How High The Bar?
Having nothing better to do, their scalp pouches still empty after five-plus years (unless you count Michael Brown and Scooter Libby, and they're not getting what they thought they'd get out of the latter), and being incapable of rethinking their basic Bushophobic premises, the Extreme Media has drifted back to Rummy-bashing. I'd yawn if I wasn't too bored by it all to bother. It's like TV re-runs in August, or Nickelodeon pretty much daily - there's nothing on you haven't seen countless times already. You can practically recite the dialogue before the characters do. And it's all futile, because Secretary Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere, and they all know it. The term "partisan masturbation" comes to mind.
What caught my eye in RCP's blog post on the topic this morning was this quote from an all too tiresomely familiar New York Times article:
"Inability of American forces to defeat the insurgency in Iraq"? Just exactly how are David Cloud and Eric Schmidtt defining victory? How are the "insurgents" defeating us? Each and every time al Qaeda (the Ba'athist dead-enders aren't even in the fight anymore, and have in some cases turned against Zarqawi's bunch) has gone up against American forces directly they've gotten massacred. By continuing to launch grisly attacks on civilians? All that has accomplished is to turn the Iraqi populace against them, which is the diametric opposite result of what an insurgency is supposed to seek if it is to overthrow the government it is fighting. And even those attacks on "soft" targets are declining, along with Coalition casualties. The recent attack on that Shiite shrine was the "insurgency's" last gasp at bringing about the only thing that could qualify as a strategic victory of any kind (i.e. triggering a sectarian civil war), and that fizzled as well. The new Iraqi political structure held. Sounds like endgame to me.
So what is it that keeps the jihadis going? People like Cloud and Schmidtt and Ignatius. Fifth-columnists, witting or unwitting, under the dubious guise of "journalism," who make common cause with the Islamic fanatics trying to kill us all out of their partisan obsession with destroying the Bush Administration once and for all. Getting Rummy's head on a stake would, indeed, "be seen as a tacit admission of failure in Iraq - something that would give the Democrats a neatly-wrapped gift for the elections this November and, more importantly, would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by our enemies overseas and cast further doubt on our commitment and resolve...."
Our foreign enemies, in other words, would get the strategic victory they are unable to attain themselves via their domestic co-belligerents who won't recognize true victory because it doesn't help them politically.
T'would be, for the journos, a "win" most pyrrhic indeed - if they weren't already too dhimmized to see it. Allah willing, it will be a "triumph" that will remain stoutly denied.
And if there's ever a victory parade, may Donald Rumsfeld be its grand marshal.
What caught my eye in RCP's blog post on the topic this morning was this quote from an all too tiresomely familiar New York Times article:
Some officers who have worked closely with Mr. Rumsfeld reject the idea that he is primarily to blame for the inability of American forces to defeat the insurgency in Iraq.
"Inability of American forces to defeat the insurgency in Iraq"? Just exactly how are David Cloud and Eric Schmidtt defining victory? How are the "insurgents" defeating us? Each and every time al Qaeda (the Ba'athist dead-enders aren't even in the fight anymore, and have in some cases turned against Zarqawi's bunch) has gone up against American forces directly they've gotten massacred. By continuing to launch grisly attacks on civilians? All that has accomplished is to turn the Iraqi populace against them, which is the diametric opposite result of what an insurgency is supposed to seek if it is to overthrow the government it is fighting. And even those attacks on "soft" targets are declining, along with Coalition casualties. The recent attack on that Shiite shrine was the "insurgency's" last gasp at bringing about the only thing that could qualify as a strategic victory of any kind (i.e. triggering a sectarian civil war), and that fizzled as well. The new Iraqi political structure held. Sounds like endgame to me.
So what is it that keeps the jihadis going? People like Cloud and Schmidtt and Ignatius. Fifth-columnists, witting or unwitting, under the dubious guise of "journalism," who make common cause with the Islamic fanatics trying to kill us all out of their partisan obsession with destroying the Bush Administration once and for all. Getting Rummy's head on a stake would, indeed, "be seen as a tacit admission of failure in Iraq - something that would give the Democrats a neatly-wrapped gift for the elections this November and, more importantly, would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by our enemies overseas and cast further doubt on our commitment and resolve...."
Our foreign enemies, in other words, would get the strategic victory they are unable to attain themselves via their domestic co-belligerents who won't recognize true victory because it doesn't help them politically.
T'would be, for the journos, a "win" most pyrrhic indeed - if they weren't already too dhimmized to see it. Allah willing, it will be a "triumph" that will remain stoutly denied.
And if there's ever a victory parade, may Donald Rumsfeld be its grand marshal.
posted by JASmius at 8:35 AM
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