The Daily Clarity

How Ann Coulter epitomizes America’s confused conservatives…

This is a sort of  ‘dissectorial’ which I define as a corrective editorial when columnists go rogue (or alternatively satire when you despair about current political discourse). This time, it is Ann Coulter’s fault, and the gloves are off. I usually don’t mind Ann Coulter that much. She is often funny, frequently tongue in cheek, and I have always had a suspicion secretly knows  she is peddling a bill of goods, but makes a good living off it so doesn’t care. She is not like a Michelle Malkin, who appears seriously dysfunctional and potentially dangerous. Coulter sometimes makes me laugh out loud. I don’t care  what she says about Obama; she is like the court jester – sardonic and sassy. Coulter is dandy on domestic issues, when she goes into international matters however, she is out of her depth.

Let’s parse her latest ramblings  for cogency.

“The question of whether President Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan misses the point”.

True. That is and never was the real question.

”What Obama really needs to do is: Invent a time machine, go back to the 2008 presidential campaign and not say, over and over and over again, that Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” while the war in Iraq was a “war of choice.” (Oh, and as long as you’re back there, ditch Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and that gay “school safety” czar.)”

On Afghanistan, you called it Ann. Czars? Cheap shot not connected logically, basically superfluous.  Gets a vague political  point I guess, but really a deflected goal

”The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.”

On which planet, alternate reality or dimension would that be? He picked, but one has to ask why there?

”Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us on 9/11 — or the dozen other times American embassies, barracks and buildings came under jihadist onslaught since Jimmy Carter presided over “regime change” in Iran in 1979. Both countries — and others — gave succor to terrorists who had attacked the U.S. repeatedly, and would do so again.”

A small and inconvenient fact, there were no Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to the latest misadventure. They were in Syria, for one example. Did he just miss the target, or really want to break the Iraq-Iran-Sunni-Shia surface meniscus to let Iran  pursue regional hegemony?

”As liberals endlessly reminded us during the three weeks of war in Afghanistan before the U.S. military swept into Kabul, Afghanistan has all the makings of a military disaster. It is mountainous, cave-pocked, tribal, has no resources worth fighting for and a populace that makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like Alistair Cooke.”

Well yes. A tactical insertion is not the same as a strategic occupation or outcome. Please see current McChrystal-Obama debate for a reference point.

”By contrast, Iraq had a relatively educated, pro-Western populace, but was ruled by a brutal third-world despot.  It’s always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator — Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) — or a crazy people governed by relatively sane leaders — Pakistan and Afghanistan, post-U.S. invasion (also Vermont and Minnesota). There are also insane people ruled by insane leaders (but enough about the House Democratic Caucus). Sane people with sane rulers has not been fully tried yet”.

Then we are supposedly a reasonable people just past the point of being governed by a fundamentalist and evangelical Administration who sent reports about Iraq around the Beltway with quotations from the bible attached. I guess extreme religiosity is a problem no matter what the flavor, huh?

”Not only could regime change in Iraq work, but Iraq’s countryside was susceptible to America’s overwhelming air power. Also, Iraq has fabulous natural resources. Once the U.S. got control of Iraq’s oil fields, the Shia, Sunni and Kurds could decide to either prosper together or starve together. (And it’s not just oil: They’re basically sitting on top of most of the world’s proven reserves of cab drivers.)”

Oh boy, the factional divides are all happy go lucky now we stopped by. Basra isn’t seeking independence. Kirkuk’s Kurds have no interest in separation. We just created a happy meal nation overnight.

”By contrast, there aren’t a lot of sticks that can be used in a wasteland like Afghanistan, where the people live in caves and scratch out a living in the dirt. The only “carrot” we might be able to offer them would be actual carrots”.

Last time we gave then rocket launchers, carrot seeds might be more useful to our interest in the longer term, certainly cheaper and may result in less NATO personnel killed or maimed

”But Democrats couldn’t care less about military strategy — at least any “strategy” that doesn’t involve allowing soldiers to date one another. To the extent you can get liberals to focus on national security at all, you will find they are rooting against their own country.”

No need to comment., really but if I was you, I wouldn’t apply for a position at State though anytime soon, Ann, you need more insight and nuance to operate in the wider world.

