Cuz We Said So

More on Congressional Dems and the War

Russell’s return volley:

I'm not exactly sure how bringing the troops home is defeat.

Well, defeat is when the enemy commander’s goals are met, and the goals of your commanders, and ultimately, your Commander in Chief—are not.  Our enemy’s goal is to create the perception that we have been defeated.  If we withdraw from the fight in Iraq, the Dems forcing the issue expressly say they are doing it because we’re “losing”, and “can’t win,” and the commander in chief says we shouldn't be leaving?  That’s a defeat.  And in case anyone is confused, it will be trumpeted as such by our enemies both foreign and domestic.

We went there to defeat Saddam. Mission Accomplished.

That mission was indeed accomplished.  Now here’s the difference between a battle and a war: a war is a series of missions.  When you accomplish one objective, you move on to the next.  That’s why we didn’t say, “okay, we've captured Iwo Jima—time to go home!”  Right now, the mission is to kill or drive off the people setting off car bombs in Baghdad, and stand up the Iraqi army so that they can defend the Iraqi people on its own, preferably sooner than later.

What is success? What is the requirement for a pull out that, in the minds of David and those like him, isn't failure?

Success is the opposite of defeat: when our goals are met, and our enemies are not.  In Iraq, that means we’ve won when there is a general consensus here, among both Republicans and Democrats, and agreement in Iraq that those opposing us are dead, captured, or have fled, the security situation there has stabilized, and the Iraqi military is capable of ensuring the safety of the Iraqi people without our help, and is successfully doing so.

So, David is saying that those calling for a pull out of our troops from Iraq literally (not figuratively, but literally) want the terrorists to win.

No, that’s by no means the most common goal, though there are certainly some on the left who want exactly that, either because they’re cheering for the other side or because they believe that a weaker United States makes for a safer world, and see our defeat as a necessary means to that end.  ANSWER, and their ilk?  That’s exactly what they want. 

Most on the left, however, are no more rooting for the enemy than was Neville Chamberlain.  Congressional Democrats, for their part, are suffering from what attack pilots call target fixation.  That’s where you direct your attention so obsessively toward the subject of your aggression that you lose situational awareness and fly your plane right into the ground.  Unfortunately, the Democrats are fixated on the president, rather than on our actual enemies overseas.  They don’t want the terrorists to win, any more than pilots want to crash.  But they’re prepared to let it happen while they obsess on about Bush.  Unfortunately, the rest of us are on the same plane. 

Pelosi, Reid, and their fellow Democrats in Congress have, with the help of the media, done everything in their power to frame our fight there as unsuccessful and our withdrawal as a defeat of the Bush administration.  Compare that to the course of action recommended by the Democratic Leadership Council in late 2001:

…[P]rivately, many Democrats were agonizing about "lost issues," paralyzed fundraising, submerged 2002 election campaigns, and, above all, soaring approval ratings of a president whose very legitimacy was previously in question among some Democratic activists.

[But] …historical precedent suggests there's plenty of room for politics and political campaigns in wartime.

…During World War II, the opposition Republican Party's political strategy was clear and consistent, and may provide a model for Democrats today. Republicans strongly and unconditionally supported FDR's war effort (even when it appeared to be unsuccessful or potentially unpopular); they made clear distinctions between the president as commander-in-chief and as leader of the Democratic Party; wherever possible, they criticized the president's subordinates or supporters in Congress rather than the chief executive himself; and they focused their partisan agenda on domestic policy issues that either were remote from the conduct of the war or enabled them to claim their domestic "reform" efforts would also help the war effort.

Democrats could have similarly taken the high road, supporting the president and doing everything they could to frame our fight there as worthwhile and, when possible, successful--discouraging and demoralize our enemies, not our troops, and casting resistance as pointless and ineffective.  They could have said, “Some of us may have grave misgivings about this fight, but America is at war, and we stand by our president.  War is always terrible, but our enemies had better know that the resolve of the American people is unshakable.  We are coming for them, and no matter what happens, we’re going to hunt you down, kill you and those you love, and we’re going to keep doing it until everything you care about is in ashes.  Or you can surrender.”  And then followed through.  Instead, they are now so invested in their insistence that we’re losing there that if we don’t, they look to moderates like a bunch of witless ass-hats.

Here’s a test.  Go to Daily Kos, and start reading posts on the war.  See if you get Russell’s “we’ve won” vibe, or something else.  See if you see unconditional support for the war effort.  In fact, see if you can find anything but unconditional opposition.  The likes of Kos are what are driving politicians on the left, these days.

