[Note: This post is slightly off topic.]
Take it back, America bashers, or we’ll sic Chuck Norris on you:
Yes 72 + 3×4 = 84! You go, Chuck. And here all along I thought you were just another dumb action star. My bad!
Pentagon considering Petraeus for top NATO position.
“The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration.” A “senior Pentagon official” who spoke to the the New York Times said that “he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing.”
Giants Win
Well, nobody thought the Giants would win tonight, but nobody thought they would win last week either. Or the week before that. I remember that after the Giants won their first game of this season my dad was worrying that if they won too many Tom Coughlin might not get fired. And now the hopes of a whole nation of haters rest on their shoulders.
Obama’s Speech
Barack Obama’s MLK speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church is extremely good. It should remind Obama fans of what they like best about him. For campaign purposes, though, I think nobody’s ever doubted that he’s a great orator. The difficulty is that he hasn’t established a policy argument on his behalf that people find compelling. With little differentiation between the candidates in terms of issues, things are breaking down on demographic lines and women outnumber men, old people outnumber young people, nonblacks outnumber blacks, and working-class people outnumber college graduates among the target audience on the primaries.
1.20.09.
Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report reminds us that “after seven painful years, the Bush presidency will end exactly one year from today.”
Something Different
This is a family blog, so I won’t quote this.
Punts
What was up with that San Diego punt on 4th and 10 trailing in the fourth quarter? Trying to cover the spread? Appalling.
Other Election News
Chris Bosh wants to be an All-Star:
He’s listed as a forward, but seems like the obvious choice as Dwight Howard’s backup at the pivot.
History Hesitated?
Rudy Giuliani’s latest ad:
When corruption ruled, he challenged it. When welfare failed, he changed it. When crime thrived, he fought it. When government broke, he fixed it. And when the world wavered. And history hesitated. He never did. Rudy Giuliani. Leadership. When it matters most.
When history hesitated? What’s that supposed to mean? There’s been a lot of mockery of the frequency of Rudy Giuliani’s invocations of 9/11, but for my money its the vacuity of the invocations that’s really striking.
Bacevich on Iraq
Not surprisingly, I agree with Andrew Bacevich:
Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor — no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush’s successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.
According to the war’s most fervent proponents, Bush’s critics have become so “invested in defeat” that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war’s perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.
The case for the surge, and the war more generally, has long been bound up in a failure to think coherently about purposes and objectives. If, instead, you throw a bunch of troops into the mix, have them do a bunch of stuff, see what happens, and then define in retrospect whatever it is they’re accomplishing as the purpose of the mission, then, sure, new tactics are working. When our old tactics were aimed at having our troops wander around the desert and kill armed Sunni Arabs, we succeeded in doing that. Switch tactics to helping to train and equip these very same people, and now we’re succeeding at doing that. But what are we trying to accompish?
