Perfidy from the Right
Lately I'd noticed that Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds and other conservatives have been working off of a meme that essentially says that since liberals were against the "surge" in Iraq that we were for "defeat," as opposed to those who support Bush, who are for "victory." So then I poked around and discovered that the good folks at Instaputz noticed the same thing and have it covered here and here. The problem with this idea, of course, is that the notion that continuing to follow Bush's policies is going to lead us to victory is patently absurd. Bush has screwed this thing up from the beginning, and yet Reynolds and his ilk are attempting a rhetorical trick to pin negative outcomes in Iraq on liberals instead of on the people really responsible for it. It's Bush's war, it's Bush's failure.
posted by Adam Villani @ 2/19/2007 03:54:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
It's pretty simple. Think of this way: your dad, a terrible blackjack player, has lost over half of the family's entire assets in four hours at the black jack table.
Figuring he's gonna blow everything your family owns, you try to talk him out of playing more. He says, "but if I don't keep playing, I can't win that money back."
This is a classic case of throwing good money after bad, and yet another demonstration as to why Instapundit and other dead-enders are just complete morons. If we keep listening to idiots like Reynolds, the country will lose our shirt.
Don't know how Reynolds landed a law prof gig, but if I were the U. of Tennessee, I can't be happy with this douchebag besmirching the law school reputation.
That's as good an analogy as any I've heard.
That said, I really don't know what our best course of action should be right now. Yes, we need to extricate ourselves from Iraq. But what method of doing that will lead to the least bad outcome there? What will happen to the power vacuum once we leave?
But one thing's for sure, "more of the same" is a losing strategy.
Hey bud
I am one of the silent cine*******. I was possessed with the idea to read your blog.
I just happen to be one of Instapundit's former students. He is a pretty sharp legal mind. However, he has all the political acumen of a thumb tack. He's playing in a field in which he has no business mucking about with his blog. Yet, if you think about it, he mostly just posts links he agrees with and follows it with a short non-seq. He makes himself look goofy when he posts things like the notion that we should be killing Iranian religious leaders and scientists so as to stop their nuclear program.
Thinking back, though, that kind of idea, inspired by Jack Bauer fantasies, fits right in with his NASA obsessed personality. Though I wasn't aware of his political stance when I was in school, I understood that he didn't care much for being smart, he wanted to be cool. He wanted to have a Bond car with all the gadgets (he basically told us one day in class).
So, I think he enjoys his massive hit count more than the exchange of ideas.
Ryan,
UT, a very conservative institution, especially the law school (two liberal deans out of the last 6 I think), is probably pretty happy with the Reynolds association. Perhaps moreso for his journal publications than his "punditry," still happy.
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