Surrender Is As Surrender Does
Surrender enthusiasts contemplate giving up. NYT:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.
That’s interesting. If they’re ready to concede that we’re winning, and its working, what do they need the modest withdrawals for? Could this mean that surrendering over there always just about scoring points over here?
After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.
Now I’m really confused. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to prevail on their measure, they are willing to give up on it. Better keep reading.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”
That’s funny. That sounds exactly like what President Bush has been saying. But I’m afraid I’ll have to quibble with the fine points on this:
The willingness to consider alternatives represents a shift by Democrats and is a recognition of changing political and practical realities they face in grappling with Iraq and its future.
Given the history of the current Democratic-led Congress, I’m not sure the realities have changed. They are, however, finally showing signs of dim recognition.
Now slowly accepting defeat on surrender, look for dickering over terms.
In addition, Democrats want to try again on a proposal by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, to prohibit troops from being returned to Iraq unless they have spent at least an identical amount of time back in the United States. The plan attracted 56 votes in July.
Mr. Reid, who has had preliminary discussions with Mr. Warner, acknowledged that there was new interest in trying to coalesce around a middle-ground proposal, but he said there was no agreement on a plan. “That’s not there yet,” he said.
But there’s always at least one true believer out there.
Mr. Levin, the Armed Services Committee chairman, said he detected substantial desire among his Republican colleagues to force a change in Iraq. “We just have to talk to more people to see what it is that can get us over the filibuster,” he said. “That is key. If we can get up to 60, that would be a major step.”
You know what they say. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
OK, cruel mockery aside, what is interesting is that the predominance of news coverage and political chatter is beginning to shift over to couched concessions of defeat by the surrender enthusiasts. It’s over.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:37 am on Thursday, September 6, 2007
24 Responses to “Surrender Is As Surrender Does”
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September 6th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Richly deserved cruel mockery, and very entertaining, too!
The substantive point is of course interesting as well. Very odd, though, emotionally. The behavior of the surrender enthusiasts has been so appalling, and the implications so troubling, that it’s cold comfort to see those implications being proved correct.
Perhaps that’s why the humor is so appreciated. That seems to be the most honorable role of humor — some would say its very definition: it leavens the truth.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:37 am
What a difference a summer makes. Today, we read that Senator Reid is trying to find a bipartisan solution to Iraq. Let me give you the translation: Dems need to “cut and run” from “cut and run”!
September 6th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Naked degeneracy. The actual war doesn’t seem to tickle a single synapse.
The ball they’re eyeing seems to have the magic number 60 written on it, and catching that ball means they can declare a win! What do they win? Something having to do with Bush, but things have become so confused, I’ve lost the point.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Short of bringing Rummy back from retirement, not even Bush should be able to screw up this welcome development.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
[...] read Jules Crittenden’s take on the article at the NYT. A commenter points out that the “Dems need to ‘cut and [...]
September 6th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Good call Salty. They “win” by making sure that Bush won’t be the president next term. Heh.
And now they are going to try and legislate military Pers Tempo? They weren’t too concerned about that back in the day when we were doing 9 month deployments with 6 month or less turnarounds.
September 6th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
The willingness to consider alternatives represents a shift by Democrats and is a recognition of changing political and practical realities they face in grappling with Iraq and its future.
In other words, they went home on vacation, got their asses handed to them by a pissed-off electorate, and are now trying to make nice. I spit on all of them.
September 6th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
“The willingness to consider alternatives represents a shift by Democrats and is a recognition of changing political and practical realities they face in grappling with Iraq and its future.”
In other words…they have bilked every nickel they are going to get from their leftard supporters in order to fill their campaign cofffers and now have to get serious.
September 6th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
it’s funny how “a mixed picture” becomes “they’re ready to concede we’re winning”. winning what? we keep hearing that the 20% escalation in troops is helping with security…but all the metrics that aren’t subject to white house doctoring are far less clear. and anyway at the end of the day it’s a moot point because mr. bush’s escalation of this war is unsustainable. troop reductions are coming…it’s only a matter of when. a salient point is that we are spending lives and a butt load of your kids cash in order to clean up an totally unnecessary mess that was caused by the same people who now claim we are “kicking ass”. they (and you) have been completely wrong from the get go. on what basis do they (or you) have any credibility left on the subject?
September 6th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
And still they come… Safe, secure, prosperous, able to say whatever pops into their heads without fear of government reprisal. And it is apparently all an accident, or at least it is all in spite of the criminal actions of the evil, criminally misguided Bushitler and his neocon advsors.
September 6th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
which is it vanguard? an accident? or in spite of cheney’s efforts? i assume you are trying (in vain) to be sarcastic…does that mean that you think cheney has worked to defend your right to free speech?
September 6th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
OK, I will assume you are making transmissions from some secret rebel enclave and are unable to appear in public for fear of immediate arrest, along with Michael Moore, Sean Penn and all the other brave penniless souls who have dared to speak “truth to power” in the last 6 years. I am truly sorry it ended up that way for you. The Constitution promised you better I know. Maybe in January 2009 you can emerge from hiding and rejoice.
In order to answer your question I guess I would need to know which ones you think “cheney” has curtailed?
Given that as VP he has no power except to break ties in a deadlocked Senate, you really need to pick a more frightening bogeyman jaybird. C’mon, I know you can do better.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
What we ought to be doing is sending even more troops to fight terrorists.
