Swiftboating Reagan
I spent time on the right wing whacko blogs yesterday and I was surprised to read all the vicious delirium aimed at Iraq Study Group co-chair Jim Baker. It was the same treatment Democratic war heroes John Kerry, Max Cleland and Jim Webb have received. But it was unsettling even to my cast-iron stomach to see the foam-mouthed wingnut extremists turn on even one of their own with such homicidal fervor. The co-ordinated Swiftboat attacks on the old Republican golden boy Baker ("Surrender Grandpa", "Surrender Monkey") are surely orchestrated by the White House with the President's approval. By attacking Baker through his surrogates with such cross-eyed, drooling hatred, WMD is lashing out at his father in some weird, sick Freudian fashion. To paraphrase Reagan, "It's a new day in wingnut pathology."
What will a wingnut do? A wingnut will step over his dying mother to stab his own father in the heart.
So Jim Baker, sun god and CEO of the Reagan administration, was really a terrorist-appeasing Liberal all the time. Pundits on Townhall.com now claim that Desert Storm was a defeat for America, and that former Republican secretaries of state Baker and Eagleburger have no foreign policy credentials. Next they will claim that Reagan actually surrendered to Gorbachev and the U.S. is actually a colony of Russia.
The overt ageism in the public attacks against Hamilton and Baker is especially sick. According to the wingnuts, ISG is just one big collective 'senior moment.' Seniors are the biggest voting bloc in the country. You want to see a 'senior moment?' Pick a fight with AARP, you'll wish you hadn't.
One wingnut failed to see the irony in his quote from Maggie Thatcher, meant to put down the ISG: "Consensus is the absence of leadership." That's just about right. In the absence of presidential leadership, the ISG tried consensus instead.
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Jon Alter digs deep into the ISG Report to point out this tidbit: There are six (sic) - count 'em, six - as in a six-pack of Heineken, as in less than seven - six (6) staffers in the U.S. embassy in Iraq who speak Iraqi fluently.
The definition of surrender is that you have given up trying. If only six embassy staffers can even speak the language, then President Bush has given up trying to achieve national reconciliation in Iraq. The President has already surrendered in Iraq.
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Even Peggy Noonan is blasting off on Bush. The former Reagan speechwriter had the same take as liberal columnist Eleanor Clift on Bush 41's public emotional breakdown the day before the public release of ISG: the former President is in a state of grief over his son's tragic presidency. Most of us know WMD has screwed up, but I doubt anyone on this planet understands the depth and specifics of the Iraq disaster better than Bush 41.
posted by 10-K @ 2:24 PM (permalink) 
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