Hiring the handicapped to run the Iraq war
Marcus Cicero offered the following advice to the Democrats:
I don’t think Marcus gets it. Democrats—like Europeans in general— are generally transnationalists. These notions are fundamentally at odds with notions of American exceptionalism and the understanding that there is absolutely nothing wrong with American unilateralism. In addition, politically active Democrats simply don’t care about terrorism; regardless of whatever else they might believe about terrorism they cannot be expected to aggressively pursue a war on terrorists if they don’t think terrorists are a big deal. Byron York examined the internals of a poll sponsored by Democracy Corps, the group founded by Greenberg, James Carville, and Robert Shrum, and found:
Recently Bryon York noted that the 2004 exit polls confirmed that there is little daylight between the Democratic Party’s rank and file and their leaders:
The Democrat’s rejections of these basic premises (i.e., that the U.S. can use military force regardless of what the UN says and that terrorism is a danger, not a “nuisance”) means that it is impossible for them to participates as full partners with Republicans in certain endeavors such as, say, running a war on terrorists. Consequently, the contradictions between the Democrat’s ideology and the prerequisites for the competent execution of a war simply mean that the Democrats must not be involved with leading it; to do otherwise would be gross negligence. On the other hand, if your intent were to lose the war then handing the Democrats the keys to war machine would be the right way to go about doing it.
This isn’t just my opinion. The jihadists in Iraq were also doing their part to help drag the Democrat’s guy across the finish line. The anti-coalition insurgency in Iraq has been conducting a series of coordinated attacks on hard targets. The interesting thing about these attacks is that they seemed to be deliberately designed to trigger a “Tet offensive” reaction in the U.S. These attacks were conducted during an election year—just like Tet offensive—and were designed to be spectacular—or, more precisely, media spectacles—just like the Tet Offensive.
The jihadists wouldn’t bother wasting men on suicidal media events unless they knew irresolute feckless Democrats were in the audience.
All of this means that the Democrat Party is internationally recognized to be the geopolitical equivalent of an effete and effeminate metrosexual; only capable of dialing 911 in the case of a midnight intruder but otherwise helpless to defend either their family or themselves—even if their life depended on it. Oh yeah, thereafter said metrosexual still would feel entitled to sneer at his rescuer because the cop struck him as a “cowboy”.
Marcus, I commend your “you go girl” encouragement to the Democrats to grow a pair of testicles and resume shouldering their share of our responsibility to defend America’s interest; but your premise that their deficiency is all about pot-smoke or 60’s infantilism and so on is flawed. Put another way, the Democrat’s problem isn’t stupidity or ignorance; they are neither. Our problem with the Democrats is their transnationalist ideology.
Transnationalism, in short, is an ideology that subsumes national interests to international ones, with particular eminence given to transnational organizations such as the UN, ICC and so on. The Pew Global Attitudes Project [pdf] shows that Democrats and Europeans express similar opinions— and Republicans expressed distinctly contrasting opinions—to whether their nation should obtain U.N. approval before using military force to deal with an international threat.
Consider Table 1, which shows the responses to the question “Should nations get UN approval before using force?”.
This question, “Should nations get UN approval before using force?”, is testing an aspect of the respondent’s transnationalism. The question, when put another way, is asking “whose interest are more important, the UN’s or your own nation’s?” In this regard the Democrat’s response is more similar to the average Frenchman that his fellow Republican’s.
The Democrats are committed to other transnational projects (e.g.,such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty) that the Republicans have also rejected. I recall that speakers at the Democratic Party’s National Convention slamming George Bush's refusal to participate in the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty. That the ICC removed constitutional protections and provided the means for every leftwing nutbar to drag Bush and Rumsfeld into court for “war crimes” mattered not a whit to them. That the Kyoto treaty was based on disputed junk science and was a international wealth transfer program—that is, transferring the U.S.’s wealth toward countries like China, just in case you were wondering which way the arrow was pointing—was also just ducky with the Democrats.
All of this indicates that (generally speaking) the Democrats are transnationalists and the Republicans are not. At this point Seinfeld would say something like “not that there is anything wrong with that.” I won’t. There is something wrong about transnationalist American politicians: they refuse to put America first.
This also means that—until the Democrats lose their transnationalism—that they are unsuitable run this country at anytime, never mind during wartime.
