May 2003 Is Calling … It Wants Its Insanity Back
What was that about ‘beating on a beached jellyfish with a baseball bat’?
Gavin, I think I’ve found your jellyfish. It’s name is Symposium. It has cute little tentacles named Bill Bennett, Victor Davis Hanson and Mackubin Thomas Owens. Watch them jerk spasmodically, clinging pathetically to the last vestiges of life, unaware that the tiny bundle of proto-hypothalamic tissue they once served has fired its last synapse.
Can This Washington Be Saved? Can This War?
After the veto.By Symposium
On Tuesday night, President Bush vetoed the supplemental war-funding bill. National Review Online asked a group of experts, who include a former senator, a former Cabinet secretary, an Iraq-war vet, a relative of an American murdered on September 11, 2001, a historian, and policy experts: How big a deal was the president’s veto Tuesday night? Can this Washington be saved? Can this war?
Okay, I’m officially confused. Which Washington is Symposium even talking about? The capital? The state? The smooth jazz sax player? The speedy but ultimately disappointing Major League right fielder?
Let’s ask Bill Bennett. Bet he knows.
William J. Bennett: I know what the polling says. You don’t poll a war. But if you want a poll, here’s the one I’d write and we’ll see what response it gets: “Do you support pulling troops from Iraq if you know a bloodbath will follow and al Qaeda will declare victory?� Poll that question please. It’s the most accurate prognostication you can get.
Let it ride, Billy Boy! Momma needs some news-Jews-can-use! But seriously, what’s happening in Iraq now isn’t a bloodbath? And, like, who gives a crap what al Qaeda declares? I think they’ve declared gambling to be really bad … and as you know, Atlantic City is still very much in business. So here’s an idea: Let’s have Bill Bennett square off against Osama bin Laden in a game of canasta. The stakes? Nothing less than the fate of the free world. Because that totally worked in ‘Casino Royale’.
Pedro? Yer up.
Peter Brookes: … Washington will be fine. A little rough and tumble, sharp-elbow politics is good every once in awhile to keep the blood coursing through our political veins.
As opposed to the blood spurting out of our soldiers’ veins. But hey, a little rough and tumble, sharp-elbow guerrilla war never killed anybody. Oh, wait.
Debra Burlingame? The Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic� Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11/01? I should probably leave you alone. Ah, screw it.
Debra Burlingame: Increasingly, Iraqis know that foreign fighters are responsible for most of the bloodshed in their country …
Not sure you want to go there just yet, Debra. In a few years, if Giuliani wins or something, we may have U.S. soldiers who were born and raised in Iraq, but for now …
VDH! Come on kid, let’s hit one outta the park here, Vicco!
Victor Davis Hanson: So we are in a psychological state akin to circa July 1864 or spring 1951, in which only good news from the war can stop the blame-game and serial expressions of defeatism. …
Or a weak dribbler back to the mound. You’ll get ’em next time, pal. Try a Punic War reference instead of Civil. Might work out better.
Cliff?
Clifford D. May: Years ago, we retreated from Vietnam; though millions of Asians suffered and died, Americans were able to get on with their lives and even eventually prevail in the Cold War. Should we lose the Battle of Baghdad, we are not likely to get off so easily.
Huh? So what, if we pull out of Iraq … billions of Asians are going to suffer and die, and then they’re going to cancel American Idol or something? Jesus, maybe we should give Teh Surge a chance.
Mack the Knife, go get ’em, buddy.
Mackubin Thomas Owens: The problem is, as I have argued before, today’s Copperheads in Congress would rather see Bush lose than the country win in Iraq. … I believe the surge is working. No matter what Harry “the Copperhead” Reid may claim, the surge does represent a change in operational approach in Iraq.
Right, we get it. “Copperheads”. You and VDH, boy, with the hip 1860s lingo … the kids today, they love it, I’m telling ya. They’re like, “Screw the new 50 Cent album, I’m saving up for a year’s subscription to the National Review … 23 skidoo!”
[Gavin adds: Excelsior, old fellow. Old French-ailment Hanson is quite the sour petunia.]
Okay, this is getting tiresome. Let’s wrap it up.
[Gavin adds: Toot-toot-Marie! Now you’re cooking with gas!]
Bill Roggio: The president and his staff have been woefully inadequate in engaging and educating the American public on how the Iraq war has become central to the overall fight against al Qaeda, even if this was not the case when the U.S. first invaded.
