Insane in the Brain
While it’s a good sign that the Iraq Survey Group didn’t ask the craziest neocon ideologues for their opinions on Iraq, I think it’s useful to remember that these loons still have tremendous influence over our foreign policy. And even though the neocons have driven us straight over a cliff in Iraq, they are showing no signs of retreating or rethinking their core ideas. Take Fred Barnes’ latest piece in the Weekly Standard, for instance:
Moxie in the Executive
How not to be a lame duck.by Fred Barnes
IN DEALING WITH the new Democratic Congress, President Bush is said to have a big choice to make. To get anything done, he either has to compromise with Democrats or ally himself with an as-yet-unformed majority coalition of Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But there’s a third option: take bold moves on his own, based on his presidential powers.
In other words, give Congress the finger and strut around like a fucking king.
It’s nice to see that the neocons have such respect for the democratic process of checks and balances, no?
The president, stung by the defeat of Republicans in the midterm election, may be reluctant to step out on his own. The safer tack would be to negotiate with Congress to pass legislation in hopes of enhancing the legacy of his presidency. That’s the normal exit strategy for presidents.
But Bush has little to lose and much to gain by acting on his own. His legacy will be determined largely by the outcome in Iraq and in the war on terror–and we may not know that verdict for years. Congressional passage of a compromise measure on, say, immigration or education reform would be nice, but neither is likely to affect his legacy in a major way. So why not be bold and go unilateral?
Here are ways the president can do just that. All they require is maximum moxie.
Barnes talks about Bush the same way I used to talk about the Ultimate Warrior when I was seven years old. “C’mon, Warrior, get up off the mat!” I used to say, milk dripping out from my nostrils. “Just ’cause Hulk’n’Andre the Giant are double-teamin’ ya shouldn’t make ya scared!! MAXIMUM MOXIE!!!! TO THE EXTREEEEEEME!!!”
Gavin adds:
Above: Bring it, yo.
Fire generals. President Lincoln did this in the Civil War and, once he put General Grant in charge, got results. Lincoln held his generals accountable. When they failed, he replaced them. Bush’s generals have failed to come close to achieving their most important task: pacifying Baghdad. His attitude is, if they’re wrong, I’m wrong. It should be,
if they fail, they go.
Hey, I’m all for firing generals if they don’t do their jobs well. But let’s be fair here: when the only instructions coming from the Pentagon are “Stay the Course!” and “Henny-Penny, Goodness Gracious!” I don’t think they deserve to be blamed for the war’s failure.
Keep John Bolton as American ambassador to the United Nations.
Give judicial nominees recess appointments. Bush did this with judges Charles Pickering and Bill Pryor. Now he could give recess appointments to all his U.S. appeals court nominees, some eight of them, whom Democrats refuse to give floor votes. The judges’ terms would run out at the end of the new Congress in late 2008. But even in that short period of time, their impact would be felt.
Mostly in women’s uteri.
Talk up the military option in Iran. Not with a public announcement, but in leaks. The Iranians seem to believe that they’re home free in pursuing nuclear weapons with American forces tied down in Iraq. But we’re not tied down. The destruction of Iranian nuclear sites would be carried out by airpower. Leaking the details of a contingency plan for doing this would provoke international debate and put the mullahs in a less truculent mood.
Brilliant! When do we start leaking our plans to attack the Mole People?
A final gift to the world.
Flowers? A box of candy, perhaps? That lovely Salad Shooter the world has been eyeing?
As Bush is leaving office in January 2009, he could implement the military option and take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Oh.
Gavin adds: This bypasses the slight problem that there’s as yet no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Then again, it boldly confronts the problem of a gigantic radioactive cloud from bombed nuclear facilities sweeping across the Middle East and/or Europe, and/or Asia or Africa.
The world would be aghast–but also relieved and, without admitting it, enormously grateful.
And they’re still thanking us for invading Iraq.
The new president would have one less crisis to deal with. So would the United Nations. Terrorists might respond, but we could brace for that. Anything they did would pale next to a nuclear attack by Iran.
Unless they buy a nuke from North Korea. But hey, we can brace for it! Problem solved!
So there’s a lot Bush or any president could do if he’s willing to be audacious. More than most presidents, Bush has been willing (and often eager) to thumb his nose at the Washington elites and break out on his own.
