Sunday, August 27, 2006

"Steyn", you know, like "stain"

I wish I could take credit for tracking this one down, but Glenn Greenwald is on the case (as usual). From the inimitable Mark Steyn's Telegraph column of May 4, 2003:

This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon's Failed War Plan. . .On the other hand, everything that has taken place is strictly local, freelance, improvised. Many commanders have done nothing: they're the ones I wrote about, the ones so paralysed by the silence from HQ that they're not even capable of showing the initiative to surrender; they're just waiting for the orders that never come.Others have figured the jig's up, discarded their uniforms and returned to their families. Some guys have gone loco, piling into pick-ups and driving themselves into the path of the infidels' tanks. A relatively small number have gone in for guerrilla tactics in the southern cities. . . .It takes two to quagmire. In Vietnam, America had an enemy that enjoyed significant popular support and effective supply lines. Neither is true in Iraq. Isolated atrocities will continue to happen in the days ahead, as dwindling numbers of the more depraved Ba'athists confront the totality of their irrelevance. But these are the death throes: the regime was decapitated two weeks ago, and what we've witnessed is the last random thrashing of the snake's body.By the time you read this, Tariq Aziz and the last five Ba'athists in Baghdad may be holed up in Fisk's Ba'athroom, and he'll be hailing the genius of their plan to lure the Americans to their doom by leaving his loo rolls on the stairwell for the Marines to slip on.But, for everyone other than media naysayers, it's the Anglo-Aussie-American side who are the geniuses. Rumsfeld's view that one shouldn't do it with once-a-decade force, but with a lighter, faster touch has been vindicated, with interesting implications for other members of the axis of evil and its reserve league.

The New Right reminds me of my two year old playing with his toys - when they break, he goes to find new ones.

2 comments:

Brack said...

It seems that we are witnessing a remarkable confluence of Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Rule and the "Not Me" installments of Family Circus.

I always knew Billy was a neocon.

Tripp said...

Delightful post and truly great comment Braxton.

Steyn is among the most annoying because he CONTINUES to bang the drum.

Take a look at this swipe at Steyn (which manages to bring Powell back into the convo)

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/08/post_40.html