The Day After
I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl that Democrats won the House, though I'm not surprised. It was the second midterm election. The party in power always loses seats, because they've been in power, so people agitate about the things they did do and didn't do, and then toss them out in hopes of someone better, who will get tossed out too after they've been in power too long.
Rumsfeld resigning as Secretary of Defense, however, was quite a surprise to me. Rumsfeld has supposedly asked to resign many many times and President Bush has refused to accept. There was the Military Times editoral calling on him to resign, but the Army, Navy, and Air Forces Times are published by a private company, Gannett Corporation, the same one that owns USA Today. They publish newspapers centered around the military, but they aren't the military, so I didn't much faith in it. So I thought Rumsfeld would stick around until 2008 as part of "stay the course." I don't know if the resignation was a reaction to the election results or it was planned beforehand, but delayed until afterwards so as not to affect the election results. I think his resignation is a positive thing for the war in Iraq. Rumsfeld always felt like the reincarnation of Robert McNamara to me, which is not a good thing in my opinion. McNamara's tenure as Secretary of Defense was disastrous. Rumsfeld is another corporate executive who wants to run the military like a corporation. While retired military are often quite successful as corporate executives, I'm not so sure about corporates executives running the military. Yes, Rumsfeld has military experience. So did McNamara for all the good that it did him. A "smaller, better, faster" mantra doesn't translate well, particularly when it comes to fighting a shooting war. Rumsfeld directly confronted with generals and admirals and went over their heads in forming doctrine. He slashed much needed programs in pursuit of a cheaper less-equipped military that supposedly was more "nimble". He trusted studies made stateside more than actual reports coming from the theater. All of these things McNamara did as well. As much as I'm denigrating McNamara for his performance as Secretary of Defense, I respect much of what he has done afterwards. Rumsfeld's successor as Secretary of Defense will be Robert Gates, yes, the same CIA head Robert Gates associated with Iran-Contra. He was offered Director of National Intelligence, but declined. I wonder why he would take up Secretary of Defense. At least, he doesn't remind me of McNamara.
BTW, I don't compare Rumsfeld to McNamara to make more Iraq War-Vietnam War parallels. A Vietnam-Iraq analogy breaks down easily. There is no regular organized army, like the Vietnam's People Army, aka NVA. There is no populist Ho Chi Minh-type leader. Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army are definitely no Ho Chi Minh or VPA. BTW to the BTW, that they make a reference to the Mahdi scares the shit out of me. In Islam, the Mahdi is the prophet who arrives before the end times. It's like a Christian referring to the Second Coming. Religious fanatics who think the apocalypse is nigh, well, let's just say nothing good comes of that. Iraq hasn't been under the thumb of foreign colonialism for decades. Vietnam didn't have the deep tribal and religious divides of Iraq. Iraq is a different situation from Vietnam, which is a good thing, because I hope that means the United States does a better job in Iraq than in Vietnam.
Someone wrote to Andrew Sullivan an interesting scenario that Rumsfeld resigns, Lieberman is appointed as Secretary of Defense, and the Republican Conncticut governor appoints a Republican senator. And now that Santorum is out of a job, what are his opportunities? Secretary of Defense? Associate Justice of the Supreme Court?
I have a healthy disgust for single-issue people, people who are wholly consumed by only one ideal. These people seem as if they would explode if they had to allow room for anything more. I went to a Catholic high school. One of my math teachers said the sole factor in determining for who to vote was whether the candidate was pro-life or pro-choice. Making abortion illegal was all that mattered to him.
David Kopel is a single-issue person. Every single thing he writes is about holding the wall against the "gun-grabbers", as if he is a Spartan at Thermopylae. I don't know why gun control opponents use the euphemism "gun grabber". Thermopylae is a famous battle in Ancient Greece when 300 Spartans and 700 other Greeks held a narrow mountain pass against anywhere from a million to five million Persians, depending on whose account you believe. The Greeks fought to the last man's death. But they had killed tens of thousands Persians. More importantly, they held the pass, delaying Xeres' invasion of Greece. That is how Kopel writes, as if he is the sole person that is preventing an onslaught of attack on God-given natural Constitutional people-granted and whatever-other-source-exists rights to own firearms. I don't think a single candidate made gun control an issue or there was a single ballot measure in this November election. OK, there was Harold Ford who portrayed himself as a God-loving gun-toting Southern Democrat, but it wasn't like Bob Corker, his Republican opponent, was going to seize everyone's firearms. Yet it's the day after the election and what does David Kopel
write about? How the election has affected the gun control debate.
BTW, I'm fucking sick and tired of being called anti-American because I'm a proud liberal. A post on Redstate.com said, "I think the Democrats are set to kick America’s ass again." Yeah. I'm a registered Democrat. That means I hate America. I hate it so much I live here and I vote. I hate American soldiers so much that I've donated time, money, and my own gear. I hate Christians so much that I pray regularly and read my Bible. I hate President Bush so much that I always refer to him by his title and name because I acknowledge him as the Chief Executive of my nation. I like taxes so much that I voted against every bond measure in this election. This is my nation too and I will not let you determine what is American and Un-American.
