“There’s a word for this kind of long-range, deep, subtle planning: Strategery”
The "Arab Spring" of 2010-11 — however bitter or sweet its fruits may grow in the fullness of time — didn't just happen. Bill Whittle makes a powerful case for GWB's foreign policy as a major catalyst in his latest YouTube sensation, "Memebusters! The Osama bin Laden Edition," where he asks "Why are all these Muslims in repressive regimes suddenly rising up for freedom and the right to vote? Why now, all of a sudden? That's why," he answers, pointing to the iconic image of a triumphant Iraqi woman who had just voted for the first time in her life in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"You know, there's a word for this kind of long-range, deep, subtle planning. It's called 'strategery,'" says Professor-at-Large of Memebuster University Bill Whittle, turning the memetic Saturday Night Live putdown of GW's Iraq strategy on its head in a Geography 101 lesson about why the 43rd President sent our forces into both Afganistan and Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11:
If you wanna know why there haven't been any large-scale attacks on the U.S. homeland since 9/11, 2001, just look at this map (below). Imagine if Mexico and Canada both became radical Muslim Nations like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Where do you think our attention would be?
Armchair strategerist that we are, we'd noticed something similar — including the geographically strategic importance of Pakistan — way back in July of 2004 in "Between Iraq and a hard place" …
Read full post here.
Seriously, this woman makes less sense than Gary Busey.
You name yourself well, AmericanIdiot. At least the Idiot part. And DO have a nice day.
I still don’t get that? How and why is it America’s charge to make democracy in the middle east? At least by use of blunt force and war? We really aren’t going to like the results of these elections very much. On the one hand republicans worry, rightly I might add, about the modern scourge of the earth, Islamists. But on the other hand they want to give them the vehicle to take full control of middle eastern states? Someone explain it to me, please.
It’s the geography, stupid (nothing personal).
Can you elaborate? I mean I know I’ve heard it before, but maybe you have a different approach. Because we have plenty of oil, ourselves. Thanks in advance.
“It’s the geography, stupid (nothing personal).”
Indeed it is! And an idea: that one can have control of one’s destiny, at least to a very defining degree.
Great post and great insight by Whittle, whose delivery leaves me breathless, but that’s my condition and I know why he does it.
Yeah, despite severe mistakes (principally allowing the charge that there were no WMDs in Iraq when there were tons of them, and more tons that went to Syria, a fellow secular/Baathist regime, before the onset in 2003 — a wrong-headed political calculation), GWB is one of our greatest Presidents. He is also among the few who are in fact good men. And he married like to like.
The policy that freedom among ME countries’ citizens is the best guarantee of US national security — after all, ME regime repression failed/fails in that goal, i.e., US national security — is the truth. GWB and his team, especially Condi Rice, created that winner and made it happen. And still it happens because it is the truth. The happiest, safest people are the freest people.
Every ounce of leftist policy and propaganda is directed at preventing happiness and safety for everyone, including themselves, by foreclosing/mocking every possibility for freedom. Sissy, you have answered the representatives of that posture well here in the comments. They and their masters cannot be happy unless others are unhappy. Pity. GWB was on the right strategic track, with some tactical mistakes and also tactical master strokes. The strategic track is the important one, ultimately. His recognition of the right one and his sticking to it marks his high character and Presidential greatness.
“On the one hand republicans worry, rightly I might add, about the modern scourge of the earth, Islamists. But on the other hand they want to give them the vehicle to take full control of middle eastern states? Someone explain it to me, please.”
OK, even though yours is a troll’s question, meant merely to deflect, I condescend, knowing an answer isn’t your intent but thinking it might be another’s wish: pick a juvenile weed and you won’t get its roots. It will return. You may also be picking a wanted plant instead of a weed. But, pick an adult weed and you will get it root and all. It won’t grow back. And, you’ll know that you’re picking a weed, not a wanted plant.
The record shows that when bad guys stick their heads up, including these Mohammedan bastards, they get them shot off. The “Moslem Brotherhood” wants to take over the Middle East with Syria and Iraq (and the USA and whole world) ….. ? OK, let ‘em at it. If they are of God they are unstoppable. If they are not of God, they are suicides.
The latter is their condition. It will happen to them as it did to AQ in Iraq: the locals and the nations will see the horror of their being and will uproot them and distribute their properties among the needy. The ultimate enemy in the ME and the entire Mohammedan orbit is the ulema. Let the people see them for what they are: fat, filthy, vicious, venal, tyrannical tergiversators. Fit for destruction and nothing else. That’s why you give citizens of a country the vote in that country. That’s why tyrants, to include the ulema, deny the vote or pervert it. George W. Bush, Condi Rice and others formulated the most compassionate, realistic, pragmatic, moral policy possible for ME countries, all Mohammedan orbits and US national security.