This also means that Carl Mackay (the guy who commented on Mark Stein's website) is right when he said; Democrats [who vote for Kerry] believe Senator Kerry is lying and [will actually] pull out of Iraq.
Again, Marcus, your premise—that the Democrats problem is 60’s-era pot-smoke—is wrong; The Democrats knew exactly what they were doing when they went nuts over Howard Dean. They also knew exactly what they were doing when they nominated a Vietnam-era turncoat—a man who sided with our enemies in a time of war—to be a wartime president. And—as Carl Mackay suspected—they believed that they were voting for a man who would cause America to abandon our war in Iraq.
This would result in losing this war. The lost would occur because we abandoned the battle and left our enemies in control battlefield. The Democrats voting for Kerry were voting for America to lose this war.
Marcus, if I’m hearing you right, you desire today’s political parties to be something like the mid-1950’s political parties, where both parties heart was basically in the right place. I could live with that. It won’t work today but I could live with it.
Today the dispute isn’t between two political parties that bicker about the size of the diaper subsidy for unwed mothers while agreeing on the larger issues of national security. Today’s argument between the two political parties is about whether the priority is defending the UN’s interest or the U.S.’ interest.
On the other hand, I’m ok with today’s arrangement. The Democratic Party gives a place for all of the transnationalists and moderate leftists to place themselves, the Greens provide a place for the hard left nutbars to place themselves, and the Republican party is where the grown-ups and Americanists-Americans go to run the country.
Of course, so long as the Republicans are running the country we will have to endure listening to the Democrats’ reciting their demagoguery about quagmire, mismanagement, bad planning, and so on. Also, of course, the Main Stream Media is their megaphone. Ignore them. The election showed the majority of the voters do. The Democrats have all of the significance of kittens squealing in a box.
Enduring Democratic drivel in exchange for winning the war on terrorists; under the circumstances I’d say that’s not a half bad tradeoff.
Hat tip to Glen
Postscript: this post was massively rewritten.
I hope the Democratic party goes to the woodshed and reinvents itself. They must. Kerry was no unifier, with his leftist anti-war past. Democratic leaders must rise within their party who recognize we are in a war for our way of life---leaders who have shaken-off Vietnam. They must distance themselves from leftists like Michael Moore. … Democrats need to own the war, and wrest it from the domination of the Republicans. We would all be better off for it. At Mark Stein's website, a reader named Carl Mackay commented:
...When Americans go to the polls to vote for President, it will be for two distinct reasons: Republicans will vote for President Bush because they think he is telling the truth about his intentions in Iraq and [will] stay the course; Democrats believe Senator Kerry is lying and [will actually] pull out of Iraq.
For me, that's it in a nutshell. The Democratic vote seemed dishonest---the campaigning, the media bias, the subversive elements seething below the surface---something is rotten in the Democratic party. … They must open the doors and windows of the woodshed and let out the dust and damp, and breathe new life into their party. We would be a stronger nation for it. The GOP has control of all branches of government. That's a mandate to the Democrats to get their heads out of the pot smoke of the Sixties and get serious. I will root for that, even if it seems unlikely.
I don’t think Marcus gets it. Democrats—like Europeans in general— are generally transnationalists. These notions are fundamentally at odds with notions of American exceptionalism and the understanding that there is absolutely nothing wrong with American unilateralism. In addition, politically active Democrats simply don’t care about terrorism; regardless of whatever else they might believe about terrorism they cannot be expected to aggressively pursue a war on terrorists if they don’t think terrorists are a big deal. Byron York examined the internals of a poll sponsored by Democracy Corps, the group founded by Greenberg, James Carville, and Robert Shrum, and found:
The survey focused on Democrats who take part in the nominating process in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. And, Iraq aside, what it found was that Democrats, at least those who are most active in politics, simply don't care about terrorism.
Just don't care.
In one question, pollsters read a list of a dozen topics — education, taxes, big government, the environment, Social Security and Medicare, crime and illegal drugs, moral values, health care, the economy and jobs, fighting terrorism, homeland security, and the situation in Iraq — and asked, "Which concern worries you the most?"
In Iowa, one percent of those polled — one percent! — said they worried about fighting terrorism. It was dead last on the list.
Two percent said they worried about homeland security — next to last.
