Stupid Question
Apparently deserves a stupid answer. Lefty blogs agog:
There was once a blog called Joe Biden Is Thugged Out. (I swear this is true.) Biden just proved why. He asked Ryan Crocker, who used to be ambassador to Pakistan, whether it would be better for U.S. interests to go after Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Crocker, in an impossible political position — give the correct answer and humiliate the Bush administration; give the administration’s answer and look like a fool — dodged as much as he could. Then Biden forced him down. Crocker: “I would therefore pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”
Hullabaloo likes it, too, declares it a significant moment, all Bush admin arguments blown out of the water, ”game over.”
This is in fact a very revealing moment. It’s not just that senators are capable of asking stupid questions. We all know that. Or that ambassadors might be cabable of giving stupid answers. Because that’s not exactly what happened.
What is revealed, yet again, is that people in a position to know better actually think you can walk away from al Qaeda in any particular battlefield. Also, that people in positions of responsibility think schoolyard games of this sort represent some kind of accountability.
It is also revealing that some people are so deluded that they might hear Crocker’s answer to a forced hypothetical as any kind of capitulation, or a banner moment for Joe Biden.
Confederate Yankee helpfully provides the vid. Crocker in fact says he doesn’t think it is an either/or question. Biden then says, OK, but what if God came down and said you can magically eliminate all AQ in one place or the other. OK, says Crocker, in that case I’d have to say we have AQ on the ropes in Iraq, I’ll go with the Afghan-Pak border.
Why Crocker greed to play this ridiculous game, I don’t know. He’s a diplomat, I guess, and maybe thought it would not be diplomatic to inform the idiot senator these are in fact serious matters that deserve a more serious treatment.
Ultimately what is most startlingly revealed here is the poor quality of the loyal opposition. Never mind the idiot bloggers. Among the sage grayhairs of the United States Senate’s Democratic majority, Biden’s supposed to be one of the moderate smart ones. Imagine if these people actually got in a position of power.
Re other senatorial idiocy, Althouse to Kennedy: “A year ago, you wanted to give up because we were losing, and now, you want to give up because we’re winning.”
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:51 am on Wednesday, April 9, 2008
8 Responses to “Stupid Question”
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April 9th, 2008 at 8:07 am
[...] Jules Crittenden said Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Biden would be good if he were less political, or at least less obvious about it. He’s a thinker [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Can’t we just kill both?
April 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
(Not Crocker or Biden. Both al-qaedas)
April 9th, 2008 at 8:44 am
“Nothing Succeeds Like Success”
Ah. Springtime on Capitol Hill. Congress’ latest community based reality cluster f#%&^ is in full swing. So…. while that esteemed body on the Hill continues to prove Will Rogers true, I found this little gem from Victor Davis Hanson.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:34 am
“Can’t we just kill both?”
We will. … If John Mcain is the 44th POTUS.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
My God. These idiots actually think that we can dictate all of the actions of our enemies. I guess our enemies have no say in the matter. They have to fight where we want them to fight, in the way we want them to fight, using the weapons we want them to fight with.
Do these idiots think this is a duel? Do they think this is like sports, where everybody decides before hand to abide by a given set of rules?
What’s so confounding is that we were supposed to believe that these jihadists would be unstoppable, impossible to beat. Now that they are getting trounced, the argument is that the wrong battlefield was chosen. If only we would leave Iraq, the accomodating jihadists would all follow us to the battlefield of our choosing! Do they really, truly believe this? Could anybody actually be that ignorant?
April 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
America has had a stroke. The left side of its brain is not getting enough blood. If we follow its proposals for this war, there will be plenty of blood, and I think it should all go to the left.
I think Biden’s hair implants were all taken from his butt.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I’m having a lot of fun thinking about all the potential responses Crocker would have preferred to offer.