I made an editing mistake.
This sentence: “The record shows that when bad guys stick their heads up, including these Mohammedan bastards, they get them shot off. The “Moslem Brotherhood” wants to take over the Middle East with Syria and Iraq (and the USA and whole world) ….. ?”
Should read: “The record shows that when bad guys stick their heads up, including these Mohammedan bastards, they get them shot off. The “Moslem Brotherhood” wants to take over the Middle East (and the USA and whole world) while in alliance, for now, with Syria and Iran ….. ?”
“If they are not of God, they are suicides.”
Strikes me as a REALLY expensive experiment. And more than once in history, they have come close to getting their wish.
Hezbollah is now setting up a major base in Mexico, close to our southern border. They are working with and training the Drug Cartels. Our complicit regime in DC, with project Gunrunner, sends them guns to kill our own people. Obama mocks those with border security concerns and jokes that some want a moat and alligators. Napolitano says the border is more secure now then ever. Obama says the fence is complete. Obama and Clinton support the overthrow of somewhat workable regimes in ME countries, particularly Mubarack, while staying mum on the atrocities in Syria. The Moselum Brotherhood is growing more powerful in Egypt. They support the rebels in Libya, who have stated they are made up of terrorists. They are killing anyone with black skin from Africa. NATO is a joke. The DC regime is filled with Moselum Brotherhood members. Obama and Clinton are complicit with the destruction of the US as a superpower. Ron Paul says that we can protect this country with a few good submarines. Hahahahahahaha.
George Bush invaded the wrong country and squandered $1 Trillion doing it. And people rationalize it. Mission Accomplished!
As I say, AmericanIdiot, your patronym suits you!
The CONGRESS authorized the use of military force in Iraq.
Just a note on reality for those of you who lie.
David,
In a website that has more troll comments to regular comments than most others I have frequented, you must know what an actual “troll” is, no? You’re a binary thinker is my guess, so if I don’t agree with a policy, I just HAVE to be a troll? See barfo, USA Moron, mikey2cents for trolls. No, I wanted an honest answer to the question.
I understand you’re really no better than the progressive. You’re both statists. You just want the state to do your “kind” of bidding as opposed to the progressive, who you might claim to be your ideological opponent. Newsflash, you’re both puppies in the litter going after the same teat.
In my mind, is a dead jihadist (islamist) a good one? Of course. As theirs, kind of like yours but obviously to a much lesser extent, is a totalitarian mindset. Now, you neocons (a terrible appellation to be sure, but an accepted one) just know that taking national resources (in both human and financial capital) to enforce our belief system on a group of people that really don’t want it, is a legitimate function of our Republican form of government. Welfare for the middle east is somehow better, and more constitutional than welfare for citizens of your own country? Now, I know your rejoinder is, “national defense is a constitutional requirement”. But, spending hundred of billions (if not trillions) of dollars and thousands of military lives to nation build is not the idea of National Defense that the founders had in mind. BTW, welfare is wealth redistribution, no matter where that “wealth” is being redistributed.
This paragraph was the funniest:
“The policy that freedom among ME countries’ citizens is the best guarantee of US national security — after all, ME regime repression failed/fails in that goal, i.e., US national security — is the truth. GWB and his team, especially Condi Rice, created that winner and made it happen. And still it happens because it is the truth. The happiest, safest people are the freest people.”
How’s that freedom working out for you guys? I mean, I know you thought it was worth the 8,000 plus soldiers dying to get a “democracy” in the middle east and all, but that’s pretty evil. The policy of freedom is, of course, the correct policy, but not at the end of a sword. The Muslim Brotherhood is gaining strength. Afghanistan is a mess. Libya may soon be run by Islamists, as opposed to an evil dictator, but not a net gain.