And just look at where it’s gotten us:
He’ll have a perfect opportunity to do this again in his final two years in the White House–and in even more daring ways. It might give his legacy a boost, too.
That last point is largely true- if Bush takes Barnes’ advice, it will secure his legacy as the worst president this country has ever seen.
“So there’s a lot Bush or any president could do if he’s willing to be audacious.”
“Any president,” and especially this one, can be audaciously wrong. I count on this President to compound the countless mistakes and grossly negligent acts he’s already committed.
Breathtaking in its stupidity.
These are the people who have had Bush’s ear for the past six years, remember. All his awful decisions make more sense now, no?
Frickin’ Straussians.
Freddy’s just trying to make a splash in the blogs. Dubya’s got a half-billion dollar library to think about.
I fully encourage Bush to be audacious and act on his own. I mean, look where it got Richard Nixon.
The Neo-Cons are a disease. I really think we reality-based folk- and you don’t have to be very reality-based to be against the Neo-Cons- should do our utmost to find a way to discredit the Neo-conservatives thoroughly. I mean like, make them worse than laughingstocks. You would think that the people would already consider them discredited, but you would be wrong.
I guess that since they consider themselves to be a vanguard group whose purpose is to destroy western liberalism, and since they don’t care about the damage this does to society, their actions make sense if you understand that.
But we have to find a way to completely expose and discredit Neo-conservatism. Otherwise, they will start war after war in coming years, and do their best to make the USA into a theocracy.
Hey Brad, can you fix that link to the Weekly Standard? I want to show someone just how frikkin’ insane these Neo-cons are.
Link fixed.
Also, the neocons have done a pretty good job of discreditng themselves. Now it’s up to the American public to never again elect someone who is crazy enough to listen to them.
Fuck that shit. He’s been “strut[ting] around like a fucking king” since 2000. The only difference in 2006 is that someone in Congress might speak up against him. He needs to slapped down, and congress needs to make a serious effort to stop his ruinious policies and rampant corruption. He wont come around voluntarily, he must be brought to bear by force. Investigate, cut off funds, and do anything necessary to hamstring the criminal regime, until they can be brought in front of a court and prosecuted for their crimes.
Shorter Barnes: “It’s okay, I’m pretty sure we can struggle our way out. First, reach in and pull your legs out. Now, pull your arms out with your face!”
It’s stuff like this which makes me realize what a “great” President GWB is. I mean think about it, in any sane world, would this sort of punditry be considered mainstream? Of course not, after being so wrong, so often, the guy would be (at worst) laughed off stage or (at best) labeled fringe and have an angry mob descend upon him with tar and feathers.
But this is George W. Bush’s America. The goal posts have been shifted. This is “acceptable” debate. Calling for withdrawal, saying the war was based on a line, hell demanding impeachment, even if all three of those are now supported by a majority of Americans? Oh no, that’s unhinged far leftist rhetoric not worthy of being paid attention to.
Brad:
1. thanks for the link.
2. Also, the neocons have done a pretty good job of discreditng themselves. Now it’s up to the American public to never again elect someone who is crazy enough to listen to them.
I dunno Brad, I talk to my co-workers and they don’t seem particularly clued in about the insanity of this administration. Lets do ourselves a favor and not under-estimate the Neo-Cons. I’m dead serious.
No, no, I think this guy is onto something. “Brace for it” could be the super-panacea for every problem we have. No more civil liberties? BRACE FOR IT!!! Jobs being sent overseas? BRACE FOR IT!!!! Halliburton building internment camps on American soil? BRACE FOR IT!!!! Reinstitution of a draft to send everyone under the age of 41 off to Iraq with a gun in their hand? BRACE FOR IT!!!! Our economy utterly dependent on the charity of Red China? BRACE FOR… yeah, you got it.
See, if you just BRACE FOR bad stuff, well, then, problem solved! Global warming, peak oil, the dying oceans, the destruction of the rain forest, monopolization of the media… no matter what the issue is, no matter how difficult… we can just BRACE FOR IT and all will be well!
It’s genius! It’s not only something we can do to empower ourselves in an increasingly complex and dangerous world, but it’s FREE! Hell, if those sissy generals and their sissy troops in Iraq would just BRACE FOR IT, we’d have rolled up the opposition a long time ago!
