Straight Pony Express

by Eric Martin

I was so leaning towared Obama, but this platform is hard to beat.  Behold, John McCain's plan for victory, whisky, sexy:

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.

The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.

The usual liberal doom and gloom purveyors have, as expected, been whining about how McCain's platform amounts to nothing more than a fantastical wish-list, not an actual plan.  Ponies, etc. 

"Fools," I say.  You have fallen ever-so-haplessly into McCain's trap.  McCain has already explained, in painstaking detail, how he will achieve these modest outcomes. For example, he laid out his comprehensive strategy at a closed door fundraiser in 2006:

"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

What do you have to say about his plan now Mr. Wonkypants?  Come to think of it, 2013 is a conservative deadline.

Not that he needs anything other than the Bullshit Doctrine, obviously, but I've put in a request to the McCain camp for comment on whether their candidate would also be employing the Glenn Reynolds Field Manual (to be taught at West Point next semester):

It's a war. The way to win it is, well, to win it.

Or, as Reynolds elaborated in a Reason Magazine interview some months later:

3. What should the U.S. do in Iraq now?

Win.

Heh.  Indeed.  Obama is so toast.

Comments

[Ara]

Which Sunnis and Shiites? These aren't groups with well-defined leaderships. Who are the Sunni leaders who have control over Sunni factions/paramilitaries? Who are the Shiites who have control over Sadr, the government and so forth?

If there were such people, we wouldn't have the problems that we do. For McCain's solution to work, the problem will already have to have been solved.

[Eric Martin]

Ara, why don't you support the troops?

[Nombrilisme Vide]

Plainly, it's because Ara hates America, Mom, and apple pie.

(Gotta move with the times...)

[cleek]

"One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'"

did you know...

There is no 'ctrl' button on John McCain's computer. John McCain is always in control.

John McCain can sneeze with his eyes open.

John McCain is suing MySpace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.

John McCain destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.

John McCain can kill two stones with one bird.

compared to John McCain, Chuck Norris is just a poseur.

[CharleyCarp]

Why are you people going on about the war? The California Supreme Court has just ensured that the election will be about whether people will be required to marry someone of their same sex.

[trilobite]

Perhaps we can confuse the issue by placing an alternate amendment requiring some-sex marriage. I'm sure this prospect would bring many male voters to the polls.

[Brick Oven Bill]

Well I guess its Victory and Friendship versus Hope and Change.

Putin is really having a good time these days. That vodka must taste good.

[Ara]

When did I stop hating Mom?

[Eric Martin]

Why are you people going on about the war? The California Supreme Court has just ensured that the election will be about whether people will be required to marry someone of their same sex.

John McCain would end homosexuality by sitting all GLBT people in a room and saying, 'Stop the bullshit.'

Dude, this works for everything!

[Eric Martin]

Ara's right: still hating on Ma dukes

[Eric Martin]

Joking aside, Ara that is an excellent point.

In fact, Iraqi politics is becoming increasingly fluid (it was before, then it trended communal post invasion, and now it's moving back again).

More on this soon when my boss takes his boot off my neck. Come to think of it, maybe I should sit him down in a room...

[Ara]

Microsoft wants to sit Yahoo down in a room...
Obama wants to sit Clinton down in a room...
Clinton wants to sit Mark Penn down in a room...

[hairshirthedonist]

Putin is really having a good time these days. That vodka must taste good.

One of the things for which many people in Russia admire Putin is that he doesn't drink. That's an extraordinary thing in Russia.

[Mr. Wonkypants]

What do you have to say about his plan now Mr. Wonkypants?

Feh.

[Hartmut]

Maybe we could put all of them into one room and fill it with bovine excrement until everyone cries "Please, no more BS!".

[Ugh]

The California Supreme Court has just ensured that the election will be about whether people will be required to marry someone of their same sex.

I felt a great disturbance in the Family . . . as if millions of marriages suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

[Sven]

Hey, what's phase two?

[byrningman]

Actually, Eric, you are interpreting McCain's plan too conservatively. When he says the troops will leave Iraq by 2013, he means about quarter past eight. If they fly through the night most of them should be home early tomorrow morning.

[Hartmut]

Didn't Putin bring Bush a vodka bottle in Kalashnikov shape as a present?
Two teetotallers and a bottle shaped like a major problem for both in occupied territories, quite an irony (surly not lost on one of them, the one that I really could believe not to be a substance abuser).

