You can already see it coming.
The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.
This, of course, is precisely how the Bush administration fostered the Anbar Awakening. If we had an adopt-a-moron program going, I would volunteer to watch Ace of Spades for the most historically ignorant shit-losing, but obviously the field is wide open.
Omnes Omnibus
Dan Riehl, just because he has be so reliably loud and stupid lately. Of course, Malkin is also a good bet.
demkat620
Allahpundit. Just for fun.
BDeevDad
Obviously Malkin or Beck.
Surreal American
First, Ace-of-Allahpundit-Riehl would state that the Obama Administration plans to co-opt the Bush strategy. Next, the claim would be that Bush would never bribe tribal representatives for their loyalty.
All in the same argument.
Joe Beese
Yeah, if you keep pouring in tens of thousands of troops, sooner or later you’re going to end up with an escalation.
Bubblegum Tate
Malkin’s a given, but for this, I do think Ace is a good call. I bet he’ll be whipped into a frenzy at the mere thought that we paid people in the Anbar Awakening; I’ve seen more than a few wingnuts claim that the payouts were liberal fiction and that the awakening happened because the Iraqis finally figured out the genius of Bush.
Shell
I thought the next freak-out would be the frantic critique of whatever charity Obama chooses to donate the Peace Prize money to. You know there will be every feverish attempt to link it to liberal causes/ACORN/Chicago/Ayers/whatever.
BDeevDad
Freepers already there.
Bubblegum Tate
@BDeevDad:
Ah, fuck. Of course the Freepers would be first. What was I thinking giving the nod to Ace like that?
SenyorDave
It will be so interesting to watch the conservatives start opposing the war effort after spending years calling anyone who dared question anything about Iraq or Afghanistan a traitor.
tc125231
Yes you can. But the other commentators are right –the one thing the wingularity is actually good at is simultaneous hysterias.
Ash Can
@Surreal American: Nah, they’ll just ignore the fact that this was Bush’s strategy altogether, and go straight for the “Worst Policy EVAH(zillionexclamationpointseleventyonesputterflail)” screed.
@SenyorDave: I’m not sure, since I only glanced at the headline (“A ‘Necessary’ War?”), but I think the WSJ may already have started to do this. I’m too lazy right now, and my back too sore, to get up and look through the husband’s WSJ back issues to check, though.
john@MM
@Shell
Wouldn’t it be awesome if they donated the whole prize to ACORN? That might bring on the Wingularity.
bellatrys
And after this, some wingnut history revisioner will start championing the following notion:
The Marshall Plan was a godless hippie librul endeavor! If a proper bunch of Real True Murkin He-Men had been in charge during/after WWII instead of those pansy Dems, it’d have been Versailles II all the way, and everything would have been soooo much better for the whole world! USA! USA!
(Hey, they’ve already preached how the Great Depression was caused/exacerbated by FDR and the New Deal, this is not much of a stretch.)
Anne Laurie
To be fair, this was a popular enough opinion during the 1950s/1960s among the Archie Bunkers that your historian will just have to pull up the NY Post archives and do a Find/Sub of “Eisenhower/JFK/Johnson” with “Clinton/Obama”. There is very little history that isn’t revisionist, so we’re always forgetting how unpopular “proven” political actions were during their implementation. (Which also has a lot to do with Cole’s stubborn refusal to understand why his GLBT readers find his DADT posts frustrating, but arguing with John about that is like trying to convince my dog not to raid the wastebaskets — it’s easier just to move the wastebaskets and save my energies for conflicts where my opinions might actually matter.)
Fledermaus
So peacably petition the government for universal health care and get told “it’s too expensive and will increase the deficit” but take up arms against the us military and afgan civilians and get paid off.
I wonder if they have thought this through.
Steve Hynd
“I can’t afford health insurance so I’m declaring war on the corrupt and illigitimate Karzai government.” ?
It might work.
smiley
Totally off topic but, I think I’m in love.
jl
The British in Malaysia used this tactic against Communist insurgents after WWII. Does that fact that this was a strategy used in one of the few succesful modern counter-insurgency operations make any difference? I doubt it, at least to the wingnuts and GOP Congressmen, and fools like McCain and Lieberman.
Go to Juan Cole’s blog
http://www.juancole.com/
and click on the global affairs link. You can find articles there that describe how fricken blown up Afghanistan is, compared to what it was before the civil wars and Soviet invasion. Reporters who do real reporting, instead of stenographing what some anonymous official wants to put out, say that locals are joining the Taliban because the Taliban pays real money and provide real social support to desperately poor people.
We should try to give people at least as good a bargain as the Taliban. And rebuild Afghanistan’s agricultural and trade infrastructure as soon as an area is secure. And quit trying to force US style political system and elections on it, that just produce corrupt governance that the ordinary Afghan does not trust and receives no benefits from.
Mike Jones
You know, I think all we need is a scoring system and we could start up Wingnut Fantasy Leagues. Each team could get one TV pundit (Fox), one TV pundit (non-Fox), one talk radio buffoon, one print pundit, one web drooler, and one open pick.
El Cid
If inanimate notions could win awards, “The Surge” should be nominated for being among the most entirely over-hyped, fraudulently anti-understood periods / phenomena in history.
The massive ethnic cleansing of Baghdad finished up, separating Shi’a from Sunni, and it was at this tail end of the successful ethnic cleansing campaign that “THE SURGE” [you shall not question it!] began, and the U.S. helped this be completed by walling off Baghdad, and local warlords began rejecting foreign inroads on their power from ‘Al Qa’ida’ nimrods, and then the U.S. started cash payments to groups formerly associated with the Sunnis attacking U.S. troops.
And this is treated like some Roman miracle of strategic brilliance by the godlike General Petraeus and somehow this pile of late-arrival shit ‘proved’ the hawks right.
Insane. And inane. But mostly aggressively assertive insanity.