How Deep is Your Love?
So apprently, The Ole Perfesser decided to launch his own version of the Iraq Study Group the other week by asking all the cranks, loons and bloodthirsty reprobates who read his site to post their own plans for stabilizing Iraq. Their ideas have been predictably hilarious (“Bottom line: “Regime change. More of it.”), even prompting the usually polite Kevin Drum to label them “batshit insane.”
Above: Glenn Reynolds’ roundtable of experts.
The best plan submitted by far has been this 20,000-word masterwork written by an up-and-coming right-wing blogger who calls himself “A Jacksonian.” He basically proposes that we stabilize Iraq by forcing Egypt to invade Syria, and then roll into Saudi Arabia to conquer Mecca. A lot of people have made fun of this piece in passing, but I don’t think that gives it the proper attention it deserves. No, I’m about to go in-depth on this sucker, because I’m the only person in Left Blogistan with the sheer BALLS to do it.
Above: My balls. They’re brass. And they’re big.
Let’s get started, shall we?
So, yes, I have taken time to look at the Middle East, see the problems, trace their roots, look at historical analogies and fits, see what does and does not work in similar situations, and so on. There are quite simple driving forces in the Middle East, but there are many of them. They must be understood individually and then put into interplay which is multi-divided factionalism. A good start there is the War of the Roses and the entire Italian Peninsula circa the Medicis, plus the Spanish Revolution.
Not to mention the Second Punic War, the Battle of the Bulge and World of Warcraft.
That requires that we *do something else*, not just pull out moldy plans and try to apply them but to understand the dynamics in the region and address they dynamics to set up a better and more self-balancing one. In conception the actual plan is extremely simple, but its outcomes are not simplistic. Simplistic plans to address complexity fail due to the complexity shifting in response to the plan.
Really. And all this time I thought complex problems were the easiest ones to solve.
The commentary rules are enforced. One free criticism and THEN PUT UP YOUR OWN PLAN WHICH IS BETTER. If you cannot do that, then do not criticize those trying to build. It is ‘Put up or Shut up’.
OK, fair enough. My plan is to take a steamy shit right on your face. It’s a lot cheaper than your plan, and it won’t get quite so many people killed.
[Gavin adds: To all you “critics” dumping on Eragon: On the day you make a better sword-and-sorcery adaptation of Star Wars than Stefen Fangmeier, I will acknowledge your so-called criticism as more than a lot of envious whining.]
Anyway, let’s skip down a little bit and get to his plan, which is…
…to widen the war and take out SYRIA using Egyptian or Jordanian or Kurdish troops in an ‘Afghanistan style’ light infantry attack and use US air supremacy to wipe out the forces of Syria wherever they appear.
Right. I’m sure Egypt and Jordan would love nothing more than to sacrifice their own peoples’ lives in order to help us take out Syria.
From the moment allied forces hit the ground with some US Special Forces and USAF spotters, this force will be ‘Rolling Hot’: it will be a continuous forward assault starting from a small entry point and racing through Syria to demolish the regime there. That took two weeks in Afghanistan and three months in Iraq. Syria is the ‘weak brother’ of the Middle East and a hard case of influenza would turn it over, so two weeks sounds about right, given that any forces we get for this will be MORE CAPABLE than the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. And that is not saying much, believe me.
Buh-buh-but you’re assuming that Egypt and Jordan would be easily convinced to further destabilize their own region by taking down another local power without a plan to rebui…
The modern US arsenal now will decimate any pre-2006 armored force on the battlefield via the use of Sensor Fuzed Weapons. Two were used in Iraq to wipe out the ‘Elite Republican Guard’ counter attack that was forming up and demolish its forward component and cause the rest of it to flee. Time involved: 10 minutes.
“You can pop three bags of popcorn, and BING! the war will already be over! Neat, huh?”
If Israel can have dominance over the ‘impossble’ Bekaa valley, the US will have absolute air supremacy over Syria. At that point, to drive home the stakes in this Middle Eastern policy, the Kurdish areas will be given autonomy and allowed to vote on joining their Iraqi brothers and the Nation of Iraq. The rest of Syria does not get this option and may find itself land locked with the port area and northern areas handed over to Iraq.
So if I’m reading this right, the plan is to invade Syria using Jordanian and Egyptian troops, and then divide the land between the Israelis and the Kurds (!!!!!!).
