Dumpster Diving For Hidden Treasures
Fascinating new NYT/CBS pile finds Americans trust the military more than Bush or Congress to bring the war to a successful end.
There are a lot of jokes in there. Readers are encouraged to poke around, find their own, post them in comments. But here’s one that isn’t a joke at all. NYT/CBS sanitation engineers apparently had the good sense not to ask Americans what they think about the ability of NYT and CBS to bring the war to a successful end.
Good thing. Practitioners of “yeah but” journalism with an expressed preference for genocide who can barely manage to report a war, much less prosecute one … probably wouldn’t poll too well on that issue. But that’s a different trashpile. We’re not poking around in that one today. Not when we have a pile like this!
What a minute. The opinions of the American people, trash?
Well, like anything else, it depends what you do with them. These are after all, opnions of the cheap, easily discarded variety. Not like the ones you govern with … you know, votes. These ones cost nothing, are freely given away at doorsteps to strangers who may do with them what they will. Festoon themselves with them, hawk them on the street, fill up shopping carts and redeem them for nickels. But any pile, excuse me, poll has layers, buried nuggets, much like any good dumpster. Let’s dive in!
Rule One. I should have told you this first. Not the hold-your-nose part. You need to know your trash. This particular pile is not actually about how Americans feels. It’s about how NYT feels. Pretty quickly we run into the latest storyline being aggressively pushed by NYT and others. That Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, is Bush’s lapdog. Here’s a gem of a paragraph:
That is almost certainly why the White House has presented General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker as unbiased professionals, not Bush partisans. President Bush has said for years that decisions about force levels should be left to military commanders, although the decision to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq this year and keep them there was not uniformly supported by military leaders. It was primarily made in the White House, and specifically by the president in his role as commander in chief.
But apparently, despite the nose-wrinkling odor, NYT and the Democrats are not influencing American thought, if despite their best efforts Americans do not share their view of Petraeus, the military man, as a tool of Bush. But I have to wonder if NYT/CBS perhaps are eager to show what fools the American people are, by manuevering them to look foolish.
Sometimes you have to try to figure out what something was like before it had rotten stuff rubbed all over it. To see how it might clean up and work again. People are embarrassed by their trash and try to disguise it. Like this idea that the president somehow is not supposed to be telling the military what to do, like that wasn’t the idea in the first place, like he shouldn’t have some discretion as commander-in-chief. OK, this is what that thing looked like coming out of the store: Bush is at the top of the military chain of command. As the civilian political leader of this country, he tells the military what he would like to accomplish. The military tells him if and how it can be accomplished. He then tells them what he wants them to do. He told the military to invade Iraq; told the military to occupy the country; and when it started getting ugly he told them to stick it out. Then, when things nosedived, he told them to surge and launch a counter-insurgency. He told them to report back to him and Congress on how they were doing after a frankly rushed period of time. He is the one who ultimately makes the decisions. Congress may attempt to influence them, as we’ve seen thus far sometimes ineffectively, but he is the one.
So maybe the American people don’t really get how it works. And NYT and CBS, who commissioned this pile, either don’t get it, or purposefully asked a false question. Either of which might help to explain why the American people don’t get it, if NYT, CBS etal are who they are relying on for their understanding of the situation.
NYT wiped noxious stuff all over that issue, not only suggesting Petraeus is a Bush partisan, and further suggesting that the fact that military leaders are not uniform in their opinions, and Bush had to choose among them, somehow makes the choices he made less military. NYT apparently doesn’t know its history if NYT wants us to think any moderately large grouping of military men have ever been of one mind about how to prosecute a war, fight a battle, or walk to the store across the street.
Buried deep we find Congress’ poor numbers — old news anyway, though higher than I’ve seen them in a while. Someone has quite wisely shoved Bush’s significantly better numbers even deeper. Don’t want anyone to see that. But let’s pull this out for a look. Congress “enters the debate in a weakened position” … “While Congress has rarely scored highly in the public mind, the current Congress’s rating is now lower than that of its predecessor in the months before the election swept the Republican Party from power.”
Fascinating how NYT has spared itself from actually saying a Republican-led Congress was more popular by attributing the higher popularity to some unspecified predecessor in the months before the election swept the Republican Party from power. I suppose they hoped no one would notice who and what were same. But as cops and private detectives will tell you, trash tells all.