”Liberals sneered at Bush’s description of Iraq as the “central front of the war on terror” and a step toward the “democratization of the Middle East” — as Mark Danner did in the Sept. 11, 2005, New York Times — because sneering was all they could do. By design, Iraq was the central front in the war on terrorism. Any fanatic who hated the Great Satan, owned an overnight bag and was not already working for The New York Times was lured across the border into Iraq … to be met by the awesome force of the U.S. military. Bush chose the battlefield that made the best flytrap for Islamic crazies and also that was most amenable to regime change”.

Can I introduce you to Mr. Cause and Mrs. Effect? You invade a Muslim nation and sympathetic fighters flock to repel you. It is not a fly trap, it is called a morass (for reference see difficulty in exit strategy logistics and swapping soldiers for contractors)

“Now nearly all denizens of the Middle East want the U.S. to invade them, so they can live in democracy, too. As Thomas Friedman inadvertently admitted, Lebanese voters credit their recent free election, in which the voters threw out Hezbollah, to President Bush. (American liberals, naturally, gave the credit to Obama, who they also believe is responsible for the sun rising every morning.”)

I thought you said Jesus made the sun come up everyday, can you please make up your mind!  Lebanese voters? What all of them? Hezbollah supporters too? I would love to see you provide your survey results and exit polls on that one.

“Brave Iranian students who protested the tyrant Ahmadinejad did so because of Iraq — and then they stopped because of Obama’s indifference. Sadly for them, America’s foreign policy will now be based on a calculus of political correctness, not national security.”

Based on this I will guarantee you can’t read or speak Farsi. Do you even know the protest signs were about the Supreme Leader not Ahmadinejad? No, I didn’t think so. The power there now is a very secular Pasadaran-e Inqilab, which means Revolutionary Guard for you, and their issue is haq-khodran. Had Obama acted like Bush we would be back where we were 8 years ago, still angry, still nowhere closer to engagement. If we had condemned the regime before the situation resolved, it would have made any subsequent engagement with them impossible, but there we go going all crazy on that engagement concept again, when we know isolationism works so well!

”During the campaign, Obama prattled on about Iraq being a “war of choice” and Afghanistan a “war of necessity” for no more thoughtful reason than a desire to win standing ovations from treasonous liberals.”

Yup, you skewered him there. An aside, however. Not all ‘liberals’ are treasonous just as not all conservatives are stupid. Some from either camp, however,  are both.

”But lo and behold, those very liberals who were champing at the bit to fight in Afghanistan are suddenly full of objections to the war there, too. As Frank Rich points out: “Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention.”
Now they notice.”

Now America finally notices, Democrats too. Republicans? Some of them have caught up as well. It was always only a matter of time.

”Afghanistan is a brutal battlefield, largely invulnerable to modern warfare — something the British and Russians learned. But as our military under Bush showed the world in 21 days, scimitar-wielding savages are no match for the voluntary civilian troops of a free people.  Bush removed the Taliban from power, captured or killed the lunatics and, for the next seven years, about the only news we heard out of Afghanistan were occasional announcements of parliamentary elections, new schools, water and electricity plants.”

And while Al Qaeda still had sanctuary, opium still flowed, maddrasssas still churned out jihadists…you mean that after a few months Bush got distracted by Iraq and didn’t finish the job, that Bush? It was never about 21 days. It was what came after that mattered, and there Bush failed and in a dismal manner and worsened American security.

“The difficult choice Obama faces in Afghanistan is entirely of his own making, not his generals’ and certainly not Bush’s. It was Obama’s meaningless blather about Afghanistan being a “war of necessity” during the campaign that has moved the central front in the war on terrorism from Iraq — a good battleground for the U.S. — to Afghanistan — a lousy battlefront for the U.S. “

Ask the parents of the deceased on both sides if Iraq was a good war. Show me a tactical gain, not a strategic loss to Tehran that was a “good” outcome from the Iraq misadventure? You show scant respect to the fallen when there is no gain for the price paid in Iraq

“And it was Obama’s idea to treat war as if it’s an ordinary drug bust, reading suspects their Miranda rights and taking care not to put civilians in harm’s way.  A Democrat is president and, once again, America finds itself in an “unwinnable war.” I know Democrats will never learn, but I wish the voters would”

Ann, they did. That is why you find yourself in opposition, absent an intelligentsia to give you policy direction, inside an increasingly ragged big tent with the tea baggers and the other discontents,  and with an article absent much fact but high on wistfulness and nostalgia. The voters have figured it out, we are all waiting until the GOP finally recognizes things have changed, too.