And remember, folks, the whole point of this plan is to stabilize Iraq.
That was *stage one*.
Stage two: we attack the sun.
Stage two is something folks will like even less, I am sure. The USAF and CVN battlegroups will be given time for R&R and resupply and whatever else they need to get back into fighting form. The next al Qaeda attack in Iraq traced back to Saudi Arabia will get this little bit of news in return to the Saudi Government: you have promised for a long time to get rid of these nasty and irrational fundamentalists their exporting of their vile creed. That you have promised for some years if not decades.
You have just seen Syria.
“Where’s the beef?”
Answer: it’s in Iran, which we’ll also invade using an army of sherpas who will descend from the mountains of Nepal and…
They will hem. They will haw. They will be face to face with the fact that their equipment is bought from the US as is their training. They will proclaim themselves protectors of the Holy Cities. They will do many things. They will invoke diplomacy and we shall use that to demonstrate that they really do *not* treat all parts of Islam equally. The second al Qaeda attack from Saudia Arabia will get this response:
“The US will back any non-aligned, Islamic forces to secure the holy cities in Saudi Arabia for ALL MUSLIMS. No muslim will be denied entry as part of this bargain. We will need 10,000 or so troops to do this and you will get aircover from the mightiest air forces on the planet. Luckily, the US owns them completely. Administration of the Cities will be done by ‘Unity Councils’ and supported by foreign donations. Every single sect of Islam gets ONE VOTE on the council. Size does not matter in this. It is FAITH that matters.”
I can think of at least two or three Islamic Nations with a beef against Saudi Arabia and complaints against it. Iranians will not believe this, and yet still want to send forces. Their Regular Army will be *welcomed*. Iraqis will want a say in this just to counter Iran. The question is *not* getting 10,000 troops, but how to stop from getting a whole lot MORE.
I had to read these three paragraphs at least ten times before I finally understood what he was proposing.
Basically, he wants to recruit 10,000 Muslims from a variety of sects and cultures to all attack Saudi Arabia at the same time. No, I have no idea why he thinks these Muslims would want to invade Saudi Arabia on our behalf, especially after we just handed over Southern Syria to Israel. My only advice to you is to keep reading:
Either way this goes, either the Saudis finally start harshly pulling in the Wahhabists or the actual Islamic Coalition forming up in a couple of months and the end will still be the same. al Qaeda will wholly, and completely, lose its largest funding base. al Qaeda operations, already on a shoestring, will now get razor thin. In either case this works out much, much better for the US and we will STILL not have spent any significant troops to achieve these things.
The US will be seen as an ‘honest broker’ willing to support Islam and yet also cleanse it of radicalism. If Iran does NOT support this, it will be seen wholly and completely out for power ALONE without religious intent. The rest of Islam will be united in opening the Cities freely to ALL people of their faith without discrimination.
Apparently, the way to make Muslims of all denominations hold hands and hug each other is to start multiple wars within their homelands. It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.
This is known as ‘pulling the rug out from under the enemy’. What is even better is that this offers a way out and a way UP for the Middle East. Iran, will either have to open up and HELP, in which case their people will get first hand knowledge of how the US operates and realize the insanity of going after us militarily and start to work hard on a new regime OR it will close up and become an immediate threat realizing that its existence is being threatened without a single shot being fired at it. It will lash out, in that case. And find the US Forces that have been stabilizing Iraq have already been shifting to counter them. The moment they *do* a two pronged attack from the southwest and northeast out of Afghanistan by US forces will put Iran out of operation in three weeks or so. Maybe even three or four months. Definitely not long as the regime is ‘one deep’ and are facing the hard demographics of their population coming to loathe them.
If you get the feeling that he’s about to say something extremely stupid, you’re right:
And who gets to run Iran while it recovers?
Simple: Afghanistan and Iraq.
OK, I give up. I cannot mock this stuff anymore. You can read the rest if you want to give yourself permanent mental scarring (sample: “There is one simple reason to put Afghanistan and Iraq in charge of Iran: they all hate each other’s guts and yet they will all be involved in running Mecca”), but I am through.
But before I go, I think we should take a quick peak at Mr. Jacksonian’s blogger profile to get a better idea of who this guy is. I’ve highlighted the relevant bits:
A Jacksonian
Industry: Government
Occupation: Disability Retirement
Location: Sterling : Virginia : United StatesAbout Me
Trying to save what thoughts I have in case my time for having them comes to an end. I keep many ways of looking at the world and from many perspectives, but they are each a part of a larger whole and reflect my thoughts and feelings. Diabetic, cataleptic, naracoleptic, hyperlipidemia, cerebral atrophy, allergies and *still* glad to be alive. Founding and sole member of The Jacksonian Party.
