Dubya Strikes Back (Sort Of)

Here is President Bush's answer to Harry Reid's declaration of defeat in Iraq:

There's a good group of people in Washington, fair, decent, honorable people - and by the way, in this political discourse, we should never question anybody's patriotism if they don't happen to agree with the President. That's not the American way. The American way is we ought to have a honest and open dialogue. There are good people, patriotic people who didn't believe that additional troops would make that big a difference, and therefore, we should not increase, but in some cases, pull out; in some cases, pull back. Either case, having weighed the options, I didn't think it was viable, and I didn't think it would work.

Stop the tape. If you want to know why Bush's approval numbers went down the crapper years ago and why his party is no longer the majority in Congress, look no further than that simpering, New Tone-esque preface. The Democrats are NOT "a good group of people"; they're NOT "fair, decent, and honorable". They're ruthless, cutthroat, lying, despicable traitors who, morally speaking, merit being deported to someplace like Iran where they would learn what a real "theocracy" is all about.

Or else they'd be depicted like the fifteen Stockholmized British sailors and marines from a few weeks back. Heck, the Donks are already Stockholmized. But at least our country would be rid of them, and have a chance of winning this war.

At any rate, I'm not suggesting that the President should have begun his remarks by calling Reid a pencil-necked, two-faced real estate chisler with a propensity for wielding figurative butcher knives at the backs of American servicepeople. I don't know that that wouldn't be part of "the American way," but it certaintly wouldn't be presidential. All I've ever expected is that he not go out of his way, bend over friggin' backwards, to slather his political enemies with civility, goodwill, "Christian charity," and benefits of the doubt that they manifestly do not deserve.

The Democrats do not have any patriotism to question, and the "debate" over the war from their lines has been anything but "open and honest". There is, as the term is traditionally understood, no "debate" at all; just a fusillade of lies and distortions and facile escapism, a subordinating of the national interest, even national survival, to the overarching, almighty god of political self-interest. They want to rule America, no matter what has to be done to America to give them that rule. Monarchs of a poisoned realm, as long as they get to sit on their thrones of fascistic "compassion" and don their crowns of dhimmized "peace".

There can be no reasoning, no rapproachment, no modus vivendi with such people. They are simply vermin to be crushed (politically), and certainly oughtn't be given any quarter that they don't give us, or the President. And yet, even in a statement responding to Harry Reid's de facto al Qaeda communique, he bends over and grabs the ankles of bipartisanship yet again. Sheesh, doesn't the man ever get lower back pain?

Anyway, the rest of his remarks are on target, if you can hold your breakfast down through that first insufferable graf:

A couple of points I want to make, and then I promise to stop talking and answer your questions. People often ask me, what are we seeing on TV? What's happening with the violence? Here's my best analysis: One, the spectaculars you see are al Qaeda inspired. They claim credit for a lot of the big bombings. The bombing of the parliament was al Qaeda; the bombing of the Golden Samarra was al Qaeda. These are the Sunni extremists inspired by Osama bin Laden who attacked the United States. I keep repeating that because I want you to understand what matters overseas, in my judgment, affects the security of the United States of America in this new era.

Their objective is twofold: One, shake the confidence of the average Iraqi that their government is incapable of providing security, and therefore, people will turn to militias in order to protect themselves. Their second objective is to shake our confidence. It's an interesting war, isn't it, where asymmetrical warfare is - and that means people being able to use suicide bombers - not only, obviously, kills a lot of innocent people, like which happened yesterday in Iraq, but also helps define whether or not we're successful.

If the definition of success in Iraq or anywhere is no suicide bombers, we'll never be successful. We will have handed al Qaeda "that's what it takes" in order to determine whether or not these young democracies, for example, can survive. Think about that: if our definition is no more suiciders, you've just basically said to the suiciders, go ahead.

Unfortunately, "no violence" is the bar of success in Iraq. Hell, we can't even reach that bar in our own country, as Seung hui-Cho demonstrated a few days ago. I guess that means we should surrender ourselves to al Qaeda's rule when we surrender Iraq.

Don't laugh. As a practical matter any chance we had of winning the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism died in last November's election. On that day it became a question of how fast we'll inflict defeat on ourselves, and consign fifty million Iraqis and Afghans to the Islamist meat grinder. The sudden press of time is what gave us "the Surge". So far the Donks haven't, for whatever reason, outright defunded the war effort, but they're steadily bleeding it. And when Madame Hillary usurps the reins in a couple of years, the plug will be pulled altogether.

I wonder what Dubya will be saying then. Nah, I know what he'll be saying: nothing at all. He'll never grandstand and guttersnipe like Mr. Bill has. Wouldn't be presidential.

Dammit.

UPDATE: al Jazeera had an entirely different take on Dirty Harry's white-flag waving. Which goes to illustrate the adage that one is known for the company one keeps.