In New Hampshire, two percent worried about fighting terrorism and two percent worried about homeland security. In South Carolina — somewhat surprisingly because of its military heritage — the results were the same.
Democrats in each state were then given the same list of topics and asked to name their second-most concern. Fighting terrorism and homeland security still placed near the bottom of the list.
Then pollsters read two statements and asked respondents to react. The first statement was, "America's security depends on building strong ties with other nations," and the second was, "Bottom line, America's security depends on its own military strength."
In Iowa, 76 percent of those polled said they agreed with the first statement. Just 18 percent favored the second. In New Hampshire, 77 percent favored the first, and 17 percent the second. And in South Carolina, 56 percent favored the first statement, and 33 percent the second. [NB: this is exactly consistent with my contention that most democrats are transnationalists--Johnh]
Given those opinions, one might expect Democrats to care little about the national-security credentials of their candidates. But the poll, surprisingly, found just the opposite.
Pollsters asked respondents which characteristics they believed would be most important in a candidate. While voters didn't care about having a decorated war veteran as candidate — sorry, John Kerry and Wesley Clark — the one attribute they said is most important is that the candidate "has experience in foreign affairs, intelligence and national security."
While some might take that to mean that Democrats want a tough, security-minded leader, the poll's results in fact suggest that Democrats want a leader who has the ability to fight terrorism, but will not actually do it.[emphasis mine--johnh]
Recently Bryon York noted that the 2004 exit polls confirmed that there is little daylight between the Democratic Party’s rank and file and their leaders:
… exit polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina essentially confirmed the Democracy Corps findings, and now yet another poll, this one from Gallup, suggests that Democrats nationwide share much the same sentiments.
In a survey taken from March 5 to 7, Gallup pollsters asked, "Thinking ahead to the elections for president in 2004, if you had to choose, which of the following issues will be more important to your vote?" Gallup gave voters just two choices: economic conditions or terrorism.
… According to a breakdown provided by Gallup, 76 percent of Democrats answered the economy. Just 10 percent of Democrats said terrorism would be more important to their vote, and 13 percent said both equally.
In contrast, 48 percent of Republicans said terrorism was their greater concern, while 46 percent said the economy, and four percent said both equally.
The Gallup pollsters also asked, "If you had to choose, which of the following presidential candidates would you be more likely to vote for — a candidate would do a good job on the economy, or a candidate who would do a good job protecting the country from terrorism?"
Overall, 51 percent said the economy, while 42 percent said terrorism, and seven percent said they had no opinion. But those numbers, too, mask significant partisan differences.
Seventy percent of Democrats chose a candidate who would do a good job on the economy. Just 25 percent chose a candidate who would do a good job protecting the country from terrorism.
For their part, 62 percent of Republicans chose a leader who would be strong on terrorism, while 32 percent chose one who would do a good job on the economy.
Those are stark —and serious —differences.
The Democrat’s rejections of these basic premises (i.e., that the U.S. can use military force regardless of what the UN says and that terrorism is a danger, not a “nuisance”) means that it is impossible for them to participates as full partners with Republicans in certain endeavors such as, say, running a war on terrorists. Consequently, the contradictions between the Democrat’s ideology and the prerequisites for the competent execution of a war simply mean that the Democrats must not be involved with leading it; to do otherwise would be gross negligence. On the other hand, if your intent were to lose the war then handing the Democrats the keys to war machine would be the right way to go about doing it.
This isn’t just my opinion. The jihadists in Iraq were also doing their part to help drag the Democrat’s guy across the finish line. The anti-coalition insurgency in Iraq has been conducting a series of coordinated attacks on hard targets. The interesting thing about these attacks is that they seemed to be deliberately designed to trigger a “Tet offensive” reaction in the U.S. These attacks were conducted during an election year—just like Tet offensive—and were designed to be spectacular—or, more precisely, media spectacles—just like the Tet Offensive.
The jihadists wouldn’t bother wasting men on suicidal media events unless they knew irresolute feckless Democrats were in the audience.
All of this means that the Democrat Party is internationally recognized to be the geopolitical equivalent of an effete and effeminate metrosexual; only capable of dialing 911 in the case of a midnight intruder but otherwise helpless to defend either their family or themselves—even if their life depended on it. Oh yeah, thereafter said metrosexual still would feel entitled to sneer at his rescuer because the cop struck him as a “cowboy”.
