One Hand Clapping, The Other Grasping For OBL
The puerile malevolence of contemporary Democrats is always competing with their comical pathos. This morning the pathos has nosed ahead again.
Last night Captain's Quarters brought us, "courtesy" of the New York Times, the dumbest controversy ever:
Rarely has wishful thinking so completely overpowered common sense. In the space of two paragraphs, the Times raises a question, provides its own correct answer, and then veers away from the latter in its reflexive fetish to portray universal opposition to and loathing for George W. Bush. Doesn't logic at least suggest that if "clapping, foot-stomping, and hoo-ahs" ordinarily accompany every speech that the President gives to the troops, there must have been orders given to refrain from doing so on this occasion?
Apparently, there are no Vulcans working at the "Grey Whore":
In other words, the assembled soldiers were ordered not to interrupt their Commander-in-Chief with enthusiastic applause. And, as Morrissey sagely observes, if those orders hadn't been given and the address had "become a pep rally," the "see what we want to see" press scribes would have accused the White House of ordering the troops to cheer, because as we all know, even the President's strongest, most vigorous supporters really hate his miserable guts.
"Slow news day?" No, just Bushophobia as Touret's Syndrome.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have "stumbled" across the mother of all "V-8 moments" in the GWOT: Let's catch Osama bin Laden!
That's it. I mean, that's the entire post. Most of the comments were longer, although not markedly more intelligent.
Well, hot damn, why didn't we think of that? Yeeeeehaw, let's throw a posse together and bring in the varmint! Git-R-done!
Except, of course, that by most reliable reports he's now based in Iran, and sending in even the number of special forces personnel and equipment the operation would require would run at least some risk of sparking a war with the mullahgarchy. Which would be just fine with me, but presumeably not our close, dear friends on the other side of the aisle, who are getting the vapors on a Noahic scale over a minor guerrilla war just next door.
And, as well, once bin Laden was in custody that would still leave Boy Assad, the mullahs and their nukes, Zarqawi, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the remnants of al Qaeda, et al to be dealt with.
And leave us not forget that the Dem-igod, Bill Clinton, had three separate opportunities to take bin Laden into custody in the mid-'90s and turned them all down, begging legal technicalities.
Oh, and then there's the celebrity/rock star status that the Extreme Media would instantly bestow upon the 6'4" bloodmister. Crap on a shingle, if you think that the EM is "humanizing" "Uncle" Saddam, they'd be building golden statues of OBL, the man who gave George Bush a black eye and effortlessly eluded capture for years afterwards.
So what is the real calculation behind this proffered "manhunt mandate"? Let's visit the comment I posted at GOP Bloggers last night....
....which I see is not up yet. Felgercarb. Nevertheless....
....it's not complicated: the Democrats have never been able to marshall a majority of public opinion against the GWOT, the way their late-'60s/early-70s antecedents were able to do vis-a-vie Vietnam. 9/11 is simply too stark a monument to the utter failure of the very foreign policy nostrums they demand we return to (which is why they go ballistic whenever the President reminds us of the actual and proper context of this conflict). Since they can't make people forget 9/11 they have to figure a way around it.
However, that can't happen absent external events that are by definition out of the Left's control. All they can do is squawk and agitate and demand and demagogue.
This explains their demand to close Gitmo, since turning loose all those jihadis would make another mass terrorist attack here at home much more likely, and the Democrats could use such an attack to discredit the war, and the President, that "failed to prevent it." And it explains this call to capture bin Laden (as though we're not, and haven't been, trying to do precisely that), since bagging the al Qaeda chieftain and architect of the 9/11 attacks would be used by the Donks, in the context of 9/11, to proclaim the war "over" and its continuance a "threat to national security."
One does wonder, though - if the troops that captured bin Laden didn't break out in clapping, foot-stomping, and "hoo-ahs," would that mean they opposed what they were doing, or had been under White House orders not to gloat....?
Last night Captain's Quarters brought us, "courtesy" of the New York Times, the dumbest controversy ever:
So what happened to the applause?
When President Bush visits military bases, he invariably receives a foot-stomping, loud ovation at every applause line. At bases like Fort Bragg - the backdrop for his Tuesday night speech on Iraq - the clapping is often interspersed with calls of "Hoo-ah," the military's all-purpose, spirited response to, well, almost anything.
So the silence during his speech was more than a little noticeable, both on television and in the hall. On Wednesday, as Mr. Bush's repeated use of the imagery of the Sept. 11 attacks drew bitter criticism from Congressional Democrats, there was a parallel debate under way about whether the troops sat on their hands because they were not impressed, or because they thought that was their orders.