I do, however, think it’s irresponsible of the conservative media to leak our best strategies so promiscuously. Islamofascist agents could be phoning the top strategists of the new global caliphate right now, and tomorrow our troops would have to somehow withstand an all new, all different onslaught of Al Qaeda led insurrectionists, all of whom would be BRACING THEMSELVES, and therefore, invincible! Jesus! Somebody increase taxes on the poor! It’s our only hope!
This column is the same kind of tactic I use with my cats. I watch what they’re going to do based on what they always do, and then I tell them to do it. It doesn’t keep them from biting housemates or hairballing on the carpet or sitting on newspapers and keyboards, but it makes me look somewhat influential while having absolutely no influence at all.
Let’s face it, your other choice is to stand there and scream at the president to remember he is not king, and look stupid when he ignores you and yaks on the carpet anyway. Of course you have to be careful not to praise them for scratching up the couch, or you’ll end up penning bizarre paragraphs in which you declare them to be of extraordinary, but unregarded, genius. And then everybody knows you’re not really in control, you’re just their bitch.
“BRACE FOR IT” – I was under the impression that was the term for Norman* foreplay…
*insert your favoirte rape ‘n pillage horde here…
If only there was an Andy to Bush’s Barney Fife.
Bush’s Sheriff Andy is, unfortunately, Dick Cheney.
Yeah. It really IS that dark outside.
Brrrrr. I like it better when we all makes with the jokes. Now I gots to start drinking or smoking crack or something to make the pain go away for a while.
Brrrrr.
This makes perfect sense, because it is obvious that this administration’s chief problem up to now has been it’s eagerness to compromise with Congress and the judiciary and, and…
Damn, I just can’t keep up the wingnutty goodness. How many rocks did they have to look under to find Fred Barnes?
Well, it’s too early in the morning here for heavy drinking, dammit. I did look up “as-yet-unformed majority coalition” in my Neocon-to-English dictionary and discovered it means “feverish, panicked, last-ditch fantasy of one in deep denial.”
Also, the older Fred Barnes gets, the more he looks like Mr. Carlson from WKRP, so I fully expect to see him in an exploding-turkey suit next time he appears here.
Is that why he was known as “Freddy the beetle Barnes”? Did he actually come from beneath a rock?
The only last gift to the world that W can give is a murder-suicide pact with Cheney. The world waits with baited breath…
How much dope has Fred Barnes done? Is he injecting uncut heroin into his eyeballs?
WTF is wrong with him? Attack Iran in January 2009? And thinking it would make the next President’s job easier?
I think Barnes just wants to play catcher to Bush’s pitching one more time.
The new president would have one less crisis to deal with. So would the United Nations.
How true. Preemptively attacking another Middle-Eastern nation right before leaving office would reduce the number of crises the new president and the UN will have to deal with. Uh-huh. Is this a tacit admission that Mr. Barnes thinks the next president will be a Democrat? Because this seems to be a rather shallow gloss of “Shit the bed! Shit it GOOD!”
Fire generals. President Lincoln did this in the Civil War and, once he put General Grant in charge, got results. Lincoln held his generals accountable. When they failed, he replaced them.
See, if only Bush would have fired those generals who disagree with him, we’d have been out of Iraq in six months, certainly less than a year.
More than most presidents, Bush has been willing (and often eager) to thumb his nose at the Washington elites and break out on his own.
Right! This son of a CIA director/vice president/president surrounded himself with “Washington-outsiders” with fresh perspectives direct from the Nixon administration and hardened by real-world experience in the Iran-Contra debacle. Together they thumbed their collective noses at the “Washington elites” who think they’re “experts” just because they “studied the region” and “speak the language” and stuff.
Well, mds, it would leave the middle east as one, uniform, living hell, rather than a number of discrete countries with differenct challenges- so from that standpoint, it would be reducing the number of problems by replacing them with one huge, festering, violent, lethal one.
yeh. the funny doesn’t come easy on this one.
Dorothy: See, if only Bush would have fired those generals who disagree with him, we’d have been out of Iraq in six months, certainly less than a year.
s/Iraq/generals/
“So why not be bold and go unilateral?”
He totally had a boner when he wrote that.
Of all the Beltway Buttbuddies, Barnes has to have the most embarrassing, giggly mancrush on W of them all.
