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You are here: Home / This is how we do it

This is how we do it

by DougJ|  February 4, 20109:44 am| 64 Comments

This post is in: Good News For Conservatives

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Daniel Pipes, writing in National Review:

He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations…

Gee, what might such a dramatic gesture be?

I’d put this one after the break to build suspense, but you’ve probably already guessed:

Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity…

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64Comments

  1. 1.

    J.W. Hamner

    February 4, 2010 at 9:49 am

    It’s gotta be comforting to neocons to know that the answer to every question is: Bomb Iran!

  2. 2.

    robertdsc

    February 4, 2010 at 9:50 am

    It’s gotta be comforting to neocons to know that the answer to every question is: -Bomb Iran!- tax cuts!

    Fixed.

    Nothing would be worse right now than another stupid fucking war.

  3. 3.

    General Winfield Stuck

    February 4, 2010 at 9:50 am

    I guess it’s Pipes turn with the Stonewall Jackson centerfold.

  4. 4.

    Joe Beese

    February 4, 2010 at 9:51 am

    I almost feel bad for the “bomb Iran” zealots. They must have an agonizing case of military blue balls.

  5. 5.

    gex

    February 4, 2010 at 9:51 am

    To be fair, there’s more like a Mad-Libs answer book. The answer is bomb _______ (insert name of country peopled mainly by non-whites).

  6. 6.

    aimai

    February 4, 2010 at 9:51 am

    Oh, I was thinking something more on the lines of “he could order the US military to bomb the next Republican Caucus Retreat.”

    aimai

  7. 7.

    IndieTarheel

    February 4, 2010 at 9:54 am

    They are consistent, you have to give them that.
    __
    Your choice as to adjective.

  8. 8.

    Zifnab

    February 4, 2010 at 9:55 am

    Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity…

    Oh… oooooh… Oooooh…. OOOOH…. YES! YES! YES!
    Ah… ha… yeah. That’s good stuff.
    Thank you Mr. Pipes. I really needed that.

  9. 9.

    GregB

    February 4, 2010 at 9:56 am

    With all apologies to Godwin.

    These f*ckers are Nazis right to the core.

    They have one solution to everything and that is the mass liquidation of humans they deem undesirable.

    -G

  10. 10.

    Kryptik

    February 4, 2010 at 9:56 am

    I fully expect him to have a WaPo ed by the end of next week to discuss this radical new proposal.

    I think he’s jealous that Bolton’s gotten the market on the ‘Bomb Iran’ rhetoric as of late. Prats.

  11. 11.

    scav

    February 4, 2010 at 9:56 am

    drop bombs

    drop taxes

    drop bombs

    drop taxes

    drop bombs

    drop taxes

    (drop your drawers, but don’t mention it!)

    drop bombs

    drop taxes

    …

  12. 12.

    kindness

    February 4, 2010 at 9:57 am

    If only National Review allowed me to comment on their pieces. I suspect I’d last about two days before I was banned for profanity.

  13. 13.

    Paris

    February 4, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Without checking the link, I thought the quote was from early 2001 and he was talking about Bush.

  14. 14.

    C Nelson Reilly

    February 4, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Obama should air drop the Carly Fiorina laser eye wolf in sheep’s clothing into Iran

  15. 15.

    FormerSwingVoter

    February 4, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Why do neocons still exist? How can people still think that a wildly over-aggressive approach to every bit of foreign policy is best for our country? Have these people been living in a cave for the past nine years?

  16. 16.

    jrosen

    February 4, 2010 at 9:58 am

    Dear Mr. Pipes:

    Drop a load. You’ll feel better. So will I.

  17. 17.

    MR Bill

    February 4, 2010 at 9:58 am

    I’ve always wondered what Pipes was smoking..

    And can’t see him on TV without my monkey brain starting to gibber and screech, warning “Danger! Evil!”
    Quite apart from his record of continual warmongering.

  18. 18.

    Ash Can

    February 4, 2010 at 9:59 am

    OK, serious question here. Has Daniel Pipes ever, I mean ever, said anything worthwhile in public? At all?

  19. 19.

    cmorenc

    February 4, 2010 at 9:59 am

    In neocon-world, any President who doesn’t embrace Dick Cheney’s approach to aggressive preemptive military interventionism is a weak pinko-ideologue.

    Ever notice how low the proportion of neocons is who ever actually served in the military period, or if they did, in any sort of active combat role where they were personally exposed to danger?

  20. 20.

