Every now and then I come across something from the other side that just defies everything, no matter what day of the week the wankery occurs on.
Trust me when I say this is one of those times.
Dan Friedman comes clean…and then drops a dirty bomb on the universe. He opens up with some fluff about chicken pita vendors in NYC, invariably to give the impressions that Muslims are human beings and all. Then, he gets into the meat-a of that pita.
Looked at another way, on the eve of our victory nothing moved in Saddam’s Iraq and no Iraqi dared own so much as a BB gun unless Saddam said it was OK. Thanks to Saddam’s 24-year reign of terror, the country we seized was a pre-pacified nation. If its oppressed populace was not entirely happy to see us, they were physically and psychologically incapable of doing much about it. The remnants of its hostile leadership were on the run or in custody, the hated “Persians” were without any sway, “Iraqi insurgency” and “al Qaeda in Iraq” were two implausible oxymorons. An occupier’s dream, putty in our hands, an Arab nation bloodied and bowed with the man in the street obliged to greet us with polite deference and ask, “hot sauce or white sauce, boss?” America was on top in Iraq — but it would not be for long.
Scary and a little worshippy of fascism, but…it’s Friedman. This really does constitute an apology on his part. Sort of.
It was precisely at his triumphant moment when George W. Bush lost Iraq, along with America’s momentum in the war on terror, control of Congress in 2006, and the political assets needed to confront a radical Islamist Iran on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power — a threat that today makes Saddam’s Iraq seem like a petulant child by comparison.
Instead of putting first things first, namely, mounting an occupation modeled on our WW II successes in Germany and Japan, then sealing Iraq’s borders, declaring martial law, preparing for a long-term American regency, restricting movement within the country, and disarming the entire populace, Mr. Bush flew off-course. He parachuted in battalions of bureaucrats and constitutional lawyers, staking all on a rapid handover of power to his Iraqi designees and delivering “democracy” to an ancient people with no corresponding word in its language. In a part of the world where theology is the motive force, and the name of the only religion translates to “submit” in English, the president’s jejune goodwill and misplaced egalitarianism signaled a willingness to replace a hard fist with an open hand. And that’s when the bad guys in the Islamic world, conditioned by the laws of war found in their Quran, looked at each other in utter disbelief and shouted with glee, “last one to Iraq is a rotten egg!”
Yep, Bush blew it. We used far too few troops (and far too many PMC mercs, but that’s just, oh, everyone.) We didn’t lock the place down and admit our fascist goal to the world, instead of turning into Bremers Gone Wild, only with people getting shot.
Treating the Iraqis like a conquered source of thrall labor instead of faking them out by “spreading democracy” would of at least been honest. Never mind dishonesty is basically how we got into this mess, but again, this is a Friedman “apology”. That’s sort of like a pack of 99 cent Wal-Mart “hotdogs”. With “meat”.
A well-executed allied occupation would have blunted the rise of today’s lethal insurgency, kept al Qaeda, Iran and Syria on the sidelines, and cost far fewer Americans (and Iraqis) their lives. Also, ironically, it would have given Bush’s political goals in Iraq a better chance to be realized than the remote possibility which exists for them now.
That’s all 20-20 hindsight, sure, but it never hurts to know how we got from there to here — especially when it exposes a dangerously naïve institutional mindset that’s still in place across the entire political spectrum. One that’s balefully clueless about the nature of the Islamic enemy we’re still battling within a struggle that’s going to take many more difficult years to win. That’s why it must be noted that virtually none of the “public intellectuals” on the right have owned up to the mistakes the administration has made in Iraq, and even fewer have owned up to their own benighted prognostications and Pollyannaish advice. There are exceptions – George Will is one.
We weren’t hardass enough, and Bush should have just dispensed with the Codpiece and instead went with the Darth Vader helmet (complete with Cheney over his shoulder as Emperor Palpitatin’). It would have been intellectually honest. Instead of lying our way into Iraq, we should have just said “Look, we’re gonna bomb the fuckers and lock down the oil. Deal with it. Bush Uber Alles, rock on.” Seems like a plan to me!
For the most part, though, the Krauthammers and the Podhoretzes of this world are content to blame the media, the frenzied Left and the Democratically-controlled Congress for the avoidable problems we are facing in Iraq. But those are the effects, not the causes, of the President’s previous failures. At the outset, the media was gung-ho, begging to be “embedded” and ride shotgun with our troops, the Left is always in a frenzy, and it was his conduct of the war that cost Bush the Congress in ’06.
And if he had just stopped here, we coulda said “Friedman’s still a putz, but at least he admitted Bush was wrong and that the conduct of the war over the last four years is on his head.” That would at least be something of an admission that A) Friedman was wrong and that B) Friedman learned from it.
But that wouldn’t be wankery, now wouldn’t it. Oh no. Well, okay, it would be wankery, but not worth writing a Sunday Wankery column on a Tuesday.
Instead, we go screaming down the chocolate waterfall in Willy Wanka’s boat.
