Eugene Robinson: WaPo Nutter-In-Chief
Who let this guy into the WaPo building? Today's editorial ranks up there among some of the best nutter rants I've ever read. But like most on his side of the thinking curve he is simply wrong.
Fresh from his triumphal visit to Baghdad -- a place so dangerous he had to sneak in without even telling the Iraqi prime minister -- George W. Bush is full of new resolve to stay the course in his open-ended "global war on terror." That leaves the rest of us to wonder, in sadness and frustration, just what that course might be and where on earth it can possibly lead.
Would Mr. Robinson care to shout to the high heavens the President of the United States is flying into a war zone? I'm glad this guy's not in charge of the Secret Service. He would have gotten the president killed a long time ago, and the nutters would be complaining about Dick Cheney instead.
This is a "war" in which three men held for years without due process at the Guantanamo Bay prison kill themselves by hanging, and their jailers are so unnerved and self-absorbed that they see the suicides as an attack. Rear Adm. Harry Harris's all-about-me lament -- "I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us" -- was worthy of delivery from Oprah's couch.
Does anyone give one rat's @$$ that these three people hung themselves? I don't. Mr. Robinson and the rest of the Left--be they politicians or those in the media--would extend these people rights associated with citizens of the United States, and have them tried in our courts like Moussaoui was. I'm sorry but it's not simply preposterous, but it's crazy. These people need to snap out of this delusion that our enemies have ANY level of mercy or compassion. They don't.
Bush claimed at his news conference the other day that he'd "like to close Guantanamo" if only the people being held there weren't so "darn dangerous." These bad people, in other words, are forcing him to hold them indefinitely under conditions that mock international norms. But if the inmates are indeed beyond redemption, why order them to be hog-tied and force-fed when they go on hunger strikes? Why not just let them starve? Why freak out when three of the evildoers hang themselves? Why not pass out rope and tell the rest to bring it on?
Isn't this just typical. Now, does anyone think that the Left wouldn't throw an absolute, unequivocated hissy if we did something like that? Mr. Robinson is railing on about the detainees and their conditions down there, yet he states that we ought to just let these people starve, or pass out rope to them. This is rich. And where is the Left to condemn this sort of editorial? Oh, that's right. They're still on suicide watch because Karl Rove won't be indicted, and the president pulled off a successful diplomatic mission to Iraq under THEIR noses.
This is a "war" in which the United States drops two 500-pound bombs with the express intent of assassinating Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that wouldn't have existed if Bush hadn't decided to invade. But when the world learns that Zarqawi briefly survived the bombing, and rumors circulate that U.S. forces shot him dead, officials rush to release an autopsy report showing that the butcher with a $25 million bounty on his head died from blast injuries. An American medic, we are told, was about to administer first aid when Zarqawi mumbled something unintelligible and expired.
Anyone catch that? We ASSASSINATED Zarqawi with two bombs. Assassination insinuates that there's something morally wrong with what we did. We killed an enemy. Had we killed Runstedt during the Battle of the Bulge, would that have been seen as an "assassination," too? Then he spins it. They would not have been there had we not invaded. I guess the reams of records showing that al Qaeda was already in Iraq doesn't faze Mr. Robinson. And that's not based solely on records prior to the invasion, but it's also corroborated by the documents released by the DoD AFTER our invasion. And as for the bounty, does he want to give it to that medic; a medic doing his job? If Mr. Robinson thinks that we would have let him die without attempting to save him, he might want to reconsider. Getting Zarqawi alive would have provided a larger boon than his death did.
Why do your best to kill an enemy leader -- a bad, bad man, the worst of the worst -- and then try to revive him? Didn't you want him dead?
Is he serious? Can he spell i-n-t-e-l-l-i-g-e-n-c-e?
In this amorphous, open-ended "war" that we're spending precious lives and billions of dollars to wage, the rules of engagement seem to be shoot first and apologize later.
