We posted this over at E-Nough!, but it is sadly relevant to our mission here as it represents a headline win for Jack and the deep-think-on-a-sandwich-board crowd.
Of course, this is no win for Iraq (and here and here). But Jack has bigger fish to fry.
BAD MONKEYS
It's Not Surrender, It's Expert Advice
The foremost job of a president is to carry the nation, to lead, to get what needs doing done. What the ISG report counsels is that the president be led from headline to headline. Mr. Bush stands against his own expert councils, against smart opinion, against current political fortunes, and, most perilously, he stands against the public mood. He stands alone. Yet he is right to do so.
Tony Blankley has written a poignant column on Mr. Bush's isolation.
December 13, 2006 (Real Clear Politics) - [R]arely has a president stood more alone at a moment of high crisis than does our president now as he makes his crucial policy decisions on the Iraq War. His political opponents stand triumphant, yet barren of useful guidance. Many -- if not most -- of his fellow party men and women in Washington are rapidly joining his opponents in a desperate effort to save their political skins in 2008. Commentators who urged the president on in 2002-03, having fallen out of love with their ideas, are quick to quibble with and defame the president.
Mr. Blakely then finds the almost perfect prefigurement.
... In 1861, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln...had decided to ignore his military advice to surrender [Fort Sumter]. While the final published version of his explanation for this decision in his July 4, 1861 Message to Congress did not reflect his personal anxiety in coming to that decision, it might be useful to President Bush to read Lincoln's first, unpublished, draft -- which did reflect his mental anguish as he tried to decide. All his military advisers, after due consideration, believed that Fort Sumter had to be evacuated. But Lincoln's first draft read:"In a purely military point of view, this reduced the duty of the administration, in this case, to the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the Fort -- in fact, General Scott advised that this should be done at once -- I believed, however, that to do so would be utterly ruinous -- that the necessity under which it was to be done, would not be fully understood -- that, by many, it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy -- that at home, it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its foes, and insure to the latter a recognition of independence abroad -- that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. I hesitated."Lincoln was alone in the self-same rooms now occupied by George Bush. All his cabinet and all his military advisors had counseled a path Lincoln thought would lead to disaster [scil., the surrender of Fort Sumter]. He was only a month in office and judged by most of Washington -- including much of his cabinet -- to be a country bumpkin who was out of his league, an accidental president. Alone, and against all advice he made the right decision -- as he would do constantly until victory.
Alas, it is not Mr. Bush's first month in office but his sixtieth.
Greatness and folly, the antithetical judgments of history, both manifest two qualities: the ability to lead and a stubborn determination to prevail. In the right cause, in the right man, these are greatness. The wrong cause, the wrong man, folly.
Pave believes this war is the right issue. We also believe that Mr. Bush is the right man. We pray he prevails.
PFFT (What is this?): Monkeys everywhere 3¾ | Rayonnement français 0
