Get This Man a Styleguide

I'll offer a fuller reaction to Rudy Giualiani's Foreign Affairs manifesto (short version: this man is batshit insane) tomorrow, but for now let me observe that I hadn't quite realized the extent to which he intends to replace the War on Terror with a War on Usage: "We have responded forcefully to the Terrorists' War on Us, abandoning a decadelong -- and counterproductive -- strategy of defensive reaction in favor of a vigorous offense."

I'd known, of course, about the "terrorists' war on us" but are the capital letters really necessary? Preventing the emergence of a world where this is a phrase we need to read regularly in our newspapers seems like reason enough to hope for Giuliani to be defeated.

Comments

But Matt, You're Forgetting 9/11!!

Posted by America's (Night)Mayor | August 14, 2007 6:31 PM

God yes.

Posted by mwg | August 14, 2007 6:32 PM

Rudy Can't Fail!

Unless of course anybody realizes what an absolute shmuck he is. Next to "Waffle-House" Mitt Romney and Fred "La-Z-Boy" Thompson, the Repubs have themselves a nice little poo poo platter of frontrunners, leaving us open to a startling Brownback Ascendancy and alliterative Brownback/ Baldwin ticket, with Jesus as the true victor come January '09.

Go Rudy, Go Rudy, Go!

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 6:39 PM

Election of Rudolph Giuliani Will be the End of the U.S. as We Know It (or "ERGWEUSWKI", pronounced, "Krzyzewski").

Posted by Ugh | August 14, 2007 6:39 PM

What happened to Global War on Terror, or GWOT? The way Bush used to pronunciate that particumular phrasation, with an affected 'a' sound at the end of terror, it sounded like the Globe was fighting itself, a la Ouroboros.

And indeed, isn't it? Num nums!

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 6:43 PM

It's TWU! It's all TWU!

Posted by esque | August 14, 2007 6:46 PM

Gregorio, don't forget the short-lived Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE).

Posted by KCinDC | August 14, 2007 6:48 PM

G-Save is a new gay dating service for fat White House advisers and the bald, buff ex-marines who love them and want to ask their bosses stupid questions. It started yesterday and let's just say its founder has a "Rove"ing eye, and a "Gannon" for an arm ;).

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 6:51 PM

Have we all decided to give "styleguide" a pass? For my part, I think I am more tolerant toward Exuberant Majuscules than I am toward elidedneologisms.

Posted by Kelly Coyle | August 14, 2007 6:52 PM

Matthew, don't get ahead of yourself. Before foisting style guides upon others, invest in spellcheck for yourself.

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 6:54 PM

Matthew is complaining about someone else's grammar? Yikes.

Posted by Al | August 14, 2007 6:54 PM

Oh GOD, Al and I bit down at the same time. I feel... icky.

But seriously Matt, "Physician, heal thyself!" No need to misspell Giuliani's stupid name in this post. Are you using FF2? It's got helpful little red lines!

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 6:59 PM

Hahaaaaaahaha. He's capitalizing things like an advertising executive from the 1920s!

But just wait til October 08.

By then, he'll have graduated to all caps: "We have responded forcefully to the TERRORISTS' WAR ON US!!!!!!!!, abandoning a decadelong..."

Posted by Will | August 14, 2007 7:00 PM

Oh GOD, Al and I bit down at the same time. I feel... icky

I too was going to comment on other people thinking the same thing (except, you know, without the insult). Not that I want Matthew to fix his typos and grammatical errors - they are occasionally pretty humorous.

Posted by Al | August 14, 2007 7:06 PM

Maybe Giuliani's whole cross-dressing thing was his way of telling us he's been possessed by the ghost of Emily Dickinson. That at least would explain his unluckiness in love and shut-in's views on foreign policy.

"A Narrow Fellow in the Grass"

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him--
did you not
His notice sudden is--

The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--

~Rudy Giuliani, Queen of Seemingly Arbitrary Capitalization?

I find this poem apropos for discussing the possibility of a Giuliani presidency.

