Via Mark Kleiman, Jon Rauch: "Some optimists say that in Army Gen. David Petraeus, Bush has finally found his Gen. Grant. That may or may not be true, but it is beside the point. The problem is that Petraeus has not yet found his President Lincoln."
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Line of the Day
13 Oct 2007 07:32 pm
Comments (30)
it's not a matter of optimists think this: it's a matter of idiots (although i like the diss on bush).
bush "finding his grant" would suggest that the problem in iraq is military in nature.
of course it isn't.
so who cares if bush found his grant? when's he going to find his george marshall, if we really want a useful discovery?
That's a clever-sounding line until you think about it for more than five seconds. If Rauch were alive during the Civil War, he would probably have been a shrill critic of Lincoln too, for suspending habeas corpus, waging a bloody, mismanaged war, etc. If anything, this sort of line plays into the Bush claim that history will judge him better than today's media does.
If Rauch were alive during the Civil War, he would probably have been a shrill critic of Lincoln too, for suspending habeas corpus, waging a bloody, mismanaged war, etc.
Right, because you people betraying the country was precisely the same type and size of threat as some jackass monster cabined in a far off sandbox of a country that's not a tenth of our size.
"Right, because you people betraying the country was precisely the same type and size of threat as some jackass monster cabined in a far off sandbox of a country that's not a tenth of our size."
SCMT,
Dems were actually more worked-up about the Civil War than they are about the Iraq War: their 'protests' (i.e., riots) in New York put your lame Code Pink ladies to shame.
why am i not surprised that fred is the kind of person who thinks that it's relevant and useful to describe the democratic party of the 1860s as the same group as the democratic party of 2007?
"If anything, this sort of line plays into the Bush claim that history will judge him better than today's media does."
There's always tomorrow,
For dreams to come true,
Believe in your dreams
Come what may.
There's always tomorrow,
With so much to do,
And so little time in a day.
We all pretend
The rainbow has an end
And you'll be there my friend someday.
There's always tomorrow,
For dreams to come true,
Tomorrow is not far away.
Well, howard, it was somecallmetim who replied to Fred with a reference to "you people" betraying the country, thereby implying some sort of continuity between the Confederacy and Fred. Before you attack Fred, please explain why somecallmetim's argument makes sense.
y81, i have no idea what somecallmetim meant in his comment, so i have no obligation to explain it - somecallmetim is perfectly capable of doing so himself.
but what i can do is note that fred has entered idiotic ann coulter territory when he tries to tie together the dems of 1860 and the dems of 2007.
Well, regardless of whether we elect an eloquent Illinoisan senator to the presidency, there's simply no prospect for decisive, unconditional victory in Iraq, in the same sense that the Union decisively, unconditionally won the Civil War. This is, of course, the big problem with the Rauch piece as a whole -- even after all these years, he's still sticking to the Incompetence Dodge.
Well, howard, it was somecallmetim who replied to Fred with a reference to "you people" betraying the country, thereby implying some sort of continuity between the Confederacy and Fred. Before you attack Fred, please explain why somecallmetim's argument makes sense.
And before that, we'd have to see how Fred knows that Rauch or anyone else alive today would be a critic of Lincoln's, implying pretty much exactly the same kind of continuity.
Julian's incompetence-dodge sentiments are right. At this point, it's not about finding the right leaders, it's about finding a De Lorean.
And even that probably wouldn't be enough.
"And before that, we'd have to see how Fred knows that Rauch or anyone else alive today would be a critic of Lincoln's, implying pretty much exactly the same kind of continuity."
Well, let's consider some of the lefty criticisms of Bush and see how they relate to some of the criticisms of Lincoln at the time:
Lincoln did enact a draft and raise taxes to fund the war -- both actions that some Dems have agitated for today, but that Dems were decidedly against during the Civil War, particularly the draft (one suspects they'd be against a draft today too, if Charlie Rangel had gotten his way).
So what exactly does Rauch mean when he laments the absence of a Lincoln today? He could just mean that he wishes Bush had raised taxes and enacted a draft, but it seems clear that he's just trying to draw an invidious juxtaposition between the nobility of Lincoln in our minds and the current president Chimpy McHitler -- and that's the level at which this sounds like a clever line.
But if you sweep away 140 years of mythology, you realize that our politics then were at least as divisive as they are today, and Lincoln's prosecution of his war was as controversial then as Bush's is today. Given that reality, it seems unlikely that anyone who criticizes Bush's conduct of the War in Iraq and the War on Terror would have been a supporter of Lincoln's at the time, especially since the same criticisms they level at Bush were also leveled at Lincoln then.
