Iraq was not a “distraction”

Megan McArdle has a post up complaining about Dick Cheney schooling Obama. In it she compares Cheney to former President Jimmy Carter.  This comparison is as mindless as it is wrong-headed.

If President Reagan had gone around whining about the problems he had “inherited” from President Carter, she would have a valid point.  But he didn’t and she doesn’t.  When President Buttercup Obama decides to man up, face the fact the he really is President of the United States of America, and do his job, rather than whining about the problems he “inherited” (he didn’t inherit them, he lied, cheated, and stole in order to become President, and thus get to deal with those problems.  If he didn’t want to deal with the problems, he damn well shouldn’t have run for the office), then it might be reasonable to call for Cheney to stand down.

But so long as Obama is blaming everything on the previous Administration, members of the previous Administration have not just the right, but the duty to point out he’s full of sh!t.

One of her commenters gave the following whine:

Of course if the previous administration had done the job right and not turned their attention to Iraq President Obama would not have to worry about Afghanistan now would he?

My response:

Do you ever think for yourself? Or are you merely capable of spouting leftie talking points that have no actual connection to reality?

The US Military is logistically “heavy”. To put it another way: we like to burn through a lot of material, instead of burning through people.

Afghanistan is a lousy place to try to do that. Iraq was not (nearby seaports are wonderful things for heavy logistics). When we invaded Iraq, the Islamist nutjobs followed, and fought us on turf that was well designed for our style of fighting.  As such, we slaughtered them in droves, and their terrorist attacks against the Iraqi people turned the Iraqis against “global jihad”.

That’s called “win win”.  Or, at least it is if you actually want to see the US win.

Afghanistan was and is a generation long struggle.  If you don’t want to deal with it, don’t run for President of the US.

The Political Lessons of the Fort Hood Shooting

Megan McArdle claims there are no political lessons to be learned from the Fort Hood shooting.  I think she’s wrong.  Here are the lessons I think we’ve been taught (again).

• Political Correctness kills
• It is better to be rude than to be screwed
• If you think it was wrong for the US to free Muslims from a totalitarian dictatorship (Iraq), or from a theocratic dictatorship (Afghanistan), you are a lunatic.  If you are an “American” who is a Muslim first, and an American second, and you believe those things, you are, presumptively, and enemy of the United States of America
• “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”  Supporting the jihadis is Treason, and should be treated as such.

Other lessons?

Yet another “scientific” whore caught in the act

So much for the bullshit about “hundreds of thousands of excess Iraqi casualties”:

In a highly unusual rebuke, the American Association for Public Opinion Research today said the author of a widely debated survey on “excess deaths” in Iraq had violated its code of professional ethics by refusing to disclose details of his work. The author’s institution later disclosed to ABC News that it, too, is investigating the study

AAPOR, in a statement, said that in an eight-month investigation, Gilbert Burnham, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “repeatedly refused to make public essential facts about his research on civilian deaths in Iraq.”

Hours later, the school itself disclosed its own investigation of the Iraq casualties report “to determine if any violation of the school’s rules or guidelines for the conduct of research occurred.” It said the review “is nearing completion.”

Both AAPOR and the school said they had focused on Burnham’s study, published in the October 2006 issue of the British medical journal the Lancet, reporting an estimated 654,965 “excess deaths” in Iraq as a result of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. An earlier, 2004 report, in which Burnham also participated, estimated approximately 98,000 excess deaths to that point.

Sounds like another Michael Bellesiles