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 7:07 PM

Looks like Giualiani is sacrificing any chance to win the general election in order to secure the Republican wingnut vote.

It's kinda sad.

I might have voted for him before he started all this crap.

Guess I'll hold my nose and vote for another Democrat (my second in 40 years).

Posted by alphie | August 14, 2007 8:00 PM

"We have responded forcefully to the Terrorists' War on Us, abandoning a decadelong -- and counterproductive -- strategy of defensive reaction in favor of a vigorous offense."

That is one of the most poorly-balanced sentences ever compiled by man.

Style guide, indeed.

Posted by Neal Murray | August 14, 2007 8:18 PM

Footnote please!
"Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency."

Does anyone credible believe this? (Crickets) So who are the delusional "historians" G. cites? Curious.

Posted by PWC | August 14, 2007 8:22 PM

I should also add that the "decadelong" bit is a cheap partisan snipe, as if Reagan's pullout from Lebanon consituted an act of "vigorous offense".

And the fact that he mentioned South Vietnam and political self-sufficiency in the same sentence should disqualify him from operating heavy machinery, let alone a country.

Posted by Neal Murray | August 14, 2007 8:30 PM

The weird thing, to me, about the Terrorists' War on Us, the passivity of it. It's sooo victimy. For a wanna be tough guy who claims he's going to go on offense all the time, shouldn't it be something a bit more butch? Like, "Our Awe Inspiring and Totally Justified, Never Ending Offensive Against Bad Guys?" Or OAITJNEOABG for short.

Posted by AJ | August 14, 2007 8:44 PM

Terrorists' War on Us sounds like Toys "R" Us. Since China has declared war on us by producing toys for export that are more dangerous than terrorists, Giuliani is obviously positioning himself as the man to make war on China's toy-making industry. This is not a wise campaign strategy. Although warmongering republicans are an important and powerful faction of the party, they are no match for Wal-Mart republicans.

Posted by Terence | August 14, 2007 8:55 PM

Make it the Terrorists' War Against Truthiness, and at least we'll have the acronym.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 14, 2007 9:03 PM

Aww Gee the Terrorists are Always Pickin' on Me!
AGTAPM!

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 9:13 PM

I wasn't aware that "decadelong" was a word either.

Posted by DrBB | August 14, 2007 9:40 PM

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!?!?!?!

Is everything supposed to look dramatically different, or did I slip through the looking glass. Where are the tabs?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 14, 2007 9:55 PM

Matt, could you actually spell out for those who didn't go to Dalton & Harvard; what's actually
wrong with his proposal. By the way the work of
Lewis Sorley, who based his work on the files and
record of Gen. Creighton Abrams; Mark Moyar for another, Frankly at the time of Al Queda's founding in 1988; by Abdullah Azzam & Bin Laden from the splinters of the Peshawar Seven council; we didn't know the danger we faced. In Feb 1993; with the First WTC, we saw the first
manifestations; but we chalked up to Egyptians and Jordanian, working out of Sudan. Afghanistan then was in the early part of its civil war. Bosnia was beginning its own civil war, and we thought it didn't matter; actually the Saudis, Pakistanis, et al; were applying the same tactics
in the Balkans.

Posted by narciso | August 14, 2007 10:00 PM

Is that a really complicated meta-grammar joke, narciso?

Posted by Ed Marshall | August 14, 2007 10:11 PM

Sure, TWOU is victimy. But victimy is what Rudy needs now. Not enough people feel threatened by terrorism right now. If they don't, there's no rationale for his presidency.

Posted by AlanC9 | August 14, 2007 10:11 PM

Hey, I like the new Atlantic design!

Posted by Korha | August 14, 2007 11:26 PM

If I wanted a butch daddy, I'd go for chiseled (out of petrified cow dung, no less) Mitt Romney over humpbacked, weasel-toothed New York Giuliani, or even that strapping explorer Sir Hillary Rodham Clinton would pack more daddymeat than the brassiere-wearing, blintz-eating Rudolpho. Are the stupid small-cocked repubs so in need of a butch daddy they'd cling to a shallow fallacy like the "America's Mayor" trope? Yawn, Romney at least looks solid, like a potty trained Gerald Ford. Rudy looks and sound like that woodchuck from Disney. All this is moot; they're all slag and we can get kucinich elected if we just get an apple crate handsome enough for him to stand on. Have you seen his wife? She's a scorching ginger tomcat— if that titchy little bugger can win over a feisty she-demon like her, he has chance with the American people.