Now for the good news. All the damaging consequences of all the blunders the President has committed to date in Iraq are reversible in 48- to 72-hours – the time it will take to destroy Iran’s fragile nuclear supply chain from the air. And since the job gets done using mostly stand-off weapons and stealth bombers, not one American soldier, sailor or airman need suffer as much as a bruised foot.
You saw it coming, man. There’s no damn way Friedman learned ANYTHING. Bush being unfit for the role of C-in-C? Nada. Intellectual honesty about why we’re fighting in the Middle East? Zip. Muslims as human beings? Dude they are so far below us on the evolutionary chain that they can’t even hurt us.
Let’s look downstream the day after and observe how the world has changed.
Oh let’s.
First and foremost, there’s this prospective fait accompli — and it changes everything. The Iranians are no longer a nuclear threat, and won’t be again for at least another decade, and even that assumes the strategic and diplomatic situation reverts to the status quo ante and they’ll just be able to pick up and rebuild as they would after an earthquake. Not possible.
Next, the Iranians would do nothing — bupkes. They don’t attack Israel, they don’t choke off the world’s oil supply, they do not send hit squads to the United States, there is no “war” in the conventional sense of attack counterattack. Iran already has its hands full without inviting more trouble. Its leaders would be reeling from the initial US attack and they would know our forces are in position to strike again if Iran provokes us or our allies. They would stand before mankind with their pants around their ankles, dazed, bleeding, crying, reduced to bloviating from mosques in Teheran and pounding their fists on desks at the UN. The lifelines they throw to the Iraqi insurgents, Hezbollah and Syria would begin to dry up, as would the lifelines the double-dealing Europeans have been throwing to Iran. Maybe the Mullahs would lose control.
Strong tremors would be felt throughout the Islamic ummah. “Just as we feared, they finally called our bluff. We pushed America to the limit and America pushed us back twice as hard. Looks who’s the dhimmi now! Uh, maybe we need to rethink this 7th century Jihad crap — as well as the Jihadist idiots around here. This is all turning out to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
Bush would have the largest wang of any President ever. And since I, Dan Friedman, told him to do this, then I, Dan Friedman, would have the largest wang ever. Of all time. Me, Dan Friedman. San Dimas High School football rules!
I got your Friedman Unit RIGHT HERE, baby!
Miracles would be seen here at home. Democratic politicians are dumbstruck, silent for a week. With one swing of his mighty bat, the President has hit a dramatic walk-off homerun. He goes from goat to national hero overnight. The elections in November are a formality. Republicans keep the White House and recapture both houses of Congress. Hillary is elected president – of the Chappaqua PTA.
Going forward, with Iran’s influence blunted and the insurgents cut off, we end the war in Iraq on our terms. In his first hundred days, the new president reads Iraq the riot act and tells its leaders if they don’t pull themselves together by a date certain, America will decide they’re not worth the candle and we’re going to get out.
From that point on, with our arms free of the quicksand, we can fight the war on terror the way it should have been fought in the first place. Using our enormous edge in weapons, intelligence and technology, and building on it, we launch quick, lethal, ad hoc strikes wherever in the world we determine terrorists are working to harm us, shooting first and asking for permission later.
That’s right, folks. The only thing that can save us from the Coming Dhimmicratic Horde of Hellary is to bomb Iran so hard that it constitutes images of graphic rape. Nobody would ever fuck with America again.
So we go from a half-assed…well, more like one-third assed…apology to a Tappa Kegga Bru roofies fantasy orgy involving deep penetrating bunker busters, Hillary, Congress, the entire Muslim World, and the sheer excitement of President Bush making every single one of them into his personal prison bitch. At the same time.
This isn’t a column. It’s Ann Coulter fanfiction.
Am I dreaming? I don’t think so. Being too sensible is probably more like it. In any event, I am not creating anything original here. Combine Bush’s recent statements with those of the President of France and it’s not hard to see where this is heading. Mr. Bush still has time to put America back on the offensive again. But with only a little more than a year left in his term he has no time to lose. Rarely does history provide a failed wartime leader with such a golden opportunity for salvation.
And as frightening as this is, Dan Friedman actually believes this. Despite the truly terrifying fact that he acknowledges that Bush fouled up the last four years and committed one of the largest tactical and strategic blunders in the history of the US, if not the world (not to mention of the the great war crimes of history)…he says all that goes away the second Bush perpetrates ANOTHER blunder, this time an entire order of magnitude worse.
It’s a snuff fantasy, except Iraqis and Iranians don’t even count as human. The hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced…that doesn’t matter as long as we destroy a government and foment a massive regional war. Iran wouldn’t dare attack us back? They would overrun Iraq, kill everything in their path, and the results would be world chaos. Friedman is insane, divorced from any semblance of reality.
And yet the leaders of our country actually think like this. They believe that’s exactly what Bush needs to do…and nobody seems willing to openly try to prevent it.
Sometimes I call out wankery to scream into the blackness. Sometimes I do it to be funny, other times I do it just because it needs to be done. This time, it’s a public service in order to inform people that people like this have the President’s ear.
Pray to whatever you believe in that there’s a way to stop this from happening.