Does anyone know where this joker came from? I feel like he was added to the Corner’s roster because the Bush administration had become so deplorable that even many existing contributors were too intellectually honest to keep defending the indefensible. Thus, the institution just needed to dig even deeper into the blinkered pile and find someone dumb enough to still be a 100 percent Bush fan. I mean, seriously: “Kerry drew the Dems into a blind alley by making respect for the troops the central issue of the Iraq war.” Seriously? Seriously. And it goes on:
Every Democratic candidate should now be asked whether they think the troops are in Iraq because (a) they are committed to the mission and want to win or (b) because of their lack of economic and social opportunity back home. The latter is plainly Kerry’s position — and that of the Democratic left — and it has now been revealed as a position for which one has to apologize. Therefore, most Democrats now will contradict Kerry, and answer (a) the troops are devoted to their mission.
This is the central issue in Iraq? No, sorry, that’s idiotic. I’m not sure whether the thousands of dead American soldiers, the tens of thousands of maimed American soldiers, the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, the wreckage of overall American national strength, or the catastrophic spillover consequences for our policy in Iran, North Korea, and Afghanistan are the central issue in Iraq, but it’s some mix of those things. Or, perhaps, it would be better to say that the central issue is that all of these factors show all signs of getting worse rather than better in the near future. The troops, obviously, are trying their best to do their duty and serve their country but this doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been ordered into an impossible situation for the worst possible reasons.