This Week's Media Meme (Pre-Foley)
Per Bob Woodward's new book [drumroll, please]....Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign! Why? Because retired left-wing generals say so! Because Bush lied us into Iraq and is lying about the progress of the war, which is REALLY awful and doomed to disaster! And if it's repeated often enough, the public will believe it just to shut these assholes up!
D'ya get the feeling that libs are finally starting to realize that militant pacifism isn't working, and that's why they moved so quickly to the Mark Foley sex scandal? For one thing, Rummy has once again disavowed any intention of complying with demands that he quit. For another, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card has denied that he ever lobbied the President to fire Rumsfeld, one of a number of mendacities that littered Woodward's 60 Minutes segment Sunday evening and doubtless clutters State Of Denial as well. Thirdly, NR's Rich Lowry, who resides in my neck of the "You can't fight half a war" woods, argues that Rummy's is, in fact, the closest internal Bush Administration stance to the Democrats' cut & run obsession by his emphasis on trying to pawn off the anti-terror fight in Iraq on the Iraqis rather than just smashing the enemy ourselves and continuing on to Tehran.
Well, okay, I added that last part, but the principle still holds.
Lastly, it just isn't having any impact on voter opinion:
After more than three years of loud, obnoxious, seditious, relentless anti-war agitating, the American people are still committed to winning the GWOT and still behind the President. That, it seems to me, is why the Democrats have returned to their salacious roots and decided that a politician's "private life" matters to his "public performance" again.
But only if he's a Republican.
More on that to come.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to include the fact that al Qaeda itself is convinced they're losing in Iraq:
"Dire" is right, given that al-Masri also concedes that AQ has lost over four thousand jihadis battling the Great Satan. Clearly he thinks that the only way to decisively turn the tide is a headline-grabbing WMD "Hail Mary" attack that would butcher hundreds of U.S. soldiers at once rather than the dribs and drabs of roadside IEDs, and panic the American public into demanding an immediately pell-mell, Saigon-1975 withdrawal. Not unlike what I've long predicted was the lesson bin Laden drew from 9/11: don't stop the jihad, but escalate it spectacularly further.
OTOH, maybe al Qaeda leaked the Foley IMs to the Democrats. That seems, in the short term, to be having a similar effect.
UPDATE II: Austin Bay has more on the jihadi pessimism that Bob Woodward refuses to see.
D'ya get the feeling that libs are finally starting to realize that militant pacifism isn't working, and that's why they moved so quickly to the Mark Foley sex scandal? For one thing, Rummy has once again disavowed any intention of complying with demands that he quit. For another, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card has denied that he ever lobbied the President to fire Rumsfeld, one of a number of mendacities that littered Woodward's 60 Minutes segment Sunday evening and doubtless clutters State Of Denial as well. Thirdly, NR's Rich Lowry, who resides in my neck of the "You can't fight half a war" woods, argues that Rummy's is, in fact, the closest internal Bush Administration stance to the Democrats' cut & run obsession by his emphasis on trying to pawn off the anti-terror fight in Iraq on the Iraqis rather than just smashing the enemy ourselves and continuing on to Tehran.
Well, okay, I added that last part, but the principle still holds.
Lastly, it just isn't having any impact on voter opinion:
Michael Barone takes a look at recent poll numbers [on the popularity or lack thereof of the Iraqi front in the GWOT] from belwether Ohio, and concludes: not as unpopular as the Democrats seem to think. On the questions whether we were right to invade Iraq and how well the war is going, respondents broke essentially 50/50. On the question whether we will ultimately succeed in establishing a secure democracy in Iraq, a clear majority say we will. And on the question whether we should stay in Iraq until the country is stabilized or cut and run, 61% say the former, and only 38% want to cut and run. In view of he present positions of the parties, those numbers break for the Republicans, not the Democrats.
After more than three years of loud, obnoxious, seditious, relentless anti-war agitating, the American people are still committed to winning the GWOT and still behind the President. That, it seems to me, is why the Democrats have returned to their salacious roots and decided that a politician's "private life" matters to his "public performance" again.
But only if he's a Republican.
More on that to come.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to include the fact that al Qaeda itself is convinced they're losing in Iraq:
Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released Thursday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.
The fugitive terror chief said experts in the fields of "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences — especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts" should join his group's jihad, or holy war, against the West.
"We are in dire need of you," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri. "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."
"Dire" is right, given that al-Masri also concedes that AQ has lost over four thousand jihadis battling the Great Satan. Clearly he thinks that the only way to decisively turn the tide is a headline-grabbing WMD "Hail Mary" attack that would butcher hundreds of U.S. soldiers at once rather than the dribs and drabs of roadside IEDs, and panic the American public into demanding an immediately pell-mell, Saigon-1975 withdrawal. Not unlike what I've long predicted was the lesson bin Laden drew from 9/11: don't stop the jihad, but escalate it spectacularly further.
OTOH, maybe al Qaeda leaked the Foley IMs to the Democrats. That seems, in the short term, to be having a similar effect.
UPDATE II: Austin Bay has more on the jihadi pessimism that Bob Woodward refuses to see.
posted by JASmius at 8:35 AM
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