Have a Heart

No, I mean literally, have a heart:

Interested in the anatomy of the heart, but never had a chance to pick one up? Check out this awesome online 3D human heart!

(Via Digg)

Cage Match

The first time I saw the trailer for Nicholas Cage’s last movie*, Ghost Rider, it spoke to me.  It said, “This is going to be a bad movie.  Don’t see it.”  Sometimes a trailer will mislead, but from the hostile reviews I’ve read, I don’t get the sense that first impression was far off the mark.

The trailer for Cage’s new movie, Next, on the other hand, evoked a much more positive response, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a while now.  I see Russell has posted about the movie below, but I’m going to avoid reading his post until I see the movie this afternoon, because I’m curious whether my first impression will pan out again.

UPDATE (WITH SPOILERS):  I loved this movie.  The film itself was fun, but so was watching the film makers manage a protagonist with nearly God-like powers, limited just enough to keep some tension in the story.  And yes, I loved the ending.  The film pretends to be about the bomb threat, but it's really about Cris and his connection to Liz, so focusing on his rescue of her is where the story lies.  Once he's saved her, screwed up, and wound back the clock, he's already convinced us that he can  eventually save the day.  Watching him do it would just be more of same, crossed with an episode of "24".  Meanwhile, seeing the screw up looked cooler and took up less screen time.

——————

* Okay, technically, maybe Grindhouse was Cage’s last movie.  But I don’t think he headlined that one, did he?  And nobody saw it anyway.

"Next"

There's a scene in the movie "Minority Report" where Tom Cruise has to sneak his way through a shopping mall with a precognitive girl in tow. She helps the process by giving him little hints about how to avoid capture. I remember when the movie was about to come out, several reviewers pointed to that as a really amazing scene. I enjoyed it, but it didn't have quite the visceral thrill I had anticipated.

"Next", the new film with Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel is that scene expanded to an entire movie. Cage is Chris Taylor, a guy who can see two minutes into the future. What seems like a set up for an SNL skit turns out to be a whole lot of fun. Dodging bullets, performing ridiculous hand-to-hand fights, and a casino chase that takes the "Minority Report" concept to a new level.

The cheesiest part of the movie is Chris's "connection" to Liz (Biel) the only person whose future he can see beyond two minutes. The film never bothers to explain this discrepancy, nor the guy's precoginitive power at all. Which is okay, I guess. On that level, it's not really a science fiction story, but a fantasy.

The most surprising thing about the movie is the ending. I don't know if I like the way it ended yet, but it certainly was unexpected. And the unexpected is what makes life fun.

On On Confusing the Result and the Motivation

Quoting Don Imus?... Really?...

Anyway... David had a number of things to say in a recent post:

Have congressional Democrats proposed a credible argument for how our defeat in Iraq will earn us standing or respect?

I'm not exactly sure how bringing the troops home is defeat. We went there to defeat Saddam. Mission Accomplished. (No, really this time.) I was all for staying long enough to build a democracy there. Oh, what do you know! Mission Accomplished. I think the idea is that we've stirred the pot long enough. The world isn't going to love us again if we leave Iraq. But they'll dang sure not love us again if we don't.

Senator Reid knows as well as I do that war is a psychological conflict as well as a physical one, and that talking down our chances of success weakens us.

What is success? What is the requirement for a pull out that, in the minds of David and those like him, isn't failure? If he's looking for a nation where people don't get shot all the time, I guess somebody needs to invade Detroit.

Connecting the dots? ...if the war turns around now, 18 months before the election, it would weaken the key issue they believe helped them to win in 2006.

So, David is saying that those calling for a pull out of our troops from Iraq literally (not figuratively, but literally) want the terrorists to win. They are actually hoping that our troops will continue to die. That's just a sadly cynical viewpoint.

Also, they don't simply "believe" it helped them to win. It helped them to win. And, what with this being a freakin' democracy and all, it's remarkable how little the Bush Administration seems to care about public opinion.

Sure, our defeat and withdrawal from Iraq would likely make the current violence look like a day in the park, and leave few people alive for Senator Reid to engage with diplomatically or politically.

Okay, this takes the cake. Pulling our troops out of Iraq would cause an escalation of violence so great that the entire nation of Iraq would be destroyed. That's twenty-seven million people dead. Wow. Just... wow.

Gun Control Arguments and Hanlon's Razor

Eugene Volokh: “Setting aside the various other questions raised by assault-weapons bans, how can a news service say with a straight face that legislation limiting the capacity of handgun magazines would have reduced the amount of ammunition used by the murderer?”

