Update: Last Refuge of Scoundrels No Longer Patriotism
It’s using terrorism as an excuse for stupid policy. In addition to saying we’re in Iraq because “we were attacked,” President Bush informs us that
“Some may disagree with my decision to remove
Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror,” said the president.
“These foreign terrorists violently oppose the rise of a free and democratic Iraq, because they know that when we replace despair and hatred with liberty and hope, they lose their recruiting grounds for terror,” he argued.
“Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home.”
One more time: This is horseshit. First off, I hope that no Iraqis figure out that what the President is saying here is, “We decided to turn your country into a battleground because better you than us.” I suppose there’s a chance that they don’t obsessively follow the public statements of the man whose troops are the supreme law in their country. Second off, how stupid does the President think we are? (Don’t answer that.) He’s turned Iraq into Jihad University. We will not kill every foreign fighter in Iraq. We will not kill every native-born Iraqi bent on revenge. Our Iraq strategy amounts to promiscuous use of insufficient antibiotics on a sinus infection – we’re culling the lame terrorists and breeding a newer, stronger strain. Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chchnya aren’t enough for this Administration. They needed to create one more petrie dish of Islamist militancy. Thanks for nothing, Dubya.
What we learn from the President’s statements is he’s got nothin’. His rhetoric betrays no new ideas, nor any indication that he has processed the events of the last two years and adjusted to new facts.
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 9:09 am
What we learn from the President’s statements is
… On the often-sound principle that the opposite of what the man says is true, I take heart from the NYT headline: “Bush: Pulling Out of Iraq Not an Option.” Also, there’s the article by John Burns in today’s Times that ends with this:
.
“I think the drawdown will occur next year, whether the Iraqi security forces are ready or not,” a senior Marine officer in Washington said last week. “Look for covering phrases like ‘We need to start letting the Iraqis stand on their own feet, and that isn’t going to happen until we start drawing down’. “
Comment by Nell —
June 19, 2005 @ 12:51 pm
Since this post has been ‘Atriosed’: hat tip to Needlenose for the John Burns article. Indispensible for Iraq obsessives.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:07 pm
It was Josh Marshall, quoting an e-mailer who certainly deserves some separate credit for the analogy, who wrote:
[]
“It’s like saying you’re going to fight bacterial disease by building a really, really filthy hospital.”
Comment by jerry —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:08 pm
Flypaper? More like the cutting off one of the Medusa’s snakes….
Trackback by The Liberal Avenger —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:14 pm
The Rhetoric of Desperation
Wow – internal Republican polling numbers must be looking grim this week. The Ministry of Propaganda has reinvigorated its “Scary Arab” lying campaign, presumably in the hopes of coaxing some rogue sheep back into the flock with tales of bearded boog…
Comment by Mike M. —
June 19, 2005 @ 1:36 pm
Ya know, even as an anti-War sort, I think that Dubya so memed my brain that I never even considered that the “we’re turning Iraq into a battleground for you,” argument basically inspires anger among Iraqis and fuels the insurgency. Now that you’ve made the connection, it seems to obvious that only an idiot President would say things like that. But, on my own, even being a news and blog junky, my mind never approached this self-evident conclusion. Not only are you right, but you’ve exposed the degradation of my own ability to properly analyze what’s going on. Now, maybe this is as simple as “I missed something.” Or, maybe a lot of people are missing a lot of things and even opponents of the war have been sucked into a wartime groupthink.
Comment by romanwalls —
June 19, 2005 @ 2:57 pm
the sadness of conditions that have at once reduced the people of Iraq to victims of all sides and increased their suffering while
the dishonest scum enrich themselves at the cost of huge amounts of our treasury and the lives of our children…the honor of the USA has been soiled by these selfserving scum and there must be legal recourse very soon…
Comment by William —
June 19, 2005 @ 5:33 pm
“Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home.â€
He keeps on saying this. And every time he says it it’s a slap in the face to the people of Madrid and Bali. For shame.