Notice, I didn’t once fellate Obama, as opposed to your gobbling of Bush, too. Obama’s foreign policy isn’t that much different than Bush’s. Of course, he’s more flippant and rudderless than Bush, because he’s of less stature, than Bush. Just give me an answer. When is the foreign policy of complete wars of choice going to bear fruit? How many years? Decades? Centuries? Oh, I know, you already said it. We done killed a whole hell of a lot of Jihadis. Yes, we did. We can kill a whole hell of a lot of everybody. That’s not policy. That’s wanton destruction. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing (the killing of jihadis). I’m not a moron progressive, or even a misguided libertarian, in thinking that the USA being a world, or more precisely, THE world power is a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s good that the USA, as it was constituted, is the beacon for other countries to emulate. But changing hearts and minds of committed religious/political lunatics by killing innocents, all the while wasting unbelievable amounts of the nation’s capital in both human lives and money, isn’t going to cut it. You misread and misjudge Islamists, if you think it will. The first foray into Afghanistan was punitive and it was completely justified in any war doctrine. But nation building is something that the founders warned us about and we fail to heed it at our own peril. So, I ask again. When do we see the alleged fruits of this foreign policy?
RFN, all wars are wars of choice. One never fights a war by accident or inadvertence.
Bill Whittle did a TREMENDOUS job on that video. It should be sent to our friends, family and neighbors.
I thought it was rather multiculti of GWB not to use the baseball term “squeeze play” and go with “strategery.” Rock-the-Vote Fallujah! It takes a woman to demonstrate to the world how morally bankrupt islam is from Miss Paper Diyala to Neda. (No archive of David Bellavia’s “Our Mission Is Finally Accomplished. Anyone Care?” so please see http://neveryetmelted.com/2010/02/22/freedom-reduced-new-dawn/
Now the young female blogger in Afghanistan Michael Yon links to, and the internet award winner from Saudi Arabia in America who have both grown up with this ink stained purple finger reality are calling for a caliphate to demonstrate muslim exceptionalism in between their going to university and working. I guess centuries of first cousin inbreeding makes them believe there will be no more of a demand of their freedom or liberty than to continue giving up their clitoris. And their down with that? Good luck.
Long ago in a Hollywood still with a memory of being a company town and not a global anti-American agent with unmatched production values, Mavis Leno, a most elusive celebrity even in her own habitat, went on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno as her husband’s guest to decry the treatment of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Followed by years of host Leno bashing the only president who did anything about it, elevating fascist feminists, glbt’s and Christian bashing guests above real human suffering, and Jay’s shout out on air to only his mother upon getting the job, should I bother to ask how that worked out for ya, Mavis?
What has humanity wrought from the Pelosi chosen, these ladies who lunch, professional mavens of taste, doyens of media, consorts of power to the “strategery” of female equality around the burqa clad world of breeders on welfare of suicide bombers, now that the protection party is over, and the elite never bothered to RSVP in the last ten War On Terror years? All those ‘I can stop when I want to’ lesbians and their back slapping homosexual ‘when I want to be interesting’ BFF’s have joined forces with the other self imposed tribal minority/identity politics net loss to the local tax base groups to anoint Michelle Obama the ultimate stage mother. More global footage of Michelle leading young school girls on the playground in doppin’ it like it’s hot and booty poppin’ while the boys line up to watch, please. The ‘Dougie’ leg spreading lyrics optional. With her “Let’s Move” campaign, not only can Michelle never get fat but her two daughters can never be overweight. Oprah’s revenge for having to give up racer Rev. Jeremiah Wright for a cracker audience when Barack didn’t? Only Gayle knows. Toned arms are the new shoulder pads, Mommy Dearest!
Madison Avenue has gone global, and TARP has spoken to Frank-Dodd “waitress sandwich” legislation, so unless your willing to be f**ked in the ass on film like a Kardashian and have your mother pimp you out, then the progressives can’t be bothered. What are entertainment media/hard news circle jerks for if not to pass along the collective, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!” to the non-elite people around the world. There’s only so much Susan Rosgen can do, and Lara Logan can take. But now the military baseball game must come to an end. There will come the whiners, domestic and foreign, recognizing the error of their ways and cry out, as the Canadian bloggers say, “Come back Luftwaffe, all is forgiven!” What you can “expect,” as Bibi Netanyahu would define it from the Oval Office to Hamlet’s face, from conservatives who have born the political damage, heartfelt loss of patriotic blood and treasure, for a peace that never comes is, “Frankly, were in no mood to give consequence to appeasers.”
Now let’s talk about the other global “mission accomplished” G.W. Bush “strategery”, the “reverse squeeze play” as it were of giving taxpayer largess without a by your leave that resulted in increasing the population of Africa three fold since 1975. U2′s Bono memebuster with debt forgiveness, kleptocracy friends, tribal corruption, white farmer genocide extravaganza! Begging bowls for everyone! Come on over! break the back of the American Ethos worker. Spin more debt to give more money to Red China as Americans pay for the Chinese move towards their first Carrier Strike Group. “Gutsy call” 1.0, Carl Rove.