Obama's Iraq Speech: I'll Take Half a Loaf

President Obama:

This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I have said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.

A good few wingnuts are annoyed that Obama went no further, to admit that Bush was right in 2007 and the Surge worked. Jennifer Rubin, and Jonah Goldberg both make this point, and Stephen Green wrestles it down and holds its nose into the mess it made. Myself, I don't care too too much. Yeah, it would be nice, but politicians don't get paid to admit error.

This is a President who has blamed his predecessor at every turn, who stood in sharp opposition to his predecessor on Iraq from its beginning. Here, without condescension or agression, he speaks of Mr. Bush and Iraq in at least the semblance of a spirit of charity.

That sounds like healing, friends.

Will Saletan: "Glenn Beck is Not a Racist"

At least, not anymore:

The resemblance doesn't mean that Beck wants to take us back to the days of segregation. It means the opposite. Crying "socialism" is what conservatives do before they yield to change. It's a stage in the process of defeat. But the process doesn't end with defeat. It ends with absorption. It ends with the political descendants of George Wallace embracing the legacy of Martin Luther King. Beck today is just catching up to where King was 50 years ago. That's because King was in the front of the civil rights bus, and Beck is in the back. And it's a really slow bus.

It's always a good idea when reading the Left to assume projection, or as Breitbart put it, that they accuse others of doing what they do. So when Saletan says "you know, these wingnuts really don't hate on black people," he's the one making the real concession. He's conceding that there's another principle operant in his opponents than bigotry, that opposition to racism is an idea that the Right has fully, finally embraced. And he's admitting that them crazy crackers do this all the time.  And if this is true, then what animates the right must be something else.

It's official: the race card is maxed out. The cudgel lacks only a ceremonial bronzing.

Remember Iraq?

We Won.

It's a strange war that ends this way; but as Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means.  We're moving from war to a very tense political environment.  That's more or less what we should expect.  What comes next?  Either compromise arises that allows tensions to ramp down, so that the political takes over from the war; or it goes the other way, and war blooms anew from the failure of politics.

Triumphalism would be wrong at this point. The fact is, nothing about this war went according to plan, and if we end up slumping towards defeat in Afghanistan and shrugging our way to a (hopefully) Cold War with Iran, then it might yet prove a Phyrric victory.

But all you folk who said that the war was unwinnable, that staying the course was infinitely stupid, that al-Qaeda was destined to triumph, that civil war was inescapable, that the whole thing was doomed, lock, stock and barrel; YOU WERE WRONG.

I'd just thought I'd point that out.

Mosque or "Cultural Center"?

Salomatic.com, which bills itself as "the Worlds Most Comprehensive Guide to Mosques and Islamic Schools," refers to the Cordoba House as a mosque. There's even a picture of Friday prayers going on right now.

I feel soooo welcome.

Super-Heroes and Machismo are Bad, Says Female Psychologist

Prepare the estrogen bath, boys:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2010) — Watching superheroes beat up villains may not be the best image for boys to see if society wants to promote kinder, less stereotypical male behaviors, according to psychologists who spoke Sunday at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

And how if society would like to keep a bit of stereotypical male behavior around? I mean, just in a glass case, for when terrorists attack and such? Not anyplace where it might get on the new drapes, God forbid.

The Ground Zero Mosque Solution

I have my doubts about whether the builders of Cordoba House -- aka the Ground Zero Mosque -- are really interested in bringing about dialogue between Islam and the West. But if they wanted to prove it too me, there's a simple thing they could do.

Rebuild the Church of St. Nicholas that was destroyed on 9/11. First. And just as tall.

If they can do it in Bagdad, they can do it in New York.

Update: Bill Whittle works himself into a fine lather. I don't disagree.

Michelle, Mademoiselle, La Daphine

I don't care about the First Lady of the United States. It's not a real position; it's a dull euphemism for the President's wife, dating from a time when such politesse obscured the purely romantic role that women played in politics. We have to say something about the woman who sleeps with our Head of State, so we call her that.

So when Michelle Obama emits some gaffe, like never being proud of her country, I ignore it, because I refuse to pay any credence to her importance, ceremonial or otherwise. I don't care about her.

But even I find it hard to disagree that eight -- eight -- vacations betrays a certain apres moi le deluge mentality. Or, as Victor Davis Hanson puts it, suggests

that her prior angst arose not because millions were not able to share the lifestyles of the elite but that she herself had not yet quite partaken in the sort of life she felt she deserved — which she is now apparently enjoying to the fullest. The fact that her Costa del Sol trip coincides with hard times back in the states, comes on the heels of the Kerry yacht and the Clinton wedding, and clashes with her husband’s anti-wealthy rhetoric (e.g., “at some point you’ve made enough money”) makes it all the more weird, both for her adminstration’s equality-of-result politics and for the larger liberal narrative of talking truth to power.

It's one thing to be wealthy and powerful in a time when others struggle. It's another to be so after explicitly casting your lot with the struggling and against the grandees. It may be less tone-deafness than hypocrisy, but
I cannot help but wonder why one's forgiveness of such ostentatious displays is the more forgivable if one mouths the right platitudes.

Unequal Outcomes can never be tolerated!

Every Community has a Right to demand of all its agents an account of their
conduct.
-Declaration of the Rights of Man

We must be vigilant, friends. Racism lurks in every corner, growing wherever it may hide, yea, even in the very ovaries of our young.

Behold: Puberty Is Racist!

Language Mongrelized.

It occurs to me that I have been blogging about the grim subject of race more than any other subject, since The Essayist was re-booted. Indeed, it was the very subject that prompted its re-boot. So today, I lingered at The Root far more than I normally would at so leftyish a web site, and was treated to their Would a Black Person Get Away With This? feature.

The continuing irony of race relations in America is the degree to which people of different races don't hear each other making the same arguments. There isn't a white person in America who doesn't think that there are things you can get away with when you're black that you can't when you're white, and so it's nothing short of amusing to note blacks feeling the reverse is true.

Behold, blunt evidence of what we honkies speak of: President Obama Calls African-Americans a "Mongrel People".

The president's remarks were directed at the roots of all Americans. The definition of mongrel as an adjective is defined as "of mixed breed, nature, or origin," according to dictionary.com.

I have no difficulty believing that. I'm fine with the word "mongrel" and have no objection to the way the President used it. But imagine, just for a second, these same words, with this exact same intent, coming out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, and then imagine someone on the left saying "that's fine".

You can't do it, can you?

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See Genre Confusion.