Comment by none —
June 19, 2005 @ 5:39 pm
Here’s what Instapundit has to say via some other blogger:
“I don’t mean the will of US forces in the field. Wander around with a bunch of Marines for a half hour, spend fifteen minutes with Guardsmen from Idaho, and you will have no doubts about American military capabilities or the troops’ will to win. But our weakness is back home, on the couch, in front of the tv, on the cable squawk shows, on the editorial page of the New York Times, in the political gotcha games of Washington, DC. It seems America wants to get on with its wonderful Electra-Glide life, that September 10 sense of freedom and security, without finishing the job. The military is fighting, the Iraqi people are fighting, but where is the US political class?”
Are Instapundit, this blogger he quotes, and the rest of them ever going to have to account for their stupidity?
Comment by Jay C —
June 19, 2005 @ 6:25 pm
“His rhetoric betrays no new ideas, nor any indication that he has processed the events of the last two years and adjusted to new facts.”
Gee, Jim: you just noticed?
And anyway, what does this Administration need with any “new” facts? They already have all the “facts” they need; remember, this is a “faith-based” Administration, “facts” are for all those suckers/losers who are still hopelessly mired in a “reality-based” world – whatever Fearless Leader Dubya says is so, IS so, and thus any evidence to the contrary is just defeatism/partisan bias/anti-American hatred/self-hatred/Bush Derangement Syndrome – pick one.
Comment by Glaivester —
June 19, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
“I never even considered that the ‘we’re turning Iraq into a battleground for you,’ argument basically inspires anger among Iraqis and fuels the insurgency.”
I believe that Steve Sailer noticed this problem with the flypaper theory:
“How exactly are we going to turn Iraq into a shining city on a hill of prosperity and democracy while also using it as our designated killing floor?”
Here.
Comment by FA —
June 20, 2005 @ 12:41 am
It’s all poll based positioning:
The War on Terror in last weeks NYT poll came in with a 52% positive for Bush
vs.
Iraq War, Worth Fighting? much lower (36%?)
If the two items can be rejoined in public mind than maybe the public will warm to Iraq again.
Trackback by Paperwight's Fair Shot —
June 20, 2005 @ 10:51 am
Return Of Son Of Dwellers In The Forest
However, I want to restate Jim Henley’s first point more clearly and more aggressively than he did.
The ‘flypaper’ strategy (to the extent it’s even a flawed and failed strategy, and not just a bullshit rationalization) is fundamentally immoral i…
Trackback by Running Scared —
June 20, 2005 @ 1:15 pm
Is it time to throw Buzz Machine under a bus? Jarvis on the DSM.
For a long time now, I have continued to read Jeff Jarvis’ “The Buzz Machine.” We may not agree on everything (and disagree vociferously on some topics) but he’s one of the professional, MSM bloggers with a lot to say. Jeff decided a long time ago…
Comment by roberto —
June 20, 2005 @ 6:05 pm
This is Bush’s Iraqi version of “they hate us for our freedom”. And again, I very much doubt that a terrorist wakes up in the morning and thinks “I hate freedom, so I will go blow up some Americans and some Iraqis too just to make sure they don’t have any of that awful freedom either.”
What is sorely lacking in America’s public discourse is to hear directly from some actual Islamic terrorists to find out exactly what they do think. What do you suppose the chances of getting Bush to debate a real terrorist at one of his “town meetings”?
Trackback by The Agitator —
June 20, 2005 @ 7:04 pm
Dead Bodies Don’t Just Attract Flies, They Breed Them, Ct’d…
A common theme around these parts gets some renewed attention, courtesy of Jim Henley. It concerns President Bush’s continuing pursuit…
Comment by lemon squashed —
June 21, 2005 @ 8:30 am
I am confused.
Is Democracy blooming in iraq or is it turning into a front of terrorism war?
Is democracy equal to people get blown off?
Trackback by The People's Republic of Seabrook —
June 22, 2005 @ 5:29 am
Uh…terrorism was not an issue in Iraq until Bush got his war on
Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home. George W. Bush…