Camille Paglia gets it mostly right when she sizes up Sarah Palin as a new feminist role model. (I’ll part company on the favorable comparison with Madonna.) And her take on Obama, the Palin maneuver, and the media is pretty much spot on:
What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.
. . .
Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” . . . This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
And she is right that the media did its part:
Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.
Paglia gets to the heart of why Palin has set off such a frenzy: she is redefining the model of a successful female poltician. Before her, women in high office consisted of victim-mongering liberals and country-club Republican Congresswoman and Senators, and a stray cabinet position or two. And now we have something utterly different: a “new style of muscular American feminism.”
Whether McCain-Palin wins or not, a lot of people have a different vision of what a powerful female politician can look and sound like–somewhat like themselves and their neighbors. No wonder tens of thousands of people are turning out. They want a glimpse of what the future of conservatism, the Republican Party, and maybe even feminism will look like.
Of course, they were all wrong on the war, which is the important thing.
Don’t feel bad, Peter. He has been so wishy-washy on these issues that your point remains valid. It is good that you apologized. But he is setting up your mistake as another strawman with which to dicredit your discrediting of him. He has been shamefully riding the waves of popular (and elitist) opinion in determining his own opinion throughout the Bush presidency, leaving him wrong more often than right. Keep pressing. The war was a good cause, and Bush showed great resolve and character in pursuing the surge and obtaining (near) victory. Those (like Sullivan) who backed down when times were tough are the ones who need to be publicly exposed, because our enemies feed off their assistance.
Bush showed courage.
Sullivan shows his glutes.
Gracious of you to apologize, but the underlying assertion that we did not have enough troops in the immediate aftermath of major combat operations is just that, an assertion. There is an argument for it, but there is another argument that the only way for democracy to root itself in Iraq was for it to go through the process it did. If a massive US troop presence prevented an insurgency, it would not have allowed the Iraqi people to deal with their internal conflicts. Things would have been artificially tamped down by our presence. And when we ultimately drew down, it would all boil over. Iraqis had to work out their own democratic compromises and reject the insurgents themselves. Perhaps Sullivan and Kristol were right, but there is an equally compelling argument that things needed to proceed the way they did. Ultimately, we will never know who was right. But if democracy in Iraq holds up, then it’s a net positive no matter what.
Can we please STOP TALKING about Andrew Sullivan? He’s a hack, he’s not conservative, and he does not care about anything other than gay rights in a candidate. Stop taking him seriously.
Good for you for apologizing and setting the record straight. It’s important that we demonstrate that we do indeed care for truth and are willing to give credit where it is due–so it is known that when we claim something, or when we do not give credit, we do so in good faith and for good reason.
Initially Sullivan thought there were enough troops, and later he thought there should be more. But it’s rather foolish of anyone to cast a decisive judgment on the matter–and later to take credit for it–without the sort of detailed information that was available to top-level military leaders and policy makers.
Of course, there is never any *one* thing that “the Generals” are saying. There are many Generals, and no two have exactly the same opinions and approaches. The left can point to General Shinseki’s contention that more troops were necessary, but there were many other Generals and Defense brass who thought otherwise. In this case President Bush may have been wrong to go along with their recommendation, but it’s never (or at least very rarely) foolish to let the leaders of the military decide military matters.
“He’s a hack, he’s not conservative, and he does not care about anything other than gay rights in a candidate.”
That’s hardly fair. He also cares about Sarah Palin’s uterus.
“If a massive US troop presence prevented an insurgency, it would not have allowed the Iraqi people to deal with their internal conflicts.”
A lot of people died so that they could deal with these ‘conflicts’ – this may not have been necessary. It could be argued that the lack of a coherent post-war strategy and enough troops to police it was at least partly responsible for the rise of the various paramilitary groups, who were just filling a vacuum. The various groups were emboldened by the lack of order. At the time of the invasion, it was by no means certain that the Iraqis would start killling each other. The relative peace following the surge could be taken to show that if order had been imposed in a similar way after the invasion, things might have been very different.