[Gavin adds: Not to be callous here, but am I right in perceiving that Glenn Reynolds linked approvingly to a proposal to start a general, multi-front war in the Middle East that was devised by a person with serious brain damage?]
Interests
science fiction, history, fantasy, alternate history, computers, virtual worlds, wargames, publishing, visual arts, geology, The Prisoner, Babylon 5, Star Trek, mythology, religion, symbolism, printing, 3D design, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs with Mike RoweFavorite Movies
The Road Warrior, Aliens, Being There, Monty Python and The Holy Grail, The Guns of Navarone
In other words:
It amazes me how many of these people actually exist. Even more amazing is the fact that Glenn has seemingly linked to every single one of them at some point.
I can’t believe it took this much time to come up with such a simple, brilliant, clear plan for victory.
My hat is off you to Brad for reading this in its entirety. I tried last week and, the pain was too much… This takes wishful demented war wanking to a whole new level.
My favourite quote
Yup, clearly in the midst of winner take all fighting, the various ethnic, religious and tribal factions will realize the wisdom of limited government and states rights.
No kidding. And by invading each others’ countries, they’ll learn the value of peaceful conflict resolution.
The Unity Council control of Mecca and Medina sounds suspiciously like part of the plot of Tom Clancy’s “Sum of all Fears,” in which Clancy has such a council running Jerusalem.
I guess we should be happy they are ripping off a shitty technothriller author and not a shitty SciFi author like, say, Orson Scott Card or that OMG-Muslims-from-teh-future nutcase.
I entirely expected to see, and am disappointed to miss, “Step Six: Using the international acclaim gathered from the success of my plan, I wait until Mom is out at Bingo and finally have a girl over.”
I could literally smell Cheetos while reading this
“Step Six: Using the international acclaim gathered from the success of my plan, I wait until Mom is out at Bingo and finally have a girl over.�
HAHAHAHAHAHAA… oh man that’s funny.
Christ almighty, I’m even having a hard time reading your takedown of it.
oh, and wazzup with “cerebral atrophy” not being bolded in his profile?
But before I go, I think we should take a quick peak at Mr. Jacksonian’s blogger profile to get a better idea of who this guy is.
Our pretendisent?
Earlier this year, The Jackholean proposed solving the problem of illegal immigration on the Mexican border by creating a zone 50miles wide—I believe he recommended taking 25miles from Mexico to match our 25miles—along the enture border in which nothikng living would be allowed. All trees and shrubs were to be eliminated, then the entire area covered by a massive satellite and camera observation system, and finally a system of multiple layers and layers of murderous electric fences and laser rays to seal off the northern and southern lines. This dead zone, the Jackholean thought, would be the proud symbol of American power and pride.
It amazes me how many of these people actually exist. Even more amazing is the fact that Glenn has seemingly linked to every single one of them at some point.
And yet even more amazing is that Glenn has drafted these people as the smart, incisive, insightful, rational, superior alternative to those know-nothing jaggovs who call themselves the ISG. Clearly, those ISG policy wonks, what with their “knowledge” and “experience” are too far up their own collective ass to see the genius of waging an everybody-fights-everybody clusterfuck war across Muslim lands–for the good of Muslims, of course!
It’d be pretty funny if it was Jon Swift. Of course, that’s the danger of parodying these modern wingnuts…you just can’t tell the difference.
step six was funny, but for the first time in a long time, i laughed out loud for a whole minute at this:
worthy of being on the shortlist of strategy moves by stephen hadley … didn’t he want to make our response to 9/11 be a counter-attack in south america? from his bio, i can’t rule out that this is actually hadley…
Uhhh… doesn’t the Air Force ALREADY have unquestioned air superiority over most of the Middle East? Is he not aware that aircover is useless in house-to-house urban warfare? Unless you’re doing that, “Hey, I think there might be enemy troops in that building. Let’s level the block with airstrikes, and sift the wreckage to see if I was right.” kind of warfare.
I’m not suprised that this guy gets his military strategery from Starcraft and Clancy.