[Q the Enchanter]

Victory by performative utterance is not a McCainean invention. As Bush noted, "See the irony is what they [the U.N. {I think}] need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

[Nombrilisme Vide]

When did I stop hating Mom?

Weren't you paying attention last week when the GOP decided it was Patriotically Correct to hate Mom?

[Eric Martin]

surly not lost on one of them

No, surly is definitely not lost on either of them.

[John Thullen]

I've always admired the overrated McCain persona wherein cranky badasses can cut through the crap from the back of the room with a piercing two-fingered whistle and a "Shadd-up, already."

Thing is, I tried it once and it didn't work.

India ...... 1978 ..... after two and a half years in the third world and a month of surveying the spectacle (wonderful and not) of India from second and third class Indian railways perches and global warming mongering buses.

An ancient university carved from stone into a cliff ..... Hindu, Buddhist, Jain at one time or another, now a pilgrimage destination.

Hundreds of Indian pilgrims and me and the girlfriend. I'm 35 pounds below my playing weight (158 lbs.) after several bouts of dysentery, the latest of which had my colon torsioning and my sphincters giving way like the bulkheads on the Titanic.

Heat, humidity ... I'm shivering and hallucinating.

We enter the cool silence of the university in stone and as the guide begins his explanation of the gorgeous reliefs on the walls, several dozen pilgrims who got left behind push their way to the front and begin berating (Indians can berate with the best of them: "What kind of a guide are you?") the guide, who argues back and pretty soon most of the sub-Continent has joined the melee.

I had maybe a half an hour in me of standing before I was going to need a gurney and, surprising even myself, I heard my voice at the top of its volume shout "Cut the crap and SHUT UP!!" .... "UP" echoing back through the chambers carved with little chisels centuries ago.

For, oh, 1.7 silent seconds, the entire writhing mass of argumentative Indian humanity stopped what they were doing and, to a man and woman and child, shot me a collective look of utter amazement, shock, and cultural apprehension.

Then, right back to arguing.

An Australian woman standing slightly in front of me to the left, who I hadn't spotted before, looked back at me and said "Good on ya, mate!".

I went gray in the gills and found a seat to wait things out.

Americans (and Aussies, for that matter), have this idea that things are simple, if you subtract, you know, humanity.

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg:

"Fourscore and seven years ago somebody should have kicked a little cracker butt and we wouldn't be standing here today telling you people to go eff yourselves!"

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

"We have nothing to fear but ... screw that ... the next guy who looks at me wrong is going to be wearing this wheelchair as headgear."

Winston Churchill:

"Kiss my ass, sausage-boy!"

Harry Truman: "Surrender, or I'll incinerate two cities and ... and ... give Tojo a noogie." (Wait, that actually happened.)

Why if had my way, we'd replace the United Nations with the late Moe Howard -- "Wise guys, huh, come'ere! Pick two fingers. There!"

[Gary Farber]

Charley refers to this big news, of course.

[malraux]

So now one McCain Unit = 8 Freidman Units?

[publius]

it's funny that the enddate is beyond his first term. so he's committing himself to essentially nothing. it's nixon's "peace is at hand", but without the kissinger charm

[Ugh]

it's funny that the enddate is beyond his first term. so he's committing himself to essentially nothing.

Uhh, I think the end date is the end of his first term, so it's a goal he's set for himself. Admittedly a gnomish pony underpants goal, but at least one for him.

Per the story on MSNBC:

John McCain , looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen.

[Katherine]

This is totally a ripoff of fafblog's plan for victory.

[Phil]

OT, but if anyone wants their spirits raised, watch some right-wing jacktard get pwned by, of all people, Chris Matthews on this whole "appeasement" thing.

[Ugh]

OT, but if anyone wants their spirits raised, watch some right-wing jacktard get pwned by, of all people, Chris Matthews on this whole "appeasement" thing.

Wow. That guy was more of a hack than Jonah Goldberg, Tucker Carlson, and Redstate.com (thomas edition!) combined. A clear graduate of the "ifitalkfastenoughandloudenoughiwin" school of debate.

[byrningman]

OT, but if anyone wants their spirits raised, watch some right-wing jacktard get pwned by, of all people, Chris Matthews on this whole "appeasement" thing.

That was superb.

[Anarch]

Good grief. I don't know about superb, but it's kind of amazing...

[Nombrilisme Vide]

That was painful and depressing. And, yes, amazing. Ugh.

[ajay]

One of the things for which many people in Russia admire Putin is that he doesn't drink. That's an extraordinary thing in Russia.