Rumsfeld resigning as Secretary of Defense, however, was quite a surprise to me. Rumsfeld has supposedly asked to resign many many times and President Bush has refused to accept. There was the Military Times editoral calling on him to resign, but the Army, Navy, and Air Forces Times are published by a private company, Gannett Corporation, the same one that owns USA Today. They publish newspapers centered around the military, but they aren't the military, so I didn't much faith in it. So I thought Rumsfeld would stick around until 2008 as part of "stay the course." I don't know if the resignation was a reaction to the election results or it was planned beforehand, but delayed until afterwards so as not to affect the election results. I think his resignation is a positive thing for the war in Iraq. Rumsfeld always felt like the reincarnation of Robert McNamara to me, which is not a good thing in my opinion. McNamara's tenure as Secretary of Defense was disastrous. Rumsfeld is another corporate executive who wants to run the military like a corporation. While retired military are often quite successful as corporate executives, I'm not so sure about corporates executives running the military. Yes, Rumsfeld has military experience. So did McNamara for all the good that it did him. A "smaller, better, faster" mantra doesn't translate well, particularly when it comes to fighting a shooting war. Rumsfeld directly confronted with generals and admirals and went over their heads in forming doctrine. He slashed much needed programs in pursuit of a cheaper less-equipped military that supposedly was more "nimble". He trusted studies made stateside more than actual reports coming from the theater. All of these things McNamara did as well. As much as I'm denigrating McNamara for his performance as Secretary of Defense, I respect much of what he has done afterwards. Rumsfeld's successor as Secretary of Defense will be Robert Gates, yes, the same CIA head Robert Gates associated with Iran-Contra. He was offered Director of National Intelligence, but declined. I wonder why he would take up Secretary of Defense. At least, he doesn't remind me of McNamara.
BTW, I don't compare Rumsfeld to McNamara to make more Iraq War-Vietnam War parallels. A Vietnam-Iraq analogy breaks down easily. There is no regular organized army, like the Vietnam's People Army, aka NVA. There is no populist Ho Chi Minh-type leader. Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army are definitely no Ho Chi Minh or VPA. BTW to the BTW, that they make a reference to the Mahdi scares the shit out of me. In Islam, the Mahdi is the prophet who arrives before the end times. It's like a Christian referring to the Second Coming. Religious fanatics who think the apocalypse is nigh, well, let's just say nothing good comes of that. Iraq hasn't been under the thumb of foreign colonialism for decades. Vietnam didn't have the deep tribal and religious divides of Iraq. Iraq is a different situation from Vietnam, which is a good thing, because I hope that means the United States does a better job in Iraq than in Vietnam.
Someone wrote to Andrew Sullivan an interesting scenario that Rumsfeld resigns, Lieberman is appointed as Secretary of Defense, and the Republican Conncticut governor appoints a Republican senator. And now that Santorum is out of a job, what are his opportunities? Secretary of Defense? Associate Justice of the Supreme Court?
I have a healthy disgust for single-issue people, people who are wholly consumed by only one ideal. These people seem as if they would explode if they had to allow room for anything more. I went to a Catholic high school. One of my math teachers said the sole factor in determining for who to vote was whether the candidate was pro-life or pro-choice. Making abortion illegal was all that mattered to him.
David Kopel is a single-issue person. Every single thing he writes is about holding the wall against the "gun-grabbers", as if he is a Spartan at Thermopylae. I don't know why gun control opponents use the euphemism "gun grabber". Thermopylae is a famous battle in Ancient Greece when 300 Spartans and 700 other Greeks held a narrow mountain pass against anywhere from a million to five million Persians, depending on whose account you believe. The Greeks fought to the last man's death. But they had killed tens of thousands Persians. More importantly, they held the pass, delaying Xeres' invasion of Greece. That is how Kopel writes, as if he is the sole person that is preventing an onslaught of attack on God-given natural Constitutional people-granted and whatever-other-source-exists rights to own firearms. I don't think a single candidate made gun control an issue or there was a single ballot measure in this November election. OK, there was Harold Ford who portrayed himself as a God-loving gun-toting Southern Democrat, but it wasn't like Bob Corker, his Republican opponent, was going to seize everyone's firearms. Yet it's the day after the election and what does David Kopel
write about? How the election has affected the gun control debate.
BTW, I'm fucking sick and tired of being called anti-American because I'm a proud liberal. A post on Redstate.com said, "I think the Democrats are set to kick America’s ass again." Yeah. I'm a registered Democrat. That means I hate America. I hate it so much I live here and I vote. I hate American soldiers so much that I've donated time, money, and my own gear. I hate Christians so much that I pray regularly and read my Bible. I hate President Bush so much that I always refer to him by his title and name because I acknowledge him as the Chief Executive of my nation. I like taxes so much that I voted against every bond measure in this election. This is my nation too and I will not let you determine what is American and Un-American.
posted by Pettifogger | 9:35 AM
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