That’s more like it ;-)
This is just the first 24 hours or so. That’s about 1 every 2 minutes.
The biggest benefit? I don’t get a million confirmation emails to read through. I think more than half my email was spam confirmation requests.
From comments on the brain trust assembled by General Petraeus: some see a repeat of McNamara’s Whiz Kids — long on education, short on real experience — while others see them as scapegoats in waiting:
Oh, great: what better strategy than to say, “don’t call Bush dumb–we sent SEVEN PhDs into Iraq and THEY couldn’t solve it either! So there, you hissy-pissy Bush Bashers!”
It could be spun as, “of course it failed–you had THINKERS and FEELERS in there, instead of solid-steel airtight military minds!”
What better way to further discredit the idea that education is useful for things. “PhDs–hah! They couldn’t win the war in Iraq with PhDs. Don’t gimme any PhD crap. Shoulda turned em into glass in 2003. The PhDs LOST this war! Burn the universities–they’re to blame!”
Obsidian Wings: The most important thing right now:
“The plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years… The administration’s recent use of the banner ‘clear, hold and build’ accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.” -Joe Lieberman, November 2005
“We recognized the problem, and we changed our strategy. Instead of coming in and removing the terrorists, and then moving on, the Iraqi government and the coalition adopted a new approach called clear, hold, and build.” -President Bush, March 2006
“Embedding more of our soldiers with Iraqi troops and training more Iraqi troops are part of the package, and so is adopting an effective clear-hold-build strategy in the areas of conflict.” -Charles, today
I’d love to believe that there’s a new strategy which deserves a chance to work. But this is the same “new strategy” we’ve repeatedly tried over the years, only this time we’re going to somehow make it work. Sorry, Bullwinkle, but real people are dying while you keep trying to pull a rabbit out of that hat. I don’t support it.
Seriously, if the people who keep saying escalating the war is the key to victory (assuming they can define it in a way that approximates the dictionary entry) would converge on their local recruiting stations, grab a kit bag and go fight for this “most important thing,” I could take them seriously. But they can’t even agree to call it an escalation.
Am I wishing they were all getting their heads blown off? No. I wish them no harm. But the words of John Stewart Mill come to mind:
Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom.
Is it too much for them to go to this place they claim to care so much about and see it for themselves, unfiltered, unedited, and take their place in that line of defense they talk about so much? Is their sense of sacrifice, of commitment, limited to arguing over the internet?