! The first 500 customers get a free novelty IED (1 per customer–I mean, how many do you freaking need? ).

There is a certain panic in the anti-war leadership … (blah blah blah)…would be a vindication of the Bush Doctrine

BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA!!!1!!1!
*hee hee*
[ wipes tear from eye ]
…Oh, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t spray anyone with spittle!
That Hugh–he so fonny!

leaving the two color-coordinated antagonists to chase each other through a lifeless, smoldering, irradiated landscape for all eternity.

…Or, get same-sex married. I mean, the world is already destroyed–what harm could it do? And you just know that it’s legal in that über-liberal Star Trek future!

…and although it would also be in the very best interests of the country as a whole

And if I had all of Bill Gates’ fortune, I’d be able to buy every WO’C reader a really huge ferris wheel, a mansion, and a yacht, but in spite of me really, really wanting all that money, somehow it hasn’t fallen into my lap. And, strangely enough, no matter how tightly Dumbya scrunches up his little face, or how often he flops to the ground as if he were boneless… well, you know.
Iraq.

Even though the day is long, I hope he ends it with Brit Hume…

Eeeeewwww!! Fagz! And with a uniform fetish, yet!

Using the Gregorian Calendar is just depressing people. He needs to start framing the debate in geologic time.

Ur just full of bon mots today, scott. Classic! Brah-veaux!

I also hope General Petraeus tells us how many foreign jihadists have been killed in Iraq in the months since the surge began.

Oh, free or four!
Hope, hope, hope–Hugh’s just fulla it, ain’t he? If you know what I mean, and I’ll bet you do!

[...] but I hope the Pentagon will see that there is a huge difference between tallies of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed in the ’60s and the ’70s, and the number of international terrorists dispatched in Iraq in 2007.

[ head explodes ]
Man, I don’t know how you manage to slog all the way through one of Hugh’s ‘orrible, ‘orrible so-called columns. Blek! Ptui! Ugh–it’s true! They do leave a crappy taste in yer mouth! It’s almost enough to drive one to… naah!
I’d do that anyway.

I didn’t think it was possible to write that much stupid in one essay. Hewitt is a master, I tell ya.

Reading this, I was struck by how much Hugetits sounds like a four year old describing his first roller coaster ride:

So we stood on line a lonnnnnnnnnnnnng time, for hours! and then we got to the front of the line and then we waited for the next train to come in the station and then we waited for the people who were in the train to get out and then they got out on the other side and then the gates swung open and then I got bumped on the head and then we climbed into the train and then grandpa had to help him in and then and then he pulled the seatbelt around me and then the bar came down in my lap and then the train started moving…

Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum.

I’m pretty sure he believes everything he’s saying.

Well, D., say it again: it’s past time to wonder about the whole mental illness vs. paid liar stuff and hold them accountable, in the criminal sense, in the same way George Bush would execute a microencephalic–in a heartbeat. But look at the number of things one must believe to grant Sugar Tits Hewitt a modicum of honesty: he believed, serially, in Iraq’s possession of nuclear weapons, and the immanent threat of their use, Mission Accomplished and an End to Major Combat operations, no insurgency, an insurgency consisting of a few dead enders, an insurgency in its last throes, of fighting them Over There, not Over Here, the glories of the first Iraq vote, the glories of the second, of the third, of the rough draft of the Constitution, of the second draft, that Bush was the answer, that Rumsfeld was the answer, that Bremer was the answer, that Gen. Petraeus is Da Man, that Gen. Casey was, that Gen Sanchez was, that every major military expert who’s weighed in against our continued presence knows less than Hugh himself, that the Times, via Judy Miller, told the truth about WMDs, despite the absence of evidence, but lied about Abu Gharib, despite plenty, and that anyone who disagrees with him on any subject from environmentalism to estate taxes wants the US to lose and Americans to die just for the thrill of saying Neener Neener to his face. I’m sorry, but my severely demented mother would have seen through all this three years ago.

There is a certain panic in the anti-war leadership as they [...] understand that the unmistakable momentum [blah blah] bolster support [blah] victory in Iraq.

You can sense that Hewitt yearns to use the words ‘Ghost-dance phase’, but he’s struggling against the temptation, for fear of the copyright royalties he would then have to cough up to Doghouse Riley.

but we can establish a minimum of the number of them killed by our military before they ever had the chance to take jihad anywhere else.

This is the argument he he is advising Petraeus to use: After a bombing raid, any corpse found in the vicinity of a weapon is a “dead terrorist [representing] a significant victory for American security”. Any corpses that aren’t armed are “foreigners who travel to Iraq [...] killed by our military before they ever had the chance to take jihad.”

I could make fun of that, but I’d feel dirty afterwards.

Something to say?