The Americans-want-out-of-Iraq issue gets chopped up and stirred around a lot of different ways — later and slower being the predominating results — but it looks like NYT/CBS steered well clear of the question that was answered in the affirmative in other recent polls: “Do you believe America can win?” Which would tend to suggest an approved-by-Americans way out of Iraq other than scheduled withdrawal. I went through the questions — the trash bags, if you will. I couldn’t find that one, about winning. I couldn’t find questions 13-19 and 21-49 at all. It’s like they got thrown out on the Jersey Turnpike or in the woods somewhere. I did find some other interesting results tucked away in there though. Did you know a resounding majority of Americans think al-Qaeda will set up bases in Iraq if we leave, but apparently they don’t care? Good thing they want us to leave this business to the military.
There’s some really weird stuff in there, if you dig deep enough. We’re away down the bottom of the PDF now. “Some people think of themselves as evangelical or born again Christains. Do you ever think of yourself in either of these ways?”
It was wedged among the “what are your politics” questions, away from the “what is your religion” question. Fortunately, I don’t ever think of myself in those ways, and boy, am I relieved. NYT/CBS made it sound … kind of dirty. Trashy.
You know, I knew if I poked deep enough, I’d find something really sleazy in there somewhere.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:01 am on Monday, September 10, 2007
13 Responses to “Dumpster Diving For Hidden Treasures”
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September 10th, 2007 at 1:23 am
“MoveOn.org Calls Petraeus a Traitor: Do Democrats in Congress agree?” by Pete Hegseth in the Weekly Standard on 09/09/2007:
“Tomorrow–as General David Petraeus provides his Iraq assessment to Congress–the antiwar group MoveOn.org is running a full-page advertisement in the New York Times under the headline: “General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House.”
***
MoveOn.org has been working closely with the Democratic congressional leadership –as an article in today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine makes clear. And consider this comment by a Democratic senator from Friday’s Politico: “‘No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,’ noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. ‘The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.’ …”
September 10th, 2007 at 1:43 am
I think he means Osama.
“Anti-war leaders stymied, frustrated” By: Mike Allen on Politico.com on
Sep 9, 2007:
“A well-known anti-war leader has gone public with the transcript of a private conference call that shows peace activists are exasperated with the Democratic congressional leadership and at a loss for a long-term strategy.”
September 10th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Is this the same Gen. Petraeus that Congress gave its okey-dokey to not long ago?
I gave up on the idea that the majority of journalists (our host among those excepted), being “educated” folk, understand how our government works. Hell, I’ve given up on the idea that the majority of congress critters (no relation to our host) understand how our government works.
I look forward to the general’s report.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Jules,
This one cut me up real bad…you may have seen or posted this before (apologies if that is the case).
Here is the link from Millitary Motivators:
http://militarymotivator.blogspot.com/2007/08/gratitude_27.html
Think this should be posted.
Keep up the ‘good fight’.
Cheers
Tim
September 10th, 2007 at 8:21 am
[...] It gets even better. NYT reported in July the split was 19% better, 20% worse. Now it is 35% better, 12% worse. See graphic. Via Jules Crittenden who has further thoughts. [...]
September 10th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Like this idea that the president somehow is not supposed to be telling the military what to do, like that wasn’t the idea in the first place, like he shouldn’t have some discretion as commander-in-chief.
Well, since the Congressional Dhimmicrats have a hard time differentiating between the Executive and Legislative branches, it isn’t a long stretch to conclude that those same Dhimmicrats don’t understand just what the Presidents does in his role as Commander-In-Chief.
Either that, or they want to change things so that the Congresscritters run the country.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Web Reconnaissance for 09/11/2007
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Folks, remember last year when the surrender lobby came up with some five or so retired general officers who said we should get out? Remember how they were lauded as the smartest people in the world? Guys who had served long and hard and seen it all and had impeccable moral authority in matters of war and peace? Remember also how the Left’s signature issue of civilian control of the military went the way of the woolly mammoth as a result?
Well now Gen Petreaus has arrived and it turns out he may not say what the surrender enthusiasts want to hear.
So that thing that happened last year has all changed now.
General officers are back to being political stooges who buy $600 hammers and can’t be trusted with the accuracy of the morning muster.
September 10th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Fascinating new NYT/CBS pile finds Americans trust the military more than Bush or Congress to bring the war to a successful end.