Likewise, the marketers at Subway have been woefully inadequate in engaging and educating the American public on how their new foot-long Toasted Turd Supreme is tasty and good for you. Also, ‘even if this was not the case when the U.S. first invaded’? d00d. Thanks for at least admitting it.
The irony, as Owen West pointed out Tuesday in the New York Times, is that just when the military has righted the ship and chosen a coherent counterinsurgency plan for Iraq, and the right general to lead it, the political support for the war has bottomed out.
Yeah, that’s some serious ‘irony’. In an Alanis Morissette kind of way. A jagged little pill to swallow. Hey, wait a minute! That song needs a new verse!
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the defeatist treasonous traitor loser Left undermining the war that was just about to turn the corner and that your bulge-having steely-eyed leader was totally going to win
Who would’ve thought…it figures
CW was one of the few major leaguers to hit 3 HR in a game in each league. Still, yes, ultimately disappointing.
Or perhaps its Denzel Washington?
Maybe it’s the Washington who always had a toothpick in his mouth.
See, I think this is a big part of the reason I was never able to keep blogging – I would be required to pay way more attention to these ignorant wads of fuck than they deserve. I feel like I’ve lost 20 IQ points just reading their inane rehashings of the past 3 years’ worth of batshit pro-war rhetoric and their willful ignorance of the realities on the ground in Iraq.
You all are doing the Lord’s work over here. On behalf of your more-weakly-constituted fans, I thank you.
Freddy ‘Boom-Boom’ Washington. Is there really any other?
Glad to see VDH has dropped “December 1945” from his litany of darkest-before-the-dawn American wartime moments. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
I feel like I’ve lost 20 IQ points just reading their inane rehashings of the past 3 years’ worth of batshit pro-war rhetoric and their willful ignorance of the realities on the ground in Iraq.
I hear a National Review subscription now comes with a free melon baller for your brain.
You all are doing the Lord’s work over here.
Indeed.
This needs pics, with each contributor in clown make-up.
Gawd. It’s like asking the elders in your tribe of savages what should be done about the eclipse.
William J. Bennett: I know what the polling says. You don’t poll a war. But if you want a poll, here’s the one I’d write and we’ll see what response it gets: “Do you support pulling troops from Iraq if you know a bloodbath will follow and al Qaeda will declare victory?� Poll that question please. It’s the most accurate prognostication you can get.
Buckley’s losing it. Here’s a far better question to reveal Americans’ true feelings on the war: “Do you support pulling troops from Iraq if you know that millions of ponies will die? Pink ones and purple ones with glittery hair, and even one with a pretty rainbow for a mane. The fancy-prancy ponies will be ground up for glue! Oh, and al Qaeda will cannibalize your family and rape your dog. Is that what you want, sissy-mary?” This question also filters out any liberal bias of the type that has skewed the polls slightly against the war, which is why you won’t see it on CNN.
I mean Bennet. Though he lost it awhile ago. Well they both did.
….fuck it. *Goes to bed*
Symposium proves that the whole is stupider than the sum of its parts.
K-Lo’s pissed because Symposium always eats the last donut and leaves the toilet seat up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War The Civil war lasted 4 years. We’ve been in Iraq for longer (or maybe as long, give or take a few months) and things are not doing better.
They miiiiight want to stop using the “Lincoln had the change generals often” analogy. Lincoln had a goal. There was a clear cut win/lose. People we’re blowing up the Capital building. Bodies weren’t being found with holes drilled in their necks in New York.
In fact, the Union won the war less so because Lincoln finally found the right generals, but because Lee had so effed up at Gettysburg as to re-kindle the Union’s hopes for victory.
holy crap!
i think that mackubin has been plagiarizing his columns from T. Herman Zweibel. or perhaps just hanging out too much with The Terror.
well, good for him, i say. mr. burns isn’t producing the quotes like he used to.
Further question: How can wingnuts, who rant and rave about government bureaucracy and red tape and inefficiency and inflation, be in-favor of a military take-over, when the Military is, by far, the largest single government entity?
If you think the military is not bureaucratic and red-taped, you are, put simply, a retard know-nothing.
Futhermore the military is not inclined to follow these f*cktards.
Not only will they be emboldened. They will be embiggened.
According to my interactive war length calendar, the American Civil War lasted 1,458 days. The arrack on Fort Sumter started on 12 April 1861. The treaty was signed at Appomattox on 9 April 1865, just three days short of four years.
