Let’s not give up on our Republic just yet. Yes, PC is a rot that eats at the very fabric of our culture. But remember, we are partisan because we can afford to be! There have been no strikes on our shores since 9/11, the casualty lists are ridiculously low, and our part in the war doesn’t even make the front page anymore (barring aberrations like Haditha and Hamdaniyah. God be with those Marines). For too many Americans, this won’t be real until they have their noses rubbed in it. It is an ugly, ugly truth, but until the fight is brought home, there’s not a whole lot we can do.

When it is inevitably brought home, we need to get some honest to God straight shooters and take the fight back with no holds barred. I wish, from time to time, that we were not so reactive, but it’s what makes us who we are. We will try everything else first, and then go for the jugular. President Bush is not our Churchill, much though I wish he were. He is still a good man, but a good man hampered by dissension and defeat at home and haunted what might have been. I only hope he either throws off his lethargy (amnesty, anyone?) and does what is best for this country before the curtain comes down or the blood really starts flowing. Beyond him, we must simply pray the the public wakes up. Woe to us if we do not.

During the German and Japanese occupation, GIs could at least walk the streets or drive the roads.
Speakup on November 25, 2006 at 12:29 AM

That’s because no one dared. Today’s military is faced with “political correctness” and “winning hearts and minds” – two silly and counter-productive concepts that no one respects and should never have seen the light of day. Shoot the damn insurgents on the spot! The reason the insurgents target so many Iraqi citizens today is because they can’t get at the military as often as they would like, or, they fear the retaliation – albeit not as the Germans and Japanese did during WWII.

Disarming a nation like Iraq is a big tough job that never got started.

Because underwhelming force was the troop level goal. The nation of Iraq never had a chance to live in peace and hasn’t anytime since shock and awe plus green zone started.

During the German and Japanese occupation, GIs could at least walk the streets or drive the roads.
Fear of death among members of our conquering army just to walk the streets or drive should be a clue that perhaps not quite enough conquering had taken place.

As much as I respect Dr Kissinger and even more regret that James Baker was not the President in place of George the first.
I’m afraid that unless the Baker commission has something magical, like a time machine. The answers they come up with won’t be easy to swallow.

Democracy is a noble ideal but when it results in the gaggle of idiots we have produced perhaps it’s time to try some other approach. — rplat

…so, instead of stepping up and displaying the leadership and acumen for which they’re being paid and feted, we ask them to surrender *MORE* of the mandate we’ve foolishly given many of them to some uber-pol?

The cool thing about democracy is that if you make a bad decision, you can correct it and make another. Recall the b*stards. Make their lives Hell. Make ‘em produce. If we don’t, we have only ourselves to blame.

Democracy is a noble ideal but when it results in the gaggle of idiots we have produced perhaps it’s time to try some other approach.

W.T.F? I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean.
The Apologist on November 24, 2006 at 5:11 PM

It means I accept rplat’s recommendation that I be appointed dictator perpetuus until the end of the war on islamofascism….

First order of business, free brownies for everyone! Secondly I order the opening of the sooper sekrit Rove detention camps for “Dissenting-Americans.”

My motto will be “Let the chill winds blow.”

Just get George Mitchell, James Baker, maybe even Jimmy Carter out of mothballs to survey the problem and given you their “bipartsian” echelons above oxygen, Olympian views on how to proceed. Have a sticky problem? Dodge the call for leadership and trot out some idle Establishment solon to “investigate” and pronounce on it gravely, making no actual decision whatever.

Have them publish “findings” to which they won’t themselves be held, making sure beforehand to stack the deck with “non-partisan” partisan activists like Jamie Gorelick, and a few cigar-store Indians like Lee Hamilton to add to the gravitas.

These “commissions” are rather like going to the scrapyard and museum berths nationally to assemble a fleet around the USS Olympia, including the USS Missouri, the USS Monitor, Old Ironsides, and the Pueblo to find out why the Cole was struck. One of the Democratic ships will be sure to act like the Yamato Battle Group and send kamakazis off into the press to leak and throw bomblets.

This is an abnegation of leadership.

In wartime, that smacks of treason. Both the Executive and the Legislative branches, mutually antagonistic based upon their soaring arrogance, egged on by a monumentally egotistical and self-righteous press, are parties to it.

Democracy is a noble ideal but when it results in the gaggle of idiots we have produced perhaps it’s time to try some other approach.

W.T.F? I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean.

If Iran and Syria were to be asked for help it would be a request that they get uninvolved, not more involved. The idea isn’t that they use their influence for good so much as they stop using it for evil. Syria needs to stop allowing jihadi’s and Baathists to organize the Sunni insurgency in Syria. Iran needs to stop funding, training, and arming the Shi’ite militias. And both need to close their borders to all but the most urgent traffic for about two months. None of this matters because Bush isn’t going to make a deal with either of these regimes. He’ll stick it out as he has been and put his faith in Iraqi politicians figuring out that they need to work together or see their country destroyed.

By the way, Sadr just overplayed his hand yesterday. He said he’d quit the cabinet and boycott parliament if Maliki meets with Bush in Jordan. The meeting’s going ahead anyway. If he really quits that may be the opening Maliki needs to turn on him. We’ll see.

We cannot leave under any circumstances that would indicate defeat for us as our enemies around the world would then smell blood and go after us everywhere. The administration must decide what is worth protecting in Iraq, i.e., the oil fields and refineries and pipelines, the Kurds, the porous borders from infiltration of men and arms, and those in Iraq who have supported us. It must then draw up a strategy to protect these assets. If the government gives us carte blanche to destroy the militia groups, we must do so; otherwise we must withdraw our support for it and concentrate on protecting the assets. If Shiites and Sunnis are intent on killing each other, so be it.

…internal dissension and partisanship among members of the supposedly bipartisan group

*claps loudly*

I hope this means gridlock and scuttlesville for a report that appears to be on the way to recommending tactics that will ensure our defeat. I mean, calling for “U.S. dialogue with Iraq’s neighbors”…?

After what has happened recently in Lebanon, I think time for talking is over.