Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin
By Erick Posted in Republicans — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
26This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
27TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
28PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
Daniel 5:26-28 (KJV)
The Republicans could learn a lesson from that passage. The voters have found the GOP wanting in too many policy areas. LIkewise, the President, who is said to read through the Bible frequently, might want to take a gander at Daniel. It seems that he, like the King, is confused by the message and we need to clarify it for him.
Mr. President, we want to fight the war. Make no mistake about it, the philosophers on TV are telling you that America wants to retreat from Iraq. That is not the case. In fact, we want you to fight the war and we don't see you doing that.
Read on . . .
The rumors are circulating that, regardless of what Tony Snow said yesterday, our Ambassador to Iraq is out and our Ambassador to Pakistan is in -- the same guy who had no problem with Pakistan turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda.
You have replaced Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, whose most notable feat in life was betraying the Kurds and Shi'ites, leading to Saddam's slaughter of them. Mr. President, the voters found your Iraq policy wanting. You say you want to win, but give no real indications of wanting to win.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Republican in Congress gave lip service to conservative complaints on spending, and yet failed to deal seriously with earmarks until it was too late. Rep. Blunt, running again for Whip, stood at the Heritage Foundation last week and defended earmarks!
The voters weighed the GOP against the Democrats and then finished off the GOP. Having abandoned its first principles in favor of staying in power, there was no other course of action to take.
For the President to redeem himself, he needs to actually fight a war, not, as Pelosi said, manage the problem. For the GOP in Congress to redeem itself, it must take seriously the lessons learned during the Reagan years -- cut spending and reduce the burdens of government on the lives of Americans.
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Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin 7 Comments (0 topical, 7 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
that we can do a lot better in 2008. Voters were depressed about many things, including the failure of the GOP to get results on the conservative agenda. Not me, but apparently a lot of people wanted to "punish" our leaders for this and the corruption scandals.
I agree about "turning tail and running"--that it would be a disaster for the U.S. If winning the war is the issue, I really think the time has come to mobilize the American people to get of their duffs and support it. If Bush had done this at the outset in 2002 and made the case to the people, we could have had that support, the sense of shared sacrifice, and the boots on the ground to do the job. But he didn't--he got people interested enough to be alarmed but not mobilized with determination and a sense of sacrifice.
Making the case, as the President does, that there is a parallel between WWII and the GWOT, it really does not make sense for the Army and National Guard to be so overstretched that the military has to use stop-loss, revoke its own promises and compacts with the soldiers about deployment, and lower its recruiting standards. It is clear it will take much, much longer, and far many more boots on the ground, to stabilize the country than was previously believed. If a draft is out of the question, I do not see how this can be accomplished unless Bush makes the case for a real national sacrifice, as well as redeploying a all, or most,of the forces we have around our global perimeter, into Iraq.
was on Lincoln's side and he and Grant were willing to spend 1000 men a mile to get from the Rappahannock to the James. Even though by this stage the AOTP was heavily immigrants and "bounty men," the Northern people had well and truly lost their ardor for The War as well. The song about Empty Chairs resonated in Northern hearts even if a large percentage of the empty chairs were in immigrant slums, Ireland, Germany, or in the slave shacks of the contrabands in the USCT. Had it not been for the glimmer of victories in the summer of '64 in the Deep South and finally Sherman's much ballyhood conquest of Atlanta and defeat of Hood's Army, that Bloody Arithmetic might well have added up differently for A. Lincoln in November of '64. We shouldn't forget that.
In Vino Veritas
or anything close to that.
I understand that the American people are tired of this war. I'm tired of it. But, that's a long way from not wanting to win it.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
Than facing fearful odds/
For the ashes of our fathers/
And the temples of our Gods.
Isn't being memorized in many American schools these days.
My point is that after three years, civilian morale in the North was very low. By the fall and winter of '64-'65 it was even worse in the South, and Lee faced Grant in the spring of '65 with less than a third of his nominal strength actually in the ranks.