As of 2 May 2007, we’ve been in Iraq for 1,505 days, about four years and six weeks.
“Those who have had a chance for four years and could not produce peace should not be given another chance.”
— Richard Nixon, 9 October 1968
I dunno what military you’re thinking of, Some Guy. The military these guys are thinking of are tough guys with cigars in clenched teeth who only speak in one liners and orders barked into crackling radios. They spit on your red tape and make bold, decisive moves that get the enemy just where it hurts them worst and wins the war.
Those are the guys that are gonna save the country with a coup, and give everyone all the toys they never got for christmas as kids. And all our dead pets will be with them, alive and forever young.
“Always hit on 15.” — Bill Bennett, ‘The Book of Virtues’
And when the military save us, that one ex you never quite got over will finally feel safe enough to come back to you and start a family.
And everyone’s mom and dad will get back together, and Lucy will let Charlie Brown kick the football.
Try a Punic War reference
Hey, don’t give them any ideas! From Appian:
“They decreed that if anything was still left of Carthage, Scipio should obliterate it and that nobody should be allowed to live there. Direful threats were leveled against any who should disobey and chiefly against the rebuilding of Byrsa or Megara, but it was not forbidden to go upon the ground.
The towns that had allied themselves with the enemy it was decided to destroy, to the last one. … It was decreed that a praetor should be sent from Rome yearly to govern the country.”
Longer Bill Bennett: “If you want a poll, here’s the one I’d write and we’ll see what response it gets: ‘Say you get dealt a pair of jacks. Do you support doubling down? Even if you know you’re likely to get a couple of fours of some crap like that, and the dealer will declare victory? The same dealer who’s already into you for a cool mil, which you earned the hard way, by working long hours hectoring your fellow citizens on their lack of moral virtues?’ Poll that question please. It’s the most accurate prognostication you can get.”
I bet I show up in this thread!
I’ll take that bet!
Doh! Two out of three?
Yer on!
much as the thebians hated the spartans during the battle of leuctra (and possibly before and after as well), i hate victor davis hanson. i mean seriously, over here at my house it’s like 371 bc, if you get my drift.
Where was Mr. Bennett’s miraculous fortune-telling ability before the war? We could have avoided this whole scenario if the poll question he was asking back then was “Would you support invading Iraq if it meant never being able to leave and allowing al-Qaeda to regain any ground they lost in Afghanistan?”
Well, some people were asking that question anyways.
Whither Lon Nol, and Madame Nhu?
Dick “Cakewalk” Cheney: I always thought it would be Senator May, Governor May.
Clifford D. “Bombs Away Le” May: We’ll get there, Pop; we’ll get there.
Heck of a job Brownie for War Czar!
and
Wasn’t Bennett a Czar of some kind?
Congress will not prevail because it doesn’t have a Czar! So there.
Shorter Symposium:
“Will you people STOP trying to mess with OUR war? You’re really starting to harsh the buzz.”
haha this is one of the better overall posts in awhile
yes Some Guy, so true. It’s like this for moder right wingers:
“Government is the problem except the part that can blow shit up, thats real cool yeah yeah”
Adrian C: “Wasn’t Bennett a Czar of some kind?”
Drug.
Appointed by G. H. W. Bush.
Adrian C: “Wasn’t Bennett a Czar of some kind?�
Drug.
Appointed by G. H. W. Bush.
Am I so wrong for scanning this comment and thinking for a moment the last line said Appointed by G.H.B. Bush?
/cheer Some Guy. The Lincoln/Civil War analogy is weak. If you really want to do a Civil War analogy, it would go something like this:
This is like if, at the first battle of Bull Run, the North had won. They take Richmond and set up a new governor there. Jeff Davis escapes to South Carolina ahead of Union troops and is rumored to be traveling between Columbia and his Mississippi plantation. At this juncture, Lincoln decides that the prudent thing would be to re-invade Mexico to “finish what Polk started.” Chaos ensues, with hilarious results!
or, after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt decides to invade South Africa (denying it has anything to do with their gold and diamonds). “Emperior Hirohito really isn’t important to me,” he says. When asked if the South Africans will fight back, he says “Bring it ON!” Then he falls out of his wheelchair whilst choking on a pretzel. When placed back in the chair, he starts chasing reporters threatening to “run them down!”