Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

Let America be America, and Depart Afghanistan (William R. Polk)

The first possible choice is to keep on doing what we are now doing.  … The second possible road ahead would involve adding substantial numbers of new troops.  …  Third, we could marginally increase our troop strength.  …  For the first time that I know of in recent American history, the uniformed military have created what amounts to a pressure group of their own.   …  Or, fourth, we could Get out.

Visceral Has Its Value (Maureen Dowd)

McChrystal and Gen. David Petraeus should have been giving their best advice to Obama — and airing their view against scaling down in Afghanistan — in confidence. Instead, McChrystal pushed his opinion in a speech in London, and Petraeus has discussed his feelings in private sessions with reporters. This creates a “Seven Days in May” syndrome, where the two generals are, in effect, lobbying against the president and undercutting him as he’s trying to make a painfully complex, life-and-death decision. … This time, Obama should adopt Palin’s straight-from-the-gut approach, call the generals into the Oval and tell them, “Your pie-holes you will shut or rise higher you will not. Because, dang it, the president I am!”

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence (David Sirota)

There are obvious reasons to believe America is becoming an idiocracy—a series of horrendous government and business decisions strongly suggests that we’ve seen the ascension of utterly foolish, senseless people, many with the mental age of infants (yes, W., I’m looking at you). And if there remained any flicker of hope that we aren’t turning into a full-on slobbering idiocracy, that hope was snuffed out last week by two of the Washington intelligentsia’s most respected voices.