The surge is working?

The new conventional wisdom is that the surge has worked, that Iraq is entering a period of calm and that voters are less concerned about the war than they have been — which would then make John McCain a strong candidate in the fall.

The conventional wisdom, as usual, has some flaws, as Juan Cole points out. Here are a couple of excerpts from today’s post on his blog:

Ambassador Marc Ginsburg is astonished that John McCain could win in Florida on a platform of a Hundred Years War in Iraq and phony slogans about “victory” that McCain is careful never to define. In my view, McCain’s mantra about “victory” in Iraq is the 2008 equivalent of Nixon having a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War in 1968. Somebody should please ask McCain what “victory” would look like exactly and how he would get there. Intensively patrolling some neighborhoods and cutting them off from traffic with blast walls are not measures that can be kept up for very long. Then what? Besides, someone please do me a favor and actually read the list of bombings and killings appended at the end of this post, occuring in downtown Baghdad and elsewhere, and tell me why John McCain thinks things are just hunky dory there. Is it a racist thing where it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis are killed as long as US troops aren’t? Even then, 5 US troops were blown up on Monday. Yeah, that’s real calm.

….

A new poll finds that the percentage of Americans who think the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein was worth it to the US declined from 35% to only 32% between December and January. The percentage who thought it was not worth it rose from 56% to 59% according to the same poll. It turns out that the American public is not impressed with a mere reduction in violence nowadays from apocalyptic levels last year this time. They want to know why we went there in the first place, and why their sacrifice of blood and treasure was worthwhile. No one, including McCain really has an answer for that.

Iraq, however, is just not that important. Go figure.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Quite blue in Monroe– and more than a little insane

We found this blog today, an odd and cranky bit of nonsense that focuses on Monroe and more generally on the Republican Party (which he describes as the “Red Menace”).

In this entry, he introduces himself:

I am the Blue Bandito. I am announcing myself to mankind. I have dedicated my life to fighting against the evil red menace of Neo-Con Republican evil.

I am giving you fair warning, Evil-Doers, I am coming for you. I will denounce until you renounce. Your lies have gone on for too long. Your false allegations, corrupt tactics and politics of personal destruction will now be met with resistance. I am your nemesis.

Repent or face ideological destruction.

I will start where all Superheros begin, at home. My home is Monroe Township, NJ. Do not try to find me for I am an elusive ghost. I will sense you coming before you even know you are doing it. I am all seeing.

We must turn the evil red tide before it is two late. I will prevail. Where you see the blue “BB” know that the Blue Bandit has left his mark.

I am here to protect the weak, the elderly, the poor and the children. Should you need me, just write. I will defend you.

Good to know, though the entire blog reads as if its writer were a homeless guy with a signboard on a street corner in New York shouting “the end is near, the end is near.”

His next entry offers his list of evil-doers, which includes someone he calls “HK”:

This is the Republican editorial writer. He writes for the entire team and they put their names to it. Besides his awful tic, his figures are often wrong. He is married to an ugly person. We have yet to determine the sex of that person.

Of course, I’m curious as to whom HK might be, given that I am HK the editorial writer. Then again, I don’t have any tics that I know of, rarely get my facts wrong and am generally considered to be to the left of the Democrats on nearly every issue. As for my wife, she’s quite the looker, so I can only assume he has a different HK in mind.

Good to see that there are some truly sane folks in Monroe.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Hey, Rudy: Don’t let the doorhit you on the way out

This post from Josh Marshall gets at something I’ve always believed about Rudy Giuliani, that he rarely has been willing to engage in a fight that he didn’t think he could win. Or, more to the point, Giuliani is the classic bully, taking on those weaker than him but rarely engaging in those who are his equals or, god forbid, stronger than him.

So, now we won’t have Rudy and hist autocrtic, bullying ways, to kick around any longer. And the republic can breath a sigh of relief.

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