The number of troops was irrelevant, because they were the wrong types of troops using the wrong strategy. Note that the number of troops we had in country at the end of conventional ops wasn’t that much less than we had at the peak of the surge. We could have doubled the number of troops in Iraq in 2003-2004, and it probably would not have mattered, because the important decisions were operational and strategic, and the troops could only affect matters at the tactical level.
In contrast, the surge could have succeeded with a smaller aggregate number of troops, if in fact the troops available had been light infantry and not predominantly mechanized troops from armored divisions, mechanized infantry divisions and cavalry regiments. The Stryker medium brigade combat teams were better as far as combat force generation was concerned, but not as good as a few BCTs of real light infantry.
Simple and to the point. For what it’s worth. I’ll take a good, unbiased look at your arguments with Sullivan in the future. Some of your other commenters seem to think he only cares about gay rights/marriage. Speaking only for the last couple years, I can say that’s completely absurd. There are a lot of semi-conservatives (or people that agree with conservatives on even a few important issues) that it may be worth debating with him more often, especially when he makes truly outlandish/wrong claims as he is sometimes apt to do (see Palin, Trig, etc.).
Gearoid, I said there were compelling arguments on both sides. Sheesh! Try reading. The fact is, it’s not settled one way or the other. We will NEVER know if the outcome would have been different with a different troop level. Maybe, maybe not.
Pete,get over Sullivan. I’m beginning to think that you have Sullivan Dependency Syndrome. It’s terminal.
Mr. Wehner, I commend you on owning up to your mistake. Just do a little more research, dude!
Regarding #2 post by Warren:
“…shamefully riding the waves of popular (and elitist) opinion…”
Wow. Covering all your bases, I see. Mitt Romney seems decisive in comparison.
Popular and elitist? That’s quite a trick. Just keep throwing out accusations until something sticks. At least Nixon settled on a group of enemies, broke the law to ruin them, and had the decency to be ashamed and resign. So who foiled your neocon utopia? Was it the shifting “popular” opinion of the brainwashed fly-over states? Or the “elitist” East-coast ivory-tower eggheads? With you guys, everyone is surely part of a vast left wing conspiracy to make the Bush administration merely SEEM incompetent. Mission accomplished.
The left can point to General Shinseki’s contention that more troops were necessary, but there were many other Generals and Defense brass who thought otherwise.
Or who thought that more troops were needed, but weren’t willing to be fired for saying so.
I note that Sullivan responded by linking to specific posts that showed you were being unfair, and then you honestly and straightforwardly admitted here that you had been unfair, and then Sullivan posted what you said and said “thanks.” You both behaved as you should have, with good grace.
As opposed to the enthusiastic focus in a few of these comments, as if the thing were to revile and keep clear who’s worth reviling, above all else. I wish the quality that you showed here had more power to serve as an example. Political people of any side could use it.
The paranoia that goes along with this, that the “other side” is just as unscrupulous and as uninterested in being a gentleman or in decency – I am thinking of Warren’s wrong prediction that “he is setting up your mistake as another strawman with which to discredit your discrediting of him” – is natural in people thinking this way, but doesn’t excuse it.
Again, good one. Civility shines.
“The left can point to General Shinseki’s contention that more troops were necessary, but there were many other Generals and Defense brass who thought otherwise.”
Shinseki was and remains a strategic dolt. You could have given Shinseki the entire United States Army and he still would have turned Iraq into hash. Shinseki was not showing any strategic insight, just doing what Army commanders had done throughout the Clinton Administration: shooting down any Administration plan to actually USE the Army for its intended purpose by making unreasonable claims about the number of forces needed and the necessary logistic support.
But then, what else could you expect from a man whose idea of Army Transformation was making the troops wear Monica Lewinski’s hat?
Sullivan’s concern about troop levels in 2003 is a convenient conceit for someone laying claim to prescience, but Shinseki boots on the ground have virtually nothing in common with Petraeus boots.
“Shinseki boots on the ground have virtually nothing in common with Petraeus boots.”
That was, of course, the point I was making. Troop levels alone determine nothing. You need the right troops, with the right doctrine, led by the right commanders. None of these was available in 2003.
Yeah, but just google Sullivan and “rope-a-dope” for some of the dumbest commentary ever.