Also, I was at work today, and there happened to be a copy of today’s Washington Times, the headline reading, “Bush says US not prepared for insurgancy.” to which my immediate and vocal reaction was, “You fucking think so, Sherlock?”
It’s Ralph Peters!
This “Jacksonian” character is obviously one of Ralph Peters’ pseudonyms. The extensively quoted rant must be what the first drafts of his novels look like. But it’s the whole “balkanization of the Mid-East” theme that gives away the true authorship.
Ralph Peters? No, this clown is definitely Ralph Wiggum.
Nobody who actually says “where’s the beef?” and means it should be allowed to communicate through writing.
Those baggy Star Trek pants on the right look like they could hold a substantial load.
Am I dreaming? Do I really miss the concise lucidity of Steven Den Beste?
Stage two: we attack the sun
Fucking funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. Plus, I think it just might work…
I bet none of you unimaginative liberals even considered sending Marina Sirtis to read Ahmadinejad’s mind. I’m right, aren’t I? Amateurs.
Well, give him credit for not having a let’s-go-nuclear hardon. That’s saying something, lately.
Stage Six: George Bush rushes to the Rose Garden, cries “Solomon! Hercules! Atlas! Zeus! Achilles! Mercury!”, and the rest pretty much writes itself.
Sorry I’m late. My Machina broke down on the way to Iraq, and I had to hitch a ride with a group of Bedouin nomads. Did the plan run smoothly without me?
A Jacksonian
A follower of LaToya, no doubt.
The author’s comprehensive plan inexplicably fails to address the Western Front. Something like, “A small Guyanese land force and a handful of crack Curaçaoan amphibian units, with the aerial support of the USAF, should be able to topple Chávez’s regime, stabilize the country, and turn over Venezuelan oil and gas production to American management in less than 10 days.”
More fun in this 11/22/06 autobiographical post: “The Modern Jacksonian – Chapter 1 – About the Author: My personal journey toward finding Jacksonianism.”
This almost best belongs at fire joe morgan. It reads like an idiot baseball fan who thinks impossible trades are wonderful ideas the team is foolish for not making happen.
Here’s how to fix the KC Royals.
1: Trade Sweeney for Pujols.
2: Zack Greinke for Johan Santana
3: Angel Berroa for Jeter
4: the ghost of George Brett, after killing him, for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis
5: Reggie Sanders for Grady Sizemore
etc
etc
Also, if we just had Germany invade France, that would solve everything.
In his/her profound & comprehensive studies of such things as “the entire Italian peninsdula circa the Medicis” (a reference wholly without sense), the Jackhoplean seems to have missed learning that the Iranians are not Arabs and, having fought off foreign domination for more than a couple thousand years since Alexander the Great conquered them by defeating Darius, they will not consent to be governed by Arbas Afghanis and Iraqis, especially if an invading, conquering, non-Muslim power like US attempts to impose this.
What, am I the only one here who would freakin LOVE to put this guy in charge?
“Ok, dood, it’s magic. You’re the leader of the free world for 48 hours. There’s just one catch. If your plans and programs fail, you face, well, let’s just say the consequences are pretty harsh. They were designed by Dick Cheney”….
mikey
So: bad plan. Am I right? That’s the sense I’m getting.
Why is there no death ray in this plan? Or a secret underwater headquarters, staffed with chinese dudes in white jump suits? That would make it foolproof, er, pretty good.
From his latest post:
“The internal accountability of individuals to the Nation is a given fact of the Westphalian world in which Nation States are the Prime Movers of interactions between and amongst mankind’s diverse populations.”
I went to school for 19 years and have no fucking clue what he is talking about. I swear he just wrote a program to jumble a lot of words together and capitalize them randomly.
Step 14: A duel force of Hottentot Lancers, and conscripted Zulu tribesmen supported by USAF A-10s, in an operation called “Stalker Deathnight Cobra” will seek out and hold down Tim Furgeston and I will punch him in the stomach- that will teach him for making fun in me in 5th grade! Then Betty Cohen will like me!
This is the sort of thing that gives us a bad name.
I find it incredibly difficult to believe this sub-geek could understand a lick of Being There yet continue to take Dubya seriously.
Step 14: A duel force of Hottentot Lancers, and conscripted Zulu tribesmen supported by USAF A-10s, in an operation called “Stalker Deathnight Cobra� will seek out and hold down Tim Furgeston and I will punch him in the stomach- that will teach him for making fun in me in 5th grade! Then Betty Cohen will like me!
