False Start on Fourth Down, Wingnuts (Re)Take Possession
The play, Lugar goes for it:
Lugar: U.S. Must Reduce Military Presence In Iraq
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, tonight announced his support for an immediate shift in Iraq policy, calling on President Bush “to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options.”
In a major speech on the Senate floor, Lugar said that “victory” in Iraq as defined by President Bush is now “almost impossible.” The current course of the war “has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.
Penalty flags are down:
[…]I have watched him for about thirty years, and I cannot recall a moment of courage, not one time when he set himself against the conventional wisdom, nor challenged a policy before the winds had shifted against it. He was chairman of Foreign Relations for several years. What did he accomplish? Nothing. He behaved in total synch with Biden, which says it all. He had hearing on Iran, and only invited witnesses approved by Powell and Rice and their people, never a clear dissenting voice.
It was predictable for him to join the calls for retreat, as he had already been a leading soprano in the appeasement choir. It wouldn’t surprise me if Biden asked him to do it, in order to show that the establishment Pubs have abandoned the war (surprise!)
Lugar: “What he is basically saying is that the war is lost.” [Andy McCarthy]
Lugar, the great Republican Foreign Policy Doyen, is saying the United States of America has lost a war against rag-tag terrorist cells — including those of al Qaeda, which killed nearly 3000 Americans on one day and has said, repeatedly, that Iraq is the battle for all the marbles … the battle they were sure they would win because America runs away whenever the heat gets turned up high enough.
And, knowing that, he would have us to run away anyhow.
God help us.
Result is a turnover on Downs:
Lugar: Plans To End The War Are ‘Very Partisan,’ ‘Will Not Work’
Earlier this week, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) delivered a major speech […] Abandoning his unyielding public support for the war, he called on the President to downsize the U.S. military presence in Iraq in order to “strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities.”
Unfortunately, Lugar has no intention of acting on his rhetoric. Speaking this morning with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Lugar said that Congressional measures aimed at curtailing U.S. military involvement in Iraq, including “so-called timetables, benchmarks,” have “no particular legal consequence,” are “very partisan,” and “will not work.”
Above: “…And the GOP Moderates section goes wild!”
Lugar, Specter… these guys are turning into verbs.
this just in: Senator Richard Lugar (R-Geezer) decries sunburn, but says hat-wearers are partisan.
OT – it’s 80s flashback day over at my dump.
They try to shame us into letting them have their way. “You think American troops are cowards! You hate America! Waah! Waah!” It’s been old for about five years now.
We don’t think the troops are cowards. Why do you want them to throw their lives away accomplishing nothing?
We support America. Why do you want to turn us into the Roman Empire?
Not even the Roman Empire. At least they granted citizenship to their conquered peoples.
This is more like European colonialism post-Dark Ages (yeah, wingers, I went there- whatcha gonna do ’bout it).
I can’t sense of your football metaphors, please refrain from them in the future.
Thanks in advance.
In fact, Harvard does suck.
For all these people claim to be Clausewitzian, you think they would’ve grasped the “Clausewitz in Ten Seconds for Dummies” lesson:
“War is the continuation of foreign policy by other means.”
“Foreign Policy” is something one state conducts with another state. France does not have a foreign policy for dealing with Madonna, for example. Italy does not have a foreign policy for the Boy Scouts of America.
I know it’s old hat at this point, but it’s bothering the crap outta me today. You cannot declare war on terrorism. You cannot declare war on terrorists. You cannot declare war on terror. Until these stupid fucknuts get this through their titanium-dense skulls, we’re going to continue hearing the same stupid shit from them over and over again.
A moment of silence for the horse that sacrificed its head, so that it could be put in Lugar’s bed to send the message.
(Actually, Jillian, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”)
But of course Jillian is right. The wingnuts’ one gesture toward analysis, their one (grudging) baby step out of the realm of fantasy (in which they see themselves as heroic, courageous, etc.) into the less gratifying realm of reality, is to point to Islam. “We can’t make ‘war on terrorism’?” they say. “Oh really? But isn’t it interesting that all the terrorists are Moslem…”
(“Isn’t it interesting that…” is nitwit code for “very stupid assertion to follow.”)
The more diffuse and archetypal the enemy, the more they can posture and pose and preen for each other. The more they can pretend to be “warriors” and the less they have to worry about diplomacy, history, knowing something, correcting mistakes, acknowledging mistakes, and so on.
They live in a comic book world, in which “the enemy” is SPECTRE and SMERSH and THRUSH and KAOS and they’re, if not Bond (or Napoleon Solo, or even Maxwell Smart), the smart, caring patriots (safely) back home.