I have to say, I’m one of those Americans who trust the military to bring the war to a successful end: provided they’re allowed to win it, and not obstructed by a blinkered, self-serving bunch of vote-whores.
September 10th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
How can Bush’s homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, say that Osama bin Laden is “virtually impotent,” contrary to top intelligence experts, and when no one even knows where he is or what he has been doing?
The Bush administration would have us believe that Iraq is the “central” front in the global war on terror, and that bin Laden is on some permanent vacation in a cave – no longer a threat? Do these people ever think before they speak? “al-Qaida in Iraq” is only loosely affiliated with al-Qaida and did not even exist before we invaded Iraq. It has been widely reported that al-Qaida is back, in strength, in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
According to some, a debate over the various progress reports from Petraeus, other commanders, government agencies and diplomats is “moot” because Bush has already decided to carry his “new” strategy forward and Democrats lack the votes to stop him.
All I have heard from the war supporters is that the mainstream media is so liberally biased as to be unreliable. Yet, it almost seems forbidden that anybody should ask any hard questions. Why hasn’t Bush taken any steps to alleviate the strain on the military? In a country of 300 million “patriots,” why is it unreasonable to call for a draft? This ill-conceived war in Iraq has put this country in a very precarious position.
The surge was not a number deemed necessary by military experts but rather just a number they were able to scrounge up by extending to fifteen months the tours of the already overtaxed troops. General Petraeus, himself, wrote the army’s new counterinsurgency manual, which calls for as many troops in Baghdad, alone, as are in the entire country. His silence on this point brings into question anything he has to say in regards to the success of the surge or the strategy going forward.
At least it does for me. But, I am just one military family member, a minority, who is not blinded by “patriotism.” I am not willing to sacrifice my loved ones needlessly and recklessly. The military comprises not even 1% of our population and it speaks greatly to the character and honor, or lack thereof, of our “commander-in-chief” and the other 99.99% that the lives and well-being of those brave soldiers who have carried this entire burden does not even rate the slightest consideration.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:15 am
karennkc:
I would not say that you are unpatriotic. I don’t have enough information to come to that conclusion. All you’ve done is express a sincere, and serious thought about the war. Since you didn’t throw mud or sneer at others, I’ll take what you said at face value. Nothing you said would make me question your patriotism.
My patriotism doesn’t reside in a president or political party. It resides in the Constitution of the United States. One of the biggest tragedies of this war is that our political class has no class. We desparately need politicians, just a few, who give a damn about this country first and are adults. The childish-thuggery we’ve seen is dangerous no matter which side of the aisle it comes from.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:20 am
karenn:
I think the remark about Osama has to do with the fact that he has been isolated enough that he can not plan attacks as he once did. I myself am not sure I even believe the guy in the tapes is Osama.
As for the military, I do think it needs to be larger, however, I grew up during the days of the draft and I really do not think that the military wants to go back to that. A draft means they take everybody and they do not want everybody.
I do think however, that the military needs to be larger. We have a huge population and we should be able to support a larger military and more men in uniform.
I grew up in Oklahoma not too far from Fort Sill. I have had family members go to Iraq. I have a friend and neighbor over there right now. I don’t think it is fair to say people have no consideration for the men and women who fight this war.
BTW, in my family every generation has had men and women serve in uniform. Every war has seen them in battle. Every war and police action in between, from the American Revolution to the Civil War to the World wars and Korea and Viet Nam to the Gulf to Iraq.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
karen, while we are apaprently not near as prolific as Terrye’s family, we do go back to service in Mr. Lincoln’s Army and quite a few since (mostly wars led by Democrats I might add). I am not sure that is germane, and I certainly do not assume any moral authority from it. And no, I do not consider you unpatriotic either. My question is, if Iraq is the wrong front in a war against terror as you suggest, then why have the terrorists contested it?
My problem with the whole anti-war position is that it seems to concede “justifiable grievances” to people who have committed some of the most horrific atrocities in history while impugning those who actually do something about it with a stain of “sinister agendas”. I cannot get around that. I also cannot get around the fact that the “anti-war” movement was missing in action in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Haiti. No “human shields” protecting MIlosevic, no stupid giant paper mache heads of Clinton, no nude protests, nada.
I guess the difference is that if/when a Democrat administration goes overseas to kill some of the people who cut off the heads of aid workers and use candy to lure in children so they can blow them up, I will support it . And if I was young enough I would serve (again), and I would support my children serving in it, wherever it takes place.