See, this is perfect. This is where I would have gone except for the three company christmas parties I went to tonight, with the scotch and the beer and the margaritas and the cognac and the scotch. Yikes. But I’m like, totally down with step 14….
mikey
My fav A Jacksonian post so far: this goodie which provides comments on journalistic credibilty by examining the ethics of the two famous fictional reporters – I shit you not – Spider-Man and Superman.
And these posts go on and on and on, just endless tracts of twisted ideology – this guy is psycho-in-Se7en crazy.
So if I’m reading this right, the plan is to invade Syria using Jordanian and Egyptian troops, and then divide the land between the Israelis and the Kurds (!!!!!!).
Actually, no, that was the one bit of this lunatic’s fancy that you misread. He clearly states that he’s going to divide Syria between the Kurds and Iraq. Which is still gonna be loads of fun. He never quite mentions how the Turkish invasion of his newly-accidentally-founded Kurdistan fits in to the Master Plan, but I’m sure it’s important.
…
Hell, why am I bothering to muster a serious criticism? This doesn’t merit it. The dumb bastard is going on comparing the Egyptian (!!!) military to the Afgani Northern Alliance. Either that, or his geography is bad enough that he thinks Egypt abuts Syria. And I don’t even want to touch his “insights” regarding Islam. I mean, I’m not really sure that they’re any worse than his political suggestions, but that’s by far bad enough.
Oh, well. At least he’s modest about his proposed little SNAFU: “Better than any damn [plan] that anyone else has thought of? Yup.”
… examining the ethics of the two famous fictional reporters – I shit you not – Spider-Man and Superman.
Good god! He actually goes into detail on the locations and quality of Peter Parker’s cameras.
I’m guessing that he is only A Jacksonian by day. By night he is a superhero with the power of dumbfounding his enemies with incredibly implausible stories.
“Step 10: Blowing the Arab world’s minds, much like how I made the men who tried to carjack me freeze in awe at my ‘LAN Party’ shirt.”
But, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’? Mightn’t this be:
THE RETURN OF FLOYD ALVIS COOPER!
Hey I just realized his “Get Us Out of The UN” Graphic is the logo for the Star Trek Evil Mirror Universe. He truly is the gift that keeps on giving!
All Hail the Terran Empire!
I am Ki-rock! I am Ki-rock!
but he forgot to station a few armies in Kamchatka!
[…] to widen the war and take out SYRIA using Egyptian or Jordanian or Kurdish troops in an Afghanistan style light infantry attack and use US air supremacy to wipe out the forces of Syria wherever they appear. … – more – […]
Is he not aware that aircover is useless in house-to-house urban warfare?
No.
This has been another simple answer to a simple question (Copyright 2006 Duncan Black, all rights reserved.)
From the above-linked “more about me” post:
I picked up on board war gaming at an early age and expanded upon that year after year. These are games that use a depiction of realistic of highly interlocking rule sets to give what can and cannot be done within the purview of the game itself. … Realistic depiction of actual forces was accomplished and you could play out the result with an opponent. I took to that so much that I was often my only opponent and I learned to ‘flip sides’ of a game on a continual basis.
Ya know, when I was 15 & my 11 year old brother didn’t want to play AD&D with me, I would go through entire modules by myself. But this guy is far, far more pathetic.
No word on how he got brain damaged in that post.
Hey, I’ve seen this guy. I’m pretty sure he’s the Paraclete of Caborca.
Thank god for the internet. In the past, people like this were found wandering city streets talking loudly to themselves. At least now they stay inside where it’s warm.
There are quite simple driving forces in the Middle East, but there are many of them. They must be understood individually and then put into interplay which is multi-divided factionalism. A good start there is the War of the Roses and the entire Italian Peninsula circa the Medicis, plus the Spanish Revolution.
The Spanish Revolution!? I mean, I actually agree that by studying the Anarcho-Syndicalist collectivisation that sprang up as the Spanish Civil War broke out could help in dealing with the modern Middle-East (and the rest of the world)… but I fail to see how that fits into this guy’s plan of rolling invasions by consumerist forces nor can I fathom how studying one faction of that war between economic ideologies can help us understand how the multiple factions of religiously inspired dickweeds interact with each other.