Rarely has wishful thinking so completely overpowered common sense. In the space of two paragraphs, the Times raises a question, provides its own correct answer, and then veers away from the latter in its reflexive fetish to portray universal opposition to and loathing for George W. Bush. Doesn't logic at least suggest that if "clapping, foot-stomping, and hoo-ahs" ordinarily accompany every speech that the President gives to the troops, there must have been orders given to refrain from doing so on this occasion?
Apparently, there are no Vulcans working at the "Grey Whore":
Republicans moved quickly to respond to what was becoming a significant embarrassment.In what parallel universe, one might wonder (just to indulge the Star Trek motif). Get a load of what the Times regards as "responding to a significant embarrassment":
Captain Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who participated in the planning for the president's trip, said that from the first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a speech devoted to policy and strategy.
"The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, 'Be careful not to let this become a pep rally,' " Captain Earnhardt recalled in a telephone interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that account.
In other words, the assembled soldiers were ordered not to interrupt their Commander-in-Chief with enthusiastic applause. And, as Morrissey sagely observes, if those orders hadn't been given and the address had "become a pep rally," the "see what we want to see" press scribes would have accused the White House of ordering the troops to cheer, because as we all know, even the President's strongest, most vigorous supporters really hate his miserable guts.
"Slow news day?" No, just Bushophobia as Touret's Syndrome.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have "stumbled" across the mother of all "V-8 moments" in the GWOT: Let's catch Osama bin Laden!
Tonight in his speech, President Bush plans to bring up Osama bin Laden:
"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11 ... if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi ... and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden."
Bush doesn't get it. There's an easy way to make sure we don't "yield the future of the Middle East" to bin Laden: catch him.
That's it. I mean, that's the entire post. Most of the comments were longer, although not markedly more intelligent.
Well, hot damn, why didn't we think of that? Yeeeeehaw, let's throw a posse together and bring in the varmint! Git-R-done!
Except, of course, that by most reliable reports he's now based in Iran, and sending in even the number of special forces personnel and equipment the operation would require would run at least some risk of sparking a war with the mullahgarchy. Which would be just fine with me, but presumeably not our close, dear friends on the other side of the aisle, who are getting the vapors on a Noahic scale over a minor guerrilla war just next door.
And, as well, once bin Laden was in custody that would still leave Boy Assad, the mullahs and their nukes, Zarqawi, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the remnants of al Qaeda, et al to be dealt with.
And leave us not forget that the Dem-igod, Bill Clinton, had three separate opportunities to take bin Laden into custody in the mid-'90s and turned them all down, begging legal technicalities.
Oh, and then there's the celebrity/rock star status that the Extreme Media would instantly bestow upon the 6'4" bloodmister. Crap on a shingle, if you think that the EM is "humanizing" "Uncle" Saddam, they'd be building golden statues of OBL, the man who gave George Bush a black eye and effortlessly eluded capture for years afterwards.
So what is the real calculation behind this proffered "manhunt mandate"? Let's visit the comment I posted at GOP Bloggers last night....
....which I see is not up yet. Felgercarb. Nevertheless....
....it's not complicated: the Democrats have never been able to marshall a majority of public opinion against the GWOT, the way their late-'60s/early-70s antecedents were able to do vis-a-vie Vietnam. 9/11 is simply too stark a monument to the utter failure of the very foreign policy nostrums they demand we return to (which is why they go ballistic whenever the President reminds us of the actual and proper context of this conflict). Since they can't make people forget 9/11 they have to figure a way around it.
However, that can't happen absent external events that are by definition out of the Left's control. All they can do is squawk and agitate and demand and demagogue.
This explains their demand to close Gitmo, since turning loose all those jihadis would make another mass terrorist attack here at home much more likely, and the Democrats could use such an attack to discredit the war, and the President, that "failed to prevent it." And it explains this call to capture bin Laden (as though we're not, and haven't been, trying to do precisely that), since bagging the al Qaeda chieftain and architect of the 9/11 attacks would be used by the Donks, in the context of 9/11, to proclaim the war "over" and its continuance a "threat to national security."
One does wonder, though - if the troops that captured bin Laden didn't break out in clapping, foot-stomping, and "hoo-ahs," would that mean they opposed what they were doing, or had been under White House orders not to gloat....?
posted by JASmius at 8:35 AM
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