Handsome said,
December 7, 2006 at 17:09
Bush’s Sheriff Andy is, unfortunately, Dick Cheney.
Hmm. That would be just like the old Andy Griffith show, except the Sherriff Taylor character has been replaced by Hannibal Lector.
“…the neocons have driven us straight over a cliff in Iraq…”
Over a cliff?…in Iraq?
I don’t know what topography you’re looking at, pal. But I see a whole bunch of plain and a whole bunch of desert over there. Maybe it’s time you got a fresh metaphor. You’re starting to sound like those two old senile heads of the Iraq Study Group.
Shorter Jose Chung: Let’s keep americans dying in iraq every day so I can maintain an erection…
mikey
Shorter Jose Chung: Despite having mountains, the fact is there are no cliffs in Iraq.
Fred Barnes! Babe, I love those tortoise-shell glasses! They’re more 1982-Reagan-retro than a letterhead done Copperplate font laying on a checkerboard-and-faux-marbled desktop from Z Gallerie. You’re a guy who knows power, and just because you stammer and babble like a grandmother trying to scrub a stain out of her pantyhose, just because you’re relegated to a c-team slot across the desk from a closet-homo self-hating moonbat named Kondracke who goes through five cans of Aqua Net a month, let it be known that the tortoiseshell is eternal, like a Julio Iglesias LP or a yellow silk tie, and confers on its owner the ability to part fern at a DC bar to leer at the latest crop of Hill assistants merely by pushing them up your nose.
His Grace, you think reality is going to start mattering to righties like Jose NOW?!?
Come on, it’s an easy corollary: Irag is a desert; deserts are flat; therefore there are no cliffs in Iraq. Wingnut Logic!
owlbear1: How many copies of The Pet Goat do you think that half a billion dollars can buy? 🙂
“His legacy will be determined largely by the outcome in Iraq and in the war on terror–and we may not know that verdict for years.”
Using my keen analytical powers, I’m willing to hazard a guess and say the Invasion of Iraq and TWAT (The War Against Terror) will be complete disasters…because they already are numbnuts!
Jesus these asshats keep sucking down the dumb juice.
BTW Jose, I have been to Iraq…they do in fact have cliffs.
TC, I know it is pretty stupid of me to hope that basic logical reasoning skills (let alone some semblance of intellectual honesty) will appear in the likes of Jose. His counter argument that Bush’s Iraq policy has not failed because Iraq’s geography doesn’t have any cliffs is a brilliant standalone example of wingnuttery. It is made all the more perfect that his arrogant belief that there is not one cliff in the 167,929 sq. mi of Iraq can be shown counter factual by a simple Google search.
I know it is pointless to argue against the obvious liberal bias of reality. On many levels arguing with someone who has the idiocy to argue not the aptness of a metaphor, but whether it is literally true is pointless. Even so, if someone doesn’t, pretty soon it won’t be just evolution and sex ed they will be trying to take out of schools.
His Grace,
No, be honest. In all of the thousands of images from Iraq where did you ever see a cliff or a mountain?
Sure. Why not take a shit on the Oval Office desk while he’s at it?
The Neo-Cons are a disease. I really think we reality-based folk- and you don’t have to be very reality-based to be against the Neo-Cons- should do our utmost to find a way to discredit the Neo-conservatives thoroughly.
You don’t fight a disease by discrediting it. Did we try to discredit polio? No, we didn’t. We came up with a vaccine and did everything we could to wipe polio from the face of the planet.
The same policy should apply to neo-cons. They’re far too dangerous to be merely contained. If we don’t destroy them completely once we have the upper hand, they’ll be back.
OK Jose, honestly, it was in this ad I saw from Iraqi Kurdistan
I’m sure you are going to come back to me and go something like Kurdistan isn’t really part of Iraq, and thus move the goal posts again.
But honestly, do you think that because you believe that Iraq doesn’t have cliffs (even though you have been contradicted in this matter) that such a “fact” constitutes a valid argument against saying (using a cliff based metaphor) that Bush’s Iraq policy is a failure? Sadly, I think I know the answer.
What’s next in the Jose Chung series of arguments? When hyperbole is used to describe the enormity of the task the US has in Iraq, quibble over whether or not it is worse than rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity?
