Your Imagination Sucks, Fred
Jan 3rd, 2007 at 2:42 pm by Chris
From Dan Froomkin’s excellent White House Briefing:
Meanwhile, the intellectual architect of the “surge”, Frederick W. Kagan, admits to the Journal: “If we surge and it doesn’t work, it’s hard to imagine what we do after that.”
Fred, I’m not saying I have a great imagination or anything, but yours must really suck because this is seriously easy. What we’ll do is crinkle our brows and say something like “the next [insert arbitrary period of time] will be crucial to our success. We must renew our national commitment to victory in Iraq. Committing to victory now will demonstrate America’s strength to our friends and enemies around the world.” We’re not talking high level cognition here Fred. Sheesh, I even stole a little of that crap directly from you.
As a side note, does anybody have a clue what the words victory and success mean when applied to Iraq? We’re years into this and, as best I can tell, nobody has even come up with a reasonable justification for the war, let alone how one could be successful at it. The only one I could ever figure out was that it would help the Republicans win the 2002 midterm elections. Mission accomplished, I suppose.
As a side note, does anybody have a clue what the words victory and success mean when applied to Iraq?
That’s easy. Even the New York Times has caught up with the rest of the class on that. To the Bushistas, “victory” and “success” mean “staying in Iraq” and “losing” and “failure” mean “leaving Iraq”.
sorry mr. kagan, it’s actually easy to imagine what will happen after the surge fails.
Keep putting stuff like this up and my feared loss of interest with the demise of Susie is GONE.
Gug
[...] The other day we discovered that Frederick W. Kagan has a lousy imagination, but what he lacks in imagination, he more than makes up for in - well I’m not sure I know how to describe it properly - let’s call it doughy, horny nerd who believes everything he’s ever been emailed vibes. Allow me to demonstrate. The following is pieced together from his December 27 Washington Post op-ed piece written in support of the surge: The Right Type of “Surge”…Must Be Large and Lasting. Of all the “surge” options out there, short ones are the most dangerous. A short surge would play into the enemy’s hands. They expect any surge to be brief. The only cure is to maintain our presence long enough. The size of the surge matters as much as the length. We have always sent “just enough” force to succeed if everything went according to plan. So far nothing has. The only “surge” option that makes sense is both long and large. [...]