    Chinn Romney

    February 4, 2010 at 10:01 am

    Oooh, he mentioned an Electro-magnetic pulse attack. Dayum. I just finished reading that Nelson DeMille thriller too. I see I’m not the only one who’s way behind in my reading, that book came out 20+ years ago. I hope Daniel accelerates his efforts to catch up with the series, I know I’m going to. I want to find out how it ends before it’s too late.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    February 4, 2010 at 10:04 am

    I vote that every time someone makes a statement like this, we give them a Vietnam-surplus rifle and a one-way ticket to the country they want to attack.

    Give the border guards there a heads-up, of course. Only polite.

    -dms

  22. 22.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    February 4, 2010 at 10:04 am

    Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon Murdoch’s propaganda production capacity…

    Fixed. This would do much more to cure the world’s problems than bombing any country.

  23. 23.

    David

    February 4, 2010 at 10:05 am

    Does he think his warmongering is serving some purpose?

  24. 24.

    FormerSwingVoter

    February 4, 2010 at 10:05 am

    We let the neo-cons have their way for the past nine years, and here’s what it accomplished:

    Alienated all of our allies
    Became a recruiting bonanza for our enemies
    Legitimized the worldwide use of unilateral force by the strong over the weak for basically any reason (hi Russia and Israel!)
    Encouraged those we would prefer not to have nuclear weapons to redouble their efforts and come closer to that goal than ever before (hi Iran and North Korea!)
    And of course, lots of dead and wounded American soldiers

    Seriously, there isn’t a single American interest that has been served by the neocon domination of foreign policy over the last nine years. How can anyone honestly hold positions like this without being laughed out of the room now?

  25. 25.

    Brick Oven Bill

    February 4, 2010 at 10:06 am

    I’ve got a better idea. How about we just pull all of our men out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and let the water in those countries find its own equilibrium level.

  26. 26.

    Maude

    February 4, 2010 at 10:06 am

    That’s so 2008.

  27. 27.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    February 4, 2010 at 10:07 am

    @Chinn Romney: You’re really far behind. Haven’t you seen Transformers 2? We’ve got all sorts of high tech weapons.

    And John Galt’s perpetual energy machine is working wonderfully in Colorado Springs.

  28. 28.

    danimal

    February 4, 2010 at 10:08 am

    “Obama, you’re a pussy..”
    “I am not”
    “then prove it, go bomb Iran.”

    It really hasn’t changed since grade school. Name calling and manipulation is their stock in trade.

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    February 4, 2010 at 10:11 am

    TPM:

    Pipes also warns of Iran launching “an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country.”

    Right. An electromagnetic pulse the size of the whole U.S.A. Why would they bother when they can nuke us with bombs carried in their super-fuel-efficient transoceanic drones? Or zap us from space with satellite-based laser cannons? Or lob meteors at us from the asteroid belt with a rail gun?

    There’s only one way we can beat such science — with nationwide training in creationism!

    .

  30. 30.

    Redshift

    February 4, 2010 at 10:12 am

    a light-weight, bumbling ideologue

    Geez, are these people capable of writing anything that isn’t obvious projection?

    Everywhere in the world other than wingnuttia, there is a “public perception” of GW Bush as a “light-weight, bumbling ideologue,” and spending his entire term acting like a warmongering bully didn’t help at all.

  31. 31.

    demo woman

    February 4, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Pipes once wrote an article about the benefits of profiling to prevent terrorism. He mentioned that most people in our prisons are black and they are studying the Koran and inferred that most are likely to become terrorists. After he wrote the article Bush appointed him to the US Institute of Peace.
    I’m more concerned about the Daniel Pipes among us.

  32. 32.

    JGabriel

    February 4, 2010 at 10:14 am

    FormerSwingVoter:

    How can anyone honestly hold positions like this without being laughed out of the room now?

    Because only non-serious people and politicians would laugh at them. Serious politicians and pundits always maintain a grave demeanor, and always recommend war, because war is serious business.

    .

  33. 33.

    geg6

    February 4, 2010 at 10:14 am

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):

    And John Galt’s perpetual energy machine is working wonderfully in Colorado Springs.

    I’m wiping my monitor. Awesome.

    As for Pipes, seems I read this a day or so ago. I mean, I can’t even take this kind of wankery seriously any more. Does anyone beyond the Village?

  34. 34.

    El Cid

    February 4, 2010 at 10:15 am

    Obama clearly should announce a SURGE for the entire planet. Only by invading & occupying China, Russia, Congo, India, and Mexico can he demonstrate the sort of wartime leadership that I learned by watching “300” repeatedly and touching myself.

  35. 35.

    jrg

    February 4, 2010 at 10:15 am

    Hmm, start a war for political purposes. Brilliant! Why didn’t the Republicans think of that before?

  36. 36.

    mr. whipple

    February 4, 2010 at 10:20 am

    Pipes also warns of Iran launching “an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country.”