[…] Oy. Just read. […]
Maybe Iraq is like Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “The desert is three weeks in every direction”, except, you know, when Indy careens his ‘jacked truck into the Nazi jeep running along side him through the oasis — and suddenly, there’s this HUGE FUCKING CLIFF for the Nazi jeep to go hurtling off into the abyss! “WAUUGGGHHHHH!!!!” scream the Nazis as they plummet to their gravity induced doom. Remember how we laughed when we saw that? Good times. GOOD times.
All this shows is that in Raiders, God is totally on Indy’s side, even if Indy starts off the movie not believing in him. And that’s just how cool God is. And Iraq is like that. Our generals can drive us right off a cliff in Iraq even if there aren’t any cliffs in Iraq, because God is on their side, even if they don’t believe in him.
If anyone understood any of that, I beseech you to explain it to me. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here drinking way too much Robitussin.
Oh wait Jose. I’m sorry. There probably aren’t any hills in Iraq either. I mean, I haven’t seen any hills when watching the Fox news coverage of Iraq, so obviously that makes me an expert on its geography. This complete lack of hills is an important fact and distinction as it makes it impossible for me to make an argument involving the labours of Sisyphus.
hey Handsome have you been to Good Time Island as well?
good times!
but I think you accurately describe the fantasy world that neocons and the majority of republicans inhabit – bravo
Hugely,
I rarely watch Bravo. Way too many flitty types. And Jesus, I got sick of WEST WING after the fourth season.
I’ve avoided commenting before but I’m currently stationed in Kurdistan(in Iraq and I’m home on leave at this moment) amd there are cliffs all over the damn place. Not that the existence of actual cliffs has shit all to do with the aptness of any given metaphor.
Oh and I’ve avoided commenting just because I’ve never actually commented on any blogs before.
Well, Dave, you did a fine job your first time here. Mr. Roarke? Where’s Dave’s welcome lei?
You don’t fight a disease by discrediting it. Did we try to discredit polio? No, we didn’t. We came up with a vaccine and did everything we could to wipe polio from the face of the planet.
You say tomato, I say tomahto…
OK, call it a vaccine. Whatever metaphor works for ya. I just mean that we have to make them look as bad as Nazis now do to the majority of the populace. That would be enough.
I think we are talking about the same thing in different words, Realist.
Ok so I can’t do links. So sue me.
OK, call it a vaccine. Whatever metaphor works for ya.
Wait, is that vaccine driving over a cliff or rolling up a hill? I’m confused.
I’m sure you are going to come back to me and go something like Kurdistan isn’t really part of Iraq, and thus move the goal posts again.
Ha, HG, the flaws in your argument are now clear. There are no goal posts in Iraq.
I think they all play beach volleyball, or cricket.
Fire generals. President Lincoln did this in the Civil War and, once he put General Grant in charge, got results.
And if Ulysses Grant was somehow resurrected and put in charge of Iraq, the first thing he would say is “wars are won by logistics – why can’t you keep your troops supplied? Where the fuck are your reserves? And what’s this ‘Green Zone’ shit?”
Then, he’d go back to the bottle – which is exactly what I’d be doing if I suddenly found myself in charge of the “occupation”.
If you want to know what’s wrong with the US military, go read former 173rd Airborne Lt Col Anthony Herbert’s “Soldier”. It’s about Vietnam, but absolutely nothing has changed in the mindset of the officer corps since then.
The world would be aghast–but also relieved and, without admitting it, enormously grateful.
Oh sure, the world may be SAYING “No, no!” – but you know what THAT really means. Look, the world was wearing thong underwear, okay? And everybody knows that France, in particular, gets excited when you treat her a little rough.
Rarely do I post without reading the comments first, but this idiocy required an immediate response.
Any response to Iran should be precluded by a diplomatic inquiry and dialogue. We’ve avoided the obvious for far too long, as James Baker stated (and I’m no fan): Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer).
I know he didn’t coin it but it remains true. Syria and Iran are important players in the arena, and to ignore them would be a crucial mistake.
We need to play smart, not hard. That has been our Achille’s heel for decades. The area is complicated and above our understanding for years, but we maintain the Cold War doctrines that proclaim that our standing in the world community renders us immune to the rules of the region.
That is over, and we are still learning.
I hope we learn fast enough to make a positive difference.