Really, it's almost surprising it took so long for Cheney to say this...

God forFUCKINGbid

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the Republican convention and the Bush campaign is to present the president as a war-leader in the abstract. The most celebrated images were from the wreckage of 9/11 when Bush spoke the only truly inspired off-the-cuff remarks of his presidency. The actual concrete details of his war-leadership - the fall of Kabul, the blitzkrieg to Baghdad, the aborted siege of Fallujah - were absent. So too the protracted negotiations at the U.N. or any images of Bush with foreign leaders, or the decision to advance the war by days to get Saddam (more bad intelligence) or even the speech that launched the Iraq war. What I think the Republicans have realized is that the war on terror is far more popular and winning an issue for Bush if it is stripped of its actual events, and setbacks and triumphs and difficulties. That's why the convention rhetoric approached propaganda - focusing not on what has happened, but on the virtues of a strong war-leader.

...

I believe in this war, which is also why I believe it is important to get as many Democrats to support it. But the Republicans have all but declared that this is a Republican war - and can only be conducted by a Republican president. I think they will live to regret this almost as much as the country will. And I fear the animosity and division that are already part of the cultural fabric (by no means all fomented by the president) could get worse in the coming years - to the glee of our enemies. In wartime, unity matters. When a campaign deliberately tries to maximize polarization to its advantage, it simultaneously undermines the war. Winning this war is more important than building a new Republican majority. But somehow I don't think that's how Karl Rove sees it.

Can't wait for the spin brigade to properly explain his utterances with the deftness of a Greek oracle finding meaning and purpose in the entrails of a bull.

heh, "approached"...

Franklin Roosevelt: And if you vote for Wendall Wilkie, the Japanese may very well attack us again!

[end SCENE]

Shit.

Well, yes. I'm intrigued by Sullivan but by no means am I sold on him.

In terms of war, the Muslims have been getting the shitty end of the stick for two years. Portions of Iraq have been slowly pulverized. We're going to keep losing people but not at a rate that's militarily significant compared to past wars in any sense. The combat power of the military and nation has not been affected in the slightest by this "war." Politically, the war may be lost or can be lost, but it can't be lost in a tactical or square feet of destruction way.

So why is unity necessary? The military has, for all intents and purposes, been running itself. Bush let it loose and gives it carte blanche and the only reason the bloodletting and pulverization of Iraq hasn't been more severe is due to some good sense on the ground there from local commanders in charge. That could change, too.

The biggest delusion, and a successful one that the government has carried out on the polity, is that this is a war in a sense like
the Wehrmacht vs. the USSR was a war, or even SHAEF vs. Army Group West after the Normandy invasion. The United States does not face an enemy which can defeat it in the field or even occasionaly inflict a really stinging reverse that would take months to recover from.

To buy this, you have to accept the idea that terrorists have a strategic arsenal of some kind and that it is certain that it will be deployed. Except, this strategic arsenal is always unknown but always capable of bringing on "tens of thousands" of casualties in an eyeblink. (Even though 9/11 did not result in tens of thousands of casualties and still managed to be a pretty good tactical hit. Numbers wise, it's not up their in the annals of "war.")

So where's the war? Let's have war if we want war! Our tough president and Democrats trying to prove their tough should stop fucking around. Let's have the draft again and crank up the munitions factories even higher and use them all and bomb the fuckers flat ten times over so they really start coming after us with pointed sticks. Then we can have the war where we must all be united in a Sullivan way.

What did this guy learn in history class? We have a phony war. That's what this is. It's a "Sitzkrieg in front of the TV" for 98 percent of the nation. There's no strategic aim. There's no tactical aim. There's no goal except the nebulous one to "beat terror" and "get the bad guys" or to "protect Americans" from something which cannot be defined except in very broad and general strokes.

"I'm going to put out my wash on the Sitzkrieg Line if the Sitzkrieg Line's still there!"
-- World War II ditty in the lull between the fall of Poland and France

I'm sorry, but I'm with Atrios on this. There's some vile shit you can't make ok, regardless of the circumstances.

Andrew Sullivan, up yours.

Bitte.

Whatever type of contradiction might exist in worldview espousing fascistic patriotism to ensure the future of christian, tory, homosexual western liberalism?

xpost

well, if "it" = the civilian policy administration

Yeah, there was a lot of old line Army that had big problems with Rummy's and Bush's plan. This isn't to say the Generals don't love a war, so much as to recognize that many officers foresaw the dangers presented by inadequate planning and occupation strategy.

The combat power of the military and nation has not been affected in the slightest by this "war."

This is untrue in such a way as to be a strong argument against the Iraq war.

There's no strategic aim. There's no tactical aim. There's no goal except the nebulous one to "beat terror" and "get the bad guys" or to "protect Americans" from something which cannot be defined except in very broad and general strokes.

Is this rhetorical, because this is an unlikely claim? I'm sure as sure can be that the STATED aim, WMD, had nothing to do with anything other than obtaining popular support for the whole escapade. And it wasn't terrorism. But there are many claimable strategic and tactical goals. Play for regional hegemony. Play for regional stability (HA!). Long term energy policy issues (not in the "to enrich oil companies" sense. Enriching big oil companies. Israel support play. Iran appeasement/engagement play. Al Qaida appeasement (vacating Saudi). I'm not saying each of these are equally credible, or credible at all, but I believe that there's a reason for the war that goes beyond "war on terra."

Let's have the draft again

I know how and why the draft is an extremely unpopular proposal, but I think from a social policy standpoint it is a pretty good idea. As I've said before, the distance between my dad's naval officer cronies and the civilian political center is quite far...and getting farther. My hope would be that compulsory service would over time mitigate this situation.

Oh, and Ned, I'm buyin' you Wahoos fish tacos on the occasion of Sullivan's philosophical collapse. I want his breakdown to be of the no-more-wire-hangers variety though, full-throttle shrillness.

Oh, hold on: we can always just elect Cheney in '08. Phew. What a relief.

"We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."