We're sorry if U.S. Marines massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. We're even more sorry than we were after U.S. military personnel tortured and humiliated those prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Bush's stalwart ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is sorry if London police, conducting an anti-terrorist raid this month, shot and wounded an innocent man whose only "crime" was to come downstairs in his underwear to see who was breaking into his house. But not as sorry as Blair was after the London subway bombings, when commandos shot dead an innocent Brazilian electrician whom they mistook for a possible, potential, just-might-be terrorist.
If Mr. Robinson thinks that we're not sorry for mistakes the coalition makes, again he should reconsider. The coalition is doing everything it can not to hurt the sensitivities and civil liberties of pansies around the globe that don't seem to get the war that's going on right now. They are doing their best to avoid those sorts of mistakes,a nd if I were Mr. Robinson, I'd be a bit more lenient. I'm sure he isn't perfect, either, but the way he makes it sound, he's Jesus Christ compared to these guys; men, I'd like to add, that are on the front lines of this war while Mr. Robinson enjoys his cushy job at the WaPo. And I love how the media simply can't let go of Abu Ghraib. They're like a dog with a chew toy, and they won't give up no matter how many teeth are pulled out. And why stop there. Mr. Robinson doesn't when he brings up Haditha to kick off this useless, nutter, seemingly anti-American rant. The men involved in Haditha haven't even been charged yet, and Eugene Robinson has them tried and convicted without a shred of verifiable evidence.
Nobody's sorry, though, about secret CIA prisons or extralegal detention or interrogation by brutal "waterboarding" or an Orwellian blanket of domestic surveillance. After all, we're at "war."
And he'd be one of the first idiots stepping up to shriek that the president didn't do his job if this nation was hit again. With these people, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We jump one way to allay their concenrs, and they gripe. We address the gripes, and they complain we're lapse in our judgment or jobs. Somedays I feel like yo-yo with the way these yo-yo's think. I don't mean to sound rude or condescending. Maybe it's a lack of sleep, but I'm starting to agree with my better half. I'm sick of these people. They're not satisfied with anything except surrender.
The military announced yesterday that the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has reached 2,500, another of those awful, round-number milestones. It is widely expected that the new Iraqi government will consider an amnesty for some of the insurgents who killed some of those American servicemen and women -- drawing a distinction between roadside bombs placed by Sunni Muslims in "resistance" to the U.S. occupation and those placed by foreign al-Qaeda jihadists. If this happens, we'll have taught the Iraqis well. They'll be saying "pardon me" just like their American tutors.
Today's generation of jihadists was forged in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. How long will the next generation, being forged in Iraq fighting the American occupation, be with us?
Iraq is just one theater in Bush's "war." Elsewhere, Afghanistan is once again ablaze as the resurgent Taliban counterattacks. Somalia is coming under the sway of an Islamic militia that may harbor al-Qaeda militants. America's popularity in the world continues to fall.
But George W. Bush forges ahead, trying vainly to kill a poisonous, retrograde ideology with bullets and bombs. His "war" is self-perpetuating, and no one even knows what victory would look like. Long after he's gone, we'll still be looking for a way to end the mess he began.
The mess he began? Pardon my language but Mr. Robinson is an @$$. WE didn't start this war. George W. Bush didn't go kicking over sand castles in the kiddies sandbox. They used four airplanes as weapons of mass destructiuon, and killed almost 3000 innocent men and women. So where the Hell does he get off accusing the president of starting this war? Did he expect America to withdraw and cower even more in the face of Islamic terror as President Clinton did? Did he expect President Bush to apologize for cramping the world's style.
Please. If the WaPo were smart, they'd hand Mr. Robinson his walking papers. This editorial not only ranks up there as Kos-worthy nutter status, but it also shows the blatant bias, the miscreant misrepresentation, and the revolting revisionism that the MSM is engaging in, once again. You'd think they'd learn by now.
Publius II
Who let this guy into the WaPo building? Today's editorial ranks up there among some of the best nutter rants I've ever read. But like most on his side of the thinking curve he is simply wrong.
Fresh from his triumphal visit to Baghdad -- a place so dangerous he had to sneak in without even telling the Iraqi prime minister -- George W. Bush is full of new resolve to stay the course in his open-ended "global war on terror." That leaves the rest of us to wonder, in sadness and frustration, just what that course might be and where on earth it can possibly lead.