    He’s been watching too many James Bond movies.

  37. 37.

    New Yorker

    February 4, 2010 at 10:20 am

    @Brick Oven Bill:

    Hold on, that’s not the Brick Over Bill I know. Are you just pulling our legs by posting something this reasonable?

    As for Pipes, I’m just shocked, shocked that there’s another intellectually mediocre daddy’s boy printing this tired, discredited rubbish as if the events of this past decade never happened. Is neoconservative thought a cult at this point? Can we start considering their ideas as seriously as we consider the ideas of Scientologists?

    And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: imagine if these people had been publishing this kind of crap in the 1980s and Reagan had been listening to them. We would have been bombing Warsaw and Prague in the summer of 1988.

  38. 38.

    cat48

    February 4, 2010 at 10:28 am

    Neocon pipe dream or CW in DC? Andrea Mitchell of all people asked Susan Collins “is it time for regime change in Iran?” It was unbelieveable and a frightening thing to hear from a normally sane reporter.

  39. 39.

    liberty60

    February 4, 2010 at 10:46 am

    More and more our political establishment reminds me of Imperial Rome. In those days, every new Emperor was obliged to demonstrate his gravitas and resolve by invading somebody, somewhere, so as to march triumphantly back from war with a parade of captives and booty.

    Most of the Emperors were bumbling lightweights of course, whose chief skill consisted of Machiavellian Rovian treachery, so about half the time their campaigns were wretched debacles of ineptitude and slaughter.

    Every Emperor Commodus had a Daniel Pipes whispering in his ear.

    I’m tempted to root for the barbarians.

  40. 40.

    soonergrunt

    February 4, 2010 at 10:46 am

    He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations…

    Well, since nobody but the neocons, still hawking their discredited ideology thinks this, why should anyone care?

  41. 41.

    soonergrunt

    February 4, 2010 at 10:48 am

    @New Yorker:

    Is neoconservative thought a cult at this point? Can we start considering their ideas as seriously as we consider the ideas of Scientologists?

    You hadn’t already?!?

  42. 42.

    soonergrunt

    February 4, 2010 at 10:49 am

    Oh, and the edit function is jacked up on my work computer, so FYWP and FYDR (FY Domain Restrictions)

  43. 43.

    Keith

    February 4, 2010 at 10:53 am

    Alternatives would be to double Gitmo and to introduce a bill to legislate prosperity.

  44. 44.

    Grog son of Grog

    February 4, 2010 at 10:54 am

    @liberty60:

    I’m tempted to root for the barbarians.

    As a member of the civilization-challenged, I take offense at your use of the word barbarians. I demand an apology, although I am not able to accept on behalf of all of those who are in fact civilization-challenged.

  45. 45.

    New Yorker

    February 4, 2010 at 10:55 am

    @soonergrunt:

    Well, I’m not saying that I take them seriously, but the Village sure does. I want us to get to the point where the media takes the foreign policy viewpoints of Bill Kristol and Daniel Pipes as seriously as they do those of Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

  46. 46.

    LGRooney

    February 4, 2010 at 10:56 am

    As a Soviet/Russian “expert” all I can say is, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” The world is nothing if not filled with reasons to piss yourself and send someone else’s kids into combat. Academic insanity runs in their blood.

  47. 47.

    chrome agnomen

    February 4, 2010 at 11:09 am

    if obama’s a light-weight bumbler, where does that put bush? a evanescent quark? (apologies to fundamental particles that actually have a purpose in the grand scheme)

  48. 48.

    Scamp Dog

    February 4, 2010 at 11:10 am

    @Ash Can:

    Actually, yes. Back in the ’80s he pointed out that the Soviet Union was facing some problems and might collapse. That’s, hmmm, 25 years ago now? And he seems to have forgotten the principle that our enemies aren’t all 9 ft tall and implacably evil.

  49. 49.

    Andy

    February 4, 2010 at 11:14 am

    In other news, Daniel Pipes recommends kicking fire ant beds to eliminate fire ants in your yard.

    Virtually everyone who’s been paying attention agrees that bombing won’t do it — their nuclear infrastructure is too scattered, too buried, too dispersed, including places we probably don’t know about. The Iranians learned lessons from Osirak, even if Daniel Pipes didn’t.

    It’s easy to say “destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capability;” actually doing it is an entirely different matter.

  50. 50.

    Sentient Puddle

    February 4, 2010 at 11:15 am

    He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations…

    I know! How about meeting with the Republican caucus and verbally bitch-slap them while taking questions?

    Oh wait…

  51. 51.

