Quote of the day
posted at 12:27 am on July 12, 2007 by Allahpundit
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“Pretty soon, you’ll all be swinging from lampposts if you don’t hang together.”
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Bob Woodward…..irrelevant since Nixon’s fall trying desperately to recapture his glory days.
doriangrey on July 12, 2007 at 12:30 AM
I hope print media chokes to death on it’s own arrogance.
unamused on July 12, 2007 at 12:34 AM
I dunno. I thought Bush at War was an excellent read — good reporting with little personal opinion/bias. Very interesting insight into the months immediately following 9/11.
Bradky on July 12, 2007 at 12:47 AM
Yeah, me too.
Bad Candy on July 12, 2007 at 12:58 AM
I think this is a good snapshot of Nov 2006. We were losing the war then. The Iraqi gov”t wasn’t holding up their end of the bargin. In many ways they still are not. It is fish or cut bait for Malki. The no confidence vote may come this weekend by the Iraqi parliment. In a lot of ways I wish it does.
bnelson44 on July 12, 2007 at 1:22 AM
Well, today’s quote of the day is grave. Depressing. So I will bury my head in the sand momentarily, in the interests of humor, and avoid it. I apologize for what is to follow:
Off topic, but worth the 10-seconds it takes to click.
One of the arguments against global warming is that we’re really just “heating the thermometers.”
Well, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration takes that further than most.
Link.
Christoph on July 12, 2007 at 1:35 AM
correcting open HTML tag… my apologies for that too!
Christoph on July 12, 2007 at 1:36 AM
Oh, I doubt that. When the time comes Maliki and his cronies will just scurry off with the millions they’ve stolen and live like kings in the south of France.
Mike Honcho on July 12, 2007 at 1:56 AM
You read that whole thing, and like all other pieces put out by NYT, WaPo, you name the left leaning paper, they all want to point back to a time that someone was right, Bush was wrong. Bush never listens. Bush did it his way. Everyone else is always right, not Bush.
The whole piece is how Hayden was right, well, guess what, HE WAS WRONG.
Progress is being made. AQI is the #1, not #5 threat in Iraq. Sunni and Shia are starting to work together, yes, maybe they are at the point of exhaustion, but they are starting to work together to remove AQI.
Now, Shiites supposedly account for 70% of the violence,compared to AQI and their 15%, but AQI kills the most.
To me it is worth more time, lets see how things go for 3 more months.
I would love it if Maliki would go on TV and tell the Dems about how much harder his goals are to reach, than theirs, and I think he would be graded better on his and the Iraq Governments meeting goals than on the goals Dems set out to do when they took over Congress, well, the Dems exceeded their goal of investigations.
WoosterOh on July 12, 2007 at 2:12 AM
Maybe, maybe not.
Each day they are at grave risks of their lives, Mike. Many Iraqi lawmakers have been killed including people close to Maliki.
Perhaps you who live in a strong well built brick house should not throw rhetorical stones at the man who does his best to live in a fragile glass house?
Christoph on July 12, 2007 at 2:18 AM
Maliki should have been put in a line up in front of women. We could tell he was a wimp just by looking at him.
Connie on July 12, 2007 at 2:53 AM
Christoph
I am with you on that. How can we in America say he is not doing the best he can? He risks his life each time he leaves the green Zone. Even when things are calm, say he is there in 5 years, his life will still be at risk, because there will always be nuts and AQI. When he is done, I say if he wants to live, he would have to leave the country.
Oh, and your link, led me to this piece and it was a great read. Congress needs to read it.
Gravy Train, just like Y2K.
WoosterOh on July 12, 2007 at 3:06 AM
Thanks for sharing your link, WoosterOh. Opening and beginning to study now…
Christoph on July 12, 2007 at 3:10 AM
Absolutely. Those of us who have successfully built a nation, much less a failed 30-year fascist state now under violent assault from religious extremists within and funded and given manpower by neighbors without, please raise your hands.
Christoph on July 12, 2007 at 3:47 AM
What few people seem to understand is that Bush’s decision to invade Iraq wasn’t popular with the Washington establishment on either side of the aisle. He greatly upset the Saudi royalty and the UAE, you know those guys who bankroll Bush41, Clinton, and AlGore not to mention many other leaders around the world. Even the whisper of democracy is like the sound of of their demise and loss of immense power and wealth. Few people in politics anywhere really want a democratic Iraq to take hold in the Middle East so is it any great surprise that the ISG heard what they wanted to hear.
Buzzy on July 12, 2007 at 8:22 AM
Well the general is right. What the Whitehouse is reluctant to discover is what the military has already experienced, and what pundits like Robert Spencer predicted before the war began. Which is to say that Iraq, being a muslim country, pieced together, not by ethnic or religious homogeny, but by the artificial construct created by the British out of the Ottoman empire, governed by islamic law, and kept intact only by ruthless dictators, is not a country that can function along normal parameters.
There is no muslim nation on earth now, or in the past, that has ever been a stable democracy, much less a liberal democracy the likes of which Bush, in his naivete, tried to make. It can’t happen. The people are not good enough. Full stop. The experiment was tried and the results speak for themselves.
