I worked with a guy who was in that class from Central High. The 101 guys would buy them whiskey and smokes. 
Well, a “surge on” sounds better than a “war on.”
McCain: “Well, we need off-shore drilling.”
Obama: “I’m against but I’m also going to be for it when we develop a plan.”
Translation: McCain tells the truth, Obama is soooo kewt & cuddly! Also full of shit.
How many times do we have to hear our president is going to wait for “a plan?”
Its a pretty ok bit of psychic jiu-jitsu. He is already married to the somewhat weak notion that the “surge” is the miracle, the deus ex McCaina, that has transformed Iraq from turd-infested fever swamp to warm and cuddly American ally. Its a pretty weak case, over all, but rather than defend it, he simply assumes that he need not, that the “surge” is so patently wonderful, he can apply it as a metaphor for other, entirely unrelated, issues. Rather than argue that the "surge’ is crunchy goodness, he simply pretends that the argument has already been settled, that everyone agrees that the “surge” was the greatest idea evah!
Obama would support it as a part of a compromise. I realize it’s a concept that hasn’t gotten much exposure in the past 8 years, so it’s understandable when people don’t understand.
You use what works; drive it 'till it dies. No sense rewriting the works of Shakespeare when your monkey’s already banged them out for you. We don’t want the cloud of smoke to be a mushroom gun.
And McCain is just going to nuke baby harp seals until the ocean gives up its oil?
McCain is all about compromise and exploring alternative energy and conserving, etc. He’s man enough to say we’re going to need more oil, while we explore our other options. Obama is brave enough to wiffle waffle and promise to form a committee to explore the issue. We all know how effective that turns out to be.
Yeah, because acting without waiting for a plan first goes so bloody well. (See “Iraq, occupation of”)
Yeah, I knew that would be the first example brought up. We so agree on that one.
But ineffectual politicians are known for appointing committees rather that doing anything of consequence.
McCain has all the answers:
Fatalities rising in Afghanistan. Give it a surge! If it worked in Iraq, it has to work in Afghanistan too!
Ok, what about energy policy?
Wait, I thought Obama was a flip-flopper because he was willing to compromise on the issue of oil drilling in return for concessions on energy conservation. Or maybe Obama is just a serious legislator.
But what should we do about the economy?
Was the surge a carefully considered military strategy or has McCain discovered an all purpose policy band-aid, one so effective you don’t need to understand the underlying issues?
C’mon Sam: if the surge is good for Iraq, Afghanistan, energy policy and the economy, it just has to be great for our domestic criminals.
Yep, America needs surgery!
It’s a breath mint and a toilet bowl cleanser!
This is beautiful, and classic politics, on both sides. The rabid anti-war leftists(and Obama) were all so vehemently against the surge. Then it worked, or at least brought the situation in Iraq to the point where a descent resolution was in sight. Now Obama and the left are falling all over themselves to co-opt what the right has been saying all along, Obama’s “16 months” meme, which he’s been pushing for several years, has finally caught up the right’s “We stand down as they stand up” mantra.
Meanwhile, against all expectation, the right has been proved (or at least vindicated to some degree) correct in Iraq, and they are seeking to build on that, applying the “surge” terminology to other programs they favor. They haven’t actually been doing it as much as mocking left wing bloggers and journalists would like to have you believe, and many of those folks have forgotten that the word “surge” is a perfectly cromulent word, when someone mentions an “economic surge” they are not necessarily using the word as a reference to Iraq but in it’s proper, dictionary meaning, but the connection IS there sometimes. The right seeks to expand the connection to absurdity, and the left desperately tries to deny the fact that they were wrong WRT the surge with mockery.
Same old, same old, politics as usual.
My three quotes all made explicit reference to Iraq, as did the OP. Your claim lacks substantiation.
Emphasis gleefully added.
Then why is he mocking Obama’s call to conserve gas by maintaining proper tire pressure? Sounds to me like he sees conservation as a trivial solution that is only worthy of derision, while drilling for more oil crack is the only way to beat this addiction to foreign oil.
I personally never had a problem with “We stand down as they stand up.” Sounded like a good plan to me. What angered me was the complete lack of intention to follow through with it. Empty words from Bush. I can only hope they won’t be from Obama, but I know they will be from McCain.
No - it didn’t work. The ethnic purging had run its course and building big friggin’ ghetto’s to stop them killing each other is what worked. And you should not have to be reminded that the metrics for the ‘surge’ success was a bunch of political stuff, little of which has happened.
And besides - if the Surge has been such a success why are the troop levels being maintained until 2010?
Tides surge. They come in and go out. This is more like a flood. And now the Kurds are threatening to annex Kirkuk. And Sadr can restart his shit any time he feels like it.
The surge without either troop reductions or political success cannot be called a success and you can’t keep redefining down what ‘success’ is until you hit the mark.
Jesus - if I set myself the goal of marrying Gweneth Paltrow and end up wanking over a picture in Hello magazine that’s hardly success no matter how many times I redefine it.
And to add another metric to the Surge ‘success’. The whole ‘Awakening’ thing. Bribing an arming a bunch of Sunni to take care of the minor threat Al-Q posed. Creating and arming an armed Sunni resistance outside the control of the State.
Now how can that possibly have a downside?
But on the more funny side - the Iraq govt is apparently giving us all the bum’s rush. No permanent bases, all combat troops out by 2011 and the rest by 2013.
'Thanks for all the arms and dollars Infidel. Don’t let the door … ’
The iranians must be pissing themselves laughing.
I would thilnk that the restraining order would count for something.
Whatever. If that’s what it takes, whatever. If they want to declare victory, and have a ticker tape parade with The Leader and McCain in the lead car with confetti raining down on them, OK. And a “Gosh, Do We Ever Love Our Heroes and the Glorious Republican Party!” Rally, OK. If that’s what it takes to get our people out of this shit swamp, OK. Bring it on, I can take it. If I have to eat some shit to close this ghastly chapter of shameful history, here’s my spoon, here’s my grin, bring it!