RE: Fred's comment
That's comment was the greatest 298 word comment ever posted at 1:40 a.m. I've ever read.
With the comments like that the great liberal crack up is just around the corner.
Dear Fred,
The war you speak of was fought HERE! On U.S. soil!!! Not in some oil-rich country on another continent...
There are parts of The Constitution (ever read it?), that Lincoln tried to take advantage of.
But, when the Supreme Court disavowed his limitaion on Habeus Corpus (ever hear of that?), Lincoln followed their judgement.
Lincoln listened to what others said.
Bush listen's to no one.
There's no Grant here, only GWB Sherman and his Blackwater troops marching through the Iraqi plains to usurp oil.
Lincoln and Bush should not ever be mentioned in the same library, let alone some stupid post.
No more "talking point's!"
Nuff said, Fred...
"1 Bush is criticized for incompetently running a long, bloody, expensive, and unnecessary war; so was Lincoln.
2 Bush is criticized for trampling on the Constitution; so was Lincoln.
3 Bush is called divisive and dishonest; so was Lincoln."
Lincoln was fighting against traitors who attacked the US. Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, unlike some of our allies in the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Just because a president got the overall war right doesn't mean that they got every decision right. It's like when you read someone like Malkin argue that we should send Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans away to camps because we did the same to Japanese-Americans during WWII. Correlation does not imply causation. Bush's trampling of civil liberties has yielded more success at locking up low-level drug dealers than he has at preventing terrorist attacks. So far the best threat they say they've prevented was the the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bride with blowtorches. You also have the bs about Padilla (an idiot who wouldn't be able to blow up his own left foot) and the "attempt" on the Sears Tower by the guys who had never been to Chicago, lacked the necessary funds and got caught trying to buy boots from an FBI agent. Lincoln was called divisive by those that wanted to maintain slavery. Bush is called a uniter by those that wanted to install Chalabi as a puppet and have help give away the majority of Iraq's oil to multinational corporations. Bush is called divisive by the same people who got this war right. You might want to learn the basics of historical analysis before you look retarded.
Bush is criticized for incompetently running a long, bloody, expensive, and unnecessary war; so was Brezhnev and Hitler.
2 Bush is criticized for trampling on the Constitution; so was Brezhnev and Hitler.
3 Bush is called divisive and dishonest; so was Brezhnev and Hitler.
Am I calling Bush Hitler? No, but I'm showing how by your own criteria, Bush = Hitler and Brezhnev.
"With the comments like that the great liberal crack up is just around the corner."
And, right on schedule, there it is. It's funny seeing these libs get angry at Fred for just rolling with Rauch's Lincoln comparison. It's clever when you bring up Lincoln as put-down of Bush, like Rauch does, but when you point out some of the obvious similarities between the contemporary response to Lincoln and Bush, as Fred does, the left gets apoplectic.
Comparing Bush to Lincoln in the end is more of an insult to Lincoln than a compliment to Bush.
"...some of the obvious similarities..."
Yes, when Lincoln was given the news that the Confederates attacked Fort Sumpter, historians say that he chose to remain at the one-room schoolhouse he was visiting for an additional 15 minutes before fleeing to rural Pennsylvania...
Shortly after Gettysburg, Lincoln was seen atop the Monitor declaring "Mission Accomplished"....
Lincoln's personal secretary was named....
I have a number of problems with the comparison, which don't really line up on one partisan side or the other:
- To suggest that the Iraq War and the Civil War were comparably bloody slights the enormous sacrifices of the Civil War, which are--by any reasonable measure--orders of magnitude greater than Iraq. Over 2100 Union soldiers were killed and over 9500 wounded at Antietam alone.
- Lincoln saw the civil war through to victory over the course of about four years. Bush has not done anything comparable.
- Lincoln trampled on the constitution in the midst of a constitutional crisis that threatened the existence of the republic. I'm not sure that anything we've faced since has presented such a clear and present danger to our system of government.
Mostly though, it was just a very different time and a very different fight.
Grant's accomplishment went beyond ending a war that should never have been fought in the first place.
Comparing an asshole to a hero always benefits the asshole.
Re: Dems were actually more worked-up about the Civil War than they are about the Iraq War: their 'protests' (i.e., riots) in New York put your lame Code Pink ladies to shame.
The New Yorkers had something to be legitimately upset about in 1863: a draft that allowed rich men to buy their way out. "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight", as they said back then. Of course that doesn't justify murder and mayhem, but there was a real injustice behind the Draft Riots.