Marcus, I commend your “you go girl” encouragement to the Democrats to grow a pair of testicles and resume shouldering their share of our responsibility to defend America’s interest; but your premise that their deficiency is all about pot-smoke or 60’s infantilism and so on is flawed. Put another way, the Democrat’s problem isn’t stupidity or ignorance; they are neither. Our problem with the Democrats is their transnationalist ideology.
Transnationalism, in short, is an ideology that subsumes national interests to international ones, with particular eminence given to transnational organizations such as the UN, ICC and so on. The Pew Global Attitudes Project [pdf] shows that Democrats and Europeans express similar opinions— and Republicans expressed distinctly contrasting opinions—to whether their nation should obtain U.N. approval before using military force to deal with an international threat.
Consider Table 1, which shows the responses to the question “Should nations get UN approval before using force?”.
| respondent | yes | no |
|---|---|---|
| Republicans | >30% | no data |
| Democrats | 57% | 42% |
| France | 63% | 42% |
| UK | 64% | 34% |
| Germany | 80% | 38% |
This question, “Should nations get UN approval before using force?”, is testing an aspect of the respondent’s transnationalism. The question, when put another way, is asking “whose interest are more important, the UN’s or your own nation’s?” In this regard the Democrat’s response is more similar to the average Frenchman that his fellow Republican’s.
The Democrats are committed to other transnational projects (e.g.,such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty) that the Republicans have also rejected. I recall that speakers at the Democratic Party’s National Convention slamming George Bush's refusal to participate in the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto treaty. That the ICC removed constitutional protections and provided the means for every leftwing nutbar to drag Bush and Rumsfeld into court for “war crimes” mattered not a whit to them. That the Kyoto treaty was based on disputed junk science and was a international wealth transfer program—that is, transferring the U.S.’s wealth toward countries like China, just in case you were wondering which way the arrow was pointing—was also just ducky with the Democrats.
All of this indicates that (generally speaking) the Democrats are transnationalists and the Republicans are not. At this point Seinfeld would say something like “not that there is anything wrong with that.” I won’t. There is something wrong about transnationalist American politicians: they refuse to put America first.
This also means that—until the Democrats lose their transnationalism—that they are unsuitable run this country at anytime, never mind during wartime.
This also means that Carl Mackay (the guy who commented on Mark Stein's website) is right when he said; Democrats [who vote for Kerry] believe Senator Kerry is lying and [will actually] pull out of Iraq.
Again, Marcus, your premise—that the Democrats problem is 60’s-era pot-smoke—is wrong; The Democrats knew exactly what they were doing when they went nuts over Howard Dean. They also knew exactly what they were doing when they nominated a Vietnam-era turncoat—a man who sided with our enemies in a time of war—to be a wartime president. And—as Carl Mackay suspected—they believed that they were voting for a man who would cause America to abandon our war in Iraq.
This would result in losing this war. The lost would occur because we abandoned the battle and left our enemies in control battlefield. The Democrats voting for Kerry were voting for America to lose this war.
Marcus, if I’m hearing you right, you desire today’s political parties to be something like the mid-1950’s political parties, where both parties heart was basically in the right place. I could live with that. It won’t work today but I could live with it.
Today the dispute isn’t between two political parties that bicker about the size of the diaper subsidy for unwed mothers while agreeing on the larger issues of national security. Today’s argument between the two political parties is about whether the priority is defending the UN’s interest or the U.S.’ interest.
On the other hand, I’m ok with today’s arrangement. The Democratic Party gives a place for all of the transnationalists and moderate leftists to place themselves, the Greens provide a place for the hard left nutbars to place themselves, and the Republican party is where the grown-ups and Americanists-Americans go to run the country.
Of course, so long as the Republicans are running the country we will have to endure listening to the Democrats’ reciting their demagoguery about quagmire, mismanagement, bad planning, and so on. Also, of course, the Main Stream Media is their megaphone. Ignore them. The election showed the majority of the voters do. The Democrats have all of the significance of kittens squealing in a box.
Enduring Democratic drivel in exchange for winning the war on terrorists; under the circumstances I’d say that’s not a half bad tradeoff.
Hat tip to Glen
Postscript: this post was massively rewritten.
posted by johnh | 8:00 PM
<< Home