I have seen many things written and said about guns by gun control advocates that are simply factually wrong.  I'm not talking about points of argument, things on which there might be reasonable controvery, but simply statements about how guns operate that suggest a basic lack of knowledge on the part of the speaker.  I wonder how much of this stems from ignorance on the part of the person opining—born, perhaps, of a disdain for guns that leads to an avoidance of learning about them—and how much is deliberate, but intended to benefit from similar ignorance among those to whom anti-gun arguments are directed.

Hard to say, though I suspect both things are at work, to some degree.

On Confusing the Result and the Motivation

Russell, in reply to my post, Odd, That:

I think you're confusing the requested end result (troops out of Iraq) and the motivation behind those requests.

Oh, but I don’t think I am.  Instead, I’m judging the behavior of the actors by the consequences of the outcome they seek.  To borrow a phrase from Don Imus, who came to the conclusion only belatedly, "There's a difference between premeditated murder and the gun going off, but the end result is the same: Somebody's still dead." 

As for the theory that congressional Democrats are “motivated by returning the US to its one-time standing as a respected and effective world power,” let’s examine that.  From what evidence might we conclude that this is really their motivation?  Have congressional Democrats proposed a credible argument for how our defeat in Iraq will earn us standing or respect?  Because we know they know expect defeat will be a likely outcome of setting a withdrawal date, as they have proposed.  Here, via Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s website, is Senate Majority Leader Reid , speaking in 2005:

‘As for setting a timeline, as we learned in the Balkans, that’s not a wise decision, because it only empowers those who don’t want us there, and it doesn’t work well to do that.’

Never let it be said I never agree with Senator Reid.

“Six months after that, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden, said this: ‘A deadline for pulling out … will only encourage our enemies to wait us out’ … it would be ‘a Lebanon in 1985. And God knows where it goes from there.’ That was our friend, Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Again, unexpected agreement with Senator Biden.

“And three months later, Senator Clinton made the same point when she said, ‘I don’t believe it’s smart to set a date for withdrawal,’ said Senator Clinton. ‘I don’t think you should ever telegraph your intentions to the enemy so they can await [sic] you.’

But why telegraph your intentions when you can declare them outright?  The headline yesterday from the New York Times: Reid, Senate Democratic Leader, Suggests Iraq ‘ War Is Lost ’  And how did he “suggest” this?  He said:  “I believe… this war is lost.”  That’s quite a suggestion.  He then added, that “he thought the war could not be won through military force, although he said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to bring peace to Iraq.”  The Senator’s unilateral declaration to our enemies that they have won and we have lost will certainly get any negotiations off on the right foot, won’t it?

Senator Reid knows as well as I do that war is a psychological conflict as well as a physical one, and that talking down our chances of success weakens us.  So why would he do it?  I think there’s an alternative to explain Democratic motivations that explains far better than Russell’s what drives the Democrats’ desire to promote, at ever turm, the idea that we are losing.  Here, let me give you a hint:

"We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) told reporters yesterday. "Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding."

Connecting the dots? 

I’m pretty confident that most of the people seeking the defeat of the US in Iraq tell themselves they have a good reason for it.  For the jihadis, it advances their quest to defeat the West.  For the Democratic party, it helps them win the White House.  The Democrats don’t believe our defeat is inevitable, or they wouldn’t be so busy marketing the idea while proposing their vaunted date for withdrawal nearly a full year from now—curiously enough around primary season. But they are desperate to see it happen.  Not only would it validate, in their minds, their view of the world, it would spare them a major political risk: if the war turns around now, 18 months before the election, it would weaken the key issue they believe helped them to win in 2006. 

Then, too, there’s the fact that the more liberal members of the party share the perspective of their comrades in Europe, who believe that a powerful United States is dangerous, and that anything that weakens American hegemony is a benefit.  And since they don’t believe the War in Iraq is critical to our survivial, losing there seems like a small price to pay to get a Democrat back into the Oval Office.  Sure, our defeat and withdrawal from Iraq would likely make the current violence look like a day in the park, and leave few people alive for Senator Reid to engage with diplomatically or politically.  But voters have such short memories…

It makes me wonder where I got the idea that Democrats are unreliable on national security.

World's Most Intimidating Hot Air Balloon

"Benoit Lambert -- member of the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison -- takes over the skies in his amazing Darth Vader hot air balloon."

John Podhoretz reviews last night's "Lost" episode

I think he’s confusing the metaphor slightly, but he gets his idea across.

Blackberries Down

Imagine no push e-mail—it’s easy if you try.  Actually, you don’t have to imagine: the entire Western hemisphere is without Blackberry service right now, the victim of a massive system failure.  That’s gotta hurt. 

I expect the madness will be setting in soon…