Would Mr. Robinson care to shout to the high heavens the President of the United States is flying into a war zone? I'm glad this guy's not in charge of the Secret Service. He would have gotten the president killed a long time ago, and the nutters would be complaining about Dick Cheney instead.
This is a "war" in which three men held for years without due process at the Guantanamo Bay prison kill themselves by hanging, and their jailers are so unnerved and self-absorbed that they see the suicides as an attack. Rear Adm. Harry Harris's all-about-me lament -- "I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us" -- was worthy of delivery from Oprah's couch.
Does anyone give one rat's @$$ that these three people hung themselves? I don't. Mr. Robinson and the rest of the Left--be they politicians or those in the media--would extend these people rights associated with citizens of the United States, and have them tried in our courts like Moussaoui was. I'm sorry but it's not simply preposterous, but it's crazy. These people need to snap out of this delusion that our enemies have ANY level of mercy or compassion. They don't.
Bush claimed at his news conference the other day that he'd "like to close Guantanamo" if only the people being held there weren't so "darn dangerous." These bad people, in other words, are forcing him to hold them indefinitely under conditions that mock international norms. But if the inmates are indeed beyond redemption, why order them to be hog-tied and force-fed when they go on hunger strikes? Why not just let them starve? Why freak out when three of the evildoers hang themselves? Why not pass out rope and tell the rest to bring it on?
Isn't this just typical. Now, does anyone think that the Left wouldn't throw an absolute, unequivocated hissy if we did something like that? Mr. Robinson is railing on about the detainees and their conditions down there, yet he states that we ought to just let these people starve, or pass out rope to them. This is rich. And where is the Left to condemn this sort of editorial? Oh, that's right. They're still on suicide watch because Karl Rove won't be indicted, and the president pulled off a successful diplomatic mission to Iraq under THEIR noses.
This is a "war" in which the United States drops two 500-pound bombs with the express intent of assassinating Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that wouldn't have existed if Bush hadn't decided to invade. But when the world learns that Zarqawi briefly survived the bombing, and rumors circulate that U.S. forces shot him dead, officials rush to release an autopsy report showing that the butcher with a $25 million bounty on his head died from blast injuries. An American medic, we are told, was about to administer first aid when Zarqawi mumbled something unintelligible and expired.
Anyone catch that? We ASSASSINATED Zarqawi with two bombs. Assassination insinuates that there's something morally wrong with what we did. We killed an enemy. Had we killed Runstedt during the Battle of the Bulge, would that have been seen as an "assassination," too? Then he spins it. They would not have been there had we not invaded. I guess the reams of records showing that al Qaeda was already in Iraq doesn't faze Mr. Robinson. And that's not based solely on records prior to the invasion, but it's also corroborated by the documents released by the DoD AFTER our invasion. And as for the bounty, does he want to give it to that medic; a medic doing his job? If Mr. Robinson thinks that we would have let him die without attempting to save him, he might want to reconsider. Getting Zarqawi alive would have provided a larger boon than his death did.
Why do your best to kill an enemy leader -- a bad, bad man, the worst of the worst -- and then try to revive him? Didn't you want him dead?
Is he serious? Can he spell i-n-t-e-l-l-i-g-e-n-c-e?
In this amorphous, open-ended "war" that we're spending precious lives and billions of dollars to wage, the rules of engagement seem to be shoot first and apologize later.
We're sorry if U.S. Marines massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. We're even more sorry than we were after U.S. military personnel tortured and humiliated those prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Bush's stalwart ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is sorry if London police, conducting an anti-terrorist raid this month, shot and wounded an innocent man whose only "crime" was to come downstairs in his underwear to see who was breaking into his house. But not as sorry as Blair was after the London subway bombings, when commandos shot dead an innocent Brazilian electrician whom they mistook for a possible, potential, just-might-be terrorist.