If he were a US politician, people would use that as evidence of his secret Muslimness.

[Gary Farber]

One of the things for which many people in Russia admire Putin is that he doesn't drink. That's an extraordinary thing in Russia.

If he were a US politician, people would use that as evidence of his secret Muslimness.

It's a shame we couldn't test this hypothesis by having a contemporary President who didn't drink, don't you think?

[RoaringPurpleEagle]

Strong leaders like McCain and Bush never talk to terrorists. That's why the so-called Sunni Awakening is so miraculous. Over a very short period of time, like a bolt from the blue, a number of former violent Sunni insurgent tribes, acknowledged killers of American and other coalition soldiers, both agreed to lay down their arms and to begin accepting payments from the Americans. Those payments also began miraculously, because, of course, there had been no prior talks as to the amounts which would be paid, to whom the payments would be made.

No, talking to terrorists is appeasement. Paying them to stop attacks on American troops (Didn't the old chestnut "A million for defense, not a dollar for tribute" used to be taught in grade schools) is a surge strategy. Come on you liberal wienies, get with the Orwellian doublespeak.

[felix culpa]

A piece likely to be of interest re McCain; from the Phoenix New Times about Cindy and her history with drugs and lawyers and the like from back in 1994. Good reporting, worthwhile story; the human cost of political stardom. h/t Southern Beale

[Gary Farber]

"A piece likely to be of interest re McCain; from the Phoenix New Times about Cindy and her history"

Since Cindy McCain isn't running for office, I'm somewhat unclear on the relevance. Should we also take an interest in Hillary Clinton's brothers?

[dr ngo]

Didn't the old chestnut "A million for defense, not a dollar for tribute" used to be taught in grade schools?

Those of us old enough to have gone to grade schools when they still taught patriotic and other inspirational [sic] stuff, learned it as “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."

I don't know who we were taught said it (Pinckney?), but nowadays it is asserted that these are actually the words of Robert Goodloe Harper in 1798. Who knew? Not me.

Note that the differential in the correct quotation is at least two orders of magnitude larger than in the modern version, and I don't think we can blame all of that on inflation.

Over the course of 60-odd years, however, I find that my vaunted command of traditional patriotic rhetoric has not been, in fact, particularly helpful in trying to decide what our national policy should actually be.

Funny, that.

[felix culpa]

Sorry to have elided the context:
Southern Beale drew attention to the piece by saying that Michelle Obama was being targeted by Republicans, and so thought it commensurate to draw attention to the Cindy piece. It’s more by way of being deep background and illuminating the man by way of his marriage, beyond the heiress angle.
It also is a human interest story, offering a sort of quotidian glimpse into a superficially exotic story.
And it seems certain to come up one way or the other during the election campaign, though I don’t expect Obama’s associates to throw any poop themselves.
That’s all.

[Gary Farber]

"I don't know who we were taught said it (Pinckney?), but nowadays it is asserted that these are actually the words of Robert Goodloe Harper in 1798."

More:

France's refusal to negotiate with the accredited U.S. representatives, let alone receive them, without bribes for its leading members and a loan for its military incursions in Europe seemed an extreme insult to Americans. The public learned that the American delegates had rejected the demands. "The answer is no! No, not a sixpence!" was their response (translated by newspaper editors as "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!") [3]

More:

AUTHOR: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746–1825)
QUOTATION: No; no; not a sixpence.
ATTRIBUTION: CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY, American minister to France, letter to Timothy Pickering, October 27, 1797, relating the American response to a French request for a tribute or bribe.—State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States, 3d ed., vol. 3, p. 492 (1819). The French had seized several American ships.

The wording of this quotation usually reads: “… not a penny.” For further discussion of the wording used by Pinckney and of the quotation frequently but mistakenly attributed to Pinckney—“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,” actually said by Robert Goodloe Harper—see The Home Book of Quotations, ed. Burton Stevenson, 10th ed., p. 63 (1967) and “Notes and Queries,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 100–103, 178–79 (1901).

I'm lazily not reproducing the italics.

[Anarch]

God, Gary. Put a little effort in already.

[magistra]

"The answer is no! No, not a sixpence!"

They were un-American coinage lovers! The traitors!

[judith weingarten]

I'm astounded. I learnt in grade school that 'millions for defence, not one cent for tribute' referred to Jefferson's war against the Barbary pirates (as does, if memory serves :-) 'to the shores of Tripoli'.

How did the French get into the act?