Likewise, in WWII by the winter of '44-'45 civilian morale was low, as was troop morale in Europe; nobody wanted to be the last to die in finishing off the Germans. As the casualties mounted in an increasingly war-weary country in the spring and summer of '45 in the Pacific, morale and the ultimate cost of "unconditional surrender" weighed heavily on both the troops and the American res publica. It is easy to posit that the American resort to nuclear weapons had as much to do with war-weariness as anything else, at least with regard to the Hiroshima bomb. There's a good argument that the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on Moscow just to hold Stalin in check so we could get out of it all and go home.
Let's not deceive ourselves about the American taste for war or for wearing the purple. Only in The Revolution have we held to our goals for longer than three or three and a half years, and even in the Revolution, probably no more than a third openly supported the US.
In Vino Veritas
Usually thats best when an angel of the lord does it.
The battle of the Wilderness had just ended, in 1864. As with all Union generals before him, Grant had been beaten by Lee when the Army of the Potomac tried to invade Virginia. As I recall the story, told to me long ago, the Union Army broke camp after the battle and started its march. Many of the soldiers thought they'd head north, once more defeated.
As the head of the army reached a key fork in the road, first murmurs and then cheers went through the ranks. The Army of the Potomac was turning south! It was pressing after Lee! THIS Union commander would not quit.
MUCH bloody fighting lay ahead. Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, the Crater. But, at the end of all that gloom, the South was broken and the nation reunited.
Mr. President, heed Erick's call. If you determine that the Iraqis do indeed intend on civil war, and they cannot be dissuaded, then we probably should come home.
But, if you think there is a realistic chance that a few more years of fighting and sacrifice can result in a stable country, then you should press this fight.
Your Army and Marine Corps is tired, but not beaten. If you quit a fight that they feel they can win, though, then they might be beaten--in spirit. They will have to live with the thought that they quit a battlefield, after much bloodshed, and left newly-won allies to their fates, because we lacked the will to stick it out. Is that the legacy you want to leave to the troops you've commanded, who've fought so bravely and so hard?
Mr. President, I know you fear breaking our Army and Marine Corps. Sir, IF you feel that we can achieve victory in Iraq, then I recommend that you risk breaking our Army and Marines. If worse comes to worse, and we have to rebuild our ground forces, we can if we have to. If need be, we can turn on our ruthless side, and threaten to blast those who threaten us with air and sea power that is unrivalled in the world.
(And, if the tender feelings of the rest of the world cry out at America's "bullying attitude," you can tell them that we're sick of the rest of the world having fun by pushing our buttons. If they persist, tell them that the "cowboy" in the White House might feel compelled to remind the rest of the world, in no uncertain terms, that America has buttons it can push, too!)
But, sir, I don't think Iraq will break our Army or Marine Corps. We may need to patch it up after a few more years of this optempo. But we can do that. Enough of our soldiers and Marines will stay on to serve as the nucleus for a rejuvenated ground force. And, it will be a force buoyed by either victory, or the knowledge that it didn't quit the field of battle until all hope was indeed lost. If you quit prematurely, our military will never forget.
Be strong, Mr. President, and wise. If you truly come to believe that we've reached the point of hopelessness in Iraq, no matter what we do, then tell the nation, tell the military, and bring them home. But, if we have the means to win this, or to achieve a good outcome, then stress us some more if need be.
If you think that the road to victory indeed goes through Spotsylvania, don't shirk from the journey. Even if it will be tough. Our military is tough. It can do it.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
passage:
And the complaint is not with the author (Erick). The complaint is with my fellow Americans. The results from Tuesday indicate a 40% turnout of eligible voters. Just over half of them voted left. The haystack "glass half empty" pessimism suggests that just over 80% of us didn't give a flip about our Soldiers and what turning tail and running will do to this generation. Nor could they be bothered to think about the implications of internationalism and the security that continues to elude us at the waterfall called the border.
Somehow there needs to be a change in the apathy and short-sightedness of WE THE PEOPLE if we're ever going to get our Political heroes to take OUR interests in mind over their self-aggrandizement and obsession with power for power's sake.
just sayin'...
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius