Armchair Pundits

Regroup--A Dose Of Reality

I've been wanting to write this for the past six days and I've finally carved out a few moments to do so. We have 794 days to the presidential election. I hope we can learn something in the meantime.

The Star Tribune Sunday Edition features a column written by Garrison Keillor. It is entitled The Old Scout. The November 12th offering was at times accurately condemning, characterologically insightful and somewhat delusional. You can read the full text via A Prarie Home Companion.

First a confession. I love the program, A Prarie Home Companion--not to mention, the related literature, Lake Woebegon, Leaving Home, etc. Garrison Keillor is a brilliant story teller and a gifted communicator.

The problem? He is such an elaborate story-teller that he is presently living out his days in a fantasy. His grasp on reality has slipped to the extent, that a friend informed me she will not read his column out of fear that his chicanery will negatively color his art. An obvious example of the Socratic axiom to know thyself, if you ask me.

Let's examine the text, beginning with the 2nd paragraph (emphasis added).

"Perhaps there will be some rational debate on the war. The voters have said they don't want the Thirty Years War that Mr. Cheney envisions, so it's time for him and his friend to start making other arrangements. This happens all the time in the real world. If you can't accomplish the mission, then you accept it and find a graceful way out."

I have no problem with satire; however, the conclusion is telling. The United States, cannot win, and must therefore graciously bow out. Such defeatism, is precisely why lefties should not be given the task of defending our nation. There exists a deficiency of will. Implied is that difficult obstacles to overcome should be quickly conceded, so as to attend to other pressing matters. In this case, winning the war isn't possible, so let's get out quick. Then we can move on to more important matters, such as Congress reacquainting itself with that lovely American classic, the subpoena. I've moved on to paragraph 3 with that last bit, but all of this begs the question, is Iraq salvagable? Keillor and his ilk say no and they are flatly wrong. The more appropriate question: Is America willing to do what is necessary to break the back of the insurgency? Doubtful, but more on that later.

Next, the eloquent liberal gives us a history lesson (emphasis added):

"People still care deeply about our government, despite every invitation to disillusionment. This is the astonishment. For my generation, the first big blow was the failure of Washington to get to the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and then its inability to change a disastrous course in Vietnam. You stand at the majestic polished wall with the 57,000 names on it, and you look across the river to Arlington, and here, within one mile, are two enormous aching sorrows, and a mile behind you is the U.S. Supreme Court, which threw the election of 2000. Some people killed our president and got away with it; men were shipped off to die in a lousy war promulgated by Democrats afraid to be called weak on communism; and an election was stolen in broad daylight, no protest. And yet we still stroll down to the church and cast our ballots. We live on hope."

This is the thing with delusions--plausible yet unreal. Yes, we do live on hope, it is necessary for our very survival. I'll grant him that but this man's hope is tainted with paranoia. Like the ramblings of the feverish, this man gave us the following in his October 24th column: "It makes you wonder: What if Mr. Cheney does not wish to give up power two years from now? Maybe he has other priorities. If an enemy of the United States - a Democrat, for example - appeared to be on the verge of election, perhaps Mr. Cheney, for the good of the country, will be forced to take the threat seriously and head for an undisclosed location and invoke his war powers and shovel a few thousand traitors into camps and call up his friends at Diebold and program the election results that are best for the country, or call the whole thing off. " With such rabid machinations you almost wonder if he is aphasic. My hope isn't in government, it lies elsewhere.

What is appalling to me is that the wagging fingered historian lacks self-criticism. The 2000 Supreme Court acted in a constitutionally consistent manner. Keillor doesn't like this result, so he revises the facts by casting aspersions. Furthermore, what does he mean when he writes that the Vietnam Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery are linked as two aching sorrows? They are linked by sorrow, and yet I suspect we see this differently.

He sees this sorrow as governments failure for intruding into international affairs. I see this sorrow, this great national scar as another type of civic failure. The government and citizenry erred grievoulsy. Our troops fought, bled, and died. When they came home, there were no parades, a conspicuously absent national gratitude, no triumph. This was accomplished in no small part by John Kerry and his anti-war crowd, of which Keillor is allied. A terrible thing had happend. The war was prosecuted in the press and the citizenry became disenfranchised. Our warriors came home to spit, epithets, and condemantion. What does this do to the psyche of the soldier? Of the man? Look around and see. The wounds are readily apparent, as we saw during the last presidential election.

Keillor goes on to rightly decry much of the nonsense in present day Washington and concludes thus:

"Or maybe Congress simply needed more Democrats. We are a civil bunch, owing to our contentious upbringings....Maybe they'll do something good. It's possible."

Wrong anwer. Civil? Are you freakin' kidding me?! The boomer democrat has such distrust for the military that at every turn they undermine Iraq, by seeking to presently remake Vietnam and the sixties. There is an utter lack of self-awareness on the left for they fail to appraise the fact that the sorrow decried by Keillor, America's wound if you will, is being perpetuated upon our men and women who serve. If we want to heal from this lament, we must welcome home our warriors with gratitude, in victory.

I have no faith in the left to do this, they are promulgating the wound. They decry pre-emption and then hail it, when it suits their purpose. They eschew morality in national dialogue, except for corruption, and corruption only matters when committed on the right. Abramoff is more villainous than Sadaam. It is inherently dishonest to promote such a double standard, and demonstrates an utter lack of seriousness for the world in which we live.

So how do we bring the troops home in victory? We could end this in 6 months, not thirty years as Keillor satirically opined, if we had the will to do so. Here are the Armchair Pundits 4 steps to stability in Iraq. 1) Black out all international communication--no reporting. 2) Kill every Shia cleric that has a militia. 3) Destroy their militias. 4) Repeat the process for the Sunnis.

War is hell. IT CANNOT BE OTHERWISE. We are a good people, we only want to hurt or kill bad guys. If we have to fight let's do it humanly, with no civilian casualties. Every reasonable person wants that--but in this environment, in any environment is such a thing possible? Can you wage a politically correct war and win? I don't think so. This problem is magnified if you cannot tell who the enemies are.

There is an obvious problem in what I'm saying. We're not really waging war, we are trying to stabilze a society. Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the destruction is aimed at Iraqis by Iraqis, not Iraqis vs. U.S. The 4 step plan above will only work to bring stability with human intel from the ground--good old fashion CIA spook stuff. The War College scholars would say that the object is to inflict as much damage as possible, to break the will of the people to fight. Regretably, this requires OVERWHELMING carnage. The British give us a lesson here from the not so distant past. It will work if implemented, but in the age of a 24 hour news cycle, where courting world opinion is the greatest moral good, where people sip Merlot and judge from afar, it is doubtful that a will to implement exists.

This is sickeningly messy. I hate the realities of war. I wish this were not the reality of the world, but it is, and we must not delude ourselves otherwise.

posted by Grisby @ 11:16 AM