Or not, but long story short, Rudy appeals only to mush-brained repubs who want to make mild concessions towards cosmopolitan social values but in reality just hate fucking darkies and want the socialists to go away.

Posted by Gregorio | August 14, 2007 11:56 PM

We need a "Global Secure Position On Terrorism" - GSPOT...

Seriously, that article - of course, I didn't read every word, I value my mind - was one of the biggest piles of unmitigated garbage, stupid inanity and meaningless drivel I've ever read.

It should win him the election.

Unless Hillary does an even bigger pile of nonsense. I figure she's up to it since she's smarter than that moron - or her writers are.

His "manifesto" boils down to: build a bigger military and attack everyone who has oil or anything else we want - or who doesn't like Israel.

Oh, yeah, and get rid of the UN, it's useless. They keep criticizing Israel and refusing to recognize our right to invade anyone we want.

And as for the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we don't care about resolving the issues - just make sure Fatah keeps running the show - until the Israelis finally figure out how to run everybody off to Jordan. Then it won't matter any more.

Just keep those AIPAC contributions coming, I'm more a friend of Israel than Hillary is. (Lots of luck with that one, Rudy.)

Meanwhile, we need surveillance on every single human being in this country - to make sure they don't make a nuclear weapon and hurt me. I saw what they did with planes in New York - I don't want them to hurt me.

Oh, yeah, and meanwhile we need to shore up our reputation around the world by making everybody at the State Department sound like John Bolton.

That way we can make sure EVERYBODY everywhere gets "democracy" the same way we Republicans have it here in the states - vote rigging and voter suppression.

Now what really amuses me is that this drivel will be taken seriously by everybody in the MSM and most blogs. Which shows just how far from reality most people are in this country.

Aside from the inane platitudes in his "manifesto", everything else is so utterly wrong as to seem like it was written by George Bush.

Oh, wait, maybe that's why Karl Rove left...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 15, 2007 1:11 AM

Way too "terrorist-centric" a policy statement. 3/4s of it was about evildoers affecting us or our "Special Friend".
Slathered up with WWII and Reagan imagery.
Way too little about Rising China and it's military challenge to us and our Asian allies, the Dark side of Globalisation and Free Trade.

Disappointing.

I do agree with Rudy about the UN comments and the lawyer-elites anal devotion to "The Laws Established by the Absolute Moral Authority of the Community of Syrians, Moldavans, Gaboonians, and Haitians" - and the Leftist NGOs that actually write them.

Too often, it has been weak, indecisive, and outright corrupt. The UN's charter and the speeches of its members' leaders have meant little because its members' deeds have frequently fallen short. International law and institutions exist to serve peoples and nations, but many leaders act as if the reverse were true -- that is, as if institutions, not the ends to be achieved, were the important thing.

Despite the UN's flaws, however, the great objectives of humanity would become even more difficult to achieve without mechanisms for international discussion. History has shown that such institutions work best when the United States leads them. Yet we cannot take for granted that they will work forever and must be prepared to look to other tools.

Which is true in that nations set up and agree to join international groups or agree to international laws only because they see advantage in doing so. Claims by some Transnationalists and Lefties that the UN Secretary-General is Supreme over the US President and Congress - or should be - is nonsense. Same with the claims of the Transnationalists that laws formulated by a pack of NGOs, bribed 3rd Worlders from insignificant nations, careerist hacks on UN staff and various Euro and Jewish lawyer elites trumping all National Constitutions - is also nonsense.

