Sunday, August 14, 2005
Someone Tell Frank Rich He's an Idiot
If your blood pressure needs a jump start to redline, read this piece by Frank Rich today in the New York Times.
John Hinderaker at Powerline provides some antidote to Rich's bitter musings here.
Mr. Rich and I, it turns out, share a few things: We have the same birth day and Mr. Rich helped start the weekly Richmond (VA) Mercury which I read once when I lived in Richmond.
You may wonder what has prepared Mr. Rich for his job as political analyst. Well, he was the theater critic at the NYT for many years and before that the arts critic (mainly TV and movies) at Time magazine and the New York Post. Nothing prepares you for clear thinking about the real World as sitting in darkened theaters watching play acting and make-believe for most of your adult life.
The truth, at least as I see it, is that we've already won the military struggle in Iraq and are merely waiting for a political solution to the terrorism/insurgency which plagues the country (and the whole Middle East for that matter). That political solution is coming in the form of an Iraqi constitution (tomorrow), further elections (later this year and next year), and the training of an army and police force that actually help and defend, rather than murder, the people of Iraq (coming along slowly). While the defeatism that became chic and popular during the Vietnam War (and was echoed in a hostile press and on TV), was somehow able to turn victory there into defeat; things have changed so much that a similar result is truly unthinkable now. The current defeatists like Frank Rich sound more like Lord Haw Haw or Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf aka Baghdad Bob than like Walter Cronkite 35 years ago.
UPDATE: The Iraqi constitution which was to be completed on Monday will now be completed next Monday (August 22, 2005). A week's delay seems no big deal; another delay might signal a bigger problem.
John Hinderaker at Powerline provides some antidote to Rich's bitter musings here.
Mr. Rich and I, it turns out, share a few things: We have the same birth day and Mr. Rich helped start the weekly Richmond (VA) Mercury which I read once when I lived in Richmond.
You may wonder what has prepared Mr. Rich for his job as political analyst. Well, he was the theater critic at the NYT for many years and before that the arts critic (mainly TV and movies) at Time magazine and the New York Post. Nothing prepares you for clear thinking about the real World as sitting in darkened theaters watching play acting and make-believe for most of your adult life.
The truth, at least as I see it, is that we've already won the military struggle in Iraq and are merely waiting for a political solution to the terrorism/insurgency which plagues the country (and the whole Middle East for that matter). That political solution is coming in the form of an Iraqi constitution (tomorrow), further elections (later this year and next year), and the training of an army and police force that actually help and defend, rather than murder, the people of Iraq (coming along slowly). While the defeatism that became chic and popular during the Vietnam War (and was echoed in a hostile press and on TV), was somehow able to turn victory there into defeat; things have changed so much that a similar result is truly unthinkable now. The current defeatists like Frank Rich sound more like Lord Haw Haw or Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf aka Baghdad Bob than like Walter Cronkite 35 years ago.
UPDATE: The Iraqi constitution which was to be completed on Monday will now be completed next Monday (August 22, 2005). A week's delay seems no big deal; another delay might signal a bigger problem.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 8:44 AM 
