David Brooks has a column in the New York Times today in which the Keyboarding Cabbage waxes philosophical about President Bush’s genius in ordering the surge, which as you know has accomplished its main goal of enabling the forging of a stable and sustainable government in Baghdad.
Oh, wait …
So Brooks is stupid enough. but then I tripped over this rightie blogger who says (emphasis added) —
New York Times columnist David Brooks admits: Bush was right:
[long quote from Brooks column in which Brooks states his, and only his, opinion]
It is becoming obvious even to many on the left that the Iraq surge has worked.
I think the assumption is that because Brooks writes for the New York Times, he must be representative of “the left.” But Brooks is as much “on the left” as I’m Brad Pitt. And does that mean Bill Kristol is “on the left,” too? If it does, I’m outtahere.
For more about the success of the surge, see also:
Derrick Jackson, “Big Oil and the War in Iraq”
“Government Study Criticizes Bush Administration’s Measures of Progress in Iraq”
For more on the persistent idiocy of David Brooks, see Mustang Bobby.
I know you’ve referred to Brooksie as a cabbage before, but the full epithet ‘Keyboarding Cabbage’ made me smile. Some combination of alliteration with the mental picture, perhaps. Thanks, I needed a chuckle.
However, it gives me a headache to imagine the n-space topological contortion that would enable someone to think he is a columnist on the left.
I find it hard to spend more than 3 seconds looking at one of Brooks’ columns, but my quick scan suggests that he’s astonished to have discovered the idea that even a stopped watch is right twice a day. Another blistering insight! Which, in typical fashion, isn’t even an accurate analysis of facts on the ground.
I think they hired Kristol so that he could make Brooks look sensible by comparison. It isn’t working.
Suppose there’s a neighborhood in Miami that has serious crime and drug problems. Now suppose that the mayor of Houston responded to something unrelated — say, the Enron scandal — by firebombing suspected crack houses in that Miami neighborhood (killing the guilty and the innocent alike), walling off portions of the neighborhood to separate rival gangs and stationing a significant portion of Houston’s cops on every street corner.
Would crime levels go down? Most assuredly. But would the problems that caused the crime and drug problems in the 1st place have been addressed? Only a fool would think so. David Brooks is a fool. I hope the GOP triumphalism over the “surge” doesn’t blow up in their faces — literally — but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I kinda like cabbage (with a small “c”), but it sure does stink when it’s in hot water.
Imagine how far to the right that blogger had to be, to think David Brooks is “on the left.”
Well, we know one thing. The recent dearth of news coming out of Iraq – journalists/reporters on the ground in Iraq have to beg the MSM to publish their reports, usually to no avail – has certainly had its intended affect on Mr. Brooks who can always be depended on to base his commentaries on what he imagines rather than on what is so or g_d forbid what he’s learned from reading what others have found out.
I found his ‘analysis’ of Mr. Bush’s handling of the Iraq invasion fascinating. Little did I realize that a bumbling fool is one in the same as a brilliant military strategist.
Over at Gateway Pundit, the peanut gallery is celebrating “Bush is Right” with a link to the video by teh Right Brothers song.
Speaks for itself, dontcha think?
At this juncture, my impression is that their is a segment of the rightie blogosphere and commenters who are simply so devoid of any connection to factual reality that they have become incapable of dealing with any facts at all. It would cause them dry up and blow away.
These are the people who can’t even determine correctly that David Brooks is a conservative and the NY Times has undergone a shift in perspective since 9/11.
Not like it’s been years going or anything….
Troop levels be damned. The arguable progress under Petraeus (and this juror is still deliberating the verdict) is due to us engaging, paying and TALKING TO the leaders who constitute the “Sunni Awakening” councils.
Funny how talking to the “enemy” has direct (yet seldom discussed) results.
Well, the surge has been a big success for the 400,000 Sunnis who collect their monthly stipend from Petraeus’ surge success slush fund. Bush has tried to pass off that expense to Al-Maliki’s government,but the Shiites baulked that why should they have to pay the Sunnis not to kill Americans.
I tend to view the success of the surge with an eye on the money. Most of the 10 billion dollars plus that is spent in Iraq goes to security costs, and if those cost remain constant, as they have, then evidently real progress hasn’t been made.. just illusion.
Yeah, and 2 more GI’s died today in Iraq
We implemented X (the surge) in order to achieve Y (oil PSA, key legislation, political reconcilliation, etc.). We have not achieved Y. Ergo X is a success.
Only in “Alice in Wonderland†(or a David Brooks/wingnut column) does that make sense.
More troops on the ground = larger occupation.
That’s the entirety of “the surge has worked.”
So we have a larger occupation of Iraq, which gets us no closer to ending the occupation, and no progress on any of the political objectives, which is nothing but a prolongation of disaster. We have not become more welcome in Iraq in that time.
So sure, if you want to keep occupying, you can keep sending more troops, and achieving ever more hostility not only in Iraq but throughout the Arab world, but the only purpose of this war is to have an eternal war.
We aren’t winning anything here. We are losing something very important. Our country, our constitution, and our humanity.
The surge provided political covering fire that enabled the Bush Administration to achieve their tactical goal: the US forces remained mired in Iraq at maximum attainable force level for two more Friedman Units. The surge was a thus a domestic political tactical success.
Bush and Cheney have never lost sight of the strategic goal, permanent development rights to Iraq’s oil fields.
Permanent war. Permanent bases. Permanent fortified embassy building.
3 more GI’s killed today.. But that’s an acceptable level according to McCain, right? Like the vitamins..one a day, and we have no problems.
4,109
Yes, David Brooks and Billy Kristol ARE on the left. Simply because the GOP has dragged this nation about 5 points to the right since Acting-President was installed in 1980.
The GOP has gone so far to the right that the beliefs espoused by the John Birch Society or the KKK are now mainstream, historical Republicans like Barry Goldwater or George Aiken are ‘hard left’, and Liberal is now a worse epithet than ‘fag’.
The Democratic Leadership has been controlled by the GOP also since the 1980s, so there has been zero opposition to this push to the extreme far right. Even today, the ‘liberal media’ refer to the moderate Democratic position as the ‘hard left’.
Now that the plan to impoverish America and devolve the nation to third-world status is almost complete, we still have a Democratic ‘leadership’ eager to hand even more power to the GOP.
There is only one political party in America. Remember, George Bush’s grandpa was a Nazi finacier, so which party do you think rules America?
SWAMI – speaking of security costs, a security guard in Baghdad makes $l,222/day whereas the lowly Petraeus makes $493/day and the even lowlier sergeant makes $7l/day and the lowest of the low, the Sunni militia fighter makes $l6/day.
MICHAEL – you’ll appreciate this: We must stay in Iraq in order to defeat those who do not want us in Iraq.
About that embassy building, it was made with imported slave labor and it’s defective, unsafe, and unusable.
Speaking of the Embassy building.. It’s an architectural horror,even for the cubist style it’s a nightmare..looks like public housing from Tashkent that was built in the late 50’s. And to think that we dropped a billion dollars into that monolithic piece of shit. Rommel’s bunkers at Normandy had more architectural beauty and detail.