The need for shia to kill shitte is for more important to them than the need to get along. Being a muslim is not good enough, you must be the right version of muslim. And even that is not good enough in the arab world. You also need to be of the right clan. And even that is not good enough. You need to be of the same family. Read this article and you will understand why the arab world is dysfunctional. Fascinating stuff. http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm
The need to spend all day selling kumquats in a vegetable stand is more important to them than to design microprocessors. The need to herd goats and make love to camels, is more important to them than to create parliaments, governing bodies, or laws against bestiality, car bombing, wife battery and slavery. The need to pray five times a day is more important to them than to pave roads, build hospitals, or create anything of value. Human life means little, so human rights mean even less. Civil rights? Don’t even go there.
In short, the culture of the people does not value what we in the west value. We have spent almost 1 trillion dollars in Iraq trying to make them value what we value and it has met with total failure. They don’t want what we want. They have their own culture, they have their own way of life, and they will cling to it no matter how backward or repressive it is. You can lead a horse to water but you can not bring it out of the 7th century.
Into all of this, the story of the muslim world for the last 1300 years, comes George Bush, a man with a vision, but no degree of understanding.
jihadwatcher on July 12, 2007 at 8:39 AM
Eight words in and I saw all I needed in order to figure out the thesis, body and closing statement of Woodward’s
essayDemocrat Party propoganda.Alden Pyle on July 12, 2007 at 9:25 AM
jihadwatcher on July 12, 2007 at 8:39 AM
I believe Turkey would take considerable exception to that remark.
doriangrey on July 12, 2007 at 9:30 AM
?????? hear that? warning winds blowing in.5, 4, 3, 2…
Alden Pyle on July 12, 2007 at 9:35 AM
Since the first general elections of 1950, there have been 3 military coups in Turkey. That is not a stable democracy. And now Turkey is threatening to pull totally away from its secular Kemalist background and turn into an islamic state. If it doesn’t, it will only be because of yet another military coup.
jihadwatcher on July 12, 2007 at 9:42 AM
I’m not going to defend Maliki. He may deserve some understanding, even kudos, for his efforts, but I haven’t followed the political process enough to do so. What I will note is that we’ve asked him, and others, to operate a cooperative system based on trust, sharing, equality and freedom, in a societal system that has operated on very little of it.
So, for four years we’ve tried to focus on creating a central power structure and for four years we’ve had people fighting tooth and nail either to hold the reigns or prevent others from holding them. But in the recent surge, whether intentionally or not, an opposite approach has been implemented — distribution of power via local control. Local government.
Emphasize central government police and everyone is suspicious and resistant. Emphasize local police and everyone is ecstatic. Emphasizing central government securing the peace and the people fight. Emphasize local government securing the peace and everyone joins in. Wait for the central government to provide sewers, water, electricity, garbage collection and what happens? Very little. Offer to help them help themselves? Bingo it starts to get done.
The last one is a little iffy because it depends on who has the money. Where’s that? The central government again. They’ve got the money but the police, who should be responsible for maintaining the peace, don’t get paid. Nothing else will get done if the peace isn’t maintained. Heck, the citizenry doesn’t even have the money to buy enough bullets to kill Al Qaeda and had to beg the Coalition for bullets when they got fed up with AQ.
Local, self-sustaining government for local affairs and a central government for limited national and all foreign affairs will be the recipe for success and the best chance for maintaining the peace and fostering individual, independent prosperity.
I can’t understand why the central government in Washington doesn’t realize that running everything from Baghdad is a bad thing and detrimental to us succeeeding in Iraq. Well, I take that back, I can understand it.
Dusty on July 12, 2007 at 9:53 AM
We hit the hornet’s nest with an idealistic broom thinking it was full of butterflies, and now we have to kill hornets.
Bailing out will only encourage the jihadists.
As foolish as the opening policy and military strategy was, only by destroying these Islamofascists wherever they appear will keep them under control.
If we tried to feed people in Darfur and Islamic terrorists started attacking us there, would we run away?
If they bomb our bases in Afghanistan, do we run away there?
If they fight us in Iraq (even if we went in under mistaken premises), should we run away there?
It is not about the Iraqis or Afghanis, or their Sharia Law poisoned “democracies”, but about killing jihadis.
Everywhere we get the chance.
The less of them, anywhere, the safer we are.
The Iraqis and Afghanis will suffer their own Islamic dogmas whatever we do. But wiping out every jihadist al-Qaeda clone is always a good idea.
profitsbeard on July 12, 2007 at 9:58 AM
Aye!
Alden Pyle on July 12, 2007 at 10:41 AM
There is a military solution. I know what is is, you know what it is. No, it doesn’t involve nukes, nor withdrawl.
The thing is, no one has the iBalls to impliment it.
Mazztek on July 12, 2007 at 11:51 AM
Mazztek on July 12, 2007 at 11:51 AM
OK so if it doesn’t involve nukes I don’t know what it is, so please inform me.
doriangrey on July 12, 2007 at 12:44 PM
Invading Iran, doriangrey.
Not doing so years ago was a foolish error.
Christoph on July 13, 2007 at 3:10 AM
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