The UN and other international institutions suffer from trying to do too much, extensive corruption, entrenched lifetime bureacrats, and dysfunctional or irrelevant nations being treated as equals to powerful ones inmuch of the voting processes. They attempt to dictate to the world, Lefties pay homage to "Kofi having the final say", and the rest of us blow their crap off - from the Russians to the Arabs to the Chinese to US to the Euros themselves - but they lack the clout and resources and consensus to push "international will".

As much as the attempts by those Transnationalists and Cosmopolitans of the EU to cram the Supreme EU Constitution and Supra-national Ministries down member nation state's throats was arrogant overreach and quashed by nationals when they had a chance to vote and tell the Brussels Bureaucrats and lawyer-elites to piss off.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 15, 2007 1:41 AM

Hey, Chris Ford, I like how you stopped beating around the bush there and just came out and said "Jewish lawyer elites." That's helpful for the rest of us.

Posted by too many steves | August 15, 2007 1:50 AM

Too Many Steves - Hey, Chris Ford, I like how you stopped beating around the bush there and just came out and said "Jewish lawyer elites." That's helpful for the rest of us.

A little paranoid about it, Steve?

It is hard to ignore the work of Jewish transnational progressives beginning with Trotsky's transnational aspirations. A majority of todays most famous transnationalist NGOs were set up or run by Jewish lawyer elites. Amnesty International (communist Peter Benenson), Helsinki Watch (Richard Berstein), it's successor Human Rights (run by Kenneth Roth), the Soros Network (it's two Executive Directors, Aryeh Neier and Ira Glasser previously ran the transnationalist, post-national oriented ACLU, which itself has been run by 3 Jewish lawyer elites for the last 37 years. Neier, Glasser, and Stroessen).

In addition, scratch the surface of any new progressive UN "convention, mandate, or Commission that purports to control some global problem and set regulations for it - such as global taxes to allievate poverty by wealth redistribution, the Convention to Ban Private Ownership of Small Arms, Convention for UN Oversight of the Internet, UN Convention on Members States Control of Space and Satellite Comunications, The Americas/Africa/Eurasian Transborder Appeals Commissions - scratch any of those and you find Lefty intelligensia and elite lawyers from the US and Europe willing to work pro bono to help create the laws.

Not ALL Left Transnational NGOs are Jewish-led. Not ALL International Law meant to further transnational progressivism comes from elite Jewish lawyers.
Nor are ALL Jews transnational progressives out to supplant national Constitutions and liberal democracy for World Government.
But like with Soviet/Euro/American Communism, Jews exert a heavy, disproportionate influence, and are SIGNIFICANT players in the efforts to destroy Western institutions and replace them with global ones controlled by elites or "majority rule by the world's 181 nations and appointed transnational ministries and Courts".

Posted by Chris Ford | August 15, 2007 6:13 AM

Release from the NSA archives of some documents relating to the Taliban and Pakistan:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm

Posted by Arun | August 15, 2007 7:38 AM

Terrorists' War on Us sounds like Toys "R" Us.

I thought the same thing when I first read that Terence. Wars R Us would be a good theme for the Rudy campaign.

Posted by gorillagogo | August 15, 2007 8:50 AM

Chris Ford,
Please tell us more about The Jew. I would like new stories for the Halloween night.

Posted by Borat | August 15, 2007 9:06 AM

Trotsky- Int'l Jew Conspiracy poster boy. See Goldstein, 1984. You know you're on the right track when you start talking like Big Brother. PS: I like the "progressive" touch, though international Marxist revolutionary might be a little bulky to fit underneath the admittedly capacious "progressive" umbrella. Perhaps you meant to type, "My name is Chris Ford and I am fucking nuts." There-- that's better.

Posted by Gregorio | August 15, 2007 12:20 PM

The worst part is:

Giuliani's trope is that "the Democrats want to be on the defensive, I want to be on the offensive."

And yet,

The change in grammar from "War on Terror" to "The Terrorists' War on Us" switches us grammatically from the subject to the object, from the Offense to the Defense.

Posted by Mikey | August 15, 2007 2:33 PM

It's not about a Terrorists' War on Us, it's about US support for the regime in Saudi Arabia.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | August 15, 2007 5:50 PM