No, not idiotic, but idiocy. Historian Joseph Ellis says: “It’s a ridiculous question: ‘What would George Washington do about Iraq?’” Ellis then proceeds to answer a convenient rephrasing of the question: "Can a powerful army sustain control over a widely dispersed foreign population that contains a militant minority prepared to resist subjugation at any cost?" My! Goodness! Ha! See! Why, that’s just like what Washington himself faced!!! And of course now the answer is so very, very obvious!
“Time and space were on [Washington’s] side. And no matter how many battles the British army won, it could not sustain control over the countryside unless it was enlarged tenfold.... Eventually the British would recognize that they faced an impossibly open-ended mission and would decide to abandon their North American empire.” !!! See?!? Git it??? We’re the British! Understand? And the British LOST!!! See?
Alas, the analogy is false. The “militant minority” in the American colonies was in fact the operative government of the land. The militant minority in Iraq is a criminal and terroristic insurgency acting in truly vicious opposition against the civilian population and the established government, however operational, of Iraq.
The American ‘occupying’ army of ‘subjugation’ in Iraq is, in effect, functioning as a subservient arm of the Iraqi government. And while the terrorists are “prepared to resist ... at any cost”, the same cannot be said of the colonials. They were prepared to surrender; happily, circumstances did not require it.
Ellis demonstrates a heroic ignorance of history’s successful campaigns against insurgencies. An army most certainly can “sustain control over the countryside”, without enlarging “tenfold”. Abrams’ policy in Vietnam did just that. The communists were entirely cleared out -- until they invaded the South again with Dhemocrat complicity and approval in 1975. Ah well, screw the South Vietnamese. Let them be put in re-education camps. Let them perish as boat people. Let them spend a generation in abject oppression. Let Cambodia go insane. Elect Pol Pot as Secretary General of the UN. Impeach Nixon! Down with America! Up its nose with a rubber hose! Them southeast asians ain't even white.
Ellis fails to understand that whereas the colonials yearned for freedom from the symbolic oppression of the British, the Iraqi people have already been freed from the actual and murderous oppression of the Baathists. Mad bombers yearning to re-impose murderous oppression is hardly analogous to Minutemen revolting against taxes. Is there any symmetry here at all? Aside from the fact that an American army is involved in both cases, the situations could hardly be less alike.
And while it is correct that the British seemed to face “an impossibly open-ended mission” -- mercy! one might almost say they had no exit strategy! -- the Americans have a very clear and entirely different mission: assist the Iraqi government until it is secure.
To get it so very wrong, one might almost suspect that Professor of History Joseph Ellis had, oh, say, an unstated and corrupt agenda, which compelled him to grossly misconstrue and twist the facts so that they appear to support his bias. But that’s ridiculous. I mean, he’s a big-time historian who won the Pulitzer Prize, which goes only to really honest and smart guys, like them reporters there on that fancy-pants paper that leaked all them government secrets a while back, remember? That’s a good thing, to leak security programs during time of war. So, like, what I was saying about Ellis is that he must be right. So that would make me the idiot.
God, I’m so stupid. I wish I was a Lefty, so I could be smart and popular. I bet the chicks would totally be into me too then. That'd be so cool. Maybe I’ll grow a ponytail. Maybe I’ll buy a teeshirt with Che looking heroic. Maybe I’ll get a yin yang tattoo and pierce my nipples and start smoking reefer. That’s what the kids are calling it, right? Reefer? Tokin a dooby? Puffin the ganga? Yeah, I’m totally down with blazin some herb. I’ll blow a stick of squidge. Blast off! Alice B and me are havin a tee party. Groovy. I’m hep to that jive. I dig. I dig peace. Yeah. I’m cool.
Dude. What was I saying? Something about ... um ...
... uh ...
um ... ridiculous ... uh ... ... idiocy ...
J
2 comments:
Cough, cough, cough, cough...here...cough, cough...it's your hit!
Awesome post, as usual!
Bodacious, dude. But I'm afraid it must have been one of the other Jacks who wrote this. I would certainly never stoop so low as to resort to tiresome drug humor. Puh-lease.
J
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