A few ideas of how to ramp it up:
1.) Increase the size of the army. Start offering better inducements to get people to serve (pay a decent wage for starters…fire a few hundred thousand bureaucrats, and pay the new troopers what the paper pushers used to get).
2.) Withdraw our worthless garrisons from Europe and Korea, and let those guys defend themselves from now on…and they can pay for it themselves too, instead of relying on the hated Americans to pay fror their defense.
3.) Reorganize the army. Too much tail to teeth.
Then, once we’re done pounding the snot out of the remnants of the Islamo-scum in Iraq and Afghanistan we can wipe out the Syrians and Iranians…just to make a clean sweep of terrorist supporting tyrannies.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Oh, yeah…lining up a few pro-surrender advocates and shooting them wouldn’t go amiss either. It’s a good morale builder.
Nothing more expendable than lefto-traitors.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
vanguard…
have you not been paying attention? cheney is running the country while george is out riding his bike, or cutting brush on his new haven ranch, or playing with barney, or choking on his cheetos.
dave surls…
the problem is we aren’t fighting terrorists. george got all fired up yesterday because cheney told him to say “we’re kicking ass”. and bin laden laughed because, whoevers ass it is george thinks we’re kicking, it sure the hell isn’t his.
have a fine evening congratulating yourselves on “winning”.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
but all the metrics that aren’t subject to white house doctoring are far less clear.
And those would be what? Please be specific.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Hey jay k.
I’ve seen the end of the road for your line of “thought”. It’s not pretty. He called himself “truthteller” and went into a sputtering frenzy of BDS nonsense when cornered.
See for yourself:
“Harry Reid Stands Small on Iraq” see comments
Truthteller (not verified) says:
I love it..you folks all spew out all this venom that was carefully crafted by Karl Rove and the other small minds in Bush’s cabal, and I’m the one being used? The only thing being used is my mind to carefully and intelligently sort through the lies and bring them out into the open. The 1967 attack by the Israelis wasn’t an accident in the fog of war, anymore than our attack on Iraq was based on sure intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The Israelis attacked because that ship was monitoring their communications and actions. And it was attacked by warplanes, not helicopters, repeatedly. As for Iraq, refresh your memories as to yor hero Reagan, who eagerly armed and financed both Hussein and Iran (remember Iran/Contra, or have you conveniently forgotten that one?) And remember, too, Rumsfeld in Baghdad eagerly shaking Hussein’s hand after he had used OUR chemical weapons on his people. We didn’t give a rat’s behind about them then, and we don’t now. We are fighting for no one’s freedom in Iraq; as soon as they pass that oil law that forces them to essentially give up their oil to multinational oil companies, they’ll start bringing the mercenaries, er, troops, home in a heartbeat. That’s all the Republicrats want. And, oh, did you forget that Bush, et al, had met with Taliban representatives in August, 2001 to try to get them to agree to our terms over a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that meant billions for Western energy companies, and that we threatened to bomb them back to the stone age if they didn’t? It’s all there in black and white, if only you folks would take the blinders off and read. But then, your educational levels seem on a par with Bush’s, that is to say, mid-high school. Don’t bother about his “advanced degrees”. They were bought and paid for by Daddy Bush, who got the money from his daddy Prescott, who got it by selling arms to Hitler during the early days of WWII. Oh, didn’t know that? Of course not. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. Vietnam=Iraq=Iran. Who suffers? Our troops, their people, our souls. Enough already. The mindless pap here is more than one brain should have to suffer through.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
…cheney is running the country …
That sounds like an assertion that can’t be verified, i.e., your opinion. Unless you can point us to some evidence, jay. And, please, no “truther” web sites. News articles, maybe?
September 6th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Anyway…we can’t pull out of Iraq, because we’re going to need bases there in order to attack and destroy the mad mullahs in Iran (has to be done, sooner or later).
Sorry, Demo-scum, but pulling out of Iraq is a no-can-do.
Pulling out of Germany and Korea (where you put us decades ago) is a better option.
September 6th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
and bin laden laughed
Not unless they have comedy clubs in hell.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
My bad jaybird. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. Cheney, sorry, “cheney” secretly running the country. Check.
And you and a couple of other fellow ideologues are the only ones smart enough to figure that out.
That’s the most impressive part.
Oh, and love the by the way. Tres, tres postmodern radical chic. Bet that goes great with your turtleneck, beret and copy of “On the Road”.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Thats love the ” no CAPs”
September 7th, 2007 at 3:13 am
Whew. You know, the ant was irritating in his ignorant rendering of the script, but this jaybird person is just pathetic. I like the touch about how the evil Bush family has been doing their dastardly deeds for generations. AND he’s got all the scripts memorized, right down to the Afghan pipeline and evil oil companies (that could have, with all their omnipotent power over the world, demanded the lifting of the sanctions and bought the oil. But that would be lots less fun, so it was damn the cost of war and full speed ahead!).
I know someone who would feel much better about themselves, and certainly less bitter toward the world, after a few courses in Aristotelian logic–and several years of therapy with a rational, reality-based psychiatrist.
September 7th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Again, you have these idiots trying to push a meaningless resolution during a period of time when their Congressional approval ratings are in the toilet (sorry about the pun, Senator Craig). Their ratings are so low because they have failed to pass anything.
I guess they didn’t spend their August recess talking to voters. They spent it talking to operatives. What morons!