[…] in: Lugar Isn’t Going to Be NRO’s MVP! By Mona . HTML Mencken reports on a very special football game, in which my personal fave of all the depraved neocons, Michael […]
“he had already been a leading soprano in the appeasement choir.”
So he’s a fag. That’s what it’s always about – who’s the tough guy and who’s the girly man.
Somehow I think the “monkey-fucking-a-football” expression needs to be worked into this metaphor – somehow.
*Allow me to conjure a vision of the future!*
———–
War… War Never Changes…
I got a shit-ton of waterchips and a suitcase full o’ G.E.C.K.
But I’m growing an extra toe, my canteen’s empty and the radioactive wasteland stretches to the hazy horizon.
PipBoy, don’t fail me now!
———————
Sad thing is,
that is my -optimistic- prediction.
Jillian, Jillian. You’re outta yer mind. Of COURSE you can declare war on terrorism. There is a long, proud history of using warfare as a solution to societal issues.
Remember the War on Drugs? Yep, Artillery and B2 stealth bombers, along with a couple of armored divisions and we blew the crap outta those drugs.
Oh, and how ’bout the war on Poverty? Remember that one? Aircraft Carriers, Cruise Missiles, SpecOps and of course, don’t forget the dedicated actions of the Coast Guard, and we kicked poverty’s ass back to its capitol, Nofoodville, and toppled it’s evil leadership.
Now I’ll admit, the war on terror still has a ways to go. There seems to be a lot of terror out there still. Even I, alas, am not immune. I’m terrified of spiders and going to the dentist. So it’s going to take a lot more military action before terror runs and hides under the bed, and the people come out from under the bed. So let’s keep lightin that fuse, folks!
mikey
“leading soprano” I bet he was excited when he came up with that one. Zing! what a tool.
“Lugar, Specter… these guys are turning into verbs.”
I’m guessing that a “Lugar” is something you bring up from the back of your throat and then “Specter” at someone?
Yep, I screwed it up….but the argument still works: states only engage in political activity with other states. The U.S. has an ambassador to Greece; they do not have an ambassador to Christopher Hitchens.
In a move of solidarity with my Republican bretheren, I say we declare war on schadenfreude – this way, people will stop feeling schadenfreude every time a Republican opens their mouth anymore.
And in other news, it looks like SCOTUS has finally started the work of repealing Brown v Board of Ed. today. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, as we’ve completely fucking ignored it since the day the decision was rendered, but it looks like we’re ready to even give up the fig leaf to our shameless lack of morality and commitment to equality.
yay us.
Bloix said,
June 28, 2007 at 17:16
“he had already been a leading soprano in the appeasement choir.”
So he’s a fag. That’s what it’s always about – who’s the
tough guytop and who’s thegirly man.bottomFixed!
OT:
I followed a couple of links from the Debbie Schlussel post to this post on Abdiel
http://www.abdiel.ca/node/107
“Mapping Shari’a is an enterprise by one Dave Glaubatz, who proclaims proudly on a web site for his company, called “Gaubatz Arabic & Counter Terrorism Training” (www.davegaubatz.com), that “[w]e don’t use books.” Apparently not. Gaubatz works in conjunction with SANE Works for US, a recently emerging “lobby” “group” of “people,” and we’ll use all three terms loosely, dedicated to bringing back the good ol’ days, when men were white and women couldn’t vote:
America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white, who ventured from Europe to create a nation in their image
They also hate Muslims, all of us, and have pulled out all of the stops to ensure that in the future, if they get their way, practicing Islam will be a criminal offense punishable by 20 years in prison. I am not joking.”
http://www.davegaubatz.com/
http://www.saneworks.com
http://www.mappingsharia.com
You cannot declare war on terrorism. You cannot declare war on terrorists. – Jillian
Something tells me that the NROers are the sorts of people who, when playing D&D, “cast magic missile at the darkness”.
Anyway, your point about Clausewitz and the role of war is way under-appreciated in our national discourse (just today I heard an NPR report with some major general going on about the military doing much needed work in Iraq and ordinary Iraqis wanting the US military to stay: and all I could think of is “isn’t this police work? why is our military doing this sort of thing?”) is spot on, IMHO, but I thought the neo-cons who pushed this war considered themselves to be idealists and regularly slammed those of us who opposed the war not only as dirty hippies but somehow also as descredited Clausewitzians … i.e., I thought they said we were the heirs of Clausewitz (and somehow at the sametime dirty hippies? Wha?) not that they were …
Dear Andy McCarthy,
The Green Lantern was a comic strip, not a foreign policy primer. Carry on …
HairlessMonkeyDK, may the Vault Dweller smile upon you.
noen, for more on the truly insane Dave Gaubatz, see my co-blogger Jim Henley’s post about poor, sick Davie G.
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/04/21/6275
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