Well, kiss my grits, as Flo used to say, for some disturbing reason.
This is equally queasy-making: I agree with Andy McCarthy.
McCarthy is disgusting, even by the standards of Teh Corner. I'm not going to link to anything documentary in this regard. Bleah. If you are not familiar with Mr. McCarthy's work let it merely be said that he still believes Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had a close, working relationship. His shoes are floppy; his nose, red and globular. His shiv is sharp and firmly stuck up one nostril.
But he writes:
It is to be the sense of Congress that as long as we maintain a dialogue with the people whose imperative is "Death to America," who have been actively killing Americans since we got to Iraq (to say nothing of the previous quarter-century), and whose most devout wish — other than wiping Israel off the map — is the destruction of America, we can draw down our troop commitment — which at current levels has been unable to defeat the enemy — to a skeleton rapid-reaction force ... which, of course, will be ineffective to stop al Qaeda from setting up a beach-head in Iraq, which will be a sitting duck for terrorists whose ne plus ultra is to kill Americans, but which will enable the NYTimes to say Democrats did not call for a complete withdrawal?
And that's the superior alternative to the Democrats' plan?
BAWK bawk bawk BA BAWK bawk bawk ba-bawk!
Ahem.
You see why I'm reluctant to link to other stuff he's written? It's because I only have two orderlies on staff, that's why, and they're not poultry trained. But anyway, the clucking fool has a point. Other than the point that makes it hard for him to find comfortable hats, that is.
What Andy's referring to in his spittle-flecked fashion is the shit-for-brains Salazar thingy in the Senate that attempts to pour naptha on troubled fiery waters.
Look: shit or get off the fucking pot. We don't need no goddamn bipartisan happyland bullshit. Either we commit to this war or we don't. I say we don't. I thought this war was lost from the get-go because I always thought the concept of a liberatory occupation was idiotic, that it would end up giving a boost to Al Qaeda by leaving us in a political cleft stick where none of the happy predictions came true and the political will for the nonsense would evaporate and on the ground we'd have extremism, that democracy promotion for people who wanted sectarian revenge first and foremost was dopey, that the inevitable can only be delayed and that civil war was always the most likely scenario -- AAAAHG. What fucking history do these people read, anyway? Why is it now so astonishing that despite Tom Friedman's wisest speculations, December comes after July?
Either we go full-on-balls Andy McCarthy and, uh, impose martial law for thirty years (the only logical conclusion to that line of "thought"), or we bug out. In other words, we do the politically and pragmatically impossible, or we do the possible. All else is wanking.
And it is the cheerleaders for the impossible that deserve the blame -- and whose consciences must be burdened. But of course if they were capable of a conscience they would not have started this shit in the first place.
I'll leave you with this from Andy, though, just to remind you why he is NOT in charge:
Planet Earth to President Bush and the Republicans: Al Qaeda — having killed nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11 and promising to do it again — is baking 11-year-old Iraqis and serving them as cannibal fare to their own parents!!! The impediment between these barbarians setting up shop and civilization is OUR TROOPS. Do you think, maybe, there might kinda, sorta be something here we could work with — y'know, assuming, just for argument's sake, of course, that we might possibly want to, um, take on the Left and rebut their insanity before we go along with all this?
Charges of cannibalism are the last refuge of the imperialist maniac. There is an impressive literature on this phenomenon, you know.
Wanker.