Moxie
Fred Barnes, in last week's Weekly Standard, has some excellent suggestions for how President Bush can avoid being just a lame duck and a poltical nonentity. Now that his accountability is shot to hell anyway, he might as well:
a) Fire the Generals. Lincoln did it until he found some that would fight. Most today are more worried about politics and procurement than about winning. We don't need more F-22s or Strykers, we need effective counterinsurgency and the ability to take military action against Iran and Syria.
b) Keep John Bolton as UN ambassador. Assign him to the State Dept and then detail him to the UN, where he could act as the Black Prince -- the power behind the throne. Let the latte-lovers, panty-wastes, and mewling barbarians at the UN screech. It will be music to my ears, at least.
c) Stop earmarks. Veto every bill that comes down the pike with even a hint of pork. Take a muslim stance toward it. The government would come to a screeching halt for a time, but the people are always safer with less government in their lives.
d) Give recess appointments to all his Congrssionally-verboten judicial nominees. Put that in your hashpipe and smoke it, Kos.
e) Talk up the military options with Iran and Syria. Hell, why not? Both the Iranian nuclear program and and the Syrian kleptocrats could be removed with airpower and the Air Force is not particularly busy at the moment. This would accomplish to things: a) possibly reduce Iranian "truculence" (read: farting in our general direction) and b) make the world press scream. Again: music.
f) Declare to Korea that any nuclear event from it against the US or any allied power would be dealt with as a direct nuclear attack on the US and would be dealt with accordingly. The Kennedy option. North Koreans in the countryside would never know Pyongyang had been nuked. They'd still be starving or in extermination camps, and Kim Mentally Il would be a shadow on the pavement.
g) Push radically for energy independence. This should get bipartisan support -- All except for drilling off the southern California coast, which would ruin the view for all the decadent social insect Hollywood types in their Malibu mansions and might even provoke Rosie O'Donnel to start an earthquake.
h) leave "a final gift to the world," as Barnes puts it: actually carry out aerial destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. More about it I cannot say, except that it is most definitely "do-able." Again the world press would go absolutely apeshit, heads would explode in the Boston Globe's press room and in Hollywood, Rosie would jump up and down (look out, those along the San Andreas), and the world would "hate us."
So? The world, except for a very few die-hards in England and Australia, hates us anyway. Who cares? More to the point, they would fear us a great deal more. Now, they and the muslim enemy regard us as a boneless chicken. Why not prove them wrong? And as for the complaining, again: Miles and Thelonius playing a duet to my hearing. Unlike Barnes, however, I think his penultimate act before leaving office should be another gift:
i) Take all the cockroaches in Gitmo, shoot them, and throw their bodies over the fence into Cuba. It'd save a lot in lawyer bills. Might even put a few radical trial lawyers out of business. All good.
Of course, Bush will do none of these things. He wants history to "like him." Unfortunately for him, history will like him only if he changes things and wins.
Won't happen...
Monk
a) Fire the Generals. Lincoln did it until he found some that would fight. Most today are more worried about politics and procurement than about winning. We don't need more F-22s or Strykers, we need effective counterinsurgency and the ability to take military action against Iran and Syria.
b) Keep John Bolton as UN ambassador. Assign him to the State Dept and then detail him to the UN, where he could act as the Black Prince -- the power behind the throne. Let the latte-lovers, panty-wastes, and mewling barbarians at the UN screech. It will be music to my ears, at least.
c) Stop earmarks. Veto every bill that comes down the pike with even a hint of pork. Take a muslim stance toward it. The government would come to a screeching halt for a time, but the people are always safer with less government in their lives.
d) Give recess appointments to all his Congrssionally-verboten judicial nominees. Put that in your hashpipe and smoke it, Kos.
e) Talk up the military options with Iran and Syria. Hell, why not? Both the Iranian nuclear program and and the Syrian kleptocrats could be removed with airpower and the Air Force is not particularly busy at the moment. This would accomplish to things: a) possibly reduce Iranian "truculence" (read: farting in our general direction) and b) make the world press scream. Again: music.
f) Declare to Korea that any nuclear event from it against the US or any allied power would be dealt with as a direct nuclear attack on the US and would be dealt with accordingly. The Kennedy option. North Koreans in the countryside would never know Pyongyang had been nuked. They'd still be starving or in extermination camps, and Kim Mentally Il would be a shadow on the pavement.
g) Push radically for energy independence. This should get bipartisan support -- All except for drilling off the southern California coast, which would ruin the view for all the decadent social insect Hollywood types in their Malibu mansions and might even provoke Rosie O'Donnel to start an earthquake.
h) leave "a final gift to the world," as Barnes puts it: actually carry out aerial destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. More about it I cannot say, except that it is most definitely "do-able." Again the world press would go absolutely apeshit, heads would explode in the Boston Globe's press room and in Hollywood, Rosie would jump up and down (look out, those along the San Andreas), and the world would "hate us."
So? The world, except for a very few die-hards in England and Australia, hates us anyway. Who cares? More to the point, they would fear us a great deal more. Now, they and the muslim enemy regard us as a boneless chicken. Why not prove them wrong? And as for the complaining, again: Miles and Thelonius playing a duet to my hearing. Unlike Barnes, however, I think his penultimate act before leaving office should be another gift:
i) Take all the cockroaches in Gitmo, shoot them, and throw their bodies over the fence into Cuba. It'd save a lot in lawyer bills. Might even put a few radical trial lawyers out of business. All good.
Of course, Bush will do none of these things. He wants history to "like him." Unfortunately for him, history will like him only if he changes things and wins.
Won't happen...
Monk
posted by Monk | 17:50