Unless of course dingus here meant the Spanish Civil War itself rather than the small part of it represented by the Spanish Revolution. Oh, Maybe he meant the Revolution of 1868! Hmmm… Proudhonian anarchism mixed with military juntas interupted by sporadic monarchy? Methinks they’ve already got that in spades over there.
Am I wrong to feel pity for this guy?
I picked up on board war gaming at an early age and expanded upon that year after year. These are games that use a depiction of realistic of highly interlocking rule sets to give what can and cannot be done within the purview of the game itself. … Realistic depiction of actual forces was accomplished and you could play out the result with an opponent. I took to that so much that I was often my only opponent and I learned to ‘flip sides’ of a game on a continual basis
Te be fair I did the same thing myself when I was a demented teenager, yet somehow I was able to understand the fantasy the game presents in your mind. It’s an abstraction. It has only theoretical application in the real world. All the politics and impredictability of human will has been stripped out. And there is no god firgure like yourself who can decide to re-roll the die because you rolled a “1” on your 1-1 attack on Lennigrad and just annahilated 10% of the german force strength and you don’t like the idea of playing out the rest of the ‘simulation’ with your forces so depleted.
Reality – Fantasy. It’s not hard once you practice living the the former.
Yes, storming Mecca and Medina with a hand-picked force of bukkake ninjas or whatever the fuck he’s proposing. Christ, that shit that Jack Nicholson typed over and over again in The Shining was more coherent than this mess.
All play and no work make Jack a DEMENTED boy.
Well, this guy’s plan will obviously work, as he has played out the scenario in Axis & Allies, and his self-opponent’s responses clearly validated his moves.
Of course, it helps if you are a member of the Jackalope Party.
“The internal accountability of individuals to the Nation is a given fact of the Westphalian world in which Nation States are the Prime Movers of interactions between and amongst mankind’s diverse populations.�
Oh, I’ve got it! “Obey your leaders, they are protecting you from /them/”
Which is pretty much what every republican believes already.
Comedy gold. The comments are even funnier than his “plan” if that’s possible.
[…] to widen the war and take out SYRIA using Egyptian or Jordanian or Kurdish troops in an Afghanistan style light infantry attack and use US air supremacy to wipe out the forces of Syria wherever they appear. … – more – […]
“Ward? I’m worried about The Beaver.”
“You mean Brad? Why, honey?”
“He’s reading delirious brain-damaged wingnuts and parsing their plans for world domination.”
“Hm.” (Puffs on pipe.) “But just as long as he’s not reading that Jacksonian fellow. Did you tell him the Jackson being referred to is Michael?”
“Oh. Oh dear, no. I told him it was Randy.”
“I’ll have a talk with him.”
Brilliant!
I only want to know how many times “Jacksonian” came typing the sentence, “The modern US arsenal now will decimate any pre-2006 armored force on the battlefield via the use of Sensor Fuzed Weapons.”
What a dick.
In retrospect, the real problem with coming back to this post isn’t the Jackoffian fellow at all, but rather the juxtaposition of Brad’s Big Brass Balls with the Live-long-and-prosper guys and the Bee Gees on backup. It’s gonna take a fair amount of scotch to scrub all that away.
My only advice to you is to keep reading
Keep reading? KEEP READING?!?! Stay the course? In the face of such carnage?
You, sir, are worse than Hitler.
This is almost exactly like one of those situations where your buddy takes a drink of something vile and lets loose with a “christ, this tastes like shit! taste it!” and sure enough you do. You KNEW it tasted like shit before you tried it, but you went ahead and tried it anyway. Now you feel like an dumb-ass with a nasty taste in your mouth as nice little bonus.
I thought I had outgrown that.
Jacksonian speaking for Boskone says:
“That is me, your ambassador to a different world! I am *still* waiting for the much promised mothership”
and
“There is the other, and more chilling way to put it: ‘He was such a *quiet* boy…’ The postal career actually didn’t look to good to me, however, so life would not take me there”
I had to stop after bon mot number 2. It was like being hit with a prose Kirk-hammer.
I got a kick out of Instapundit’s link to this tour-de-farce:
The Jacksonian Party offers “a plan to stabilize Iraq.” It’s rather involved.
I bet that’s where Brad found it. Rather involved! Heh, indeedy.
The sad part is, this dude seems to like all the same things I do: B5, wargames, Holy Grail…man oh man, there but for the grace of the Unknowable go I…
Some highlights from the “About the Author” post I linked to above.