Re: Bush is criticized for incompetently running a long, bloody, expensive, and unnecessary war; so was Lincoln.
Bloody and expensive, yes. But not unnecessary: the South fired on the Union, remember?
Re: Lincoln did enact a draft and raise taxes to fund the war
Yes, Lincoln put the country on a war footing. He also reached out to pro-Union Democrats (they existed in coniderable numbers; most Democrats then were NOT "copperheads") and even made one his vice presidential running mate in 1864. Imagine Bush dumping Uncle Dick and putting even Joe Liebermann on the ticket in 04. Hope you didn't choke from laughing!
Re: There's no Grant here, only GWB Sherman and his Blackwater troops marching through the Iraqi plains to usurp oil.
That's unfair to Sherman who was actually a decent fellow though he did make hard war. When his Confederate opponent finally surrendered to him at the end of the war Sherman's terms were so lenient and pro-Southern that Congress censured him and forced him to make a harder peace. And can we please drop this "steal the oil" line. Yes, the war is about oil, agreed,. but not in the simplistic way you suggest. Every drop of Iraqi oil sold will be sold freely at market (er, OPEC-dictated) prices. The US is not "stealing" it.
y81, i have no idea what somecallmetim meant in his comment, so i have no obligation to explain it - somecallmetim is perfectly capable of doing so himself.
SCMT was making the uncontroversial point that there is effectively a Northern Party and a Southern Party, and no one's unclear about which one Fred supports.
"SCMT was making the uncontroversial point that there is effectively a Northern Party and a Southern Party, and no one's unclear about which one Fred supports."
Considering that Fred is a Northerner, has no cultural affinity for the south, and plans to vote for a Northern candidate for president, you're statement is meaningless. And if you are trying to claim that the Dems who rioted against the Civil War in New York wouldn't have been Dems today, you have an uphill battle: they were working class urban immigrants, corrupt city machine pols, union members, etc. -- all of whom remain Dem reliable constituencies today.
"The New Yorkers had something to be legitimately upset about in 1863: a draft that allowed rich men to buy their way out."
Why would the New York Dems even want to buy their way out of the draft? According to Matt Yglesias's insinuations, if the Iraq War were as necessary, just, and important a war as he believed it to be when he initially supported it, the Army wouldn't have to offer generous bonuses to re-up: officers and enlisted men would throw themselves back into the fight again and again because the cause was so important. Certainly, the Civil was a necessary, just and important war, and yet history shows that many Americans, particularly urban Democrats, had no interest in serving without being compelled to do so.
Fred's voting for Hillary Clinton?
"Fred's voting for Hillary Clinton?"
Oh that's right: the former first lady of Arkansas is a Northerner now. Nope, not voting for her, and I'm not voting for that candidate of the "Southern Party" John Edwards either.
Hey, speaking of General Petraeus ("Betrayus"), check out the WaPo's editorial today, "Better Numbers: The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute."
Salient point:
"...it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong."
Fred, you're wrapping yourself in circles. Where is the power base of the Republican Party? The South. Who did the South go for completely in 2004? The Republican candidate. Where is the power base of the Democratic Party? The Northeast and the West coast. Why did the South become Republican? Because Northern Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Right Act, etc. Why were Southerners against it? Because they hated the very descendants of the very black slaves that the Civil War freed. What do Republican candidates do when they go to South Carolina? They defend the State House's to fly a symbol of racist treason. Whose party base is more attached culturally to the Stars and Bars as a political and cultural symbol of their own identity and heritage? The South. Why could the South conceivably go for Giuliani? Because he's a Republican who hates blacks and Muslims, etc.
"Hey, speaking of General Petraeus ("Betrayus"), check out the WaPo's editorial today, "Better Numbers: The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute.""
So your source is a Washington Post editorial? Are you high? The editorial board there the past few years have proven themselves to be retards who lack the ability to critically judge anyone on the government on their bullshit. And the good general has shown he isn't exactly reliable about what numbers he uses. I wouldn't have gotten away with handing in the type of charts he showed Congress (lacking numbers and scale, including irrelevant information to skew results) if I had handed them as a lab report in middle school.
Really, you're just convincing people that you're retarded. You aren't convincing anyone here you have anything viable to say. Why do you get your kicks getting your ass handed to you?
don't feed trolls.
fred's a troll.
Comments closed October 27, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Ouch.
Posted by El Cid | October 13, 2007 8:02 PM