Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Maureen Dowd Slams Military, Fails To See Irony...

Maureen Dowd, having finally found an excuse to let loose her long-held hatred of the media, goes buck-wild in the pages of the New York Times today, invective flowing like the surging waters behind a long-held dam:

Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they’ve never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his hard-bitten, smart-aleck aides nuked the president, vice president and other top advisers as wimps, losers and clowns in a Rolling Stone profile meant to polish the general’s image.

It was a product of the warrior-god culture, four-star generals with their own public-relations teams, that came from Gen. David Petraeus. And the towel-snapping was intensified by the fact that McChrystal used to be a tough special-ops, under-cover-of-the-night, rules-don’t-apply-to-us military guy.


Well, let us say at the very least, military guys are smart in the field of their choosing, the military. On outside matters - such as PR - maybe not as much. But one can say for sure that opinion columnists - such as the bitter Grey lady herself, Ms. Dowd - are never as smart as they think they are. But unlike military commanders, who get cashiered after an error in judgement, op-idiots like Dowd are allowed to keep on rolling. Maureen's column on Tuesday was shown to be full of factual errors and misstatements? That's OK, let's see what see comes out with on Thursday!

To wit, I would like to turn one of Dowd's statements back upon her:

McChrystal’s defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men — (the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary) — must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened.

So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can’t punish the military because that would make him weak? It’s the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses.

Vicious circle, Moesy? How about this one: " If we get attacked by terrorists who perceive us as weak we can not fight back, for it will only make them stronger via publicity and recruitment. Additionally, any changes in our national security - no-fly lists or tougher immigration laws - are admissions that the terrorists have in fact won, so we cannot implement them either. And if, through our lack of improved security, they attack again, we can not fight back because that will only make them stronger via publicity and recruitment...."

Heard that one before? Only out of the mouth of every anti-military, pro-terrorist liberal with a platform...

Pass the Advil, Maureen. You may perceive that the argument to keep McChrystal is a vicious circle, but that's only because your long-held liberal hatred of the military makes it hard to wrap your head around the concept of putting aside personal grievances - which is all you seem to have in life, by the way - in order to get the job done. And incidentally, it is your agreement with the "let's just lay down and take it" faction of foreign policy (as demonstrated above) that generates your venomous reaction to being in Afghanistan in the first place.

Ugly.

You think retaining McChrystal is a "vicious circle", Maureen ? Try explaining your own approach to foreign policy, without getting stuck in the same logical roundabout that liberal reasoning always finds itself in...


UPDATE: Dowd gets her wish as McChrystal is sacked by Barack Obama and replaced with Gen. David Petraeus . Funny, when General Petraeus was serving under a Republican Commander in Chief, he was known as "General Betray-us". Funny how things change oh-so-quickly...

Of course, should Afghanistan crash and burn, Maureen will still keep her job. For some, there is never a price to pay for ignorance and stupidity....

2 comments:

Right Wing Extreme said...

It is not a logical roundabout, it is a death spiral.

The JerseyNut said...

Well put!