An interesting article by one of the funniest conservative writers (he did an excellent job during the DNC for USA Today). A bit on the serious side this time:
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Hard Times...
...and ever-moving goalposts.
"Forty-five dead — that's not peanuts," veteran journalist Donatella Lorch told the Washington Post, referring to the number of casualties in the wake of the Iraqi elections. "If that had happened in the United States on Election Day, we would have made it a major scandal. Now we're acting like in Iraq it's a great success. We seem to have become numb to the daily car bombs and daily attacks."
Yes, that's true. If in fact 45 people were killed on their way to the polls in America, it would be a "major scandal." Who can argue with that? In the "Well, duh!" department, Ms. Lorch's comment ranks just a few notches below the illuminating observation that bears habitually use our national forests to go potty.
Of course we all recoil at the murderous attacks last Sunday. But that's a point about trees. The forest is over here: Roughly eight million Iraqis went to the polls — largely on foot — to vote in the face of very, very credible threats that their children would be murdered, their families slaughtered, their homes blown up if they did so. By this one act, they robbed the insurgents of any claim to be the "authentic voice" of Iraq. Their motives for voting were no doubt a mix of the parochial and the idealistic, but one overriding reason they voted was that they could. And they could for only one reason: The United States and its allies had toppled Saddam and had stayed put to prevent a civil war and foster democracy.
A foreign-policy realist might have said, "Oops, no WMDs" — and then bugged out. We called Saddam's bluff, which was our perfect right given the stakes, but it's not in our interests to stay. That's realism. And it's funny to hear Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, et al. keep invoking it.
cont....
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OTB
Hard Times...
...and ever-moving goalposts.
"Forty-five dead — that's not peanuts," veteran journalist Donatella Lorch told the Washington Post, referring to the number of casualties in the wake of the Iraqi elections. "If that had happened in the United States on Election Day, we would have made it a major scandal. Now we're acting like in Iraq it's a great success. We seem to have become numb to the daily car bombs and daily attacks."
Yes, that's true. If in fact 45 people were killed on their way to the polls in America, it would be a "major scandal." Who can argue with that? In the "Well, duh!" department, Ms. Lorch's comment ranks just a few notches below the illuminating observation that bears habitually use our national forests to go potty.
Of course we all recoil at the murderous attacks last Sunday. But that's a point about trees. The forest is over here: Roughly eight million Iraqis went to the polls — largely on foot — to vote in the face of very, very credible threats that their children would be murdered, their families slaughtered, their homes blown up if they did so. By this one act, they robbed the insurgents of any claim to be the "authentic voice" of Iraq. Their motives for voting were no doubt a mix of the parochial and the idealistic, but one overriding reason they voted was that they could. And they could for only one reason: The United States and its allies had toppled Saddam and had stayed put to prevent a civil war and foster democracy.
A foreign-policy realist might have said, "Oops, no WMDs" — and then bugged out. We called Saddam's bluff, which was our perfect right given the stakes, but it's not in our interests to stay. That's realism. And it's funny to hear Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, et al. keep invoking it.
cont....
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