Two scathing pieces from Sully today. The first notes the stab-in-the-back rhetoric from the President:
To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to “pull the rug out from under them,” is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It’s beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither.
The second takes Kristol to task:
This is pure toxin. The truth, of course, is that this might conceivably apply to a fringe on the extreme left – but they never supported the war in the first place. Those of us who did and who have watched as the effort has been bungled morally, strategically and diplomatically to almost comic degrees, are guilty of a few things. We are guilty of accepting that there is no good, medium term end to this catastrophe; we are guilty of sticking to the basic premises of counter-insurgency warfare when judging how far the surge can go; we are guilty of tending to the very political benchmarks that Petraeus and every other sane observer has called the essential metric for judging the surge’s progress; we are guilty, unlike Kristol, of taking some moral responsibility for the carnage and evil our previous positions have helped unleash and, in the case of torture, actually imposed.
Maybe we’re wrong (we have been before).
Maybe a miracle is about to occur and ancient Shia-Sunni rifts are about to melt away. Maybe Maliki is a great man on the verge of a triumph. But we do not wish to hurt the troops; we do not want America to fail; we do not want terror to win. And we know that under this president, terrorists have won many victories, America has endured a profound, moral tarnishing, the military has been stressed beyond measure, thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, billions have been wasted, and Iraq is further away from some kind of normalcy than it was three years ago. In fact, Bush has presided over the creation of two new terror sanctuaries in five years: Iraq and Pakistan. And yet those who faced up to this these past few years are now the ones being called to account. Go figure.
The vileness and chutzpah of the current neocon right on the war are still somewhat staggering to me. I thought better of them. I really did. But this Weimar crapola is really depressing. I guess they have nowhere else to go.
I am firmly convinced it is only going to get worse from this administration and the nutjobs at the Weekly Standard. That is, unfortunately, a given, as we know how low they will go- as low as they possibly can. The only interesting question for me is how far will the lunatic fringe 28% crowd in the blogosphere go? How outrageous will the rhetoric have to get before the Malkins, the Hewitts, and all the rest of them say “Wait a minute- that crosses the line?”
I am betting they will never find a line they will not cross- this is not about Iraq or domestic politics anymore. This isn’t about the soldiers and it isn’t about the prospect of Democracy in Iraq. This is about being “right” in the face of evil leftists. This is about “winning.” This is not about what these policies and this vile rhetoric are doing to this nation and our standing- this is about saving face and their own personal stake in what they have attached themselves to in the course of achieving “victory.” My guess is Bush and his speechwriters and Kristol and those mutants at the Weekly Standard and other rags feel comfortable saying this stuff because they know that out there in the blogosphere and the world there are ample knuckledraggers willing and happy to cover for them.
Sadly, they are probably right. It doesn’t matter what type of filth you churn out- The Powerline will have your back. Remember- the Democrats are worse.