    Michael

    February 4, 2010 at 11:23 am

    It’s easy to say “destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capability;” actually doing it is an entirely different matter.

    And that presumes a level of competence that our overpaid, overfed warriors haven’t demonstrated.

    1. The Cold War has come to really piss me off. As has been demonstrated time and again with large yet limited disaster relief, it was the height of arrogance to believe that you could have a civilization-eradicating nuclear exchange and have anything other than prolonged chaos in the rubble for the surviving civilian populace. It makes me want to piss on the grave (or in the aged faces) of every old Cold Warrior who thought that this could be accomplished.

    2. I’d have thought we’d have learned our lessons about occupation messiness by now. Even regimes that ran brutal occupations (Nazis come to mind) couldn’t tamp down insurgency completely.

  52. 52.

    Gravenstone

    February 4, 2010 at 11:26 am

    @scav: You missed Bomb Taxes – but never, ever Tax Bombs.

  53. 53.

    Joey Maloney

    February 4, 2010 at 11:36 am

    @General Winfield Stuck: You have won the prize for today’s best comment. Please contact Tim Berners-Lee to make arrangements to pick up your internets.

  54. 54.

    Steve M.

    February 4, 2010 at 11:47 am

    Better yet, in the spirit of bipartisanship, ask Scott Brown to bomb Iran. Naked. That would really give wingnuts wood.

  55. 55.

    Balconesfault

    February 4, 2010 at 11:54 am

    Plus, he would give the DFH’s a good kick in the nuts! Score!

  56. 56.

    thomas

    February 4, 2010 at 12:13 pm

    Pipes must have one of theose one-handed typing machines so he can write this crap and touch himself at the same time.

  57. 57.

    Comrade Dread

    February 4, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    Yes. Because I know that I want a President who will start another thrice damned war with millions of potential victims and the possibility of escalating into a regional war, astronomical gas prices, and a generation of young men who will hate and despise the United States for it for decades to come because he’s feeling insecure about his manhood.

    I don’t say this often, but seriously, fuck this douchebag.

  58. 58.

    Mike in NC

    February 4, 2010 at 12:18 pm

    Nothing would be worse right now than another stupid fucking war.

    Which is exactly why the neocons would advocate it. They operate in an alternate reality universe.

    You missed Bomb Taxes – but never, ever Tax Bombs.

    It should be “Bomb Texas” if their wingnut governor starts talking about “The Great Satan” anytime soon.

  59. 59.

    S. cerevisiae

    February 4, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    I don’t remember who said it first, but I can only think of him as Daniel “Crack” Pipes.

    Bomb Iran. Right. What could possibly go wrong?

    Didn’t they have to quit a war game a few years ago because the commander playing the Iranians sank a carrier group and was winning the game? I seem to recall this.

  60. 60.

    Mike G

    February 4, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations…

    This was written in 2001, right?

  61. 61.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    February 4, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    @S. cerevisiae:

    Didn’t they have to quit a war game a few years ago because the commander playing the Iranians sank a carrier group and was winning the game? I seem to recall this.

    That would be the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercises. Which had to be suspended and “refloated” part way through because for the Blue Team (aka the US) they were going, as Hirohito once put it, “not necessarily to our advantage”. The Red Team was commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, a name that is easy to remember because it sounds like a character out of a Stanley Kubrick movie.

  62. 62.

    Sleeper

    February 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Daniel Pipes has some strange ideas. I remember him saying that his solution to the Palestinian issue wasn’t a one-state solution or a two-state solution but a three-state solution – give Gaza back to Egypt and the West Bank (minus Jerusalem, natch) back to Jordan and they can deal with the Palestinians. Which, of course, wouldn’t be a solution at all, even if it were feasible, as the Palestinians would still be SOL and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., would still be fighting. It’s just that they’d be killing Egyptian and Jordanians and not Israelis, which is all Pipes cares about.

    It would be one thing if neocons were particularly religious. I would find their devotion to Israel, or rather, Their Vision of Israel, a little more understandable. But they’re not, really. Cheney, Kristol, Perle, Pipes – they’re not particularly religious men, but sometimes they’re further to the right than even the most hard-line of Likudniks. Some of it’s just crude coalition politics, paying lip service to the Christian right which needs Israel in existence to usher in the Apocalypse, but it goes further than that. I’ve never understood it.

  63. 63.

    S. cerevisiae

    February 4, 2010 at 4:13 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: That was it! Thank you.

    After reading that link, you would think the military would be very cautious about stirring things up with the Iranians. They also have supersonic anti-ship missiles that we could do little to stop.

  64. 64.

    Svensker

    February 4, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    Daniel Pipes is a racist war-mongering prick. There is nothing else to say about him.

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