A Jacksonian reduces the world’s religions to a formula:
A Jacksonian identifies the one true human science:
A Jacksonian used to work for the Department of Defense:
And did someone mention Steven Den Beste?
Straight to Old Hickory’s plantation!
Honest to goodness that guy was not me in a previous life. I’m not even close to that stupid. I’m just crazy.
EC
This poor human does not appear to be the sort of creature with whom I feel comfortable sharing the planet.
However, since this poor human is apparently occupying some other planet than the one which currently has the honor to be my home…
…I forgot what I was saying. I think I’ll take a nap now.
Answer: it’s in Iran, which we’ll also invade using an army of sherpas who will descend from the mountains of Nepal and…
Not Sherpas. Yetis. Yetis would be so much cooler.
I got it! He’s actually the TimeCube guy!
Well, give him credit for not having a let’s-go-nuclear hardon. That’s saying something, lately.
The Jacksonian prefers the long-term, small-scale suffering of conventional wargamery over the quick, easy fix of nuke-em-till-they-glow. Possibly his medications have, er, “solved” the quick-trigger problem so common among the Reichtards?…
To be slightly more serious: I have never worked for the Department of Defense, but I have worked for large corporate entities both public & private, and when I get a resume that reads:
“So learning the ropes took a bit, but once done I was finally able to get moving through more interesting positions and became the ‘pinball’ of the Agency getting to touch on nearly every aspect of its work. And once my ability to deconstruct problems and find solutions was evident, I got moved… then back… by volunteering to help spell my coworkers… worked hard to help find new and better ways to put necessary information into the hands of those who could ‘connect the dots’ which went up and down the scale…
I bullet-point it thusly:
1) Slow learner
2) Can’t take direction, but is an enthusiastic meddler in other people’s work
3) Doesn’t respect chain of command; will pester anyone from a mail clerk to a senior vice-president
4) Has been bounced from multiple departments, yet never fired. Legacy hire (i.e., somebody’s idiot nephew)? Protected category — ADA? Previous history of bias-related workplace claims?
“Recently a medication has interacted with an underlying condition in my family and taken me out of service permanently…”
Finally found — or was forced to visit — a doctor who’d fill out the forms to have him declared medically unfit. His then-supervisors failed to contest the claim, which means either he’s VERY obviously unfit, or they considered his disability payments a lesser liability to the department than his ‘services’, or both.
This is not the description of an individual I’d recommend hiring, not even for a very simple task, not even if I would never have to work with him myself, not even if there were a large cash bonus waiting upon my positive recommendation.
The Wingnut Welfare Wurlitzer is really getting hard up for new voices, if this is the quality of their latest recruits!
i’m betting this Jacksonian fellow is some 17 year old who’s still addicted to RISK and has read a little too much for his own good. The style reminds me of how i used to write, when i was an utterly self-confident yet obliviously idiotic book nerd, who thought i knew enough about everything to have the world figured out, when in fact i really had no friggin’ clue.
…either that or he’s just completely fucking insane, on which we’d all agree anyway.
as for me i’ve recovered. im 25, read the Financial Times and this blog for example, and yet have no illusions regarding my own intelligence. ok, time for cartoons.
In fairness to this obviously insane plan, he wants to give parts of Syria to Iraq not Israel. Oh, and I hope he realizes who the most well trained and experienced fighters in his “overthrow the House of Saud” batshittery are, because if not I’d love to be there to watch as his head explodes when Al Queda races into Mecca with U.S. air cover.
If not for the courage of the Sadly, No! tribe in deciphering the blatherings of the imbeciles inhabiting the right blogosphere, we might none of us be cerebrally damaged now. Kudos, you lot, I can’t even read your interpretations of this shit without feeling borderline psychotic. Geebus X.
Anne Laurie, I love your observations. I must also add that as a Federal employee, he doesn’t need to be legacy. It’s impossible to get fired from a Federal agency. My work puts me inside a lot of agencies, and I would be kind to say 60% of them could be fired and nobody would miss them. At my current client site, I can see one sexual harrasser (twice reprimanded, shuffled to a new dept.), a woman who is so medicated that she stares at the wall of her cube when her phone rings, and a manager who demands that every little thing we do be printed out and bound so he can always appear to have work sitting on his desk. Incompetence is par for the course at the Fedgov, anything more and you simply would not be hired. Intelligent people do not last long here.