If Mr. Robinson thinks that we're not sorry for mistakes the coalition makes, again he should reconsider. The coalition is doing everything it can not to hurt the sensitivities and civil liberties of pansies around the globe that don't seem to get the war that's going on right now. They are doing their best to avoid those sorts of mistakes,a nd if I were Mr. Robinson, I'd be a bit more lenient. I'm sure he isn't perfect, either, but the way he makes it sound, he's Jesus Christ compared to these guys; men, I'd like to add, that are on the front lines of this war while Mr. Robinson enjoys his cushy job at the WaPo. And I love how the media simply can't let go of Abu Ghraib. They're like a dog with a chew toy, and they won't give up no matter how many teeth are pulled out. And why stop there. Mr. Robinson doesn't when he brings up Haditha to kick off this useless, nutter, seemingly anti-American rant. The men involved in Haditha haven't even been charged yet, and Eugene Robinson has them tried and convicted without a shred of verifiable evidence.
Nobody's sorry, though, about secret CIA prisons or extralegal detention or interrogation by brutal "waterboarding" or an Orwellian blanket of domestic surveillance. After all, we're at "war."
And he'd be one of the first idiots stepping up to shriek that the president didn't do his job if this nation was hit again. With these people, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. We jump one way to allay their concenrs, and they gripe. We address the gripes, and they complain we're lapse in our judgment or jobs. Somedays I feel like yo-yo with the way these yo-yo's think. I don't mean to sound rude or condescending. Maybe it's a lack of sleep, but I'm starting to agree with my better half. I'm sick of these people. They're not satisfied with anything except surrender.
The military announced yesterday that the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has reached 2,500, another of those awful, round-number milestones. It is widely expected that the new Iraqi government will consider an amnesty for some of the insurgents who killed some of those American servicemen and women -- drawing a distinction between roadside bombs placed by Sunni Muslims in "resistance" to the U.S. occupation and those placed by foreign al-Qaeda jihadists. If this happens, we'll have taught the Iraqis well. They'll be saying "pardon me" just like their American tutors.
Today's generation of jihadists was forged in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. How long will the next generation, being forged in Iraq fighting the American occupation, be with us?
Iraq is just one theater in Bush's "war." Elsewhere, Afghanistan is once again ablaze as the resurgent Taliban counterattacks. Somalia is coming under the sway of an Islamic militia that may harbor al-Qaeda militants. America's popularity in the world continues to fall.
But George W. Bush forges ahead, trying vainly to kill a poisonous, retrograde ideology with bullets and bombs. His "war" is self-perpetuating, and no one even knows what victory would look like. Long after he's gone, we'll still be looking for a way to end the mess he began.
The mess he began? Pardon my language but Mr. Robinson is an @$$. WE didn't start this war. George W. Bush didn't go kicking over sand castles in the kiddies sandbox. They used four airplanes as weapons of mass destructiuon, and killed almost 3000 innocent men and women. So where the Hell does he get off accusing the president of starting this war? Did he expect America to withdraw and cower even more in the face of Islamic terror as President Clinton did? Did he expect President Bush to apologize for cramping the world's style.
Please. If the WaPo were smart, they'd hand Mr. Robinson his walking papers. This editorial not only ranks up there as Kos-worthy nutter status, but it also shows the blatant bias, the miscreant misrepresentation, and the revolting revisionism that the MSM is engaging in, once again. You'd think they'd learn by now.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 12:11 AM
2 Comments:
yeps we are learning just how much worse the USA is than terrorists in our ethics and moral stance.
-:)
br3n
Br3n:
Really? We're worse than terrorists? Care to cite some examples of that? I don't seem to recall US troops becoming suicide bombers, or beheading innocent people. And before you go off half-cocked and bring up Haditha you can drop it.
You, like everyone else, doesn't know squat about Haditha because nothing's been released about it. Further, the Marines have stated that there are more inconsistencies in the TIME article than what the Marines involved in that shooting have.
I love you tin-foil hat peope who think that we are the biggest threat on the face of the planet. You, and the Democrat party in general, had better give up this notion of dhimmitude that seems so prevalent on your side right now. And, your side still can't get around the fact that they did vote IN FAVOR of going to war.
It's a bit late to pull out now, don't you think? Doing so now would do more damage to the troops and this nation than anything those animals could throw at us.
Publius II
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